We Must End the Conflicts

I’m not worried about the China spy balloon. Balloons have been used in conflicts around the globe as far back as our unCivil War. Despite upgraded surveillance systems, they gather the same information that satellites can, but at considerably lower cost. Slower, they can gather greater detail. But it’s not like the Pentagon is papering Montana prairies with classified docs. I don’t care that three similar balloons flew above the US when Trump was in office either.

The issue got raised by elected Republicans as part of their repetitive textbook propaganda machine that finds at least two mock Biden ‘scandals’ each week, floods the quick-response internet zone with alarms about some fresh threat or terror. The Independents and Democrats counter it with considerably more factual info, refuting the outright lies, providing context and perspective, and pointing out the hypocrisies the GOP pushes. If they cede that propaganda space to the GOP unanswered, the thinking goes they’ll lose ground in the public opinion.

Before the balloons, it was ‘sexy’ M&Ms.

And this contrived series of perpetual conflicts is treated as very important news by mainstream news outlets. It’s standard thinking because controversy draws eyeballs to sell ads. The process on all sides has grown stale and musty and doesn’t serve the public very well at all.

(Hang on a second so I can add something artful here.)

I have to entertain you, keeping your mind and eyes interested, without the ‘standard thinking’ and clickbait links and ads. Is it better than the constancy of conflict that old school media provides?

Pushing and participating in conflict is destructive and runs counter to my nature to mediate and find paths to cooperative societies. But for Roman gladiators and football stars and WWF wrestlers, for fans of superheroes and cop shows and spy stories, they trigger things in the collective human psyche that normalizes conflict, endless fear and the distrust of people. And nature.

Our potential advances as a civilization are sharply limited by the old bread and circuses political mindset with its inherent inflictions of pain.

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”
— Ernest Hemingway

“All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.”
― John Steinbeck

“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

CURRENT WARS & CONFLICTS IN THE WORLD

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Estimated war and terrorism fatalities from 1/27/2022 - 1/27/2023; most estimates by ACLED and/or the Global Terrorism Index run by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP). Where no cause is displayed, typically it’s terrorism, minor insurgencies, and/or government crackdowns on protests.

Russia: more than 120,000 (offensive war begun against Ukraine, with actual numbers unknown)

Ukraine: more than 100,000 (defensive war countering Russia, but unlike Russia fatalities, 40% are civilians per best Pentagon estimates)
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Myanmar: 18,800+ (civil war) ongoing wars for 75 years
Nigeria: 10,496 (civil war)
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Mexico: 7,791 (drug war)

Brazil: 7,086 (drug war)

Somalia: 6,897

Ethiopia: 6,495

DR Congo: 5,897

Syria: 5,625 (civil war)

Yemen: 5,390 (civil war) Saudi Arabia also involved

Mali: 4,819

Ethiopia : 4,790 (civil war) Eritrea also involved

Iraq: 4,523 (civil war/terrorists)

Afghanistan: 3,782 (civil war/terrorist insurgency)
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Columbia: 2,116 (drug war)

Sudan: 1,999

South Sudan: 1,951

Pakistan: 1,700+

Cameroon: 1,038
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Niger: 995

Mozambique: 899

Philippines: 882

India: 869

Venezuela: 760

Chad: 661

Guatemala: 628

Honduras: 586

Kenya: 561

Iran: 519

(Countries with less than 500 fatalities not shown)

Beyond Russia and Ukraine, there was more than another 110,000 known war and conflict fatalities in the rest of the world last year.

Steve Killelea, Founder & Executive Chairman, IEP: “Terrorism is becoming more centred in conflict zones, underpinned by weak governments and political instability, while in Europe and the US politically motivated terrorism has overtaken religiously motivated attacks. As conflict in the Ukraine dominates global attention it is crucial that the global fight against terrorism is not sidelined. Terrorist activity in the Sahel is increasing substantially, and is driven by Islamic militias.”

“The decline of terrorism in the West coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic. Restrictions on freedom of movement, travel and the immediate threat to personal health may explain some of the fall. Once the emergency measures are removed there is the possibility of an uptick in terrorism activity.”

Some say it’s naive to expect human nature to change, that there’s something innate within us that desires conflict, fully extended to violence and the mass murder war always is. I think they - all the ‘theys’ - are influential and distinguished bullshitters.

Governments hire the young to carry out their dastardly deeds for a reason: they can be more easily and quickly bullshitted. Terrorist leaders do the same. Druglords do the same. Young people are more malleable, full of passion and conviction. And more attuned to playing every new exciting game.

Patriotism isn’t a new game. Omerta and loyalty are not new. Tying young people to a shot at some blessed immortality isn’t new either. These are some of the circus tricks leaders have pulled for centuries. The human nature of violence-prone leaders is what we need to be aware of. Not all leaders are like that, but many are. By choice.

