Celebrate the Facts!
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Since the dawn of consciousness, humans have been searching for magical compounds and techniques to extend what can never be replaced - a person’s time on this planet. Many techniques, such as extended fasting, vitamin supplementation, exercise, and now pharmaceutical compounds, are tools to extend life, both lifespan and quality of life. One of these, rapamycin, has hit the mainstream, and doctors routinely prescribe it as a longevity drug despite incomplete evidence of its efficacy. Human life expectancy constantly rises, and the median lifespan increases, but the maximum lifespan does not. Although the number of centenarians (100 or older) doubles every ten years, maximum longevity remains the same. The longest-living person died in 1997 at 122; this record has not been beaten. Researchers first isolated rapamycin from soil samples collected from Easter Island in the 1960s. This exciting find contained streptomyces hygroscopicus, a bacteria native to the island. Realizing that streptomyces hygroscopicus produced a compound that could kill fungi, they named it rapamycin after the island, Rapa Nui. When scientists discovered rapamycin inhibited the growth of eukaryote cells, research on rapamycin turned to rapamycin’s immunosuppressive and anticancer properties. A eukaryote is any cell or organism that possesses a clearly defined nucleus. The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved rapamycin in 1994 to help prevent organ rejection in liver transplant patients, marking a significant milestone in organ transplantation. Rapamycin is also used to avoid restenosis after coronary angioplasty, and it is being tested in many clinical trials as an antitumor agent. That research paid off when the FDA approved the use of rapamycin for treating pancreatic cancer patients in 2011. In 1994, several scientists independently discovered several aspects of rapamycin’s mechanism of action. When rapamycin crosses a cell membrane and enters a cell, it binds with an enzyme named mTOR, the mechanistic target of rapamycin. In doing so, rapamycin partially inhibits mTOR activity, which enables the activation of autophagy. Rebalancing the mTOR/autophagy ratio may result in extraordinary vigor upgrades and pause aging initiation. In 2009, researchers found rapamycin could increase the lifespan of mice when administered later in life. This was the first evidence that a pharmacologic agent could lengthen life. Since then, there has been a surge in research investigating the effects of rapamycin on various diseases, biological functions, and organic processes in mice. However, the importance of further human studies to validate these effects cannot be overstated, underscoring the urgency and importance of our continued exploration in this promising field. Popular theory considers pharmaceuticals as the primary means of delaying aging. Over the past decades, various anti-aging drugs, such as the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin; antioxidants such as resveratrol, melatonin, and coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10); and especially senolytics such as dasatinib and quercetin (D + Q) or fisetin, have shown promising effects on longevity by targeting mTOR, mitochondrial and oxidative stress, and cellular senescence. When nutrients are available to a cell, mTOR initiates signals that activate cell metabolism, telling the cell to use the available nutrients to build new proteins, enzymes, and other cell components. mTOR is a crucial sensor of nutrient availability. When nutrients are available, mTOR activates cell anabolic (building) growth and proliferation processes. Autophagy is a process within all cells that counterbalances mTOR’s activities. It occurs when the body breaks down damaged proteins, enzymes, and other cell components for reuse or elimination. Most cells contain hundreds of mTOR sites. When a person takes rapamycin, it enters cells and binds to some mTOR sites. This results in partial inhibition of mTOR and the activation of autophagy, which promotes a wide range of health benefits in people constantly over-activating mTOR (most people). Inhibiting mTOR and activating autophagy allows all cells in the body to detoxify more effectively and undergo regeneration and restoration. Results from animal models suggest that partially inhibiting mTOR with rapamycin might improve symptoms of continuing progressive diseases. This category includes metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes, inflammatory conditions like arthritis and lupus, nerve ailments such as Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis, macular degeneration, glaucoma, obesity, hearing loss, periodontal disease, cognitive decline, and Alzheimer’s disease. Obesity is an escalating global health crisis with direct links to metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular disease. Because rapamycin inhibits mTOR, it mimics calorie restriction. In animal studies, rapamycin therapy decreases appetite and reduces body weight and fat mass. Based on these results, rapamycin might be a potential tool for obesity treatment. Proponents point to rapamycin's benign side effect profile, which includes a variety of conditions like many other drugs. As physicians use the drug for various situations, including mitigating transplant rejection, scientists have closely defined these side effects, providing a risk profile for examination by physicians and potential users of the drug. It is almost certain that the FDA will never approve rapamycin for longevity. The agency doesn’t categorize aging as a disease, plus rapamycin’s generic status means there’s little financial incentive to run expensive clinical trials for aging or similar ailments.
Living a healthy and long life is achievable, provided genetic medical conditions are manageable and lifestyle conditions are healthy and supportive of such ambitions. The mix includes emotional wellness, sleep, exercise, diet, and environmental factors. Pills alone may support this endeavor, but they are in no way a magic bullet. Instead, they could help boost health and longevity. Unfortunately, the science about the efficacy and risks of longevity compounds, including rapamycin, is murky and unlikely to be resolved soon. Still, the temptation exists, particularly for older people who don’t wish to wait and choose to be their laboratory rat.
