Category Archives: Politics

Noted situations

Posted on by
Reply

Mariner hasn’t posted for the last few days. The reason is the break in the heat wave, allowing him to get out tending lawn and garden. Nevertheless, there are some situations that are significant to note. Each situation has been covered by news stations and websites but speak specifically to ‘our times they are changing faster’.

Taiwan – A nation with a lovely culture not blinded by dollar bills, firmly entrenched in local life and family yet, in 2005, the last time mariner checked, Taiwan was the seventh wealthiest nation in the world and is the world’s most productive source of Lithium batteries. Mariner had a contract in Taiwan for a while and is fond of that experience.

Alas, the future does not bode well for Taiwan. China believes, with much more heritage than Putin has, that Taiwan, an island 225 miles long and 110 miles from China mainland, is part of China.

It always had been China until the Qing Dynasty ceded it to Japan at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895. Japan held control until the Second World War. At the end of the war the island was assigned back to China but less than a year later the internal war led by the Communist party and Mao Tse-tung drove the Chinese government to relocate on Taiwan where it claimed still to be the real government of China.

Over the years the West has supported Taiwan; the nation has become a mix of resistance to Mainland China and a virtual western democracy. Militarily, Taiwan is willing to go to the mat with China if China decides to invade. Taiwan knows it will be decimated but its military strategy is not to defend the island but to throw everything into China, making it extremely expensive for China to try.

The United States, South Korea and Japan have a commitment to Taiwan but mariner cannot see a way out without a bullet war. Don’t forget, North Korea is less than a thousand miles to the north.

Beyoncé – She’s back. Why?

Ancient Mariner

Around the town square

Posted on by
Reply

֎ It turns out there is a big war between oligarchs about what will be the primary energy source for the future: Lithium or Hydrogen. Mariner suggests the reader put their money on Hydrogen; there are ways to produce Hydrogen but Lithium, a mined resource, already is in short supply.

֎ On another national front, yesterday in a speech Donald laid out his perception of what changes should be made in the US government. This paragraph is from the Atlantic:

“Trump sketched out a vision that a new Republican Congress could enact sweeping new emergency powers for the next Republican president. The president would be empowered to disregard state jurisdiction over criminal law. The president would be allowed to push aside a “weak, foolish, and stupid governor,” and to fire “radical and racist prosecutors”—racist here meaning “anti-white.” The president could federalize state National Guards for law-enforcement duties, stop and frisk suspects for illegal weapons, and impose death sentences on drug dealers after expedited trials.”

֎ Venture capitalists and big data corporations are caught debating a peculiar form of ethics. It seems that there must be rules of behavior between corporations in order to make the metaverse work. To quote Derek Robertson of Politico, “That means that whatever the standards-setting process for the metaverse ends up looking like, it’ll have to be profitable for the deep-pocketed companies building it.” Who looks out for the minions that use it?

֎ Some insight from Axios:

The stakes: The benefits of knowing thy neighbor abound.

Lives saved: In well-connected neighborhoods, fewer lives are lost in tragedies, including natural disasters and mass shootings.

Happier aging: Older adults who know their neighbors report a far higher sense of psychological wellbeing.

Safer streets: Tight-knit neighborhoods have lower rates of gun violence.

Boosted wellbeing: People who know their neighbors are generally cheerier, healthier, and spend more time outside.

Ancient Mariner

The Electorate – AAPI

Posted on by
Reply

The fastest growing population of voters is the Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI). A series of polls from different quarters suggest that, generally, this group leans toward the liberal democratic agenda. In the past two decades, Asian Americans also have become one of the fastest growing racial or ethnic groups in the United States.

Between 2010 and 2020, the Asian population in the United States grew by 39%, and their population is projected to pass 35 million by 2060. Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders were the third-fastest growing group, growing by 30% from 2010 to 2020. Their population is projected to pass 2 million by 2030.

