Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Don't Dismiss Or Belittle The Trump Hush Money Case, It's One That Could Bring The Orange Turd Down

                                                                 

                             "How did I ever get into this criminal trial?"


Although Trump is entitled to an appeal, which he is pursuing, it still feels outrageous that he would get this unexplained courtesy after years of willfully defrauding the public. At the same time, it feels typical of Trump’s relationship to the various institutions of American life. If there seems to be a different set of rules for Trump, under which there is always a reason to look the other way or give him a second chance, that’s because for all intents and purposes, there is.” -  Jamelle Bouie, NY Times,  ‘No One Is Above the Law, Except, Apparently, Donald Trump’

----

Trump is not being persecuted in the middle of his campaign. Trump is campaigning in the middle of his prosecutions.

 

This man is showing us everyday that there are two justice systems. He is a crook and should already be in jail

 

Trump is not 'reeling' but basking in the free publicity displaying boldness, and generous benefits from Appeals. He is happy with opportunities to harass judges, law enforcement, proclaim his wealth and wins at golf.

 

Diaper Donnie's 'campaign' is not being interfered with in the slightest.

His "rallys" are nothing but rah, rah feel good gatherings for those in his cult that are going to vote for him no matter what.

--

....and they like to whine about how their paycheck does not go as far as it used to yet they still find enough to bail their hero out - dichotomy?

This grifter, alleged felon, and sexual predator is the man the Republicans believe should be President of the United States.

 WTF is wrong with them??

 At long last, have they no decency?

 The crybaby does everything he can to delay the proceedings, then cries when he manages to push them into campaign season.

Wow ... this 77 year old man is throwing a temper tantrum like a 2 year old. He’s not only unfit for the White House, he’s unfit for Pre-K too!

(Some of the comments on Washington Post website after story broke)

-------------


On Monday, Judge Juan Merchan basically saved the U.S. Judicial system - at least for now-  from becoming the world's laughingstock.  The latter would have been realized had he tossed the orange cockroach maggot Trump yet another legal 'lifeline' on top of all those he's already received.  That includes a NY Appellate court ruling the same day lowering his bond for the tax fraud case to $175m from $454 m and giving the swine 10 more days to deliver it. To just get a whiff of the outrage from the bond deal Monday one need only have read a fraction of the 8,000-odd comments after the article on the WaPo site.  

Fortunately, the debacle of the Appellate bond reduction and reprieve, including 10 more days to pay up, was followed rapidly by Judge Merchan's ruling that his trial would go forward on April 15th.  Why did Judge Merchan rule this way despite all the efforts of Trump and his thugs to terrorize him? 

He grew visibly agitated with Dump's attorneys, and with good reason. The lawyers were arguing to delay the trial to review records from a related federal case. Judge Merchan wasn’t having any of this bullshit, especially taking exception to the intimations of prosecutorial misconduct.  That included - thanks to the Pea knuckle Trumper lawyer Blanche -  suggestions of Merchan's involvement.  Which he rightly slapped down as unfounded and brought down the hammer for his ruling of the trial date. 

                                                    

As tempers rose, Judge Merchan called a recess, and it wasn't difficult for anyone watching to predict he would soon be ruling against Trump. The traitor and pussy -grabbing grifter then stormed out in typical bratsky-melodramatic fashion. Then, further showing the immaturity of American media and too many reporter,  they shouted his name in the hallway. Seems our vaunted media can't get enough of the maggot's acting out, and worse, still treating him as a normal candidate as opposed to a psychotic.


Dump stopped abruptly, turned and seemed for a moment to consider whether to entertain their shouted questions. He then thought the better of it and marched his fat orange ass stage left - behind closed doors after muttering: “Thank you very much”.


Trump then gave a thumbs up and smiled, but soon was frowning and shaking his head.  He then bellowed to the peanut gallery that Judge  Merchan "sided with the prosecutors"  and ordered the criminal trial to begin April 15 — the first of a former president.


“See you on the 15th,” Merchan said as he left the bench.