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Alcoholism, sometimes denoted as Alcohol Use Disorder, has been a curse on humanity since they created refined alcohol. Alcoholism provides a binary choice: abstinence or a progressive march to death due to systemic poisoning and the resultant destruction of critical organs. Alcoholism has ineffective treatments, and the syndrome affects as much as 11.2 % of the adult American populace. Likely, alcoholism is a complex mix of genetic factors and trauma. While alcoholics and other addicts do severe damage to families and friends, they are still human beings and deserve treatment and respect as such. The first step significant clinical consequence of alcoholism is cirrhosis. Cirrhosis is permanent scarring and damage to the liver, trading healthy tissue with scar tissue that prevents the liver from acting conventionally. The scar tissue can also partially block blood flow through the liver, and cirrhosis worsens, causing a condition known as portal hypertension. Cirrhosis and portal hypertension are the commanding origins of ascites, accounting for about 80% of cases in Western countries. That's when long-term alcohol abuse causes scarring of the liver tissues, which obstructs blood flow through the portal vein running through the liver. Clinical outlooks for liver cirrhosis have two phases: the symptomless stage, also named 'compensated cirrhosis,' and the phase of problems due to the advance of portal hypertension and liver dysfunction, also called 'decompensated cirrhosis,' where patients may develop ascites, the most frequent complication from liver cirrhosis. When fluid from these enlarged veins leaks into the abdomen, it builds up inside the peritoneal cavity, causing ascites. Ascites cause uncomfortable swelling in the abdomen and can affect appetite and digestion. In severe cases, it extends into the chest cavity and interferes with breathing. It's also a risk factor for infection in the peritoneal cavity, resulting in peritonitis. The march towards ascites is straightforward. A heavy drinker damages their liver through years of heavy drinking; scar tissue stiffens the organ, and then they develop uncomplicated ascites. Hepatic decompensation, defined by ascites, hepatic encephalopathy, and portal hypertensive gastrointestinal bleeding, is an essential landmark in the natural history of cirrhosis. Even patients who are ambulatory and have cirrhotic ascites have a 3-year mortality rate of 50%. Patients with refractory ascites have a 1-year survival of less than 50%. A silent path characterizes the natural history of cirrhosis until decompensation when the progressive deterioration of liver function causes a rapid decline in life expectancy. The disease's early stage is 'compensated cirrhosis.' At the same time, the late one, defined by the appearance of ascites, bleeding, brain disease, or jaundice, is 'decompensated cirrhosis.' Due to the strikingly different survival rates, compensated and decompensated cirrhosis are considered two distinct clinical entities. Management of Uncomplicated Ascites:
Refractory ascites (RA) is the term for a patient's progressive lack of response to diuretic therapy (diuretic-resistant RA). Management of Refractory Ascites
Abdominal wall and inguinal hernias are common in patients with cirrhosis and ascites because of the incredible abdominal pressure from fluid buildup. Umbilical hernias grow in about 20% of patients with cirrhosis. Increased abdominal pressure from ascites, weakened abdominal muscles, and poor nutrition can rapidly enlarge hernias. Bacterial infections are present in approximately one-third of patients with cirrhosis who are hospitalized, a much higher prevalence than in those without cirrhosis. A familiar yet unique type of infection in this setting is infections that occur without an obvious source of infection. Bacterial translocation, the migration of bacteria from the gut to the bloodstream and other extraintestinal sites, and decreased host defenses have been implicated in the pathogenesis of these spontaneous infections. Other common infections in cirrhosis are urinary tract infections, pneumonia, and soft tissue.
Liver replacement is the best treatment for cirrhosis and cirrhotic ascites. Experts have different opinions about the referral timing, but physicians should contemplate it when a cirrhotic patient first presents with difficulty from cirrhosis, such as ascites. Because refractory ascites portends imminent death, time is critical. Alcoholism offers a mortal choice to those afflicted – quit drinking or die a miserable death at a young age. As it results from a complicated array of factors and is incredibly difficult to treat, it seems sad for humanity. Despite that, formal education about the consequences and other public health measures are essential to implement and would result in significant positive outcomes. 7/2/2024 0 Comments Death in the Center Aisles: The Alarming Health Effects of Ultra-Processed FoodsUltra-processed foods (UPFs), deceptively designed to be hyper-palatable, pose a significant threat to our health. Many of these products, due to their cunningly addictive potential, can hijack our neuronal mechanisms, making them difficult to resist. One can find UPFs in the center aisles of grocery stores, which charge vendors fees for shelf space. Crowding on those shelves are thousands of different concoctions fraudulently presenting themselves as food stuffed with chemicals and sugars, the stuff of slow suicide, and the path toward obesity and its sister ailments. Over 60 percent of caloric intake in the United States is from UPFs, a staggering statistic that should raise concern. These products are industrially processed substances (oils, fats, sugars, starch, and protein isolates) extracted or refined from whole foods. They contain little or no whole food and typically include flavorings, colorings, emulsifiers, and other cosmetic additives. This extreme processing creates foods so effortlessly absorbed by the body that they’re effectively predigested. Specialists claim food companies design these to overcome our satiety mechanisms, which pilot people to overindulge and gain weight. Ultra-processing degrades the internal structure or ‘food matrix,’ the intricate core structures that not only hold the raw materials together but influence the bioavailability of the nutrients, how our bodies use the food, and whether we feel full after eating it. Most ultra-processed products are poor in protein and micronutrients and can potentially supersede nutrient-dense, unprocessed, or minimally processed foods. This displacement could lead to a low protein and micronutrient intake during critical periods of growth and development. Studies confirm the harmful health effects of UPFs:
UPFs are manufactured via industrial processes, requiring large plants that cost a lot of money and are exclusively owned and run by large corporations. There’s gold in those center aisles, and these enormous corporations present calorie-dense, sweet, and salty foods that are impossible to resist. As the feedstocks for these ersatz foods are cheap and vendors sell many units of each, large corporations accrue huge profits and can sell their products at a lower price point than whole foods, thereby capturing the low-income market. Additionally, these food surrogates have exceptionally long shelf lives, as they only resemble food and are resistant to spoiling and decay. One of the most significant issues with UPFs is their ubiquitous added sugar, which manufacturers use as a flavor enhancer, flavor, and browning agent. Sugars turn brown with heat, providing a desirable visual hue to baked goods like bread and buns. Epidemiological data imply that the prevalence of metabolic conditions, such as obesity, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes, has heightened due to the excess consumption of these sugars.
