Apply Warp-Speed Vaccine Process to Life

NASA put men on the moon in 1969 by: 1) putting the steps needed to accomplish this feat in order and 2) by assigning a number of teams to work on each step. When one team figured out how to accomplish step one, it could assume one of the teams working on step two was ready to move forward by applying its solution. Simplifying the task of developing a vaccine, there would be three steps: 1) develop a test vaccine, 2) prepare a pool of control and test subjects for the vaccine and 3) distribute the vaccine to the public. You can see how separate teams could be charged with the tasks of each step and, as soon as step one was complleted, another team was prepared to implement step two. As individuals, although we can't count on teams ready to work on various aspects of our lives, we can improve the way we live our lives by idehtifying the steps involved along the way. Children and adults can list the steps needed to get out of the house to school or work. For example, activities might include: get out of bed when alarm sounds, take a shower, exercise, get dressed, make bed, make breakfast, eat breakfast, make lunch, check email, read or listen to weather report and news, walk to bus or car. Once a list of activities is set, next, put them in order, paying secial attention to what can be done simultaneously. You might even discover activities that can be done the night before. Identifying steps that can be accomplished simultaneously is a way to be ready to accomplish step two as soon as step one is completed, even if there is no separate team ready to help you take on step two. Simply hanging clothes in the bathroom before taking a shower enables getting dressed as soon as exiting a shower, just as turning on a coffeemaker before showering speeds up the breakfast process. When students say they want to be president or a doctor, it is important to help them identify the steps needed to accomplish their objective. Helping students understand how a degree and experience working at a fast food restaurant or grocery store can pay off with good and legal professional positions in the future rather than dropping out of school to make short-term, fast money selling drugs and possibly landing in prison with no future. When a woman wants to have a career and raise a family, her planning also requires detailed plotting how to care for young children and how to maintain professional credentials at the same time. For example, she might find childcare/babysitters, enroll in graduate school, find a teaching position, subscribe to professional journals, write for a local publication, start a business. Because life is full of the unexpected does not mean forecasting is totally impossible. A general plan for any age, from birth to 100, always can leave room for delays and options, but identifying the steps needed to obtain an objective is the first step to getting there.

Who Was Responsible for Pearl Harbor?

Because the FBI failed to share a German questionnaire with U.S. military leaders, Britain inadvertabtly provided a blueprint for Japan's December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. During World War II, Japan joined the Axis by signing a Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy on September 27, 1940. Less than two months later, outdated British airplanes took off from naval carriers and launched a successful night time bombing raid on Italy's well-fortified Mediterranean naval base at Taranto. According to Larry Loftis' account in his book, Into the Lion's Mouth, Japan repeatedly asked Germany to provide details of Britain's surprise Taranto attack. Berlin had different priorities: aerial bombing Britain into submission while pressure from Senator Arthur Vandenberg's isolationists kept the United States out of the war. Nonetheless, Japan's persistence paid off. In the German questionnaire a spy carried to the United States, Taranto morphed into Pearl Harbor. The airfields, airplane hangars, wharfs, submarine stations, ammunition dumps and oil supply depots Britain destroyed in Italy became the targets Tokyo wanted to identify in Hawaii. Posing as a wealthy playboy, Kusko Popov, said to be one of Ian Fleming's inspirations for the James Bond character, served as a double agent spying for both Germany and Britain. London knew what he was doing and helped furnish Germany with useless and false information. Hitler was not in on the charade. When Germany sent Popov to the U.S. to replace its inept Hawaiian spy, Loftis recounts how he came to New York in August, 1941, carrying the Japanese-inspired, German questionnaire requesting him to collect detailed information about Pearl Harbor. Along with an English translation of the questionnaire were telegrams ontaining photographically-reduced information embedded in microdots the size of periods. A period containing the German version of the Pearl Harbor questionnaire could be read under a microscope. Popov turned over the German questionnaire, English translation and telegrams with microdots to FBI representatives on August 19, 1941. London mistakenly believed the FBI would welcome counterespionage assistance from a trusted British spy like Popov and that helping William "Wild Bill" Donovan set up a new Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency, would reinforce the Anglo-American bond and help encourage President Franklin D. Roosevelt to provide the military assisatnce Britain urgently needed. At the FBI, although J. Edgar Hoover received an English translation of the Pearl Harbor questionnaire by August 19, 1941, on September 3, 1941, he only shared information about the microdots with the President's military secretary. Furthermore, he gave the impression Germany's new system for transmitting information by microdots was discovered during an FBI investigation. Although the FBI had pledged to counter Axis espionage by cooperating with miltiary intelligence, Hoover was not about to allow the new OSS to threaten his agency's investigative authority and budget. Loftis concludes, none of the eight, pre-1948 investigations of intelligence failutes prior to December 7, 1941, mentioned the FBI had received, ignored and failed to share the German questionnaire Dusko Popov delivered to the United States nearly four months before Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

World-Welcoming Holiday Gifts for Kids

Creative Hanukkah, Christmas and Chinese New Year gifts present an opportunity to welcome kids to their world. Although the illustrated, 32-page My First Atlas of the World from National Geographic and a squishy fabric Hugg-A-Planet Globe come as a $42 set for kids 3 and older from The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City (STORE.METMUSEUM.ORG), bookstores also carry child-appropriate atlases, globes and world wall maps separately. The World Wildlife Fund caters to the love kids have for animals that roam over the world. A $50 donation for worldwide conservation efforts comes with a choice of a plush animal from 50 species, from the popular Tiger to a Narwhal. For additional animal-related gift ideas, visit WWFCATALOG.ORG. Adults would have to do a little explaining to show kids how they can help the world with a gift to Heifer International, World Vision or kiva. Using the HEIFER.ORG/CATALOG online, kids and adults would learn how a $10 or $25 donation for an alpaca, goat, sheep, pig, flock of chicks/ducks or water buffalo would help a foreign family. World Vision (worldvisiongifts.org) offers a similar way to provide needy families with livestock, plus medicines, bed nets to prevent malaria. school supplies, soccer balls, fishing kits, fruit trees and clean water. Older computer-savvy students, with only a little adult guidance, could put their own $25 kiva gift card to work online by choosing to make a loan to someone in one of 80 countries. Go to Kiva.org to purchase the gift card a student would use to make a loan. Finally, in what has become a trying year, a child might like to be able to transfer or forget concerns about school, friends and other matters. UNICEF helps children and adolescents in 190 countries and territories with funds from sales of a variety of items, such as a set of six handcrafted worry dolls from Guatemala, who are ready to receive all the concerns kids transfer to them, and a wooden handcrafted 3D Tic Tac Toe set from Thailand, that kids can use to demonstrate their ability to overcome a challenge. The dolls and wooden game are each $29.95 at unicefmarket.org or by calling 800-553-1200.

