Truth in advertising: Media and politics

Media has an outsized role in the coming election. ‘We Have A Big Responsibility': Facebook Rolls Out New Election Security Measures. Meanwhile watch AOC ask Mark Zuckerberg if she can run fake Facebook ads, too. Zuckerberg’s answer on whether Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez can falsely claim Republicans voted for the Green New Deal: Probably.

Huh, I spoke at Facebook soon after the 2016 mess and offered FB executives simple, elegant ways to help solve the factuality problem without acting as an unpopular policeman of diverse opinions. They used none of my proposals, all of which would be far better than all of the things they are trying.

Make no mistake. Second only to toppling Pax Americana and wrecking our standing in the world, the top goal of the Putin-Murdoch-led world mafia is to destroy the impartial rule-of-law, enforced by independent civil servants... 

...the very same "deep state" that Trump and every other gopper rails against. They openly call for an end to civil service protections, so that these offices can yet again be filled by "spoils" -- by party hacks or those who are terrorized by party hacks. You need to know the history. This article helps proivide background.  

And sure, there's another argument, that civil servants can become a stodgy, cloying influence, hampering governmental agility, acting to protect their own institutions... see that problem revealed in the hilarious British comedy series "Yes, Minister." It's a legitimate complaint, when made by reasonable-sane-adult conservatives or libertarians (when such existed outside of Utah.)

Only note that it was Democrats who saw that the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) had become "captured" by oligarchs, as was the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB), both of them destroying competition in railroads and air travel... and Democrats demolished both cloying - obsolete agencies! They broke up AT&T. Al Gore both reduced bureaucratic paperwork by 20% and pushed the bill that unleashed the Internet, and Clinton unleashed GPS. 

The only industries 'freed from bureaucracy' by Republicans have been WallStreet/finance and resource extraction (oil/coal) Gee I wonder why those?

When we again resurrect the extinct species -- reasonable-sane-adult conservatives or libertarians -- they'll be welcome at the table, demanding least-bureaucratic approaches to 21st Century problem solving. But first we need to defeat mad-traitors who seek to destroy the civil services, intel and FBI and military officer corps, our science, fact-professionals and alliances.

== Volatile Politics ==

Market volatility has leaped immensely, reacting to Trump’s sudden blurts and trade wars, as often against allies as adversaries. According the economics analyst Bob Cesca, the top five biggest single-day point declines in the history of the Dow have occurred on Trump’s watch, and all have occurred since February, 2018. “Sure enough, someone — or a connected group of someones — has been making super-colossal trades just prior to Trump’s announcements about the trade war.”

My friend Joe Carroll suggests we go back to the font of most American wisdom - Mark Twain - and ask,,, “Have we been warped in much the same way that Twain portrays in his story: “The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg”? It would not surprise me to learn that Putin read it, back when he was a devoted communist studying American weaknesses at the KGB Academy.

China’s very special agent from Macao, charged with helping to control the Republican Party and use it against us, is now applying pressure to make a trade deal favorable to Beijing.  

Elizabeth Warren appraises the problem of lobbyist power over Congress and legislation. While your average leftist may reflexively attribute this to the corruption and venality if legislators or “corporatist Democrats,” Warren — having worked alongside many of those maligned colleagues — knows it is much more complicated. “While a big part of the problem is a broken campaign finance system, members of Congress aren’t just dependent on corporate lobbyist propaganda because they’re bought and paid for. It’s also because of a successful, decades-long campaign to starve Congress of the resources and expertise needed to independently evaluate complex public policy questions. How has Congress filled that gap? By turning to lobbyists.”

Zeroing in on a problem that has gown worse every year since Newt Gingrich destroyed the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, Warren explains: “Republicans eliminated an independent office of experts dedicated to advising Congress on technical and scientific information. Congressional staff salaries, for most roles, have failed to keep pace with inflation, making it harder to attract and retain staff with scientific expertise. And the committees focusing on science and technology have seen their staff levels fall by over 40% over the past few decades.”

Warren’s plan to end Washington corruption is worth your time and attention. It’s one reason why I am dedicated to having her be in one of the two top slots of the 2020 ticket… and I am leaning evermore toward that being #1… though in that case I hope she’ll appoint an experienced governor to be her #2. And maybe try some of the methods I prescribe in Polemical Judo.

