Blitz Chess (3M) Modern Defense With 1.E-4

                                                             I played black...

Leadership Ostrich Evolution; North Korea Unbound

North Korean communist forces under the direction of the Dictator Kim Jong Un have steadily progressed to develop nuclear weapons, miniaturize them and build ICBMs. North Korea may have as many as twenty nuclear weapons already and is near to completing its ICBM system to attack American targets. Democrats and the media prefer the ostrich policy of diplomacy to war. Let’s consider that.

The ostrich position would declare diplomacy a moderate success if the nuclear issue disappears from the news media for some time even while nuclear weapons and missile upgrades continue in North Korea.  http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/lawmakers-slam-trumps-promise-unleash-fire-fury-north/story?id=49099484

North Korea has every reason to believe the United States cannot launch a pre-emptive nuclear and conventional strike because it lacks the will. Like a gun as a deterrent to crime, it is only effective if the criminal believes the victim would use it. North Korea knows the United States has not the will to begin a war to end its nuclear build-up

Nearly every media article about the nuclear development problem in North Korea and the possibilities of war concludes with the information that war must be avoided and diplomacy pursued. Yet Dictator Kim Un has already won the dimplomacy contest; he can continue to develop nuclear weapons and missiles as he pleases.

So one might consider what a world in two or three years would be like if North Korea continues building nuclear weapons and launchers. It might have 200-300 nuclear weapons and several dozen ICBMs. It is quite possible that former communists look to North Korea as the wedge to rebuild a communist world. 

Some believe that if the U.S. sanctioned China and forbid it from having students attend U.S. colleges that could force it to get North Korea to disarm. That policy though diplomacy would itself fail to be enacted by Congress as well as being ineffective at making North Korea stop building nukes and ICBMs.  Globalists look to China as the golden consumer-producer land of the future.

Would U.S. policy change when North Korea has a couple hundred nukes and ICBMs? The ostrich policy would say not at all; it could be ignored because Dictator Kim is a reasonable man. Diplomacy would lead the U.S.A. To expose its throat to a North Korea that could launch whenever it liked or at leas vaporize Japan.

One must wonder what Japan would think of the North Korean nuclear development. Would it be moral to prevent Japan from developing its own counter-nuclear missile force and nukes, or would Americans be uncomfortable with that? How would a nuclear proliferation policy in Asia stabilize or destabilize U.S. influence? Would the U.S.A. seem like a paper twit with missiles and no balls to use them except in retaliation?

If war eventually does occur with North Korea after it has developed a few hundred nukes and missiles U.S. policy makers may wish they had acted to stop the nuclear development earlier, even as a few US. cities are smoldering ruins and world economic leadership has shifted entirely to China.

Trump Imprecates Shakespeare to N. Career Nuclear Threat?

Dictator Kim has a fast nuclear weapons and missile deployment pace that seems head toward a launh even though democrats say its all President Trumps fault because he is irritating the dictator with rough language. President Trump said that North Korea would be met with fire and fury and some in error said that Trump misquoted Shakespeare's sound and fury line from the Tempest. Instead I think the phrase most likelier did not come from Romeo and Juliet...

Ihttp://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/08/trump-north-korea-warning-241409

t could be from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet Act 3 scene 1 “Away to heaven, respective lenity, “And fire-ey'd fury be my conduct now !" Trump may care about the U.S.A. and North Korean nuclear development so much that he isn't yet ready to send food and a State Depatment dancer

Chicago Sues to Resume Sanctuary from Lawfulness

In order to create their own laws conformal to their own desires several cities in America have declared themselves sanctuaries for law-breaking illegal aliens- presumably excluding members of ISIS and Al Qaeda. http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sanctuary-city-suit-chicago-doesn-t-want-go-back-abuses-n790406

Should cities be free to declare themselves sanctuaries from select federal laws?

Chicago in the day of Al Capone could have declared itself a sanctuary city from paying federal taxes and that leading citizen would not have been rudely arrested and deprived of his liberty by the U.S. Government.

This was a tactically excellent move by the Mayor to advance the global plutocratic imperial interests. That is creating sanctuaroes for lawlessness would radically acellerate sedulous disregard for constitutional protections of U.S. citizens inclusive of freedom to be free from illegal labor competion. Chicago is probably stuffed with cheap illegal labor and the party of slavery could not relenquish that any more than the confederacy.

