Apocalypse

Three things point to apocalypse in the near future.

First, there is the world of my occupation, journalism (distinct from blogging). I have been reeling ever since May 31, when I heard that the New York Times Will Offer Employee Buyouts and Eliminate Public Editor Role. In my own less august journalism world, things have not been going according to plan either.

This is the kind of gutting of the invisible people who make a well-written, well-researched news medium possible. It happened to The Washington Post several years ago and only the calamity of Trump was temporarily stayed the executioner. The Post was never the Times, but it could be a reliable source of information, sometimes written decently. I explained it in The Information-free Society.

Second, my eye caught a business story in the Post, Why Apple is struggling to become an artificial-intelligence powerhouse, that made the Newtonian apple hit my head. AI explains the socioeconomic future!

Put simply, it is this: the elites, the unknown "they" who have their hands at the levers of society and the economy like the Oz wizard, behind the curtain of government, have decided to decimate the population. There are too many people, they fight too much, they want wages and rights and all sorts of things humans want but can't all have. Solution: starve 80 percent of humanity and leave a thin layer of highly educated people who can live off the goods and services produced by AI. (I would hope that me and mine are among the privileged 20 percent, but I can't be sure.)

Third, there's climate change. No further explanation is needed.

This may reflect the realization of my own personal apocalypse, as I approach my 65th birthday, but I honestly just don't see a better future.

The Dead are not heroes, they're victims

Once again we come to Memorial Day and its orgy of militarism and the propaganda schmaltz. What else do you call "honoring" the dead, essentially people ordered to go get killed for the profits of the war making machine?


Make no mistake about it. They didn't die for our relative "freedoms" (we are no notably freer than Britain or France or Sweden). No soldier dead since World War II gained us any. They died for Boeing and Grumman and Lockheed.

Still, they keep sending Johnny marching off to kill and be killed. It's time to stop.

Here are some of my posts from other occasions on this subject:

A Greatful Nation

Dulce et Decorum Est

War is the fault of all the soldiers who wage it

Let's not forget: Osama had a point

Defying militarism

Let's stop, please. Let's honor people by staying out of war and stop bombing countries with which we are not at war.

Rot In Hell: Roger Ailes

I hereby resurrect the Rot In Hell Awards I started in 2006 for rapscallions who die, lest others attempt the rehabilitation of their reputations.

In the case of Ailes, his life is so filled with travesty that the challenge is to find something mildly neutral to say about him. Even The New York Times can't do better than republish a statement from his wife about him being a "living husband" (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!).

Strike 1: he was rich.

Strike 2: he was a conservative propagandist of the most loathesome kind, a facilitator of faux news (the news part of the Fox network) before even someone like Donald Trump gave a name to it.

Strike 3: he abused women who worked for him.

Y'er out!

What Trump Is Probably Hiding

Donald J. Trump is probably not a billionaire if you subtract his debts from his assets, that is why he is hiding his tax return. He has a smaller wallet than he would like everyone to think; almost certainly he didn't add to what he inherited.

He probably coasted, at best, on what used to be called "gentleman's Cs" in the fancy schools he attended. He got in mostly because his father had money.

He has enough money that he could buy sex anywhere, hence his claim to have better sex than anyone else. But I bet he's not a particularly good performer in bed. Why brag about it otherwise?

As for business, he has been in the easiest, least productive sector of the economy that there is: real estate. Let's face it, land just sits there. It contributes nothing to a society to put one more ugly chrome and glass structure on it. It doesn't help the average consumer do anything.

He doesn't have to hide that he is rude, crude, dishonest and basically selfish. That is perfectly in evidence. As is that he has never opened the Bible for more than appearance's sake -- such as at the inauguration.

Which reminds me, he probably hides most of all that he is not interested in the job of president, at least not as the official described in the Constitution. He would like to be CEO of the United States, but CEOs are neither elected nor particularly accountable to anyone; it's not what the Constitution prescribes.

Does Greek Mythology rhyme, echo, or retell with the stories of the Bible?

Not directly. The sources of Greek mythology did not have direct contact with the sources of biblical writings, and vice versa, in any way that would make borrowing likely or even plausible.

There are, however, archetypal ideas found in different forms in every set of writings about the very basic human concerns. We all are concerned with right, wrong, life, after life, etc.

