Putin Owes Biden a Thank You Note

By holding a summit with Putin on June 16, 2021, President Biden restored Russia's position on the world stage. China lacks world class music, ballet and literature, but, unlike China, the USSR and Russia failed to monetize funds and know how invested in military and space projects that provided a commercial return on their investment. President Biden recognizes Putin as the only other world leader who has protected the universe from MAD use of nuclear weapons and who understands the need to prevent nuclear weapons from getting into the hands of those with no experience with nuclear controls. If Putin is smart, he will invest less energy in being a disrupting, corrupt authoritarian and more in making Russia worthy of investment and respect as befits a guardian of the galaxy.

Origin of Human Life

Everyone watching the George Floyd trial this morning (April 8, 2021) heard a witness testify that the DNA of a person is collected because it is distinct from a person's parents and even his or her siblings. This statement dispels the notion that, because a mother has a right of privacy over her body, a mother has the sole right to choose to destroy another human life that is not her own. Rather than plan another "March for Life" on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, planning a one-day conference on the scientific origin of human life would generate publicity at a prime time when COVID-19, climate change and a landing on Mars shine a focus on science. Nearly a half century has passed since Justice Blackmun wrote in Roe v. Wade: We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer. When the highest court in the land could not speculate on the origin of human life, recognizing a woman's right to choose an abortion seemed reasonable. However, what research has discovered about DNA in the first human cell conceived no longer justifies ignoring the State's obligation to protect human life, supporting abortion with taxpayer funds and giving a mother the sole right to choose to destroy another human life unless, in self defense, this life presents a physical or mental risk to her own. Clearly, a new understanding of abortion has ramifications, many inconvenient, that will lead to additional conferences, legislation and legal decisions.

Human Nature Foils Authoritarian Bloc

China and Israel peddle surveillance equipment to willing authoritarian regimes around the world. An University of Toronto report, mentioned in the February 23, 2021 issue of AFRICAN ARGUMENTS (africanarguments.org), found Israel's government authorized export licenses for a telecom company, Circles, to provide spying equipment to at least 25 foreign governments, including those in Morocco, Nigeria, Kenya and Botswana. A current exhibit at MoMA should give pause to those who rely on constant scrutiny. The MoMA exhibit reveals what artists created while under the watchful eyes of guards at a federal US prison. One inmate not only transformed 39 prison bedsheets into the monumental collage of heaven, earth and hell pictured in THE ATLANTIC magazine (March, 2021) but also mailed his masterpiece home sheet by sheet. The stability strongmen represent and their lack of accountabiity for corrupting bribes make them attractive allies to some. During the Cold War, for example, the US identified Iran's Shah as a bulwark against Communism in the region. Known as Persia until 1935, Iran practices Shia Islam, different from its Sunni Muslim Arab neighbors like Iraq, which Iran fought in a bloody 20th century 8-year war. Earlier in the 19th and 20th centuries, when Britain and Russia vied for control of Iran, Tehran invited a US attorney to help straighten out its finances. But in 1953, the US Central Intelligence Agency protected the Shah's growingly repressive rule from a coup staged by a popular prime minister. By 1979, when President Carter's administration invited the ailing Shah to come to the US for medical treatment, the Islamic Revolution was ready to take over Iran. Supporters stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and held US officials captive for 14 months. China and Israel currently both have reasons to make friends in Asia and Africa. Beijing views a coalition of authorian countries as a hedge against UN sanctions for its human rights' abuses. Meanwhile, Israel is willing to help authoritanian rulers stay in power as a way to wean their support away from Palestine. As tempting as it is in the short run, assuming authoritarian regimes can maintain permanent control is not a safe bet. Facial identification systems cannot reveal what people are thinking. Smiles conceal as well as reveal. Given enough time in prison, under a dictator or anywhere, the impossible becomes possible. Dental floss was once woven into an escape rope. Muslim women sneak out of China's slave camps; male North Korean workers loaned to Russia disappear. Somethings are innate to human nature. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, truths, such as liberty, are self evident.