Breaking up the U.S.A. a piece or city at a time with sanctuaries will bring down the rights to of actual citizens so theey can adjust to becoming subjects of the plutocratic global imperium.

Poverty, Punishment and U.S. Prisons

The majority of people in prison are poor. Why is that? Most perpetrate crimes while young. Youth hadn’t the time to become established and save money in comparison to older people. Sometimes they choose crimes for profit. Civil law, common law and customary and Islamic legal systems; there are several forms through which socieities seek justice. Africa alone has 3000 tribes, 1000 languages and a mix of legal systems. The U.S.A. has a common law and adversarial legal system rather than a civil systems loosely derived from Rome whereby a magistrate is judge and prosecutor. The U.S. system of an adversarial prosecutor covers fewer than 20% of the people of the world, yet it has evolved to a reasonably conservative compassionate status compared to what went before yet it has a long way to go to increase its efficiency at finding the golden means of justice for all.

Youth may lack good avenues for non-criminal progress living in poor social environments. Poor social environments may have higher crime rates and illegal drug use as aspects of their street economics that are lacking from affluent neighborhoods without criminal gangs.

At Rikers Island N.Y. 80% of the incarcerated are awaiting trial. That is, they haven't been convicted of anything. Half of the incarcerated couldn't afford a bail of $1000 or less. 

The poor may have no comparable ability with the prosperous to afford competent legal representation. Court fines and cost may be trivial to the prosperous and debilitating to the poor. Far too many vulnerable and even socially incompetent people perpetrating misdemeanors may be incarcerated to the cost of society and themselves. Plainly a separate system of corrective remedies for the lowest classes of misdemeanors that do not require incarceration should replace more harsh and ineffective corrections structures. Public service instead of fines and detoxification instead of jail are two obvious courses to pursue that would perhaps save public expense.

Incarcerated prisoners experience some of the depersonalization of military inductees with their private life and identity removed to a certain extent by rude and impersonal treatment. Having one’s freedom taken away is a drastic response by society to crimes against other people. That wasn’t too well noted by the empaneled round table. They have no right in that traditional criterion to expect any family life at all as if they were checking into a hotel. I am sure a better system could and should be designed, yet that it still the underlying premise. They have no more rights than when the sovereign throws a prisoner under a trap door in a dungeon crawl space in the darkness (as at Warwick castle). I am sure the courts have enumerated the rights of prisoners as citizens yet I just don’t know what those are really. I guess they might be limited to things like guards cannot commit crimes on prisoners.

Plainly society has allowed prisons to exist that allow prisoners (and some guards) to commit crimes on other prisoners. I would think that the state could be sued for making prisoners subject to crimes by other prisoners in a reasonable criterion, yet since they obviously haven’t the prisoners must have so little rights as citizens that they cannot expect to be free from violent crimes enabled by the state in that has every reasonable expectation that any given prisoners has a very good chance of being made a victim of crime even with grievous bodily harm.

Prisoners may be transferred as guards or administrators deem without notice or consent of the prisoners. Perhaps that is not only to destroy any sense of personal security by to prevent possibility for designing an escape plan.

Compulsory naked inspections by guards would tend to damage an inmate’s psychological sense of security in person-hood. That could affect behavior of prisoners upon parole as they may have been conditioned to treat other people with a similar degree of disrespect, or perhaps a higher degree of disrespect than those that weren’t incarcerated. It does at any rate seem a somewhat sado-masochistic perversion that should be avoided if possible with some sort of evolution to a security system that does not require human contact (indirect electronic and camera viewing for authority audiences to assure that there are no weapons or dope under the nutsack.

In reading the Gulag Archipelago of Solzhenitsyn I found the conditions were far more harsh than that of U.S. prisons generally-especially the initial arrest and interrogation at the Lubyanka. In the Kolyma District prisoners were stacked outside the transit hut like cord wood after freezing to death. Crowded into a space without room to sit down and with the temperature about -45 f and wearing like clothes without coats and half starved the prisoners were offered cold salt herring to eat. Those that ate the fish became thirsty and drank ice water, and that temperature lowered their marginal body core temperature and they died of hypothermia and were piled outside.