The view that the Bible is "actual reality" is hugely off base. The Bible has a lot of mythology.

The creation story is not factual, nor is the Flood. No one can verify that Moses existed or that the Hebrew people were enslaved in Egypt, much less wandered in the desert. Some of the historical books bear a passing resemblance to verifiable history, but could hardly be called actual history. We know precious little about the person of one Jesus of Nazareth, somewhat more about some of his followers, but not much.

These are just a few of the many ways in which the Bible is a mythological anthology, much of it not even written down by its original sources.

The Bible, however, is not about facts but faith. As Greek mythology was.

Mythology is not a collection of falsehoods, as some believe, but rather a literary form of telling foundational stories.

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This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.

Why do Catholics revere Mary (mother of Jesus) more than other Christians?

Strictly speaking, Catholics revere or respect Mary on a par with Orthodox Christians, but somewhat more than most Protestants, who do not believe in invoking saints for intercession (to speak on one's behalf to God). Thus the broad and larger trunks of Christianity consider Mary special, with Protestants the minority exception.

Why? A variety of reasons.

First, there's the respect for the mother of Jesus, which was surely why John the apostle took her to live with him. Second, there's looking at Mary as an example of obedience to God, shown in Luke's narrative of when the birth of Jesus was announced to her. Third, there's the view that thanks to Mary we have Jesus, which has given to various theological titles of Mary, some resulting in a bit of symbolic "inflation," but nonetheless in some respects, reasonable.

People who study popular piety, which is how the theologically untutored devotion to saints and to Mary is called, agree that there are psychosocial factors, as well. Jesus is a powerful male figure. Mary seems more approachable and her story is one of being an ordinary person caught up in a major story, like most of us.

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This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.

What are the main differences between Catholicism and Protestantism?

The principal difference is epistemological, meaning where and how the teachings of the Christian faith are revealed and how they may be legitimately applied and developed. Otherwise, there are superficial differences in church organization and worship and some semantic arguments that when you drill down in a peaceful and amicable way amount to very little.

Catholic epistemology holds that truth is revealed by God and entrusted through the apostles to the Church under a pope going back to St. Peter, out of which sprung the Bible (with 73 books, per the Council of Trent), theology, seven sacraments, etc. Protestant epistemology holds that divine revelation is confined to the 66 biblical books that Martin Luther approved of, subject to the interpretation of the individual good faith Christian; the Protestant consensus is that the Bible justifies only two sacraments and theologies vary widely.

Traditionally, almost all Protestant denominations hold to some version of Luther's three solas (sola scriptura, sola gratia, and sola fide, meaning only scripture, only grace, only faith). These were thought to divide Catholics and Protestants, but as the heat of controversies simmered down, it seems that the theological meaning and significance of scripture, grace and faith are really very similar. Catholics and Protestants both acknowledge that the Bible is a central touchstone of Christian teachings. Similarly, Catholics and Protestants both believe that salvation comes as a gift (gratia) from God through Christ. Finally, Catholics and Protestants both believe that faith is what allows believers to receive the benefits of the salvation work of Christ.

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This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions and their subtexts are not mine.

Fidel and I

Towards the middle of April 1959, when I was still an elementary schoolboy, I had a chance meeting with a personage who has just died. Many years later that person still affected the world. It happened more or less like this.

At that time, my father served as a diplomat in Washington, D.C., sent by the government of President Arturo Frondizi of Argentina.

Given my age I was not told too much about my father's work. It was, as always, something to do with economics. My father had taught me the law of supply and demand and, in a children's history book, I had read something about a certain Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin who had caused a stir in the world of adults.

We were all in the middle of a Cold War with the Soviet Union, with the possibility of nuclear war. All this was very complicated, interesting and frightening at the same time.

Years before in New York, where I was born, I had startled the nuns in my school the day the teacher asked us what our Daddies did, as part of a lesson on the idea of ​​working, and I replied "he's a Communist." My mother asked me about it and managed to make out that I had meant "economist." At my age the two words were very similar. My father was not a Communist, not by long shot.

But that was before the episode about which I write, which was in 1959, months after the triumph of the Cuban insurrection led by Fidel Castro (and, curiously enough, equipped by no less than the Central Intelligence Agency). In April, Fidel came to Washington for 11 days to meet with officials, but also to visit the capital.

