From Parkland to Stockholm

It’s odd that conservative parties the world over, favoring wealth and power over financial and environmental protections for the vast majority of their citizens, seem to be ignoring a building tsunami rising behind them, one that will permanently sweep them away. Their arguments are always the same: protect wealth at the top, remove restrictions and responsibility, and jobs and money will flow down to the masses. We have called it “supply-side economics,” “Reaganomics” and “trickle down economics.” 

And those three descriptive epithets have three unifying features: they have never worked, they do not work now and they will never work. Wealthy people with newfound cash do not take that spare money and instantly begin creating jobs. They didn’t get rich being that stupid.

If the economy sinks, they use spare cash to buy distressed assets. That’s the story of the recent Great Recession. If the economy is good, they use that extra money to buy-back their own shares. That’s legacy of the recent massive tax cuts accorded the richest in the land. Underemployment is now epidemic. When they do choose to invest, even when they are willing to take risks inside the trade-war-driven United States, their money goes into worker-displacing automation. If there are new jobs, those that remain after automation is the rule tend to pay the remaining workers less, even as they require them to work harder. They push labor off their payrolls into off-balance-sheet short-term contracting or rely on a locally outsourced gig economy.

In the United States, the radical right has managed to embrace those it has harmed the most: working class Americans displaced from once well-paying jobs. “Protect our Second Amendment Rights.” “Ban abortion.” “End Socialized Medicine.” “Stop job-killing environmental regulations.” And as such incomes fall, as the opioid epidemic has targeted that demographic, as local water supplies witness rising toxicity, floods join fires and virulent mega-storms that destroy homes, workplaces and farms and summers smolder in unprecedented heat, and as gut-tearing military bullets from civilian-owned assault rifles involved in mass shootings have killed about 300 Americans in 2019 alone, Donald Trump and the redefined Republican Party scoff at the tree-huggers and “radical socialist left.”

There’s one catch: that tsunami is not coming from the outside. It’s a rising tide of their own children, watching the documentary and news footage showing the ravages and the expected destruction from man-induced climate change. It is their “active shooter drills,” knowing other children who have been murdered by the spray of AR-15 bullets. It the news coverage of the white supremacists, xenophobics and displaced unskilled workers vetting their anger as dark “angels of vengeance.” It’s the world that we have asked them to spend the rest of their lives coping with, knowing that they will experience the brunt of the “worst is yet to come.”

Whether Democrats have grappled sufficiently with these life-threats, knowing that the GOP is absolutely going in the wrong direction, and facing a new form of job obsolescence from artificial intelligence just as the cost of a meaningful education has exploded into absurdly expensive, these youngsters are both sophisticated, linked by social media, and angry.

In response to the active shooter execution of 17 students and faculty, “On Saturday, March 24, [2018] people across the US and worldwide — from London to Paris to Mauritius to Mumbai — took to the streets to protest for stricter gun laws. The mass demonstrations, which took place under the banner ‘March For Our Lives,’ were instigated by Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students to ensure no more innocent lives would be lost to gun violence, like the shooting experienced at the school on February 14.

“One of the biggest rallies was in Washington DC, where the Parkland, Florida students and families, were joined by an estimated 800,000 people including celebrities like Lin-Manuel Miranda, Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande, and Jennifer Hudson who lost her mother, brother, and nephew in a 2008 shooting. Over the course of the day, youngsters who had experienced gun violence firsthand delivered poignant and articulated messages to the large crowd.” DogoNews.com, March 26, 2018. Parkland students traveled the United States, testified before Congress and held anti-gun rallies across the nation… new activists in the war against ubiquitous assault rifles and lax gun ownership laws. A year later, more killings, but US gun laws remain unchanged.

On September 20^th, all stemming from the passionate and consistent message of now 16-year-old Greta Thunberg (pictured above, early in her crusade), perhaps the most articulate spokesperson against global underreaction to climate change, millions of young people marched in protest all over the world. New York, Paris, London, Los Angeles, Washington, etc., etc. Speaking at the U.N. 

Climate Change Conference on September 23^rd, the young activist noted: “‘This is all wrong,’ Thunberg said, reading from a piece of paper. ‘I shouldn't be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean, yet you come to us young people for hope. How dare you.’

“‘People are suffering,’ the 16-year-old continued through tears. ‘People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are at the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you?’