Asian Americans respondents ranked health care (88%), jobs and the economy (86%), crime (85%), education (82%), gun control (73%) and the environment (75%) as “extremely important” or “very important” issues for deciding their votes in November. Voting rights and addressing racism were also important issues.

This explains why there is growing resistance and prejudice against AAPI from the grumbling conservatives and unenlightened bigots.

Things may get interesting: Today, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced a seven-figure investment in digital, print and radio advertising to woo AAPI voters.

– – – –

The Associated Press announced today that a new survey showed that 2 in 3 Americans say they favor term limits or a mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court justices, according to a new poll that finds a sharp increase in the percentage of Americans saying they have “hardly any” confidence in the court.

There are only three branches of government: Congress is dysfunctional, the President is shackled by the Congress and the Supreme Court is wallowing in early 20th century interpretations of the Constitution.

Does the reader have a hobby?

Ancient Mariner

 

Privacy continues to dwindle

Posted on by
Reply

Before we start, mariner has been asked about the accuracy and prejudice of his cluster of news sources. Anyone who knows mariner knows he is critical about everything – especially doctored facts. He has collected the best commentary, best fact checking and least biased reporting available. That being said, the two news sources below aren’t trying to change minds, just enlighten them.

Mariner owes it to his readers to reprint a Protocol (news agency) article that clearly demonstrates how large corporations can erase privacy even for the most personal aspects of one’s life. This issue also begs the question whether super giant corporations like Amazon should be allowed to be so large as to control what should be independent government oversight.

 

“Amazon announced yesterday that it’s buying its way into a huge slice of health care provision with the acquisition of One Medical for nearly $4 billion. It claims the deal will allow it to “reinvent” health care, and it’s raising some eyebrows.

One big concern with the deal: data. Health care companies hold a massive amount of information, especially in the age of telehealth. The deal gives Amazon new ways to glean data to help it build AI, Protocol Enterprise reporter Kate Kaye writes.

One Medical operates clinics throughout the U.S. and already has roughly 800,000 members enrolled for both in-person and virtual services. Amazon will have access to a treasure trove of valuable data for AI health products.

This means that talking with your doctor could be used to improve things like voice-enabled health apps or in-office ambient software.

This deal is also unlikely to face antitrust pushback despite its size, Protocol Policy editor Kate Cox told me.

Because Amazon doesn’t yet have a strong foothold in the health care industry, other than its work with Amazon Pharmacy, the deal will likely be viewed by regulators as “competition-neutral,” Kate said.

This reveals a flaw in current antitrust laws, allowing massive corporations to continue to grow their influence: Antitrust laws go after companies that are trying to grow in one particular sector, not “octopus” companies working on a little bit of everything.”

Join Amazon Prime! Cancer cured with Amazon products. Get Amazon health insurance discounts not based on averages but specifically targeted to your ailments except for existing conditions . . .

If Amazon doesn’t produce goosebumps, read this article by Axios that reveals Donald’s active pursuit to dismantle the FBI and IRS as part of a scheme to make America great again as a dictatorship, should he be re-elected. Winning aside, his advocates are deadly serious. See:

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-ed1e48cc-4d9d-4a23-b2b9-042504d7b0b6.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

Ancient Mariner

The Future Economy

Posted on by
Reply

A frequent subject on the blog is the shape of United States participation in globally-based economics. Often mentioned is the big three of the ‘Sumo’ league, US, China and India, who have economies large enough to lead massive supply chain agreements. But things already are changing – welcome a new member to the Sumo League: the G7. On June 26 the group of nations committed to a plan to spend $600 billion to invest in low and middle income nations over the next five years. Its title is “Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII)”

Quoting Wikipedia, “the Group of Seven (G7) is an inter-governmental political forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. In addition, the European Union is a ‘non-enumerated member’. . . As of 2020, the collective group accounts for over 50 percent of global net worth ($418 trillion), 32 to 46 percent of Global Domestic Product, and approximately 770 million people (10 percent) of the world’s population.”

