Okay. This time the UFO mania isn’t ebbing, so…

Usually, these completely silly UFO blather manias - twice per decade for 80 years - start to fade after a year or so of evidence-free jabber. Alas, this time - because public diversion now serves some major world elites - the episode seems to be just getting worse. 

Hence, for what little good it will do, here’s another call for at least some of you to actually think about this awful distraction from our real business – making a civilization that truly is worthy of the stars. 

First some news:

“On July 13, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) introduced a measure that asserts eminent domain over “any and all recovered technologies of unknown origin…that may be controlled by private persons or entities.” 

I like Schumer. Here, he goes for something both logical and practical, in addition to being sci fi imaginative. O-o-okay then! Demand revelation from the secretive owner castes! With that, we’re now getting into territory similar to my novel Existence! Wherein rich collectors, ancient families and priesthoods may have squirreled away secret ‘relics’ or artifacts for a very long time, perhaps millennia. 

Think Indiana Jones #4, only with a much better premise. Let me know if you see any panicky struldbrugs scurrying to their ancient family vaults or safe deposit boxes, because of the Schumer Bill. A good place to start? Look closer at whoever is bloaking such a common sense bill, that at worst would be harmless and at-best reveal hidden wonders.

Alas, typically, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), along with Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and two other Republican senators, are doing something far stupider. They introduced legislation compelling immediate public revelation of all “UFO secrets" held by government agencies at any level, without apparently ever pondering what I call Question Number One.  

But I’ll save that Big Question for last, down at bottom.  

== A devastating critique – and so now they’re invoking… Mussolini? ==

Brian Dunning’s latest Skeptoid posting does a fantastic job dissecting the ‘testimony’ (supported by softball questions) recently given by Mr. David Grusch before a theatrical Congressional hearing on UFOs. And indeed, alas and jeepers, the most recent 'whistle blower' is an even worse jibberer than I had inferred from the news.   

Foisting one after another third-person, hearsay tall tale, Mr. Grusch pushed the hoary-hackneyed notion that for 80 years (since Roswell) tens of thousands of humanity’s best minds have been recruited and hurled at studying purported crashed ‘alien ships' ... all without any of those purported thousands of top people ever leaking… 

...or even showing any sign in their lives that they ever participated in such an urgent, Manhattan Project type endeavor. (During WWII, lots of folks knew something was going on, just from the number of physicists and families who had gone ‘missing’!)

In fact, not one of those folks - the thousands who would likely have been asked to take part - is ever even named by Grusch or others like him. Not one such top person. Ever. Too bad, since I know hundreds of them. 

I am one of them! And I keep demanding one question of the Roswellists… “Did it ever occur to any of you to ask us? 

"To ask the most rambunctiously independent-minded and creative techies in the world? Instead of dismissing us as some kind of Blofeld-lackey, obediently controlled, James Bond henchmen clichés? Or to track the whereabouts and activities of those who blatantly would have been involved in such an urgent study?"

No? Didn’t think so. Some truth detectives! 

Look at what Hollywood has done to you.

== And now they bring in Il Duce? ==

Only, times do change, a little. Increasingly, the UFO community (ahem, cult) has shifted away from the thoroughly-discredited Roswell stuff… to a relatively new story that was never seen until it got triggered by one muttered remark in the nineties, then lavishly embellished just recently. A tale that Benito Mussolini had his own 'crashed alien ship' way back in 1933! Shared it with the Japanese and Nazis, in fact. And then... 

…and then what? Not one scientist from any of those three countries is known to have disappeared into the kind of emergency research program that such a 'find' would have merited or incited, especially during desperate wartime. 

Nor was there even a single suspicious leap in any kind of technology. Not even any new alloys - a trivial thing to get from any advanced wreckage. The turbopumps and gyros developed by Von Braun for the V2 were clever increments on Goddard... and only increments. Likewise, when the Americans supposedly seized all the 'Italian materials' – the wreckage and alien bodies? Hey, now that makes the whole Megillah NINETY years of near-perfect secrecy.... 

...despite successive U.S. administrations who hated each others' guts! And who would gladly have distracted the public by exposing the other party's nefarious coverup!

