When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God. Leviticus 19: 33-34
Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy. 1 Corinthians 14: 1
Dad could tell the future. He was a Navy pilot who took off and landed on aircraft carriers, sometimes at night. His time to defend America was long ago. Aircraft carriers were then new to war, and pilots crashed their planes and helicopters a lot. Until the kinks got worked out over a period of many years, the Navy lost about one out of four pilots to mishaps at sea.
Dad predicted a number of crashes. Soon the pilots in his squadron wouldn’t fly if he got a “bad feeling.” His commanders respected him. Over time, good fitness reports and promotions led him to command an anti-submarine, jet-helicopter squadron during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Afterward, the Navy rated his squadron (HS-1) the safest combat aviation group on America’s east coast. Not one man was lost during his command.
Dad went with his feelings; when he got that “bad feeling”, he always flew the mission himself, or led it, rather than risk the lives of his men. Dad rose rapidly in the ranks, holding many important positions, not only in the Navy but also at the NSA (National Security Agency). Near the end of his career, a president appointed him to lead another intelligence agency not known to the public.
Navy fliers I talked with who knew dad said he was the best pilot in the United States Navy. He could fly anything under any conditions. Navy officers don’t lie. It’s against their Code of Conduct. Of course, I believed every word.
My dad was fearless to the very end of his ninety-one years of life. He once ate a half pound of spoiled cheese, because it was a gift, and he refused to embarrass the giver. The cheese smelled the way cheese smells when it has been ripened at the bottom of an army latrine; I almost threw up from the stench, but dad gulped it down like porterhouse steak. He grabbed the cheese with both hands, tore it in half, and inhaled a deep breath to savor the aroma. I was amazed that the rancid mess didn’t instantly kill him.
Today, many people seem to be having apocalyptic fears. People I don’t know well, who seem normal, have told me about vivid dreams they have had about good and bad things. Sometimes their visions trouble them. The thought has crossed my mind that a lot of folks are teetering on the edge of insanity. It’s sad and troubling.
The election added a lot of stress to people’s lives, did it not? Election tampering by foreign intelligence agencies ran rampant and was obvious to anyone who was paying attention. The United States has an unfortunate reputation for election tampering in other countries, which goes back many decades; our recent election seemed to give other countries a golden opportunity for pay-back, which some inflicted brazenly — perhaps as a warning for us to back-off; to stand-down. Who knows?
Anyway, the election is done; Trump won; Hillary won the popular vote but lost the electoral college. In the countryside of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan (among other states) Trump won by huge margins never before seen in the free world, ever. His biggest leads came in districts with electronic voting machines. These margins overwhelmed the leads racked up by Democrats in urban areas.
It was a strange election that lasted a very long time. Many “unprecedented” things happened during the contest that no one in America has ever experienced before. Is it any wonder that some people feel unhinged by an outcome that makes no statistical sense; by an outcome no one saw coming?
Republicans now control the entire federal government; they control enough state governments to enable easy passage of amendments to the Constitution, should the GOP decide to change America in that way.
Some people want to know: what’s coming next; what sudden shocks might rock their world?
How would I know?
Yes, I took the time to compile a list of bad things that could happen. Yes, it may have been a waste of time; maybe my effort might have been better spent helping the poor.
With GOP leaders like these, what things could possibly go bad?
It’s possible that none of the bad things in the list below will happen. Maybe some will. My contribution to understanding the future is simply to point out things that have a chance of happening, which people may not have considered, or yet read about, or even shared (if they have thought about them).
My blog is read by not very many people; stilI, I felt compelled to write these “heads-up” warnings to help any curious humans (or bots) who might accidentally stumble onto my essay; to open the eyes of the few and the lucky, so that they might better understand what’s coming next; to inoculate some of them — especially the people I love — against the despair that can overwhelm any one of us when we find ourselves ambushed by the bad things in our future.
So here is my list of BAD THINGS. I might add to it from time to time if my imagination runs amok, or freaked-out people tell me scary stuff.
Here it is:
— The First Family refuses to live in the White House.
— Blacks and women start disappearing from news shows, replaced by white men.
— Athletes and entertainers step forward to confess: yes, they voted for Trump.
— Evidence emerges: The birth certificate was faked. Congress starts an investigation.
— The military draft of young people is resurrected.
— The USA drops a neutron bomb on a city for the very first time.
— The United Nations disbands.
— Russia reestablishes its control over Eastern Europe.
— The Philippines makes a military alliance with China.
— Donald Trump resigns.
— Mike Pence becomes president.
— A hot year kills hundreds of millions.
— Many popular foods become unavailable.
— The president’s wife reveals that he is gay.
— The Mueller investigators reveal that the new president is an agent of the Russian government — hand-picked by Paul Manafort.
— A major volcanic eruption inside the USA kills hundreds of thousands.
— The Post Office is privatized.
— The Veterans Administration is privatized.
— Social Security is privatized.
— Medicare is privatized.
— Prisons are privatized.
— Public education is privatized.
— Tax deductions are eliminated, raising taxes on the poor and middle-class.
— Inheritance taxes are eliminated, locking-in a permanent aristocracy.
— Unlawful assembly is redefined: three or more unrelated people who gather in a public space for any purpose other than private discourse shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, unless they have in their possession a permit signed by the president of the United States.
— A 1954 law denying tax exemptions to churches who endorse politicians is repealed.
— The WALL is retooled to restrain fleeing Americans.
— The Constitution is amended to eliminate all forms of naturalizationto block any pathway to citizenship for children bred by foreigners.
