FRENCH GLOBAL SECURITY LAW PROTECTS POLICE AND ALL CIVIL SOCIETY

 FRENCH “GLOBAL SECURITY” LAW PROTECTS POLICE AND ALL CIVIL SOCIETY  

WITHOUT SUCH LAWS WE TURN PARIS AND NEW YORK INTO  “DODGE CITY” 

Recently, the French parliament has proposed and green lighted a “global security” law which aims to protect the police from those who would maliciously photograph officers while in the conduct of their duty.  The law would impose a stiff fine and or a jail sentence of as much as a year in prison on offenders. 

A casual observer might wonder what is the motivation? 

The French are a practical people who suffered through being the battleground of two world wars and have a long national history, punctuated by violence, uprisings, civil unrest stemming from their past colonial history etc. etc.  The citizenry suffered through their violent past and understand the importance of balancing the two cardinal objectives of any functioning central government: to keep the peace and enforce the laws of the state, as well, to protect the right of peaceful politicalr protest. 

There is a fine line that every functioning state must adhere to. It has to protect the rights of all its citizens to live in a law abiding  and orderly nation where citizens can conduct business and live in peace and security, and on the other hand it must also protect the rights of free assembly and free speech guaranteed to its citizens. 

Sadly, the French and the rest of the world at large have been witness in recent  months to fearful violent events in the USA where the excesses of officials of local and state governments ignor3d their function to keep the peace and enforce laws and under pressure from rioters undermined police function in an attempt to protect not only peaceful demonstrators  but even those who stooped to lawlessness,arson, looting, and horrible acts of violence.  .

The act of permitting police to be photographed and then using these evidences agasint them in a malicious manner has too often counter productive, dangerous and unwanted outcomes. It undermines the essential function of a state to protect its citizenry from lawlessness, violence and property damage. A civil productive, economically viable society can not survive in a “Dodge City”. We need an effective police force and law enforcement first. The French have made the right decision.  Order first...then justice and demonstrations can all  be possible. Nothing can be accomplished in a Dodge City. 

In Dodge City the only justice comes at the end of a baseball bat or the smoking muzzle of a gun. 

The French clearly are opposed to falling into a similar morass of riots and violence  They are a nation with a long history of respect for the law and a citizenry who too well remember the horrors  of the pitfalls inherent in uncontrolled  (even sanctioned) street violence we have seen here...

In every civil society both  the police, as well as citizens and journalists must be protected for it to continue to survive and function. The global security law of the French  parliament  is an attempt to keep these key elements in proper balance and insure that the French  police can function without fear of reprisal.  

Perhaps, some spark of intelligence may arise somewhere in our own government and result in a similar law here in the USA. 

The alternative to “global security” is police dysfunction, declining efficiency and recruitment, insufficient force level , rising anger from citizens who pay for security through taxes and receive nothing in return,  and civil unrest and vigilantism when a frightened  and armed citizenry is  forced to protect themselves—a return to Dodge City. 

WEARING MASKS DO NOT PROTECT YOU, BUT DO HELP PROTECT THE COMMUNITY AT LARGE

 Mask wearer: you are protecting others, but get little protection for yourself. 

But that is good! 

I just read a report on a Danish study examining the efficacy wearing a face Masks ( See a review and summary in the Spectator, 19 Nov 2020: “Landmark Danish Study finds No Significant Effect For Face Mask Wearers)  The authors - Carl Henefhan and Tom Jefferson) ask the question: Do face masks work?  Their conclusion: No!  They don’t protect the wearer.  

The actual research and data found in the study  (Danmask 19 trial) was conducted in the Spring of 2020, with over 6000 participants. It was a randomized, controlled trial.  One group of volunteers, wore identical masks which were supplied to each person and followed  rules about use and changing  the mask regularly.  The results (as reported by Henefhan and Jefferson)  indicate that after a month of wearing the masks 1.8% of those wearing masks had been infected, while 2.1 % of those not wearing masks  (the control) had contracted the disease over the study period.  The authors concluded that there was no significant difference between the infection rate of those who wore a mask and those who did not.  Clearly wearing a mask DOES NOT PROTECT THE WEARER FROM INFECTION. 