So, when the Mussolini Wreck story gets dropped, what’s the next reset? That it goes back even earlier? 

That H.G. Wells based his alien invasion story on a stranded pack of spaced invaders? 

Hey, I participated in that anthology! See War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches.

== Puh- lease? ==

Mind you I am "Mr. Aliens," having studied such notions in astrophysics, SETI, NASA and innumerable science fiction thought experiments. I would do a 180 in an instant, if you showed me anything other than vapor, pareidolia and hallucinations.

There are big differences. Both SETI and sci fi are exploratory. On the other hand, shrieking ‘coverup!’ at civil servants who have way better things to be doing with our tax dollars? Raving masturbatory, fantasy what-ifs and yammering that it all must be real, because I want it to be! 

That's the biggest reason why I am so sick of the UFO nonsense. Not because contact isn't possible! I'm open to that. Rather, because all of the scenarios we’re offered are insipid, time-wasting and dumb!

Mr. Dunning sifts through the now-most-popular UFO fetishisms -- other than recent ‘tictacs,’ which are a completely separate matter than the ‘crashed ship cult. (See below - at least those assertions can be grappled-with, as I do, elsewhere.) 

Dunning’s most caustic critique is aimed toward the Congressional shills who put us through all this endlessly, tediously recurring ‘crashed ship’ nonsense  for their own political reasons, without doing a scintilla of due diligence:

“Now, researching this episode took me the better part of a week, because I had to track down every part and verify each with solid references. If I was a US Congressman, like Tim Burchett who is the one most responsible for putting Grusch on this stage, I would have at least assigned a staffer (an intern, an aide, anyone) to spend at least a day or two on the Internet to verify this guy Grusch's story just to make sure I wouldn't end up looking like a fool. Well, Burchett felt confident enough not to do that, and now he looks like a fool — because a lot of people like me can do this research, and we have easy platforms to get it out there.

“And David Grusch, bless his heart, I'm sure he's honest and he believes deeply in what he's saying; he just seems to have a very, very low bar for the quality of evidence that he accepts, to the point that he doesn't even double check it before testifying to it before Congress as fact. And this is common, not just for Grusch and other UFOlogists, but for all of us: When we hear something that supports our preferred worldview, we tend to accept it uncritically. Too few of us apply the same scrutiny to things we agree with as we do to things we disagree with. It's just one more of countless examples we have, reminding us that we should always be skeptical.”

== The Question No One Ever asks ==

Okay, here’s one you’ve not heard elsewhere, which is a pity, in light of the dumb Gillibrand-Rubio bill.

IF tens of thousands of US experts have been studying alien ships for 80 years without a single outcome or leak - despite every modern temptation to seek either  transparency and/or publicity - then have you considered this? That these folks – our very best and smartest people – might have a good reason to keep it secret? A reason that has convinced those tens of thousands to stifle their own natural, strong impulse to shout "Look at what I've been doing!!"

In which case - if their consensus-agreed reason is that strong - then who the F are YOU fools to screech at them over possibly existential-level reasons for discretion?”

Sure, the fellow saying that to you right now is widely called “Mister Transparency!” Transparent accountability is key to our civilization! 

But I am also a sci fi author and historian and hence I can imagine more than a dozen scenarios in which the sage answer – consensus agreed by all those thousands of our best people - would be: “We’d better keep this quiet for a while.” 

Certainly they'd have to have 'reasons' a whole lot better than the clichés we hear bandied about: National Security (???) or 'prevent public panic!' (seriously?)... or the dumbest one: protecting military contracts. (You imply that revealing the existence of unfriendly aliens would reduce defense spending?) 

No, it would take something really compelling. Maybe something *I* can't even imagine! (Hey, it's happened.) Moreover, if ALL of those thousands so-agreed, and kept to that consensus across 80+ years, then who the heck are you to declare – without any of the facts – that we should spasm it all?

 What a stunningly self-centered and bratty position to take!

 (In fact, I explored exactly this scenario in a novella called “Senses, Three and Six.”)

Okay... in that case...

...want a solution? A middle ground?  

Form a commission of the dozen most respected and trusted human beings on Earth. Maybe start with – um – Tom Hanks and Morgan Freeman and Oprah?  Add Kip Thorne and Neil Tyson and Beyoncé and Bill Nye and Patrick Stewart? Give them go anywhere passes to see anything and question everyone.