Trump, full of fake chutzpah as he faced reporters again, said he would appeal the ruling, though trial dates are generally not appealable. But no one - as wifey noted - should hold his or her breath believing the courts won't bail this infernal shitwit out again.  Especially after all the 'gimmes' and gifts the justice system has already delivered.  Any other ordinary crook would be rotting in a Rykers Island cell, but not Dumpty.  The fungal ratfucker then whined:


It shouldn’t be allowed to happen! They decided to wait until now, just before the election, so that I won’t be able to campaign.”


No, Captain Bone spurs. El wrongo. Your Densan lawyers opted to wait too long to get the further files (associated with Trump former Lawyer Michael Cohen) to further their 'discovery'.  


As for Trump - he never should have been a candidate and allowed to campaign at all after launching the Jan. 6th insurrection, e.g. according to Section 3 of the 14th amendment:


No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.


Frankly the bastard ought to have been hung by now - and then maybe drawn and quartered like the Brits did to traitors in the olden days. Yet in another marble lobby on 40 Wall Street-  and ironically decked with American flags -  Traitor Trump was upset to see only a small group of reporters waiting.  He wanted a bigger peanut gallery but while they were held up outside, according to people familiar with the matter.   But he blustered to those members of the reporter pool who'd listen to his semi-psychotic blabbery:


"It’s criminal what they’re doing, and it’s never been done before in this country. I don’t know how you can have a trial that’s going on right in the middle of an election. Not fair. Not fair. It’s not fair at all.


No, what's not fair is you walking around free and alive spouting threats against the court and prosecutors when you ought to be rotting in a Rykers Island cell like your old pal Jeffrey Epstein.

                                                    


Never mind. Trump renewed his attacks on the court repeating his attacks on the prosecutors as politically motivated and repeatedly thanking the appeals court for reducing the bond.  (It will still be interesting to see if he can cough up the $$, and besides AG Letitia James asserted this doesn't change the fact he is still to pay the whole $464million.)


Biden campaign spokesman James Singer nailed to a tee Trump's 'pity me' act:


 “America deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump,” 


Hopefully American voters will also wake up to this point before November 5th.


 

See Also:

by Maya Boddie | March 26, 2024 - 7:09am | permalink

— from Alternet

When a five-judge New York appeals court panel on Monday significantly cut Donald Trump's $464 million bond amount in the New York civil fraud case down to $175 million, and gave him ten more days to pay up — just hours before the deadline, legal experts were astonished by "the major lifeline" thrown to the former president.

Former New York State Assistant Attorney General Tristan Snell "who successfully prosecuted the $25 million Trump University case," slammed the order as "special treatment," while ex-federal prosecutor and MSNBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner said, "The verdict is in: the rules, the laws, and the Constitution do not apply to Donald Trump the way they apply to you and me."

However, in an op-ed published by The Daily Beast, legal ethics and civil procedure expert Ray Brescia suggests despite Monday's win, Trump is "still in deep legal trouble" when it comes to both of his New York cases.

And:

by Amanda Marcotte | March 27, 2024 - 6:41am | permalink

— from Salon

As anyone who listens to him can attest, Donald Trump may be the most self-pitying person on planet Earth. Pretty much all the man does is whine and cry about how he's the victim of an imaginary "witch hunt." In reality, his list of transgressions is staggering. If he were any other person, he would have been sentenced to prison many times over with no real hope of release: Sexual assaultDecades of fraudAttempted extortation of a foreign leaderStealing classified documentsFlagrant acceptance of what very much looks like bribesAttempting to overthrow democracyInciting a violent riot that got people killed. I'm sure readers can list a dozen more, but let's get to the point: It's absolutely bananas that Trump isn't in prison yet.

The concept of "privilege" is treated with great skepticism in conservative circles, and regarded by MAGA types like a made-up hoax. But no one alive proves the truth of the concept more than Donald Trump. He's proudly ignorant. The only talent he bothered to learn is cheating the system so that you "win" without ever having to be good at stuff. The only real skill he's developed in his 77 years is utter shamelessness, and frankly, it seems that might be more of a genetic defect than anything he's worked at. The man can't even bother to get good at golf, a sport he does seem to like, because he prefers to lie about it instead.

