This T-Boy writers’ poll is devoted to THE LAST PLACE in the world where you would NEVER want to visit, or revisit. The instructions were simple: it could be a nation, state, region or province, a city or town, or a place; like that fisherman’s bar in Valparaiso, where I was once thrown out of for singing the Sex Pistols’ rendition of God Save the Queen a tad too loud.

By Susan Breslow, T-Boy Writer – The Garden of Earthly Delights? Hell, no!

A travel guide to Myrtle Beach could save on photography costs by simply featuring the hellscape from the Garden of Earthly Delights on its cover to represent the destination. Hieronymous Bosch’s sixteenth-century vision of Hades is a portrait of chaos, gluttony, porcine characters, hideous body modifications, and antagonistic flags. Myrtle Beach features all of these… plus miniature golf and a beach whose water turns polluted brown after storms.

We drove into this redneck Riviera hotspot from the south, coming up from sedate Charleston. We had no way of knowing that it was Bike Week (held every May, it turns out). Harley-Davidson owners decked out in black leather with silver studs and their similarly appointed, slutty-looking molls (even those old enough to know better) preened along the main drag beside thousands upon thousands of shiny parked hogs.

Behind them, a maelstrom of marquees for bars and fast-food joints where “fried” is the daily plat du jour. These troughs stand alongside souvenir shops where skeevy-looking, gray-bearded riders of both sexes have no problem buying and wearing black T-shirts that boast, “Born to be Wild.”

Had enough of this American Grotesquerie? Myrtle Beach: For a good time, drive on by.

By Richard Carroll, T-Boy Writer – The MV Sundancer, on Alaska’s Inside Passage

I was on a cruise with my mom and I booked the MV Sundancer to Alaska’s inside passage and upon reaching the Seymour Narrows, it sank. This specific cruise is the last place I would want to return too. It was June 29, 1984, and at 8:30 p.m. I was in the main lounge interviewing a crew member while a small band was performing show songs to a few of the 787 passengers sitting about enjoying the moment, when suddenly there was a heavy jolting thug that vibrated the ship. The band instantly stopped playing, and the ship seemed to be quietly floating dead in the water, then another whack and the lights went out, fluttering dimly and the smell of oil permeating the air. The Canadian Pilot had miscalculated our position and the Sundancer had slammed twice into Maud Island near Campbell River, an attractive town with wonderful residents.

The ship was quickly taking on water from a 32-foot gash on the starboard side. I rushed to my cabin where my mother was getting ready to retire. I said, “Mom, we have a problem, and you need to get dressed and put on a life jacket.” Water was seeping into our cabin, and it seemed like it took mom forever to get dressed, I could hear people running in the corridor and shouting. I said, “Forget the panty hose,” which was a tremendously slow process with only one foot in place, “Just slip on a dress, we have to get up to the top deck ASAP.” Finally, we departed the cabin and made our way up the dark stairway, sloshing through sea water, past panicked passengers, some who were frantically crying, to the top deck that was tilted to a sharp downward slant.

Garbled messages from the captain were useless as were the lifeboats that were banging against the side of the ship. The Sundancer made it to the Elk Falls Mill pier at Campbell River with almost complete chaos on the ship. It seemed, and not a generalization, that most of the young passengers panicked, while the older ones were calm and quietly standing on deck with their life jackets. A young couple on their honeymoon were hovering near the railing, when the husband hopped atop the rail facing the water yelling “I’m not going down with the ship!” My mom grabbed his shirt shouting, “Get down from there young man!” His wife was aghast. She was looking at him in disbelief and must have been thinking, “Is this what I just married?”

Campbell River, noted as “The Salmon Capital of the World,” was incredible in organizing a Cherry Picker to host off the elderly passengers like my mom, and were a great help overall. The ship had destroyed most of the pier, and, not by choice, I was the last passenger off the ship climbing down a rope ladder into a tug boat with a young boy from Puerto Rico who had become separated from his parents. As he clutched my arm, he told me he didn’t know how to swim. On land at the Red Cross Help Center, the Campbell River people gave the passengers clothes, blankets, hot drinks, good thoughts, and thankful that no one on the cruise died. The young man who wanted to jump ship and leave his new wife behind was strolling around shirtless sipping a cup of coffee, his distressed wife staring at him with sad eyes. Mom came up to her and with a big hug said, “Honey, give him a chance, maybe he’ll be okay.” We flew back to Southern California with no luggage. Years later I discovered my late mother’s collection of matchbooks and spotted the Sundancer souvenir from her first and only cruise, a memento I keep on my desk to this day. Inside she had inscribed, “Went on cruise with Richard. Ship sunk.”