This study is a good example of the old adage that there is “no certainty in science”. That is until someone actually tests a hypothesis and provides hard facts.  It in this case, many of us were not surprised at the results,  given the known inefficiency of masks and as well the  very small size of the particles involved and the relatively coarse weave of the fabrics used for most face masks.  

Given the facts of how small the particles that we seek to filter out are so small and the fabric weaves are so coarse, think of this analogy.  A man walks onto a soccer (football) pitch with his golf bag. He sets up directly in front of a field goal with the obvious intending to use the netting (@ five inch openings)  of the soccer goal as a back stop for his practice golf drives.  He takes a golf tee from his bag, tees up a golf ball (@ 1.7 inches) and take a huge sweeping swing. The golfer watches as the well hit small white sphere passes cleanly through the netting, rises upward, continues climbing in height, clearing a high fence of an adjoining  neighborhood. As it fails off III begins to describe a slight draw to the left. The golfer still in his post swing pose begins to twist his body right as if to control its flight, but It missed a large tree and sadly crashes  though the  window of a near by home.  Whereupon the golfer,quickly jams his driver in his bag and slinks off. 

As a near-by observer you could have predicted the sad outcome.  Since it was clear/from the beginning that the netting could not contain the golf ball.  But some scientists want to actually prove the obvious. They are “following the science” as some politicians are beginning to utter constantly these days,  even though nary a one ever saw the inside of an introductory college chem lab. 

Yep. We pretty much knew this would happen. Aware of the actual size of the aerosols and the openings in typical fabric  masks, the reality is even more stark than this golf ball analogy.  Masks do not protect the wearer.   But they are most likely useful  in trapping a good portion of the larger droplets generated when we breathe and speak (again this is still scientifically unproven).  This capture by masks close to the source, no doubt helps limit the amount of aerosols in the air and in particular especially those originating with folks unknowingly infected with the Covid 19 infection.  Remember, that there are many asymptomatic people out there. 

Perhaps why our government and official agencies, as well as those in Johnny come lately scientist politicians in authority seem to ignore the fact that masks provide little protection against the virus for the wearer  is rooted in the sad fact that most of us find it difficult to 

WHAT DOES “CARBON NEUTRAL” MEAN?

  A few days ago, on a chilly Fall day, my grandson showed up  to help me cut up some fallen tree branches as fuel  for our fireplace. Afterward, we shared a cup of hot cocoa sitting in front of the fireplace, where as it happens we had an interesting conversation about what “carbon neutral” means. 

The recently laid fire crackled  and snapped as the orange and yellow flames licked up brightly over  the oak logs, giving off a welcome heat.  My grandson dragged his chair up closer to the fire and spread his palms out to intercept the radiant heat.

“Pop pop, what’s it mean: ‘carbon neutral’ ?”, he asked, adding, “My science teacher said  that China has promised it will be carbon neutral by 2060?”

“Well that’s easy to explain sitting here in front of this fire”, I said. “Just look at this fire. The heat and light we feel and see  in front of us is said to be “carbon neutral”.  But if I go over to the wall there and turn the thermostat to high, the oil burner in the basement will go on and the heat produced that way is not carbon neutral. That fossil fuel source of heat pumps “new” carbon into the atmosphere.  But the wood burning in the fireplace, over here, does not.  The wood fire in the fireplace makes its heat from burning wood and is carbon neutral,  but the oil burner heat is not. 

“But why grandpa?” 

“That tree branch we just  just cut up out there, it is composed of cellulose and wood fibers.  The tree’s  green leaves produced all the parts  of the tree  from the water in the soil and the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, using the sun’s energy.  What do you call that process?

“Oh yeah!  I know— that it’s  ‘photosynthesis’”. My grandson happily and mechanically recited: “The leaves produce sugars from carbon dioxide and water,  with chlorophyll in the presence of sun light” . 

“Yes!  And  those sugars are combined to produce cellulose and other tissues that make up the tree that we are now burning in the fireplace.”

I turned to add new log to the fire, and asked,  “So what’s happening in here? In the fire pit?”

“Ahh......  burning?” 

“And “burning” is....? 

“Is that oxidation?” 