== And... ==

Two articles you should add to your quiver, when you hunt and reel in your smartest RASR… one with enough neurons he or she might yet be hauled back from treason and darkness. The two words they fear most at Fox are not “Elizabeth Warren.” 

The two words that send every Foxite fleeing are “Ocean Acidification.” Because they have no blithe shrug-answer for it. None is possible. You can demonstrate the phenomenon with a glass of water, a drinking straw and two swimming pool test strips. Only human generated CO2 can be causing this disaster. 

Then follow with: “'We Should Be Worried': Study Confirms Fear That IntenseOcean Acidification Portends Ecological Collapse.”

And then this from Fox News itself! “Ocean acidification was the final straw in the Cretaceous (dinosaur) extinction” A different cause, but similar lethality.

Mark Zuckerberg has offered to toss scraps to the New York Times and other sources of real journalism. That’s not an answer. This article asks: ”Are News Bundles The Future of Journalism?"

No, they aren't. In response: My article "Beyond Advertising: Will Micropayments Sustain the New Internet?" has received a lot of attention as the failures of an advertising-based Internet are becoming ever more apparent and as news media get starved into oblivion.

== And finally, a full-on rant! ==

Ready? Take a deep breath and here goes...

The blatantly extortionist withholding of appropriated aid to Lebanon ended quietly as the Ukraine thing unfolded. But what was Trump extorting? Not 'investigations' of never-stated crimes by Hunter Biden. Could it have been actual emoluments in some form? And while we await John Roberts's betrayal - desperately stopping the tax records and Deutsche Bank revelations from reaching Congress -- we must wonder: when will a log break from the jam and unleash the revelations river? Some brave settlement victim defying Trump to enforce his "Great Wall of NDAs? 

Or maybe Epstein's "insurance" files? Giuliani's? David Pecker's safe? A brave Graham-lover stepping up? Some Koch-scion or conscience-driven Helvetian who realizes that $billions will be useless in a world awash in tech-savvy refugees and streets filling with tumbrels?

My money is on "Little Rocket Man," who is volatile enough not to link arms with others in the Putin-Fox-Saudi-mullah-dominionist cabal, desperately plugging every leak and loose log. If Kim does something to his "lover" in the next few weeks, the dems need to be ready with a unified howl of derision and "kissy" sounds at rallies to mock "we fell in love" Trump's adoration of a mnurderous communist tyrant.

What depresses me is that the dems never agree on unified talking points, while every gopper receives instructions from Rupert Murdoch, every single morning, and has for a decade. Just a few such unified memes would do wonders! 

Example: The one common element in every Republican "defense" is "Don't look! You should never have looked! We don't want to look! No one should know!" It is the distilled essence of their attacks on the "Steele Dossier," on Strzock & Page. On "FBI spying." On Schiff's committee proceedings... it is the root of every single whine.

Mock that! A faux cringe (hands up to divert sight) and a cry "Don't look!" 

If any THREE dems did it, the media would catch on.

Fairness on the Public Airwaves

In a previous political posting, we ran through a long list of political addictions – nostrums and catechisms that believers return to decade after decade, despite their having been relentlessly and decisively disproved. Like the notion that a seventy year Drug War can cure chemical dependency, or that a fifty year trade embargo on Cuba ever did a scintilla of good. Or an utter insanity called Supply Side (Voodoo) Economics, or SSVE, that never made a single successful prediction, not even one, ever...

...or – indeed – some of the almost-as-absurd incantations nursed by the much-smaller but still dangerous very-far-left. Like anti-vaxxing and other hostilities to science, that approach 5% as silly as climate denialism; (yes, that silly.)

Normally, even the most obstinate human would start to shift away from such disproved nonsense. That is, if they were exposed to the disproof!  Alas, so many of us scrupulously avoid looking in directions that might offer up such evidence we’re wrong!  And there are evil men who cater to this weakness in human nature.

Which brings us to today’s topic.

== Should we hear any disagreement… at all? ==

Probably the most destructive administrative act in the last 50 years, and the root cause of almost all of America’s current problems, was based in a Reagan era action: 

“It was called the "Fairness Doctrine" created to prevent the American people from receiving misinformation in the guise of fact. Over 60 years later, the Fairness Doctrine is a thing of the past and the American people are worse off because of it.” 

Take a look at: The Repeal of Fairness: How Ronald Reagan gave us FOX News and other Bias Sources from the Examiner.