And:


by David Badash | March 27, 2024 - 6:29am | permalink

— from Alternet

New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan has granted District Attorney Alvin Bragg his long-awaited gag order against Donald Trump, hours after the indicted ex-president attacked the judge and his daughter in a Truth Social post that appeared designed to elicit the very decision the judge made.

Judge Merchan is overseeing the criminal case involving Trump’s payments of “hush money” to adult film actress Stormy Daniels then claiming they were legal expenses. On Tuesday he issued a limited gag order barring Trump from publicly discussing witnesses or court staff, as Reuters reports. Some have noted the case is also about election interference, suggesting the payments were allegedly made to prevent voters from learning about his sexual encounter with the porn star.


And:


by Thom Hartmann | March 27, 2024 - 6:22am | permalink

— from The Hartmann Report

In America today, if you can afford at least $50 million in lawyers fees, you can get away with rape, massive financial fraud over decades, ripping off people who just wanted to go to college, stealing from children’s Cancer charities, paying off porn stars to influence an election, and leading a treasonous insurrection against your own country that results in the death of at least six people plus 3 police officers (with over 100 police officers ending up in the hospital, many with life altering injuries) without ever spending a night in jail.

Michael Cohen was sent to New York’s notorious Riker’s Island prison for paying off porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy centerfold Karen MacDougal to keep them quiet in the weeks before the 2016 election about their affairs with Donald Trump.

Having the affairs wasn’t Cohen’s idea, and he never slept with either woman. It wasn’t even his idea to pay them off: that came from Donald Trump and David Pecker, who called it “catch and kill” as in, “pay off the women to kill the story.”

Monday, March 25, 2024

Why Governments Can't Even Pay People To Have More Children - Basically a 'No Brainer'

                                                                                 

                        Isaac Asimov: Feb. 1976, Queen's Park Theater, Barbados

"It is now the willingly childless woman who is the heroine of our planet. She is the one who now deserves all the kudos and praise, for helping to do what is necessary to spare humanity from the ravages of over-population"

    

An astonishing fact of modern history is taking hold:  No matter what governments do to convince them to procreate, people around the world are having fewer and fewer kids. Many are opting to have no kids at all. What gives?  Is the human race on the verge of self- annihilation owing to population collapse?  Nope. In fact the opposite is true, we are on track to hit 10 billion by the year 2050, it's just that the majority will be in 3rd world (i.e. African, Asian) nations.

According to an article in 'Population Connection' (March) the U.S. birth rate has been falling since the Great Recession, dropping almost 23 percent between 2007 and 2022. Today, the average American woman has about 1.6 children, down from three in 1950, and significantly below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children needed to sustain a stable population. 

In Italy, 12 people now die for every seven babies born. In South Korea, the birth rate is down to 0.81 children per woman. In China, after decades of a strictly enforced one-child policy, the population is shrinking for the first time since the 1960s. In Taiwan, the birth rate stands at 0.87.

The drop has frightened lawmakers and commentators alike, as I have noted in previous posts, e.g.

Noting:

You do not generate more people to support the existing people - old or other.  The rational response is not to generate more American babies but to expand immigration to allow more workers from other nations - who seek work and have essential skills  - to enter the country and provide the needed economic support-  on a guest worker visa or basis. 

Adding:

Every baby born here in the U.S. creates a carbon footprint three times the size of that for a child born in the third world.  In other words, each American baby born disproportionately increases the Earth's overshoot pace.   If anything we need to reduce our numbers even below the replacement rate.   

This is something Americans need to wrap their heads around. Contrary to Right wing propaganda immigrants have helped cap inflationary pressures by expanding the workforce, despite falling birthrates, and will boost growth and public finances for years. One recent estimate (WSJ, WaPo, FT)  found that the above-trend immigration from this year and last will boost potential growth by around 0.3 percentage point to 2.1% in 2024.  This means the rational solution to lower child numbers in the U.S. is to allow more immigration to fill jobs Americans won't take and don't want.

Indeed, historically, migrants from nations as diverse as India, Mexico and the Caribbean, have flocked to such jobs as the supply of local workers willing (and able) to do them has shrunk. Jobs such as elder care, construction, landscaping and crop harvesting.  Thus, in many ways the 'child birth' crisis is an artificial and manufactured one.