“Yes! Very good. Your teacher did well!”

I continued, “So you are saying that the wood is undergoing oxidation in the fireplace and in that process it gives off......just what? “

“ Oh yeah, I know,” he said, raising his hand as if eagerly answering a question in class. ”It’s oxidation. Oxidation is the combining  of a fuel with oxygen to give off carbon dioxide and water’.”

“Good boy!!

“ So a carbon neutral process is one in which we only return the same carbon that was in the air, right back into the air. We add no new carbon to the air.  In the fireplace the tree we are burning  absorbed carbon from the air and when we burn it to get heat and light we are returning the same carbon right back into the air in the smoke ( which carries the  CO2) that goes up the chimney.” 

“ But grandpa,  how is that different from the  ‘not carbon neutral’ carbon dioxide that goes up in the air from the oil burner chimney?”

 

“OK,  Look so when

 we burn any fossil fuel, like coal, oil ( petroleum = petro =rock, oleum = oil, thus  “rock oil”)  even natural gas, we are taking carbon that was made by trees or other green plants millions of years ago and by ancient geological processes was buried underground for those eons.  This carbon was separated from the atmosphere for millions of years until modern humans discovered these “dug up” (fossils) could burn very nicely.  Since that time they continued  digging this fossilized carbon up to provide useful heat and energy by burning it in the present- day atmosphere.”

Bringing  it into the atmosphere and then burning it in the air produces “new” carbon dioxide.  But this carbon is not really “new”.  It had just been sequestered ( separated) from the modern atmosphere for millions of years and now as a result of human need for cheap energy  it is being added to the existing burden of carbon that is presently in the air. “

“So grandpa what’s the big deal about carbon dioxide? Why is it called a “burden ”?   Is it poisonous or something?”  

No it is not “poisonous” but it does have a a special property. It is an excellent absorber of earth heat. Do you feel that heat coming off the fireplace? All bodies that are hot produce that kind of radiation.  It is called Infra Red ( IR) radiation.  The earth produces infra red radiation when the sun strikes its surfaces.  Think of the heat coming off of a shopping center  parking lot In mid summer.  It is that heat that CO2 tends to absorb.  Not the heat from the sun itself, but the radiant heat  (IR ) produced when the sun heats a surface.  It’s a simple equation— the more CO2 in the atmosphere—the more it absorbs earth heat. This heat is trapped in the lower levels of the atmosphere and acts like a heat blanket for the earth. The more carbon dioxide the hotter it get..

Since the 1850s when humans began using fossil fuels in greater and greater amounts the concentration of CO2 has been slowly and  steadily rising ( today it is 0.04% or 400 parts per million or ppm) and clearly if there is more of a gas that causes the air to warm in the atmosphere,  then we can expect the atmosphere to continue to warm up corresponding to the amount of “new” carbon we add to it.

  In just petroleum alone ( not counting coal, and natural gas) the world consumes and burns about 100 million barrels of oil per day! That’s a lot of carbon going into the atmosphere. 

So there. That is why nations and companies are now striving to become more  “carbon neutral”.  They do not want to be responsible for the bad effects of an overheated atmosphere. 

 

WHY I QUIT READING THE NY TIMES.

 WHY I STOPPED READING THE TIMES. 

HOW THE NYT ABANDONED NEWS AND JOURNALISM TO BECOME A BASE PRODUCT-FOR- SALE-ONLY 

IT IS PURPOSELY TAILORED TO A SPECIFIC CLIENTELE— A SMALL MINORITY OF OUR NATION’S READERS. 

In 1961 I graduated from college and somehow landed a great summer job with the illusriousn NYT.  In those days the paper was known as the “great gray lady” (no color adds and no comic strips) .  It was the prestige organ of journalism.  It was tasked with creating an historic record of the times.  All the great jurnos, want to be writers and commentators either worked there or wanted to.  It sold millions of copies and was published around the world. 

But that was before the great “electronic tech” revolution. In this as days almost  every literate person (or wanna be) had the times delivered to his or her office or home where one could comfortably open the paper over hot breakfast with the famous broad sheet flopping over  a steaming hot cup of coffee and its corners occasionally becoming fat stained in the near-by buttered bagel.  The bulky, hard to manage “big sheet” required gloves ( to protect one from ink stains) and an extensive knowledge of origami to be able to effectively fold the sheets and read and manage the parts you were interested in.  .    