“‘How dare you continue to look away and come here saying you are doing enough,’ Thunberg added. ‘You say you hear us and understand the urgency, but no matter how sad and angry I am, I do not want to believe that. Because if you really understood the situation and still kept on failing to act, then you would be evil. And that I refuse to believe.’” Yahoo.com, September 23^rd. Donald Trump came into the hall for 10 minutes after Thunberg had finished her presentation… and then left. He wanted nothing to do with any climate change initiative.

Instead, he inveigled his way to meeting with other world leaders, and issued this self-congratulatory moment to the press the 23^rd: “President Trump told reporters at the United Nations Monday [9/23] that while he was deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize, he didn’t expect to be awarded one.

“‘I think I’m going to get a Nobel Prize for a lot of things, if they gave it out fairly, which they don’t,’ Trump said following a bilateral meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.

“As do many U.S. conservatives, Trump then voiced frustration that former President Barack Obama received the award in 2009…. ‘Well, they gave one to Obama immediately upon his ascent to the presidency and he had no idea why he got it,’ Trump said despite not being asked about his predecessor… ‘You know what, that was the only thing I agreed with him on.’” Yahoo.com. The notion of Mr Trump’s receiving any bona fide international acclaim is at best amusing, perhaps more reflective of a man who has predicated his success on delusion and fake news.

Perhaps, Trump and his “whatever Trump wants” Republican Party should heed the warning young Thunberg gave that if those in charge did not solve the climate change crisis, younger and future generations would never forgive them. What do Parkland students and climate change followers of Greta Thunberg have in common? They are truly the voices of the Z and younger generations, a unifying definition of the future global constituency. In the United States, Democrats may be blasted by not doing enough, but Republicans will be decimated when those younger generations rise to vote and take charge. Those who cannot deal with appropriate gun control and the devastation of climate change will be marginalized and shoved onto the ash-heap of history’s failures.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and acting righteous when you are absolutely on the wrong side of history never goes well for those with failed vision and false policies.

Chlorinated Chicken

Let’s face it, the United States has become one of least popular countries in the world, a fact which probably keeps China from sending her troops into Hong Kong to crush the protestors. They are happier, so far, letting the United States slide further out of favor, lose more influence on global matters, skewer its own people with the obvious disastrous results of its proclivity to wage trade wars, reject multinational treaties, decimate a meaningful role in the Middle East by simply siding with Israel on everything and helping Saudi Arabia bomb Yemini civilians, humiliating allied leaders while elevating brutal despots… even as one of those trade wars is hurting China. If they were to use their military to crush the protestors, China just might make the United States a little less of a global bully by comparison.

But one country faces a particular conundrum over Trump-America unpopularity. The U.K. Specifically, foundering PM Boris Johnson – rejected by an increasing number of his own party, forcing him to lose his parliamentary conservative majority control. As Trump continues to tweet in support of Johnson’s pure-hard-break-Brexit mantra, the position that cost his party that majority, Boris is clearly cringing. As Trump sent Mike Pence over to London to support Johnson with lots of photo ops, mirroring his support for Israel’s right wing PM Benjamin Netanyahu in the last election (Netanyahu still could not put together a ruling coalition forcing another election), our President’s belief that his support alone can sway voters in other countries to support his choice… his version of election interference… may have the opposite result.

“Boris knows how to win,” Trump told reporters in Washington on September 4^th. Wince. But should Boris distance himself from Trump’s toxicity, he faces alienating the biggest trading partner willing to make a post-Brexit agreement of significance. A trading partner the UK will desperately need on a hard exit. An agreement that is itself being greeted with skepticism.

“Mistrust of U.S. motives figured in parliamentary debate on Tuesday [9/3] and Wednesday [9/4], with the opposition Labor Party warning that a Britain bereft of its familial trade relationship with the EU would be vulnerable to unscrupulous practices by big American corporations and would risk being stripped of food-safety and other consumer protections that the United Kingdom has enjoyed as part of the European bloc.

“That led to an odd burst of prominence for the phrase ‘chlorinated chicken’ — a reference to critics’ concerns that U.S. poultry treated with antimicrobial rinses, a practice banned in the EU, would be foisted upon British consumers if the country eventually signs on to a prospective American trade deal touted by both Trump and Johnson.