One needs to value the comparative better state of U.S. prisons to many of those around the world. Later I will quote from a book about African prisons.

Psychological torture at the Lubyanka included the routine practices of cold concrete floor and no furniture, being doused with ice water, being forbidden to sleep and things as trivial as not being allowed to put hands under ones blanket if given a bunk and blanket. Lights might never go off, and if they did be turned back on if one fell asleep. Of course beatings were given to encourage confessions. There are innumerable methods for psychological torture in and out of prison by both legal and illegal authorities I suspect.

Incarceration is a dumbing down environment as well as a sobering up (for some). The court costs for pre-trial time were hidden for me and seem absurd; the arrested did not choose to be incarcerated and should not be responsible for that even if found guilty later. The debt presumption seems consistent with a free market system however that system presumes a free rather than a duressed contractual relationship.

The incarcerated suffer high social opportunity costs (an economics concept) rather than correction in some cases. I think it worth reminding that not all of the arrested are the same socially or behaviorally. It is true that many may be poor, yet poverty is a condition of the young rather than the old generally, at least at the start of adult life, so the arrested who happen to be under 35 and delinquent from work and stable environment may be young and poor logically.

The prison system can't fix a badly designed economic system that permits poverty to exist, yet neither should one blame poverty for the choices people make to use drugs, alcohol and commit crimes. Marijuana and meth each cause brain damage to some extent. Laws to prevent that and encourage people to benefit society rather than to be degenerate and contribute to social decline are worth keeping. Some of the young don't realize that life is not just partying. It is necessary for the poor to eschew drugs and alcohol entirely, keep one's wits about and get a job. When they don't they may steal to pay for addictions that those already prosperous have no trouble affording.

A society that does not encourage employers to hire those out of work longest with tax credits cannot be serious about reducing poverty . Pre-trial incarceration, money bail and plea bargaining were the three biggest challenges that one public defender mentioned as problem, and they are related to the poverty of those incarcerated. To some it is evident the poor aren’t able to afford adequate and equal legal rights of defense as those not poor.

I was reading about prison conditions in Africa in order to be able to make some comparison with those of the United States. Africa like South America generally has a higher murder rate than the U.S.A. yet with a lower incarceration rate. Probably they lack the will or financial capacity to expand prisons some of which, like those of Portuguese Angola were built long ago during the colonial era, from 1570 and likely need to be replaced.

Following is a description from the book Crime and Punishment around the World, Volume 1: Africa and the Middle East; of prison conditions in Angola (in 1995)- (quote from page 6 on Angola)- “Most of these facilities are overcrowded with substandard conditions. Though prison conditions vary widely, some of these conditions include poor diet, sanitation, and medical facilities; prolonged interrogation, beatings, torture, and inhumane treatment; curtailment of visits by family and friends arbitrarily; and holding inmates incommunicado or moving them from one prison to another without notifying the family.”

People certainly do not want criminals running amok, yet one neither wants injustice to prevail such that poor people are locked up so people can have jobs in a system that requires that a pool of people be input and held like cattle for profit. Neither should parole conditions be unrealistic such as expecting that those released into a sub-zero city without possibility of work should be required to remain in that area instead of someplace with moderate temperatures.

Finally,if one wants to keep the poor from being drafted into the prison system there must be better odds for staying out of it through quality employment with good-paying jobs and affordable places to live that don't require a lifetime to afford.

Elements of Hidden Costs to Individuals of Incarceration

Incarceration is a dumbing down environment as well as a sobering up (for some). The court costs for pre-trial time were hidden for me and seem absurd; the arrested did not choose to be incarcerated and should not be responsible for that even if found guilty later. The debt presumption seems consistent with a free market system however that system presumes a free rather than a duressed contractual relationship.

The incarcerated suffer high social opportunity costs (an economics concept) rather than correction in some cases. I think it worth reminding that not all of the arrested are the same socially or behaviorally. It is true that many may be poor, yet poverty is a condition of the young rather than the old generally, at least at the start of adult life, so the arrested who happen to be under 35 and delinquent from work and stable environment may be young and poor logically.

