Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Wednesdays at 11AM (CT) on KPFT-HD2, Houston’s Community Station. You can also hear the show:

1. Live online at KPFT.org (from anywhere in the world!)
2. Podcast on your phone’s Podcast App
3. Visiting Archive.KPFT.ORG

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig where we discuss local, state, national, and international stories. My co-host and show editor is Andrew Ferguson.

• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.
• You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.

1. Make sure you are registered to vote! VoteTexas.GOV – Texas Voter InformationTEXAS SoS VOTE-BY-MAIL BALLOT APPLICATION (ALL TEXAS COUNTIES) HarrisVotes.com­ – Countywide Voting Centers, (Election Information Line (713) 755-6965), Harris County Clerk
   1. Harris County “Vote-By-Mail’ Application for 2021
      1. Fort bend County Elections/Voter Registration Machine takes you to the proper link
      2. GalvestonVotes.org (Galveston County, TX)
      3. Liberty County Elections (Liberty County, TX)
      4. Montgomery County (TX) Elections
      5. Brazoria County (TX) Clerk Election Information
      6. Waller County (TX) Elections
      7. Chambers County (TX) Elections
      8. For personalized, nonpartisan voter guides and information, Consider visiting Vote.ORG.   Ballotpedia.com and Texas League of Women Voters are also good places to get election info.
      9. If you are denied your right to vote any place at any time at any polling place for any reason, ask for (or demand) a provisional ballot rather than lose your vote.
      10. HarrisVotes.com – Countywide Voting CentersHARRIS COUNTY – IDENTIFICATION REQUIRED FOR VOTING: Do not possess and cannot reasonably obtain one of these IDs?
          1. Fill out a declaration at the polls describing a reasonable impediment to obtaining it, and show a copy or original of one of the following supporting forms of ID:
          2. A government document that shows your name and an address, including your voter registration certificate
          3. Current utility bill
          4. Bank statement
          5. Government check
          6. Paycheck
          7. A certified domestic (from a U.S. state or territory) birth certificate or (b) a document confirming birth admissible in a court of law which establishes your identity (which may include a foreign birth document)
          8. You may vote early by-mail if:You are registered to vote and meet one of the following criteria:
             1. Away from the county of residence on Election Day and during the early voting period;
             2. Sick or disabled;
             3. 65 years of age or older on Election Day; or
             4. Confined in jail, but eligible to vote.
             5. Make sure you are registered:
             6. Ann Harris Bennett, Tax Assessor-Collector & Voter Registrar
             7. CHECK REGISTRATION STATUS HERE
             8. CLICK How to register to vote in Texas
             9. Outside Texas, try Vote.org.
2. BE REGISTERED TO VOTE, and for those of you whoa are eligible, REMEMBER TO FILL OUT AND MAIL YOUR MAIL-IN BALLOT APPLICATIONS FOR 2022
   1. BE REGISTERED TO VOTE, and for those of you who are eligible, REMEMBER TO FILL OUT AND MAIL YOUR MAIL-IN BALLOT APPLICATIONS FOR 2022
   2. Primary Election: March 1, 2022 – (These dates are subject to changes from the 2021 legislative session.) as per TEXAS Secretary Of State

   3. First day to apply for a ballot by mail using Application for a Ballot by Mail (ABBM) or Federal Post Card Application (FPCA).

      Saturday, January 1, 2022

       

      Last Day to Register to Vote – Monday, January 31, 2022

      First Day of Early Voting by Personal Appearance – Monday, February 14, 2022

      Last Day to Apply for Ballot by Mail (Received, if not Postmarked) – Friday, February 18, 2022

      Last Day of Early Voting by Personal Appearance – Friday, February 25, 2022

      Last day for Receipt of Marked Ballot by Mail – Tuesday, March 1, 2022 (Election Day) at 7:00 p.m. if carrier envelope is not postmarked, OR  Thursday, March 3, 2022 (next business day* after Election Day) at 5:00 p.m. if carrier envelope is postmarked by 7:00 p.m. at the location of the election on Election Day (unless overseas or military voter deadlines apply)⁴    *First business day after Texas Independence Day