By Peggy Polinsky, T-Boy Writer – Chaos at Versailles

Yes, chaos at Versailles, in this day and age. Unfortunately. So sad. When I first visited Versailles in 1965 with two friends (we had just graduated from college), there was an orderly line to enter the castle. Then we just walked around and saw everything under the guidance of our friend who became a successful travel agent. It was a beautiful, memorable experience. And then we visited the gardens as well – just strolling through.

The next time I went was in 2019 with my husband. We signed up for a tour. Connecting to the tour was frantic. Upon entering the palace, we discovered that there were hundreds of tours with thousands of tourists. There were so many people that the only time you could really see anything was if you looked up. But, although beautiful, not everything is on the ceiling.

And it was so loud. So, we made it through and got outside where we could see the outstanding gardens at a distance. We knew we couldn’t walk that far. No one had told us about the trams that will take you through the gardens. By then it was too late in the day. So, we made it back to the train and then the bus that took us back to our hotel. Determined not to ever do that again.

By Raoul Pascual, T-Boy Webmaster – The Horror Stories of Iran

I would never ever want to visit Iran. Because of the horror stories of head chopping and degradation of women and infidels, this is the country I would avoid at all cost (unless I want to leave this earth prematurely). It’s a Hotel California trap – you may enter any time you want but you will never leave… at least with your organs in one piece.

The Ayatollah Khomeini

“Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini, (May 1900 or September 1902 -June 1989) was an Iranian Islamic revolutionary, politician, and religious leader who served as the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death in 1989. He was the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the leader of the Iranian Revolution, which overthrew Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and ended the Iranian monarchy.

Khomeini was Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1979, and has been described as the “virtual face of Shia Islam in Western popular culture,” where he was known for his support of the hostage takers during the Iran hostage crisis, his fatwa calling for the murder of British Indian novelist Salman Rushdie, and for referring to the United States as the “Great Satan” and the Soviet Union as the “Lesser Satan.” Following the Islamic revolution, Khomeini became the country’s first supreme leader, a position created in the constitution of the Islamic Republic as the highest-ranking political and religious authority of the nation, which he held until his death. Most of his period in power was taken up by the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988. He was succeeded by Ali Khamenei on 4 June 1989.” – From Wikipedia.

Muslin Woman in the U.S. Today

Comment by Ed Boitano: Recently I met with a Muslim woman from Tehran, who spoke of her dislike of American liberals. I began to understand that her disdain stemmed from American liberals’ support of Iran’s Holy Muslim Quran, and that it was none of our business what goes inside of their country.

As the Muslim woman from Tehran continued with her tirade, she wished that U.S. liberals and conservatives alike would bond together and try to abolish many of the words in the Iranian Constitution, whose language, based on the Quran, spoke of misogyny, inequality and abuse of human rights. And whose words led to a state sponsored theocracy, the exacty opposite of what many of us in the U.S. pretend not to believe today.

By Ringo Boitano, T-Boy Writer – Hoodwinked in Daufuskie

As our little ferry boat graced the salt marshes of Hilton Head Island, surrounded by a world of sea grass in South Carolina’s Low Country, we were on our way to the island of Daufuskie Island in search of Gullah history. The ferry ride served as our introduction to our tour vendor, Tour Daufuskie. Little did we know that this very ferry ride would be the high point of our tour.

I recall the words on Tour Daufuskie’s welcoming sign, but noticed another on the ferry dock landing, which said, “No food Allowed.” But, before I booked my tour with Tour Daufuskie, I should have remembered the sacred verbal sign, which is known to all travelers as they journey throughout the world’s land: “Investigate Tour Operator Before Booking.”

My photographer and I were escorted by a Tour Daufuskie employee to a row of golf carts by a general store. His scripted remarks included “If you want any food you better get it here, ’cause this store is the only place on the island you can get it” (later we found an independent grocery in the island’s center), and “this is our BEST golf cart on the island… I know ’cause I just rode it!”

As we rode the BEST golf cart on the island, we were more than happy to leave the Tour Daufuskie man; and, with map in-hand of historic Gullah sites, we excitedly navigated our golf cart down the dusty dirt road in search of the past culture of these remarkable people who had once called Daufuskie their home. But our excitement was tempered, due to our golf cart, lumbering along at half speed. We returned it to the less-than-embarrassed Tour Daufuskie slicker, who offered no explanation, and were given another, which broke down ten minutes later. This time, a more qualified man arrived at the spot of our breakdown, and said we should have never have been assigned the first two carts and gave us another that actually worked.