This history of the doctrine shows that its elimination led to today’s utterly polarized media, in which our fellow citizens stare at hate-drenched lie-festivals … rallying the faithful… without ever catching even a glimpse of another side.

While the Left has its own echo chambers that strive to copy the lucrative Fox – captive audience – business model, there are no masters of propaganda better than the crew led by Roger Ailes.  Indeed, MSNBC teeters on bankruptcy, because dedicated leftists are only a small minority of the Blue Constituency. 

The larger portion — moderate liberals — get bored by constant uniformity and wander off to find a variety of news sources. Indeed, their guru - Jon Stewart - swivels and skewers assumptions in all directions, while welcoming smart opponents on his show.

They are the ones who do not need a Fairness Doctrine.  They feel an itch on their own, to sample from a range of perspectives. 

But the far-left and entire-right are dogma junkies. Those portions of the populace need to be exposed to occasional rebuttals, lest they become shambling zombie-marrionettes to the hypno-lobotomizing propaganda puppet shows they stare at, endlessly nodding as stoked-up hate and fear levels just keep on rising.

There is a reason that the merchants of fear-and-loathing despise any talk of a restored fairness doctrine. Indeed, they would fight against it more furiously than anything else, even fair tax rates for oligarchs...

...because even just one minute of rebuttal per hour… would destroy their scam.  

Oh, we would still disagree, debate and fuss… there would still be liberals and conservatives and libertarians and such… but the purity of utter spite might give way to argument, comparison of evidence, some concessions in both directions, and even the horrible thing that the puppet-masters fear most. 

Negotiation. 

== How bad is the lie tsunami? ==

A new survey by the Tampa Bay Times’ PunditFact, looking at the veracity of cable networks, found that Fox News won (or lost) first prize for having the most falsehoods studied.  According to PunditFact, Fox News’s on-air talent were mostly-false, false, or “pants on fire” 60% of the time.  

MSNBC ranked second in falsehoods, at 46% of the time.  

And CNN ranked a lowly (or uply) 18% level of falsehoods – meaning, CNN did a pretty good job getting it right.  

As validation, the Economist, also a generally conservative journal, did its own survey of truthfulness, coming to very similar ratings. 

And hence this open challenge. Do you doubt I could do that one-minute rebuttal, myself?

I’m quite serious. Give me one minute per hour on Fox… or one per three hours… hell even one minute per week… and I would leave the Fox lie machine a smoldering ruin. You know I could do it. So could many of you. 

Want an equal chance at liberal media? Well, rebuttals already happen over there. Even on MSNBC. But sure… have at!

Alas, the masters of propaganda will fight to the death against any “fairness” on publicly owned airwaves, even though the principle was deemed totally righteous by our parents, in the Greatest Generation. The puppeteers know that the Ailes-heimers sickness they impose on millions would dissipate like a bad dream, and so would this phase of our re-ignited Civil War...

...setting us back on the path of non-demonizing, practical negotiation and vigorous, but reasonable argument. 

On that day when the fever breaks, we will regain a conservatism of intellect (I want it back!) and on that day, Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley can stop spinning in their graves.

== Don't even pretend that truth evasion is equal ==

Oh, for those of you preaching the cynical line that “the parties are just the same, equally captured by Wall Street and equally corrupt,” dig this well.  

Democrats have long supported the Fairness Rule… meaning that they do not fear rebuttal...

...while Republicans sought to destroy it, and would go into actinic fury if they saw any hint of its return.

 Let's reiterate: one side does not mind its partisans hearing contradicting views and evidence.  The other side desperately dreads it.

Think about that. WHY is the right terrified of letting their troops hear any rebuttal at all?

Nothing better shows that the matter now is not “left-vs-right”... but honest/sane versus dishonest/insane.

Go on, spin out the rationalizations! It’s “freedom of speech” to keep half of a country hypnotized and hate-stoked with relentless, easily disproved lies. Just like the way southern whites, before the Civil War, had only newspapers to read that were owned and run by the plantation caste, having burned-out every other voice, loyal to Union and reason.

Go ahead and cry out “it’s simple competition and supply and demand!”  As you defend the same monopoly-oligarchy that was the top enemy of flat-open-fair enterprise for 6000 years. The exact and diametric opposite of "competition."

Sorry, these flailings may reassure you. But deep inside you know. 

This deliberate lobotomization of American political discourse is nothing less than treason.