Today the coffee and buttered bagel might be there, but there is no paper.  The reader would be staring at a small rectangle of blinking light displaying  “apps” that provide access to all forms of news information in several languages and from distant places around the world.  

The days of  “newsprint” —-that crinkly, foldable, hand staining, good for packing glassware, excellent fire starter, often spread as a table covering to serve Maryland Crab dinners and used as a surface to clean a mess of fresh caught fish—that type of newspaper —-was completely over.   

In the latter part of the last century the NYT owners were terrified, How would the near 150 year old newspaper survive in the face of falling circulation numbers?  It acted as a news source for tens of millions in the 1980s and 90s.  It informed the entire nation.  In those days it’s  profits came from selling advertisement  space in its papers.   Vast columns of “houses for sale”, big two page spreads of advert for clothes, cars and all the products a nation’a businesses sells might appear in the Times. That circulation meant that the Times could demand big sums for a full page ad. .  It made it’s profits from sale of advertisements.  The greater it’s circulation the more people of varying economic and social positions it reached the better, for it could charge more for its advert space. .  It’s news and opinion  sections were published for the benefit of a wide diverse, often national readership.  The publisher’s goal was to attract the broadest possible spectrum of readership and this correlated with their profits from of advertisement space in the paper. 

But what happens if you can no longer sell copies?  What happens when circulation shrinks by 10 to 25% as it did in the 1990s.  How can a business  survive when sales of copies drops from tens of millions to a few hundred thousand copies and advertising revenue disappears accordingly? . The answer is that  news organizations dependent on advertising sales—  folded like so many others  around the nation and disappeared. The old paradigm of great informative and “free news” paid for by advertising space in a widely circulated journal  was over. 

To survive the Times’ owners had to devise a new business plan. They settled on selling  subscriptions to a small subset of its readers. But why should these subscribers PURCHASE the Times when they could access a wide variety of information sources via internet right on their little iPhone screens and   all for free.  The Times needed to change its news and opinion philosophy from “all the news that’s fit to print” to:  only the news that pleases the subscribers. 

To inveigle this small subset of readers into becoming subscribers the Times had to TAILOR its news and opinion to attract and hold them.  The Times—is no longer the “great grey lady” the newspaper of record, the paper that publishes what actually is happening ( or as close to that goal as anyone can reasonably accomplish) but it is now a boutique publication catering to the interest, biases and preconceived notions of a small clientele—mostly of the far left, often elites of urban centers, comprising radical feminists, pro-abortionists,  socialists, the “woke” generation, BLM movement, and the LBTQ xyz so called community and other of the fringe left.   

These groups subscribe to the Times. They pay for the news they prefer to read and the Times news and opinion pages accommodate  them.  To remain in business the Times must keep these folks pleased with the “news” the paper chooses to print and the .”storyline” they prefer to read.    (The NY T recently claims about  7 million subscribers.  Those 7 million subscribers are apparently enough to keep the Times afloat and generate a profit.  

But this number is only  a fraction of its pre-1990s readership.  Today the Times reaches only perhaps 2 to 4 % of the voting public.  Thus more than 95% of voters do not read the Times or care to read its electronic pages. It can no longer boast it is the “newspaper of record”. It is now a  “niche publication”, as in ecology where that word means an organism adapted to a specific and specialized environment.  

The Times no longer provides  “news”  for those who need to be, or simply want to be informed. This is no longer the kind of real journalism that democracies  depend on  to help generate  informed citizenry, who vote based on established facts .  No!   The NYT’s “survival  business plan” is generating a product —like any commercial institution—its product is generated, modified and modulated expressly for the likes and dislikes of its subscribers and for purposes of continued robust sales. 

Yes, the President was correct.. it’s “fake”.   It is not real news. 

Use it if you like it. Leave it on the shelf if you don’t. . 