Family life may be destroyed for the incarcerated. Yet that is again variegated per the circumstance of the individual, and society already has been attacking the family and Christian values for a few decades. Since the Supreme Court forced homosexual marriage on the nation one might wonder if prisoners that are homosexual should be segregated from themselves so they don't enjoy incarceration, and straight prisoners shouldn't be free from incarceration with homosexuals.

The prison system can't fix a badly designed economic system that permits poverty to exist, yet neither should one blame poverty for the choices people make to use drugs, alcohol and commit crimes. Marijuana and meth each cause brain damage to some extent. Laws to prevent that and encourage people to benefit society rather than to be degenerate and contribute to social decline are worth keeping. Some of the young don't realize that life is not just partying. It is necessary for the poor to eschew drugs and alcohol entirely, keep one's wits about and get a job. When they don't they may steal to pay for addictions that those already prosperous have no trouble affording.

A society that does not encourage employers to hire those out of work longest with tax credits cannot be serious about reducing poverty . Pre-trial incarceration, money bail and plea bargaining were the three biggest challenges that one public defender mentioned as problem, and they are related to the poverty of those incarcerated. TO some it is evident the poor aren’t able to afford adequate and equal legal rights of defense as those not poor.

Magnus Carlsen Drops Complex Game at Sinquefeld Rnd 4

World chess champion Magnus Carlsen with the white pieces lost a complex game to the Mart Scurll of chess- French expert Monsieur LaGrave. Carlsen made a small blunder drawing the shark MVL to pounce just before the time control, and duped the French into a disadvantaged position; a rare experience for the French crust of crusts player.

Yet within several moves the world champion made an unintentional large blundere losing a rook throwing Sesse, the obnoxious chess engine into a frenzy and Monseur LaGrave into a pastry-like contentedness. The Frenchman went on to win in an unremarkable yet tedious endgame smirking after the handshake with the champion who dropped in ratings 2.1 points while LaGrave rose more than 10.

President Trump Lacks Hillary's Teflon Exterior

President Trump lack's Hillary's teflon exterior; people throw a lot of mud and it sticks- for a while. Maybe it is the cyclical rate of fire of media mud keeping the President coated; its very high.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/special-counsel-mueller-impanels-washington-grand-jury-in-russia-probe-1501788287

http://www.npr.org/2017/08/05/541370064/trump-s-back-to-culture-wars-something-is-going-on

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/report-mueller-seeking-wh-documents-on-flynn-as-part-of-special-counsels-investigation/

Hillary Clinton had so many ethics and even criminal issues over the years that it boggles the mind- yet nothing ever came of it and she was rarely investigated. Alternatively the mainstremem media has had an intifadah of headlines with generally specious allegations since inauguration day.

President Trump's administration is likely to run its full course yet the media seem to wish to impeach him if possible, and certain foreigns are howling with dump Trump sentiment. He might be doing a good job to stimulate such hatred.

The Trump administration is also under fire... 

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/08/05/sessions-leaks-media-attack-worse-thank-you-think-215465

Envisioning World Dance

After a minute or so of thought I have discovered how world dance is envisioned.
In the photo below of the Arctic ice cover taken yesterday one may clearly see how the East and West hemispheres are joning hands in world dance at Alaska and Siberia.

Image credit; Cryosphere Today

Flore et Zéphire 1839

An Alaska Aggressor Squandron Got New Paint

Summertime in Alaska has a rush to complete exterior paint jobs. Decrepit paint can ruin the appearance of an aggressor squadron. So an F-16 aggressor squadron appeared with good new paint jobs that resembled the SR-71 and Arctic snow and stone. 

http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/13125/aggressor-f-16c-appears-at-red-flag-alaska-in-sr-71-blackbird-like-paint-scheme

There are new paints that can produe not only electricity on building exteriors; some available in a longer time frams will produce electricity and hydrogen. That sort of coating may evolve into ship and military ground transport as well in order to allow electrical collection even in broken humvees to power or recharge equipment.