Media Challenge FAA Drone Ban -- and drones conveying beauty?

Tomorrow I will offer comments on the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.  But first, let's catch up on some important issues.

Drones have already been used on several occasions in the US to document the news. Last week, a storm chaser in Arkansas used a drone to record the havoc wrought by a tornado. But the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been very slow to adopt rules for private and corporate drone use and has taken a draconian zero-tolerance policy on its interim ban on almost all such uses. Now, a number of media companies, including The New York Times and The Associated Press, accused the Federal Aviation Authority of violating the First Amendment.

Is this a difficult problem? Sure! Just imagine a future city scape abuzz with irritating mechanical vultures -- delivery owls and snoopy eye-spies, swooping about, colliding with buildings and each other and power lines, causing blackouts and raining shattered, glowing parts on all below… at minimum, city use should involve devices capable of situational awareness and detection of collision hazards and minimum separation rules. But dig it - we will only get there if the experiments can proceed in a few cities to see what really happens!

Start with Houston. They don't give a darn anyway….

== Drones, androids and robots bring you the news! ==

 Will human journalists become obsolete? I participated in an online (HuffPost) panel discussion about the latest trend... robotizing the news media.  Here are just a few examples of the trend.

Japan Unveils  It's First Android Newscaster. Not exactly uncanny, yet.  But they're busy. With an expected 7% drop in population, their interest in automation is very high.

AP Will Use Robots to Write Some Business Stories.   - 4000 robo stories in the time it takes human writers to do 300. Shades of Max Headroom! The following couch discussion of this is... fluffy and made me want to replace the panel with robots!  Another News Outlet Is Using Robots To Write Stories...

Apparently most sports stories have come to us this way for several years.  (I suspect decades, even generations.)

== And more drones...  ==

Drones… everywhere!  Illustrating what has sometimes been called Brin’s Corollary to Moore’s Law… that cameras get smaller, faster, cheaper, more numerous and more mobile faster than ML. Now… watch how the flying cams are getting far more rugged, using a simple gimbal in a cage approach!  Watchbirds here we come, yippee.

Oh, but see the very end of this blog for one of the best links you'll ever click, brought to you by a drone.

== The insurrectionary recourse? ==

All the ructions and revolutions overseas raise an earnest question: could it happen here? Dialing in closer: is it still even theoretically possible for a mass citizen uprising to topple the government of a modern, western state? Mr. Harry Bentham makes an earnest effort and raises a few interesting points in “Does Modern Tech Render the 2nd Amendment Redundant?”

Alas, his appraisal winds up being rather shallow, simply reiterating his arm-waved and evidence-free assertion that a mass uprising, armed with civilian rifles, could naturally and easily overcome forces of the modern state. Mr. Bentham leaves aside any discussion that:

- Any mass civil ruction will likely feature as many armed civilian "tories" as "rebels."

- Local police have lately been heavily up-armed to close to military levels. Their loyalties in a crisis would complicate matters.

   - Everything depends upon the morale and attitudes of the troops. If they retain strong connectivity and identification with the populace, they will be unreliable instruments of repression.

These and other factors were discussed in my own treatment on this issue -- The Jefferson Rifle: Guns and the Insurrection Myth -- where I appraise whether modern westerners -- and Americans in particular -- still retain an "insurrectionary recourse."

Even more important, I explain carefully why attachment to that ideal is THE driver behind the refusal of the Gun Lobby to consider even modest compromises.

== Finally... drones and sheer beauty 

I cannot recall when last an item of media so delighted me. I am... for once... speechless. Though proud to live in ...

...oh, just click this. Full screen. 

A Plague of Outrage

A while back, I referred to this book: “The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility” by Jeffrey M. Barry and Sarah Sobieraj.  An interesting rumination on how political disagreements unfold in American media can be found in Salon Online: How Right-wing Media Spiraled out of control, excerpted from the book. Skim past a lengthy and somewhat tendentious introduction about Michelle Bachman, and head to the meat, where the authors suggest that our current Era of Outrage is rather unprecedented and driven by deliberate incitement in media that are out of all proportion or control.

