Month: June 2015

I had the sad task of driving 300 miles (one way) from my mountainside home to attend the passing of one of my best friends who had been stricken with incurable cancer. He fought a losing battle with this disease for over five years, and had the very best doctors trying treatments beyond the ordinary radiation and chemotherapy; and he suffered with strange symptoms resulting from experimental/ research drugs. All to no avail. My destination was the home of a very close friend (Craig) who had moved Al (the victim) into his home and cared for him diligently throughout the five-year ordeal. What prompted my rush to St. George,Utah, was a late night call from Craig; who said, “Al is now in the terminal stage, and he will be dead in a few days.”

“I’m on my way. I’ll call Rip (another close friend who is a professional musician) and tell him the bad news.”

“Why don’t you come down in the morning. He’s all doped up, and I don’t want you to hit a deer or something else in your headlights, the way you drive”.

“O.K.”, I sighed, “I’ll leave about 5:00 AM. What’s the air temperature in St. George?”

“Well, it topped out at 105 degrees this afternoon, but it will be 111 tomorrow, according to the forecaster.”

“No problem, I’ll see you around 9:00 in the morning. Is Al coherent?”

“He fades in and out, depending on how much Morphine he’s taken. You can probably talk to him and be understood, but don’t expect much in the way of a reply.”

“Okay; See you in the morning.” I hung up and called Rip. Rip said he would hurry down as fast as he could reschedule stuff, and that he would bring his guitar (he’s an excellent  musician).

From different backgrounds and age groups, we were part of a tight knit band of brothers, mostly musicians and artists called “The Loose Trucking Company.” As a group, we had explored the hidden reaches of the Colorado Plateau ‘slickrock’ country, and skied the wild peaks of the Wasatch Mountains. We have been getting together to go exploring for over forty years.

I arrived in the toasty heat of the early morning in St. George. Craig ushered me into his home, which was located beside a long fairway of one of the famous golf courses in the area.

“How is he doing?” I asked.

“He’s downstairs. He’s in full hospice care now and he didn’t take any heavy jolts of the pain killers so he could talk with you.”

I followed Crag down to the lower level of house, where Al was setup in what seemed to be a hospital room complete with a hospital bed, wheelchair, oxygen machine, hospital supplies, etc.  Al was lying on the bed with tubes for a catheter and other stuff emerging from the bed sheets. He was so thin and gaunt that I hardly recognized him, and as I peered intently at his face, his eyes fluttered open and he saw me staring down at him. His lips quivered a little beneath his mustache, and then slowly broke into a smile. “It’s good to see you, Cox; thanks for coming.” he whispered.

I won’t bore the reader with our weepy conversation. I reminded him of the good times we had shared, skiing, hiking, backpacking in the wilderness and so forth. Several women came by while I was visiting with him, and they kissed him goodby tenderly. A little later Rip showed up, talked a bit privately with Al, and then got out his guitar and played a full concert for Al as if he were in a big auditorium. The sweet and complex music filled the room for over two hours. Al had Craig prop him up in bed, and he watched Rip play attentively. Craig’s father, who now lives with him since his wife passed away, came downstairs to listen to the beautiful cords of the guitar. When Rip took a short break, Al motioned me over to his bedside, and croaked in his feeble voice, “You know, Cox, it’s pretty weird listening to your own funeral music…”

In spite of all of his pain, and all that he had been through, he joked around with me once more, because that was Al. The next morning, I drove across the Nevada border and went into a casino where they got me drunk, took all my money, and kicked me to the curb. They weren’t having anything to do with a crying old man slouched over a video poker machine; it was bad for business.