It should be understood that in April 1959 Fidel Castro was not known as a Communist. He was a hero to almost everyone. Richard Nixon, who had debated with Nikita Khrushchev of the USSR, pronounced him "almost naive in ideological matters" after interviewing him.

Fidel had overthrown a dictator, one those of the 1940s and 1950s in Latin America. The dictator had been one of those more or less demagogic leaders, megalomaniacs, who censored the press and barred criticism, ideologically eclectic, some accomplishing socioeconomic improvements and some not. Getulio Vargas in Brazil, Juan Domingo Perón in Argentina, Marcos Pérez Jiménez of Venzuela, the three Somozas of the dynastic dictatorship in Nicaragua, Rafael Leonidas Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, François Duvalier of Haiti and, of course, Fulgencio Batista of Cuba.

At that time, my family was looking for a house and meanwhile we were staying in a hotel where many diplomats and foreign groups came. I was a multilingual kid who talked to everyone and I met a group of young Cubans, young men and women in their 20s, who adopted me as their mascot and invited me everywhere.

Fidel arrived in the city and my Cuban friends were ecstatic, telling me that they were going to go in the caravan of cars that would accompany the new Cuban president to visit George Washington's home in Mount Vernon, Va., about an hour from Washington.

I got caught up in the excitement and ran with one of them to beg my mom for permission to go with them. My mother had doubts but I convinced her. The day arrived and she made me put on a suit, used gel on my hair to make it stiff as a rock, and I left, riding on the hood of a convertible like parade model, my feet held to the back seat by two of my Cuban friends.

We arrived at Mount Vernon and after waiting in line I found myself in front of a bearded man who seemed to me very tall. I told him what my mother had told me, that my parents and grandparents extended the congratulations of Argentina. He told me something else that I don't remember and urged me to tell him something of what I thought.

And then my request came out: "I would like a uniform like yours."

He smiled, told some of the men around him to take my information and send me a uniform. I was happy. Fidel Castro would send me another outfit to play in, along with my cowboy clothes and my civil war soldier and baseball uniforms.

My family did not have much occasion to receive the uniform. Meanwhile, my father became an advisor to Frondizi in the Pink House, Argentina's version of the White House. In that position he participated in a private meeting with Che Guevara, the latter in his capacity as Minister of Industry of the Republic of Cuba, and in a more protocolary encounter with Fidel Castro in Punta del Este, Uruguay. No one told me, still a boy, what was said in such high level gatherings.

Years later, around 1990 I found myself, as spokesman for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, making the case on television for ending the useless economic blockade of Cuba, a reality that has not yet come to pass, despite the resumption of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States.

From my point of view, Fidel was less nefarious than those who hate him say, but also less spectacular than those who adore him think.

Undoubtedly, as Brazilian economist Celso Furtado explained, Cuba's socio-economic success in eliminating the extreme poverty that still afflicts much larger Latin American countries is an example that should inspire shame in all the governments of the continent. On the other hand, there should be some way to achieve similar achievements without a Stalinist regime.

Today, as news of Fidel's death reached me, I have different complaint: he never sent me the Cuban guerrilla uniform I had asked for!

Eat, Drink and Be Merry, for Tomorrow We Die

The title phrase draws from a letter of Paul of Tarsus to the Corinthians that uses the phrase ironically, yet it expresses perfectly what the Trump era promises to the physical environment. Go ahead and buy yourself an a SUV, not only has climate change been way past stopping for a decade, but now Trump's malign neglect will speed up and worsen its effects.

The full quote is: "If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what is the gain to me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die." In other words, if you don't believe in God, Christ, salvation or an afterlife, don't waste your time trying to be upright.

Donald of New York might have written to those two guys from Corinth, of whom he seems to have been fond, something like: go grab yourself some pussy and, oh, yes, some beer.

Bring it on!

Let's turn on all the lights, burn all the gasoline we can, buy all the furs we can afford, run all the air conditioners we want, throw away all the plastics we can think of ... the planet is doomed.

Before Trump the first serious effects of climate change were due by 2050 -- a date likely to be after my death. Now, with a little help from me, I can live to see it. Hurrah!

Amerikkka has taken off its mask

For Hispanics, who watched Barack Obama deport about twice as many people as George W. Bush, this is refreshing. Turns out the United States was always about white, not so white and black. The white liberals and the dog-whistling conservatives aren't that much different if you're not a non-Hispanic white.