4 Problems of U.S. Intelligence

In the process of describing the directors responsible for leading the Central Intelligence Agency since its inception after World War II, The Spymasters by Chris Whipple lays bare at least four systemic problems that affect the intelligence that supports policy decisions affecting U.S.national security. 1) Conflicting attitudes toward analysts, covert operators, technology, a mole/spy (Rick Ames and earlier, James Jesus Angleton's search for spies within CIA) and women affect the agency's morale, hiring, firing and intelligence reports. President Nixon's CIA director, James Schlesinger, purged covert operators left over from the Vietnam era; President Reagan's CIA director, William Casey, himself a covert operator during World War II, hired 2000. Casey ended up in the scandalous plot, where contra guerrillas, funded from arms sales to Iran that were used to free U.S. hostages, fought to overthrow the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Presudent Carter's CIA director, Stansfield Turner, favored using technology rather than human intelligence collection methods. James Woolsey, President Clinton's first CIA director, however, recognized the value of integrating technology and human intelligence. Until relatively recently, CIA was "white, male and Yale." Appointed by President Trump, Gina Haspel, the first female CIA director, came up through the covert Directorate of Operations. Jennifer Matthews, who joined the CIA in 1989, was one of the analysts in the secret unit, Alec Station, that had warned President George W. Bush's administration of an impending Al Qaeda attack on the United States. At age 45, Ms. Matthews told family and friends she needed an overseas covert assignment in order to progress professionaly. As chief of base in Khost, Afghanistan, she was killed in a suicide bombing in December, 2009. 2) Turf wars, at a time when available information abounds, prevent innovations capable of capturing, evaluating and distributing relevant information, the lack of which can have dire consequences. On paper, responsibilities of the CIA, FBI, other U.S. agencies and departments, embassies and foreign intelligence services seem clear. But in the U.S. alone, the CIA and FBI have conflicting responsibilities, and there are conflicts between the FBI's need to collect evidence to prosecute offenders in court cases and the CIA's need to take timely action on intelligence information. For example, the CIA's Jose Rodriguez justified use of waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" as the fastest way to get Al Qaeda terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, to disclose plans for additional attacks that required immediate prevention. He had no respect for the interrogation method of the FBI's Ali Soufan, who, as an Arabic-speaking Muslim, gained information by establishing personal rapport with terrorists. (See Lawrence Wright's very different positive profile of Ali Soufan in The Looming Tower). Both the CIA and FBI knew Al Qaeda was behind the October, 2000 attack on the USS Cole destroyer in Aden, Yemen, but the Clinton administration's failure to react emboldened Osama bin Laden's September 11, 2001 attacks. What surfaced as one of the consensus reasons for 9/11 in the postmortem was a lack of intelligence sharing. As a remedy, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was designed to integrate not only the CIA and FBI, but also the National Security Agency, Department of Energy and another 10 contributors to U.S. intelligence. Of course, even this cumbersome Office does not collect, evaluate and coordinate intelligence information supplied by other sources, such as NATO, the UK and Israel. A year before the August, 1998 Al Qaeda attacks on U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, for example, the FBI learned CIA discounted the warning of a bombing plot an Egyptian member of Al Qaeda provided at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi. In contrast, acting on a tip from Jordan's General Intelligence Directorate, CIA relied on a would-be double agent, Human Khalil al-Balawi, who presented a video showing he could get close to Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al Zawahiri. On December 30, 2009, Balawi, who turned out to be a suicide bomber and triple agent working for Al Qaeda, set off the explosion that killed Jennifer Matthews and her team in Khost, Afghanistan. 3) CIA and Presidents navigate a difficult relationship. Separating those who provide and those who use information is a mistake, when collaboration is likely to produce a much better conclusion. Within the administrations of U.S. Presidents, policy decisions are based on political calculations, incomplete intelligence information, the clash of personalities and opinions and often an attempt to provide deniability and avoid blame, if a decision launches an action that goes wrong. Political suspicions linger, for example, regarding President Clinton's reluctance to retaliate for Al Qaeda's attack on the USS Cole. Acknowledging Al Qaeda crippled a U.S. destroyer could have made Democrats look weak a month before the 2000 election. Plus, with President Clinton's Monica Lewinsky affair fresh in the minds of voters, a retalitory strike on Al Qaeda could look like an effort to distract from the affair, an imitation of the film plot in Wag the Dog. The experience of CIA directors and their staffs is too valuable to exclude from the policy-making loop. Consider the positions held by these CIA directors. James Schlesinger: Secretary of Defense George H. W. Bush: U.S. President William Webster: FBI director Robert Gates: Secretary of Defense John Deutch: Deputy Secretary of Defense George Tenet: Deputy CIA director Michael Hayden: National Security Agency director Leon Panetta: Member of Congress, President Clinton's White House Chief of Staff and OMB director, Secretary of Defense Mike Pompeo: Member of Congress, Secretary of State Yet, the principals in positions to take control during a new crisis may fail to give sufficient attention to a looming problem, if their attention is focused on erroneous information about a different threat and/or if they fail to understand the country or group involved. After George W. Bush won the 2000 presidential election, the CIA continued to voice grave concern about the growing Al Qaeda threat, but the president's advisors: Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz at the Defense Department and National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, were preoccupied with Iraq. Pretending Iraq's Saddam Husein was connected with Al Qaeda and had weapons of mass destruction led to a disasterous war. From their positions of power, Presidents often try to use the information and tools CIA can provide to implement their will. During the Vietnam war, Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon asked CIA director, Richard Helms, to violate the CIA's lack of authority to engage in domestic police activities by beginning a domestic surveillance program, MHCHAOS, designed to identify the communist connections of anti-war protest leaders in the United States. After I left CIA in 1967, I lived in Honolulu for a time. While I was on a date with a Hawaiian assistant attorney general, he asked if I were willing to compile a list of anti-war leaders at Hawaii's East-West University, if the government paid for my Ph.D. studies. I was unwilling. Just as CIA directors need to avoid being intimidated by Presidents, they need to be careful not to use their own power to intimidate their staffs. When a crisis erupts, the CIA hierarchy has a tendency to leave analysts who monitor a country or subject out in the cold, while over and over again the same top tier officials assemble to consider options. After Russia invaded the former Soviet Union's Republic of Georgia in August, 2008, CIA director, Michael Hayden, asked (I hope, in jest.), if CIA had an expert on Georgia. Clearly, the Georgia analyst who followed the country every day was not the first person asked for an assessment. John Brennan was an Irish Catholic and White House counterrorism advisor before he became the CIA director. To confine him to an information-only lane would not make sense. National security depends on a CIA that provides information it knows to be true(and legal), not to robotically go along with every request from Presidents and their administrations. 4) Just as political considerations play a role in the relationship between presidents and CIA directors, they also affect Congressional relations. The title, Playing to the Edge, of the book by George W. Bush's CIA director, Michael Hayden, captures the intelligence community's mindset. Compared to covert operators determined to stretch the legal limits to complete a mission, most legislators are attorneys schooled in a strict rule of law. Blame for poor CIA-Congressional relations, cannot be assigned to CIA alone, however. By August, 2016, Russian interference with the U.S. election process was clear. But when President Obama's CIA officials asked Congressional leaders to warn their State election commissions about foreign tampering, they were told to stop being played by Moscow. Wavering views on assassinations can serve as a proxy for understanding complex Congressional and CIA positions. In 1973, Congress looked at CIA's involvement in plots to assassinate four foreign leaders: Fidel Castro, Vietnam's Ngo Dinh Diem, the Congo's Patrice Lumumba and Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. As a result of these investigations, Congress established oversight by House and Senate Permanent Committees on Intelligence. In the 1980s, the Middle East's unsettled Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. support for Iran's Shah inspired vengeance by Islamic fundamentalists. A CIA manhunt eventually killed an elusive terrorist leader of Iranian-backed Hezbollah, Imad Mughniyah, who promoted effective suicide bombings and the kidnapping and torture of U.S. citizens. When pressure against what was perceived as torture by CIA operatives gained public support after 9/11, Congress condemned the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used on Al Qaeda terrorists and passed the "Detainee Treatment Act" in 2005. But, even as early as 2001, assassinations began to go unchallenged, when they could be accomplished from afar by drones. And crowds gathered outside the White House to cheer the assassination of Osama bin Landen in May, 2011. The U.S. public and Congress agreed to take action for Saudi Arabia's role in the dismemberment of Washington Post journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, in Iran's Saudi Arabian Embassy, but President Trump was reluctant to lose a $450 billion sale to the Saudis. Yet, President Trump authorized the murder of Iranian general, Qassim Suleimani, head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Quds Force. How Congress and the public will view future assassinations remains unclear. Although eliminating a dangerous leader appears to accomplish a mission, such a short-term remedy often poses worse long-term consequences. President Clinton's first CIA director, James Woolsey, recognized the dilemma. He described how a giant, after slaying a dragon, suddenly can discover he is surrounded by poisonous snakes. The death of one kingpin does not prevent more than one from taking his place. Finally, no one book provides a complete review of the tools, procedures, limitations and capabilities the U.S. intelligence community uses to protect national security. As Chris Whipple surely knows, the CIA directors and others he interviewed for The Spymasters are motivated to protect their legacies and the integrity of the Central Intelligence Agency. Their perceptions also reflect their personalities and loyalty to and chemistry with associates. Predictably, CIA's current director, Gina Haspel, and Michael Pompeo, the current Secretary of State and Ms. Haspel's predecessor, declined to be interviewed, since anything they would say could have repercussions related to their ongoing responsibilities. It was unfortunate to see the good ol' white, male and Yale CIA boys use Ms. Haspel's lack of response to an interview request as an opportunity to take their long knives to her experience, decisions and behavior. In the final analysis, however, The Spymasters reminds citizens of democracies how free they are to discover the way their governments work and how free they are to correct what they dislike.

Don't Make A Choice; Choose "And"

Framing solutions as either/or options ignores the power of "and." What R. Edward Freeman, Kirsten Martin and Bidman L. Parmar prescribe for business in their book, The Power of And provides structure for the expression, "Think outside the box." Just as executives are invited to imagine ways to satisfy stockholders, customers AND employees, those in other fields also can achieve greater benefits by creative thinking. How can the U.S. cut federal spending on space exploration and reach Mars? How can public education improve teaching methods and deal with student medical and emotional problems? Women loved Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg but they never challenged her assertion that they could not be full participants in civic life without the option of abortion to prevent motherhood. Yet, Senator Tammy Duckworth lost both legs serving in the military in Iraq and gave birth while she served in the U.S. Congress. What can help people in any field learn to think creatively? The authors of The Power of And suggest tuning into the arts. Each objective is like a note in a symphony, one color in a painting or one step in a dance. Integration can produce harmony, a composition or a ballet. Even something out of place can lead to a new solution, the way a different note leads to jazz. By combining journalism and fiction Tom Wolfe created a new literary genre. Improv comedians keep a gag going by simply saying "and" after each other's statements like "I went to the store, and...." Try converting "I'm going to visit my grandmother on Thanksgiving or stay home?"

2021's Presidential Hot Topics

At tonight's presidential debate between US President Trump and former Vice President, Joe Biden, the candidates have their last chance to detail how they would meet the challenges the country will face in 2021 and beyond. What are those challenges? The Foreign Policy Association has released the following list of the global issues their groups will be discussing when they meet remotely next year. It would be interesting to see if you can check off any of these issues discussed at tonight's presidential debate. 1. The role of international organizations in a global pandemic. 2. Global supply chains and national security. 3. China and Africa. 4. Korean peninsula. 5. Persian Gulf security. 6. Brexit and the European Union. 7. The fight over the melting Arctic. 8. The end of globalization. The US presidential candidates touched on all of these topics, except the supply chain, which is complicated by moral as well as economic and political considerations: and Brexit and the EU, which is not of much interest to US voters. COVID-19 and China were discussed, but not in relation to international organizations or Africa. North Korea, with an economy crippled by sanctions and crop damage from unusually punishing typhoon rain, needs help, maybe from China, but possibly from selling weaponry to would-be nuclear states using hard-to trace cryptocurrency. The future of the oil industry discussion involved both the Persian Gulf and the effect of climate change melting in the Arctic. The future of globalization involves jobs, always a subject of US presidential debates. For information about how to engage in the Foreign Policy Association's discussion groups, go to fpa.org.