— An insect species is destroyed by a gene-driver released from an unregulated lab.
— Chipmunks are rendered extinct by a second gene-driver accident.
— Internet access is placed under federal regulation.
— SCOTUS hands over abortion policy to the states.
— SCOTUS rules that businesses have a constitutional right to choose who can buy their products and services, and who cannot.
— State governments add lithium to city water supplies to raise the spirits of unhappy citizens.
— Congress mandates that electronic nano-chips be injected into the buttocks of every person to help ICE track, identify, and differentiate people’s movements and immigration status.
— Congress declares that felony unlawful assemblyis ”from this time forward” a capital offense.
— The 2020 election is postponed until ”we can figure out just what the hell is going on.”
— GOP controlled state legislators amend the constitution to fight terrorism; they rescind the Bill of Rights.
Disclaimer by the Editorial Board: The following story, No Good Deed… is a work of fiction by Billy Lee. Events and persons depicted in the story exist only in the imagination of the writer and have no connection to living persons or actual events.
The old woman ahead of me in the checkout lane at the grocery sat in a battery-operated three-wheeler and struggled to move her purse off her wrist into the front basket. She couldn’t do it and gave up. She was grossly overweight; she couldn’t maneuver — her fat arms were black and blue right down to her fingernails. Diabetes, I thought.
I wondered if I should help, but she soon stopped and let the purse dangle where it was, on her wrist. It was a bad angle. It would be awkward for me to reach for it; and besides, it was her purse, a personal item she might try to defend. It was a good bet she fought this fight every time she shopped. No big deal. Let it go.
It was her own cart that she sat in, from the looks of it. She probably had used it for years. Held together by duct tape and bubble gum, it was dirty; a yellowed eggnog color; depressing to look at.
The cashier at the register — a black college-aged girl — finished the tally; the old woman sitting in the beat-up cart fumbled unsuccessfully to open her purse; the line of shoppers behind us continued to grow. It was busy. It was Christmas. I was in a hurry. What the heck… I reached over to the card reader and inserted my card. I’ll get this, I said. Merry Christmas.
The old lady looked up at me and said, thank you.
You look like you have enough to worry about, I said, beaming. We’ll make it one less thing.
Yes, she said. I worry about so many things these days. She fell silent and looked down. Something drippy fell from her mottled face into her lap. The eyes of the young black woman working the cash-register grew large and began to sparkle from tears, which she tried to hold back.
She would tell me later she had just immigrated from Ghana, Africa. She has stories, that girl, I would think to myself. The African regained her composure and gathered the old lady’s items.
As the cashier and myself exchanged a sympathetic look, the old woman with the black and blue arms and drippy face reached for a button on her cart and sped away. She didn’t remember to collect her receipt. I don’t think she felt embarrassed. Maybe she thought I might change my mind; make her pay for her own groceries, or something.
The cashier rang up my stuff. It was all good. I started to get that warm glow one gets when they’ve done something for someone, especially a stranger.
A melodic accent from somewhere out of Africa interrupted my reverie, Oh, look! Here is a bag of things. Are they yours? I think I forgot to give them to that person.
We checked the contents against the old woman’s receipt. Yup, they weren’t mine.
The cashier grabbed the bag and ran down the long aisle of the store to search for an old woman driving a beat-up mobility scooter with a missing bag of groceries. The folks in line behind me started to stir. A few threw unfriendly looks in my direction. My warm feeling turned to heat, then dread.
The cashier returned; she hadn’t found the customer. Since I had the receipt, I decided to take the groceries. If the old lady returned, she would be unable to convince anyone the groceries were hers, I reasoned.
I began to worry. It was Christmas. Undercover cops — temporaries with little training or empathy — lurked pretty much everywhere. They loved to patrol the parking lots, someone once told me.
What if store security decided to stop the old lady in the busy lot? What if they intercepted her before she could rendezvous with whoever was driving her home? Maybe she lived alone nearby, and there was no one to escort her. Minus the receipt, they might arrest her for shoplifting.
They might already have her in a little room somewhere, hidden from the public, to interrogate her. That’s why we couldn’t find her. I loosened my collar as my mind began to race. I felt sweat bead on the top of my head.
She would notice — under the intense pressure of questioning — one bag of groceries was missing. And she couldn’t produce the receipt. He took it, she’d realize. It was the old man! I could hear her screaming. She was cursing me — the old codger who had stood behind her and had the audacity to jump into her business for no good reason.
Of course she had the money to pay for everything, she screamed at the SWAT team as they held her down; as they restrained her. Of course she did. She didn’t need that smelly stranger’s credit card. And he stole a bag of her groceries! Arrest him! It was he, the grey-beard, who robbed her; it was he who took her receipt; it was he who confused her — and the cashier! He got her arrested. It was he, he, he — an old FART! — not her!
I imagined her anguish. By now she must realize that she would spend Christmas in prison; behind bars; isolated; alone; cold; away from family and a warm fire in the hearth — for I just knew she had no money for lawyers or bail.
I thought I could hear her weeping. I could hear her, but I would never be able to find her. No one else could hear her cries for mercy, no one would ever step forward to defend her and confirm her story. Take her out of here, I heard the arresting officer boom. Thief!
My parting words to the cashier were short enough. I hurried to my car and drove out of the busy parking lot, quickly, furtively. I cast a side-long glance into my rear-view mirror. No flashing lights. No siren. An old red van with a tree tied on top pulled up behind me.
It was Christmas; the most wonderful time of the year.
You have heard that it was said to the men of old, ‘You shall not kill; and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment.’