3. City of Houston approves lake-lowering plans for Lake Conroe, Lake Houston; By Jishnu Nair | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 6:54 PM Jan 20, 2022 CST | Updated 9:29 AM Jan 21, 2022 CST
   1. The city of Houston, through its public works department, gave its approval Jan. 20 to a set of protocols controlling the water levels in Lake Conroe and Lake Houston, according to the San Jacinto River Authority [SJRA], which manages the lake levels. The protocols would run until 2023. …
   2. For both lakes, the city of Houston would retain the authority to call for further capacity releases for major storm events, according to the presentation.
   3. Houston said stakeholders, such as the city of Houston and Montgomery County, would discuss the protocols in fall 2022 to evaluate their effect.
   4. In addition to the lake limits, stakeholders agreed to support efforts to “limit further construction of habitable structures below 207 feet above sea level” around Lake Conroe. However, only those with construction permitting authority such as Montgomery County can prevent that construction from taking place.
   5. https://communityimpact.com/uploads/images/2022/01/21/177502.jpg
   6. MIKE: There’s a lot more detail in the article about how this would work, and you can click on the article link for that information.
   7. MIKE: It seems to me that the City has traded higher seasonal lake levels for greater authority over necessary releases and lowering of lake levels for predicted heavy rains or water surges from upriver.
   8. MIKE: The compromise I infer from the story is between city flood control concerns versus business and recreational use of the lakes, since lower lake levels leave some recreational assets stranded.
   9. ANDREW: The trade is a good one. A lower lake might be bad for business, but so is flooding. If necessary, the city could maybe fund construction of new piers at the lower average water line in order to restore businesses’ access to the water.
4. At least 87 Texas hospitals were out of ICU beds last week, according to the latest federal data. Look up the ones near you.; Each week, hospitals in Texas report their current ICU bed capacity to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. … by Carla Astudillo and Karen Brooks Harper | TEXASTRIBUNE.ORG | Aug. 23, 2021 Updated: Jan. 24, 2022
   1. The highly contagious omicron variant of COVID-19 continues to send unvaccinated Texans to the hospital with serious illness every day, pushing the state close to previous pandemic record admission rates and putting those facilities under enormous pressure to find room for new patients. …
   2. Hospital staff has never been in shorter supply, which deepens the strain on all departments, including emergency rooms, respiratory therapy and even labor and delivery. Without the capacity to take on new patients — and with equally thin resources elsewhere to transfer them to — doctors fear they’ll have to start making heartbreaking decisions about care in order to save the most lives possible.
   3. According to the federal government, the weekly ICU capacity numbers should not discourage patients from seeking medical care in these facilities. “Hospitals have protocols in place to keep patients safe from exposure and to ensure all patients are prioritized for care,” the agency said.
   4. The vast majority of COVID-19 patients in hospitals and ICUs are unvaccinated. Doctors say mask-wearing, hand-washing and social distancing are the best ways to slow down the hospital numbers in the short term, and that monoclonal antibody therapies for people with COVID-19 symptoms can keep them out of the hospital in many cases. They also say the only way to permanently slow down the spike in hospitalizations is to vaccinate a majority of the state.
   5. [The} latest situation can be found here.

   6. ANDREW: It’s important to get vaccinated if you can, but vaccinations alone aren’t going to end this crisis. The federal government should have properly locked down back in March 2020, including closing all but truly essential businesses and limiting ones that stay open to remote and delivery service, enforcing stay-at-home orders, sending regular stimulus payments, and covering everyone’s rent and utility bills. If we’d done that, we could have flattened the curve in a few weeks. Instead, we have cases skyrocketing and hospital resources stretched to the breaking point. But better late than never. We need to lock down now and get people out of harm’s way.