Plainly such paint would be useful for electric drones enabling them to stay aloft longer to fire missiles at aggressor squandron jets air-to air.

http://www.businessinsider.com/solar-paint-transforms-your-house-into-a-source-of-clean-energy-2017-6


Shenyang J-31 iamge credit via wikipedia-http://www.airliners.net/photo/Untitled-(AVIC)/Shenyang-J-31-(F60)/2542713/L/

Obamacare; The Best Tool for Creating State Socialism

Obamacare insurance markets and government payments to insurers may be the best way for the state to establish socialism, corporatism and /or communism in the U.S.A. It is a creeping hegemony over a free market with a slow government-insurance relationship like that Hitler developed with his national corporations before the second world war. Just saying…

http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/republicans-democrats-suddenly-want-fix-obamacare-n788686

Will Donald Trump Finally Get a Nobel Prize?

On December 10; the anniversary of the death of Alfred Nobel the world-famous dynamite maker, the Nobel Prize committee will have an awards ceremony for the 2017 winners. This year Donald Trump may finally receive his Nobel Peace Prize for not nuking a little rat nuclear terrorist in North Korea as so many other might have done.

President Trump has faced the greatest challenge to the existence of peace in the world in a generation; since the cold war with Russia ended. So far, that is in 2017, he has not blasted Pyongpang and its new ICBMs that can hit 'every city in the U.S.A.' as Dictator Kim Jong Un has boasted recently.

It requires a particular sort of peaceful individual not to respond to nuclear terrorism with total, immediate annihilation of the enemy if possible. Thus, Donald Trump is the most deserving of the award this year. Surely leftist peace-mongers in Stockholm will agree.

The Nobel Committee owes it to the public to give President Trump the opportunity to make an acceptance speech at Stockholm. Without doubt it would  be the greatest ever.

Report That World Temp WIll Go Up at Least 2 C (3.6 F) by 2100

If the global temp rises two degrees centigrade there would probably be major crop failures around the world. Yet the median expected rise is 3.6 degrees C and it may go up as much as 4.9 degrees C.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-almost-certain-to-warm-by-2-degrees-celsius/

Conscientious objectors to global warming and fossil fuel use might want to sell their gas burning vehicle and take up electric bike riding. The Von Musk hypertube network for the U.S.A. also should be the new featured national infrastructure renewal project priority instead of more asphalt and gas burning 4 wheelers.

http://www.newsweek.com/hyperloop-unveils-11-potential-us-routes-580111

https://newrepublic.com/article/120578/global-warming-threshold-what-2-degrees-celsius-36-f-looks

Probably the nation will need bigger and faster 2nd gen hyper-tubes to eliminate fossil fuel cars and to build cargo only tubes as well.

Restoration of wildlife habitat so far as possible would be possible with the great reduction of surface transportation and highway networks.

Marijuana May Cause Brain Damage and Lower IQ

Scientific research seems to support mal-effects of marijuana on human and rat brains especially if regular use starts in youth. Apparently it is bad for pregnant women too, and not just for herself. The progeny may suffer damage.

https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/marijuana/what-are-marijuanas-long-term-effects-brain

Cannabinoid receptors in the brain in numerous reagions may be effected by reguar dope use especially in adolescence. Loss of neurons in the hippocampus may be accelerated with the aged hop-head brain. Memory loss and verbal impairment begin starting in adolescence can continue until the doper's last toke in the old.

http://www.politico.com/states/new-jersey/story/2017/08/01/booker-seeks-federal-marijuana-legalization-113716 Booker wants to legalize dope nationwide

Abornirmalities have been found in the white matter of the corpus callosum that connects the two haves of the brain among dope users of high-THC pot

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/brain-damage-seen-potent-marijuana-smokers

The corpus collosum is the light area at center in this image of the brain of a formerly healthy dead human


Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=295383

Red Leaders Hate Trump Tweets, Ban VPNs

Red Chinese leaders have criticized President Trumps copious Twitter tweets. Recently the same communist leaders banned virtual private networks so the people can't communicate. Unfortunately President of Russia Vladimir Putin did the same and banned VPNs in Russia. If people hate the CHicom leadership and the communist political system, the same leadership doesn't want any private communication going on about it with people likely to collude to get rid of it.

All one need to is ban the sale of cetain technology that enable virtual private networks and those repressive leaders have followed the American media in taking the opportunity to criticize President Trump. Those supporters of a global evil empire are running an Orwellian communication intifadah against the U.S. President and his familty with the hope they can just make him go away.