Further good news is that the group is organized around the principles of liberal democracies.

G7 has not named its target nations but mariner hopes the nations include those in South and Central America. In any case, the monetary power of the group is incomparable even considering China and India.

Even though the PGII doesn’t address the Pacific Rim situation directly, this is great news and mariner wants the readers to know – this is a good news post!

Ancient Mariner

What does it feel like?

Posted on by
2

What must it have felt like to societies that were at war before the invention of explosives and then experienced bullets, bombing and impersonal killing? Before explosives, war was very personal; brutal person-to-person engagement in violent and painful murder; war was an engagement of individuals – war could not be executed without individuals directly engaged with other individuals. Suddenly, many individuals could be killed without that personal, person-to-person engagement.

This is an example of ‘depersonalization’. War was no longer a personal experience, it became one person taking no risk but killing many unknown persons far away – whether the unknown individuals deserved it or not or even knew they were engaged in combat. Society must have felt an important moral commitment slip away – the individual was no longer morally responsible, rather, killing became a pluralistic, amoral experience.

What must it have felt like to societies that lived in relatively stable, locally governed communities where daily commerce was an engagement with familiar people, where the local economy was created by the community as a group of related individuals before the invention of the internal combustion engine that shifted commerce away from communal living, required massive interaction with non-community businesses and having to travel away from the local community on roads and rails? Afterward, communities were subject to economic forces outside the community and its familiar economic ethos of individual well being. This is depersonalization of economy – no longer a community-driven value system.

What must it have felt like to society when elections were strictly a regional phenomenon, where the elected officials were locally known and the issues were the voters’ concern focused on meat and potato issues before individual perspective was swamped by television which exposed individuals to unknown, pontificating, irrelevantly motivated hacks that had no concern for the power of the individual in democratic politics? This is depersonalization of democracy – a philosophy dependent on strength that comes from a bottom-up flow of authority.

What must it feel like to humans when growing up, assuming persona and responsibility and living life among other humans when the chemistry of inter-human behavior is disrupted by a handheld device that replaces human behavior with insidious instructions and influences, induces drug-like dependency and the sole motive is to deflect normal human behavior. Truly this is the depersonalization of human life.

Mariner has vowed to practice forgiveness and compassion, center his life in the society of his town, deny participation in top-down political activities that impose on local perspective and will never participate in the evils of uncontrolled, unmonitored behavioral modification.

In accordance with his Luddite attitude, mariner has completed his Christmas wish list for 2022: two ponies and a small, two-axle pony cart.

Ancient Mariner

 

Possible tools for HORSE #3

Posted on by
Reply

It is interesting to notice how this horse race has an all or nothing air to it. HORSE #1 has democracy at stake. Intensely focused social and political resources must be expended, to borrow an abused phrase, to make America great again.
HORSE #2 has economic survivability at stake. As the 21st century moves forward, civilization will become more extreme in its relationship between have and have-not nations. Already 793 million humans are starving to the point of death, severe malnutrition and stunted bodies. Already out of 43,000 multi-national corporations, 40% of the wealth rests in the hands of only 147 of those corporations.
Human society has hidden much of its economic imbalance by over indulging in the consumption of Earth’s resources – fossil fuel, over-fishing the oceans, destroying forests to plant crops, leveraging limited elements on the Periodic Table, etc. The resources have become scant enough to threaten national stability around the world. HORSE #2 has the difficult task of redistributing wealth in an oligarchic, grow or die world.
Taking a look now at HORSE #3, the planet has no judgment with which to modify or improve its condition. The planet, from an unusual perspective, is just another orphan in the Milky Way not allowed opinion or input into how the orphanage is run.
What tools might humanity use to counter such huge, automatic, astronomic rules?
Probably the most important tool is to realize that humans live in the same orphanage. (Suddenly, a new metaphor emerges; mariner can’t help it!) In other words, planet Earth responds only with cause and effect options. Humans have given HORSE #3 Carbon Dioxide, which amounts to Furosemide (Lasix), also called “doping”, in horses. Now the Earth is running a lot faster than it usually does. So, not being too intellectual, humans should stop doping Planet Earth with Carbon Dioxide. But humans have a flaw: humans can make decisions without facts.
Today, it is the fossil fuel industry, the logging industry, the computer industry (computers are in the same class as automobiles when it comes to releasing CO2), the plastics industry, et al who make decisions about Carbon Dioxide. Asking these industries to stop releasing Carbon Dioxide is like asking the reader to stop urinating.
In this respect, all three horses are using the same equipment to win the race: Politics and money. Planet Earth, however, has an unmeasurably large bankroll with which to raise the stakes (another metaphor: poker).
To win or at least tie in this race, the US stable must expend unknowable amounts of money, must overcome the fleabites of prejudice and greed in society, and must acknowledge from the heart that they do not own or control the biosphere.
Ancient Mariner