But, first, a little about the Gullah; after all, that was why we were there. Research told me that slave traders brought Africans from Sierra Leone to the chain of Sea Islands for their expertise in planting, harvesting and processing rice. During the 1700s, American colonists in the Southeastern U.S. realized that rice would grow well in the moist, semitropical country bordering their coastline. But the American white plantation slave owners had no experience in the cultivation of rice, so they purchased slaves with a preference for Africans from the “Rice Coast” or “Windward Coast,” the traditional rice-growing region of West Africa. The enslaved people became known as the Gullah (Gul-luh), perhaps derived from Gola, a tribe found near the border of Liberia and Sierra Leone. Daufuskie itself: translated to “pointed feather,” a name attributed to island’s earliest inhabitants, the tribes of Muskogean stock.

I read that when the U.S. Civil War commenced, white slave owners hurriedly abandoned their plantations and slaves, and fled to the mainland, while some Gullah were actually unaware of the war and their eventual freedom from slavery had finally ended. Due to this isolation, the Gullah were able to preserve more of their African cultural heritage than any other group of African-Americans. They spoke a unique Creole language and maintained a life similar to that of Sierra Leone. I was anxious to meet a Gullah person and hear their unique language in conversation, and, who knows, maybe even a bit of folklore.

So, we were now officially off on our expedition in search of the Gullah, though it did take awhile. The map turned out to be fairly accurate leading us to the First Union African Baptist Church, listed as a historical landmark, followed by Maryfield School (circa 1930), the primary school for the Gullah children. This is the school where author Pat Conroy taught in the late 1960s, later documenting his experience in the novel, “The Water is Wide.” Transportation only began in 1950, so the children must have had a long walk in the woods, in particular with long walks without shoes. The small Billie Burn Historical Museum was next on our agenda, with Ms. Burn considered the first true Daufuskie historian, having documented life on the island’s past in her book, An Island Named Daufuskie.

The afternoon closed, after quick looks at the Maryfield Cemetery, the largest Gullah cemetery on the island. As we returned to the petite ferry, it was obvious that we had been misled and even lied to by Tour Daufuskie employees. Nevertheless, we were happy to see and learn all we did. But, were still annoyed that we had been taken advantage of, and wondered why such a company like Tour Daufuskie could even exist. It occurred to me that South Carolina is one of the least regulated states in the U.S., a state where the establishment of forming workers’ unions was once illegal. Curiously, the Sea Islands were the first place in the South where slaves were freed. And it made no sense to my Yankee mindset, for at the beginning of the U.S. Civil War, 96% of the population of South Carolina were African-Americans who wore the chains of slavery.

But the experience did serve as a life lesson, a lesson I had ignored; never book a tour with a vendor until you’ve thoroughly, independently, researched them and the specific tour. If not, there is a chance you might be disappointed. In conversation with others on the ferry ride back, it became clear not one of them had even a hint about the culture, let alone the existence of these proud and historic people, the proud and historic people simply known as the Gullah of Daufuskie Island.

By Fyllis Hockman, T-Boy Writer – The Most Difficult Trek We Had Ever Experienced

The eight of us huddled together, warned repeatedly to stay close and keep quiet. A soft cough escaped from one of our group, and the guide looked immediately askance. Coughing and sneezing were very much frowned upon. If you’re scraped by a stinging nettle, don’t even think about screaming – a usually fitting response. Sharing 98.4 percent of our DNA, the elusive mountain gorillas – whom we were seeking at the time – are very susceptible to human-borne illnesses and more gorillas die from such infectious diseases than from any other cause. We were carriers and they had to be protected from us. And this was before the pandemic!

Still, eight humans a day are allowed to visit these gentle giants, as they are known, for no longer than an hour, as we did during a recent visit to Uganda as part of an ElderTreks tour.

This is not exactly a drive-by photo op. With a vigorous (to say the least) trek of 1-7 hours, depending upon where the gorillas are that day, you have to REALLY want to see them. But even with visitation restricted to an hour, it is usually well worth the effort. But more on that later.

There are about 880 mountain gorillas in the world with almost half located in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, a World Heritage Site clearly worthy of its name, in southwestern Uganda, an 18% increase over the last census due to increased conservation efforts, education and veterinary care. This is very good news.

The prelude to the hike is itself intimidating. Treks range from 1-7 hours according to the promotional material, with a maximum increase in elevation of 500 meters. Wear good hiking boots, don gloves for the nettles, a walking stick is mandatory, bring lots of water, don’t get closer than 25 feet – and remember these are wild animals.

Anticipation mixed closely with apprehension as every person on our tour, whether expressed aloud or not, felt “I hope I can make.” The tale I’m about to tell about my travel-writing husband Vic and myself is not the norm. The tale for the other eight members of our Elder Treks tour, from whom we were separated because of the limit of eight people to a gorilla trekking group, is the opposite extreme – also not the norm.