     And then let them tell us:

 

“We found nada –“

Or  “We found THIS! –“

Or else maybe - “Everybody Shut th’F up. Sit down. We mean it.”

== It’s time to shift tactics, dear UFO folks ==

Seriously, the entire premise of the ‘crashed ship' cult is so execrably dumb that it seems quite compatible with a different ET contact scenario... that aliens are spewing down at us some kind of stoopid ray! 

The cult really would be advised to drop that 'crashed ship' part of their catechism, altogether. Along with all the silly-debunked ‘photos’ from the 1950s and such. 

(With ten million times as many active cameras on Earth today, why do the ‘images’ get fuzzier, every year?)

Instead of the insanely ludicrous Crashed Ship stuff, you could focus on the present, like the ‘tic-tacs’! Those recent ‘sightings’ of blurry, zipping glow-balls, reported by Navy pilots and such. The few of them that haven’t been clearly debunked by Mick West, that is. 

Those few exceptions do appear maybe to be glowing dots, flitting about in the atomosphere above US Navy test ranges! And at least the tictac thing doesn’t pre-suppose that tens of thousands of top humans are movie cliché lemming-henchman! 

So sure, offer up your cheap sci fi star drives that violate every known law of nature and physics! (I can do much better!) Yeah, I suppose a magical zippy-drive that crushes, Newton & Einstein & Thorne might rank somewhere at the very low end of a long list of Tic-Tac UAP possibilities. 

Though maybe you might first consider more plausible explanations, as I do here? Theories for the phenomena that don’t require viciously nasty space teasers breaking every law of science?

== By far a more likely “they’re here!’ scenario! ==

A few final thoughts on this, for now. Especially something that MIGHT ACTUALLY BE HAPPENING.

Consider. If ‘they’ do exist and are truly are here in the solar system, would they not already be on the Internet?

Isn’t our technology supposed to be child’s play for such beings? 

Picture them amused by our primitive political thrashings and TV shows and fetishes… maybe selling it all to Galacto-Netflix as space-voyeur reality TV? ("Oh, Those Funny Humans!")

Indeed, maybe…reading - and chuckling over - what I just typed, just now? 

And what you type in response? Maybe hacking your webcam and phones etc., for giggles? (Shouldn’t that possibility make you a wee bit…angry?)

Isn’t that scenario vastly, vastly more plausible than vapidly vaporous and incompetent ‘crashed ships’? (Ships that the aliens never seem interested in recovering, or their lost comrades?) Or flitting-teaser fuzzballs, desperately adjusting their blurr-rays, as we keep improving our cameras?

Let’s dive into that Internet Lurker Scenario for a bit. If aliens or probes are listening in on our TV and Internet (a form of ET contact that I do believe does have a small chance of being true, as I depict in Existence), then they must be laughing, or shaking their heads, sadly, over this recurring UFO mania.

In fact, as part of an effort to test that theory, anthropologist Alan Tough posted a website in 1999 -- his “Invitation to ETI lurkers” endeavor! 

Alas, poor Alan never got the answer that he sought, though the website is still up. And he included my confrontational challenge “Open Letter to ETI,” a revised version of which made it into Existence.)

In fact – as a physicist and science fiction author – I deem that to be a form of first contact some of us may live to see! Perhaps when we reach the Asteroid Belt and encounter ancient Von Neumann replicator probes… 

It might even happen in time for some of us living today to witness. If we have patience. If NASA gets out of the current, silly Moon-fetishism and lifts our gaze beyond that sandbox of useless poison dust, leaving that playpen for the symbolism-hungry, Apollo-wannabe kiddies...

...so we can get back to exploring farther out, where the real riches await. And possibly much more than mere riches.

Above all, it might happen if we fix our immature manias and focus on doing something that UFO cultism doesn’t help with, at all…

…growing up.

Will masks save us?

I'm not gloating, just sad. It turns out the one thing that might save us from the monsters in this looming night... is light. Did I tell you so, 22 years ago? No, make that 29 years ago. 