In the Americas, Brazil, Mexico, Columbia, Honduras and Guatemala are torn by druglords. They dispense favors and jobs and pathways out of poverty, bribing politicians, police and judges, just as city bosses dispensed patronage. Boss Tweed, Mayor Daley, Al Capone and El Chapo differ in the amount of brutality they unleashed but each was corrupted by self-serving greed. Greed is more ingrained in human nature, but it, too, can be tempered by education and training, just as violence can.

And where can the masses turn for pragmatism, wisdom and ethical guidance for that tempering? Here’s several examples of flawed leadership that offer no guidance towards a less violent future.

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1. Leaders who dehumanize others, comparing people to animals, demons and monsters. Every one is human and even if they act terribly, the critic should direct their critique at the actions and decisions they made. If they act without empathy, sympathy and compassion, one can analyze that as sociopathy or psychopathy, but suggesting animals act like that, or witches or devils, therefore the person is being a puppet to outside, dark forces…. is inaccurate. It frees the responsible from responsibility to assume their choices are partly because of sinister evil beings that are only seen in artistic renderings and drug-induced hallucinations.

2. Cutthroat business leaders who exploit their labor by compensating them at less than a living wage, treating them as expendable serfs laid off in droves no matter how well they actually performed. When they lay off thousands and business management teachers normalize that as ‘standard business practice’ their indifference to their employees and the families they support is just another form of violence. When they follow it by outsourcing those jobs to pay foreign workers far less, it’s surely pragmatic if we only count dollars and cents for shareholder value. But the recent pandemic has made it clear that emergencies can cause supply chain disruptions and quality control issues.
   
   And what good comes of dollars and cents when it requires complete disregard for employees and customers? Government aid programs like food stamps and section 8 housing should not have to subsidize business decisions that exploit people, which became pretty evident when sharp-eyed people added up the dollars and cents the government was spending to subsidize Walmart employees before covid disrupted the old payscales. Dollars with sense required the acquisition of more knowledge, more than the acquisition of profits for the few at the expense of the majority.

3. Religious extremists are also a major source of unethical behavior. There are cults and there are established religions. Both have resorted to practices that prey on human biases and logical weaknesses that are a part of our human nature. Many a non-extremist religion has also done so to some extent. Which is not to say that all religions have done so.
   
   As I researched these conflicts, my own biases - rooted in ignorance - came into play. I assumed the conflicts throughout African countries were driven by Muslim extremists. Through past study, sure, I’m well aware that a few thousand Muslim extremists exist in the world but there’s more than 1.8 billion people of that faith and the violence promoters are less than 1% of them. Almost a quarter of the world’s population is Muslim and only Christians outnumber them. But over 99% of both religions seek common things like potable water, arable & sustainable croplands, decent shelter and reliable utilities, adequate and affordable healthcare, human rights, recreation and entertainment and the opportunity to move beyond meager subsistence to a greater degree of comforts.
   
   In most of the countries listed, further research indicated that all but a couple listed at least one of four major natural resources: petroleum, natural gas, gold and uranium. Could the conflicts there be rooted in pursuit of those resources?
   
   Possibly. It can’t be ruled out, depending on how vast the resource and its availability via common extraction methods. But research led me to much more worthy of consideration. Chad is only 53% Muslim and 44% Christian. The DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) is 96% Christian and had the third highest number of conflict fatalities of Africa’s 54 countries.
   
   Sao Tome and Principe is about 97% Christian and Equatorial Guinea is 93% Christian. Central African Republic, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), South Africa, Burundi, Liberia, Namibia, Malawi, Uganda, Kenya and Lesotho are between 80 and 89% Christian.
   
   Angola, Congo, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and Ghana are 70 to 79.8% Christian. Other Christian dominant countries include Gabon (65%), Ethiopia (62.1%), South Sudan (60.5%), Cameroon (59.7%) and Eritrea’s harder to pinpoint but is a minimum of 49% Christian.
   
   Mozambique stands out with 57%-59% Christian but it also has a comparatively high 17% of atheists/agnostics. Mozambique, Benin and Togo are well under 50% but still easily outnumber the Muslim adherents. So more than half the countries in Africa are majority Christian. Generally- but not exclusively, African countries on or beneath the equator are Christian majority and above them is where the Muslims dominate.
   
   Most of the evidence in African conflicts suggest that ethnic divisions and geography plus Muslim extremism and US government decisions account for most or all of them.

   

   A seminal event in human history was the terrorist hijackings that occurred on September 11, 2001. Not only was the world’s strongest nation - militarily and economically - proven vulnerable to an attack by several dozen extremists, but they even crashed a plane into one of its two major command centers, the Pentagon.
   
   Near universal support and empathy rolled in from across the globe in the wake of that profound tragedy. But the political and military leadership squandered that support with some really bad decisions.
   