Boy, were we ever wrong. The trek was somewhat strenuous from the beginning, with steep climbs and slippery descents, traversing narrow ravines, but we were holding our own, feeling pretty good about ourselves. Until we entered the forest. And there was no semblance of a trail at all. The guides were trail-blazing with the help of machetes deep into the clearly “impenetrable” woods, the rocks, roots and brambles beneath our feet not even visible because of the thick underbrush. With walking stick in one hand and the porter’s hand in the other, I tried valiantly to move forward though at times the porter was literally dragging me up the precipitous slopes or keeping me from sliding down sheer declines, twigs and vines attacking from both sides of the non-trail, entangling my feet and arms to further impede progress in either direction. At times, I thought either my arm would be pulled off by the porter or my legs by the vines.

All the while, I couldn’t help but feel guilty for thinking to myself how little at that point I cared about the gorillas and how much I was worried about surviving the grueling trip back. I was seriously considering becoming a modern-day, Dian Fossey and staying with the gorillas, assuming we ever reached them, just to avoid the return trip.

I wish we could say the trip was worth it but by the time we finally dragged ourselves – or more appropriately – were dragged by the porters to the designated area where the gorillas had been, they had left. This is just not what you want to hear after what most of us on the trek agreed was the most difficult thing we had ever experienced.

By James Boitano, T-Boy Writer – Athens’ “Ammonia Square”

Athens, It’s not a terrible place: it’s just not at all that remarkable. It’s a big gritty working city that happens to have become the capital of Greece by default in their Ottoman wars of independence. I remember as breathing in all the auto fumes trying to catch a taxi on Omonia Square, we jokingly called it, “Ammonia Square.” Athens is a busy and charmless city which I rate as the most overrated capital city in Europe. There are many more lovely places to visit in Greece. But I will say it its defense: the view of the Acropolis rising above the city is its finest feature. But I never need to go back after seeing it once.

By Ed Boitano, T-Boy Editor – Beneath the Surface of Coeur d’Alene

The French name Coeur d’Alene when translated into English means, “Heart of an Awl.” Once, when I was traversing the pleasant small city streets, I remembered what “Coeur” meant, but had never heard of such a thing as an “Awl” before. Later I learned, it is a thin, tapered metal shaft, coming to a sharp point.

But then yesterday it hit me, and it hit me sharply to my core; when I read that on March 28, 2024, a Utah women’s college basketball team was seen strolling down Coeur d’Alene’s sidewalks from their sponsored NCAA Tournament hotel. They were there for fun, food and relaxation, in preparation for a NCAA Tournament game to be played later in Spokane, WA. A few passing cars packed with locals shouted obscenities at the University of Utah’s Women’s Basketball Team. But it’s not unusual for a city to mock a visiting team, but was there something more below Coeur d’Alene’s emotional surface? And then, local and national news broadcasts said that it was truly something much more.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) – “On Thursday, the Utah team and another women’s team staying at the Coeur d’Alene Resort were walking to dinner at a restaurant on Sherman Avenue when the driver of a truck displaying a confederate flag began yelling the N-word and other racial slurs at members of the basketball teams, cheerleaders, the band and others in the traveling party.”

Utah head coach Lynne Roberts said, “Her team experienced a series of hate crimes after arriving at its first NCAA Tournament hotel in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.”

“For our players and staff to not feel safe in an NCAA Tournament environment, it’s messed up,” continued coach Roberts.

“It’s getting to the point where people of color can’t even travel anywhere,” Spokane NAACP President Lisa Gardner said. “This is starting to be reminiscent of the ‘ 60s.”

And it really did become something much more worse than I had thought…

“Officials in Idaho tried to apologize Tuesday for the racism the University of Utah’s women’s basketball team faced in Coeur d’Alene before an NCAA tournament game at Gonzaga.

Yes, but: “Right-wing disruption shuts down Idaho’s apology for racism targeting Utah during NCAA tourney.” – Axios Salt Lake City.

And, the reason: “They abruptly shut down the news conference when a far-right operative began shouting questions at a human rights advocate.”

Why it matters: “Northern Idaho has become a hub for right-wing extremist groups.”

The latest: “Investigators in Coeur d’Alene are working with the FBI to determine which, if any, criminal violations occurred,” Hammond and police chief Lee White said at the Tuesday news conference. Idaho law forbids “malicious harassment.”