Ponder any aspect of the Putin-centered, Fox-propelled, Saudi/Mercer/Koch-financed Trump fiasco, and ask yourself: "What if every single secret were exposed?" Yes, including every secret of every Democrat or pundit or "deep stater." Fair exchange. Why am I confident which cabal would dissolve, like vampires under the sun? 

Because one of them openly raves against every possible type of revelation*, forbidding officials to speak, enforcing NDAs, railing against investigations, begging John Roberts to safeguard all their secrets. Oh, he will. But that won't be the end of it. Oh, no.**

== The dismal reflex ==

To be fair, it's not just the vampire right who declares hatred of light. Or suspicion of it. Some of the very best folks - those who honestly feel they are fighting for the enlightenment - fall prey to the lure of shadows. Take this example:

Can protesters hide behind masks? Recently - protestors wearing head-mounted cameras scanned 13,000 faces in D.C., as part of a protest organized by Fight for The Future. These privacy activists are vigorous and rightly concerned about misuse of surveillance tech. Right problem! They demand absolutely and spectacularly the wrong solution! One that is not only technologically and historically clueless, but that plays right into the hands of every would-be Big Brother.

I debated this very topic on NPR's "To The Point" with Warren Olney. An ACLU attorney - Kade Crawford - was smart, cogent, agile... and she again utterly missed what history tells us -- that it's no use 'hiding' from elites, and that technology does... not... stop still, no matter how hard you denounce it, or even if you pass laws. 

What works -- the only thing that has ever protected freedom and, yes, some privacy -- is when average citizens can maximally see, and thus hold elites accountable.

Why do you think Putin and Trump and Fox desperately seek to preserve secrecy? The sole fallback position of the GOP today always distills to "Don't Look At Us!" Tax returns, staffer testimony, Trump's bragged-about "Great Wall of NDAs"... enemies of the enlightenment are terrified of light! We mustn’t be the ones giving them excuses to blind us, while retaining in secret all the powers we foolishly “outlawed.” Listen to the stimulating debate on NPR.

Ironically, those Capitol steps protesters were doing the right thing. Looking. And teaching others how to look. And rightfully-rapidly criticizing today's perhaps-racially-biased facial recognition systems so that tomorrow's will be better. It's where you see open, knowing criticism that things are working. I worry about where the light isn't shining. 

== More smartpeople foolishness ==

But it goes on, the incredible foolishness of well-intended folks:

This article from The New York Times about "the Privacy Project" shines light on important topics. Alas, like nearly all paladins of privacy, the author yet again dances around the key point, never zeroing in on the blatant lesson. Take the following, excised from her piece: "Sahil Chinoy, a graphics editor for the Opinion Section, built a facial recognition system for less than $100. There are many ways this technology can be abused. San Francisco has banned the use of facial recognition technology by its police and other agencies, but other cities, including New York, haven’t taken any steps to impede its use."

Can it be that a knowledgable person of above average intelligence actually wrote that paragraph, without contemplating the ironic contradiction and conclusion? That banning face-recognition systems -- or almost any type of surveillance-type technology -- is not only futile and hopeless, but actually distracts from the real problem? And the real solution. Seriously. What can be replicated now for $100 will cost pennies, tomorrow.

I have been engaged in this issue for 25 years, having won the Freedom of speech Award for The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? I've been involved in so many Privacy Conferences and I hope the Privacy Project will help spread growing Awareness of the problems we face, especially as we see deployment of "social credit" systems and ubiquitous camera tech. Unfortunately, nearly all these conferences wind up being festivals of hand-wringing, offering no plausible solutions.

There is a way out -- a way we can forge into the future without falling into surveillance hell by governments, corporations and other elites. But it will not come by banning "Orwell Tech." Or hiding from it, or screaming "don't look at me!"

It happens to be the same method we've used with growing effectiveness for 200 years, the method that's responsible for all our freedom. Alas, it seems that it's utterly counter-intuitive to contemporary pundits, who cannot conceive of any solution except prescribing darkness.

Want a better example of transparency/accountability in action? “Law enforcement agencies in Dallas and Florida on Thursday became the latest to announce they are investigating allegations some of their employees made offensive comments on Facebook after a watchdog group compiled screenshots of the posts and shared them in an online database.”