“But ‘chlorinated chicken’ has also become a catchall descriptor for unease about the prospect of a post-Brexit Britain becoming overly subservient to the United States, even as Brexit backers portray the planned split with the EU as a triumphant assertion of British sovereignty.

“Johnson, who became prime minister in July, tried, with debatable success, to turn the phrase into a scathing insult of rival Jeremy Corbyn, the Labor Party leader. During Wednesday’s parliamentary proceedings, he called Corbyn the only chlorinated chicken in sight — and repeated his gibe about the Labor leader to Pence the next day.

“Another sensitive topic came up in Johnson’s meeting with Pence: the National Health Service, Britain’s flawed but widely revered system that provides universal health coverage. Johnson’s critics have repeatedly suggested that U.S. pharmaceutical and medical companies would seek to muscle in post-Brexit, raising prices for drugs and services.

“Trump did little to allay those concerns in a state visit to the U.K. in June. With Johnson’s predecessor Theresa May by his side, the U.S. leader was asked by a British reporter about potential harm to the NHS arising from Brexit.

“When the president did not appear to understand the question, May quickly interceded, spelling out what the initials stood for, as if simply clarifying an inaudible query. But Trump alarmed many Britons with his response that ‘when you’re dealing on trade, everything is on the table, so — NHS or anything else.’

“Critics pounced on that, with Corbyn tweeting that ‘our NHS is not for sale.’ On that point, Johnson voiced rare agreement with his rival, telling Pence in their meeting that the health service would not be part of future trade talks with Washington.” Laura King writing for the September 6^th Los Angeles Times. Ireland’s equally unhappy with Trump’s hard Brexit support, since one of the biggest and seemingly unsolvable issues concerns a 300-mile open Northern Ireland/Ireland border. Open after decades of bloodshed that no one on that Emerald Isle wants to block with a hard wall.

If the rest of the world is getting tired of Donald Trump, noting that they are not remotely as saturated with all things Trump 24/7 as we are, will the US electorate be so damned worn out by all Trump, all the time that they will vote him office in part for a little piece of mind? After all, the main source of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton mention is Trump himself. And they truly do not matter anymore. Wouldn’t that be a nice result for Donald Trump?

              I’m Peter Dekom, and you have to wonder what reporters on MSNBC, CNN and Fox News will talk about in a post-Trump era… even as the Trumpster will continue to tweet.

Fake News through Fake Views

We know that through the application of self-learning artificial intelligence, social media messaging can be tailored automatically to cater to the biases and preferences of just about any recipient. Key words, tracking websites people visit, gathering personal and demographic information from any number of sites, some perhaps hacked, and linking it all back to a specific individual allows the construction of a rather shocking database for that individual.

If there is a predisposition to conspiracy theories, an inherent racial or ethnic bias, medical issues, stance on political issues including party affiliation, etc. all that information can be used to construct targeted messaging intended to cause a certain result. Outrage and anger against the political foe of the purveyor of this information. A feeling of political impotence that might keep that opponent from even casting a ballot. Or a sympathetic eye/ear willing to spread the underlying disinformation to others under their own signature. Adding their personal credibility to a false statement.

It is only going to get worse, even as “bot-driven” messaging may be required to be disclosed or banned altogether (First Amendment issues). Perps simply ignore the proscription of the limitation knowing that they can always assert the First Amendment at any attempt to curtail their manipulative and usually fake messaging. Despite the rather universal knowledge that not everything communicated over the internet is true, it is alarming to watch how gullible people are still convinced that it is. Especially older users who are not raised with the skepticism that younger users have.

But if you think that’s bad, artificial intelligence can take random recordings of an individual’s voice and use those intonations and accent to create believable soundalike statements that are complete fabrications. Literally putting words into someone else’s mouth. It gets worse still as presently sophisticated AI programs can actually take images and visual recordings of real people and, with that information, create very credible audio-visual footage showing that individual, “facing the camera” with accurate lip and mouth movement, uttering words that they never said. Images can be slowed down to make a speaker appear inebriated (Nancy Pelosi found that out the hard way). Yeah, well, you say, that requires a pretty sophisticated computer, major file server storage capacity and state-of-the-art AI. You mean like the Russians and the Chinese have?