The Ridiculous and the Sad

Coeur d’Alene, like Idaho, is renowned for its recreational components where one can hike, bike and even ski right out your door. But it also has a long history of hate groups, white nationalists and exclusiveness, where realtors often market their properties for “likeminded”‘ transplants who can no longer bear to live a life in urban centers, such as San Francisco, Portland and Seattle. And security is essential, particularly in some cities and towns, for many properties are marketed as “bunker homes.” But, what for: THE pending doom of the Apocalypse? OR Muslim terrorists’ attacks? OR Martian invasions? OR you and me who happen to live in an urban centers outside of the state? I’m still not sure why, but did notice on my last trip to Idaho, that locals, often transplants, are fond of echoing Fox News talking points via Trump News Social, such as “Liberal urban elitists.” I was happy, though, that “Cappuccino Liberal” didn’t seem to work out, for it’s still my favorite coffee beverage wherever I’m about.

Will I ever revisit Coeur d’Alene and Idaho again? My reply is, perhaps not.

Sun Valley Resort: America’s First Destination Ski Resort

I should close and say, none of this applies to Sun Valley Resort, located in the adjacent city of Ketchum. The resort is well-known as a tower for tolerance and acceptance, where many of its employees are guest workers from foreign lands, with the intention for all of us to understand the many different cultures in the world in which we live today.

And if the liberal patriot Hemingway chose to live there, how bad could it really be.

The post The Last Place in the World Where I Would EVER Want to Visit or Revisit Again appeared first on Traveling Archive.

The Doomsday Clock was set last year at a two-minutes until midnight, (midnight being the endgame), and there it now remains. There’s little comfort to be had in standing on what University of Chicago astrophysicist Robert Rosner characterized as a precipice we’d best quickly leap back from. Bulletin president and CEO Rachel Bronson stressed that the clock remaining where it is, the closest it has been to world catastrophe, is not stability, but “a stark warning to leaders and citizens around the world.”

William Perry said the organization views our current situation as precarious as it was in 1953, in the gloom of the Cold War while the Korean War still raged. Jerry Brown said, “ The blindness and stupidity of the politicians and their consultants is truly shocking in the face of nuclear catastrophe and danger….the business of everyday politics blinds people to the risk, we’re playing Russian Roulette with humanity,” with the danger of an incident that will kill millions if not igniting a conflict that will kill billions.

Brown told journalists while they may love the Trump tweets and news of the day, “the leads that get the clicks,” the final click could be a nuclear accident, a mistake. “It’s hard to even feel or sense the peril and danger we are in, but these scientists know what they’re talking about, and I can say, based on my understanding of the political process, the politicians, for the most part, do not.” Referring to Congress’s inaction on related matters, Brown called it “massive sleep walking all over the place.” He committed to spending the next few years doing everything he can to “sound the alarm and  get us back on the track to dialogue, collaboration and arms control.”

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and the Doomsday Clock are creations of a group of scientists who participated in the Manhattan Project. The clock’s current position was determined by a group of scholars and scientists that includes fifteen Nobel Laureates. These are serious people. It is heartening to see their avoidance of political talking points or partisan tilt in favor of Joe Friday’s focus on “just the facts, ma’am.” Just the chilling facts that let the chips fall where they may. About thirty-three minutes into the conference Jerry Brown gave a Dutch uncle talk to Democrats who maintain the attack mode on Putin on all matters without holding open the option for nuclear dialogue. It brought to mind the discussions of Washington’s bipartisan War Party prompted by William Atkin’s recent critique of NBC and MSNBC.

The Bulletin has been criticized for going beyond the original nuclear realm to include a number of other perils. But it seems if there is one thing we’re learning now from climate and polar ice studies and being slapped around by extreme weather events, it’s that seemingly unrelated factors cascade and overlap, interacting and accelerating in ways we hadn’t understood. No doubt more surprises will come. Certainly the impacts of climate change on food and water supplies, on ocean health and on migration will bear on political systems and on future tensions and conflicts. Perhaps it’s too far afield, but a case could be made to include prospects of financial meltdowns from bankers behaving badly. Economic calamities have lit a lot of fuses.

Stanford cyber expert Herb Lin focused on the ongoing debasement of institutions that hold leaders accountable. While nuclear risks and climate change lead the concerns, that witches brew is now put into the blender by the misinformation on steroids enabled by the Internet. Says Lin, “Events in 2018 have helped us to better understand an ongoing and intentional corruption of the information environment.  Our leaders complain about fake news and invoke alternative facts when reality is inconvenient. They are shamelessly inconsistent.”

So we have Information warfare combining with information overload to compromise the public’s ability to absorb and analyze critical issues. Among other things, information warfare delegitimizes the values and truths embodied by science, causing a cheapening and distrust of all information, opening a Pandora’s Box of distortions that allow the public and politicians to avoid grappling with the serious issues before them.

Fine by me if the experiences of the past few years inoculate the public with a healthy cynicism, offering some protection from the Gatling guns spewing talking points. But if the public discards the legitimacy of scientific thought and proof, not so good.