Left to right: Dave, Craig, Al, & Cox golfing in St. George. Rip is not in this image

 

There is much consternation in the United States over Cyber attacks from China, Russia, and dissident groups with an agenda. Our paid Cyber-sleuths have the damning evidence in hand, and the political elements in the country are filled with fear and loathing and feel helpless to do anything substantial about it; the main reason being that we have conducted attacks ourselves. An example is the attack on the Iranian centrifuges that were whipping up near weapons-grade enriched Uranium. The problem is that the attacks recently conducted by Russian and Chinese hacker groups have damaged the integrity of our system of democracy and threatened the lives of ordinary citizens. When you add in the disclosures of Edward Snowden, the real-world effects are as big as those created by detonating nuclear weapons on the U.S. Government. Here is a link that supports my thesis: http://www.defenseone.com/threats/2015/06/5-chinese-cyber-attacks-might-be-even-worse-opm-hack/115321/?oref=d_brief_nl

The USA needs to retaliate in kind in a big way, and fast. We need to make it so painful to the parties involved that they never try it again. We also need to isolate North Korea even further by cutting off the access of their hackers to the Internet. The physical servers that connect them up are located in China, and the U.S. knows exactly where they are. We need to demand that the Chinese disconnect them immediately or suffer the consequences.

At the same time, the U.S. Government needs to ‘privatize’ its networks immediately from the inventors at DARPA to the IRS and the Pentagon. There must be no physical links to the Web, wired or optical. The sad truth is that there is NO Way to make the web secure. It is the nature of digital computing; where there are bit streams flowing in and out of a digital/analog processing system, the ‘doors’ in and out cannot be locked and any combination can be tricked into revealing itself and be subject to decoding. The Government network is vital and entrenched in everything the government does. The same applies for power plants, public utilities, and state/local government agencies, including local fire stations, hospitals, traffic lights, railroads, and mass transit systems.

All of these networks must be physically isolated from the world-wide web. The interconnecting wire or fiberoptic lines must be in steel jackets and Tempest-shielded; and they should be buried deeply in the earth. As soon as it is technically possible, such communications should take place via Quantum Entanglement. Until that time, the USA needs to tell the world in the strongest terms that we reserve the right to retaliate on future attacks with cruise missiles or space-based railguns that target the physical location of any hacker groups and network nodes identified by our Cyber Intelligence Corps (when we have one in place). No vital activities of any kind should be connected to either the Web or the Internet of Things.

 

Image courtesy of prepperbroadcasting.com

In my last post I discussed a pending extinction event, and one of my valued readers (MoonDawg) asked me to elaborate on my analysis that led to this alarming conclusion. I tried to summarize my thinking in a few words, but later, I realized that I needed to make an iron-clad analysis that supports my view available to all of my readers. So, here it is, presented by many others besides myself. The only question in my mind is if I got the timeframe correct (2040). I don’t think it is far off the mark. So, here are some very short videos that support my conclusion. I will follow up soon with a post detailing my ideas for a fix. First of all, read this: http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/5/e1400253

The oceans:

Worldwide deaths of coral reefs:

The impact of overfishing:

The Amazon Rainforest:

 Greenland Ice melting:

Recent ice melting in Antarctica:

 A Planetary Perspective:

The global water crisis:

Depletion of soils due to industrial agriculture:

 Overpopulation crisis:

See full article: Risk to life on Earth

I hope Mr. Vladimir Putin reads this. It is my hope that he stops threatening the USA with nuclear warfare if he doesn’t get his way in Eastern Europe, and starts contributing to the survival of humanity by removing all of the nuclear waste, reactors, and decrepit nuclear submarines that Russia has been secretly dumping haphazardly in the Kara Sea, the Barrets Sea, and Northern Pacific. And Russia is not the only country that did this. It is a time bomb that will guarantee the demise of much remaining oceanic life as it migrates to the cooler waters in order to survive. The greatest impact of this trashing of the ocean will be on the Russians who depend on fishing there to feed the people of the country.