5. Harris County judge criticizes Texas voting laws following confusion over mail-in ballot requirements; By Jishnu Nair | COMMUNITYIMPACT.COM | 3:23 PM Jan 19, 2022 CST | Updated 5:17 PM Jan 19, 2022 CST
   1. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo held a press conference Jan. 19 to respond to reported challenges facing voters attempting to register ahead of the March 1 primaries.
   2. Hidalgo referred to new regulations enacted by Texas’ Senate Bill 1, passed during the legislative session in August. The bill enacted sweeping changes to voter registration and mail ballot applications. The March primary will be the first election where SB 1 will take effect. Harris County has flagged 35% of mail-in ballot applications for rejections to date, Hidalgo said.
   3. “It’s a solution in search of a problem,” Hidalgo said. “The people who passed those laws in the last session and who are defending them now know [those rejections] could sway the election.”
   4. Harris County Elections Administrator Isabel Longoria reported the most common problems facing both mail-in ballot applications and voter registrations include voters failing to include newly required information, or for older voters, information that is inconsistent with previously recorded data, requiring the county to track them down to confirm the voter is who they say they are.
   5. “Definitively, the increase [in flagged registrations] we are seeing is the direct result and consequence of the passage of SB 1,” Longoria said. …
   6. ANDREW: Voter fraud has always been negligible at best. Laws that create barriers to voting aren’t about election security, they’re about reducing who can vote. The right pushes them both because they can set the barriers to favor their voters, and because reducing the power of the majority is at the core of right-wing philosophy.
6. ‘Indelible mark of shame’: L.A. pivots to clearing homeless camps amid Covid surge, housing crisis; By Alicia Victoria Lozano | NBCNEWS.COM | Jan. 23, 2022 / Updated Jan. 23, 2022, 9:21 PM CST
   1. … “The policy of criminalizing homelessness has never worked,” said Georgia Berkovich, director of public affairs at The Midnight Mission, which offers emergency and social services to homeless people. …
   2. Over the summer, the Los Angeles City Council adopted an ordinance to prohibit people experiencing homelessness from sleeping in specific outdoor locations, including certain sidewalks and parks. The ordinance came with a promise to take a “trauma-informed approach,” such as offering temporary shelter and services to people in need. …
   3. Protests broke out in March when activists and housing advocates clashed with police attempting to clear tents and other belongings from a large encampment in Echo Park, a desirable neighborhood near downtown. …
   4. In the 1970s, [Los Angeles] city planners deliberately pushed unhoused people further east into Skid Row and away from the business district under a plan known as the “containment strategy.” The idea was to give downtown businesses a boost by removing signs of blight.
   5. In 1984, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development dubbed Los Angeles County “the homeless capital of America,” ushering a new era of enforcement that empowered police and sanitation departments to clear camps, especially around downtown.
   6. According to a January 2021 report by the University of California, Los Angeles, “throughout the 1980s officials failed to comprehend the breadth and depth of homelessness, or to truly consider what its resolution might require.” …
   7. Affordable housing has long been a challenge in California and most of Los Angeles, where typical home prices are upward of $900,000 as of this week, according to Zillow. …
   8. Homelessness in Los Angeles has become endemic throughout the generations … 
   9. Fueled by an affordable housing shortage and the dismantling of social services, tents and encampments have proliferated across Los Angeles even as taxpayer-approved initiatives funnel money into new housing options. …
   10. Nationwide, about 580,466 people were homeless in 2020, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. More than a quarter of them are in California, or about 161,548 people. Of those, nearly 64,000 live in Los Angeles County.
   11. Ever day, shelters and organizations work to temporarily house people living on the streets, but every day more people fall into homelessness. On average, 207 people are rehoused daily in the county, but 227 people are pushed into homelessness, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, an agency created by the city and the county. …
   12. ANDREW: I’ve been following homelessness in LA through Kenneth Mejia, a former Green Congressional candidate and current candidate for LA City Controller. He’s estimated the Echo Park sweep cost nearly $2 million in LAPD overtime costs alone. All it did was destroy what little these people had, indignify them, add to their criminal records, and push them somewhere else. The solution to homelessness is to provide what people need– housing, food, and medical care immediately, education and job opportunities later on. Mejia is hoping to use the Controller’s office to highlight the wasted money and failings of current policy, and work with unhoused people and their advocacy organizations to propose alternatives that will actually help people.