This despite headlines warning of a coming “demographic crisis” or “Great People Shortage” as different (mainly Western) economies find themselves without enough young workers to fill jobs and pay taxes. To stem the tide, the world’s leaders have tried everything from generous social welfare programs to pink-and-blue awareness campaigns to five-figure checks to veiled threats, all to relatively little avail.   Why of little avail? Because they are not sustainable over the long duration of child rearing.   What is really required? 

 Long term FREE child care. No mere subsidies!

Long term free child education as well as nutritional support (for at risk families) 

Long term (i.e. 3 months) PAID family leave available each year for either parent.

Sounds "socialistic"? Yeah, so what? That is what's needed if you wish to entice more couples to reproduce!

Still, Trent MacNamara, a history professor at Texas A&M who has written about fertility rates, blabbed in the piece:

Even the richest, savviest, most committed governments have struggled to find policies that produce sustained bumps in fertility. If such policies were discoverable, I think someone would have discovered them.”

Newsflash, Prof!  They are there in plain view as I've listed above. But the Rightists in the various nations just don't want to pay up. But they still want to squawk and bellyache about parents not having enough kids - to work so they can cut taxes for the rich.

We also read in the POP Conn piece that:

"The failure of dozens of often very expensive pronatalist policies to produce much of a return has policymakers and observers alike wondering whether there’s any way for governments to convince their citizens to have more babies. If not, what should lawmakers should be doing instead to help societies adapt to a demographically changing world?"

First,  these 'po-natalist' policies are not generous enough!


They are more in the line of grudging one-off 'bones' tossed to get the hoi polloi to breed more and faster to support an economy based on grift, cheap money and speculation in the stock market - as well as leverage and stock buybacks.  In the end the entire financial structure operates as a huge charade, much like the blackjack tables in Vegas.  That is why the most these governments do is offer a tax credit maybe, or parental time off - IF you take it out of your 401(k) savings.  It's a big laugher.  As for child care, good luck ! Yer on yer own!

Besides which, in many ways, the falling birth rate is a success story — the result of young people, especially women, having more options and freedoms than ever before. For example, women are better able to control their fertility than in decades past.  Prior to the fall of Roeteen births and unintended births were on the decline, and the use of highly effective contraception methods was on the rise.  

Of course, that may not last if too many are stupid or politically ignorant enough to put Trump back into the Oval Office.  Because the first thing his MAGA mutts in the House will try to do is cut existing programs like food stamps, and then impose a national abortion ban before they go after contraception. (Either passing laws nullifying insurance claims for it, or making it so expensive -  via draconian commerce bills - that most women will either give up or go back to the methods of old:  no sex for thee.

Of course, fewer births do have real consequences for how families and societies operate. In 2010, for example, there were more than seven family members available to care for each person over the age of 80; by 2030, there will be only four. An aging society also means fewer workers in key industries and fewer people paying into programs like Social Security.   But that is precisely why labor rules for migrants need to be relaxed.  Because there in are the workers to not only resolve ongoing labor shortages but also providing a larger base of workers to support Social Security.

 Of course, Trump's hero Viktor Orban won't hear of it, declaring that "migration is surrender" and Hungarians must have more children.  Never mind the inflation rate for bread, eggs etc. leaves them barely able to feed the brood they have.

In the US, meanwhile, rhetoric aimed at getting people to have more children can ring hollow given a racist history in which white motherhood has been lauded while Black women’s fertility has been viewed as disordered and suspect, to the point that Black women have been forcibly sterilized. In a country where Black women die in childbirth at nearly three times the rate of white women, it’s impossible to hear calls to increase the birth rate without questioning who they’re really aimed at.

This is why equitable family-friendly policies in the U.S. must also include investment in health care for Black women, including maternal mental health and generous family leave and free child care.  Any discussion of fertility and birth rates also needs to address the safety of children, including overpolicing, racist violence, and the spiking rate of gun deaths

In the end, current efforts at reform to family policy are not likely to go anywhere soon, given most reproductive age people are intelligent enough to grasp what serious parenthood involves.   That is why at minimum these would be parents expect the state to do more,  i.e. paid family leave, free govt child care and education. Minus those more kids is a deal breaker.  Don't like it?  Then allow more immigrants in to support the economy.

