New Year's Eve Fears

I don't have high hopes for 2025.

* Trump.

* H5N1. Trump makes this a much, much more serious and more likely to be lethal risk. This is one mutation away from mass pandemic status and may be much more deadly than COVID-19.

* The war in Ukraine continues. It will be three years old in two months. Trump is eager to abandon Ukraine and please Russia. The rest of NATO will continue to support Ukraine. Russia's capacity to fight a conventional ground war has been dramatically degraded and its conventional naval forces have been revealed to be more vulnerable than widely believed beforehand. While Russia is incrementally gaining territory, longer range Ukrainian strikes and covert operations have put targets deep inside Russia's borders at risk. Russia continues to lose soldiers and hard to replace military equipment on a daily basis. Russia's economy is straining. It's secrets about how to conduct a war and its weaknesses have been broadcast to the world. Troops sent by North Korea to support it are getting slaughtered by the thousands.

* We will see what kind of regime emerges in Syria with the fall of Assad's regime.

* Israel's multi-front war with Iran and its proxies continues and it has indefinitely occupied some Syrian territory on its border in the wake of the fall of Assad's regime there.

* Gaza has been leveled.

Millions of Palestinians are still in Gaza because they have no way to go anywhere else. But this is unsustainable. It is basically impossible to make this a place that can sustain life for millions of people without mass deaths before this is done, and no one has the will and money to make that happen anyway.

At this point there are really only two possibilities: Either the number of deaths surges from a few tens of thousand to many hundreds of thousands or more, or many hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are exiled indefinitely from Gaza, a burden that no one has been willing to accept in the necessary numbers. Still, my assumption is that sooner or later, hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza will be relocated, willingly or unwillingly. The West Bank, Egypt, and Jordan would be the most obvious places to move them, but there are endless possibilities. Iran, which created this problem by encouraging the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas is the country that should take in the people of Gaza, but it probably won't.

* The civil war in Sudan continues to be a shit show. Nobody even has more than a rough estimate of how many have died or been injured in the conflict. Neither side is good, but the side that is backed by the perpetrators of the Darfur genocide is worse and backed by Arab monarchies. There are no signs of short term improvement in this catastrophic war.

* Because Trump took office, a massive global trade war is imminent. It will drive up prices in the U.S. at the expense of U.S. consumers, and destroy the economy. It will do almost nothing to help U.S. companies.

* Trump's promise of mass deportations promises to destroy the U.S. economy (especially agriculture, construction, and hospitality), to be a humanitarian nightmare, and to test once again the rule of law in the U.S.

* Trump's threats of conquest directed at our allies poses a risk of war.

* Trump's extreme weakness, stupidity, and hostility towards China could encourage more warlike action by China against Taiwan and the Philippines. 

* Trump's promise to pardon the thousand plus people convicted or facing charged from January 6 will lead to a surge in right-wing terrorism in the U.S. and undermine democracy.

* Maybe, if we are lucky, Trump won't live to complete his term. He isn't young, he isn't healthy, he isn't careful, all of which could lead to his death from natural causes, and he seems to have advancing dementia as well. Also, lots of people would like to assassinate him and there were two serious attempts to do so in 2024 already. If Trump died from natural causes before January 20, 2025, this could save the United States as a country.

* We can expect a surplus of serious natural disasters and extreme weather in 2025 that will probably surpass 2024, due to global warming.

* We are close to the internal combustion engine/electric vehicle tipping point. If it isn't in 2025, it will happen soon, even though Trump's policies may delay it in the U.S.

* While the left and the middle of the American political spectrum agrees that health care in the U.S. needs sweeping reforms, if anything, the Trump administration will only make things worse.

* The political right in the U.S. is increasingly opposed to education and libraries at all levels. We've seen a preview with book banning efforts, anti-intellectual Florida mandates for educators, and the effective ruin of New College in Florida already. An all out attack on academia and education, which is particularly intense in red states, is likely to get worse during the Trump administration.

