10/8/19

Pres Trump Should have created a Kurdish state in part of Syria

President Trump should have created a Kurdish state in part of Northern Syria to settle Kurdish allies with security. While the President may believe he is exercising statecraft in acting in harmony with Turkey to offset Turkey's turn toward Russia, it was wrong to leave the Kurds in what looks like a kill zone. Turkey has lots of weapons the U.S. sold them to eradicate Kurds in their way.

The Kurdish problem originated at the end of the First World War when the allies reneged on a promise to create a Kurdish state in the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. President Trump is putting Kurds unnecessarily in harm's way in giving the inheritors of the Ottoman Empire a solid chance to occupy part of Syria 

What good Turkey can do in policing Northern Syria is questionable since Syria hasn't attacked Turkey nor intended to. While the United States may save some money in removing military forces from the region, there weren't many as it were and the axiom of penny wise, pound foolish appears to be the right description for a policy that fails to security Kurdish security.

Mosul is the natural capital of a Kurdish state and Northern Syria and the S.E. corner of Turkey should be part of the Kurdish state. It would be useful to solve the problem of Kurds needing to fight for their own land by having the allies correct their century-old error. Turkey would be compensated by being granted twice the amount of land in Syria that they conceded to form part of the new Kurdish state, as would Iraq.

President Trump is all business all the time yet in the present situation he should exercise statecraft that actually works. Northern Syria is a good field training area for elements of the U.S. military that can learn useful intelligence regarding operations in the area. Ignorance and ostrichism isn't generally the best policy. Some may ask if the Trump policy supports the need for impeachment.

It is of course good to discover ways to avoid conflict along with the expense of spending munitions and life and that vector could probably be advanced by settling Kurds into a Kurdish state. It is true that Syria would lose a little ground yet that may be the least bad option available.

https://www.vox.com/2019/10/7/20902699/trump-syria-turkey-erdogan-invasion-kurds

Map from the C.I.A. Fact Book

China May Be Better Without N.B.A and Hong Kong


China may be better off without the N.B.A. or Hong Kong. The N.B.A. promotes a lot of goons to multi-millionaire status instead of scientists and inventors, and that creates wrong social values.  Compare the service-value to humanity of a scientist inventing an internal food deodorant that when consumed would change the smell of bowl movements to that of roses versus that of putting a ball in a hoop like Fido. The latter has less social value than a dog retrieving a tennis ball, for the dog may be a watchdog sentry too.

 A Communist society may prefer such egalitarianism that intellectual work is devalued and repressed or exploited by meat-heads with money and power, yet the people are the real losers when ignorance prevails. Hong Kong is an entrepot for excellence in enterprise and intervention that would bring far ore social advance and prosperity for China as a free mini-state than as a vassal dominated by ham-fisted communist party rulers.

Good sense is rare in politics. China is probably no exception.

Chinese leadership shouldn't be upset about free speech nor work to repress it. In the United States censorship is accomplished in a similar way as the Chinese method used to retaliate against the N.B.A. for something a Houston Rockets manager said in support of Hong Kong protesters; they hit the wallet or buy up and close down offensive venues of expression-even with degraded search engine listings.

Democrats are looking to a former special education teacher for leadership to help explain issues to them. If only the leadership understood the issues that might work.


10/7/19

Married Priests, Priesthood of Believers etc.

Pope Francis has opened up a dialogue for ending the celibate priesthood, that is, priests in that denomination would be allowed to marry as they were permitted until a millennium ago. In my opinion married priests would radically reduce Catholic priest's pederasty. Single priests in a time when life was shorter were able to be more militant and work missions like a soldier to a certain extent in taking the gospel around the world. In an era when television and the internet is saturated with sex and mostly naked female photos (like Linda Carter's wet t-short picture on sports news pages as an ad the past two months), and a large percent of people remain unmarried without a bad opinion about out of wedlock sex, celibate living is more challenging. It may have outlived most of its usefulness for the priesthood. *-quote;"It was not until ecumenical meetings of the Catholic Church at the First and Second Lateran councils in 1123 and 1139 that priests were explicitly forbidden from marrying"-endquote On female leadership I would say that the leadership should lead to a priesthood of believers church format where most people share leadership roles in small groups yet get together for a sing-a-long. Maybe men could have the main 7 minuted sermon for themselves and so technically leadership remains male. That would be like an opera where women don't usually sing bass nor men soprano. Other than that women would share the rotation of speaking roles in the service, although there should be beginner, intermediate and elder ranks based on attendance history as an adult. Quality theologians could prepare standard liturgical content for people to use in groups of 8 or twelve people. When all people are confessing Christians hypocrisy is reduced. When going to church means more than sitting on a chair and watching one knows that one might actually be missed if one did not attend to participate each week, When all Christians finally act like priests (humble ones) all Christians will be missionaries too. A real priesthood of believers church structure could be more supportive of Christians. It could have Christians job banks and savings for emergencies banks that are nationally networked (with a cap on how much could be saved and use requiring some peer group approval). A semi-monastic network of guest quarters for Christian travelers could be constructed across the nation for all Christians to use that have good attendance records at the Priesthood of Believers affiliated churches across the nation.