Without VPNs it is also more difficult to modernize business and design propriatary inventions with through networking. At least China is working against Lenin's maxim that the capitalistss will sell us the rope we hang them with...the Chinese leaders won't let us.

If he does, I would support only a conservative , pro-American, Oprah Winfree administration, and none other.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/344748-china-goes-after-trumps-tweets-emotional-venting-cannot-become-policy

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-11/how-china-s-vpn-ban-asserts-digital-sovereignty-quicktake-q-a

https://qz.com/1041927/after-chinas-crackdown-now-russia-is-banning-vpns-too/

Increase of Private Prisons Afer the Cold War

During the first term of the Clinton administration the number of people in prison first reached one million. In 1990 comparatively the number incarcerated in state and federal prisons was about 750,000. A report by the Bureau of Justice and a statistician said surprisingly that the rise wasn't because of longer prison sentences, it was for increased violence by white and drug use increase by blacks. One could consider the new technologies of cell phones and proliferation of automobiles as common infrastructure for new organized crime as well as the surge of Latino criminal gangs tied in to the over-the-border underworld. People learned to make their own meth in field cookeries all over the country also helping support non-rational criminal outbreaks.

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/08/us/in-90-s-prison-building-by-states-and-us-government-surged.html

The report goes on to say that most prisons were under court orders to limit over-crowding in prisons. After the cold war the United States tried to cut back on federal spending that had increased during the Reagan administration. Few in Congress were willing to spend to build more Federal prisons when the public debt was already trillions and trillions (it is now about 20 trillion dollars)

After the end of the cold war increasing the number of government workers in publicly financed prison wasn't popular as it would require increased taxation. This essay isn't the place to examine the public economics issues, yet privatization was more popular than increasing government bureaucracy during the 1990s right until the present day. It goes without saying that government, legislative and Executive management of the federal budget is never good. Philosophically speaking, politicians are quite unenlightened regarding economic philosophy and rely upon truisms and stereotype postures inspired by Ayn Rand or Karl Marx as the case may be.
The Clinton administration brought about the beginning of a covert-overt moral decay following atheism, evolution theory and moral relativism that brought youth toward maturity in an 'anything goes' social environment. The lessons of Dewey and Nietzsche were taken up by the broadcast media. In Sacramento not only did Rush Limbaugh start in broadcasting, at least one radio station played with calling itself radio Satan. There were numerous mass school shootings in the U.S.; previously mostly unheard of. Drug use around the nation was rampant. The baby boomers raised their kids to be a me generation. Tens of millions of illegal aliens were still surging into the U.S.A. during the late 80s and 90s. Globalism and a failure of patriotism, unconcern for the advantages and responsibilities of being an U.S. citizen were more tributaries to a river of anomie called by one scholar 'the age of fracture'. Minorities and rap culture occasionally regarded prison as a home away from home eschewing shoelaces outside the walls because they are forbidden inside the walls. Drug use and sales were regarded as ways for upward economic mobility, especially as good jobs were sent out of the nation and the Wall Street rich concentrated national wealth and served as examples of the philosophy of personal egoism ethically. Christian moral influence declined nationally for a number of reasons.
Private prisons or prisons for profit seem to fit in more with the political outlook of the nation today. They need not necessarily be bad or set up to just make a profit by increasing in-flow and cutting costs. If the judiciary and legislature require certain good contractual or empirical parameters for prisons to earn government contracts then they shall find a way to accomplish and cohere to those parameters. Private prisons can be in effect experimental corrections facilities more readily than a government establishment anyway. A new prison costs tens of millions just to build much less staff and in has a hard time changing its physical infrastructure once built. Private prisons alternatively can close with no cost to the public. The private sector can produce buildings at lower cost and satisfy well-written government contracts, with those able to win perhaps already possessing the right assets for the contracts before bidding. Private prisons may today have grave faults, yet that is more the fault of the government for not designing good theoretical corrections facilities that the private prison corporation must follow if it wants to have a contract.
One obvious parameter concerns correction and recidivism rates. Government can require low recidivism rates for private corrections contractors for renewal of contract.