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is cheaper than other types of sugar and is made in America. Corn is the biggest crop in the United States; we grow it far more than any other country. In 2021, American farmers produced 15.1 billion bushels, and the process is mechanized and efficient. Since the middle of the 20th century, mechanization, advances in agrichemicals (both fertilizers and pesticides), and genetic modification of crops have increased yields dramatically. The United States government is complicit in the UPF boom, as it encourages farmers to grow immense amounts of corn through subsidies, helping ensure that prices stay low and production stays high, making HFCS artificially cheap. In addition to annual crop insurance coverage, farmers can obtain commodity payments for growing corn (and other crops like soybeans, wheat, and cotton). In 2019, the federal government dispersed more than $2.7 billion in free funding to corn growers. This influences a system that creates a load of cheap corn ready for processing. The United States uses about one-third of its corn grown for animal feed, with another one-third to produce ethanol. The rest enters the food supply, much of it in the form of HFCS, which is more sugar for an already sick and overfed population. American adults now consume an average of almost twenty teaspoons of sugar daily, about sixty pounds of added sugar per year. Humans never encountered significant amounts of sugar in the natural world during their evolution, and thus, we couldn’t adapt to process them, so the sugar load shows in the health effects of this extreme consumption. Are there solutions? Of course, there are, but aside from education, much more is hopeless in the current business-friendly American political environment. One can envision an American population continuing to struggle, with public health continuing to deteriorate. Pursuing a similar approach to a contemporary public health problem, smoking, would likely work. Sin taxes to raise the costs of these phony foods would raise the prices higher than whole foods, which would steer consumers to whole foods. Requiring warning labels on these products, like warnings on cigarette packs, would be prudent. An intriguing and unique perspective is to view the United States rather than as a superpower directing the world's political and economic direction but as a colony, first among other colonies, serving the world's wealthiest. This conclusion, when viewed objectively, seems compelling and undeniable. This investigation aims to evaluate that thesis from a dispassionate viewpoint. A colony is over which a foreign nation or state extends or maintains control. If one assumes that the extremely wealthy serve the role of a foreign country or state that controls the governance and decision-making of the United States, then the premise is accurate. One of the basics for managing colonies is to control their governance and suck wealth from them, with little consideration for the welfare of the population. Consider the British Empire and its treatment of Ireland and India as a primary example. Ponder the Ottoman Empire, the Roman Empire, the German Empire, and the Japanese Empire, which were all similar in exploiting colonies and territories. The playbook is standard, and each population under control makes an inordinate sacrifice to make their masters rich. In this scenario, albeit novel, the rich have formed a central core of governance, extracting wealth from their subjects and enjoying inordinate power. The statistics are well-established, and the facts are undeniable:
Do the ultra-wealthy exert control over the US government? While direct evidence may be lacking, the influence of big money in federal elections, made possible by the Citizen's United ruling, has opened the door to 'dark money. ' It's becoming increasingly difficult to ignore that the one who pays the piper calls the tune. 'Dark money' refers to spending meant to influence political outcomes where one cannot discern the source of the money. Politically active nonprofits such as 501(c)(4) are under no legal obligation to disclose their donors, even if they spend to influence elections. Billionaires and large corporations pour money into these groups but don't suffer the repercussions of adverse public reviews. Opaque nonprofits give unlimited amounts of money to super PACs. While super PACs must disclose their donors, these groups are effectively dark money outlets, and no one can trace their funding back to the original donor. Dark money groups spent about $1 billion to influence elections in 2010 and 2020 when the Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court ruling opened the door to this secretive and nefarious tool for managing the United States government through controlling its elected officials. As the influence of big money increases, its control of the government helps it take more and leave less. Money seems a conscious entity at times, ever hungry for more, hence the increase in wealth at the expense of the impoverished. Federal legislation controlling political campaign contributions and eliminating dark money contributions would help immensely improve governance in the United States. The current decision gives money a voice, which is indecent and immoral. Reform of this is necessary to rid the governance of unholy influences. Federal legislation to control gifts to Supreme Court justices would also help. Recent disclosures of huge donations of luxury travel, vacations, and forgiven loans display the avarice and indecency of the wealthy and the corruption of the Supreme Court justices. Once again, the paymaster calls the tune, and the justices vote their way to the detriment of most citizens. The United States government, in turn, provides direction and enforcement to sovereign governments, including an immense navy that protects shipping worldwide. The remaining branches of the United States military, with a standing presence in over one hundred different countries, provide on-the-ground presence, enforcement, and the ability to deploy troops and quell uprisings. United States taxpayers pay for and staff an immense military organization. This organization keeps governments in power that favors the wealthy and keeps supply chains and markets stable and available for goods and services. The combined defense spending of the subsequent ten countries is less than the United States value, and defense spending accounts for half of the federal discretionary spending. Is anyone paying attention? There are unconsidered costs associated with the bloated defense budget and United States military presence worldwide, which are lost opportunity costs. Speculate, for instance, if the United States halved its defense budget, freeing up almost half a trillion dollars each year for investment in programs that create wealth rather than simply consuming it. Proxy wars keep the military sharp, evaluate new military systems, and expend old and outdated ammunition and military systems, so taxpayers must fund their replacement. Active proxy wars in Yemen and Ukraine allow for such, and who benefits? The wealthy finance and own military contractors, which are the benefactors of these proxy wars, and the poor starve and die as a result.
Who pays for this? United States taxpayers directly, but there are innumerable consequences. First, the consequences of sending people to war are substantial. People die, are maimed, and so are permanently physically disabled, and the mental health consequences are severe. These uncounted consequences are the biggest crime of the wealthy. An example is the supply of United States-manufactured F-16 fighters and Abrams battle tanks to Ukraine. Allied governments are replacing these with upgrades, so supplying them to Ukraine costs little, as they would be scrapped otherwise. Their replacements, notably the F-35 fighter, cost much more, and the companies that manufacture them are owned, in large part, by very wealthy people. The F16 is an aging and outmoded platform, and battle tanks are sitting ducks on a battlefield. Another consequence of the disparity of wealth is political unrest. The United States is a sick country in many ways, going through an existential political crisis. The wealthy don't mind that, as people screaming at each other about electric vehicles, windmills, and racism keep the people from the easy conclusion that they have much more in common than not, and the wealthy exploit their labor and take and hoard an inordinate share of wealth. The people who create the wealth are poor, while the wealthy fly their luxury jets to Davos and plan their next steps. The uber-wealthy will not give up their ill-gotten gains without a struggle. The first step toward reform would be an international agreement on baseline tax rates so the wealthy can't use tax havens to their advantage or compete with nations against one another. The money couldn't hide then and would be available as tax revenue. The Reagan regime sponsored two significant tax cuts: the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 and the Tax Reform Act of 1986, summarized by trickle-down and supply-side economics. The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 cut the highest personal income tax rate from 70% to 50%. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 cut the highest personal income tax rate from 50% to 38.5%, which decreased to 28% in trailing years. Reform of the federal tax code to roll back reductions in tax rates would make an immediate and generational change, allowing money for the betterment of the population. This additional revenue could eliminate childhood poverty, establish free post-secondary education for qualified students, and make strategic investments in public works producing wealth, such as high-speed rail, ports and harbors, airports, and improving energy infrastructure. Movement on these matters should not be tribal political. Reform and the resultant bettering of life for most Americans are not a matter of politics; it's a moral decision, and the proper course is not disputed. Hoarding wealth is immoral; condemning and correcting it should be easy. Another innovative measure that could help would be labeling Infotainment programs on politically branded media outlets such as Fox, MSNBC, and CNN. A mandatory disclaimer indicating the programs currently represented as news are editorial commentaries for entertainment would erode the credibility of such, and rightly so, and perhaps encourage viewers to seek unbiased coverage, would help the population lower their hatred of the 'other side,' with whom they share the exact core needs, ambitions, and desires. We are all one people. Our differences are finite and almost inconsiderable, while our commonalities are profound. Our enemy is the rich and their nefarious methods of gaining wealth and hoarding it. The media often presents simplistic but inflammatory stories in its pursuit of attention-grabbing headlines. In a time of political polarization, nothing is more intriguing than presidential polling reports. Unfortunately, these polls are often nothing more than clickbait, drawing lots of attention from folks on both sides of the political divide and causing unnecessary anguish and worry. With two aged and unappealing candidates lurching toward election day, Americans would prefer a dynamic and inspiring leader who could sharply contrast the candidates and move the country toward an optimistic vision. Instead, the election consists of two candidates locked in a feeble rematch, like a movie franchise at the end of its life. The closeness of the race is directly attributable to this unenviable matchup. There are many reasons to disregard polling numbers:
The noise of simple Presidential polling reports obscures more important election concerns for each party. Control of the United States Senate and House of Representatives is critical to the next administration, regardless of who wins the presidency. The Senate, of course, is responsible for approving nominations to the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court. The next President will nominate at least two Supreme Court justices and hundreds of federal judges. Two more conservative justices would continue a generational movement toward Christian Nationalist ideals, while two more liberal justices would mean a swing back toward progressive ideals. The election, particularly the Senate majority, is the prize in this election and the most crucial issue in the 2024 election. Similarly, the House of Representatives majority is critical to moving forward with any agenda in the next presidential term. Currently, the polling data shows both houses likely to be Republican-controlled. Given Trump's notoriously short coattails, this could easily swing Democratic, resulting in an impotent Trump presidency unable to effect any change requiring legislative approval and also besieged by impeachments. Alternately, should the Republicans control one or both legislative groups, they would similarly throttle the impact of a second Biden administration. Many have pointed to nonresponse bias as one of the potential reasons for significant polling errors, supposedly because Democrats were more likely to respond to pollsters than Republicans. Some pollsters theorized that the Republicans who answered may have differed in crucial ways from those who didn't. The 2020 election's record-setting turnout amid the COVID-19 pandemic posed another tricky situation as states expanded mail-in voting. ![]() Google Trends Values for the Term Presidential Polling Over the Past Year Demonstrate Intense Interest (Numbers represent search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region and time. A value of one hundred is the peak popularity for the term. A value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. A score of 0 means there was not enough data for this term) Beyond gathering a representative sample, election polling presents another challenge: gauging what the electorate will look like in each election cycle. This weighting means adjusting the sample to reflect anticipated voting turnout.
The problem with weighting is that it is more of an art than a science. After being burned badly in 2016, adjusting, and still being slightly inaccurate in 2020, polling experts will attempt to weight survey analyses more in Trump's favor, mitigating the risk of an embarrassingly erroneous poll. Different sampling and weighting techniques featured trade-offs and offered no silver bullets. As we look ahead to a November rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden, pollsters are under pressure to address the problems they faced in 2020 as they aim to hit a moving target amid great public scrutiny. Another factor in dismissing presidential polling data is the clickbait factor. Close races increase interest, and in the era of data analytics, a close poll draws interest, resulting in more money. There's a financial interest in presenting these results, often abbreviated. With margin of error rates in the 3% range, a close poll is meaningless as it usually means the race is a tie. The long and short is one should ignore clickbait poll reports and look for deeper and more nuanced data. Hypersonic weapons, a technology recently gaining significant attention, may not just be a product of hype. They offer missiles that can travel at speeds several times that of sound, with the ability to maneuver unpredictably, making them difficult to intercept. This unpredictability is their key strength, enabling them to bypass anti-missile systems and reach their targets with unprecedented speed, causing immense kinetic and explosive damage. Weapons that exceed five times the speed of sound are hypersonic weapons.
However, the reality of hypersonic weapons is not without its challenges. The high speeds at which they travel result in significant friction with the air, leading to heat, melting, and ablation of the missile material, as well as potential instrumentation malfunctions. These formidable technical hurdles might lead one to dismiss the publicized information from Russia and China as mere fluff and question the feasibility of hypersonic weapons as a viable weapon system. However, a look at the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) budget indicates that the defense department does not agree and is spending substantial resources to investigate materials that might buffer the effects of friction and make these nightmare weapons feasible. DARPA’s record of accomplishment is impressive. Technologies credited to DARPA research include the Internet, the Global Positioning System (GPS) network, the computer graphical user interface, or GUI (pronounced ‘gooey’), and the mouse, Tor, which stands for ‘the onion routing,’ for the dark web, Siri. Apple’s digital virtual assistant and stealth military planes, such as the B-2 Spirit bomber and F-117 Nighthawk fighter, through a collaboration with the Lockheed Corporation. Hypersonic weapon research is a priority at DARPA, based on a review of their most recent budget documents:
Is this funding an insurance policy just in case the Chinese or Russians have developed hypersonic technology? Or is it an endorsement that this is a potential weapons system the United States must have, both on offense and defense? The expenditures are likely a bit of both. The United States military has an immense amount of money to spend on all manner of programs, and this could be a way of defending against public criticism. A political opponent could point out that the United States has no plan or preparation for hypersonic weapons, and pointing to this research could deflect these comments. In addition, the technologies from this research could help other Defense Department weapons programs, such as the long-promised SR-72 Dark Star aircraft and drone aircraft capable of flying at extremely high speeds. High-temperature-resistant materials could help extend the capabilities of new platforms, and the preliminary research performed by DARPA could jump-start these capabilities. 6/12/2024 1 Comment Why Progressives Continue to Lose on Civil Rights and How to Create Equality for AllUnfortunately, the laudable American cause of racial equality has taken multiple steps back merely because skilled conservative propagandists dictated the terms of the argument. Dictating the terms of the argument leads to a strategic advantage in winning arguments. Often, the noble loses to the hateful merely because of poor tactics. The argument is lost before it starts. Progressive forces have engaged conservatives on their ground rather than using an asymmetric attack strategy. However, they are consistently failing, primarily due to ineffective and inconsistent messaging and a lack of focus on progressive legislation and challenges through the legal system. The situation is like the anti-abortion movement and the resultant truncation of abortion rights. Conservative forces are dismantling voting rights and voting access, eliminating legal abortion access, expanding private school vouchers, gerrymandering to reduce minority participation drastically, preparing to restrict contraception, and other corrosive actions. When one thinks about leaps forward in progressive actions, they are led by oppressed people rather than smug ‘thought leaders’ or wealthy folks similarly with no skin in the game. Unfortunately, racial and other categories fracture civil rights activism – Black, Asian, Latin, Jewish, and other groups such as the LGTBQ communities and disabled people of all kinds. Each is active for its respective group, often ethnic. The ethnic groups seem focused on moving themselves into a more desirable category – in other words, to become white or the equivalent of such, and then abandoning support for the remaining people. The power of the ‘majority minority’ concept is unity in method, collaboration, and coordination in methods and focus. And it is not happening. Some dismiss the idea of great leaders and defer to the notion that social and economic factors create leaders. Taking that argument to its logical conclusion, one would think that social and economic factors are not driving the desire for movement forward in civil rights. That is not the case. Where is the leadership? The NAACP president is Derrick Johnson. Have you ever heard of him? Recent leaders have included Bruce S. Gordon, Benjamin Todd Jealous, Dennis Courtland Hayes, and Cornell William Brooks, similarly leaders with no national presence. Long gone are the days when the NAACP, formerly the center of the civil rights movement, played a significant role in the narrative. Are there any nationally known civil rights leaders? No, there are not. The leadership vacuum is stunning. The problem is a lack of unity, unfocused efforts, and incredibly poor messaging by ‘leaders’ who are often self-appointed and engaged in hobby jobs. Melinda French Gates, who married and then divorced her way into incredible wealth, preaching about equality is laughable at its core. Yet, the public does not seem to perceive the hypocrisy in her and similar presentations. A discerning crowd would laugh these posers off-stage. Over the past decade, academics have produced thoughtful and vital works that deepen our understanding of racism, ethnocentrism, and social changes. These books and publications have advanced the discussion and have been quite helpful in advancing the cause of human rights. But academic ‘thought leaders’ and talking heads seem more like entrepreneurs aiming to pile on the interest in race and racism in the United States. Often, they work at institutions that promote racist policies like preferred admissions to legacy students and the nefarious admission by donation. The irony of arguing against racism from a platform paid by organizations with anti-progressive policies seems lost on them. When one’s paymaster is a pillar of and profiteer from institutionalized racism, arguments by their employees against racism are little more than a fig leaf to cover the ugly truth that the educational institution’s policies support racism. These presentations enable the funding institution to conceal its support of anti-progressive actions. As for the academics, liberals who support various civil rights groups as a self-branding exercise, and the smug wealthy who have never stretched a paycheck, they can be depended on to vote, but as far as meaningful action, they will provide little assistance. These groups appear to offer more in the way of difficulty than help at times. While their intentions are laudable, most people cannot relate to them, and their presentations support the idea that these people do not or cannot understand progressive movements. As a masking exercise in the George Floyd era, corporations and organizations, including colleges and universities, created diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. Similarly, these were fig leaves to hide structural barriers to equality. Corporations are now quietly walking DEI departments back as quickly as they created them. Similarly to academics preaching about civil rights, one sees lip service but no results. Corporations are the foundation of hyper-capitalism, and they will never be the answer to human rights concerns. There is a way to attack reactionary forces, dictate the terms of a successful engagement, and move forward with a country of opportunity for all. The root cause of inequality in the United States is the asymmetric income and net worth distribution due to hyper-capitalism, the current tax code, and the wealthy's excessive impact on political and legal processes. A critical missing part in the arguments for civil rights is that everyone has at most one degree of separation from someone with a dog in the fight. Consider the general population affected by inequality – aged people, Dreamers, immigrants, women, racial and ethnic minorities, the LGTBQ community, disabled people, and poor people. The most compelling strategy for movement forward in civil rights is amalgamating the affected into one much larger, inclusive group, merging the disparate groups into a much larger organization with focused leadership, messaging, and actions to move forward in civil rights—legislation, legal challenges, and support for political leaders who support the cause. This alternative would be to unite people unsatisfied with the current concentration of wealth at the expense of many people, combined with other special interest groups, such as feminists, along with the current array of ethnic and racial groups. The United States is incredibly wealthy, and plenty of resources exist to create wealth, including meaningful and rewarding jobs and care for the sick, disabled, and elderly. The United States is also a country that is struggling to fulfill its vision of all people being equal, especially in this age of hyper-capitalism. The wealth issue could unite a coalition of disparate groups currently divided, including many now in the populist Trump coalition, poor whites. Most activists in civil rights argue the problem is systemic racism and outright bigotry and bias, and those are pervasive. However, there is also the truth that absent the tax code revisions ushered in by the Reagan administration, the accumulation and hoarding of wealth would never have occurred and the welfare of all people, particularly oppressed minorities, would have been assured. The federal treasury would have supported investment in economic initiatives, lower tax rates for Americans with modest incomes, social welfare programs, a guaranteed basic income, government-funded college and trade school education, robust funding for late-life healthcare, and other initiatives such as child poverty reduction. To conduct such evolutionary change in the civil rights movement, articulate and credible leadership capable of articulating a vision and directing messaging and initiatives would be foundational. Are there such people around? Looking at the Democratic Party ranks, Elizabeth Warren, Corey Booker, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Barack Obama, Raphael Warnock, and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez come to mind. Unfortunately, despite a fair amount of seniority, none have moved the needle on meaningful reform. While an astute politician, Hakeem Jeffries, currently the minority leader of the House of Representatives, lacks the inspirational speaking skills to be the public-facing leader desired and necessary.