   The actual evidence at the time did not support an invasion of Iraq, since (a) Iraq was not at all involved in the planning or execution of the attacks, (b) renewed UN inspections indicated no Iraq WMDs existed and ( c) a homeland security leader reported that the planning for the attack on Iraq began when Bush and Cheney first took office and 9-11 just provided a (weak) excuse to justify the invasion.
   
   While a strategic argument could be made for taking out Saddam Hussayn and his two sons, followed by a quick exit, that war proved costly in numerous ways. It exceeded cost estimates by many multiples of billions, it exposed our military’s willingness to commit numerous war crimes in violation of international law (without proof that any advantage was gained via torture) and much of the Iraqi military leadership fled and ultimately formed some of the core of the terror group commonly called ISIS.
   
   After a long protacted war and occupation, we gained a still unstable Iraq, a new conflict in Syria (the most visible blowback), a damaged reputation in the world and a still active ISIS. Because of the geography of northern Africa, the Islamic State terror group (among others) conducts a lot of its movements east to west across a mostly rural or desert environment in sub-Saharan Africa. That strip is called the Sahel.
   
   They also coordinate activities in the Lake Chad Basin which includes most of Chad and Niger. These are shown below. Only Mauritania and Senegal on the West coast don’t have significant

   

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   I contend that humans are not innately violent and prone to conflict, not because I wish it to be so, but because there’s plenty of evidence in history and psychology to indicate it’s true.
   
   Certainly, fighting off an invading force is pragmatically and ethically defensible. The ‘mama bear’ defensive maternal instincts run through most mammals and many other species. Survival instincts are certainly innate for almost all humans and papa bear responses to protect mates and offspring is fairly common too.
   
   But offensive aggression? as stated, ideology and ethnic differences - often intertwined - along with excessive avarice, accounts for nearly all of it. Almost all driven by things we’ve been taught or conditioned to via life experience.
   
   A dog can be trained to attack via a carrot/stick approach or by abusing the dog. The same is true of people. Trained in school or military units, kept poor, lean and mean so life’s a constant struggle to survive, we are taught and conditioned to conflict. And there are solutions.
   
   Which I’ll describe in the next newsletter.

   

   A lot going on in recent days. A close friend underwent surgery so helping the friend through post-surgical needs kept me busy.
   
   Last night while working on this, I was also checking out the new social media platform, Spoutible, fresh competition for Twitter. Instead of a twitter bird tweeting, it utilizes a whale so posting there is a spout (or spouting off). Instead of trending topics, there’s ‘making waves’.
   
   It appears to be intentionally designed to be more friendly and open to debate, with moderation standards to limit disinfo and threatening behavior. It’s not hard to figure out a lot of it but a few features require a little instruction. Each spout is limited to 300 characters and one can edit spouts and comments unlike Twitter.
   
   Unlike Post.news there hasn’t been a big stream of news sites, journos, politicians and celebs signing up yet, but several are there. As the site didn’t fully open to the general public today, as was intended, I’m confident they’ll come. I doubt many will be interested in following multiple Twitter-like platforms so it’s currently a guessing game where moderates and liberals will land. Mastodon, Post.news, Spoutible or remaining on Twitter appear to be the likeliest options.
   
   Me, I intend to leave Twitter 100%. I’ll post some in Post and spout some in Spoutible for a bit before settling on one. As a non-techie I find both very user friendly. Determining how well they’re moderated, who useful they are as sources of news, art, music, humor and more will help me narrow my usage further, likely within this month.
   
   Useful: Rather than refreshing your Spoutible Timeline, check out "Explore" and keep refreshing that. You'll find lots of interesting Spouts and new Spouters to follow.
   
   Also like there’s a few good souls posting tips to enhance usability, in Spoutible you’ll find several people sharing tips like this and this and that one too. The designer of the site delivers super important goods as well, so definitely follow him.
   
   Today Christopher Bouzy spouted “Bullies are so used to abusing others on social media, they naturally assumed they could come here and it would be business as usual. They were wrong.”
   
   He also delayed the full public opening to Thursday:
   

   

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   More than 6,200 buildings collapsed. More than 4,300 people died. More than 7,800 people rescued from the rubble.
   
   I was watching news videos last night, well into the morning. A PDX friend, a retiree who owned and ran a coffee cart for 30+ years, was talking about his visits to one of the two hardest hit cities. In our minds we develop rough sketches of foreign countries we’ve never visited, often based on their leaders and often far off the mark. He said, in all of Europe he’d never visited a friendlier city, full of exceedingly nice people and excellent food.
   
   That’s when the devastation really hit me. I was pretty overwhelmed. Went to bed at 3:30 in the morning. Had two of the vividest short dreams of my life, both waking me up within half an hour. Couldn’t get back to sleep, I was so startled. Got up and did more research, finally getting to sleep about 5:30.
   
   This is the most devastating earthquake I can recall in my 70 years.