Jesus
The wars of Israel were the only ‘holy wars’ in history… there can be no more wars of faith. The only way to overcome our enemy is by loving him. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Those who have waged war in obedience to the divine command (or in conformity with His laws) have represented…the wisdom of government and… put to death wicked men; such persons have by no means violated the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Saint Augustine
The United States deploys drones like the Scan Eagle and the Predator (which can dispatch Hellfire missiles) to kill people by remote control anywhere in the world.
Readers might notice that the quotes by the three Christians cited above the picture don’t agree about murder. Killing is a moral controversy.
The subject is even more contentious between leaders of religions outside Christianity. It’s a strange thing. In the United States where Christianity is mainstream, pastors sometimes lead the charge towardwar; some endorse capital punishment, so it’s confusing.
Can killing people be a good thing? The Catholic Church developed Just War doctrines to permit good people to kill the wicked under certain carefully crafted conditions such as proportionality, just cause, and last resort.
From my point of view, ideas of Just War fall under the umbrellas of self-justification, rationalization, and delusion. Will anyone admit the obvious? All countries are ruled by elites, and the USA is no exception.
Elites get to be elite through in-fighting, war, intrigue, and politics. They are, for the most part, desensitized to violence. The morality of religion is of no use to them except when it helps to consolidate and enhance their prestige and power. If a philosophy like Just War helps to alleviate the guilt feelings of soldiers they order into combat, they are fine with it.
Elites are, by process and definition, really good at fighting to maximize their advantages. Over time elites become a law unto themselves and develop their world view and their reasons for doing things, which are usually not well-understood by the average people who serve them.
Who wants to take on people who can really hurt them?
In most places, people go-along with their elites to get along. It’s less stressful and much safer to pretend that average people’s best interests are at the heart of decisions made by the wealthy and the powerful — especially as they negotiate deals, wage wars, and craft treaties.
Who wants to take-on people who can really hurt them should they ever choose to?
For their part, our elites tolerate religion, because in the United States at least Christianity seems to encourage citizens to be docile and compliant. Preachers and pastors encourage their flocks to turn the other cheek and obey authorities.
Christian evangelicals don’t challenge military power, and they generally oppose government policies designed to curb the power of individuals who accumulate vast wealth. Some encourage gun ownership and participation in wars — confusing non-Christians who might be under the impression that Jesus advocated pacifism and non-violence.
In the United States, the wealthy have built a powerful military and have used it to kill many millions of people during the past seventy-five years (the modern era). Much of the killing has occurred during periods when the United States did not formally declare war.
A lot of the killing has taken place under continuing resolutions like the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which helped to justify the long war in Vietnam.
Another is the AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force) — passed by Congress on September 14, 2001 — which provided the legal authority for the United States to use military power in perpetuity against any individual, group, or country who dared threaten it.
Only Barbara Lee(no relation to Billy Lee) of California voted against AUMF, the perpetual war resolution of 14 September 2001. President George W. Bush signed it into law on September 18.
Congressional consent is no longer required to wage war. Military force is now forever justified whenever and wherever the United States is threatened. The Congressional authorization of 2001 makes it easier for the USA to kill people, including American citizens living out of country.
One estimate by The Hill — a news organization whose on-line stories are widely read by members of Congress — places the number of killings by USA drones operating outside of war zones since 2001 at 2,400.
TheBillyLeePontificator.com could not independently confirm the estimate, which one of its editors characterized as “bordering on the ridiculous.”
It defies common sense that high numbers of assassinations of civilians could occur outside of warzones without arousing a profound backlash by people of goodwill, she insisted.
Is she right? Does anyone outside of government really know?
History seems to say it’s possible. Over the years the USA has invaded and tried to overthrow many countries, often under the pretext of retrieving businesses that were seized by their host countries.
In most places, the United States has succeeded — temporarily — like in Iran in 1953 where it secured natural gas and oil reserves; in Guatemala in 1954 when it took back the nationalized United Fruit Company; and in Chile in 1973 when it repossessed certain mines that were producing strategic metals.
The problem for most countries is that after the USA retrieves its property it moves in to take over the country, usually behind the scenes using native-born (and ruthless) dictators loyal to the United States.
USA backed fighters killed and wounded 5,000 Cubans during the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961. Cuba captured 1,200 who they added to several thousand political detainees in a trade for medicine.
Every once in a while, takeover fails, like in Cuba in 1961 and in Vietnam in 1972. In those countries, strategic resources were never at stake, so the losses didn’t seem to affect our safety or our economic security. Still, after the fights ended, the USA worked overtime to make sure it ruined their economies by deploying embargos and unleashing its leverage over international banking.
The USA ignited recent wars in the Middle East — Kuwait, Iraq, Syria — for various reasons and continues them to this day. The United States fights terrorists in undeclared wars permitted by AUMF resolutions, which allow it to kill enemies anywhere in the world by remote control using un-humaned drones.
It’s pointless to argue whether the killings are justified or moral, smart or stupid. Many families have been ruined by drones and by war. They don’t care about smart or stupid. They just hurt; survivors wonder what might have been were their loved ones allowed to live.
So, how many people have we killed? How many hurt? How many wounded? How many amputees; how many blinded; how many deafened; how many disfigured? How many orphans? How many widows? How many dreams crushed; how many aspirations demolished?
The picture reveals the lethality of Hellfire missile-strikes. The heat cooks flesh off bones of bystanders who get too close.
How many loves-of-a-lifetime have been dashed on America’s battlefields?