HORSE #3 at the starting gate

Posted on by
Reply

Mariner has leaned heavily on the horse race metaphor. It helps provide direction and simplifies objectives. The element that changes dramatically when HORSE #3 enters the race is the track itself. It has been easy to correlate the requirements for winning with HORSE #1 and #2 – they are owned by the same stable: The United States. The track is identical for both horses. HORSE#3, however, is owned by a different stable: Planet Earth. The track is unfamiliar to the US stable. Given today’s circumstances, to win the race the US stable must run on an unfamiliar track.

There are familiar attributes in HORSE #3. All three horses are focused on consumption of resources; all are concerned about survival; all are concerned about the grand order of things. What distinguishes each horse is the manner in which each horse runs the race.

HORSE #1 runs by modifying legislation, shoring up cultural unity and establishing common purpose.

HORSE #2 runs by investing in financial partners who will comprise an international market/GDP liaison.

HORSE#3 runs by utilizing planetary resources such as atmospheric temperature, biosphere adaptation, weather patterns, tides, volcanoes, earthquakes and similar physical characteristics. (When evaluating HORSE #3, there is a tendency to push measurement to infinity, that is, one feels the urge to jump off the track and frolic in the infield. If one’s thoughts seem to require a consultation with Charles Darwin, Sir Isaac Newton, Stephen Hawking, Albert Einstein or Harry Emerson Fosdick, the scale is too grand.)

Perhaps not very scientific but the three-horse race is all about the fact that the US stable has been borrowing hay from the Planet Earth stable and not ever paying for it. The cost to run this three-horse race is very, very high; without a good racing strategy, the US stable (and other national stables) could go bankrupt.

Addressing the issues more directly, humans have been releasing carbon dioxide in volumes so huge that they have interrupted the naturally very slow Carbon cycle typical of the Earth’s planetary behavior. Spiking the planet with Carbon Dioxide is like giving someone methamphetamine. Consequently, glaciers are melting, oceans are rising, air is heating, weather is changing dramatically and earthquakes are more active.[1]

֎ The planet is so energized that in the US alone 162 million people — nearly 1 in 2 — will most likely experience a decline in the quality of their environment, namely more heat and less water. 1 in 12 Americans in the Southern half of the country will move toward California, the Mountain West or the Northwest over the next 45 years because of climate influences alone.

֎ Eight of the nation’s 20 largest metropolitan areas — Miami, New York and Boston among them — will be profoundly altered, indirectly affecting some 50 million people.

֎ Ten fastest-sinking coastal cities (2015 to 2020)
Tianjin, China 5.22 cm per year
Semarang, Indonesia 3.96
Jakarta, Indonesia 3.44
Shanghai, China 2.94
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 2.81
Hanoi, Vietnam 2.44
Chittagong, Bangladesh 2.35
Kobe, Japan 2.26
Kerala, India 1.96
Houston, USA 1.95

 

To translate the impact into dollars, the cost of repairing damage from hurricanes, floods, fires and drought in the US has risen. Climate change has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $350 billion over the past decade, according to a report released last year from nonpartisan federal watchdog the Government Accountability Office. By 2050, that figure will be $35 billion per year. Costs include clean up and disaster assistance caused by flooding and storms, which are set to increase under rising temperatures. Not taken into account are the shifts in climate which will severely impact agricultural production.