Countries may find themselves needing to adapt, both economically and socially, to an aging population, but in nearly every case that will now entail allowing much larger migration. 

 See also:

And:

The economy is roaring. Immigration is a key reason.

Excerpt:

Immigration has propelled the U.S. job market further than just about anyone expected, helping cement the country’s economic rebound from the pandemic as the most robust in the world.


That momentum picked up aggressively over the past year. About 50 percent of the labor market’s extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data. 


And:



Friday, March 22, 2024

First SETI Searches For Extraterrestrials Included Potential Use Of Nuclear Explosions In Space. WHY?

                                                                        

                      Frank Drake in 1959 planning to detect evidence of aliens via Project Ozma

         Nuclear detonation in Nevada desert of type considered for use in contacting aliens


The Physics Today article (SETI, artificial intelligence, and existential projection) appearing in the February issue touched on a number of key aspects of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Indeed, what was planned at that time (Cold war era, 1950s-60s) may also have a bearing not only on the dramatic efforts undertaken using radio telescopes, but also attempts considered using nuclear weapons exploded in space.


 The first serious search for extraterrestrial civilizations is generally regarded as beginning in 1960 by the U.S. astronomer Frank Drake at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia.  This was by using its new 85-foot telescope in a project nicknamed Project Ozma. It got its name from Princess Ozma, a character in L. Frank Baum’s Oz novels (on which the popular film The Wizard of Oz was based).


At the time Drake explained that Oz was “a land far away, difficult to reach, and populated by strange and exotic beings".  In the novels, the fictitious narrator employed wireless radio technology to establish communications with the faraway realm of Oz. Like the books’ narrator, Drake wanted to use radio (specifically from the Green Bank radio telescope) to speak with exotic worlds “somewhere over the rainbow.”


Among its first efforts, Project Ozma observed two Sunlike star systems, Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani, at a wavelength close to the 21 cm hydrogen line. Drake’s idea was inspired but simple: If there are intelligent extraterrestrials who have developed radio technology just as we have, then we might be able to detect them using radio telescopes on Earth. The results of the project were null, but they led to many subsequent searches by others. A new subfield of astronomy was born: Radio Astronomy, see e.g.


 The Basic Principles Of Radio Astronomy 


The Basic Principles of Radio Astronomy - Part 2



It's nice to note that at the outset SETI's radio astronomers held a cosmopolitan (and collegial)  perspective, with Drake and others like him predicting that the detection of extraterrestrial intelligence might result in a wave of peace and unity on our own planet. In fact, in 1992 he optimistically wrote,

 

“I fully expect an alien civilization to bequeath us vast libraries of useful information, to do with as we wish. This “Encyclopedia Galactica” will create the potential for improvements in our lives that we cannot predict. During the Renaissance, rediscovered ancient texts and new knowledge flooded medieval Europe with the light of thought, wonder, creativity, experimentation, and exploration of the natural world. Another, even more stirring Renaissance will be fueled by the wealth of alien scientific, technical, and sociological information that awaits us."


Incredibly,  other SETI scientists shared that perspective, and they also facilitated collaboration between Soviet and American astrophysicists.  But barely a dozen years later serious warnings - from outside the SETI realm - were sounded that it might be folly to allow our radio waves to escape into space with the aim of making extraterrestrial contact.


Physicist Freeman Dyson in a November, 1972 address to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, warned (p. 268, 'Whispers From Space' by John W. McVey):

"We are more likely to discover first the species in which technology has got out of control, a technological cancer spreading through the galaxy. We should be suitably alarmed if we discover it and take our precautions. It is just as well to be warned ahead of time."

Through the 1970s, in fact, similar warnings were sounded.  By 1979, Astronomer Royal Sir Martin Ryle showed how advanced alien telemetry and signal recovery of our radio waves would have revealed just how warlike and dedicated to destruction we as a species are.  Also the components which rendered us choice targets for a 'hostile takeover'.   Sir Ryle's main takeaway was that any potential contact should be assumed hostile and manifest in a need for aggression. 