President Trump Needs to Secure Kurdish Security Directly

Giving the green light for a Turkish invasion of Syria endangers U.S. Kurdish allies. The Kurds are one of the few reliable long-term partners in the region so the President of the U.S.A. needs to watch out for their security as well as repair the relationship with N.A.T.O. member Turkey that has decided to buy Russian military equipment that is a danger to N.A.T.O. security.

While a Turkish presence in Syria might be easy to allow and will provide a measure of regional security they may be hard to get rid of as the former colonial power (of the Ottoman Empire). It would be helpful if President Trump would explain to the public what is plans are for Kurdish security and for the problem of Syria that the Obama administration started toward civil war and regional insecurity.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-07/trump-s-motives-on-allowing-turkey-invade-syria-can-t-be-trusted

It would of course be great if President Trump could in some way get the Kurds and Turks to work together to secure mutual geographic interests. Actually that shouldn't be too challenging if the Turks are not indignant and meat-headed about it. Maybe a redesign of borders and citizenship issue could be creatively solved at some kind of camp David think tank for Kurds and Turks so they can work together for long-term regional security including Syria.


10/6/19

Mitt Romney and Pres Trump Don't See Eye to Eye

Senator Mitt Romney occasionally throws dirt on President Trump. President Trump replies; it’s not unusual or difficult to understand. What motivates Senator Romney to attack the President and give aid and comfort to President Trump’s political enemies?
The former Governor of Massachusetts, who vacated that state some time after his Presidential campaign loss, is something of a Boston elitist. He finds natural synergy with those New England elites with Harvard associations that run a little blue-blooded. A moderate Republican, he was elected Governor of that leftist state because he wasn’t a Christian and was thus tolerable for the godless atheists that fill the state.
Even so Mitt Romney was a one-term Governor. He brought the forerunner of Obamacare to the state and that was the limit of his interest to the people of Massachusetts. Romney-care was essentially President Nixon’s health care plan that he he set forward to counter the Democrat's desire for Universal Health Care like that of England.
George Romney, the father of Mitt Romney, was a Governor of Michigan. He lost in the Republican primaries of the 1968 campaign to President Nixon. Perhaps Mitt took an idea from the winner of the 68 election as a model for Romney-care.
In the 2016 Presidential election, as in 2012, President Obama’s real birthplace became an issue. Donald Trump was publicly of the opinion that Barrack Obama was really born in Indonesia where he grew up and lived until age 7, instead of Hawaii. It was very possible to get a doctor to sign off on a birth certificate a little cooked in that era, and records of international travel no longer exist for when Barrack’s mother actually arrived and left the U.S.A. Donald Trump had valid points yet drew the wrath of those that don’t care to recognize U.S. boundaries and birth as meaningful compared to just anyone. George Romney, like Senator Ted Cruz, was not born in the U.S.A. and wasn’t really eligible to serve as President of the United States. That is another point of hate that Mitt Romney has against Donald Trump.
Donald Trump, like a good Mormon that he isn’t, doesn’t consume booze. Mitt Romney as a Harvard M.B.A. has the school's natural hate of plebeian billionaires (lol) like Donald Trump that cannot help acting like a populist. The Harvard elites joined with Hillary in 2016 and a Harvard paper actually offered “an exit strategy for Trump voters”. Mitt Romney is a Boston-Harvard blue blood kind of elitist with a sense of entitlement who merely needed to move to take up residence in Utah to run for and be elected to the U.S. Senate. I would guess he is part of the ‘deep state’ crowd that are so well off that party affiliations are not as important as belonging to the right clubs, or at least being a Harvard alumni.
There is no question in my opinion that Mitt Romney would have been a better President than Barrack Obama. He simply isn’t anything like a populist though and is far too left and a put-your-dog-in-a-cage-on-top-of-the-car kind of guy for red meat voters. Voters tend to want a have the dog ride in the passenger seat President, even if one can get flesh eating bacteria from a dog licking a face.
In the United States corporatism is evolving and uniting with socialism to pacify the masses of Democrats. The way it is going five percent of the people will own 95% of everything and the people will effectively rent houses they believe they are buying for thirty years. Democrat candidates are so ignorant and bottom of the barrel and devoid of intelligent political thought about how to benefit the masses including the poor with effective legislation that they can do nothing besides offer pie-in-the-sky multi-trillion dollar plans that will fortunately never become law and would add trillions to public debt besides being ineffective if they did.
Good politicians should talk about good practical legislation that doesn’t cost anything and just directs economic infrastructure to transition toward an ecologically sustainable footing. It isn’t too difficult yet requires intelligence lacking from Democrats. When Democrats are elected President they do nothing to egalitarianise the concentration of wealth so capital is built by everyone in better proportion nor to preserve individual free enterprise and expression from the encroachment and control of concentrated wealth and corporate power. While Democrat Rube Goldberg plans fail the politicians themselves become mutli-millionaires and the election cycle goes on.
President Trump is good for business and ordinary people and is a populist. Though he lacks environmental sensibility, in practical measure so do the Democrats. They wish to greatly increase public debt with vast government plans and economic disruptions that won’t accomplish much besides redistributing more wealth to Democrat Party donors that are contractors.
If Senator Romney really wanted to be helpful to the general public he would try to educate the public watching the political circus about ecological economic methods and how to value environmental resource services. Actually they may all be quantified and analyzed. President Trump is pretty good at business, though its not really Harvard reciprocating elite business, and he could perhaps, perhaps not, benefit from Senator Romney working for just the public benefit and not against the President occasionally. Senator Romney should remember that much of the country doesn’t appreciate the godless democrat way of working politics divisively. A good politician should get things done for all of the masses without turning them against one another. The way of the Democrat party since the late Senator Edward Kennedy became fairly loony (probably in the 1980 primary run against President Carter) has been division and trying to force everyone to live the way they want, and to extirpate opposition. That policy of destroying middle class independence and independent thought isn’t antipathetic to the will of the most rich to have a spineless dopey mass society totally controlled by the will of the 1%, and that isn’t good for the nation or world generally, because they aren’t that smart.