So entry fees for this three-horse race are exorbitant. They are large enough for every nation on the planet to be forced to reassess budgets. What comes first, war or flooding? What is more important, plutocracy or feeding citizens? What’s more important, space budgets or rebuilding New York City and Miami?

Finally, given the objectives of all three horses, will the US stable win anything?

Ancient Mariner

[1] If the reader wants to have a deeper understanding of the Carbon cycle, check out https://www.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/CarbonCycle

Possible tools for HORSE #2

Posted on by
Reply

There is precedent for a tool designed to develop the integrated marketing schemes that will emerge in the near future:

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) was a proposed trade agreement between Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, Vietnam and the United States. Participants signed the agreement on February 4, 2016.

As written, the TPP had serious flaws that left human rights issues at risk. Congress was not willing to sign the agreement as it stood; renegotiation would be necessary. After taking office, newly elected President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the agreement in January, 2017.

The remaining nations signed a reworked agreement called ‘Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership’ (CPA) that went into effect in December, 2018. The eleven signatories have combined economies representing 13.4 percent of Global Domestic Product (GDP).

The issue at hand is the cost and political transition of such agreements. Every member nation must adjust government budgets, labor laws and have a member nation who can underwrite the cost of setting up productivity, legislation and buying off resistance. Without the US, the CPA moves slowly and cannot make competitive changes to the world market. Hence the importance of China, India and the US as anchors for these large international markets.

Using South America as an example, several dictatorships with failing economies must be rescued; several failed nations in Central America, the Gulf and Caribbean (including Cuba) must be propped up with renewed, functioning cultures and economies. This strategy cannot begin until HORSE #1 creates a more caring attitude toward South America and Hispanics in general. Today Congress and the President would rather spend billions on a failed and eternal immigration issue rather than go to the source nations and make them economic partners, thereby eliminating the cause of excessive immigration in the first place. China has a head start –

The race is on.

Ancient Mariner

HORSE #2 at the starting gate

Posted on by
Reply

When HORSE #2 is examined, one discovers that the three horses have more in common than expected and may, in fact, be traced back to the same genetic source. HORSE #1 is about democracy and HORSE #2 is about economics; both are about capitalism. Both are about the democratic ethics of a unified and principled nation leading the world in fair and equitable market management.

At the starting gate, a great deal can be identified about track conditions. China, with its Belt and Road economic strategy, is focused on smaller neighbors along the Pacific Rim and a large swath of Eurasia including several ‘stan’ nations. A sea version loops around India into the Indian Ocean and to the east coast of Africa – 60 nations in all.

India, troubled at the moment by conflicts similar to those in the US, eventually may get it together, displace China’s sea strategy and may even dominate the Middle East economy.

Europe and China are investing heavily in African commerce.

This leaves South America, Pacific alliances including Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, Canada, Mexico and Japan and presumably a greatly enhanced presence in South America as fertile economic ground to be developed by the US.

Coming out of the gate, HORSES #1 and #2 require a common unity of purpose. Winning the race requires compassionate assistance to potential nations; winning requires wise and significant investment in the economics of potential nations; winning requires an air of successful cooperation with fellow partners.

Does current prejudice against Hispanic people and governments help? Does pulling manufacturing back onto US soil help? Does prejudice against Asian nationals help? Does the frozen, nontaxable wealth of the oligarchs help? Frankly, if HORSE #2 has any chance of winning, it will be because HORSE #1 got wise and developed a unified and principled nation.

Mariner calls the big three nations the ‘Sumo League’. Each nation had better come to the tournament healthy, well endowed, and have its internal affairs in order.

Ancient Mariner