See:http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/09/russia-dumped-19-radioactive-ships-plus-14-nuclear-reactors-into-the-ocean.html

The fact is, the Earth can only support eight hundred million to one billion humans in a sustainable fashion. This leaves room for the rest of the planet’s non-human species to thrive and continue on their own evolutionary path. You can check out this factoid for yourself. Many studies support this notion. Now imagine an international group of governments getting together in secrecy to develop a plan to reduce the human population by about five billion people before 2040. They may decide that to avoid global warfare, the best way is to get all of the ignorant populations around the world fighting and killing one another with weapons from ancient times where possible and more modern weapons when necessary; donated in secrecy by their technically advanced ‘friends’ around the world. At the same time, these ‘friends’ introduce viruses that are untreatable without the use of high technology, such as Ebola, H5N1 Bird Flu, and so forth. In addition, they keep the fighting and killing going going on by making the issues religious, or based on control of water & food resources.

Far fetched, you say? Well, think about the alternatives. Right now, Putin and the Russians are flying nuclear bombers around, annexing territory from neighboring countries, and colluding with like-minded friends from the Cold War past to create an ‘Us vs.Them’ scenario. They long for the past of the Soviet Union, and are making an open grab for land and resources under the misguided belief that the more they have, the better off they will be. This is the one thing that makes me think that the forgoing secret meetings may not have taken place yet. A lot of conspiracy theories already abound on the Internet. Wikipedia highlights one of the most important here:

New World Order

Soon, the depletion of natural resources and the massive breakdown of the oceanic food chain will add to the misery of resource-poor countries whose populations are fleeing to anyplace that provides a safe haven to survive and raise their children. Sadly, these havens only exist in the minds of the refugees. Even America, the so-called breadbasket of the world and refuge of the downtrodden is under stress, both physically and financially from overpopulation; and millions of unemployed and ‘undocumented’ immigrants are breaking the hearts and backs of the citizens who are trying to assimilate them into our Western cultures.

We no longer have the luxury of tolerating any human activity in the world that exacerbates this global misery. Recent history has shown that at least 80% of the planetary human population is incapable of making any positive contribution to reducing the impact of our disparate societies on global ecosystems and human-induced climate change. As we know, these issues must be confronted and dealt with now. And, any individual, organization, or social system that cannot or will not contribute to the effort to save us all must be coerced into helping in some measurable way or suffer being confined to controlled settings where they cannot disrupt the efforts to change our human societies in a way that is beneficial to our global ecosystem and human survival as soon as possible

This harsh assessment holds regardless of one’s religious bent, political philosophy, or humanitarian impulses. Tough situations usually demand harsh responses, and the gathering storm of social, economic, and religious issues are converging too fast to allow leisurely debate of the issues and their consequences. In general, while we all agree that something must be done; there is little agreement as to what we should do. As an example, the people of Beijing are often seen in photos wearing surgical masks when they go out of doors to conduct the business of their daily lives; yet the Chinese government wants special treatment in climate change discussions that will allow the country to continue to consume more resources and emit more pollutants in order to achieve ‘parity’ with industrialized societies in the ‘Western World’.

This is a recipe for disaster. Now, I am not putting the spotlight on the Chinese people alone. The United States of America has just as much ennui, and the people are not presently willing to make the tough choices and take the tough steps to ensure that humans survive for a few hundred years more. We won’t do it, if no one else does.

The second order of business would be for the UN to ensure that food and potable water resources are distributed equably without preference to religion, politics or skin color, with one caveat: Recipient countries must demonstrate that all members of their society are employed in some fashion for the betterment of humanity and/or environmental remediation. No slackers allowed. This means no crack-smoking indigents lurking on the street corner, no violent criminals, and no terrorists. Redemption is the province of God, if He/She exists; for the rest of us, the best way to deal with our problems is to eliminate those who oppose us. We cannot afford to put them in cages for the rest of their miserable lives and try to ‘rehabilitate’ them.

In conclusion, the only benign alternative that I can see to ‘Death by Design’, is to enact strict global control of births through sterilization/contraception, and deaths by controlling the use of life extension techniques in old age, and the limiting of antibiotics, etc. to control disease outbreaks. Only agreed upon regions of the planet would remain ‘sanitized’ by application of medical technologies. I think it may be the most humane approach to the problem, and I would be very interested in your ideas for reducing the human population fast enough to forestall ecosystem collapses and massive die-offs of many classes of life on Earth.