* It isn't at all clear what the future looks like for reproductive rights. Dobbs was a catastrophe, but referenda and courts in many states have clawed back some of the losses. Other states, like Texas, for example, are absolutely horrible, with the quality of women's healthcare generally destroyed.

* MAGA's efforts to scapegoat transgender people continues and is gaining ground. Fleeing red states and conservative controlled institutions look like the only options for now.

* MAGA has rekindled racism in the U.S. and made it more strident. This seems likely to continue.

* Right wing Christianity's hate and sexism seem likely to continue the exodus from Christianity which came to a brief pause.

* Tax cuts are likely to undermine infrastructure in the U.S.

* If the right's battle against Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other public benefit programs is successful, we are going to see tens of millions of new poor people struggling for survival (and sometimes failing). The Trump recession will make it even worse.

Where To Worry About China?

China's military is probably more of a threat to Filipino fishermen and merchant ships in the East China Sea than to Taiwan, which it would face far more severe consequences for invading than it would in an insidious, low intensity campaign to gain de facto control of waters that belong to other countries or are international waters.

China has the military might to launch a land invasion of North Korea, for which the world would thank it (even, eventually, the liberated North Koreans). Russia or Mongolia or Kazakhstan would be very angry but not very weakened by losing a lot of land with few people on it, and would receive little international support to defend themselves. An attempted land invasion of India would yield mostly uninhabited frigid mountains that have never been exploited for their mineral resources, at a high cost.

China has no need to invade Laos or Vietnam, which are already in its sphere of influence. It has no reason to invade the other "stans" on or near its border or Burma, which would be more trouble than they would be worth.

Invasions of South Korea or Japan would be too costly for it to attempt, not just militarily, but in the collapse of the international trade based economy upon which it relies for its prosperity.

Police Killings Of Civilians

The bad news is that "Since the beginning of the year, police have killed 343 people. That’s 343 people in 110 days." In most developed nations, it is an order of magnitude smaller. 

The good news is that the U.S. isn't the Philippines, a country of about 100,700,000 people (about third of the population of the U.S.) where police killed about 7,000 civilians last year in the course of their war on drugs backed by President Rodrigo Duterte, who like President Trump is a small minded man with bad ideas who somehow got elected President.

The war on drugs approach also hasn't gone well for Mexico which has one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Catastrophic Floods And Storms

I'm beginning to think that these are not perfect storms. I'm beginning to think these are regular storms and we have a shitty boat.

- Jon Stewart.

The lion's share loss of life from catastrophic storms, and a significant share of the disastrous floods causing great loss of life in relatively recent history, have happened in two general areas.

* South Asia (especially Bangladesh) and Myanmar (formerly known as Burma)

* The Philippines

Certainly, these areas are subject to regular, extreme weather events and have large populations. But, other places that experience similar extreme weather events seem to suffer far fewer casualties as a result, suggesting that poor preparation and disaster response also plays an important role in the disaster related carnage in these regions.

Some examples of these disasters with the number of resulting deaths, according to the 2017 World Almanac and Wikipedia, are as follows:

South Asia and Myanmar

* 61,000 Typhoon, October 1942, Bangladesh 

* 40,000 Hurricane, October 15-16, 1942, Bengal, India

* 6,000 Tidal wave/flood, October 10, 1960, Bangladesh

* 4,000 Tidal wave/flood, October 31, 1960, Bangladesh 

* 22,000 Wind storm, May 28-29, 1963, Bangladesh 

* 17,000 Wind storm, May 11-12, 1965, Bangladesh 

* 30,000 Wind storm, June 1-2, 1965, Bangladesh 

* 10,000 Wind storm, December 15, 1965, Bangladesh 

* 4,892 Flood, June, 1968  Rajastan and Gujarat states, India

* 780 Tidal wave/flood, October 7, 1968, Northeast India

* 300,000 Cyclone, November 13, 1970, Bay of Bengal and Bangladesh 

* 1,217 Monsoon rains, June-August 1973, India 

* 28,700 Flood, July, 1974, Bangladesh 

* 2,500 Tidal wave/flood, August 12, 1974, Bangladesh 

* 3,800 Food, July, 1978, N ad NE India

* 15,000 Tidal wave/flood, August 11, 1979, Morvi, India

* 900 Monsoon rains, June 1983 India 

* 15,000 Cyclone, May 25, 1985, Bangladesh 

* 2,055 Tidal wave/flood, July 22, 1987, Bangladesh

* 1,000+ Flood, August-September, 1987, Bangladesh

* 2,379 Flood, June-September, 1988, Bangladesh

* 1,000+ Flood, September, 1988, Northern India

* 450 Multiple cyclones, May 6-11, 1990, Southeast India 

* 139,000 Cyclone, April 30, 1991, Bangladesh 

* 2,000 Monsoon, June, 1993, Bangladesh 

* 1,000+ Cyclone, November 6, 1996, Andhra Pradesh, India 

* 108 Cyclone, May 19, 1997, Bangladesh 

* 1,320 Cyclone, June 9, 1998, Gujarat, India 

* 1,441 Food, July-September, 1998, Bangladesh

* 326 Monsoon, August, 1998, Bangladesh 

* 9,392 Cyclone, October, 1999, East India 

* 1,000+ Flood, September 19-30, 2000, India and Bangladesh

* 1,100+ Flood, July-August, 2002, India, Nepal and Bangladesh

* 220 Cyclone, May 19, 2004, Myanmar

* 2000+ Flood, June-September, 2004, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar

* 53,769-53,969 Tidal wave, December 26, 2004, Sri Lanka (35,322), India (18,045), Bangladesh (2), and Myanmar (400-600) and many more outside South Asia (176,502) in Indonesia, Thailand, and elsewhere

* 1,110 Flood, July 21-August 3, 2007, Bangladesh

* 1,103 Flood, July-September, 2007 India

* 3,363 Cyclone, November 15, 2007, Bangladesh

* 138,366 Cyclone, May 2-3, 2008, Myanmar

* 1,063 Flood, June-July 2008, India

* 260 Cyclone, May 23-26, 2009, India and Bangladesh

* 992 Flood, July-September 2009, India

Total since 1942 910,708+ (12,307 on average per year 1942-2015)

The Philippines

* 440 Typhoon, October 22, 1952

* 107 Typhoon, June 30, 1964

* 300 Typhoon, September 15, 1970

* 583 Typhoon, October 14, 1970

* 526 Typhoon, October 15, 1970

* 454, Tidal wave/flood, August 7, 1972

* 169 Typhoon, December 3, 1972

* 215 Typhoon, May 20, 1976

* 400 Typhoon, October 27, 1976

* 176 Typhoon, November 25, 1981

* 1,363 Typhoon, September 2, 1984

* 650 Typhoon, November 25, 1987

* 7,000+ Tropical storm, November 5, 1991

* 600+ Typhoon, November 2-3, 1995

* 220+ Typhoon, November 6-12, 2001, also Vietnam

*1,060+ Flood, November-December 2004

* 145 Typhoon, September 21-28, 2005, also SE Asia and S. China

* 1,000 Tidal wave/flood, February 17, 2006

* 450-1000+ Typhoon, November 30, 2006

* 233 Typhoon, June 20-25, 2008, also China

* 498+ Typhoon, September 23-30, 2009, also SE Asia

* 375 Typhoon, October 3-10, 2009

* 159+ Typhoon, October 30-November 3, 2009, also Vietnam

* 105+ Typhoon, July 13-17, 2010

* 1,257 Typhoon, December 16, 2010

* 2,000+ Flood, July-December, 2011, also Cambodia and Myanmar

* 1,146 Typhoon, December 4, 2012

* 7,986 Typhoon, November 8, 2013

* 173 Typhoon, July 15, 2014, also Vietnam and China

Total since 1952 29,790+ (465 on average per year 1952-2015)