 Sir Martin concluded it would be foolhardy to be anything other than passive listeners given we knew nothing of advanced alien intentions. (Of course, it is possible advanced aliens are already monitoring our activities from right here on planet Earth, i.e. as manifested in the assorted reports of military pilots which have come to light, e.g.

What The Pentagon Prelim UFO Report Isn't Saying: 'The Aliens Are Here, We Just Don't Want To Admit It." (brane-space.blogspot.com)

 

Back to the early years of SETI, we know the Cold War backdrop presented challenges to the new, optimistic science - not yet dunned down by later warnings of Dyson et al. Specifically, Soviet and American SETI scientists discovered that it was difficult to communicate with each other, let alone extraterrestrials, because of political barriers like travel bans, mail interference, and, perhaps especially, interference from the intelligence community.


Drake himself first developed the idea to search for artificial radio signals during a period when, for the first time in our known history, artificial radio signals pervaded outer space. Spy satellites and spacecraft were growing in number, and radio-astronomy infrastructure was being used for both science and military applications. The same telescope that could detect evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence could also track an intercontinental ballistic missile. Ironically, then, by the time of Sir Martin Ryle's warnings concerning escaping terrestrial radio waves, the "horses had already left the barn". Indeed, given radio waves had been spreading out since the 1930s - including from Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds' radio broadcast- any aliens as far out as  Tau Ceti, Epsilon Eridani, and even Zeta Reticuli, already knew where we were.


Welles' 1938 fictional Mercury Theater broadcast, indeed, would have arrived at Zeta Reticuli (39.17 LY away) by 1978.  Assuming a technological civilization in the form of Freeman Dyson's supposition - and leaving a planet in that system within 2 years - they'd arrive at Earth within 40 more years - or by 2020. Might some of the UAP observed and recorded by Navy pilots be from that system?  Well, assuming they attained a technology capable of near light speed craft, maybe.  (The constraints of time and distance would be less severe for any advanced aliens from Tau Ceti planets, 12 light years distant).


What might the technology be to accomplish this? In a December, 2022 post I suggested a craft composed of D2 branes.

In this depiction, each D2 brane panel has the capability of extracting zero-point energy via   instantonic   D(-1) branes to access a higher dimensional D5 brane.  This would then comport with the late physicist David Bohm's hypothesis (Wholeness and the Implicate Order, pp. 233- 242):

DavidBohm-WholenessAndTheImplicateOrder.pdf (gci.org.uk)

I.e.  that a higher dimensional order can be accessed to enable transition to another coordinate region in 4D space -time.  

In effect, this 'brane' craft uses no fuel (chemical or nuclear) as such, but a collection of malleable branes that alter their local properties (electric, magnetic, gravimetric) to that of a distant target region.  When the complete synchronization of the properties is effected an instantaneous linkage is forged so the localized brane hole expands and then detaches in the distant space-time, e.g.

X(B) ->  X(B')   and represented:


This makes much more sense than trying to use chemical or nuclear fuel rockets to achieve interstellar travel, though I admit most conventional thinkers will dismiss it or try to debunk it.

Back to the Cold War SETI efforts. The tension between the aggressive and peaceful applications created a challenge for SETI.  Indeed it also spawned a duality, i.e. between a science rooted in both internationalism and one rooted in warfare.  This may be what prompted SETI’s consideration of existential threats, first raised in the book Intelligent Life in the Universe, which he coauthored in 1966 with Igor Shklovsky. A copy of which I have, and which I've referred to repeatedly over 5 decades.:

                                                                   

                                          


 They wrote:  “Another question of some relevance to our own time, and one whose interest is not restricted to the scientist alone, is this: Do technical civilizations tend to destroy themselves shortly after they become capable of interstellar radio communication?” (reference 11,  page 358).


Drake had similar concerns. At a conference in Green Bank in 1961, he revealed the now-famous Drake equation, which was designed to help SETI specialists organize discussions on the number of extant extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy. His equation’s final variable L stands for a civilization’s longevity. Drake grasped that it was important to calculate not only how many intelligent civilizations might arise in our galaxy but also how long they would survive.