This is how citizens can break omerto and corner the good cops into helping cull their ranks of the bad. Most are dedicated public servants. A large minority are former Jr. High bullies who crave the power to instill fear. The answer is simple. Hire and encourage and support the former... if they help rid the ranks of the latter.

 And if they do, then they can be trusted with the new technologies that are coming, anyway. That is, they can be trusted... if we get to watch.

== Worries about deadly drones ==

In “The Real Robot Threat,” Robert Zubrin (otherwise known as a zealous proponent of Mars colonization, asserts that autonomous weaponry — bereft of conscience or human sentiment — could become either police state enforcers or the ultimate doomsday weapons.  To be clear this is a step beyond today’s mere remote-controlled drones, whose operators have been shown to be just as morally cautious — if not more so — as the pilots of fighter-bomber aircraft. Zubrin frets that whole swarms of  robot killers might be dispatched by a single tyrannical decision-maker, and even that entity might not be human.

Of course we’ve all seen the movie. And there’s an interesting thing about such flicks… in a free society, they have often become self-preventing warnings.  In this case, it had better be. Zubrin cites a commission that recommended a worldwide moratorium on development of such tools, along with weapons that find, track, and engage specific individuals whom a human has decided should be engaged within a limited predetermined period of time and geographic region.

== Incantations for aristocracy... on the left ==

Lest it ever occur to you to imagine that dogmatic insanity is restricted to the mad-right, go every now and then to any university campus and attend a lecture on semiotics or post-modernist criticism. Here’s one that defends the power asymmetries that have always given elites control over information flows and thus power over nations, peoples and races… all couched in airy fairy claims to “liberate” us from neo-liberalism: Transparency as Ideology; Ideology as Transparency by Jorge I. Valdovinos: 

“Abstract: Along with the increasing commodification of all aspects of culture and the persistent aestheticisation of everyday life under late capitalism, there is an equally increasing longing for objectivity, immediacy, and trust. As the mediation of our everyday experiences augments, a generalised feeling of mistrust in institutions reigns; the sense of a need to bypass them increases, and the call for more “transparency” intensifies. As transparency manages to bypass critical examination, the term becomes a source of tacit social consensus. This paper argues that the proliferation of contemporary discourses favouring transparency has become one of the fundamental vehicles for the legitimation of neoliberal hegemony, due to transparency's own conceptual structure—a formula with a particularly sharp capacity for translating structures of power into structures of feeling. While the ideology of transparency promises a movement towards the abolition of unequal flows of information at the basis of relations of power and exploitation, it simultaneously sustains a regime of hyper-visibility based on asymmetrical mechanisms of accountability for the sake of profit. The solution is not “more” transparency or “better” information, but to critically examine the emancipatory potential of transparency at the conceptual level, inspecting the architecture that supports its parasitic logic.”

This Orwellian gobbledygook is part of a general shriek of hatred aimed at all flat-open-fair systems of accountability that are rooted in the thing they hate most – the very concept of objective reality. Never forget that our enemy is zero-sum, incantatory justifiers of bullying power. And while today the worst examples work for a powerful "rightist" attempted Oligarchic Putsch, aiming to restore 6000 years of feudalism, there are would be savanarolas and Robspierres and Stalins among our (temporary) allies on the far-left, as well. 

== Transparency-pertinent news items ==

The 15 Biggest Ever Cases of Bank Fraud. Wow, a fascinating recounting of thefts and frauds, showing how much is being stolen by hackers and insiders… and this is probably not a complete list, by far! And the only long term solution is not “security.” It is transparency.

"Stephen Fry has narrated a new animated intro video for ChangeAView.com, discussing why we need (and may get) much better forums for argumentation and negotiation. The enemy of knowledge is not ignorance… Stephen Fry narrates.

Finally, futurist speaker David Orban offers a video on 21st Century Life Design Skills.

=

=

===footnotes ====

* Except for the malignant, spiteful, sadistic and opposite-to-Jesus "Book of Revelation," which the Dominionists worship instead of Jesus.

** When, not if, John Roberts succeeds in demolishing the credibility of the US Supreme Court, it will be up to all of us to stand up for Enlightenment Constitutionalism in our own ways. I offer 100+ suggestions in POLEMICAL JUDO.