The growth of iprisoners in private prisons both state and federal has begun a slow decline from its high around 2013 when approximately 135,000 people were held. The crime rate too has decline a bit since then.http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/11/u-s-private-prison-population-has-declined-in-recent...

Retributive Punishment in the Evolution of History

Retributive justice is condign punishment for crimes. Every era has some sort of governing theory of punishment-or several, that are applied. If people use their honest best theory in the era, it may be difficult to find fault with it. If obvious injustice in punishment or correction occurs such that people know it is wrong, then it is wrong. Plainly a continuing quest for improvement in corrections and response to criminal activity is in the best interest of society ( more of a utilitarian concern though).

Secular laws according to various theories of retributive or utilitarian punishment were formed to control non-conformists to legal parameters of social behavior. Some regard them as heartless and so retributive forms are morphed by reformers increasingly into empirical social contracts for progenitors of acceptable sin training for convicts to train them to support secular political powers. That is, they haven’t been designed by those with the laws of God written upon their hearts and minds. They have hearts of stone instead of flesh and minds that are not born of the spirit. I support a more modern synthetic approach to corrections for crimes than retribution. Simple retributive justice may be ineffective except in time of war or civil disorder when summary execution may be required for survival. There are too many people shot out of the canon of life that are incapable of understanding why they are in jail instead of at Harvard. Correction can inform them why, whereas retribution probably won't.

The roles of punishment are to prevent, deter, correct and/or cause suffering to perpetrators of crimes. Durkheim, besides writing the first study of suicide, regarded crime as having some positive value; largely that it supported social change. Yet not all social change is good, some is bad. If for example there were cannibals in Wisconsin that wanted to eat their neighbors , that would not be a positive social change for the good though it would be criminal. Criminal activity rather than reason and social advise and consent to change laws serves revolutionary ends regarding the established governing powers. It is consistent with fascist methods to get what is wanted.

When some laws are unjust or appear so to large numbers of people, that enfilades the nature of social power and control by the ruling sovereign power. Not all people were in agreement with those within ruling power in virtually every nation in the history of man.

In democracy people theoretically try to improve justice and the efficiency of government so that it may function well yet not impinge the personal rights of individuals. Different forms of government may have different theories of punishment, such as execution for anti-state activity.

Retributive theories of punishment originate with payment in kind for criminal offenses; Lex talionis. Because it is impossible to have perfect justice with perfect witness, flawless evaluation of the motive for the offense with mind-reading of perps and victims, there are implicit dangers in the principle of eye for an eye retribution.

The video on Lex Talionis related that it actually provided a measure response to crime that was fair and balanced more or less, rather than excessive.

One can imagine sentencing someone to a lifetime of torture for some minor offense in youth as an example of disproportionate retributive punishment. Yet there were moderate position in disproportionate punishment to that were cognizant of kinship relationship and the need to quell violence.

One made read Tacitus’ Germania for examples of Euro-justice in the1st century a.d.

quote from Germania-“Punishments. Administration of Justice. In their councils an accusation may be preferred or a capital crime prosecuted. Penalties are distinguished according to the offense. Traitors and deserters are hanged on trees; the coward, the unwarlike, the man stained with abominable vices, is plunged into the mire of the morass with a hurdle put over him. This distinction in punishment means that crime, they think, ought, in being punished, to be exposed, while infamy ought to be buried out of sight- Lighter offenses, too, have penalties proportioned to them; he who is convicted, is fined in a certain number of horses or of cattle. Half of the fine is paid to the king or to the state, half to the person whose wrongs are avenged and to his relatives. In these same councils they also elect the chief magistrates, who administer law in the cantons and the towns. Each of these has a hundred associates chosen from the people, who support him with their advice and influence.”

At any rate it is worth noting that much of western common law came not from the ancient Middle East or Greece but from Germania and Britain and their traditions of common law such as the Salic Law of King Clovis in the 6^th century. Primogeniture shaped many levels of European society unto the late middle ages and beyond.

Quote concerning wounds from the Salic law… “Title XVII. Concerning Wounds.

1. If any one have wished to kill another person, and the blow have missed, he on whom it was proved shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.

2. If any person have wished to strike another with a poisoned arrow, and the arrow have glanced aside, and it shall be proved on him; he shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.