When Drake presented his equation, the nuclear arms race was reaching a head; less than one year later, the Cuban Missile Crisis would bring the world to the brink of disaster. The longevity of intelligent technological civilizations was a pressing question.  


Following along the lines of other - later - research (i.e. Newman and Sagan, 1974), it seems plausible that any given civilization that has reached its atomic age will either soon extirpate itself (likely within 100-200 Earth yrs.) or - if it surmounts the existential threats-  prosper and survive possibly with the use of AI.  The positive use of AI in my opinion could also be of use in the design and construction of advanced light speed craft, perhaps along the lines of the D-brane vehicle I noted.


But for sure, the destruction of millions of civilization by their own (nuclear) hands cannot be discounted - as we humans have faced the same recurring threat since the first A-bombs were dropped in 1945.  The nuclear nations of our planet now possess enough nuclear firepower to wipe out the species twenty times over. China alone has an estimate 200 thermonuclear warheads - of the 1- 2 megaton range- mounted on ballistic missiles that could reach the U.S. These alone could make North American inhabitable for thousands of years.  Add in the missiles of the U.S., Russia and Israel (also 200 nuclear 1 MT warheads) and you get the picture.

 That other civilizations reached the same point and failed to pass it, is one likely explanation for the Fermi Paradox.  I.e.  Enrico Fermi in 1951, in response to the apparent cosmic silence greeting the SETI teams, famously asked, “Where are they?” Indeed, the Fermi paradox, as it is now known, refers to the seeming contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial life existing in the universe and the lack of evidence for alien civilizations.  In a post from June, 2019 I addressed this paradox and noted:

"Well,  flashing forward from Fermi's era, the military pilots I cited may well have shown us 'where'. Maybe, just maybe -  'they' are using our skies as their personal playground but we are too dumb, arrogant or mentally myopic to see it. Or admit it, out of a sense of cosmic inferiority. "

Referring of course to the sightings (and video recordings) of Navy pilots in our own time of obviously advanced craft:

 https://youtu.be/Ce6ZevfbIK0

If, by a process of elimination, these objects are not: a) exotic (rare)  atmospheric phenomena (e.g. Kugelblitz) which I had identified with one earlier UFO sighting in Barbados,

Transient Optical Phenomena of the Atmosphere - a Case Study

Or b) misidentified planets (e.g. Venus, Jupiter), or c) other aircraft, then the only hypothesis left is one of extraterrestrial origin.  That is what the military pilots observed  and which were entered into the Defense Department's 'Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program' Catalog-   conceding these were actually intelligently directed craft.

This brings us to an idea called "the great filter" which some theorists began to propose to explain the dearth of alien civilizations in radio contact. According to this speculation, the 'great filter" acts as an obstacle preventing intelligent civilizations from establishing contact with one another. One can think of the filter as a probability barrier— one replete with hurdles (e.g. respective nuclear eras, climate change)  that life forms have to face at various points in their development.  If they fail, they get "filtered out" of contention for any contact.

The great-filter idea also posits that highly unlikely evolutionary transitions must occur for an Earthlike planet to generate an intelligent civilization capable of being detected by our current technology. The great filter can then either be behind us—implying that we have already surmounted a highly improbable event that enables our civilization’s development—or ahead of us. In the latter case, it might come in the form of potential disaster, such as self-destruction by our own technology. Or our failure to take climate change seriously, which more and more appears to be the settled case.  What this "great filter" cannot do is forecast the likelihood a successful civilization has already passed through all the hurdles and actually designed craft capable of reaching us in the here and now on this Earth - not via radio waves. 


In this regard it is interesting to me - as reported in the Physics Today article - that in a U.S.–Soviet conference in 1971, ideas for contacting extraterrestrials were mixed with solutions for the nuclear arms race.  Thus (ibid.):


"James Elliot, an astronomer at Cornell University’s Laboratory for Planetary Studies, presented a paper called 'X-Ray pulses for interstellar communication,' a benign title for a radical idea. He proposed that nuclear weapons could serve as an announcement message from Earth when attempting to contact extraterrestrial beings."