North Korea, Nuclear at 75

On Saturday, October 10, 2020, North Korea will parade the fruits of 30 years spent above ground and in secret underground tunnels developing a nuclear ICBM deterrent, possibly including advanced multiple independently targetable missiles and missiles that can maneuver in flight and on re-entry. North Korea is suspected of paying for its 2020 nuclear-related purchases with $275 million in hacked cryptocurrency. When Pyongyang commemorates the 75th anniversary of Stalin's founding of North Korea's communist Workers' Party, the world will be able to identify contributions countries, such as Russia, Ukraine and Iran, made to Saturday's military models, just as the world saw how Pakistan helped develop the uranium enrichment process on display in North Korea's first 2006 nuclear bomb test. Saturday, the world also might see evidence of Iran's hand in a North Korean submarine capable of launching solid-fueled ballistic missiles. These missiles, known as Pukguksong, again were paraded on January 14, 2021. Activity at North Korea's Sinpo South shipyard suggests development of such submarines. The 1989 collapse of the USSR was both a loss and a blessing for North Korea. Boris Yeltsin withdrew North Korea's Russian protection in 1991, but Pyongyang found it could recruit unemployed Russian and Ukrainian experts needed for its nuclear and missile program. Porous sanctions failed to prevent North Korea from becoming a nuclear power. Saturday's parade will demonstrate North Korea is, not only a nuclear power, but also a source able to supply weapons eagerly desired by would-be members of the nuclear club. With an economy crippled by sanctions and crop damage from unusually heavy typhoon rain, North Korea is likely to look for such a deal and, by using cryptocurrency, the transactions would be nearly impossible to trace. In one sense, North Korea finds the US and South Korea pitted against Russia and China, but global dynamics are more complicated. After North Korea and the US seemed on the brink of war in 2017, South Korea and China recognized, at the very least, such a nuclear confrontation destabilized the area. Just a year later, when the US and South Korea began improving relations with North Korea, Beijing made overtures to Chairman Kim designed to block greater US involvement on the peninsula. By 2000, Vladimir Putin took control in Russia and he too reached out to restore relations with North Korea. North and South Korea also have an on-again, off-again relationship. In June, 2020, the two countries cut off communication with each other, and Pyongyang blew up their joint liaison office in Kaesong, North Korea. Two months later, Chairman Kim was reported to be in a coma. In September and October, 2020, he was wishing President Trump a COVID-19 recovery and apologizing to Seoul for killing one of South Korea's officials in waters North Korea controls in the Yeonpyeong islands. Detailed disclosure about the incident compromised South Korean-US joint intelligence methods. Finally, just weeks before Saturday's parade of military hardware, a North Korean spokesperson said Pyongyang was satisfied with its military deterrent and planned to focus on economic development in 2021.

Action Verbs

Home schooling during the COVID-19 pandemic finds parents teaching their children "action verbs." I don't recall a teacher making a distinction between action verbs and "is, was and were," but action verbs do represent a way to involve kids by asking them to demonstrate run, laugh, play, write and the like. Action verbs also demonstrate a difference between moving and standing still. They focus attention on what contributes to both personal and social health. Consider some action verbs: help, legislate, donate, vote, negotiate, celebrate, question. They all offer more promise than sitting, conforming and doing nothing. Action verbs lead to providing healthcare, feeding the hungry, sheltering refugees, employing the jobless, building roads, educating children, recyclinng plastic and mediating disputes. Of course, there also are negative action verbs: kill, riot, lynch, steal. And, depending on your side, other action verbs, such as protest, break and fight, can be good or bad. One thing is certain. Action verbs invite reactions. Everywhere in the world, they teach children, adults and countries to do something.

All Work and No Play Unmakes China

It is hard to imagine how one of China's innovative business leaders or beautiful movie stars could look at the Chinese loyalists hunched over their desks at a Chinese Communist Party Congress and commit all their energy to further the will of Chairman Xi. Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese leader who decided to end the 1989 democracy demonstration in Tiananmen Sq uare by force, proclaimed, "It is a glorious thing to be rich." Yet, Hong Kong's Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, who is said to be among the leaders receiving the highest remunerations in the world, does not pocket any interest on her funds. Prompted by fear of US sanctions, she has no bank account and keeps her cash at home. Mr. Deng neglected to include joy, happiness, fun, freedom, beauty, truth and privacy on his list of glorious pursuits. In AMERICAN FACTORY, the Netflix documentary film about a Chinese factory in Ohio, a Chinese factory manager reveals he has had to commit to two years working away from his family. Even so, the factory manager is one of the lucky men his age who has a wife. China's earlier one-child policy has left 30 million men without mariageable women in 2020. And China's well educated urban women expect to marry men with money; they are not about to settle for villagers. While the Chinese Communist Party focuses on collecting data to control its 1.4 billion Chinese population, the Chinese people entertain other ideas. Ignoring social distancing and assorted restrictions imposed to prevent the coronavirus, China's young people flocked to see Mickey Mouse as soon as Disneyland reopened in Shanghai in May, 2020. For relief from China's "996" work schedule requiring labor from 9 am to 9 pm six days a week, fun-loving Chinese also ignore the government's distain for the lack of socialist values associated with playing Tencent's "Honour of Kings" or watching amateur dancers, singers and comics on Douyin, China's version of TikTok. Some have discovered they can discuss taboo topics away from censors on the Clubhouse app. Unfortunately, a team of Buddhist monks and nomad sheep and yak herders failed to play in a 2019 international basketball tournament because their participation was canceled by Chinese police who felt they might be unable to control a crowd of fans during the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party. Watching the Chinese Horse Club owners cheering when their Triple Crown winner, "Justify" won the 2018 Kentucky Derby, no one would have known China bans gambling. China's race horse buyers and trainers also can be seen at the New Zealand Jockey Club. Casinos on Macau, the former Portuguese island that is now a Special Administrative Region of China, continue to attract wealthy Chinese. Less affluent Chinese hide in the woods to gamble on mahjong games. At the same time, the Chinese culture that cultivates cheating and lying to achieve business objectives caught up with Lin Qi, the billionaire developer of "Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming," who died of poisoning on Christmas Day, 2020. Founded in 2009, Mr. Lin's Chinese YooZoo Games studio launched his popular strategy game in 2019. Accordig to the BBC, Mr. Lin was poisoned at the hands of a suspect, identified by Shanghai police only as Xu, but later as Xu Yao, the head of YooZoo's film productio unit. YooZoo holds the film adaptation rights to the popular Chinese sci-fi novel, THREE BODY PROBLEMS, the first of a trilogy by Liu Cizin. Like other Chinese movie projects, the plan for the book's film adaptation never developed. But Netflix now seems ready to adapt THREE BODY PROBLEMS for television. China expected its 1.4 million-plus population and twice as many eyes to serve as waving strobe lights attracting film-makers to Qingdao's new 2016, $8 billion film production complex. At first they came, but they soon refused to deal with the demands of censors in China's State Administration of Press Publications, Radio, Film and Television. China's popular film star, Fan Bingbing, was on her way to international fame until the government charged her with tax fraud, and she disappeared. Nowadays, the fledgling movie industry that made a Netflix romantic comedy despite electricity outages in poor little Zimbabwe offers more promise than China. Just as China allows its population limited film fare, readers have to be content with propaganda slogans on factory walls. In 2015, the owner of Hong Kong's Causeway Bay Books was arrested and charged with the "illegal sale of books," the political thrillers and bodice-rippers the Central Propaganda Department decided the Chinese population should not read. Before moving his bookstore to Taiwan in 2020, he observed, "Contemporary China is an absurd country." No doubt, most cowed Chinese will self-monitor their activities to conform to Beijing's control requirements. But some will defy personal recognition by shielding their faces with umbrellas and masks, wear black-face makeup to trick artificial intelligence into thinking they are apes, point lasers to disable surveillance cameras and travel on crutches or in wheelchairs to "disguise" their gait. What will the top tier geniuses China needs do? As some have done in the past, they will tire of finding their natural human desires unsatisfied and flee to Silicon Valley.

China's One Belt, One Road: Pakistan's Cautionary Tale

Back in 2015, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) section of China's One Belt, One Road (OBOR) Initiative was expected to bring economic development and jobs to Pakistan and also provide substantial benefits to China. The new deep water port at Gwadar, Pakistan, on the Arabian Sea would enable China to transport oil from the Middle East up through Pakistan to western China rather than across the Indian Ocean and through the congested Malacca Straight between Indonesia and Malaysia to the South China Sea. By encircling India, the CPEC offered a way to balance or neutralize democratic India's influence in the region, but the CPEC also involved China in India's Kashmir border dispute with Pakistan high in the Himalaya Mountains. Shots fired on the border in Septemebr, 2020, violated an Indo-Chinese agreement. Pakistan found the terms of the CPEC less than transparent and a debt burden Beijing was unwilling to renegotiate. The Chinese support Pakistan expected for its border dispute with India failed to materialize. In fact, in September, 2017, China and India signed an anti-terrorist declaration that criticized Pakistan for shielding terrorist groups. The US even floats the notion that China might be an ally willing to help persuade Pakistan to pressure its Taliban friends to help stabilize neighboring Afghanistan. The bottom line is: Pakistan's deteriorating economy, made worse by the coronavirus, finds 18 million employees out of work. China, which expects repayment for the CPEC, has no need for Pakistan's textile exports. CPEC construction jobs failed to satisfy Pakistan's need for the education, technical training and scientific research necessary for modern employment, such as monitoring and correcting Pakistan's poor air quality. Finally, the CPEC involves atheistic China with a Muslim country, when China is trying to eliminate the Uighur Muslim culture in Kashgar, home of the Id Kah Mosque, and to control up to one million Uighurs in so-called re-education camps. At the same time, Pakistan's Hindu minority, already discriminated against in better economic times, is converting to Islam just to receive assistance from the government and charities.