Dynamic leadership would come from the margins of the political structure instead of the current political party structure. The role of dark money in political processes has reinforced incumbency and throttled change, as reflected in the current static governance. Concept and labeling in these matters are critical. Consider the moniker chosen by anti-abortion activists – ‘pro-life,’ a masterful accomplishment. Who isn’t pro-life? And if you are not pro-life, aren’t you pro-death? Consider a name for this movement, such as the ‘Equality Project.’ This could flank reactionary and conservative Christian forces with a compelling name, central ethic, and consistent messaging to take the high ground in the argument. People who want equality and the trappings such as equal pay, access to public education, reform to the tax code, access to birth control, abortion, health care, freedom from hate, bigotry, and harassment, and legislation against the imposition of partisan religious values. All media, whether it be print, television, YouTube, or social media, is awash in Donald Trump stories, many of them spun in apocalyptic overtones. Clicks mean money, and Donald Trump means clicks, so much coverage is tinged with hysterical notes. Regardless of the clickbait, Donald Trump will never again be President of the United States, and not only because of his legal trials. Fundamental factors prohibit his election. The Republican party has been tottering for decades as demographics had ordained its end. For many years the party had been a relatively homogeneous party led by old-fashioned conservatives like John McCain and Mitt Romney. The old-school Republican party was primarily white, suburban, and rural, mainstream Christian conservatives. Today’s Republican Party would be more appropriately renamed the Trump Party, should truth in labeling be required. When Trump is gone, the party will fall into separate special-interest groups, as many have no allegiance to Republican Party traditions. Trump destroyed the Republican party, but his work did not involve witchcraft. Trump’s genius was his gifts for aggression, scattering personal insults, inspiring anger, dog-whistling racist appeals, and encouraging a sense of lower-class white grievance and hatred. As much as those who oppose him hate him, his followers lust for the emotional fix of hating the groups and people he demonizes. Trump is the most polarizing character in modern history. Absent moral convictions or any apparent central belief system, Trump cobbled together a winning presidential campaign by enlisting new voters and appealing to various single-issue voter groups. The parts of his winning coalition included avowed racists, evangelical Christians, anti-abortion types, militia members, sovereign citizens, Christian Nationalists, gun enthusiasts, and the remaining bulk of his voters, who were educated, conservative white people. While many people discount the importance of micro-constituencies, they can determine election results in swing states as the electorate became all too aware in 2016. Grabbing a few groups of single-issue voters made a difference in 2016 and made 2020 a close call. Once one understands the current Republican constituency is composed of many groups of single-issue voters, the picture morphs into a clear focus. While many consider some of the more cringy groups as conspiracy theorists, that’s a remarkably uninformed look. Almost no one believes there was any significant voter fraud, that there’s a conspiracy of anarchists known as Antifa trying to overthrow the government, that there’s a person known as Q who provides riddles about a baby-eating liberal elite class of pedophiles, or that Donald Trump is an honest and honorable person. Trump himself doesn’t believe any of that tripe. Responding to his nonsense means engaging on his ground, a premise that somehow acknowledges his statements are worthy of being refuted. Not one person who is whole of mind believes any of this combative gibberish, and debating it gives it a patina of dignity it does not deserve. Debating a Trump follower is similarly fruitless as they merely spout Trump’s talking points. An election fraud of the scale required to deny Trump the Presidency in 2020 would have required the cooperation of tens of thousands of election insiders, hoards of state and federal judges, and additional thousands of journalism personnel. Such did not happen; even a faint semblance of such never occurred. The so-called conspiracy theory constituency is a group of people who mimic Trump’s approach of spewing nonsensical statements and claims intended solely as an insult. One might as well argue with a flat-earther as debate a Trump fanatic about the election fraud, Marxists in government, or the soaring legal abilities of Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, and Sidney Powell. Their statements are merely juvenile arguments not worthy of a middle school student. In the end, facts matter; in this case, they are not alternative facts. The Department of Justice has presented what appears to be an airtight case in the Mar a Lago documents case, and the other forthcoming federal indictments will likely be similarly detailed, with many witnesses agreeing to provide testimony in return for favorable consideration. At one time, the party apparatuses prevented eccentric candidates from achieving nominations; think of George Wallace, Ross Perot, and Pat Buchanan. The hollowed-out status of the Republican Party allowed Trump the entree to enter the festivities. The vast and rather undistinguished group of primary challengers in 2016, along with Trump’s unabashed courting of fundamentalist Christians, enabled a hatchet man like Trump to pick them off, one by one, until no one was left. And despite the opportunity, no apparent strong candidate exists to challenge the zombie-like 2024 Trump candidacy, giving him a plausible onramp to the nomination for an incredible third time. However, it’s certain Trump will spend months of the campaign season sitting in the dock in one or more criminal trials, severely limiting his time while he takes negative shots virtually daily, eroding his already tenuous position. Despite media predictions of a cakewalk to the nomination, Trump faces immense obstacles, and his ascendancy to the nomination is uncertain. While there’s an odd satisfaction for many in poking fun at Donald Trump and his followers, and several comics have made careers of his reign on the national stage, there’s a significant and more fundamental problem. The same dynamics that made the Republican Party ready for demolition are prevalent in the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party has no dynamic or inspiring leadership in senior positions and not much in the way of bench strength. Messaging is also a considerable problem, likely due to unimaginative leadership’s fear of trying anything new. And the party appears terrified of taking new and inventive approaches to solving old problems. The United States federal government, particularly the Justice Department, seems similarly ineffective. Despite Trump inciting a crowd to commit mayhem in the January 6 insurrection, conspiring with numerous people, including attorneys and elected officials, to defraud the United States and remain president, stealing classified documents, and then obstructing justice by not complying with a federal subpoena, no federal charges other than the Florida indictment have yet been forthcoming. However, an indictment for January 6 activities is coming shortly. The senescence of the parties dovetails with the senility of the federal government’s law enforcement institutions and the seeming lack of courage to take moral action. Seemingly the Justice Department decided to wait, figuring Trump would go away. But there’s too much money and fame in the Presidency and even a campaign for the office for Trump to ignore. And, as Trump spins on toward even more criminal indictments for crimes he appears to have committed, his quest for the office seems to be more an alternative between winning and going to jail. Winning implies a self-pardon for federal crimes, and losing, it seems, means a stretch in the Graybar Hilton. If one thinks the January 6 insurrection was a big deal, wait until the Justice Department corners Trump with a full deck of convictions related to election interference and, quite possibly, seditious conspiracy. The end of Trump and Trumpism will likely be a frenzy of hate and violence. That’s no surprise, however, as the Trump movement itself has been characterized by those sentiments. Oddly, the flaccid reactions of the Justice Department reinforce the right-wing narrative that the law arbitrarily imposes justice and the elites are immune from prosecution. Many pundits have warned about the next Trump, insinuating another far-right provocateur could take a page from his playbook and cater to racist constituencies to gain power. That hasn’t happened because the bench strength of the Republican Party is so vacuous. The androgynous would-be leaders Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Mike Pence, and Lindsey Graham don’t have the right stuff. A properly pugnacious Ron DeSantis attempted to copy the hate formula and failed, a political journeyman destroyed by a master. Trumpian candidates such as Herschel Walker, Dr. Oz, and Judge Roy Moore learned that merely being eccentric and spouting bizarre statements was insufficient to get to the show. Offensive shock jocks such as Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene managed to get into the spotlight, but primarily by grabbing seats not coveted by authentic candidates. Madison Cawthorne discovered one could be a highly admired raving lunatic but being gay was impermissible.