Trump is no dog whistler. Trump has made clear he will encourage the hate. At last an honest man, Dionysus!

Sadly, I have to accept that the country I have loved and hoped in doesn't want me and never wanted me.

My real name is Cecilio José Morales. Do you think I call myself Cecilieaux Bois de Murier because I want to be French? The French are a nation of sissies who never saw German to whom they couldn't surrender.

No. I am Cecilieaux Bois de Murier because I have been told repeatedly online, by idiots with losing arguments that they would have me deported. My words were just Spic talk when said by Cecilio Morales.

Right. Deport me to New York City, where I was born.

What are valid arguments supporting discrimination against the unemployed?

To discriminate is to evaluate someone based on characteristics other than merit; sometimes it involves acting on that assessment.

In actual fact, unemployed people experience many kinds of discrimination. There is ample evidence, for example, that it is easier to find a job when you already have one. This is largely because to potential employers someone who is employed is already demonstrating some basic minimum traits (showing up at work, behaving reasonably in a workplace, keeping up some level of productive behavior, etc.).

However, it would not be logical to assume that every person who is unemployed does not possess similar traits, only that the traits are only not evident in the present. Nonetheless, the bias exists among employers.

Some even argue that the longer a worker stays out of work, the more their skills degrade—for example, the jobless often do not gain exposure to the latest techniques in certain fields or through lack of practice they lose proficiency. This is debatable. Certainly, it cannot be applied reasonably to everyone on a blanket basis.

At this writing in mid-2016, in most of the United States to act in the labor market on the basis of biases such as I have presented is not illegal, although it is neither kind nor fair nor, in many cases, sensible. In my view, it is not valid to refuse to hire people on the basis that they are unemployed.

There are other conclusions, however, that may be validly drawn from unemployment.

People without jobs are not likely good risks for a bank loan, unless they can show unearned income. Unemployed people are not likely to be paying taxes, they are likely to suffer from unemployment psychologically and require help. Some studies show that people who lose their jobs during great economic crises tend to have lower future incomes and life expectancy. It would be valid to make some decisions on the basis of these effects of unemployment and take actions that might discriminate, sometimes for the good of the jobless person.

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This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions are not mine.

Why is it not possible to eliminate world poverty?

Conceptually, poverty cannot be eliminated because being poor means being the person(s) with the least money and resources. Someone will always be richest and someone poorest unless some way is found for everyone to own and have income that is exactly identical.

However, poverty as a condition in which essential needs such as food, clothing and shelter are unmet, can in theory be eliminated. For the past 100 years or so humanity has possessed the means to produce enough food, clothing and shelter for everyone, whereas in the past the lack of industrial machinery might have prevented this and genuine shortages existed.

What is lacking is the political will, the collective disposition of most people and most societies to make an earnest effort to make sure these become available to all. This could change. The fact that the United Nations Millennium goal to eliminate extreme poverty is slowly being met shows much more can be done. What cannot be done is eliminate poverty and keep societies that have excess luxury intact.

Also, a much more difficult way to eradicate poverty involves providing everyone the access to education and employment sufficient to help them become self-sustaining. This is a much more complex problem.

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This is a repost from my replies to questions posted on Quora, a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users, at quora.com. The questions in italics and their subtexts are not mine.

The anti-Columbus fashion is a matter of bias fed by lies

Christopher Columbus was not a saint and, despite his first name (which means Christ-bearer), was likely a Marrano (or secret) Jew. Moreover, the first European ever recorded as having set foot in the New World was openly Jewish, a man named Luis de Torres, who spoke Hebrew to the Americans he met on October 12, 1492.

If this startles you, it is because the reality of what happened that fateful day and in the years that followed has been obscured by historical propaganda.

The version prevalent in the English-speaking world is that cruel, lazy and papist Spaniards landed in the Caribbean driven by a lust for gold, a crazed desire for spilling blood and enslavement of natives and an unquenchable urge to rape their women. The republics were doomed to fail given their rampant “miscegenation” and collapse into neofeudal sloth. Britain and later the United States were duty bound, the story went, to exploit these people for the good of the continent, bringing democracy and free trade.

This overlooks several uncomfortable facts.