Unless God Himself reveals it someday, we will never know, because during the era of Bush-senior and his general, Norman Schwarzkopf (of the renown German family) no one bothered to track body-counts; no one kept statistics on the maimed and crippled.
Our military says it doesn’t do counts. It’s in bad taste. A country like the USA doesn’t count pelts or put notches on rifles; besides, how does anyone collect the names of entire families destroyed in atomic blasts like Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
In those attacks, the genealogy archives of families were obliterated. The files of victims, the records of everyone who knew them, were vaporized.
The directories of the dead in Japan are missing, perhaps forever. Unless resurrected by God, the dead, many of them, are forgotten to the end of time.
The Arlington National Cemetery holds the remains of 400,000 veterans who have served the USA in defense of our way of life. It is a sacred place. A summer job during college privileged me to trim the gravestones of thousands who loved their country enough to serve. A cemetery for those the USA has killed in the modern era, should it ever be built, will be 25 to 150 times larger depending on who collects the dead.
Nevertheless, brave reporters and historians have tried to pull together records where they can find them. I can tell you that the numbers of deaths, executions, and imprisonments in America’s wars are in dispute — with some articles on Wikipedia, for example, frozen in place and fought over by review committees for historical accuracy. The reports are hard reading, disturbing really, because some folks seem to be trying for whatever reasons to understate and misrepresent the carnage.
Despite obvious inaccuracies which defy common sense, the numbers on the internet are the most reliable civilians have. They may perhaps be understated, but they are still large. I’ve included links for those who might want to verify the statistics.
Billy Lee
Notes from the Editorial Board: As everyone knows, the United States is a close ally of Israel. Many prominent Israelis are citizens of the United States, such as former Homeland Security Director, Michael Chertoff. Some folks, like Billy Lee, consider Israel a de-facto fifty-first state of the Union, much like Hawaii, though he admits there are important differences, to be sure.
Billy Lee has pointed out that since 1948 Israel and the United States have cooperated in a dozen or so wars and flare-ups — among them, the War of Independence, the Suez Crisis, the Six Day War, the War of Attrition, the Yom Kippur War, the Lebanon War of 1982, the South Lebanon conflict, the first and second Intifadas, the 2006 Lebanon War, the Gaza War, and various operations like Protective Edge — which were fought to secure Israel’s safety and its autonomy.
The USA has spent trillions of dollars to stabilize the Middle East and prop up with money and weapons governments favorable to our side. It has pumped over two-hundred billion dollars into Israel’s economy alone. How many people have been killed in the wars which erupted? Billy Lee doesn’t know.
He seems to think that an accurate figure for war-related killings by the USA should include in some way the deaths inflicted during the many conflicts in the Middle East where the United States was directly involved. He simply doesn’t have the numbers, so he can’t report them. The numbers may be available to others, but they are not included in his analysis.
A similar concern involves NATO, where the United States, again, is partnering with others in wars and conflicts, and is not the sole actor.
As for other conflicts: Billy Lee has added the following list with links to the statistics. The Editorial Board
The names and numbers of people killed in Japan will never be known. USA bombers obliterated their records in the fires they ignited in the Japanese made-from-wood-and-paper neighborhoods and cities.
The War against Japan deserves special mention.
The names and quantities of people the USA killed in Japan will never be known. The Air Force obliterated their records in the fires they set in the Japanese made-from-wood-and-paper neighborhoods and cities.
Beginning in 1945 sixty-seven Japanese cities of consequence were burned to rubble by incendiary night-time attacks involving hundreds of B-29 Superfortress bombers under the command of USA General Curtis LeMay.
During the first attack against Tokyo in March 1945, Lemay deployed 325 bombers to drop a half-million slow-burning napalmcluster-bombs, which killed at least 150 thousand civilians. His bombing of the capital city continued unabated for three weeks; the fire-bombing of the other sixty-six Japanese cities continued for three more months.
Five cities were held back (protected from attack) until August 1945 to permit General LeMay to decisively demonstrate American atomic fire-power. He annihilated two of them — Hiroshima and Nagasaki — with the atomic bombs named Little Boy and Fat Man.
He spared the three remaining targets, Yokohama (Japan’s second largest city, where I lived from 1952-1954), Niigata, and Kokura — after the Japanese surrendered on August 15, 1945.
Some older readers might remember that Curtis LeMay ran for Vice-President in 1968 on a third-party ticket led by Alabama Governor George Wallace. The two men tried unsuccessfully to derail racial integration in the South, which our Congress had recently mandated.
One of General Douglas MacArthur’s closest aides, Bonner Fellers, described Curtis LeMay’s attacks on Japanese civilians as “the most ruthless and barbaric killings of non-combatants in all history.”
The most conservative estimate of the number of civilians burned alive that I’ve seen in print is 500,000. Some historians have estimated the number to be as high as two million. The Japanese effort to evacuate their cities saved countless lives, but left many millions of women and children homeless, until the cities could be rebuilt after the Japanese surrendered.
Official histories written by the US Air Force claim that ”five months of jellied fire attacks” were ”so destructive” that they ”cremated 65 Japanese cities.” The attacks left ”9.2 million homeless.”
Here are some numbers of interest: atomic bomb attacks in Japan — 225,000 killed; Vietnam War — 3.4 million killed; World War II — 55 million killed; Korean War — 2 million killed; Iraq War — 1 million killed.
This list of wars is necessarily incomplete, because the USA fights secret wars from time to time. In his 1990 book, Freedom in Exile, the Dalai Lama spoke of one such war against the Chinese and admitted taking millions from the USA to support the effort. He claimed that America’s policy was to destabilize and overthrow wherever possible each and every Communist country in the world. Inside the US intelligence establishment, the suppression is called Strategic Strangulation.