Or perhaps just an app that anyone can use? Like the currently popular Foto Face Swap app that works with most smart phone cameras. The publisher tells us: “Foto Face Swap lets you interchange faces in any picture. Finally, an easy way to swap faces in any picture. Just select the image where you want to switch the faces, and the picture with the face you want to insert. FotoFaceSwap guides you throughout the process. Enlarge, reduce or rotate the faces. Modify the colors to fit the background. And add any text to your composition. Then save, email or print your new picture. Have fun with your friends, enemies and even with celebrities.” Oh, and this is just one of several such ubiquitous smart phone apps. Like the one that works a little too well, Zao, a Chinese app that is particularly adept at making “deepfakes.”

As the Los Angeles Times tells us (September 3^rd), “Zao’s smooth and quick integration of faces into videos and internet memes is what makes it stand out… Chinese face-swap app Zao rocketed to the top of app store charts over the weekend, but user delight at the prospect of becoming instant superstars quickly turned sour as privacy implications began to sink in.

“Launched recently, Zao is currently topping the free download chart on China’s iOS store. Its popularity has also pushed another face-swap app, Yanji, to fifth place on the list… Users of the app upload a photo of themselves to drop their likeness into popular scenes from hundreds of movies or TV shows. It’s a chance to be the star and swap places in a matter of moments with the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Leonardo DiCaprio or Jim Parsons as Sheldon Cooper on ‘The Big Bang Theory.’

“The photo uploads have proved problematic, however. Users can provide an existing photo or, following on-screen prompts, create a series of photos in which they blink their eyes and open their mouths to help create a more realistic ‘deepfake.’” So problematic that watchdog consumers and privacy advocates, and more than a few regular users, forced Zao to modify its terms of usage, which in turn decimated the value of the app.

“An earlier version of Zao’s user agreement stated that the app had ‘free, irrevocable, permanent, transferable, and relicense-able’ rights to all this user-generated content… Zao has since updated its terms — the app now says it won’t use head shots or mini videos uploaded by users for purposes other than to improve the app or things preapproved by users. If users delete the content they upload, the app will erase it from its servers as well.

“But the reaction has not been quick enough. Zao has been deluged by a wave of negative reviews. Its App Store rating now stands at 1.9 stars out of five after more than 4,000 reviews. Many users complained about the privacy issue…. ‘We understand the concern about privacy. We’ve received the feedback, and will fix the issues that we didn’t take into consideration, which will need a bit of time,’ a statement posted to Zao’s account on social media platform Weibo said.

“On Monday [9/2], the China E-Commerce Research Center urged authorities to look into the matter… The app ‘violates certain laws and standards set by the nation and the industry,’ the research house said in a statement, citing Wang Zheng of the Taihang Law Firm.” LA Times. So what? That such a ubiquitous app, readily available today from several sources, can create such believable fake views is the headline. Technology is only getting more robust; it will only get more realistic… not to mention that truly sophisticated tekkies can already easily exceed anything that Zao can do.

The First Amendment was never designed to take such technology into consideration. But that essential element in our Bill of Rights also defines the essence of democracy. The proliferation of simple fake news was and is pretty nasty, but the next generations of “fakeness” could easily undermine the entire fabric of an open and free society.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and you wonder if democracy can survive the “fake news generating” available technology… or if we deploy filtration and editing functions whether those writing the filtering software would literally become the autocrats running what used to be democracies.

Interesting Facts About Anti-Vax

Photograph from the 1950s before the widespread application

of the anti-polio vaccine developed by Dr. Jonas Salk

On September 9^th, California enacted a new law that severely undercuts the ability of doctors to grant medical exemptions to the state’s vaccination requirements for school-age children. Doctors catering to parents with a strong belief that mandated vaccinations are health-challenges that can create diseases like autism – a scientifically disproven myth – can now face disciplinary review based on a pattern of issuing too many such exemptions. 

The summary of the new bill from the Legislative Counsel tells us: “This bill would require a parent or guardian, by January 1, 2021, to submit to the department a copy of a medical exemption granted prior to that date for inclusion in a state database in order for the medical exemption to remain valid. The bill would require the department to annually review immunization reports from schools and institutions to identify schools with an overall immunization rate of less than 95%, physicians and surgeons who submitted 5 or more medical exemption forms in a calendar year, and schools and institutions that do not report immunization rates to the department. The bill would require a clinically trained department staff member who is a physician and surgeon or a registered nurse to review all medical exemption forms submitted meeting those conditions. The bill would authorize the medical exemptions determined by that staff member to be inappropriate or otherwise invalid to be reviewed by the State Public Health Officer or a physician and surgeon designated by the State Public Health Officer, and revoked by the State Public Health Officer or physician and surgeon designee, under prescribed circumstances.”