3. If any person strike another on the head so that the brain appears, and the three bones which lie above the brain shall project, he shall be sentenced to 1200 denars, which make 30 shillings.

4. But if it shall have been between the ribs or in the stomach, so that the wound appears and reaches to the entrails, he shall be sentenced to 1200 denars-which make 30 shillings-besides five shillings for the physician's pay.

5. If any one shall have struck a man so that blood falls to the floor, and it be proved on him, he shall be sentenced to 600 denars, which make 15 shillings.

6. But if a freeman strike a freeman with his fist so that blood does not flow, he shall be sentenced for each blow-up to 3 blows-to 120 denars, which make 3 shillings.

Title XVIII. Concerning him who, before the King, accuses an innocent Man.

If any one, before the king, accuse an innocent man who is absent, he shall be sentenced to 2500 denars, which make 63 shillings.”

Plainly Clovis and people of his day regarded monetary punishment significantly. In light of later material in the course concerning for-profit prisons, that money element is important since there were probably many that could not pay. One would need to do historical research to determine what happened to those without money that were convicted. Plainly the advantage for satisfying legal penalties for those convicted was with the aristocracy and nobles of means, rather than those without.

I wanted to write something about Dr. Knight’s video and comments about Genesis and Adam and Eve. There are numerous ways of shaping retributive justive and for thinking about the people deserving punishment or not, and if the punishment was or should be proportionate. Obviously when one does not comprehend what occurred it is difficult to form a kind of post hoc determination of a punishment being just, fair or whatever with any accuracy.

Dr, Knight’’s account of the fall from the Garden as “a tiny peccadillo” and just eating a fruit plainly was an interpretation of a man without faith in God. He regarded it as a small crime and the killing of Cain by Abel as a large one.

Adam and Eve in the Garden is one of the most interesting stories of the Bible. They incurred correction for the original sin of eating of the tree of knowledge. For those of actual faith in God that was a real fall from grace. The correction was addition of all the characteristics of becoming a biological being in a thermodynamic system with all of the drives inherent across the animal kingdom.

God was concerned that eating of the tree of knowledge had made the disobedient pair ‘as little gods’. He constrained their existence to the temporal Universe therefor before they could also eat of the tree of eternal life and become real problems. That criterion is quite different than the secular and even atheist paradigm that Dr. Knight put forward.

Dr. Knight also did not believe in the divine origin of the Decalogue. He did not regard it as being delivered unto Moses who prophesied essentially that a man of whom King David fit the role would dwell upon the writings day and night. Moses probably invented Hebrew writing and commissioned the writing of works that became the Pentateuch when assembled in the Court of Solomon or Rehoboam formally (and redacted latter).

Wouldn't Beijing Be Nuked Same TIme As Pyongyang if Things Escalate?

One wonders if the Chinese leaders are disciplined enough to not expand the war beyond the three capitals should a nuclear exchange transpire in the future. Beijing has not placed good enough sanctions on North Korea and probably hopes they vaporize D.C. so Beijing can be number one in world trade. Beijing and its nuclear threat of retaliation on the United States should D.C. choose to vaporize Pyongpang before it vaporizes Washington, makes it North Korea's real sponsor for nuclear terrorism on the United States from Paramount Dictator Kim Jong Un and his communist dong missiles.

China without Beijing might be a more peaceful, gentler place with better democracy. Evn in the most dark cloud, silver lining may emerge like shiny fortune cookie.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-hits-back-at-trump-criticism-over-n-korea/ar-AApasTU?li=BBnba9K

Should Joe Lieberman Be WH Commo Director?

With the removal of White House communications director Scarmucci from his job after ten days the White House needs to find a secure, reliable and capable individual to olay that role. Maybe Jeff Goldblum or Joe Lieberman could fit the bill.

Personally I believe that someone like former Alaska Republican senate candidate Joe Miller (lost to Lisa Murkowski in 2010) who is a former federal judge, Yale law graduate and University of Alaska-Fairbanks M.A. in economics with a silver star from Desert Storm when he was an Army officer, could serve reasonably well.

There is always reliable billionaire Ophrah WInfree,Charley Gibson or Juan WIlliams to ask if the White House feels it is in trouble.

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