UPDATE February 6, 2017: Maybe Bangladesh really is simply a victim of circumstances. Charlie's Diary makes some pertinent observations:

Consider Bangladesh, and the Bay of Bengal fisheries collapse, not to mention the giant anoxic dead zone spreading in the By of Bengal (which means those fisheries won't be coming back for a very long time). There are nearly 170 million people there, mostly living on alluvial flood plains feeding into the gradually rising ocean. If the sea level rises by just one meter, 10% of the land area will be flooded; most of the country is less than 12M above sea level. It's a primarily agricultural economy (it's one of the main rice and wheat producing nations), heavily dependent on fisheries for protein to supplement the diet of its citizens. 

Bangladesh can't survive the 21st century on this basis. It's vulnerable to devastating tropical cyclones bringing storm surges, and as the atmosphere heats, these are going to become more energetic. The loss of fisheries may cripple its ability to feed its population, even if temperature rises don't kill off the wheat and rice crops. Flood, famine, and storm look as if they will inevitably render a large part of the country uninhabitable within 50 years. 

I see three possible responses:

* A rational and humane response to this would involve attempts to: promote GM crops with increased heat resistance and increased bioavailable protein and micronutrient contents to repace the dying fisheries: promote female literacy, education, and access to healthcare (demographic transition correlates strongly with female education and emancipation): redeploy human capital to urban center construction in the northern highlands: invest in survival infrastructure (flood/weather shelters), and so on.

* An unplanned, current-day response to this would be to provide ad-hoc famine relief and aid on demand, to wring hands when millions die in heat emergencies or super-cyclone storm surges, to prevent mass emigration by criminalization rather than by trying to make Bangladesh a more attractive place to stay, and so on. You know this scenario because we're living it today.

* A white supremacist response to this would be to build a wall around Bangladesh--probably a "virtual" one patrolled by killer robots--and starve the inmates to death so they don't pump any more carbon into the atmosphere. After all, the residual carbon content of a dead foreigner is measured in single-digit litres.

Also in favor of Bangladesh is the fact that a major public health campaign has dramatically reduced the extent to which people in Bangladesh relieve themselves away from proper toilets, in a very modest number of years, with huge positive health returns, in part out of a Muslim pride pitch. But, rising religious sentiments have also led to numerous assassinations of atheist bloggers, gays and other people seen as threats to the reigning cultural order. 

Yes, There Are Criminal Justice Systems Worse Than The U.S.

The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world.  But, as bad as the American criminal justice system may be, there are places that are worse.

* The Philippines has shockingly crowded and understaffed jails, de facto run by prison gangs, and stunning long delays in the judicial process.  The CNN story linked highlights a jail with 20 guards that houses 4000 inmates, some of whom have been awaiting verdicts on the charges against them for as long as 16 years, where about three-quarters of inmates for affiliated with four major gangs.  Some of the crowding is caused by new war on drug policies there.  About 60% of inmates in the featured jail were drug offenders.

* Indonesia regularly executes people for drug offenses.

* Saudi Arabia and Iran both have versions of Islamic criminal justice in which executions are very common and the process is systemically unfair, especially to women.

Family Visa Backlogs And Delays

When you apply for a green card (lawful permanent residence status) as a spouse or parent or ummarried child of a U.S. citizen under age twenty-one, your application can be processed when it is filed, many factors that would disqualify you for other visas don't apply, and if you entered the country legally (even if you later fell out of legal immigration status) you can apply for a green card in the U.S. rather than at a foreign embassy.

But, suppose that you are a child of a U.S. citizen who is over the age of twenty-one, a brother or sister of a U.S. citizen, a spouse of a lawful permanent resident, or an unmarried child of a lawful permanent resident, how long do you have to wait in line to have your application considered a recent date?

1. Spouses and unmarried children under the age of twenty-one of lawful permanent residents: Four years if not Mexican nationals, and six years and nine months if Mexican nationals.