7. Supreme Court Appears Skeptical of Boston’s Refusal to Fly Christian Flag; … By Adam Liptak | NYTIMES.COM | Jan. 18, 2022
   1. The City of Boston, which refused to let a private group raise a Christian flag in front of its City Hall, seemed to be headed for a loss after a Supreme Court argument [last] Tuesday.
   2. Justices across the ideological spectrum, noting that the city had approved many similar requests from organizations seeking to celebrate their backgrounds or to promote causes like gay pride, seemed ready to rule that the city had violated the free speech rights of Camp Constitution, which says it seeks “to enhance understanding of our Judeo-Christian moral heritage.”
   3. The group’s application said it sought to raise a “Christian flag” for one hour at an event that would include “short speeches by some local clergy focusing on Boston’s history.” The flag bore the Latin cross. …
   4. As the argument reached its conclusion, Justice Elena Kagan said the city had made an understandable mistake in relying on the part of the First Amendment that prohibits government establishment of religion when it should have been focusing on its free speech clause. Putting a permanent cross on the roof of City Hall would violate the establishment clause, she said, but banning a religious group from conveying its message in a transient setting open to lots of speakers violates the amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech. …
   5. Sopan Joshi, a lawyer for the federal government arguing in support of Camp Constitution, said that “it can be a really fine line between the government soliciting messages from third parties to help shape its own message on the one hand and serving as a conduit for the third parties to express their own messages on the other.”
   6. He said the flag program in Boston had created a public forum in light of the number of flags approved and the cursory review most applications received. He used an analogy: Government speech is like a curated symposium, while a public forum is like an open-mic night. …
   7. Even as the Supreme Court seemed poised to reject the view that the hundreds of flags the city had allowed were all government speech, some justices worried about the consequences of a broad ruling, asking, for instance, whether the city would have to fly a flag bearing a swastika.
   8. Mathew Staver, a lawyer for Camp Constitution, said yes. He added that “an informed observer” familiar with the city’s flag program and its history would know that the flags flown on the third flagpole represented private speech.
   9. That assertion met a skeptical response.
   10. Such an observer must be “very informed,” Justice Kagan said. As for the more typical ones, she said, “all they know is: ‘I’ve seen the City of Boston flag here a thousand times, and now I see another flag. It must be the City of Boston decided to do something else today.’”
   11. Douglas Hallward-Driemeier, a lawyer for Boston, said there were limits to what the city must be made to allow. “Private parties are free to wave their flags on City Hall Plaza or even raise a temporary flagpole there,” he said, “but they cannot commandeer the city’s flagpole to send a message the city does not endorse.” …
   12. ANDREW: This exemplifies the lack of understanding people have of what systemic oppression is, and who faces it and who doesn’t. Christians are not oppressed in the US. Systemic oppression requires an institution in society– be that government, or broader social mores, or corporations if you live in a sci-fi dystopia– to attempt to suppress or exterminate a group of people based on an aspect of their identity that it would be unreasonable to expect them to change. Religion does count, but since there has never been any significant effort to force Christians to become any other faith, Christians are not oppressed in the US or most of the world. This is the difference between the cross flag and the gay pride flag, or even one depicting a Star of David or a crescent. LGBT, Jewish, and Muslim people have all faced suppression in the US, and Christians haven’t. I think the city should have been able to refuse the cross flag on these grounds.
8. Pentagon puts 8,500 troops on ‘heightened alert’ as U.S. weighs military action against Russia; Among the options presented to the president was to move troops and equipment from other parts of Europe into Poland, Romania and other countries neighboring Ukraine. By Courtney Kube and Kelly O’Donnell | NBCNEWS.COM | Jan. 23, 2022, 7:37 PM CST / Updated Jan. 25, 2022, 6:12 AM CST
   1. … With Moscow massing more than 100,000 troops at its neighbor’s border and no diplomatic breakthrough in sight, the West is stepping up its response amid mounting fears an invasion could be imminent.
   2. Conversations are underway with NATO countries that could receive U.S. military forces as part of a plan to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression, the official said.