2022 Winter Olympics: China Loses

Beijing is looking forward to welcoming the world's elite athletes and hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Winter Olympics next year. Hard currency will be flowing in for hotels, food, merchandise and event tickets, but Chinese companies also are counting on profits from collecting and selling the facial characteristics of the world's population, algorithms able to connect a person's face with his or her activities and global DNA samples. Using technology to take advantage of a situation is nothing new. Social media sells information about what we spend time watching to advertisers who benefit from targeting potential consumers. When COVID-19 made shopping in stores deadly, ecommerce profited. There is, however, a difference between being used by social media and an ecommerce giant or being exploited at China's 2022 Winter Olympic Games. The games profit a country that holds up to one million Uighur Muslims in so-called re-education camps, and, according to a BBC report, uses the captives as slaves to pick cotton for China's textile industry. Besides what has been called a form of cultural Muslim genocide, China also has arrested, among others, Hong Kong's political activists, two Canadian journalists and Zhang Zhan, who was attempting to document the origin of the coronavirus in China. China's secrecy regarding COVID-19 focuses attention on the health dangers associated with attending the 2022 Winter Olympics. Just this January, 2021, a new coronavirus outbreak occurred in Shijiazhuang, a city of 11 million. The city's airport, located on a main road into Beijing, is positioned to transport visitors to the Olympics from the south. Since the SAR-coV-2 coronavirus caused the first COVID-19 case at the end of 2019, China's government has done everything possible to prevent a full understanding of what caused the global trauma that has killed over 2.3 million people and undermined economies in at least 170 countries. No one knows if a lab accident or wild animal meat in Wuhan's Huanan market initiated the pandemic. China fostered rumors about the origin of the virus, financed research papers never allowed to be published, closed Wuhan to outsiders and, as late as January, 2021, delayed a team of World Health Organization (WHO) scientists from inspecting Wuhan. Even before the virus posed a health threat to Olympic visitors, Beijing's officials recognized the dust and dirt blowing south from the Gobi Desert north of Olympic sites in Yanqing and Badaling would mix with pollution from fossil fuels heating winter homes and factories to cause irritation to the lungs and eyes of athletes and onlookers alike. Also, pollution was likely to prevent attendees from seeing the Great Wall from a tower constructed for that purpose. In 2018, the military was called into action to plant a tree wall to block desert winds and absorb pollution. Of course, the scrub brush and cactus that grow in desert soils do not provide the kind of barrier China hoped to provide, and the growth of tall, fast-growing trees not native to the area suffered from a lack of sufficient water. In addition to the health risks China's Winter Olympics present, facial identification surveillance is able to track every move athletes and other visitors make. Attendees from around the world offer China a global sample of colors and characteristics that enable surveillance technology to fine tune the potential to recognize every person on Earth. At the same time, the Winter Olympic population would help China develop algorithms capable of connecting facial identifications with the activities of likely domestic dissidents and other troublemakers. China's economy thrives on an ability to monetize every potential income stream, such as sales of new technology to foreign governments determined to monitor and control their populations. Beijing seems all too willing to lead and support an alliance of like-minded, state-dominated authoritarian regimes ready to claim equal status with the governments of countries that value the rights of individuals, an independent judiciary, and, in short, derive their legitimacy from the consent of the governed. Not content with using existing methods to pursue world domination, China is now intent on weaponizing a new technique. After seeing how the COVID-19 pandemic crippled the world, William Evanina, the recently retired director of the Counterintelligence and Security Center, reported China is poised to create a data base of DNA samples used to predict a new disease capable of infecting the world. In reality, a single mutation rarely causes a disease; more often diseases are influenced by a variety of genetic DNA factors, each having a small, but significant, effect. Since identifying the cause of complex physical and psychological disorders requires a vast number of sample cases, countries, such as the UK, the Netherlands and Estonia, pool cases in biobanks designed to help rearchers prevent medical problems and find cures. China's BNG biotech giant had a different purpose for trying to establish COVID-19 testing labs that could collect DNA samples in the United States. China planned to use these samples to be first to predict a new disease and to provide the medicine, vaccines, equipment and supplies vulnerable countries would be willing to pay and do anything China wants. At China's Winter Olympic Games, anything anyone from around the world touches, and anything that touches him or her, could add to China's DNA collection. Skiers, skaters, hockey teams, snowboarders and curlers can test their skills at other competitions. No mandate requires any country's Olympic athletes to serve as lab mice for Chinese experiments and profit. (Also, see the earlier post, "All Work and No Play Unmakes China.")