Putin's Private Siberian Project Excludes Alexei Navalny

Two-dimensional maps often show Russia on the far right side and the United States all the way over on the left. This separation provides the false impression the countries are far apart. But as John McCain's vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, famously observed, she could see Russia from her kitchen window. Presumably, Russia's President Vladimir Putin can see the United Staes from a Siberian window. And lately, US military planes have intercepted Russian planes snooping from the skies over Alaska. Climate change turned Siberia, once identified with Russian prison camps in an inhospitable frozen wasteland, into what President Putin calls the East Sibrian Sea's Northern Sea Route "a matter of national pride." With increased seasonal passage through Arctic waters comes faster market access for oil and gas from Russia's Yamal Penninsula and a new military option. Beginning on September, 11, 2018, Russia, China and Mongolia participated in Vostok-2018, a massive military exercise in Siberia. By the middle of 2020, Vladimir Putin, who considered the collapse of the USSR the 20th century's geopolitical disaster, felt confident. Russia tamed the Chechnya separatists in 2000 and annexed Crimea in 2014. Possible domination of Georgia and Belarus was still in play. The US was about to walk away from an Open Skies Treaty, resisted by the Kremlin ever since one was designed to prevent surprise attacks after World War II. Refusing to authorize treaty-permtted flights over Russia's military exercises and staging areas for nuclear weapons aimed at Europe provoked the US to designate a final November, 2020 participation date. Russia already interfered with US elections in 2016 and was prepared to do so again in 2020. On July 1, 2020, voters approved a referendum allowing a Russian president to serve two consecutive 6-year terms after the next election, when the current term of President Putin, age 67, ends in 2024. At this propitious moment, Putin's political nemesis, Alexei Navalny, arrived in Siberia. Mr. Navalny's anti-corruption message had gained traction in Russia's urban areas, where his slick YouTube delivery system skirted state-owned media and inspired massive protests when Putin decided to return to the presidency in 2012. By 2020, Navalny was far outside Russia's major cities schooling opposition city council candidates who won two seats and ousted the majority held by Putin's United Russian party in the student town of Tomsk in Siberia's elections on Sunday, September 13, 2020. By winning one seat in Novosibirsk and uniting with three other independent candidates, the United Russian party also seemed likely to lose its majority there. Timing favored Mr. Navalny's opposition party, since the coronavirus exposed the effect of falling oil prices on a falling standard of living, while Putin's wealthy oligarchy buddies remained untouched. On the plane back to Moscow from Siberia, Mr. Navalny became seriously ill. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, Siberia, where Alexei spent two days in a coma before the Kremlin allowed a plane to fly him to Germany on August 22, 2020. There, and also later in laboratories in France and Sweden, doctors determined he was exposed to the nerve gas chemical weapon, Novichok, the same poison that nearly killed the former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, in England. On Tuesday, September 8, 2020, a masked man threw a foul-smelling liquid into the offices of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation in Novosibirsk, Siberia. By Wednesday, September 9, German officials announced the attack on Navalny forced them to reconsider Gazprom's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Germany and Russia, which already is a source of controversy in Germany and Poland. Although Mr. Navalny came out of his coma on Monday, September 7, 2020, and could walk a short distance by September 14, German physicians remain uncertain about the extent of his long-term recovery. German doctors released Mr. Navalny from the hospital on September, 22, 2020. He will remain in Germany for rehabilitation but has expressed his intention to return to Russia, where court orders have frozen his bank accounts and, on August 27, 2020, seized his apartment to prevent it from being "sold, donated, or mortgaged." Knowing Mr. Navalny will be greeted with a rousing rally when he returns to Moscow, Putin certainly is planning to counter his reception. It is interesting to note how enthusiastic Vladimir Putin was about Siberia, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited him in 2010. He took her to a map in his dacha's private office to show her the areas where he was involved in saving Siberian tigers and polar bears from extinction. An earlier post, "North Pole Flag," also details Russia's continuing interest in the Arctic.

Q is QAnon's Practical Joker

Q, a practical joker on the TV show, "Impractical Jokers", is fun. QAnon is mumbo jumbo. According to QAnon, Q is so named, because he or she is a miitary or intelligence official with high level classified Q clearance to see nuclear material/weapon information, and QAnon's followers have been described as Christians striving to learn and apply biblical truths. They are certain they have foreknowledge of the inevitable Great Awakening when good destroys evil. Yet, the NEW TESTAMENT, in Mark 13:31-33, says "Heaven and earth will pass away...But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." When faced with inconvenient truths, QAnon's supporters bob and weave to deflect objective truth and reason with ever-changing explanations. QAnon followers see President Trump and themselves, a band of US patriots, fighting to bring down the "deep state" of powerful elite leaders in a cabal of corrupt media, government and education, financial and religious institutions. For QAnon's devoted band, signs from on high provide clues to the future. Maybe the name of the horse that wins Saturday's Kentucky Derby will be significant. They already see the death toll from the coronavirus as giving the media elites a way to hurt President Trump (known as Q+) and his chance of re-election. To believers, President Trump is not part of the Establishment. Conspiracies appeal to QAnon: - A New World Order is trying to dismantale societies throughout the world. - Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton ran a ritualistic children's sex ring in the basement of a pizza place in Washington. - Hillary Clinton and Barack Obamatha have a 16-year plan to destroy the US with draught, disease and nuclear war. QAnon tells followers to "Enjoy the show," the forthcoming global Armegeddon. Some scared followers alleviate their paranoia about the certain good versus evil clash by joining the secret community that expects to be on the winning side of good. Since others are willing to participate in the battle to destroy evil schemes and individuals, such as Hillary Clinton, the FBI classifies ANon as a domestic terrorist threat.

Alexei Navalny's Sudden Siberian Illness

Despite the campaign Alexei Navalny's supporters waged against a constitutonal amendment allowing Russian President Vladimir Putin to remain in office until at least 2036, past the current two consecutive term limit, the change passed in July, 2020. To preclude a challenge from a government-in-exile or any other "foreign" opponent, another constitutional amendment prohibits future Russian presidents from having established citizenship or permanent residency in another country. These constitutional changes are just the latest maneuvers Putin has made to eliminate domestic and foreign challenges. Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000 determined to restore Russia to pre-Communist collapse status. He switched from President to Prime Minister in 2008, but, when President Dmitry Medvedec's term was about to end in 2012, he decided to return to the presidency. His decision was greeted by an outbreak of protests about corruption, movtiated by Navalny, and a speech in Europe criticizing Russia's less than fair parliamentary election by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Putin determined to get his revenge on both the protests and Secretary Clinton. Yet, he saw red flags. Navalny unexpectedly won 30% of the vote in Moscow's 2013 mayoral contest with a Putin crony, and opposition to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovch's decision not to partner with the European Union and the following bloody protest led to his departure in February, 2014. Unmarked Russian troops moved into and gained control of Ukraine's Crimea by March, 2014. Back in Russia, Boris Nemtsov was collecting evidence that the so-called volunteeers fighting in Crimea were there at Putin's direction. On February 27, 2015, an assassin's bullet ended Nemtsov's life near Red Square. Unlike Nemtsov, Navalny was not as concerned about Putin's role in Crimea and the US and other countries' sanctions that followed. He seemed to take the annexation as a given. Putin turned his attention to providing support for Secretary Clinton's 2016 presidential rival. According to The Atlantic magazine's review (September, 2020) of Catherine Belton's book, PUTIN'S PEOPLE, Russian operatives had been tracking Donald Trump for 30 years on the chance that he some day would be useful. After a one-on-one 2018 meeting with President Putin in Helsinki, President Trump absolved Russia of interfering in his 2016 election. In 2017, Putin managed to eliminate Navalny as a political opponent by barring convicted criminals from running for office and by having both Alexei and his younger brother, Oleg, arrested on questionable charges. A judge suspended Alexei's five year sentence, but, in an unsuccessful attempt to put pressure on Alexei to end opposition protests, Oleg was sent to a penal colony for three and a half years. The brothers were reunited on June 29, 2020, shortly before Alexei fell ill in Siberia. Although Alexei was barred from running for office himself, his platform of anti-corruption and support for an increased standard of living, once considered only appealing to Russia's urban middle class, began to attract a wider audience of low-paid unskilled, agricultural and transportation workers, healthcare professionals and teachers in the public sector, some trade unions and those dissatisfied with the age increase for state pensions. By September, 2018, Putin's candidates for four regional elections were defeated. Viktor Zolotov, commander of Putin's 300,000 protective force, challenged Navalny to a duel, never fought. On August 20, 2020, after a month earlier Russia's Constitution was ready to declare Putin president for life, it was no surprise Navalny suddenly became seriously ill while returning from a meeting with opposition candidates for local elections in Siberia. Originally, it was thought Navalny was poisoned by drinking tea laced with a toxic substance. After he was transferred to Germany for treatment, doctors discovered a nerve agent probably was sprinkled in his underwear or socks. One final note, in 2017, President Putin arrived with flowers and champagne to show his respect on the 90th birthday of Crimean-born, human rights agitator, Lyudmila Alexeyeva. She pressed the case for Alexei Navalny and denounced Boris Nemtsov's "awful political killing."

Spies Fail Lie Detector Tests?

How do the CIA, FBI and US Army explain the long periods Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, Jerry Chun Shing Lee and Peter Rafael Dzibinski Debbins spied for China and Russia without being detected? Mr. Ma was employed by the CIA for 22 years and the FBI for six. For nine years, Mr. Lee first worked for the CIA and then the FBI, and Mr Debbins spent his nine years in chemical and Special Forces units within the US Army. Each man provided highly classified national defense material to US enemies. Mr. Ma also compromised US human assets in China, and Mr. Debbins recommended fellow Green Berets who might cooperate with Russian intelligence. Periodic lie detector tests, identifying suspicious coincidences, "walking back the cat" investigations to discover those who had access to information about a failed operation, security clearance questionnaires and other procedures for uncovering spies exist. But Robert Hanssen, an FBI counterintelligence analyst, never had a polygraph test during the 15 years he spied for Moscow. Another spy revealed he had been able to convince a new lie detector operator results that indicated he was lying were inconclusive. What methods should prevent US spies from escaping detection before they are able to undermine US national security?