   3. NATO said Monday that it was sending ships and fighter jets to Eastern Europe and that Washington “has also made clear that it is considering increasing its military presence in the eastern part of the Alliance.” …
   4. In a statement, the White House said Biden and European leaders “reiterated their continued concern about the Russian military build-up on Ukraine’s borders and expressed their support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” …
   5. Homeland Security warns that Russia could launch cyberattack against US; By Josh Meyer | USA TODAY | Jan. 24, 2022
   6. A new Department of Homeland Security bulletin warns that Russia could launch a cyberattack against U.S. targets on American soil if it believes Washington’s response to its potential invasion of Ukraine threatens its long-term national security.
   7. DHS blasted out the memo Sunday to S. critical infrastructure operators and state and local governments around the country, warning that “Russia maintains a range of offensive cyber tools that it could employ against U.S. networks” that make everything from planes to hospitals to dams and bridges operate.
   8. Separately, a well-respected private cybersecurity firm leader warns that while “cyber espionage is already a regular facet of global activity, as the situation deteriorates, we are likely to see more aggressive information operations and disruptive cyberattacks within and outside of Ukraine.”
   9. GOING BACK TO THE DECADES-OLD COMPLAINT FROM THE U.S. THAT EUROPE WAS GROWING TOO DEPENDENT ON SOVIET (NOW RUSSIAN) NATURAL GAS: US to Bolster Europe’s Fuel Supply to Blunt Threat of Russian Cutoff; Many European officials suspect President Vladimir V. Putin instigated the crisis in the winter in part to leverage his threat to turn off Russian fuel sales to Europe.Top of Form By David E. Sanger | NYTIMES.COM | Jan. 25, 2022
   10. MIKE: This may be similar to a “Rhineland” moment: Remilitarization of the Rhineland, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
   11. After the Nazis took power in 1933, Germany began working towards rearmament and the remilitarization of the Rhineland. On 7 March 1936, using the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance as a pretext, Chancellor and Führer Adolf Hitler ordered the Wehrmacht to march 20,000 German troops into the Rhineland, which caused joyous celebrations across Germany. The French and the British governments, unwilling to risk war, decided against enforcing the treaties. …
   12. … The remilitarization of the Rhineland (German: Rheinlandbesetzung) began on 7 March 1936, when German military forces entered the Rhineland, which directly contravened the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties. Neither France nor Britain was prepared for a military response, so they did not act. After 1939 commentators often said that a strong military move in 1936 might have ruined Hitler’s expansionist plans. However, recent historiography agrees that both public and elite opinion in Britain and France strongly opposed a military intervention, and neither had an army prepared to move in.^[1] …
   13. The remilitarization changed the balance of power in Europe from France and its allies towards Germany by allowing Germany to pursue a policy of aggression in Western Europe that had been blocked by the demilitarized status of the Rhineland.
   14. The fact that Britain and France did not intervene made Hitler believe that neither country would get in the way of Nazi foreign policy. That made him decide to quicken the pace of German preparations for war and the domination of Europe.^[2] …
   15. MIKE: Nazi Germany reoccupied and remilitarized the Rhineland in March 1936. In March 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria in what was called the Anschluss. With the acquiescence (what came to be called “appeasement”) by Britain and France as parties to the Munich Agreement in September 1938, Nazi Germany annexed the northwest part of Czechoslovakia that the Germans called the Sudetenland. A year later, on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland (jointly with Stalin’s USSR), and World War 2 in Europe was begun.
   16. MIKE: History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. While I’m not comparing Russia to Nazi Germany, I think there are echoes here of the period from 1930 to 1939. Let’s say that Crimea was Russia’s Anschluss; that the Russian-supported separatist parts of Ukraine are Russia’s Sudetenland; that Russia’s massing of troops on the borders of Ukraine are the Rhineland; that Putin’s demands of the US and NATO are Putin’s attempt at a Munich-style agreement; and that invading Ukraine would be Putin’s Poland.
   17. MIKE: Historians debate if there was a point where Anglo-French resistance might have given Hitler pause at any of the events before Poland. Then in a historical rhyme, where are we now? What should Western responses to Putin be? Will history judge our choices as having been right or wrong? Or will all of us just make different kinds of mistakes leading to disaster?