Here’s a few excerpts from the Bulletin statement on the Doomsday Clock.

Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention. These major threats — nuclear weapons and climate change — were exacerbated this past year by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization in extraordinary danger.

In the nuclear realm, the United States abandoned the Iran nuclear deal and announced it would withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), grave steps towards a complete dismantlement of the global arms control process. Although the United States and North Korea moved away from the bellicose rhetoric of 2017, the urgent North Korean nuclear dilemma remains unresolved. Meanwhile, the world’s nuclear nations proceeded with programs of “nuclear modernization” that are all but indistinguishable from a worldwide arms race, and the military doctrines of Russia and the United States have increasingly eroded the long-held taboo against the use of nuclear weapons.

On the climate change front, global carbon dioxide emissions — which seemed to plateau earlier this decade — resumed an upward climb in 2017 and 2018. To halt the worst effects of climate change, the countries of the world must cut net worldwide carbon dioxide emissions to zero by well before the end of the century. By such a measure, the world community failed dismally last year. At the same time, the main global accord on addressing climate change — the 2015 Paris agreement — has become increasingly beleaguered. The United States announced it will withdraw from that pact, and at the December climate summit in Poland, the United States allied itself with Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait (all major petroleum-producing countries) to undercut an expert report on climate change impacts that the Paris climate conference had itself commissioned.

Amid these unfortunate nuclear and climate developments, there was a rise during the last year in the intentional corruption of the information ecosystem on which modern civilization depends. In many forums, including particularly social media, nationalist leaders and their surrogates lied shamelessly, insisting that their lies were truth, and the truth “fake news.” These intentional attempts to distort reality exaggerate social divisions, undermine trust in science, and diminish confidence in elections and democratic institutions. Because these distortions attack the rational discourse required for solving the complex problems facing humanity, cyber-enabled information warfare aggravates other major global dangers — including those posed by nuclear weapons and climate change — as it undermines civilization generally.

Worrisome nuclear trends continue. The global nuclear order has been deteriorating for many years, and 2018 was no exception to this trend. Relations between the United States and both Russia and China have grown more fraught. The architecture of nuclear arms control built up over half a century continues to decay, while the process of negotiating reductions in nuclear weapons and fissile material stockpiles is moribund. The nuclear-armed states remain committed to their arsenals, are determined to modernize their capabilities, and have increasingly espoused doctrines that envision nuclear use. Brash leaders, intense diplomatic disputes, and regional instabilities combine to create an international context in which nuclear dangers are all too real.

A number of negative developments colored the nuclear story in 2018.

First, the United States abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the multilateral agreement that imposed unprecedented constraints on Iran’s nuclear program and allowed unprecedented verification of Iran’s nuclear facilities and activities. On May 8, President Trump announced that the United States would cease to observe the agreement and would instead launch a campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran. So far, Iran and the other parties have continued to comply with the agreement, despite the absence of US participation. It is unclear whether they will keep the agreement alive, but one thing is certain: The Trump administration has launched an assault on one of the major nuclear nonproliferation successes of recent years and done so in a way that increases the likelihood of conflict with Iran and further heightens tensions with long-term allies.

Second, in October the Trump administration announced that it intends to withdraw from the INF Treaty, which bans missiles of intermediate range. Though bedeviled by reciprocal complaints about compliance, the INF agreement has been in force for more than 30 years and has contributed to stability in Europe. Its potential death foreshadows a new competition to deploy weapons long banned. Unfortunately, while treaties are being eliminated, there is no process in place that will create a new regime of negotiated constraints on nuclear behavior. For the first time since the 1980s, it appears the world is headed into an unregulated nuclear environment — an outcome that could reproduce the intense arms racing that was the hallmark of the early, unregulated decades of the nuclear age even as arms control efforts wane, modernization of nuclear forces around the world continues apace. In his Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly on March 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin described an extensive nuclear modernization program, justified as a response to US missile defense efforts. The Trump administration has added to the enormously expensive comprehensive nuclear modernization program it inherited from the Obama administration.

Ominous climate change trends. The existential threat from human-caused global warming is ominous and getting worse. Every year that human activities continue to add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere irreversibly ratchets up the future level of human suffering and ecosystem destruction that will be wrought by global climate disruption. The key measure of improvement on the climate front is the extent of progress toward bringing global net carbon dioxide emissions to zero. On this measure, the countries of the world have failed dismally.

Global carbon dioxide emissions rates had been rising exponentially until 2012 but ceased growing from 2013 to 2016. Even if this emissions plateau had continued, it would not have halted the growth of warming. Net emissions need to ultimately be brought to zero to do so, given the persistence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for up to thousands of years. The ominous news from 2017 and 2018 is that world emissions appear to have resumed their upward climb.