China and Russia Play A Long Game; So Must We

Why should kids stay off the TikTok app, when all they want to do is dance, watch kids lip-sync and try out their comedy routines? Along with collecting the location, unique device identies and message content data of TikTok users that will last forever, just as Pavlov conditioned a dog to associate food with a bell, China can associate the images kids throughout the world see on TikTok with a warm and fuzzy feeling about all things Chinese. Big Bird helps kids learn on SESAME STREET. What can a Chinese cartoon character with a cuddly pet panda or "Mulan" do to grab a kid's attention and to begin conditioning him or her to ignore warnings about Chinese motives? This morning a PBS kids cartoon show already taught children to associate the "Golden Rule" exclusively with China's Confucius. China also is taking advantage of the opportunity to reach adults by running propaganda ads in TIME magazine and other respected, but revenue-starved, publications. Why not subsidize travel/study trips to China for high school and college students, offer senior centers a documentary about the advanced civilization Marco Polo found, not playing in a commercial's swimming pool, but in 13th century China or include a souvenier pin from the 2022 Winter Olympics near Beijing in cereal boxes? China's payoff would be worth these and other investments that dull US precautions, such as when a US graduate student obliviously agrees to help a Chinese professor obtain classified documents for a research project that compromises US national security. Similarly, a US business executive, conditioned over the years, may see nothing wrong with a sale that transfers US intellectual property to China. Chinese-Americans are especially vulnerable. Both fiction, QUANTUM SPY by David Ignatius, and the FBI case against Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, who worked 34 years for the US government, illustrate Chinese agents use a pitch asking them to start supporting their "motherland", not the "foreign" land of their birth. Russian agents use more traditional methods to recruit spies, but they too play a long game. They target those who have access to classified information who run into financial problems, are susceptible to compromising affairs or can be blackmailed because they are hiding a secret. A review of Catherine Belton's book, PUTIN'S PEOPLE, in THE ATLANTIC magazine (September, 2020), lists the Russian operatives who tracked Donald Trump for 30 years on the chance that he could be politically or commercially useful. Looking back at how Westeren democracies contained the USSR after World War II suggests a way forward. NATO brought together a coalition ready to deter Communist expansion. The US cannot go on blithely providing the food, commodities and safe financial haven China and Russia need, while these countries are free to concentrate on their legal and illegal efforts to make military, surveillance and other technological progress, as well as on using social media and other means to destabilize societies throughout the world. Neither on-again, off-again sanctions by the sole US government, nor agreements with and assurances from China and Russia, offer the promise of long-term peace the way a democratic alliance would. When Britain concluded a review of an April 24, 2019 decision to build its 5G (fifth generation) network with a limited amount of equipment from the Chinese telecom giant, Huawei, the decision was overturned on July 14, 2020. Following the UK's decision, Britain suggested forming a 10-country alliance of democracies to develop alternatives to Huawei and other Chinese suppliers. Such a NATO-like coalition of G7 members (Britain, Canada, the US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan) and Australia, South Korea and India represents the brainpower, financing and determination needed to offset the continuing threat China and Russia pose.

Has China Overplayed Its Hand?

Xi Jinping, Chairman of China's Communist Party, envisions a "China Dream", not to cool or feed the planet, but to regain China's place, center stage in world history. Kublai Khan's civilization, superior to Europe's in the 13th century, waited for Marco Polo to discover Chinese people paid for their goods with paper money and healed their wounds with a kind of vasoline. Unwilling to wait for China to be discovered in the 21st century, Chairman Xi chooses to dream of world domination by following Deng Xiaoping's 1978 advice, "It is a glorious thing to be rich." To be a rich country in the 21st century requires the technological superiority the world associates with Silicon Valley. When Chairman Xi learned, in April, 2018, a US ban on microchip exports could cause the bankruptcy of a Chinese firm, ZTE, he saw how the patent a US company held on a specific semiconductor chip established the international standard for an item essential in every device connected to a cell phone network. From that point on, his "Made in China 2025" program aimed for self reliance and acquiring standard essential patents (SEPs). Using a SEP without being licensed subjects a user to the charge of infringement. According to a German patent data source, Huawei now holds 2000 5G SEPs. Normally, a firm has to license its monopoly rights to anyone on FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms. The US wants to withhold licensing its SEPs to competitors because of national security concerns. To be fair, Huawei would have to be allowed to do the same. The chip situation is very complicated, because Washington has not been able to resist lobbying from US firms that want to continue selling chips to Huawei, a short term gain, since China is determined to end reliance on US supplies. Nonetheless, as of September 26, 2020, the US Commerce Department requires US suppliers to obtain hard-to-come-by licenses to export what China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), considered a supplier to the Chinese military, needs to upgrade and maintain its manufacturing and hardware equipment. Not easy to replicate or fund are the processes of: 1) designing the delicate silicon microchips created for different purposes, such as operating driverless cars, and 2) constructing the automated, super-cooled and shock resistant facilities where chips are manuractured. Ironically, Taiwan, which Beijing claims under its "one country, two systems" policy framework, currently is among the countries with facilities capable of fabricating microchips. Yet, Beijing is at odds with the democratic government Taiwan re-elected in January, 2020. Chairman Xi's detrmination to maintain stability through surveillance-guaranteed control and conformity undermines a relationship that provides Taiwan's top tier brainpower and technology. What steps is China taking to reduce external dependency, even from Taiwan, on foreign sources of semiconductor chips? - Enhanced domestic training of top quality skilled workers - Using experienced Chinese hackers to scoop up foreign researh and development progress in a wide variety of high tech industrial, medical, engineering, solar, gaming and military fields - China Talent Plan, a spy-like program for recruiting foreign individuals with access to intellectual technology property who are willing to work with Chinese partners - Huawei, a Chinese company with total annual earnings of over $100 billion annually from 170 countries, sells smartphones and cellular and internat gear that give Beijing potential access to big data from around the world. Some US professors targeted by the China Talent Plan have seemed oblivious to the way China uses them, but the FBI has been concerned for more than a decade. Yanqing Ye, for example, would see herself on an FBI wanted poster after she entered Boston University's Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering without declaring, on her visa application, her status as a Lieutenant in China's military, her membership in the Chinese Communist Party and her association with China's National University of Defense Technology (NUDT). The FBI found a Princeton professor working on unmanned drones and autonomous submarines with a scientist from NUDT. Although Huawei has global sales, its biggest customer is China, where a 2017 law requires any citizen or organization, including Huawei, to comply with all government requests. Therefore, the US attempts to prevent countries from making Huawei purchases, especially the countries in the "Five Eyes" spying pact that shares intelligence among Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and US. When Britain concluded a review of an April 24, 2019 decision to build its 5G (fifth generation) network with a limited amount of Huawei equipment, the decision was overturned on July 14, 2020. In October, 2020, Sweden also decided not to use Huawei products in its 5G network. Following the UK's decision, Britain suggested forming a 10-country alliance of democracies to develop 5G technology and to eliminate dependence on Huawei and other Chinese technology companies. With 6G technology already on drawing boards, an alliance of G7 countries (Britain, Canada, the US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan) and Australia, South Korea and India represents an important source of brainpower and financing to develop future networks. Such a NATO-like coalition also could more than match China's future investments in computing power to handle big data, the semiconductor industry, drones, robotics, autonomous weapons and other advanced technology. By attempting to gain world domination, China has stirred up widening opposition to its transgressions, such as internment of one million Uighur Muslims in so-called re-education camps, disregard of Hong Kong's 50-year guarantee of rights under China's takeover agreement with Britian and an expanding claim to the South China Sea. What some are calling a tech Cold War is more. Chinese Communism and the democratic ideals of human rights, the rule of law and representative government are waging a battle for history's center stage.

What Can Be Learned about North Korea: Defectors, COVID, Accidents

North Korea's Chairman, Kim Jong-un, surfaced on September 25, 2020, to send a letter to South Korean President Moon Jae-in's Blue House apologizing for the North Korean troops who killed an official from South Korea's Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries on Septemebr 22. North Korea later claimed the official crossed North Korea's maritime border south of the Yeonpyeong islands it controls in order to defect to the north. This explanation occurred shortly before reports began to claim Jo Song Gil, North Korea's acting ambassador to Italy, who disappeared with his wife in Rome in November, 2018, had been living in South Korea since July, 2019. A North Korean diplomat in London, Thae Jong ho, and his family had defected to South Korea in 2016. Originally, Chairman Kim expressed condolences that the incident involving the death of the South Korean official had occurred at a time when both countries were suffering from COVID-19. On October 3, after President Trump was found to have COVID-19, Chairman Kim also expressed his wish that the president would recover. Commercial satellite imaging has shown the Yongbyon area, where North Korea's Nuclear Scientific Research Center is located, suffered severe damage from typhoons in September, 2020. The breach of a dam caused the lake that provides a steady water level for cooling when reactors are operating, which they are not now, dried up. Elsewhere, flooding in the area damaged grain in the country's already suffering economy. Grain is now drying on every available surface. At the UN in September, 2020, North Korea announced it is satisfied with the strength of its nuclear deterrent and intends to concentrate on economic development. A party conference is planned for January, 2021, in order to develop a new 5-year economic plan. Sanctions imposed to block North Korea's nuclear and missile program remain in place, although they have not been very effective. As usual, reports direct from North Korea, where citizens are afraid to talk to reporters, were not forthcoming immediately after neighboring countries announded North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, was in a coma on August 25, 2020, and observers saw explosions across China's border at Changbai on August 3, 2020. Since the sister of Kim Jong-un, Kim Yo-jong, who was anticipated to assume interim North Korean national and international duties while her brother was in a coma, had not been seen in public since July 27, 2020, some suggested a power struggle for leadership might be in progress. This no longer seemed the case, when Kim Yo Jong was seen with her brother, Kim Jong Un, inspecting the flooded area in Yongbyon in September. The August explosion in North Korea occurred in the Tapsong neighborhood of Hyesan City on North Korea's eastern border with China. These explosions caused articles to reference a July, 2020, train fire in Sinuiju on North Korea's western border with China. Firefighters were unable to contain the fire, because extinguishers at the train station were empty. In the process of describing how the explosion began with a gasoline fire and spread to LPG storage cylinders, we learned that homes in Hyesan each rely on their own stored gasoline or LPG. Finally, besides reporting on North Korea from South Korean and official Chinese sources, initial reports of the explosion revealed there are Chinese activists who help those trying to escape from North Korea.