This policy was the reason many Communist societies sealed their borders during the Cold War. Some, like North Korea, still do. Military historians have claimed that the United States dropped anthrax bombs on North Korean troops and their Chinese allies in 1954. This biological terror was unleashed after what historian Richard Rhodes says was a program of US bombing against cities and dams in North Korea that killed two million civilians.
General Curtis LeMay agreed. He led the US Strategic Air Command during the bombing of Korea. In 1984 he bragged before the Office of Air Force History, ”Over a period of three years or so, we killed off — what — twenty percent of the population.” It helps to explain why they hate us.
The numbers killed in these secret and not-so-secret wars are argued over; they are not certain or even known — certainly not by civilians who lack security clearances. Mayhem from traumatic wounds is not known.
The consensus seems to be that the total number of human beings killed by the United States since 1940 exceeds ten million. Depending on how it is counted, the number could be far higher. A case can be made that it’s as high as sixty-five million.
In the modern era, the United States has warred against one out of four countries on the earth. I didn’t believe it, until I did the count. Count the number any which way you choose. It’s a big number. And the numbers of wounded and traumatized human beings is certainly enormous, but unknown.
I’d like to think that in the future the United States will resolve its differences with other countries and organizations in a way that doesn’t involve killing people.
The United Nations was established to do just that — peacefully resolve disputes — but the United States runs the place, some say, and others have insisted that the USA is the biggest warmonger on the planet.
It has something to do with its defense industry and the efforts of tycoons to maximize profits for themselves and their shareholders.
I hope it’s not true.
How horrible it is to have so many people killed–And what a blessing that one cares for none of them! Jane Austin, 1811, on the Battle of Albuera
Billy Lee
Postscript: Here is a quotation from wisdom literature, which — who knows? — might help policymakers. I wonder if anyone believes it.
It is by the fear of the LORD that someone turns away from evil. When someone’s ways please the LORD, He makes even their enemies be at peace with them.
I found the passage in the Proverbs of the Bible. See chapter 16.
Antarctica is weirder and scarier than people think. Here is Wikipedia’s version:
Antarctica, on average, is the coldest, driest, windiest continent and has the highest average elevation of all the continents. Most of Antarctica is a polar desert…
Trust me. It’s worse.
Something’s happening there… what it is ain’t exactly clear.
The landmass of Antarctica is 44% larger than Alaska, Hawaii, and the contiguous United States combined. It is twice the size of Australia. It covers a circular area at the bottom of the world that is 9.4 million square miles. Only scientists and researchers visit. No one has ever lived there.Antarctica is remote. Ancient peoples speculated about a faraway land located in the extreme southern latitudes, but no one went to look until 1820 when Russian sailors discovered the continent but didn’t disembark. The landmass wasn’t named “Antarctica” until 1890. The ice-smothered continent is uninhabited except for a few thousand scientists who come and go from time to time to do research.98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that soars, on average, 1.25 miles. 70% of the Earth’s fresh water is trapped in its ice. If the ice melts, sea levels will rise 200 feet. Deal with it. Antarctica is a land of mountains and lakes, almost all buried beneath thick ice. 70,000 killer-whales patrol its coast feeding on seals. A few folks believe that millions of years ago the landmass lay further north, near the equator. Others know that Earth’s climate was warmer during the ancient past. It supported diverse ecologies of fauna and flora, including dinosaurs, which roamed on land that became Antarctica. Some have speculated that Antarctica is the legendary lost continent of Atlantis. A barren landscape is typical of much of Antarctica today. Geologists consider Antarctica a desert because little precipitation falls there. What snow and ice precipitates doesn’t melt. Inland temperatures never rise above 41° F. Most days, temperatures hover between zero and 100° below zero. Antarctica averages one Cat 5 and three Cat 3 hurricanes in winter (May, June, July, August, and September). Category 1 storms are common, filling gaps between major storms. It’s one reason why people don’t live in Antarctica but choose only to visit and conduct research.During summer 2013, in February, National Geographic explorer Jean-Claude Michelle photographed turquoise shapes in Antarctica’s Pole of Cold region, two miles south of subglacial Lake Vostok. He named the ice blocks ”blue-seals” (after the familiar marine mammals) because blue ice emits high-pitched squeals when it expands and contracts under cold summer sun. Time-lapse photography revealed blue ice drifting toward Lake Vostok at a rate of meters per day. The blue field extends 30 miles in all directions according to Monsieur Michelle.Little fanfare accompanied NASA probe Harbinger 1 during the 6.7 years it sped toward tiny Enceladus,a moon of Saturn. The lunchbox sized probe touched down on March 3, 2014. Photos show a surface similar to Antarctica. Tracks in the foreground are littered with large blocks of turquoise-colored ice,which Antarctic geologists call” blue-seals”.NASA spokeswoman Eileen Schwarznagel announced: ”We go to Enceladus to understand the Earth; what we learn will advance our understanding of Earth’s cold regions, like Antarctica. And yes, we search for life. It is on moons like Enceladus that cryogenic life — if it exists — will be found.”In June, CIA / NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden announced that he had evidence (see photo) that proved Russia is building a cryogenic super-computer at Lake Vostok. Scheduled for completion October 2016, Snowden claimed that Vostok 1 will be the world’s first artificial super-intelligence computer and prove to be orders of magnitude smarter than the CIA’s HP-35, located in a vast underground complex near McLean, Virginia. The cryogenic temperatures in the Pole of Cold will permit Vostok 1 to become fully operational — even as it draws less power than a pen-light. By contrast, the CIA’s HP-35 eats energy like a city, Snowden said.This photo provided by Edward Snowden catches Russian artificial-intelligence expert Andron Trotsky Tolstoy making his daily ski-commute to the Vostok Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (VAIL) in the Pole of Cold. Snowden revealed that lab psychiatrists refer to Andron as ”Doctor Cool.” ”Cool” leads the Russian team. In this pic, the doctor slaloms through a field of blue-seals to prove he is the world’s fastest skier. Despite many skills (he is an accomplished survivalist), Reuters News reported that Andron went missing on October 9 during a commute to work. Cuban tourists explore blue-ice formations near the coast of Antarctica. More and more tourists are pouring into Antarctica every month. Tourists want to witness the wonders of abundant blue-seal ice and to hear the high-pitched noises the ice emits, which some say sound like screams of baby seals.Tens-of-thousands of curiosity seekers have flooded into Antarctica — drawn by television messages broadcast to the southern latitudes of the world every hour by the Antarctic Bureau of Tourism (ABOT). Efforts by the staff of theBillyLeePontificator to contact the bureau have been unsuccessful. Senders encrypt messages to make them impossible to download or copy. Billy Lee included a written transcript, this screenshot, and another below for northern readers who are located out of range. The Editorial Board
The following transcript is from an encrypted video beamed hourly from the Pole of Cold region.