Especially interesting is a historical survey of how TV news used to be a forum for consensus and how shows like William F. Buckley's Firing Line encouraged debate that was constructive and mostly civil:

"Firing Line emerged in the context of these dramatic and often divisive events. The program was a one-hour debate-style public affairs show hosted by conservative William F. Buckley, during which Buckley posed challenging questions of the day to high-profile guests ranging from Hugh Hefner to Noam Chomsky. The interviews were interesting, with a more adversarial tone than found in network news and yet markedly more civilized than today’s cable news analysis shows. Questions were thoughtful, answers tended to be substantive, and those involved treated one another respectfully. Disagreement was ever present, but disparagement was rare.

“Firing Line” is noteworthy not only because it created space for extended exchange of political opinion on television, but also because it aired for over 30 years. “Agronsky and Company,” which debuted a few years later, but had less durability, also began to offer opinion-laden public affairs programming on television with a recurring slate of combatants who would reliably disagree with more personality than was typical of other news-based content of the time, though still in a far more respectful manner than is characteristic in similar formats in the outrage era."

It is an interesting essay by Berry and Sobieraj -- a chapter from their book -- though I might demur from some of its assertions… e.g. that there was not an Outrage Industry in earlier eras.  One has only to look at the almost uniformly noxious press that fomented treason in the South before the Civil War. (Newspapers that drifted from the Slave-o-crats' party line were burned.  Indeed, the principal complaint and grievance mentioned in nearly all documents declaring secession was fury over the stubborn refusal of Northern states to quell freedom of press and close down abolitionist papers.)

Other periods saw the swell and fume of "yellow journalism"  that stoked bitter rage and stymied sober debate. Indeed, one of these intervals encompassed the first two decades of the American Republic.

Still, the authors' point is well-made. We boomers grew up in a golden age of journalism that, ironically, was undermined by the generally wondrous advances in electronic media that have freed us to wander out of the paternalistic firelight of journalist-professionals.  Inevitably, along with the good aspects (e.g. being able to research any topic independently and gather points of view from all over the globe) we have also seen wretched things like the consolidation of millions of rivetted followers, stoked on monochrome opinion and hate, via subsidized cable and radio "news." Systems that create, in effect diatribe-based  "nuremberg rallies". Given the addictive allure of indignation -- and freed from any Fairness Doctrine requirement to show all sides -- we had all the ingredients for a genuine plague of outrage.

Have a look and then grasp that this destruction of adult discourse in the United States was almost entirely deliberate, sabotaging the political negotiation and problem-solving systems that had served the republic for two centuries.  There is no clearer case of treason.

== A case in point ==

David Frum is far from the cleverest of the high-IQ-but-dingbat students of Leo Strauss who came to be known as "neo-cons" in the late 1990s and early 2000s,  members of an arrogant-triumphalist wing of conservatism who thought they ruled the roost, amid the dawning years of the George W. Bush presidency. In those heady times, especially right after the events of 9/11 filled them with a bracing sense of mission and empowerment, men like Paul Wolfowitz, Paul Nitze, Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman concocted grand rationalizations for why America should rush to do what it had sworn never to do again, after Vietnam -- plunging into vast, decadal, land-wars of insurgency in Asia. Two such wars, pouring arterial gushers of national wealth, prestige, honor and lives into distant desert sands. Wars that left the battlefield s owned by bitter foes of the U.S.

It was the coterie of neocons who provided grand, Straussian incantations, proclaiming for America a sense of imperial mission -- not the mild-consensus Pax Americana designed by Marshall, Acheson, Truman and Eisenhower, but an aggressively-resolute, romanesque imperium, unashamedly applying Manichaean power to transform the world any way their dear leader - George Bush - desired.

And if those lunges into middle-eastern quicksand happened to be exactly what Osama bin Laden and every enemy of the U.S. wanted us to do? Especially a certain petro-kingdom whose influence over the Dear Leader was near-total, and who also provided most of the 9/11 attackers?  No matter.  It is a tragedy of human existence that (as we also saw among the communists) high IQs and the ability to craft polysyllabic conjurations offer no protection against irony.

It can be hard to look back a whole ten years or more to the heyday and then sudden collapse of neoconservatism, but in retrospect we can see it as a shining era for the last intellectuals of the American Right. At last, they had their revenge upon those Che-tee-shirt-wearing leftist students who had trashed their offices and driven them away from real universities, into the welcoming arms of faux-academies like Heritage… where they willingly crafted whatever rationalizations that were asked of them.  In those heady times, they could ignore the grave spinning of Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley, as every principle of true, erudite conservatism was handily reversed.