International concerns and promises

Keeping with a breather from the US election... (phew!) ... except for maybe a lagniappe at the end. Still, there are adjacent topics worth contemplating!  Such as: Instead of building A Wall, Why Not a Binational Border City?  Consider...

Border City - plans by Fernando Romero

A Mexican architect, Fernando Romero, has a utopian vision for a walkable city straddling the U.S.-Mexico border. And no, that does not mean surrendering sovereign border control. Just bring it into the 21^st Century. People in the city would wear their ID openly.  It is called your face. 

Moreover, there is a fact we must face.  We are achieving what should always have been the Number One U.S. foreign policy goal – to help create a stable, middle class Mexico – another Canada – along our southern flank.  No measure could do more to enhance our security and – ultimately – economy, and it is exactly one of the effects of NAFTA. It has resulted in net immigration from Mexico into the US turning negative, as the Mexican middle class burgeons and, yes, is starting to buy megatons of stuff from north of the border.

 Sorry left and right wingers.  You have both been short sighted and dumb on this one.

== The Big Picture on Nation States ==

As Distrust Mounts, U.S. and China Battle Over New Rules of Global Order: An interesting Big Perspective article, pertaining to US-China relations, by Wang Jisi, one of China’s “America experts.” Here's an excerpt:

 ‘In the political area, China advocates the “democratization of international relations,” which is to realize democratization on a country level in the international system where developing countries hold the majority. However, the United States continues to advocate reinforcing the “liberal international order” and promoting the “democratization of the world,” which is related to individual freedom and rights of the people. Between these two rules, there are insurmountable obstacles.’

Also: ‘Both China and the United States attach a high degree of importance to cybersecurity and regard each other as one of the main sources of cybersecurity threats they face, but the two countries have very different focal points: China is more concerned about political infiltration of its domestic network that may undermine the leadership’s authority, while the United States is concerned about “online hackers” stealing U.S. commercial secrets or attacking security agency websites.’

This seems a fair summary, as far as it goes. Yet it glosses over fundamentals. 

Essentially, the Chinese leadership views it as inherently destabilizing and dangerous to vest sovereignty and power in billions of autonomous human beings – a position that they share with almost all previous human cultures on this planet. In other words, their elitism and paranoia is normal.

Even within the U.S. and other nations that have done this vesting - switching to an openness-accountability model - a large share of elites recoil at the experiment in distributed, autonomous and effective citizenship. History shows that these experiments are rare and do not seem “natural” to people already in power.

Of course, then it’s pointed out that these experiments in distributed-flattened systems based on reciprocal accountability have also been fantastically successful – at engendering scientific, commercial, economic and happiness advancements. 

To which the inevitable response is to point out disadvantages. These include worries about the flighty chaos or intemperate public fads and whims. (See our own Federalist Papers.) It does seem logical that a serene, intelligent and thoughtful elite should be more effective. In China’s case, that elite consists largely of engineers, which has put off for a decade or more their hitting the "wall of competence" at state planning.

In China, an earnest effort was made to incorporate some controllable aspects of western society – corporations, mass education and investments in technology – while retaining the top-down control of traditional, pyramidal hierarchy.

Even in the West, there is severe discomfort with the next step… giving humans powers of citizenship pertaining to the planet and its institutions.  Certain elements of “world government” – courts and bureaucracy – have been allowed, while others – e.g. an elected executive and legislature – have been banned even from discussion! All authority is vested in two hundred nation states, a situation that plays into the hands of anti-democratic forces.

Now... consider China's Debt Crisis:  “China’s "credit to GDP gap" has reached 30.1, the highest to date and in a different league altogether from any other major country tracked by the institution. It is also significantly higher than the scores in East Asia's speculative boom on 1997 or in the US subprime bubble before the Lehman crisis. Studies of earlier banking crises around the world over the last sixty years suggest that any score above ten requires careful monitoring.” 

This from John Mauldin’s newsletter. China’s problem is not federal government debt, but corporations and local governments that are drowning in red ink. ‘Outstanding loans have reached $28 trillion, as much as the commercial banking systems of the US and Japan combined. The scale is enough to threaten a worldwide shock if China ever loses control. Corporate debt alone has reached 171pc of GDP, and it is this that is keeping global regulators awake at night.’ 