Even nations that have strongly supported the need to decarbonize are not doing enough. Preliminary estimates show that almost all countries contributed to the rise in emissions. Some countries, including the United States and some members of the EU, increased their emissions after years of making progress in reducing them.

The United States has also abandoned its responsibilities to lead the world decarbonization effort. The United States has more resources than poorer nations have; its failure to ambitiously reduce emissions represents an act of gross negligence. The United States stood alone while the other G20 countries signed on to a portion of a joint statement reaffirming their commitment to tackle climate change. Then in 2018, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poland, the United States joined with Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait — all major oil producers — to undercut a report on the impacts of climate change.

The threat of information warfare and other disruptive technologies. Nuclear war and climate change threaten the physical infrastructure that provides the food, energy, and other necessities required for human life. But to thrive, prosper, and advance, people also need reliable information about their world — factual information, in abundance.

Today, however, chaos reigns in much of the information ecosystem on which modern civilization depends. In many forums for political and societal discourse, we now see national leaders shouting about fake news, by which they mean information they do not like. These same leaders lie shamelessly, calling their lies truth. Acting across national boundaries, these leaders and their surrogates exacerbate existing divisions, creating rage and increasing distrust in public and private institutions. Using unsupported anecdotes and sketchy rhetoric, denialists raise fear and doubt regarding well-established science about climate change and other urgent issues. Established institutions of the government, journalism, and education — institutions that have traditionally provided stability — are under attack precisely because they have provided stability.

In this environment, communication inflames passions rather than informing reason.

Many countries have long employed propaganda and lies — otherwise known as information warfare — to advance their interests. But a quantitative change of sufficient magnitude qualifies as a qualitative change. In the Internet age, the volume and velocity of information has increased by orders of magnitude. Modern information technology and social media allow users easy connectivity and high degrees of anonymity across national borders. This widespread, inexpensive access to worldwide audiences has allowed practitioners of information warfare to broadcast false and manipulative messages to large populations at low cost, and at the same time to tailor political messages to narrow interest groups.

By manipulating the natural cognitive predispositions of human beings, information warriors can exacerbate prejudices, biases, and ideological differences. They can invoke “alternative facts” to advance political positions based on outright falsehoods. Rather than a cyber Armageddon that causes financial meltdown or nationwide electrical blackouts, this is the more insidious use of cyber tools to target and exploit human insecurities and vulnerabilities, eroding the trust and cohesion on which civilized societies rely.

The Enlightenment sought to establish reason as the foundational pillar of civilized discourse. In this conception, logical argument matters, and the truth of a statement is tested by examination of values, assumptions, and facts, not by how many people believe it. Cyber-enabled information warfare threatens to replace these pillars of logic and truth with fantasy and rage. If unchecked, such distortion will undermine the world’s ability to acknowledge and address the urgent threats posed by nuclear weapons and climate change and will increase the potential for an end to civilization as we know it. The international community should begin multilateral discussions that aim to discourage cyber-enabled information warfare and to buttress institutions dedicated to rational, fact- based discourse and governance.

Particularly regarding the 2016 election, Russia and fake news have become inseparable to many. My lingering view remains that any impact from Internet mischief the Russians did during elections was a blip next to all the rot that’s been flying about for years, much of it funded by homegrown dark money and most of it owing to good old-fashioned American lack of integrity. On the other hand, I don’t have a cell phone, am not on cable and have never been on Facebook, so maybe I’m just clueless about how easily people are significantly swayed by a select few of the gazillion bits of information firehosing them, even those bits that people happily cobble into personal echo-chambers. But it seems that folks who are birthers and such don’t have to depend on the far flung for nonsense readily available and riding down a hotel escalator. The American realm of carefully calculated election misinformation from incognito sources is wonderfully underscored by the POV film Dark Money. It shows how dark money, ramped up by Citizens United, distorted elections in Montana, targeting both Democrats and Republicans who didn’t do a sufficient kowtow to the big money. Not to Putin’s druthers, but to the big money, to polluters, Koch brothers allies, ALEC objectives and such. But I digress, because that’s the beauty of a blog post.

Back to bombs. According to the Federation of American Scientists, nine nations together have about 15,000 nuclear bombs, most far more powerful than those used on Japan, 1,800 of those possessed by the US and Russia are kept on high-alert status. Ride along with Major Kong here, and sing along with Vera Lynn here on “We’ll Meet Again,” as humanity exits stage left. Here’s a version picking some of the 331 atmospheric tests the US conducted from 1945 to 1962. Try the comfort of the largest bomb exploded, the Tsar Bomba, aka Ivan, aka Vanya. If you’d like to explore the impacts of a single one megaton bomb, (eighty times larger than the Hiroshima bomb but tiny compared to some modern bombs), as well as the global impacts of an exchange of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs, perhaps a conflict between Pakistan and India, here you go. Perhaps pass these along to George W. Bush so he has a better idea of how to look for a WMD, maybe at a correspondents dinner.