MILO AND THE GRAY SQUIRREL

Squirrel swims across pool to escape from a dog  

 The eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) 

There are many stories of how the common gray squirrel has outwitted those of us who love to feed our backyard birds and fool the engineers who design bird feeders.   After many years of observation of wild and domestic critters I can agree with those who laud the “smarts” of the gray and also say that all too often we humans underestimate the mental abilities of  so called “dumb animals“. The fact is that if we observe them long and closely enough, we find that many of them are “thinking” much like we do. Perhaps some do some mental gyrations even better than we do. 

Like many of us these days confined by the fear of Covid, my wife and I have been able to spend more time bird watching.   Lately our back yard nature observations have revealed to us a  particularly smart gray squirrel ( Sciurus carolinensis)  which has been finding ingenious ways to get to the seeds and nuts offered (only) to our avian visitors in backyard bird feeder. 

After rapid disappearance of a good half pound of  bird food I thought I had figured outing  a way to frustrate this fellow  ( I assume he this one is a male). But then I saw him testing and then avoiding the Vaseline smeared pole topped with the bird feeder and instead climbing up a near by bush.  From there this smart  guy made a leap to the the curved arm of the pole (no Vaseline there) and hanging only by his hind feet and stretching across the void,  he could reach the feeder, poke his fore leg- terminating in a paw that looks much like a human hand — through the feeder and grasp a “handful”  of super expensive “fruit and nut” wild bird feed. 

“Did you see that guy?” I called over to my wife looking through  the window,  over the edge of her morning coffee cup at the four legged marauder.

“He’s the one”, she murmured, “that one  with the white tipped tail, he jumps onto the top of the feeder and tips it over” she said, adding. “But he’s nice enough to clean up whatever he spills“.

“All he got this time was a paw full,” I said watching as the fluffy gray boldly jumped from the feeder to the top of our wooden picnic table just twenty feet from our glass slider door.  

Just beyond the table, across a short stretch of brick patio the light from the morning  sun glimmered off the water of our in-ground pool. Our sicurid raider seemed to be very content with himself as he sat breakfasting comfortably on our food and on our poolside table. 

There, he perched himself upright on his haunches, his tail curled upward like an umbrella over his head and began nibbling at the goodies in his front paws. His big fluffy tail with its white tip twitched rhythmically, apparently in response to the enjoyment and satisfaction of his stolen meal. (By the way the genus name Sicurus  is a derived from this critter’s  long tail —Gr “urus” = tail, and “sica” = shade— or “an animal which can use its tail for shade”.) 

Though the human observers of this scene could be somewhat amused, it was otherwise  for the canine observer.   This canine observer was our five-year old Jack Russel terrier.  Milo stood stark still staring though the glass at his nemesis and frequent furry quarry.  The Jack Russel’s bobbed  white tail was held rigidly upright and it vibrated with his intense excitement .  

Milo stared at his quarry and whined  in anticipation as  he focused on the one pound little furry beast perched on the table where even Milo was forbidden to perch . 

As a practiced and eager squirrel.chaser, though so far over his five summers always an unsuccessful one, he begged for his masters to open the door and permit him to give chase.

Not as amused with this squirrel’s behavior as was my wife(and being responsible for refilling and repairing the bird feeders),  I slowly and silently slid the door ajar  and let the eager, panting Jack Russell race from the room like a bull leaving the bucking chute at a rodeo bull riding contest. 

In immediate hot pursuit, Milo raced across the deck and  leaped down the deck stairway.  He landed close to the picnic table,  but the squirrel was faster.  At the sound  of the door opening and the frantic clawing sounds of Milo’s claws scraping  on the deck the one pound gray bird/food-robber, leaped from the table just feet from the pool edge.

Here our sicurid marauder proved just how smart and adaptable he was.  In a very small fraction of a second the tiny but complex brain of this critter must have had to calculate that at this point in the chase, the much larger dog behind him was too close and too fast  for him to escape to the any near tree or large bush. That escape route —up a tree- his usual escape strategy was not available.  The closest tree was on the far side of the pool, but that was a good 25 feet across a six foot deep watery barrier  with a good eight inch climb out  the pool water over the bull nosed brick coping of the pool edge.  

To catch the squirrel Milo would have to race around one or the other  side of the 40 foot long pool to get to that location.   But for the bushy tailed marauder that was the only safe route of escape. 