Punishment for Human Rights' Abuses

Like two aspirins for those whose heads ache, because they feel powerless to do anything about unspeakable human rights' violations, the concept of Magnitsky laws is a cure. These laws impact the individuals and organizations responsible for inhuman abuses, who often seem to escape prosecution, to accummulate fortunes by leveraging their high-level contacts and to laundeer and stash their wealth in safe havens throughout the world. Countries, including the US, UK, Canada, the Baltics and members of the European Union, enact a version of the Magnitsky law to freeze accounts of those responsible for human rights' abuses, thereby preventing them from financing their anticipated luxurious lifestyles. While the laudible aim of Magnitsky laws and fate of Sergei Magnitsky are well known, some details are disputed. Mr. Magnitsky, a 37-year-old tax expert, sometimes represented as an attorney, worked for Bill Browder's London-based Hermitage Capital Management investment firm. When Browder's Russian investments in state-owned corporations, especially Gazprom, prospered, he appears to have involved Magnitsky in a scheme to limit his tax liability by claiming a discount for employing disabled workers firms did not employ. In connection with an investigation two Moscow police officers made into Broder's alleged $230 million tax fraud case, Magnitsky ended up in a Russian prison, where a doctor discovered he needed pancreatic surgery he never received. Magnitsky died in prison on November 16, 2009. Mr. Browder effectively tells the story that the two police officers who initiated the tax fraud investigation were responsible for Magnitsky's death. In any case, the US Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) maintains a list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) sanctioned under various laws, including the Global Magnitsky Act of 2012. On Friday, August 7, 2020, the OFAC list added 11 Hong Kong officials for undermining autonomy guarantees and restricting freedom of expression or assembly. In mid-July, 2020, the UK's Global Human Rights Sanctions Regulations imposed asset freezes and travel bans on: - 25 Russian officials implicated in Magnitsky's death - 20 senion Saudi intelligence officials allegedly involved in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi - 2 Myanmar generals connected to ethnic Rohingya autrocities - 2 North Korean organizations that run the concentration camps for political prisoners The UK's sanctions regulations provide review provisions.

You Don't Have to Be Catholic to be Helped by Nuns

On the passing of John Lewis, the young 1963 Civil Rights leader who went on to represent Georgia in Congress for 33 years, one tribute mentioned nuns who administered a Selma, Alabama, hospital took care of him when he was beaten by police in 1965. A female Muslim student wrote a prize-winning story about a nun, the principal of a college in Bangladesh, who saw she was absent, visited her family and arranged to help her continue her education after her unemployed father could no longer afford tuition. Shamima Sakendar's story is now a film, "The Soul," which can be viewed on Facebook and YouTube. Taken together, these mentions of the unheralded contributions religious orders of women reminded me of the legally-trained nuns who represent immigrants in courts at the US border and the recently deceased Sister Carolyn Farrell, who had helped plan, at the invitation of Iowa's governor, the State's long-term goals. She also was elected to the City Council in Dubuque, Iowa, in 1977 and became mayor in 1980, since Council members held that office on a rotating basis. The work nuns do in Africa is extremely important. To prevent young women from being lured into the human trafficking trade, nuns in Bukoba, Tanzania, help students become self-sufficient in a 3-year sewing program. At graduation, they receive their own sewing machines. Since 1989, nuns in Kampala Uganda, have provided a home for as many as 30 abandoned babies and children under five at a time. When mothers die in childbirth after traveling long distances to deliver their newborns, relatives often cannot be found to care for the babies. In other cases, women flee from abusive husbands who are left with children they don't want, husbands leave to seek work in cities or abroad and never return and friends and relatives shun women and children who are HIV positive. With help from volunteers, the nuns carry the babies, sleep with them and maintain a cow and chickens to provide milk and eggs to feed them. The nuns try to find caring relatives by posting children's photos in local newspaper ads. If no relatives are found and the children have not been adopted by age 6, they are transferred to a children's home and then a group home until they can support themselves. As carbon dioxide's greenhouse gases continue to raise the Earth's temperatures, the organic farming practices of nuns in drought-ridden Chilanga, Zambia, provide a valuable example of how to produce a variety of indigenous fruits, cabbage, kale, maize, tomatoes, onions and beans as well as how to raise cows, goats and chickens. By drilling a borehole, the nuns were able to install an irrigation system to spray water over crops. They also use manure as organic fertilizer and crop rotation to keep from depleting soil nutrients. Mixing crops grown on the farm helps control insect damage. Without becoming Catholic, people around the world benefit from the care nuns provide.

What Does Success Look Like?

When a "Black Lives Matter" group took over the pavilion in a park to broadcast a message by bullhorn last night, I was reminded of this question an interviewer asked a Black author on the "Book TV" program. I guess I would have answered her question by saying success in a Black neighborhood would look like a well-maintained school, no Pay-Day loan and liquor stores or abortion clinics. The kindly Black man on the "Today" show this morning, who had adopted a "family" of a dozen or so multiracial children would have answered differently. As would Rev. Derrick DeWitt, the director of the Maryland Baptist Aged Home whose residents have had no infections during the COVID-19 epidemic. Jasmine Guillory, an attorney who writes romance novels with Black female lead characters, might judge her success by publication of PARTY OF TWO, her fifth novel. Everywhere on the globe, no matter what your aim is: reforming a police department, feeding a hungry world or living a happy and fulfilling life, before beginning a task, ask yourself, "What will success look like?"

Rocky on the Ropes

No pandemic would send Rocky Balboa or the folks on the World War II home front into a black hole of loneliness and depression. Follow their advice: Get physically fit. Activate you own version of Rocky's raw egg concoction and his run up Philadelphia's Art Museum steps. Grow your wealth. During World War II, Captain America advised citizens to fight for freedom by investing $37.50 in a war bond that would yield $50 in ten years. Today, bonds are sold online at treasurydirect.gov. Discover farming. Pick apples, berries and watermelons at local farms, buy fresh corn at stands along country roads, plant tomatoes in your own Victory Garden and grow flowers to attract the honeybees that pollinate crops. Enjoy home entertainment. Once listeners gathered around the radio to hear a closet full of items tumble out on "Fibber McGee and Molly" or they read comic books in lighted closets during blackouts. Choose from a much wider variety of ways to enjoy home entertainment today. Hone your arguments. While sheltering in place, take time to scroll through social media, listen to talking heads, read up on the issues and then express your opinions in "Letters to the Editor" and elsewhere.

Sky-based Networks Aid Earth-bound Travel and National Security

For centuries, wise men and ship captains have relied on stars to guide their way. When China's Long March 3B Rocket launched a final satellite from the Xichang Satellite Center on June 23, 2021, the completed BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) became a new network in the artificial skies mentioned in an earlier post. Besides serving China, the BDS is expected to court customers along China's Belt and Road Initiative project throughout Asia and Africa. Earlier, the European Union had allowed China to use its Galileo network of navigational satellites even though China was not an EU member. Once China learned what it could about a satellite system, it went off on its own. A short time later, the UK announced, on July 3, 2020, it would join with Bharti Global, India's mobile network operator, to fund a $1 billion purchase of the bankrupt OneWeb startup that had invested $3.4 billion in its satellite project. With satellites manufactured in Florida, Arianespace had helped launch 74 satellites out of a planned 650 for OneWeb. As of November, 2020, the government of the UK and India's Bharti Global own OneWeb, including its 74 satellites already in space. A Russian Soyuz rocket is scheduled to launch another 36 onconnect nearly all of the Earth's land and sea surfaces. December 17, 2020. Bharti Global's 425 million customers in India demonstrate the commercial and operational expertise that company brings to OneWeb's ultimate connection with nearly all of the Earth's land and sea surfaces. Nowadays, satellite constellation networks represent more than aids for travel, navigation, port traffic, sea rescues and precision timing, they offer broadband internet communication across the world, and they are an essential national security asset.

Expand Family and Business Income Streams

Economic suffering from jobs lost to automation and the COVID-19 pandemic accelerate the need for multiple income streams from family members and businesses. The earlier post, "Rebirth of Self Worth," suggests ways children even can help generate income by adding lemonade and hot dog stands and entertainment to family yard sales. The following examples show how some businesses find new market segments eager to try their products.

     Hard to mow hilly parks overgrown with invasive buckthorn bushes and honeysuckle inspired the formation of the HaakHagen Goat Grazing farm run by a couple of friends in Wisconsin. Their 88 agile goats, rented out to private landowners and government land, also help preserve prairies by nibbling invasive species and shrubs that block the sun needed by shorter native plants. The goats are gentler on the land than heavy mowing machinery, what they leave behind eliminates the need for some fertilizer and adults and children find the goats fun to watch.