Yin and Yang; Ox and Spacecraft

Valentine's Day nestles between the beginning of the Chinese, or Lunar, New Year of the Ox on February 12, 2021, and the landing of NASA's "Perseverance" rover in the Jezero Crater on Mars February 18, 2021. Fittingly, their interacting negative and positive yin and yang forces both propel mankind forward. According to Chinese, Korean and Japanese folklore, the ox is an earthbound symbol of hard work and patience, plowing a fertile field free of flooding to produce a good harvest. For a visit to Mars, the legendary ox might provide nourishment to help the enginers at NASA's Jet Propulson Lab in Pasadena, California, design and assemble the 3000 parts in "Perseverance." In the minus 76-degree temperature on Mars, "Perseverance" also needs nuclear batteries and solar energy to power the rover's three little arms that scoop up and shuttle soil and rock samples back and forth between Mars and NASA's spacecraft. As a special feature, "Perseverance" will carry and drop a little, 4-pound helicopter drone named "Ingenuity" on Mars, where it took off on April 19, 2021 and flew around to explore the red planet. Plowing a field and exploring the universe both rely on the yin and yang forces of hard work and perseverance.

Job Hunt Clues for Recent Grads

Current surveys indicate business activity is expected to rebound in the third quarter of 2021, and recruiteers expect to begin hiring this spring. Therefore, now is the time for optimism and for focusing on a job hunt. Not long ago, Bill Gates gave an interview telling how he would answer typical job interview questions. What impressed me most was the way he tailored his responses to match the kind of position he wanted with the kind of person a company wanted to hire. In response to what always is a tricky question about salary expectations, Mr. Gates suggested expressing interest in the entire package: not only an entry salary, but, in his case, stock options. He felt stock options would indicate his interest in helping a company grow. Asking about opportunities for advancement or corporate compensation for graduate school might also indicate attractive qualifies for companies that value ambition. Nowadays, some companies and organizations include their mission statements and employee benefits on their websites. In other words, you can learn if your expectations fit company objectives. At the same time, if a company is not union-friendly and does not offer flex time, childcare, transfers to other States/countries or the virtual work options you want, there's no point in asking for them in an employment package. Both students about to graduate this spring and those who were graduated a year ago need to put a positive spin on their experiences. Organizations that have mastered the challenges of remote, virtual work are likely to continue working this way, at least in part. They will value those who have spent the past year taking virtual classes, handling technical problems themselves and developing effective communication techniques to keep in touch with professors, other students and administrators. On the other hand, graduates who had their career plans dashed when everything shut down last March, have an opportunity to impress potential employers with their willingness to learn, flexibility and how well they are able to adapt to new trends in today's fast-paced business climate. Therefore, be ready to describe how you switched from what you expected to be doing by finding other employment, volunteering, working in unusual protetive garments, reading books on diverse subjects, writing a blog, joining and becoming active in a professional association, helping younger siblings/neighbors with their virtual learning experience or starting your own online business. Sometimes the question of why a firm should hire you is asked in another way: what are the strengths and weaknesses you bring to an organization? Bill Gates said he would give examples of his self motivation and how he liked to work on big problems and set ambitious goals. He also said it was important to maintain a pleasant expression that shows you can convey your opinions, listen to others and keep your temper while working with a team. Knowing what you want and like to do prevents an employer from putting you in a job you'll hate. When describing weaknesses, for example, say, given your choice, you'd prefer not to do the same thing every day, not to work alone with few opportunities to interact with others, not to perform tasks requiring fine hand work or lifting heavy objects. A white, female friend of mine was asked in a job interview if the company should hire a more diverse work force. She responded by asking, "How do you expect me to answer that question?" She was hired. It's not possible to anticipate every job interview question. Before responding, take a moment to hope for inspiration.

Alexei Navalny Arrested on Russian Return

Navalny reminded Russians who will take to the streets to protest his arrest on January 23, 2021, that they are demonstrating not just for him but for themselves. The strength of Navalny's anti-corruption movement derives from its nationalist identity rather than being a construct of the United States or another foreign intervention. As soon as Alexei Navalny returned to Russia on January 17, 2021, after a 5-month recouperation in Germany from Moscow-ordered nerve agent poisoning, he was arrested for violating the terms of a suspended sentence for a questionable offense. Russian President Putin is threatened by public support for Navalny's anti-corruption movement and the size of his YouTube audience. Just as the plane carrying Navalny from Germany was about to land in Moscow, it was diverted to another airport away from the group of supporters waiting to greet him. Back at Vnukovo airport in Moscow, police officers detained Novalny's supporters and associates. Also see earlier posts: "Putin's Private Siberian Project Excludes Alexei Navalny" and "Alexei Navalny's Sudden Siberian Illness."

YooZoo Update on Lin Qi

Following the poisoning death of YooZoo Games studio founder, Lin Qi, by suspect, Xu Yao, head of YooZoo's film production unit, on Christmas Day, 2020, YooZoo's tribute to Mr. Lin received 290 million views on its Weibo microblog. See additional information about this subject on the earlier post, "All Work and No Play Unmakes China."

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.