The Evils of Foreign Policy Without Values; Viral Diseases Are Skyrocketing Locally–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Nov. 30, 2023

Indy Digest: Nov. 30, 2023

Whenever major political figures pass away, people tend to paint pictures of their lives with big, overly broad strokes—despite the fact that most politicians, like most humans, are complex, with lots of shades of gray in their lives. Either these politicians are lionized or pilloried, depending on now much people identify with their politics.

That said … a very small number of political figures, in my humble opinion, are deserving of being lionized, with a slightly larger number deserving of being pilloried—and Henry Kissinger definitely deserves to be in that latter category.

Kissinger died yesterday (Wednesday) at the age of 100.

Jarrod Hayes, a Massachusetts political science professor, wrote about, as the headline says, the “tortured and deadly legacy” of Kissinger for The Conversation; Hayes’ piece makes it perfectly clear (while still being fair) why Kissinger’s legacy is pretty terrible.

An excerpt:

When Kissinger entered government as Richard Nixon’s national security adviser, he espoused a narrow perspective of the national interest, known as “realpolitik,” primarily centered on maximizing the economic and military power of the United States.

This power- and transactionalist-oriented approach to foreign policy produced a series of destructive outcomes. They ranged from fomenting coups that put in place murderous dictatorships, as in Chile, to killing unarmed civilians, as in Cambodia, and alienating potential allies, as in India. …

In his dissertation turned first book, Kissinger argued foreign policymakers are measured by their ability to recognize shifts in political, military and economic power in the international system—and then to make those changes work in their country’s favor.

In this model of foreign policy, the political values—democracy, human rights—that make the United States a distinctive player in the international system have no role.

This perspective, with its self-declared realistic agenda, along with Kissinger’s place at the top of the foreign policy establishment as national security adviser and secretary of state for the better part of a decade, made Kissinger into something of a foreign policy oracle for American policymakers of all stripes.

Yet Kissinger’s record reveals the problems with the narrow conception of national interest devoid of values. His time in government was characterized by major policy decisions that were generally detrimental to the United States’ standing in the world.

Any system that devalues the rights of human beings is a bad system. Yet because of Kissinger, our country has repeatedly taken actions that have devalued humans in other countries—and our country and our world are much, much worse off as a result.

—Jimmy Boegle

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More News

• It’s been a while since we’ve discussed wastewater testing for SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses (like mpox), for various reasons—but we have two updates today. First: The CDC has started compiling a national Wastewater Viral Activity Map, where you can see regional and state-by-state compilations of this data. The current national level for the virus that causes COVID-19 is “high” and trending in the wrong direction, for what it’s worth. It’s “moderate” in California.

• Closer to home, Indio’s Valley Sanitary District—which has continued its wastewater monitoring for SARS-CoV-2 (and a lot of other viruses) while Palm Springs stopped months ago—has data showing there are a lot of viruses in circulation out there. The virus that causes COVID-19, influenza A and B, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) … all of those levels are up, up, up. Consider yourselves warned.

• If you have a Google account that you have not used in a while, but you want to keep, it’s time to take action. Time magazine explains: “Under Google’s updated inactive account policy, which the tech giant announced back in May, accounts that haven’t been used in at least two years could be deleted. Accounts deemed inactive could be erased beginning Friday. If you have an account that’s deemed ‘inactive’ and at risk for deletion, you should receive notices from Google sent to the email affiliated with that account and its recovery address (if one exits). … In May’s announcement, Google credited its inactive account update to security issues. Accounts that haven’t been used for a long time are more likely to be compromised, the company said—noting that ‘forgotten or unattended accounts’ typically have old passwords, often lack two-factor authentication and receive fewer security checks. As a result, these accounts could be hijacked and used for spam or other malicious content, as well as identity theft.”

• Axios reports that generative AI models like ChatGPT are starting to change medicine for the better: “Early in 2023, experts were holding ‘conversations’ with ChatGPT on subjects like stem cell research or the future of surgery. They quickly graduated to testing how well ChatGPT performed on the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam. (It passed.) Soon, clinicians started wondering if it could lighten their workloads, with studies examining how well ChatGPT wrote discharge summaries or radiology reports. In some cases, it was even found to be more empathetic in answering patient questions. … The pharma industry is already using generative AI models to make drug discovery more efficient. Tech giants have been finding ways to use the algorithms to better target cancer. ‘What we did in the last 100 years, we’ll achieve in the next 10 years, or even five years,’ (Shafiq Rab, system CIO and chief digital officer at Tufts Medicine), predicted.”

• And now in much worse tech news: The Wall Street Journal (registration required) found that Instagram’s algorithm for Reels videos is, creepy, to put it mildly: “Instagram’s Reels video service is designed to show users streams of short videos on topics the system decides will interest them, such as sports, fashion or humor. The Meta Platforms-owned social app does the same thing for users its algorithm decides might have a prurient interest in children, testing by The Wall Street Journal showed. The Journal sought to determine what Instagram’s Reels algorithm would recommend to test accounts set up to follow only young gymnasts, cheerleaders and other teen and preteen influencers active on the platform. Instagram’s system served jarring doses of salacious content to those test accounts, including risqué footage of children as well as overtly sexual adult videos—and ads for some of the biggest U.S. brands. The Journal set up the test accounts after observing that the thousands of followers of such young people’s accounts often include large numbers of adult men, and that many of the accounts who followed those children also had demonstrated interest in sex content related to both children and adults. The Journal also tested what the algorithm would recommend after its accounts followed some of those users as well, which produced more-disturbing content interspersed with ads.” Yikes.

• Over at Apple, a recent iPhone operating system upgrade automatically activated a feature called “NameDrop”—and this has raised some privacy concerns. CBS News explains why you may want to turn off the feature—especially on children’s phones: “All one has to do is hold their phone’s screen close to the top of another person’s iPhone, which will cause both devices to vibrate. Once they link, a NameDrop prompt will appear on both phone screens, allowing users to choose if they want to share and receive contact cards. iPhone users can select what contact information, such as phone numbers and email addresses, they wish to share, according to Apple’s website. Notably, iPhone holders have to manually authorize the transaction, it doesn’t happen automatically. … Cybersecurity experts say that the feature does indeed make it easier to share personal information, including with bad actors. ‘This can include your name, phone number, email address, home address, work address, birthday, a picture of your face, and even more. The more information cyber criminals gain access to, the more harm they can cause you and your finances,’ said Mike Scheumack, chief innovation officer of identity theft protection company IdentityIQ. While anyone who opts to use the feature should be cautious, some say warnings to avoid NameDrop altogether are overblown.”

• And finally … new parents are often sleep-deprived—but penguins seem to have found a way to get the sleep they need while protecting their eggs and chicks. The Associated Press reports: “Chinstrap penguins in Antarctica need to guard their eggs and chicks around-the-clock in crowded, noisy colonies. So they nod off thousands of times each day—but only for about four seconds at a time—to stay vigilant, the researchers reported Thursday in the journal Science. These short ‘microsleeps,’ totaling around 11 hours per day, appear to be enough to keep the parents going for weeks. ‘These penguins look like drowsy drivers, blinking their eyes open and shut, and they do it 24/7 for several weeks at a time,’ said Niels Rattenborg, a sleep researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence in Germany and co-author of the new study.”

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