     Renting out RVs during the pandemic has become a new business catering to both vacationing families and virtual employees looking for office space while sheltering at home. When pleasure and business travelers return to the skies, they are likely to receive airline-branded Honeywell Safety Packs containing single-use gloves, hand wipes and face masks. Trendwatching.com reports Honeywell offers airline crews reusable packs of safety glasses and face masks with interchangeable filters.

     What is obvious from these three businesses is the way they each seized opportunities to serve multiple market segments. Clothing manufacturers now have an opportunity to produce double-duty items for home and business wear. Educational suppliers can think in terms of the home and school markets. Online retailers might gain multiple incomes from pop-up holiday shops, and more and more similar ideas will create new jobs and economic growth. 

   

On A Bad Day, Try SpaceX Patience

"(W)e want to make sure that if this is their worst day...it's not their last day." Elon Musk's private SpaceX company and tax-payer-funded NASA use this saying to motivate the preparations for sending astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station and for bringing them home safely one to four months later.

     In these troubled times, like astronauts, we all need a motivating motto and an escape plan to avoid things like viruses, food shortages and excessive government control over our religious and gender preferences.

      To protect astronauts, there is now an abort system that enables sensors to detect rocket malfunctions, to separate the capsule carrying the astronauts from the rocket and to parachute the capsule down into the ocean. Consequently, preparations for launching the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket require precise calculations of ocean water temperature and wave velocity and height over a vast area anywhere a team may have to rescue the downed astronauts near Cape Canaveral or on their route to Newfoundland, over the Atlantic Ocean and on to Ireland.

     Although the SpaceX launch is scheduled for May 27, 2020 at 4:33 p.m. EDT, a delay due to rough seas should be expected. For astronauts, as well as each of us, taking time to correct problems may be the surest path to survival.

     After a three day delay, SpaceX took off on Saturday, May 30, and docked safely with the International Space Station on May 31, 2020.

The astronauts returned safely with a successful splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday, August 2, 2020.      

Inform Career Preparation

Lessons from current events and research findings can prevent career preparation mistakes.

     China's President funded facial recognition technology to control the country, and suddenly the coronavirus required masks. In the United States, voters in primary elections discounted presidential candidate Andrew Yang's plan to give $1000 a month to every citizen over 18 years of age. A few months later, they received a $1200 check from President Trump. Research Robert Plomin presents in Blueprint shows genes have an important influence on a child's propensity to excel in certain fields, but some parents risk criminal prosecution to bribe their students ' admission into prestigious colleges unsuited to their normal development.

     Several examples suggest productive ways to think about preparing for careers in the rapidly changing future.

      As world stock markets tumble, Scottish investment firm, Baillie Gifford, prospers. By purchasing stocks in companies whose stock prices fell because  they channeled profits into preparations for online sales, Baillie Gifford willingly sacrificed short term gains for a future when stores would lose out to channels serving online customers. As a high school student, becoming a dependable employee in an unglamourous, low-paying position can be the way to a credit card and a bank loan for higher education or a business of your own. Shark Tank Daymond John spent years working at Red Lobster to help finance his first fashion business.

     Skills are transferable.

     Erik Larson's current book about Churchill tells how Lord Beaverbrook, the head of a publishing empire, became head of England's Ministry of Aircraft Production in World War II. He felt manufacturing executives in one industry could master another, just as knowing the basics of one religion enabled someone to grasp the principles of another faith. This summer, the lucky student interns working at home in virtual positions for one company are gaining the valuable skills needed to fill virtual positions likely to expand in many companies throughout the global business world.

     Walk back the cat.

     Consider how the management structure NASA developed to win the race to the moon, the structure being replicated to develop a COVID-19 vaccine in the US, applies to career planning. Beginning with the objective, do what intelligence agencies do when they are trying uncover a spy. They begin "walking back the cat" to see who had access to the information that caused a project to fail, whom those people knew, and so forth. I don't know if Barack Obama operated this way, but, if he did, he would have said to himself, "I would like to be President of the United States." What should I do? I need to show I can win an elected, high-level political office. I will run for the Senate. Who supports and funds this kind of campaign. Where should I attend college to meet the people who provide that kind of support, and so forth. Whether someone has a clear objective to be an astronaut, a president, a movie star or a millionaire, he or she needs to begin today to: 1) trace back the steps needed to reach that goal and 2) take the first step.

Killer Hornets v. Lovable Honeybees

     Giant Asian "murder hornets" seem poised to attack hives just as World Bee Day approaches on May 20, the birthday of Anton James, teacher in the world's first beekeeping school, founded by 18th century empress, Maria Theresa. Modern day beekeepers already struggle with the impact of collapsing honeybee colonies on the world's food supply.   

     With spring planting in progress in the Northern Hemisphere, a review of recent findings regarding bee health is important.

• Honeybee-killing pesticides containing neonicotinoids have been banned throughout the world,
• Global warming that makes hives too hot, strong winds and cold winter temperatures require protective hive designs,
• To compensate for the loss of pollen from fewer natural wildflowers, gardeners need to plant bee-friendly blooms such as zinnias, cosmos and lavender,
• Every effort should be made to leave clusters of woody debris and leaf litter undisturbed in breeding areas where bees forage and nest.

Local bees deserve nurturing care, since the introduction of foreign bees rarely compensates for hive collapse elsewhere. Not only can a different species be unable to adapt to a new area, it may introduce a foreign disease harmful to local bees.

     What can be done to protect honeybees from the exceptionally long stingers of attacking hornets? Maybe the research that shows some success in eliminating malaria-carrying mosquitoes might help.

Rebirth of Self Worth

As summer approaches in the Northern Hemisphere and the coronavirus diminishes (We hope.), neighborhoods can expect to witness blocks and blocks of yard sales and mini-entertainment venues. Sheltering in place is providing an opportunity to examine the contents of closets, cabinets and drawers; to rediscover old family recipes; practice musical instruments, dance moves and baton twirling; paint a picture; knit and build a bird house or a bookcase out of wood. Also, a backyard garden or community plot can lead to sales of flowers and produce, such as tomatoes and lettuce.

     With neighbors walking from yard to yard in the sun, hungry shoppers will need grilled hot dogs besides lemonade. Custom sunscreening can join facepainting at a "service station." And entertainers can set up lawn chairs and sell tickets to 15-minute shows of magic, sock puppets, dance, and band concerts performed in costumes.

     At yard sales, kids learn to talk to customers, negotiate prices, make change, keep an eye on the cash box and look out for shoplifters.  Shows offer children a wonderful chance to organize, price and prepare signs for their performances.

     When my friend's 7-year-old saw her making a to-do-list before beginning her virtual workday at home, he wanted one too. As a result, he makes his own bed, sorts his wash by white and colored, puts all toys away except the one he is playing with, reads a book to his little sister, brushes the dog, writes out or draws what he would like for lunch, watches a certain TV program at 9 am, dusts the living room and helps unload the dishwasher.

     I see that the Whirlpool home appliance manufacturer, according to trendwatching.com,  sponsors #ChoreClub to give parents ideas for engaging children ages 2-11 in life skills as well as
 learning activities. Pairing socks becomes a matching game, cutting a pizza teaches fractions and learning Spanish involves a scavenger hunt for household products that print directions in two languages.

     Between running yard sales and entertainments and mastering essential adult skills, growing up in the COVID-19 pandemic might not be so bad for kids (and parents).

Look Beyond One Right Way

A review of a new book about the US artist, Alexander Calder, described how he employed physics in the service of art. Reading this, I was reminded that my sister, who has an art major degree. looked at a drawing of the coronavirus and saw a similarity with the look of the Times Square ball that drops on New Year's.

     Science, it seems, also could be employed in the service of art. Picture how the motion of constantly copying genes could be expressed the way Calder incorporated motion in his art.

     Every field can be expressed in art. If employees were encouraged to design and decorate their cubicles, the idea of dressing to express on casual Fridays might lead to occasional happy hour tours of minimal and exuberant art in employee spaces. Consider the variety of ways food can be arranged on a plate; how politicians around the world express their policies in the green, pink, yellow and red-white-and-blue graphics on their campaign posters; and how the pattern of interstate roads moves the eye across a country like the lines on a Mondrian painting.

     "(I)t is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self," said British psychoanalyst, Donald Winnicott. Viewed this way, laughing at and ignoring an individual's creative spirit stifles growth and development. Hitler may not have been a great artist, but wouldn't humanity have been better off if he expressed himself in art rather than in creating the "final solution"?

     Family life could be much fuller and much more satisfying, if each member were encouraged to create. It is easy to laugh at a relative's out-of-the-box ideas and creations, but during the coronavirus lockdown, we have seen the joy of family members taking videos, dancing, singing, playing musical instruments, taking photos out of windows, painting, cooking, reciting original poems, sewing colorful protective masks, and tailoring outfits for pets. Some people have the confidence to never doubt themselves, but being laughed at is enough to discourage the creativity of most.

       Finally, observation helps nurture creative expression the way my sister connected seeing  a drawing of COVID-19 with the Times Square ball. When Calder awoke on the deck of a ship one day, he saw a red sunrise on one side and a silvery moon on the other. In the solar system, he realized two very different phenomena are related, just as the moving parts and shapes on his mobiles would   be connected later.

     Encouraging observation and nurturing creative expression beyond one already established right way of doing something can benefit self, family and maybe even humanity.

China-Mongolia and the Deaths of Race Horses in California

Many aspects of global life illustrate how connected the world is. As preposterous as a connection between China, Mongolia, and last year's deaths of 23 horses at California's Santa Anita racetrack  seems, it is a connection worthy of  investigation.