Our gray with the white tipped tail jumped right into the pool and beating the water to a bubbly froth  swam the distance across in what I estimate was no more than two seconds,  Then without hesitation the squirrel somehow jumped upward to grasped the coarse brick coping and leaped soaking wet out of the pool  over the coping on the far side.  

The dripping wet squirrel was well up the nearest tree when Milo, growling and barking in frustration, reached the streak of water-stained brick where the wet squirrel had tracked across the brick patio. 

I added a new note to my nature observations.  I added a codicil to the Sicurus chapter: “squirrels can swim very well”. They can think even better.  It took some quick mental calculations to determine that taking a short unlikely and probably his first ever swim was the best route for escape.  Yet he calculated that unlikely route was the best and safest snd he made the decision in only a very small fraction of a second. 

WILL PANDEMIC BECOME ENDEMIC? WILL COVID GO AWAY?

WILL CORONA VIRUS GO AWAY?  

NO UNWITTINGLY WE HAVE DESIGNED OUR MODERN WORLD FOR NEAR IDEAL DISEASE TRANSMISSION 

The truth of the matter is over the last seventy years or so we have unwittingly created  a world that is an ideal setting  for generation and transmission of deadly pathogens and recurrent pandemics. 

The world population is now over 7 billion.  Our planet is for the first time in into long history massively overpopulated with a single species —-Homo sapiens.  Our species is now the most common large animal on earth,  with more Individua

A than than any other large animal wild or domestic. Though the Norway rat and an insect— ants—beats us out in sheer numbers. 

This too numerous human species of ours  are found most concentrated in densely packed urban enclaves.  These cities melding together into megalopolises  where tens of millions of people live cheek by jowl. Here their life ways are characterized by necessary and economically efficient dense packing. The denizens of these places are forced to work and live in close proximity to others.  They are crammed into subway cars, elevators, and huddle together in closed spaces to shop, eat, drink and (sometimes) be merry.  Their entertainment venues are even more densely packed crowded theaters and concert halls.  

Escape from the crowded cities for “vacation” is accomplished by packing themselves off into other tight spaces.  Most commonly travelers are arranged  sardine like, into airplanes where for hours on end they are forced to  breath and rebreathe the air of some hundreds of other passengers from all walks of life and all stages of disease transmission. Others jam crowded tour ships built like floating cities where they live eat and freely spread germs to each other, then disembark en masse each day in so called “tourist destinations” which are other densely populated port cities where they disperse  and disseminate disease vectors or become infected themselves. 

Sexual activity is credited as the most effective means of germ transmission. Early societies were quick to control this act, not for social or sexual dominance as some would have it, but for survival of the tribe or clan from deadly pathogens.   Tribes which adopted these practices tended to survive  others passed into extinction and obscurity. Today promiscuity is rampant in our overpopulated world. Traditional restraints on the most intimate of interpersonal practices have been abandoned for sexual perversions, rampant promiscuity and desperate experimentation.  Modern sexual practices of the western world would make the debased Roman emperor Nero blush with embarrassment,  then wonder why he hadn’t thought of that perversion himself. 

We have abandoned traditional  small family farms and animal husbandry enterprises for factory farms where we grow mono crops subject more subject to plant disease outbreak and we house thousands of upon thousands of domestic food animals in horrible conditions of close confinement.  These places are breeding grounds for pathogens which once introduced can spread like a wild fire through the entire confined population and often can jump to human hosts to cause pandemics. 

In less advanced, but recently more affluent nations, ancient food gathering and wildlife exploitation practices have not died out with new  modern sources of food,  but continue to be practiced.  In these places exploitation of dwindling wildlife—wild  birds,  small mammals, reptiles, and  marine organisms formerly used as food and ancient medical remedies continue unabated.  These wild animals are kept alive  in inhumane and unclean confinement until purchased and slaughtered .  It is here again where again humans play into the hands of disease organisms which are programmed to exploit opportunities of confinement to disperse and reproduce or evolve into other more deadly forms. .  It is in these on going and unrestrained  circumstances—that new human pathogens arise from those which had only formerly been transmitted among a wild population. 