Elderly Working Poor Face Federal Age Discrimination

The working poor that are between ages 65 and 70 are denied the federal earned income tax credit that is given to people 64 and under. The cap on E.I.C. is $15,700, and if the elderly are not receiving social security in addition to pay for work there is no just cause to exclude them from E.I.C. payments they would receive if they were 64. Sleeping on sidewalks doesn't become suddenly softer at 65.

If those older than 65 who are the working poor have dependent children they may qualify for an E.I.C.

There are some Americans and U.S. residents that do not qualify for social security and need to work beyond age 65. I met a Korean living in Anchorage that had no benefits and lived in a cold van. If he could have found work, the E.I.C. would have been helpful too.

There are also elderly Americans that do not qualify for Medicare. That is another story, and a reason why the V.A. should have been expanded and networked with homeless and community clinics to directly treat poor legal residents and citizens for free, instead of the middle class bureaucrat milieu of Obamacare.

* I suppose this fascinating point might lead some to wonder if Boris Johnson would be eligible to run for President of the United States in 6 years if he were to become a United States citizen again. I don't know what the answer is to that. Boris was a U.S. citizen by birth then renounced the citizenship a few years ago. If someone who got rid of their citizenship takes it back up are they then a renewed natural citizen or just a naturalized citizen ineligible for the Presidency?

Besides Lindsey Graham and Mike Pence, Republicans may need to start lining up candidates for the 2024 election.

10/5/19

A Course on Ecosystem Services and Sustainable Development

There is a good free college level course at coursera named Ecosystem Services; a Method for Sustainable Development.

https://www.coursera.org/learn/ecosystem-services

Ecosystem services management includes conservation of natural capital so it isn't destroyed thoughtlessly  by developers and building economic activities with ecospheric syntegrity. Very few U.S. states have any regions were significant work in a positive way is going ahead. A part of the problem is blindness to the human effect on the ecosphere with historical ways of living.

Ecosphere management and development are harsh terms to have in the same sentence so far as I am concerned. The issue isn't about capitalism versus socialism or another system of economics, the matter is about a lack of education and intelligence, lack of political will and economic interest, etc.