2. Ummarried children of U.S. citizens who are more than twenty-one years old: seven years if not nationals of Mexico or the Phillipines, seventeen years and seven months from the Phillipines, and eighteen years from Mexico.

3. Unmarried children of lawful permanent residents: eight years and nine months if not nationals of the Mexico, the Phillipines or the Dominican Republic; twelve year and seven months from the Phillippines, fifteen years from the Dominican Republic, and nineteen years and six months from Mexico.

4. Married children of U.S. citizens: eleven years if not nationals of Mexico or the Phillipines, twenty years and ten months for nationals of Mexico, and nineteen years and nine months for national of the Phillipines.

5. Brothers and sisters of U.S. citizens: twelve years if not nationals of Mexico or the Phillipines, sixteen years for nationals of Mexico, and twenty-four years for nationals of the Phillipines.

The deadlines shift from month to month.

There is no family based immigration for married children of lawful permanent residents, or siblings of lawful permanent residents, or parents of lawful permanent residents.

In these categories there are also far more reasons that you can be prohibited from filing a legal immigration application for periods of three or ten years for past immigration related issues.

In theory, it takes a minimum of three years as a lawful permanent resident for a spouse of a U.S. citizen to get U.S. citizenship, and a minimum of five years for other lawful permanent residents to get U.S. citizenship, although in practice, it takes longer in both cases.

Spouses of less than two years who are granted lawful permanent resident status have that status reviewed after two years, at which point they must have the bona fide status of their marriage re-examined by immigration officials.

The particular irony here is that people from the Phillipines were U.S. nationals (although not U.S. citizens) until 1946, when it declared independence. Mexican immigration was but unregulated until the end of World War I, was widespread despite regulation until the Great Depression, was again widespread despite regulation from the start of World War II until 1954, and was still permitted far in excess of immigration from other countries until 1968. There was also a major amnesty for undocumented workers in 1986 that particularly benefitted immigrants from Mexico. In a matter of a few decades the U.S. went from welcoming people from the Phillipines and Mexico with open arms, to placing restrictions on immigration from these countries that are far more severe than those on would be immigrants from any place else in the world.

Of course, the current system represents a compromise. The system could refuse to grant any ability to immigrate merely because you have a U.S. citizen who is your child, because your sibling is a U.S. citizen, or when you are an adult, because you have a parent who becomes a lawful permanent resident or U.S. citizens. Indeed, the long waiting times mean that many people on the waiting lists cease to be qualified to immigrate while they are waiting in line. And, many economically oriented critiques of the immigration system argue that we should narrow the scope of family relationship based immigration in favor of immigration based on education, job qualifications and other economic factors (e.g. inbound investment and trade).

But, the compromise is a rather flawed one. Generally speaking, the longer someone has to wait abroad before they are granted permission to immigrate to the United States, the less likely it is that they will every really master American English or become integrated into U.S. culture. If someone fits in a category we are willing to use as a basis for legal immigration, eventually, what is the virtue of making people wait?

If national immigration policy is to insist on maintaining quotas on immigration (from which the delays are a consequence), perhaps we would be better off denying admission entirely to lower priority categories to reduce the wait time in higher priority categories. And, if the quotas really mean a waiting period, why not simply codify the waiting period so that at least people can have some way to plan their futures? And, while country by country quotas may make conceptual sense, when the effect of those quotas it to penalize immigrants from just three countries (and only just a small subset of immigrants from one of those countries), is that really anything more than a penalty specific to Mexico and the Phillipines in all but name?

The six years and nine months of delay for spouses and unmarried children under the age of twenty-one from Mexico for lawful permanent residents (as opposed to four years for other lawful perament residents) is a particular indignity shared by no other nationality, which is deeply damaging to intense nuclear family ties.

It is hard to imagine how we could ever have come up with a system that works the way our current system does by design, but now that we have backed into the current system and it is a controversial issues politically, a real fix seems distant.