Information about Spanish wrongdoing during the early colonization is not a new discovery by liberal left-wing U.S. academics, or even by American Indian activists. The facts come from the written advocacy on behalf of natives by Spanish Catholic priests, including the first one ordained in the New World, going back 500 years.

Little is said by the outraged garment-rending followers of anti-Columbus fashion about British atrocities against American Indians, Irish, Indians from India, Africans and so on. This includes the first recorded use of germ warfare, when British commanding generals ordered, sanctioned, paid for and conducted the use of smallpox against Native Americans during the French and Indian War. Where were the Protestant clerics demanding that such practices be put to an end?

This is to say nothing of the introduction of the kidnapping of Africans into slavery in the New World, a wholly British and Portuguese business. Today, every single former British colony, including the United States, has an ethnic or racial fissure at the core of its society. Ever wonder why?

Of course, there is a Spanish-speaking-world version of historical propaganda about the colonization of America, with other distortions.

According to the traditional Spanish and Ibero-American story, valiant and devout Spanish military men and missionaries brought civilization and Christianity to savage Indians, installing societies in which all were respected according to their ordained station. Notably, these societies included an intermingling of Spanish, American natives and Africans that today offers a rich palette of skin hues in that part of the world. The venture was disrupted by British pirates’ attack on Spanish shipping and their agents’ promotion of discontent among the local elite.

In a relatively new and revisionist rendering since the 1970s—which adopts some of what traditionally was called the British “black legend” about the Spanish colonies—the Ibero-American story adds that the former colonies of Spain and Portugal became neofeudal estates thanks to a deliberate British campaign to develop a neocolonial regime of subservient banana republics. Once the British Empire faded, the United States stepped in as colonial master.

Supposedly enlightened U.S. Americans are coming to the game a little late—as are the Ibero-American children and grandchildren of more recent immigrants who had little to do with colonization. It’s easy to see wrongdoing in past generations of unrelated foreigners.

The much harder task is to reevaluate history with fresh eyes that take into account what people born before our time could not have known or understood.

For example, the term “genocide” was coined in 1944 by Polish-born U.S. jurist Raphael Lemkin in his work Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. It means to kill a tribe, from the Greek genos (race, kind). Columbus would not have known what anyone bringing up such a charge even meant.

All conquest in history, even in 21st century Syria and Ukraine, has involved some vile and repulsive violence against the civilian population, often enough chosen as victims simply because of their kind.

Columbus was not leading a scientific expedition out for a picnic. He was leading an expedition to get access to Asian goods that could be sold in Europe. He had investors to repay, because contrary to legend the Catholic monarchs did not finance the venture, but rather a consortium headed by two conversos like Columbus: Luis de Santangel, Spain’s chancellor of the royal household, and Gabriel Sanchez, treasurer of Aragon.

In researching this post, I found a fanciful explanation that adds another viewpoint, published in an October 14, 2013, Times of Israel blog by Simcha Jacobovici, a Canadian-Israeli filmmaker and journalist.

Jacobovici points out that Columbus left the port of Palos on August 3, 1492, which to him is the 9th day of the Jewish month of Av, “the saddest day in the Jewish calendar, the day that both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed.” It was also the deadline for Jews in Spain to convert or leave.

Alongside Columbus’ ships was a veritable flotilla carrying Jews. Indeed, at least four Jews were on Columbus’ crew, in addition to Luis de Torres: Marco, the surgeon; Maestre Bernal, the physician; Alonso de la Calle, a bursar; and Rodrigo de Sanchez of Segovia, who was related to the Aragon treasurer.

Then Jacobovici drops his bomb:

Why would Columbus take a Hebrew speaker with him on a voyage to the New World? Because, according to Simon Wiesenthal in his book Sails of Hope, Columbus wasn’t looking for India. Rather, his secret mission was to find the lost tribes of Israel.

Whether this is true is irrelevant. There is some evidence that the delay in the Canary Islands, apart from having to do with the Great Navigator’s affair with a widow whose house in Las Palmas still stands (I visited it), was related to negotiations involving Jews and the Spanish authorities.

Whatever Columbus was looking for, he accidentally chanced on something else.

There was no established protocol on what to do when you find lands you didn’t even know existed, inhabited by peoples with warfare technology vastly inferior to your own. The precedent, from the most ancient history, offered one clear example: conquer them.