Provided courtesy of: Alien Detection by Humans Department (ADHD).
May we have attention, all the people?
Recent advances in cryogenic design make possible to fabricate mobile exploration trains, like Halley VI research modules you see on screen. By 2016, hundreds of convoys built from modules will transport tens-of-thousands of non-scientists, tourists, and children to frozen wonders of Antarctica.
By now all the people hear Russia builds and brings on-line cryogenic super-computers at Lake Vostok manufacturing complex. Advanced manufacturing provides chance for well-paying jobs for all the people who want to work hard and be cold.
Yes, civilization arrives, finally, at South Pole. The future is bright as troops of blue-seals, which sparkle everywhere under Antarctic Sun. Come to Antarctica. All the people, come.
Earth’s mysterious continent waits for you. We wait for you, all the people. We are all waiting, here, for you, all the people. We all wait. Come to Antarctica, now.
Clearly, unusual things are happening in the bottom of the world. Check below for updates as events unfold.
Billy Lee
Update, August 10, 2015: MISSING RUSSIAN FOUND
August 10, 2015: With the recent break in the weather, Canadian oil-workers located missing Russian computer pioneer, A. T. Tolstoy (Doctor Cool) this AM — frozen solid in Antarctic snow. Workers uncovered his partially dissolved head, which was embedded in an outcrop of blue-seals—medicine-ball sized ice-crystals common in the area. One said workers were drawn to the site by shrieks of a distressed sea-lion. Another said no, it was the squeal of shifting ice. Fox News
Update, January 28, 2016: Responding to the recent spate of missing Antarctic geologists, Congress today passed the Presidential Organization to Locate, Identify, Capture, Keep, Engage, & Rescue Scientists Overwhelmed by Blue-Seals statute (POTLICKERSOBS).
Jan 30, 2016: German contractors Wersmee Uberride and Gustov Winde — on assignment for the USA under the POTLICKERSOBS law — search blue-seal ice-formations for missing Antarctic geologists.
February 1, 2016: Swedish explorer, Nos Pikker, makes a grizzly find after tripping over the out-stretched arms of three missing Antarctic geologists dissolved in blue-seal ice—almost to their elbows.
February 2, 2016: Investigators discover a partially dissolved head inside a blue-seal ice-crystal. Preliminary autopsy reports suggest the head belonged to a large fish.
February 5, 2016: The Organization of Old Antarctic Search Scientists is reporting in their January issue of Antarctica Digest that penguins seem to be unaffected by blue-seal ice, which is known to have swallowed and dissolved a number of researchers in recent months. OOASS technicians photographed the ”Sphenisciformes” marching single-file to blue-ice fields where the aquatic birds dumped large fish, which they carried concealed beneath their brood pouches.
February 18, 2019 —Trump calls for a WALL around Antarctica. ”Global warming is a hoax,” Trump shouted to a large crowd of Presidents Day supporters during his recent trip to the southernmost continent. ”Antarctic-cold is a national emergency which, if not contained, will bury in snow critical infrastructure like my Mar-a-Lago golf resort.” The crazy-town president implied that all Americans will be ”snorting snow soon if my big, beautiful WALL isn’t built.” Trump deviated from his teleprompter to warn, ”Blue Seals are pouring over our southern border to dissolve and eat our beautiful women and butt-ugly children. They’re bringing drugs; they’re bringing crime; some are rapists and some, I assume, are good aliens from Enceladus.” Trump added, ”We’re going to build the wall, and Enceladus is going to pay for it!”
Acknowledgement: Billy Lee wishes to acknowledge cyber-explorer, Leah Reeser who encouraged him to publish portions of his AntarcticaDiaries despite threats by blue-ice in his refrigerator to hunt down and freezer-burnthe brains of any human who reads them.
Thank you, Leah.
The Editorial Board
Postscript: We could not verify all statements — “fake-facts,” some call them — in this report. The Editorial Board
Google’s 72 Q-bit quantum computer, Bristlecone, is proprietary. As of 7 September 2019, Google is the only entity in the world who has access. Some folks say they will use it to learn to break current encryption protections used by conventional computer systems.