Will there be another Trump? Many will likely attempt to catch the Trump lightning in a bottle, but the possibility is faint. Before he ran in 2016, Trump had a public presence for many years, including a remarkable run as the emcee of a purported reality television show that ranked number one in ratings for many years, featuring him for 14 seasons. Trump also tried on conspiracy theories for many years, referencing his affection for birtherism, perfecting his dog-whistling expertise even before he declared his candidacy. Trump is an unmatchable seminal figure. The point about the Republican Party is it must stay far-right and embrace Trump or fall apart, explaining the coddling of weirdnesses by otherwise rational politicians like Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy. McConnell could have likely powered through an impeachment during the second impeachment trial and ended the circus forever. McConnell knew this was suicide for the Republican Party and deferred action. The intriguing question is what will happen to a moribund Democratic Party, although the comparison is imperfect. The party has moved to the right during the Trump era, with little legislative accomplishment or new ideas, content to simply court socially conservative voters, especially those mythical suburban housewives. The bench strength is similarly bland, aged, and bereft of energy and resolve. Can the Democratic Party elect an ancient, albeit nominally effective, Joe Biden? That is more than likely. Kamala Harris as the president-in-waiting seems an uninspiring choice, but her office is mainly ceremonial, and perhaps there is more charisma in her than meets the eye. Aside from the ascendancy of Hakeem Jeffries to the Speaker of the House role, there doesn’t appear to be much bench strength development in either the Senate or the House, and the state government offices similarly lack energetic candidates with new ideas. A more significant factor in Trump’s electability is his role in overturning Roe v Wade by packing the Supreme Court with Christian Nationalist justices. Abortion rights are a polarizing issue, and Trump’s repayment to his fervent Christian voters will come back and cost him at the ballot box, making election impossible. This factor has been little discussed in infotainment programs that pass as network news, as it draws fewer views than more inflammatory rhetoric. Still, it is an immense obstacle to Trump and any Republican candidate. There’s a real possibility the 2024 election could feature Trump running as an independent candidate. One can easily envision a scenario where a hobbled Trump totters into the Republican Convention and fails to gain the nomination. With no allegiance or loyalty to anyone but himself, Trump would almost certainly run as a third-party candidate, thereby splitting the Republican vote and ensuring a Democratic landslide. While not yet a likelihood, there are many miles to go before the primary season, and it looks like a bumpy road for Trump. Humanity is in a dark age of medical knowledge, particularly in dealing with the worst disorders, clinical depression, its traveling partner, anxiety, and the end-of-life horror of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and other dementias. Older adults with dementia are confined to skilled nursing warehouses, wandering hopelessly in their memoryless journey to death. Psychiatrists, physicians, and therapists often seem little more than witch doctors in white coats with mountains of pills to dispense, tablets that supply little more help than placebos. There is hope, however, in recently published research using hallucinogenic compounds. Clinical researchers are providing discoveries demonstrating psychedelic compounds can improve neuronal connectivity, stimulate neurogenesis, reinstate brain plasticity, decrease inflammation, and improve cognition. Research is in its adolescence, though, and it is not time to dial into the dark web and self-prescribe. Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) is a compound first synthesized in 1938. It is an ergot alkaloid extracted from the rye fungus Claviceps Purpurea. The politically inspired War on Drugs, started by President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s, effectively stopped all clinical LSD research. LSD is not just a recreational drug; the compound may be another tool to help resolve depression and treat other conditions. Scientists in the United States have only recently restarted clinical LSD research. This exploration is in its early stages but points to LSD as a potential agent to encourage neurogenesis, the growth of nerve cells, in the human brain. Stress and depression, as well as other psychiatric illnesses, cause structural changes in the human brain. These alterations result from atrophy and loss of neurons and glia in specific limbic regions. Dendritic loss in neurons is a common feature of stress-related psychiatric disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, and drug addiction. Depression is associated with structural alterations in brain zones that manage mood and emotion. Animal studies of chronic stress and postmortem examinations of brain tissue from depressed human subjects show atrophy and loss of neurons and glial cells. These findings suggest that depression and stress-related mood disorders may be neurodegenerative ailments. Eliminating stress and the administration of conventional antidepressants can block and even reverse the progression of these structural alterations. The logic of using LSD to reverse brain atrophy and improve neurologic conditions is captivating. For example, if depression causes the atrophy of specific brain parts, then changing that process could be the answer or at least a part of a solution. That logic, however, requires a lot of assumptions, and those assumptions might well be only partially valid. Moreover, the compound is poorly understood clinically, and research is, at best, in its preliminary stages. Psychoplastogens, small molecules capable of rapidly encouraging cortical neuron growth, have been posited to cause beneficial effects on behavior by mending these changes. LSD, a psychoplastogen, may promote sustained growth of cortical neurons, even after limited treatment. Modern-day studies in the United Kingdom and Switzerland include neuroimaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). LSD administration is associated with extensive alterations in functional brain connectivity, measuring the activities between different brain parts. These results agree with theories that mind-altering treatments exercise their effects by impeding the cerebral sorting of external and internal data. Taking low doses of LSD, called microdosing, has hit mainstream conversation. A microdose is a sub-threshold dose, meaning it's on the threshold of feeling. Microdosers aim to brighten their mood and increase cognitive abilities, not to feel 'high.' Unfortunately, there is no consensus on what constitutes a microdose, and the subjective and perceptual effects of weighted doses are anecdotal and so problematic. Positive or negative empirical results about microdosing are debatable, as studies involve only a limited number of doses and have fundamental flaws in their design and the resultant data. The continued criminalization of psychedelics for public health reasons appears without support. Despite anti-drug propagandists' attempts to foul the image of hallucinogens, they seem strangely safe. A recent population study of 130,000 adults in the United States failed to find evidence for a link between hallucinogenic use and mental health problems. Lifetime psychedelic use was associated with significantly reduced odds of past-month psychological suffering, past-year suicidal thinking, past-year suicidal preparation, and past-year suicide effort. In contrast, lifetime illicit use of other drugs was primarily associated with an increased likelihood of these outcomes. These findings provide evidence that psychedelics are not causal elements in suicide and mental health issues, contrary to commonly held beliefs. The mechanism of AD includes the presence of amyloid-β and tau deposition in the brain, hippocampal atrophy, and heightened rates of hippocampal degeneration over time. In AD, there is a reduction in global brain glucose metabolism in frontal and temporal-parietal areas. In addition, all known genetic and environmental risk factors for AD are associated with increased inflammation, suggesting that reducing inflammation could be a target for preventing AD.