Protestors in the state capitol were loud and passionate. Six were arrested. The reaction of the irate parents is well-summarized by this statement from one anonymous protestor: “No one is listening, what does it take? I have pictures of injured kids in my pocket.”  Sponsoring State Senator Richard Pan (himself a pediatrician) noted: “It is my hope that parents whose vulnerable children could die from vaccine-preventable diseases will be reassured that we are protecting those communities that have been left vulnerable because a few unscrupulous doctors are undermining community immunity by selling inappropriate medical exemptions.”

But the emphasis of today’s blog is not the California experience but of what happens when mythology overtakes common sense in this immunization battle. It is the story of the nascent resurgence of an incurable and seriously debilitating disease (a potential lifetime of paralysis or death): polio. “[The] virus can be stamped out through regular doses of an oral vaccine. It was eliminated in the United States four decades ago.

“The global effort [to eradicate polio], which includes UNICEF, foreign donors and international charities, has made huge strides from 2014, when nine countries recorded new infections… In Pakistan, the door-to-door campaign to inoculate all children younger than 5 has been hampered by insecurity and lack of government authority in certain areas. This year alone, five polio workers have been killed.

“Experts compared the struggle to that of Nigeria, which was thought to have eliminated the virus until an outbreak in 2016 in a state that had been overrun by the Boko Haram militant group. Nigeria has not recorded a new polio case in three years and is on track to be certified polio-free in 2020.” Los Angeles Times, September 13^th.

Still, there is deep suspicion of modern inoculation efforts, particularly in Pakistan and Afghanistan, often linking greedy pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the vaccine to political corruption to get governments to buy their products and implement forced immunization. Especially in the most conservative Islamic communities. Rumors that the polio vaccine can seriously harm a child and that getting polio is lesser risk, false reporting of children seriously injured from the vaccine alone, have placed village-level healthcare workers at great personal risk as they try to convince locals to inoculate their children.

“Polio is making a troubling comeback in Pakistan, and it is being driven by some of the same forces spreading measles in the United States… Two years after health officials declared they were on the verge of eradicating the crippling childhood disease from Pakistan, one of the last countries where it remains endemic, at least 58 children here have tested positive for the virus since January.

“That is nearly five times the total of all of last year, and the most in a calendar year since 2014 — a major setback for a $1-billion-a-year global eradication campaign… Some 2 million Pakistani households have refused immunizations for children since April, when reports circulated on television channels, Facebook and Twitter that children had fallen ill after a vaccination drive at a school in the northern city of Peshawar.

“None of those adverse reactions were serious enough to require hospitalization, according to health officials. But the rumors revived long-standing myths about the dangers of vaccinations in Pakistan that the decades-long eradication effort has fought to dispel…

“Pakistani health officials have been baffled by the idea that parents would risk exposing their children to the virus in order to make a political statement… ‘It’s a joke,’ said a frustrated Aziz Memon, national chairman of the PolioPlus program in Pakistan led by the charity Rotary International. ‘But these are just blackmailing tactics. The government is taking care of this in a serious way.’…

“Memon said the government has replaced anti-polio officials in poor-performing districts and redoubled efforts to win over tribal and religious leaders, some of whom have denounced vaccinations as a Western plot to sterilize Muslims. At the request of Pakistani officials, Facebook said it deleted 36 posts for spreading vaccine misinformation ‘that had the potential to incite violence against health workers on the ground.’” LA Times.

Anti-vax protestors cite religious reasons (e.g., Islam vs Western Medicine), conspiracy theories, the right to control their children’s bodies and provide Internet-driven false accusations and fake photographs as tangible proof of the clear and present danger of vaccinations. But inoculations tilt the balancing act between individual freedom and a health threat to the millions of innocents around them who become exposed to disease by reason of this purported “personal choice.” The greater good, the overall health of us all, has to outweigh individual choice no matter how passionate the plea.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and self-righteous indignation cannot work to expose an entire community to an easily eradicated disease under a notion of “I’m right and everyone else is wrong.”