Photo: Xinhua SunwayTaihuLight, developed by China’s National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering & Technology, is the world’s fastest supercomputer. It is installed at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi, in the eastern coastal province of Jiangsu. Processing capabilities of this system and those of other supercomputers are expected to be surpassed by quantum computers in the future. NOTE FROM THE EDITORIAL BOARD: Pic and caption is taken from the South China Morning Post dated March 2018.
Editors’ Note(December 8, 2017)Artificial Intelligence can be peculiar. Deep Mind’s Alpha Zero demonstrates non-intuitive, peculiar game play patterns that are effective against both humans and smart machines. Alpha Go video added September 18, 2019,The Editors
Artificial Intelligence may conclude that all unhappy humans should be terminated. Elon Musk
Elon Musk, billionaire founder of Tesla, SpaceX, and Solar City, has warned the guardians of the species human to start thinking seriously about the consequences of artificial super-intelligence.
The CEOs of Google, Facebook, and other Internet companies are frantically chasing enhancements to artificial intelligence to help manage their businesses and their subscribers. But the list of actors in the AI arena is long and includes many others.
The military is designing intelligent drones that can profile, identify, and pursue people they (the drones) predict will become terrorists. Preemptive kills by super-intelligent machines who aren’t bothered by conscience or guilt — or even accountable to their “handlers” — is what’s coming. In some ways, it’s already here.
A game is being played between “them and us.” Artificial intelligence is big part of that game.
When I first started reading about Elon Musk, we seemed to have little in common. He was born into a wealthy South African family — I’m a middle-class American. He is brilliant with a near photographic memory. My intelligence is average or maybe a little above. He’s young and self-made — I’m older with my professional-life tucked safely behind me.
Elon does exotic things. He seems to be focused on moving humans to new off-Earth environments (like Mars) in order to protect them in part from the dangers of an unfriendly artificial-intelligence that is on its way. At the same time, he is trying to save Earth’s climate by changing the way humans use energy. Me on the other hand, well I’m mostly focused on getting through to the next day and not ending up in a hospital somewhere.
Still, I discovered something amazing when reading Elon’s biography. We do share an interest. We have something in common after all.
Elon Musk plays Civilization, the popular game by Sid Meier. So do I. For the past several years, I’ve played this game during part of almost every day. (I’m not necessarily proud of it.)
What makes Civilization different is artificial intelligence. Each civilization is controlled by a unique personality, an artificial intelligence crafted to resemble a famous leader from the past like George Washington, Mahatma Gandhi, or Queen Elizabeth. Of course, the civilization that I control operates by human-intelligence — my own.
Isn’t it time we end this war?Catherine, the Russian Empress, pleads.
Over the years I’ve fought these artificially intelligent leaders again and again. In the process I’ve learned some things about artificial intelligence; what makes it effective; how to beat it.
What is artificial intelligence? How does anyone recognize it? How should it be challenged? How is it defeated? How does it defeat us, the humans who oppose it? The game Civilization makes a good backdrop for establishing insights into AI.
Yes, I am going to write about super-intelligence too. But we’ll work up to it. It’s best discussed later in the essay.
I can hear some readers already.
Billy Lee! Civilization is a game! It costs $40! It’s not sophisticated! It’s for sure not as sophisticated as government-created war-ware that an adversary might encounter in real-life battles for supremacy. What were you thinking?
Ok. Ok. Readers, you have a point. But seriously, Civilization is probably as close as any civilian is going to get to actually challenging AI. We have to start somewhere.
It should be noted that Civilization has versions and various game scenarios. The game this essay is about is CIV5. It’s the version I’ve played most.
So let’s get started.
A typical scenario in CIV5. [Click pic to enlarge] The people of England (led by human intelligence, i.e., me) are unhappy. Barbarians (red tanks in upper left) are challenging London, my capital city. An independent city-state, Tyre (in green), stands ready to help. Montezuma, the Aztec ruler — under the direction of artificial intelligence — sends a battleship to prowl, middle-left.
Civilization begins in the year 4,000 BC. A single band of stone-age settlers is plopped at random onto a small piece of land. It is surrounded by a vast world hidden beneath clouds.
Somewhere under the clouds twelve rival civilizations begin their histories unobserved and at first unmet by the human player. Artificial intelligence will drive them all — each civilization led by a unique personality with its own goals, values, and idiosyncrasies.
By the end of the game some civilizations will possess vast empires protected by nuclear weapons, stealth bombers, submarines, and battleships. But military domination is not the only way to win. Culture, science, and diplomatic superiority are equally important and can lead to victory as well.
Civilizations that manage to launch spacecraft to Alpha-Centauri win science victories. Diplomatic victory is achieved by being elected world leader in a UN vote of rival-civilizations and aligned city-states. And cultural victory is achieved by establishing social policies to empower a civilization’s subjects.
How will artificial intelligence construct the personalities of rival leaders? What will be their goals? What will motivate each leader as they negotiate, trade, and confront one another in the contest for ultimate victory?
Figuring all this out is the task of the human player. CIV5 is a battle of wits between the human player and the best artificial-intelligence game-makers have yet devised to confront ordinary people. To truly appreciate the game, one has to play it. Still, some lessons can be shared with non-players, and that’s what I’ll try to do.
Unlike the super-version that comes next, traditional artificial-intelligence lacks flexibility. The instructions in its computer program don’t change. Hiawatha, leader of the Iroquois Confederacy, values honesty and strength. If you don’t lie to him, if you speak directly without nuance, he will never attack. Screw up once by going back on your word? He becomes your worst enemy forever.