By the way, do you think kids in the Fifties might have had a few issues to work out later?

Actions and statements by Trump figure significantly in the clock’s advancement in 2017 to two and a half minutes before midnight. A then-incoming President Trump made alarming statements regarding nuclear proliferation, the prospect of using nuclear weapons and his opposition to US commitments on climate change.

And in 2018 he helped move the clock ahead thirty seconds by announcing his intent to scrap the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) that for decades was a lynchpin for global arms control. He also pulled out of the agreement with Iran. By the way, that latter idiocy was greased by nuclear power Israel, Sheldon Adelson and their American neocon minions like John Bolton. Invading Iraq wasn’t enough horror.

I do wish Trump luck for a good follow-through with North Korea that might relax the minute hand a bit. The world needs a win.

Trump recently reincarnated the illusion of a global defense system. A worthy critique by Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, is his essay “Donald Trump’s Mission Impossible: Making His Unrealistic Missile Plan Work.”

That man behind the curtain has nothing on Trump. Now we have the news of Trump’s latest misdirection, Venezuela. In 1975 I traveled overland to South America. Two impressions of Venezuela linger, the startling transition over a few hours going from snow in the Andes to the streamy tropics below, and the surreal feel while waterskiing between the oil derricks in Lake Maracaibo. Like slicks on the water, oil money was everywhere, a pleasant-looking lifestyle for many of the privileged youths darting about in convertibles filled with cheap gas. I can’t grasp the changes since then. Whatever way out of the miseries of a failed state might be found, it’s hard to imagine lighting the fuse for a civil war would prove beneficial. Perhaps Venezuelans will come knocking seeking asylum, quoting Trump’s description of their plight, never mind contributing US pressures. In any case, Venezuela should give us pause at how fast things can change.

Tick Tock.

The post Haven’t Enough to Keep You Awake at Night? Try the Doomsday Clock for a Truthful State of the Union appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Many of you know that my Mom passed away 2 years ago. I want to share a song I wrote about my Mom. It’s crude and recorded with basic equipment (I cried) but before that, I’d like to introduce her to you.

Mom’s name was Henrietta and by her name alone, you know she came from a different era. She called herself a “Polyanna” (ie. innocent girl) from a far away village in Ganazi, Southern Philippines. Despite her very humble beginnings, she was extremely cultured. She loved to play the piano, and appreciate art in all its forms. Her favorites were the Impressionists. She wrote Haikus and articles about government corruption. She was a key political resource and she testified in front of the US Senate at the Capitol building (personally encouraged by big shot Senators Kerry and Lugar in the 80s). She influenced the eventual fall of the Marcos dictatorship.

Mom loved Broadway and one of her favorite songs was “The Best of Times is Now” from La Cage Aux Follies. She would always want me to sing it with her and I always resisted although now I wish I gave in more. Her interests and compassion trickled down to all her 7 children. But the one trait that I will remember and admire her for the most is her ability to give “GRACE” (ie. give charity where it isn’t deserved).  Even when she was correct, she would give up that right and ask forgiveness. That ability to forgive would almost always put her detractors to shame.

Don’t forget this Sunday is Mother’s Day. To all you Moms out there: Thank you! You guys don’t get enough recognition for all the amazing things you do. Those of you fortunate to have mothers still around, don’t be a shmuck! Go and show Mom how much she means to you while you still can. (I know some of you are estranged … sorry, I hope things get better). For others like me, remember that we are an extension of their lives. As the refrain of my song goes:

And though today no longer with us,
You planted well enough your seeds.
You will always come and visit
In our thoughts and in our deeds.

CLICK HERE to listen to my song. The lyrics of the song are also there.

I would also like to whisper a prayer of encouragement to some of my friends who are going through very difficult times. You know who you are.

Of course, this is just me.

TGIF people!

The Baby Specialist

Shared by Ernie of New York

I wondered if I should include this here because the subject matter is questionable and it is quite lengthy. I hope I made the right decision.

NFL Chip Commercial
Sent by Mike of New York

This commercial needs no introduction. Silly. Funny. Clean.

WATCH VIDEO

Don’s Puns

From Don’s collection of puns

Parting Shots

Thanks to Jennifer of Southern California who shared this photo

Thanks to Tom of Pasadena, CA

The post Baby Specialist: A Mom Day Special appeared first on Traveling Archive.