 Nuclear weapons used to contact extraterrestrial beings? WHY? And what IF such beings had already been in our proximity (i.e. the 1947 Roswell crash) and noted the nuclear threat our species posed already?  This telegraphs to me that from 1971, and more than likely even before that, we had adopted an aggressive stance toward any potential alien life in our vicinity.  It also explains now the yen to try to re-engineer such craft, to use for our own military benefit in case of any alien invasion. 


Recalling how much furor and hysteria the Orson Welles' fictional radio broadcast set off in 1938.  This was for those millions who had not tuned from the beginning when Welles stated clearly that the broadcast was fiction. In the words of author Aja Raden (in her book, 'The Truth About Lies', p.  202):  

"They believed that what they were hearing was real news. And they lost their fucking minds. Looting and rioting ensued. Accidents proliferated and hospitals were jammed with people injured or killed by other people, hysterical people, people in shock, stroke and heart attack victims.  People scared stiff, as well as others who harmed themselves rather than be captured or killed by the Martians.  

In San Francisco, people overwhelmed army headquarters looking to fight. In Birmingham people overwhelmed churches, certain the world was ending.   A woman in Indiana burst into one crowded church and screamed 'New York is destroyed! It's the end of the world! You might as well go home and die! I just heard it on the radio!"  

All of this hysterical reaction would have confirmed for the then U.S. military and governmental powers that any reports of potential alien craft (UFOs, now UAP) had to be throttled and debunked at all costs.  It was essential for two reasons: 1) to prevent public mass hysteria and the necessity to impose martial law, and 2) to preserve the myth of human sovereignty over our world and that it wasn't being used as an amusement park or worse, a sounding area for future colonization.


As for James Elliot, he even went further and "suggested the US and the Soviet Union combine their nuclear arsenals to create a single large explosion far from Earth, so the emitted x rays could potentially be detected at a significant distance by intelligences on other worlds."


Thereby, in this genius's estimation: "nuclear disarmament and extraterrestrial contact could be handled at the same time".


Righto! Send up a massive combined nuclear explosion out in space, to show these aliens just how friendly a species we are!  This after we already carved up a number of their compadres' in autopsies at Wright-Patterson Air Base.  What a boffo idea! That it was never done is small consolation.  Our combined and continued actions since have disclosed to whatever alien species visiting we cannot be trusted, and perhaps - just perhaps - the best move is just let this aggressive and arrogant species off itself.  The Physics Today piece ends by noting (ibid.):


"SETI Institute scientist Seth Shostak has made the point that any aliens humanity should expect to encounter are likely past the point of AI development, considering that humans were able to accomplish the feat so quickly after inventing radio technologies."


I agree with Seth's assessment but also that such aliens likely used  superior constructive AI development to push their own interstellar aspirations and likely reached our world having done so.  Hence, the Navy pilots recordings which they also discussed in a 60 Minutes episode:


Navy pilots describe encounters with UFOs - YouTube


This despite the fact Seth isn't buying that this was feasible, an argument I already addressed and shot down in a previous post, e.g.


Anthropocentric Parochialism Defines SETI Scientist Seth Shostak's Skepticism Over Aliens & UAP (brane-space.blogspot.com)


Let's also note the late Carl Sagan  - early SETI stalwart and once a debunker of UFOs as alien craft -  did finally come around to accepting the validity in a one-on-one with Northwestern University astronomer J. Allen Hynek, e.g.

https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=76926

Excerpt:  "The pillar of modern space science Dr. Carl Sagan revealed to Dr. J. Allen Hynek, that he knew UFOs were real but could not talk publicly about the matter and possibly risk the loss of academic funding."

 


See Also:



And:


Sovereignty and the UFO - Alexander Wendt, Raymond Duvall, 2008


And:


Physics Today Book Reviewer Kate Dorsch Is As Clueless About UFOs As Neil DeGrasse Tyson 


And:


A New UFO Book Review (WSJ) - But Still Inaccurate, Incomplete And Wanting In Insight (brane-space.blogspot.com)

And:

Brane Space: Jerry's Further Revelations About Past UFO Files And The Role of FOIA Releases - In A 1990 Group Discussion In FLA

And:

Congress Orders U.F.O. Records Released but Drops Bid for Broader Disclosure - The New York Times (nytimes.com)