To be clear… there is still room for a soft landing. But we are pushing the envelope of even very smart human competence. In fact, I feel no schadenfreude. I wish them luck.

== Tax Havens and Secrecy ==

Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa is following the script I described in my 1989 novel EARTH -- as he lambasts tax havens and financial secrecy as the principal villains consigning half the world’s population to poverty.  “Half of the world’s wealth is now in the hands of the richest 1 percent. Shockingly, just 62 individuals hold more wealth than the poorest half of the world put together.”

To be fair, Correa leaves out some good news… that half of that poor-half have been climbing out of extreme poverty in recent years, mostly by their own efforts but assisted by global trade and by improved infrastructure and governance. Neighboring Peru, in particular, has seen results from vesting the poor in their own property, according to the brilliant plans of economist Hernando de Soto Polar, combining both libertarian and liberal ideas. A version of “leftism” that is decisively different from the catastrophic Chavez-Madero approach in Venezuela.

Only read Correa’s denunciation of banking secrecy, which was exposed in all its evil by the Panama Papers episode a while back.  In EARTH I portray the world after a charismatic developing world president got fed-up and crafted an alliance of such nations to go after… Switzerland.  (Read about the Helvetian War!) But in the near term:

“We are taking the bold step of calling a national referendum to decide whether or not elected politicians and civil servants will be allowed to hold assets in tax havens. If our proposal, known as the “Ethical Pact,” passes the test of the electorate, all such public servants will have one year from the referendum to bring their wealth back into the country or be barred from office.

“Across Latin America, $340 billion in tax payments are evaded annually to the detriment of poverty and inequality reduction in what is still the world’s most unequal region…. Oxfam calculates that 32 million people in Latin America would be lifted out of poverty if income tax was paid in full in the continent as opposed to hidden in tax havens.”

Number one on my priority list for Hillary Clinton’s presidency would be to negotiate treaties – among the world’s nations, and between the states of the US -- to reduce or eliminate the foul practice of hiding who owns what.

Finally...

Comics can shed light (and occasionally humor) on serious global issues, as shown by Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis: Story of a Childhood, Art Spiegelman's Maus: A Survivor's Tale, or Joe Sacco's Journalism in a Visual World. Sarah Glidden's latest entry into graphic journalism - Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Syria and Iraq - attempts to humanize the ongoing international refugee crisis. Watercolor illustrations and dialog illuminate the hardships of daily struggle for individuals displaced by war or repression -- showing the fear, resilience and courage of families facing horrific situations and yet, managing to build new lives.

== Okay I can't help myself! ==

The damned election.  We were just out canvassing for Colonel Doug Applegate, running for the 49th District, against the infamous hypocrite and French Revolution-style aristocrat Darrell Issa. Indeed, it's good to see both Clinton and Obama turning vigorous attention to Congress. For just 2 out of the last 22 years, have we had a Congress that was not locked into a torpor of utter futility by the laziest political party in U.S. history.

Dogmatic? Tools of the top 0.001%?  Sure? Tipping into troglodytic racism?  Yep. Waging outright war on science and every other professional caste? Yep. Insane. But it is important to note that none of these has been as damaging to the republic as that slothful refusal to even hold hearings about any issues important to a 21st Century American and world.

Worst of all has been the laziness.  Moreover. And Donald Trump is not a disease on the Republican Party.  He is a symptom. 

Don't be fooled into ticket splitting.  The GOP needs to be sent home for 2 years of wound-licking and reflection. Republican voters need to replace monsters like Issa with some of the grownup conservatives the party used to provide, capable of pragmatism, moderation, conversation, sane argument, appreciation of facts (science) and actually negotiating. Which means dropping the Hastert Rule. Concocted by those two prime role models -- the sexual predator perverts Dennis Hastert and Roger Ailes. 

You decent American conservatives out there can help this repair and renewal.  Starting this November by sending home every member of the current cult of GOP leaders. Yes, and at the state level, too.

Hey, 2018 ain't so far. Come back with a new team. Heck, maybe YOU are that kind of old fashioned adult.