Sic transit gloria. By 2004, the neocons had been tossed aside like used tissue, as their nerdiness grew vexing to Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch. Verbose concoctions -- even crazy ones -- no longer fit the narrative that all smartypants types are enemies. From scientists to teachers, medical doctors, journalists, economists, civil servants, law professionals, skilled labor, professors… name one exception… the populist, know-nothing theme on Fox and Right-Radio became hate all elites except the rich.  And yes, that applied even to intellectual courtesans of the no-longer "neo" right. Most of whom slunk away into obscurity, once more --

-- but not David Frum, who has spent recent years inveighing against the lobotomization of his movement.  Far from converting to liberalism, Frum has been among those on the American right with the guts to stand up to Rupert Murdoch, joining others at The American Conservative in appraising what went wrong, how it all got hijacked, and how to rescue something from the murdochian flames.

Frum's latest sally is interesting, an appeal for the reader to look back to the roots of the "left-right" axis and terms like "liberal" and "conservative. In particular, he points to the debates between English parliamentarian Edmund Burke and Anglo-American polemicist Thomas Paine. Frum argues that gradually (I would say recently, and in large part because of the neocons) the entire meaning of Conservatism has undergone a process of reversal, so that many of the virtues professed by Burke are now rejected utterly, in Tea Party America.

I do not endorse all… or even most … of the insights offered by Mr. Frum.  But I found them interesting and a welcome (if brief) look back to days when "conservative" and "intellect" weren't antonyms.

== Conservative media in turmoil ==

Continuing on this… I oft remark that Arizona and New York are drawing copious electricity from coils arranged around the spinning in the graves of Barry Goldwater and William F. Buckley Jr., both of whom growled and denounced the trends that were hijacking their beloved -- (and once-upon-a-time intellectual) -- movement.  Now it seems that New York can crank up their power draw a bit…

"The National Review magazine, longstanding house news organ of the establishment right, is facing a lawsuit that could shutter the publication (originally founded by Buckley with money he inherited) permanently. According to The Week, a suit by a climate scientist threatens to bankrupt the already financially shaky publication and its website, the National Review Online (NRO)."

So are we stuck with Fox News to represent the undead, were-thing that has taken over the American right?

As I mentioned above, have a look at the manifesto of The American Conservative, a journal that appears to be trying hard to resurrect the notion of a US conservative movement that argues constructively with their liberal neighbors, without kowtowing to a far right that is controlled by plutocrats and worshippers of aristocracy.

The American Conservative will not be a liberal's cup of tea! Indeed, it still lapses often into rants that betray its roots in a co-founder… one Patrick Buchanon. I do not promise more than one article in ten will rise above baloney.  But even that ratio 'be a blessing,' nowadays… and some of you, propelled (as I am) by curiosity and a desire to hear all sides, will drop in, now and then.

There are embers and glimmers of sanity among our neighbors over there!  Don't denigrate.  Help our "ostrich conservative" friends and neighbors to lift their heads and gradually move away from Fox-induced mania. Help fan the flames of a rebellion against the monsters who have hijacked the once intellectually cogent movement of Buckley and Goldwater.

== More on Divisive Politics ==

What's behind this modern plague of political wrath? Jonathan Haidt, a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, best known for his “moral foundations” theory,  has applied science to  appraising why differences in personality and choice of moral foundations affect the more superficial political leanings of liberals, conservatives and libertarians.  It's actually quite fascinating and sufficiently neutral that most liberals and conservatives nod and say "yeah, that's me."

Climate change: another divisive topic. See this fascinating discussion of how the rapidly changing Arctic will provoke a cascade of secondary effects, from conflicts over resources in the Arctic Shelf to shipping changes to the release of trillions of pounds of methane from melting permafrost.  There are no Naval officers who deny climate change. All are aware that conservatism no longer connects to our strategic needs at any points of overlap.

Welcome to the future? See: The Poor Deserve Equal Protection by the Law:  "Businesses and economic elites in developing countries left frustrated by incompetent police, clogged courts and hopelessly overburdened judges and prosecutors are increasingly circumventing these systems and buying their own protection. In India in late 2010 the private security industry already employed more than 5.5 million people — roughly four times the size of the entire Indian police force. A 2009 World Bank report showed roughly the same ratio in Kenya. The largest employer in all of Africa is a private security firm, Group4Securicor, and in Guatemala, private security forces outnumber public police 7 to 1."

Do we want that for our world?