     On the books, China's Communist regime outlawed gambling when it took over in 1949. Efforts continue to purge online betting apps, and prison awaits those who challenge Chairman Xi's abhorrence of corruption. Nonetheless, local administrators of state-run lotteries manage to take their cuts, gamblers access online casino apps designed in Southeast Asia, illegal mah jong games hide from overhead drones in China's woods and mountains, and police even had to break up gambling at a cricket fighting tournament near Shanghai in August, 2019.

     Off shore, casinos dominate Macao, a former Portuguese island and now a Chinese Special Administrative Region. In 2017, New Zealand created a Jockey Club to attract Chinese  thoroughbred buyers and to cater to Chinese owners who want to train and race their horses in Australia and New Zealand. When Justify won the Kentucky Derby and the other two legs of the U.S. Triple Crown in 2018, owners from the China Horse Club just laughed after a reporter questioned how racing squared with China's ban on gambling.

     If there is a connection between China and the 23 race horses that died at Santa Anita, it runs through China's landlocked northern neighbor, Mongolia. The historic domain of Genghis Khan's horses and riders also is the current home of dusty courses where hundreds of children as young as five ride bareback in races to win a Russian-made car. When racing was legal in China, owners used to send their horses north to strengthen their bones by grazing in the nutrient-rich  pastures of Mongolia. Reporting on the fatal leg injury that caused the horse, Mongolian Groom, to be euthanized after the Breeders Cup Classic at Santa Anita in November, 2019, Billy Reed mentioned the need to reassess the calcium-building limestone content of the soil and water where many race horses graze in Kentucky.

     As a cause of last year's race horse deaths, in recent months the coronavirus is receiving more attention that the dietary value of Kentucky's pastures, Scientists suspected COVID-19 could pass between animals and humans after researchers discovered pig farmers died of coronavirus in Malaysia. Observers watched bats land on a tree and poop into a vat of pig slop. Tests found the bats carried COVID-19 and transmitted the disease to farmers who had contact with the pig slop.

     The coronavirus that affects humans and the equine enteric (gastrointestinal) coronavirus horses pass between each other are both among the large group of RNA messenger viruses. Since both forms of the virus in horses and humans lock onto cells using the same kind of spikes, transmission between  these species is highly probable. Lack of evidence showing horses and humans exchange COVID-19 at this time may be a function of a lack of testing fecal samples of thoroughbred race horses and the failure to test personnel at Mongolian Stable, who may have shown little or no initial symptoms of the virus.

     In August, 2019, the San Diego Tribune ran a photo showing Enebish Ganbat, a Mongolian who trains horses at Mongolian Stable, kissing Mongolian Groom's face. Such gestures, not unusual among those who love and care for horses, provide ample opportunity for humans and horses to transmit coronavirus to each other. Horses contract equine enteric coronavirus by contact with surfaces exposed to the manure of infected horses or by consuming some of their manure. Therefore,  to prevent contracting coronavirus from a horse, people need to wash their hands whenever they touch anything, such as a shovel or pitchfork, that may have been in contact with an infected horse's manure. Unless humans who have or may not yet show symptoms of COVID-19 wear masks, they may spread coronavirus to horses.

     Before racing resumes at Santa Anita this summer, last year's fate of Mongolian Groom is reason to test the nutrient value of Kentucky's pastures and to test for the presence of coronavirus in the horses that race there.

             

Hands-On Educational Magic

If metal balls are tipped down a big board filled with vertically-divided rows, they fall into a bell curve. At least that is what my granddaughter and I caused to happen when we participated in a discovery day at the University of Wisconsin. The effect reminded me of the statistics professor who brought our graduate class a large bowl of colored marbles and a scoop that had indentations we each filled with five marbles and then averaged the number of green marbles to demonstrate how sampling works.

     At a middle school, a remedial math teacher brought in a Makey Makey circuit board, sewing kit, and 3Doodler pen. Students grouped themselves by interest to use each device. When students in a regular math class saw what the remedial math students were doing they voluntarily signed up to attend the math support class twice a week.

     What were the remedial math students doing? They played a song on six bananas wired together and to the circuit board. Some students began seeing how they could make a circle in a football team's logo by embroidering an arrangement of the squares made by cross-stitch Xs, the same way pixels do on a computer screen. By using the 3Doodler pen to draw the same 2-dimensional design over and over again on top of each other, students learned how 3D printing is making a wide variety of products, including homes.

     Finally, students in the regular math class saw how the remedial students purchased additional circuit boards and supplies for the sewing basket and 3Doodler pens by perfectly pricing and selling pencils.

     Students everywhere in the world have creative juices. Invite them to illustrate the books they read, figure out how to move heavy rocks, use as little cushioning as possible to prevent an egg from breaking when dropped from different heights, dissect an old watch, not only a frog.

A Book for Global Peacemakers

Richard Brookhiser looked at competing factions and went back to the development and struggles associated with writing 13 key documents to find a structure for satisfying the human desire for liberty. Rather that produce a ponderous tome for scholars, in 262 readable pages, his Give Me Liberty identifies a peaceful foundation for countries.

     Liberty is closely related to other ideas: consent of the governed, freedom, democracy, and the God-given human rights of equal individuals.

     Beginning with the first English settlement in 17th century Jamestown, Virginia, on the North American continent, colonists objected to sole rule by the London-based Virginia Company's royal governor. They elected members to a general assembly empowered to decide local matters by a majority vote. Although the governor could veto these decisions, it took four months of ocean voyages before the assembly learned his wishes. By 1699, the assembly decided to move to Williamsburg, Virginia, and its elected members became an independent body. The governor retained a veto, but a principle, consent of the governed rather than fiat, was established. There would be "no taxation without representation."

     Back in Jamestown, the first general assembly acknowledged "men's affaires doe little prosper where God's service is neglected." In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson would write: "We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." In short, human rights are Creator-given to all mankind as part of their human nature. When human rights, which are derived from God, are trampled, as the colonists claimed they were by George III, the Declaration of Independence noted rebellion is justified.

     Around the world, liberty continues to roll out much too slowly for slaves, women, and immigrants. James Madison justified excluding the word, slave, from the U.S. Constitution, because it would be wrong to admit men could be property.  In his 1863 Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln finally affirmed the United States." was conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Two years later the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, but 100 years after the Gettysburg Address, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told a March on Washington the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were promissory notes still unpaid.

     At the first women's convention in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York, the former slave, Frederick Douglass, and the only black person who attended, concluded, "(I)f that government is only just which governs by the free consent of the governed, there can be no reason in the world for denying to women the exercise of the elective franchise." Not until 1920 did the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution eventually grant suffragists the right to vote. Unlike other countries in the world, as yet no woman has headed the U.S. government.

     In opposition to Jewish, Irish, German, Italian, and Scandinavian immigrants, a U.S. voting bloc formed the Know-Nothing Party. In contrast, Emma Lazarus, who was proud of a country willing to take in the poor and oppressed, wrote a poem honoring the waves of immigrants "yearning to be free." With the help of the French engineer, Gustave Eiffel, and funding from Joseph Pulitzer, a Statue of Liberty rose in New York harbor in 1886. Ms. Lazarus preferred calling the statue, "Liberty Enlightening the World." and her poem became the message on the statue's base.

     The Monroe Doctrine began an effort to guarantee liberty throughout the world. On December 2, 1823, U.S. President Monroe sent an open letter to Congress announcing the Americas were closed to conquest. Outside interference, he claimed, would be viewed as "an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." Some 107 years later, in a "Fireside Chat," President Franklin D. Roosevelt prepared the United States to enter World War II by noting the Western Hemisphere was no longer protected by the Atlantic Ocean. A year later Japanese airplanes bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and proved the Pacific Ocean no longer shielded the country either. Liberty needed a defense everywhere in the world.

     By 1980, when Ronald Reagan became President of the United States, the Berlin Wall symbolized 40 years of unchecked Communist expansion. At the Brandenburg Gate in the wall separating West and East Berlin, President Reagan, in 1987, chastised the godless, totalitarian Soviet regime for restricting "freedom for all mankind." He told General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, "(T)ear down this wall," and on November 9, 1989, free men tore down the Berlin Wall.

     It seems, as long as people lack liberty, peace is not possible.
     

   
   


       

Revisit the Search for Malaysia Flight 370

Not all airplane crashes in water have the happy ending of Captain Sullenberger's successful landing in the Hudson River. Downed off the west coast of Australia in water 20,000 or more feet deep,
Malaysia Flight 370 has never been found.

     What we know and don't know about the ocean's hadal zone 20,000 to 36,000 feet under water may explain why Flight 370 is still missing. Heavy ships, like the Titanic, constructed to sail the high seas have been found in large identifiable chunks after they sank. An airplane, made to sail through the air, is not a vehicle for: 1) crashing into a wall of water at the accelerating rate of gravity (The one piece of Flight 370 found on Reunion Island off the eastern coast of Africa may have broken off at this level when the plane hit the water.) and 2) withstanding the two million pounds of pressure per square foot exerted in the Indian Ocean troughs at the greatest depth of the hadal zone.

     On Earth, a person is under a certain amount of atmospheric pressure. Under 33 feet of water, the same person is under twice as much pressure as on Earth. Every 33 feet more under water exerts another amount of pressure equal to the amount of atmospheric pressure a person feels on land. At 300 feet down, someone would be subjected to 10 times the atmospheric pressure exerted on him or her on Earth.

     Vehicles attempting to explore deeper and deeper under water trenches have shuddered and bucked; their windows cracked, they have needed headlanps to see in the dark; and they have landed in blinding plumes of sediment. In 2014, an unmanned dive by Nereux, the best deepwater robotic vehicle designed thus far, broke apart under the hadal zone's crushing pressure at about 33,000 feet below the Earth's surface.

     Nothing would seem to prevent the water pressure on airplanes that crash into deep dark water from breaking them into pieces of debris at depths where they would be nearly impossible to locate.