So it is clear we have unwittingly created a world for the betterment and wide transmission of deadly pathogens.  Our modern  society has created conditions to generate the “perfect storm” fir recurrent deadly pandemics which even our great science and technology can not completely quell or keep up with new or novel pathogens which arise so rapidly.  

The ancients, thousands of years ago in the Fertile Crescent  of the Middle East were faced with similar  threats of disease. Those tribes and races of man which survived were those which adopted certain social, dietary, and sexual practices in response to the disease threat which lserved to limit exposure. avoid contamination and limit disease mortality .These sexual, social and dietary practices operated for thousands of years successfully in some cases until modern times. 

Modern society seems to believe that we have overcome these threats from the natural world. We pridefull believe that science and progressive thought will protect us moderns and we now to thumb our noses at Mother Nature laws of evolution and disease transmission.  

The  Covid 19 pandemic is just the most recent and deadly in a spate of  recent pathogen outbreaks. The organisms we face are pre programmed to exploit host animals (humans) in congested, crowded and enclosed spaces. Circumstances and places in which modern humans are now forced to inhabit. We now live in a world well adapted for germ transmission so we can expect continued plagues from these ubiquitous evolving and unnumbered disease organisms.  If we fail to recognize our wayward course in this world we live in which is governed by the forces of nature and in which we are only one of a myriad of other species subject to disease  we will continue to suffer the consequences of our behavior.     

Humans have survived as a species because they were able to change and adapt to new conditions.  They evolved socio-dietary-sexual practices in response to the existential threat of disease perhaps thousands of years ago.  

Perhaps it is time in this of COVID-19 that we finally accept the challenge from the natural world of which we are an integral and dependent part and adapt to its rules and conditions rather than hubristically  ignoring Mother Nature. 

 

Biden Wins In Tainted Election Has No Mandate

Joe Biden has won. But in a tainted election with the connivance and collusion of the mass media, the Chinese and their Covid virus, massive amounts of money from powerful elites  and the corrupt election practices of several key states which gave him only the slimmest  (suspicious) margin of victory.   

His party lost seats in the House. Latinos and Blacks went for Trump in record numbers The Senate remains in GOP hands.    The Supreme Court is more conservative than in the last 50 years  Thre was no “blue wave”.   Joe remains at the head of a constituency of the fringe far left, populated by the BLM movement, radical feminists, the LBGT xyz community,  socialists,  and other malcontents.  

 God help him.

 He faces powerful forces on his left and right, a pandemic, a faltering economy in the fragile early stages of recovery and a nation as divided and angry as it was in pre Civil War in 1860. He has little chance of success. 

Joe sold himself as a unifier and  “not Donald Trump” and nothing more. He has no legitimate mandate. 

But Joe does have a choice. He could be a great transformative president who will bring peace and unity, or a Carter-style disaster who will be swept out and replaced by a more tactful, traditional but true Trumpian Republican in 2024.  

To be that transformer Jie must uncover an inner source of great courage and force of character   Both of which have been in little evidence in his stealth and “basement” campaign.  

Yes he can be that great unifier,  by simply coming to terms with what was apparent to all in this last lingering election-the fact that fully half of this nation are traditionalists with needs and aspirations. These are  the vast, nationally ubiquitous,  conservative, family oriented, hard working, god fearing, gun toting, life-affirming, bible loving, race and gender neutral. law and order abiding, white, black, Hispanic, Asian folk who love this nation, love freedom, economic opportunity and dearly want to see it prosper.   His acknowledgement and support of the legitimacy of these massive numbers of  American citizens, their culture and values, (termed “irredeemables” and worse by his supporters,) would go a long way to healing the nation’s wounds.   

His politicians empty campaign words of “unity” would then become real .   But that would mean alienating the powerful radical forces on the extreme left he has made  a Faustian bargain with,  and which this election has demonstrated  is so unpopular with so many American voters.  

Does Joe have it?  Or is he only another hack politician living high for fifty years on the taxpayers dime seeking a new and softer bed in the White House and even bigger more lucrative “deals” and emoluments for his family and the infamous Hunter?

Joe has a choice.  

Let’s all pray that he finds that inner courage.