Early on, researchers understood psychedelics could be helpful agents for dealing with dementia. As a result, pharmaceutical companies developed ergot alkaloids to help mental recognition and other symptoms related to AD. Medical practitioners prescribe the FDA-approved ergot-derived drug ergoloid mesylates (Hydergine®), which confers minor improvements in AD treatment. In addition, physicians use Nicergoline (Sermion®), another ergoline alkaloid, to treat dementia. Ergot alkaloids are assumed to enhance the blood flow to the brain and modulate the neurotransmitter function. Recent research findings are fascinating and provide compelling evidence for more detailed research. This research may result in clinical breakthroughs to help treat and possibly resolve debilitating psychiatric conditions. LSD and similar hallucinogens appear to provide little risk when used recreationally, and decriminalization likely provides little public health risk. Regardless, empirical research is in its infancy, and the self-administration of these compounds to treat complicated clinical conditions is ill-advised. 6/26/2022 0 Comments THE Election of Socialist Gustavo Petro as President of Colombia and the United States in the Twilight of Its EmpireThere is a ‘pink tide’ in Latin America. The pink tide is a massive new wave of socialism with climate justice at its core, and it aims to transform the economies and lives. Colombia recently elected its first left-wing President, former Bogota Mayor and Senator Gustavo Petro. Petro gained power through the long-term development of grassroots connections with under-empowered demographic groups and added to the ‘pink wave’ movement in Latin America. This poses the possibility for significant changes in South and Central America Colombia fast facts:
Colombia has long suffered some of the most dramatic income and wealth disparities. The Income share held by the lowest 10% of the country is less than 1%, while the top 10% has a 42% share. More than one-third of its population lives below the poverty line. Despite immense resources, Colombia’s gross domestic product per capita has remained static and significantly dropped during the COVID pandemic. The combination of young people's high unemployment, the dramatic wealth disparities, and the pandemic's effects immensely helped the country's civil unrest. Another critical piece in the movement left in Colombia came in 2019 when President Duque proposed dropping the minimum wage for workers under 25 years old. Protestors formed a national strike that stopped commerce. Strikes and protests continued through the COVID pandemic. In 2021 the federal government proposed higher taxes and ignited even more public outrage. People demanded better education, public transportation, and healthcare. According to the United Nations, the Colombian government responded with violence, murdering at least 44 protesters and injuring hundreds more. Non-State armed groups killed 255 people in 66 massacres in Colombia in 2020 and killed 120 human rights defenders. While the federal government was not directly responsible for these attacks on indigenous and other under-empowered groups, the United Nations claimed they had not done enough to mitigate them. Former Bogota Mayor Gustavo Petro and his vice president, environmental activist Felicia Marquez recently became Colombia’s first left-wing, progressive leaders. The election had the highest turnout in Colombian history. However, their election was not an outlier. Years of grassroots organizing and coalition construction preceded. The campaign proposals by Petro were still relatively modest, featuring tax reform to provide the government with more money for its education and health systems, along with ending Colombia’s fossil fuel needs through a ‘just energy transition.’
Grassroots organizing and coalition building overcame the immense inertia of the right-wing establishment. Petro’s rivals highlighted his past involvement in the M19 rebel group, which demobilized in the 1990s, as a smear tactic. They attempted to characterize him as a buffoon unprepared for the office. Regardless, Petro and Marquez built strong ties with Indigenous communities, Afro-Colombians, peasants, women, gender-diverse people, and other repressed subgroups and won the office. Petro and Marquez’ election win will be an immense change in Colombia and throughout Latin America for several reasons. One of Petro’s major platform items was his intention to make Colombia central in the global fight against climate change. He also focused on proposals to better the living standards of Colombians, and another environmental item, preserving the Amazon rainforest. Petro encourages other progressive leaders in Latin America to make ending their countries’ dependence on fossil fuels a part of their agendas and interlace it with economic and social justice. Petro calls for banning unconventional oil fields, fracking, and offshore oil wells and ending all fossil fuel exploration. All these actions are integral to the just energy concept. This just energy transition that Colombia will try to implement provides environmental movements across Latin America and the remainder of the world with a model to adapt to their efforts. The inertia of a moribund economy and the other existing factors will undoubtedly be impossible for Petro’s government to overcome other than incrementally. Pundits might toss around overworn phrases such as facing significant headwinds. Regardless, the overall movement of Latin America is following a story arc like the development of liberal democracies in European history. Undoubtedly these movements will act to diminish the influence of the United States in the region, which is likely an excellent thing for Latin America. Conversely, it is not such a good thing for the United States. Arguably, when the United States headed to the Middle East for its forever wars, its attention to Latin America waned. In the meantime, Latin America has diversified trade partners and invited China as its banker and natural resource development partner in many instances. Changing that, if possible at this point, would involve heightening attention and connections for a similar twenty-year period to pay off. But, with the United States currently in a revolution and turmoil at home, it’s doubtful in the twilight of its empire that it will make that effort. |
InvestigatorMichael Donnelly investigates societal concerns with an untribal approach - to limit the discussion to the facts derived from primary sources so the reader can make more informed decisions. Archives
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