Humans should learn about ecospheric service before or early on in making settlements on other worlds such as Mars- and even on the Moon of the Earth- as harsh and seemingly barren as it appears. Once ecospheres are wrongly developed it is very challenging to restore them or even to evolve them with directed engineering and political economy of sustainability toward a state of being as good as that lost with wrong development of an ecosphere.

Democrats Say to Pres Trump; 'Yes MASA'!

Democrats searching for a clever way to expropriate MAGA have innovated or recycled the old name by which slaves called their masters; Masa. Democrats apparently with no sense of U.S. history believe the acronym for Make America Smart Again-MASA, is new and fresh. Actually though it is an appropriate slave term for idiots that believe that when President Obama made the Bush II tax cuts permanent when all he needed to do was to let them expire and then negotiate with Republicans from a position of strength with tax cuts for the most poor and then working up to the middle class (excluding the most rich). Being stupid is smart in the collective political memory of Democrats.

All of the inane democrat politics of the Obama and Clinton eras are regarded as smart no in the rosie glow of the past. On environmental reform Democrats then did far too little, and the total of that would not have stopped mass extinction of species and decline of habitat. What is required for that is a complete transformation to ecological economic policy and honestly the Democrat Party is clueless on what that is or how it would work.

Flooding the nation with illegal aliens in order to have cheap labor and keep the poor and their wages down is not smart policy at all and actually is harmful to environmental conservation and making the electorate better educated. The Democrat Party is working as best it can to make Americans soocial vassals of quasi-imperialism in the nation.

Someone should add up the total new federal debt  Candidate Elizabeth Warren's programs would bring if made into law-really, it isn't smart.

10/4/19

Some Worry About Human Predation as a Pack

Predators are often individuals i.m.o. It is a pejorative term of course. A few prey upon the many. For example a few lions prey upon hundreds or thousands of ungulates. 

Some wonder why it is ethical to slaughter animals for food yet its not o.k. to torture domesticated animals (pets). Dogs are humanity's first domesticated breed and it is bad form to torture one cutting off a leg or whatever. Torture is wrong in any case. In 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' a philosopher living on a hill looking down on a town regarded everyone as sheep following along without being awakened- it is an old theme. Nietzsche had syphilis and it affected his worldview over time. Average people work and follow along without thinking about what an ideal society would be or how to build one, much less test out their theoretical work. Government is an improvement over anarchy. Civil order brings civil education and the knowledge of concatenated generations.

All animals consume food- that thermodynamic need is probably what original sin is really about. Adam and Eve were cast down into temporality, birth and death, the need to labor etc instead of being something like pure spirit. When Jesus gave his body and blood symbolically at the last supper, he apparently was aware of the fallen criterion of mortal being in a Universe. Through accepting his sacrificial atonement one is reconciled unto Spirit. Many want to stay mired in the original sin paradigm though, or don't recognize it.

It's OK to Ask Foreign Governments to Help Investigate Terrorists and Democrats

There is nothing wrong in asking foreign governments to help investigate corrupt Democrat politicians and terrorists. democrat Party politicians should not feel free to organize crime, shakedowns of foreign businesses and governments or to exploit White House connections to solicit billions of dollars of foreign investments in private businesses. Terrorists and corrupt Democrats should not feel they have sanctuary nations overseas where they can plot crimes against elected U.S. Government officials nor scheme to manipulate elections with the help of foreign governments such as Ukraine that is apparently a hotbleb of illusions used for broadcast media propaganda to influence U.S. elections.

President Trump would be wrong to disregard the contributions Interpol and the Chinese Ministry for State Security may be able to contribute to enfilade corrupt Democrat party personnel that have pressured China unreasonably to buy influence via purchases of shares in special Democrat Party foreign ventures with foreign partners. One should not expect the F.B.I. to act like the C.I.A. overseas nor vice versa. The C.I.A. probably should not spend their time investigating corrupt Democrats wreaking havoc abroad. Foreign governments should be the ones to investigate corrupt and other crimes perpetrated within their borders by Democrat Party member Americans.

As China slowly evolves toward free enterprise with certain capital ownership caps it is important to keep it free from corrupt Democrat party shakedowns that corrupt free enterprise and capitalization in sustainable technology. In fact it might be a good idea for the Chinese to ask President Trump to move to more sustainable economic policy as part of the current trade negotiations. Foreign help in moving toward bi-laterally positive economic policy for a sustainable human world ecosystem is as positive as picking the fleas off international business.

Imperfect Character is Universal

The question of why anything exists rather than nothing was a question that Plotinus considered in The Enneads. Why would The One order anyt...