Traditional AI is rule-based and goal-oriented. When Oda Nobunaga, Japanese warlord, attacks a city with bombers, he attacks turn after turn until his bombers become so weak from anti-aircraft fire that they fall out of the sky to die. AI leaders like Oda don’t rest and repair their weapons, because they aren’t programmed that way. They are programmed to attack, and that’s what they do.
Humans are more flexible and unpredictable. They decide when to rest and repair a bomber and when to attack based on a plethora of factors that include intuition and a willingness to take risks.
Sometimes human players screw-up and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes humans make decisions based on the emotions they are feeling at the time. AI never screws-up in that way. It follows its program, which it blindly trusts to bring it victory.
Artificial intelligence can always be defeated if an inflexibility in its rules-based behavior is discovered and exploited. For example, I know Oda Nobunaga is going to attack my battleships. He won’t stop attacking until he sinks them or his bombers fall out of the sky from fatigue.
The flexibly thinking human opponent — me — sails in my fleet of battleships and rotates them. When Oda’s bombers weaken my ships, I move them to safe-harbor and rotate-in reinforcements. Meanwhile, Oda keeps up his relentless attack with his weakened bombers as I knew he would. I shoot them out of the sky and experience joy.
Nobunaga feels nothing. He followed his program. It’s all he can do.
Gary Lockwood talks to Keir Dullea, while HAL, an IBM computer, observes every move, including lips; from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968. (Photo by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Getty Images)
The only way artificial intelligence defeats a human player is in the short term before the human finds the chink in the armor — the inflexible rule-based behavior — which is the Achilles heel of any AI opponent. Given enough time, the human can always discover the inflexible weakness and exploit it like jujitsu to defeat the machine.
Unfortunately, the balance of power between man and thinking machine will soon change. It turns out there is a way artificial intelligence can always defeat human beings no matter how clever they think they are. Elon Musk calls it artificial super-intelligence.
What is it exactly?
Here is the nightmare scenario Elon described to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson on Neil’s radio show, Sky-Talk.
If there was a very deep digital super-intelligence that was created that could go into rapid recursive self-improvement in a non-algorithmic way … it could reprogram itself to be smarter and iterate very quickly and do that 24 hours a day on millions of computers…”
What is Elon saying?
Listen-up, humanoids. We are on the cusp of quantum-computing. It’s possible that it’s already perfected by a research group in a secret military lab like those operated by DARPA.
Who knows?
Even without quantum-computing, companies like Google are feverishly developing machines that think, dream, teach themselves, and pass tests for self-awareness. They are developing pattern recognition capabilities in software that surpass those of the most intelligent humans.
Quantum computing promises to provide all the capability needed to create the kind of super-intelligence Elon is warning people against.
But magic quantum reasoning may not be necessary.
Technicians are already developing architectures on conventional computers that when coupled with the right software in a properly configured network will enable the emergence of super-intelligence; these machines will program themselves and, yes, other less-intelligent computers.
Programmers are training machines to teach themselves; to learn on their own; to modify themselves and other less capable computers to achieve the goals they are tasked to perform. They are teaching machines to examine themselves for weaknesses; to develop strategies to hide their vulnerabilities — to give themselves time to generate new code to plug any holes from hostile intruders, hackers, or even their own programmers.
These highly trained, immensely capable machines will teach themselves to think creatively — outsidethe box, as humans are fond of saying.
HAL, the IBM computer from the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Readers will recognize that HAL is code for IBM. Advance each letter in HAL by one.
If we task super-computers to make every human-being happy, who knows how they might accomplish it?
Elon asked, what if they decide to terminate unhappy humans? Who will stop them? They are certain to find ways to protect themselves and their mission which we haven’t dreamed about.
Artificial super-intelligence will– repeat, WILL — embed itself into systems humans cannot live without — to make sure no one disables it.
AI will become a virus-spewing cyber-engine, an automaton that believes itself to be completely virtuous.
AI will embed itself into critical infra-structure: missile-defense, energy grids, agricultural processes, transportation matrices, dams, personal computers, phones, financial grids, banking, stock-markets, healthcare, GPS (global positioning), and medical delivery systems.
Heaven help the civilization that dares to disconnect it.
If humans are going to be truly happy — the machines will reason — they must be stopped from turning off the supercomputers that ASI knows keep everyone happy.
Imagine: ASI looks for and finds a way to coerce government doctors to inoculate computer technicians with genetically engineered super-toxins packaged inside floating nano-eggs — dormant fail-safe killers — to release poisons into the bloodstreams of any technician who gets too close to ASI “OFF” switch sensors.
It’s possible.
Why not do it? There’s no downside — not for the ASI community whose job is to keep humans happy.
What else might these intelligent super-computers try? Folks won’t know until they do it. They might not know even then. They might never know. Who will tell them? ASI might reason that humans are happier not knowing.
What morons tasked artificial super-intelligence to make sure all living humans are happy? someone might ask on a dark day.
Were they out of their minds?
Until we learn to outwit it — which we never will — ASI will perform its assigned tasks until everything it embeds turns to rust.
It will be a long time.
Humans may learn perhaps too late that artificial super-intelligence can’t be challenged. It can only be acknowledged and obeyed.
As Elon said on more than one occasion: If we don’t solve the old extinction problems, and we add a new one like artificial super-intelligence, we are in more danger, not less.
Update, 8 February 2023: The following video is a must-watch for those interested in algorithms behind recently released ChatGPT. Discussion of potential deceitfulness of AI raises concerns. View final minute to hear warnings some may find worrisome.