   18. ANDREW: To zoom in a bit, I think there’s one issue in NATO’s support for Ukraine that isn’t addressed enough. I want to start by saying I support self-determination as long as one’s self-determination doesn’t prevent someone else’s, and that includes Ukraine. But there have been reports as recent as this year and as far back as 2014 of significant integration of neo-Nazis and other fascists in Ukrainian government and armed forces, and this is a big problem. Right now, as much as a successful invasion could be a staging ground for Russian imperialism, a Ukrainian victory could be a launching pad for further fascist takeovers in the region and abroad. I think NATO needs to insist on or take action to remove the fascists, but I worry that an investigation and removal of fascist officials could give them an excuse to target left-wing and other individuals who might not be desirable for NATO as well. I’m not sure what the best solution is.
9. China’s birth rate drops for a fifth straight year to record low; By Nectar Gan, CNN Business | CNN.COM | Updated 2:51 AM ET, Mon January 17, 2022
   1. China’s birth rate plummeted for a fifth consecutive year to hit a new record low in 2021, despite government efforts to encourage couples to have more children in the face of a looming demographic crisis. …
   2. [One source uses a 2021 statistic of China 1.7 children per woman.] The number of births was just enough to outnumber deaths, with the population growing by 480,000 to 1.4126 billion. …
   3. The plunging birth rate comes as the Chinese government ramps up efforts to encourage families to have more children, after realizing its decades-long one-child policy had contributed to a rapidly aging population and shrinking workforce that could severely distress the country’s economic and social stability.
   4. ANDREW: China’s not perfect. The population restrictions, while they may have been necessary, have clearly had unintended and negative consequences, and a sharply declining birth rate is one of them. I think the fact that they’ve ended the one-child policy shows that the Chinese government is capable of rethinking its past decisions. The big question now is, did they rethink soon enough.
10. Long Slide Looms for World Population, With Sweeping Ramifications; Fewer babies … More abandoned homes. Toward the middle of this century, as deaths start to exceed births, changes will come that are hard to fathom. By Damien Cave, Emma Bubola and Choe Sang-Hun | NYTIMES.COM | May 22, 2021
    1. All over the world, countries are confronting population stagnation and a fertility bust, a dizzying reversal unmatched in recorded history that will make first-birthday parties a rarer sight than funerals, and empty homes a common eyesore. …
    2. Maternity wards are already shutting down in Italy. Ghost cities are appearing in northeastern China. Universities in South Korea can’t find enough students, and in Germany, hundreds of thousands of properties have been razed, with the land turned into parks.
    3. Like an avalanche, the demographic forces — pushing toward more deaths than births — seem to be expanding and accelerating. Though some countries continue to see their populations grow, especially in Africa, fertility rates are falling nearly everywhere else. Demographers now predict that by the latter half of the century or possibly earlier, the global population will enter a sustained decline for the first time.
    4. A planet with fewer people could ease pressure on resources, slow the destructive impact of climate change and reduce household burdens for women. But the census announcements this month from China and the United States, which showed the slowest rates of population growth in decades for both countries, also point to hard-to-fathom adjustments. …
    5. The ramifications and responses have already begun to appear, especially in East Asia and Europe. From Hungary to China, from Sweden to Japan, governments are struggling to balance the demands of a swelling older cohort with the needs of young people whose most intimate decisions about childbearing are being shaped by factors both positive (more work opportunities for women) and negative (persistent gender inequality and high living costs). …
    6. … Even in countries long associated with rapid growth, such as India and Mexico, birthrates are falling toward, or are already below, the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family. …
    7. [A]ccording to projections by an international team of scientists published last year in The Lancet, 183 countries and territories — out of 195 — will have fertility rates below replacement level by 2100.
    8. Their model shows an especially sharp decline for China, with its population expected to fall from 1.41 billion now to about 730 million in 2100. If that happens, the population pyramid would essentially flip. Instead of a base of young workers supporting a narrower band of retirees, China would have as many 85-year-olds as 18-year-olds. …
    9. Many countries are beginning to accept the need to adapt, not just resist. South Korea is pushing for universities to merge. In Japan, where adult diapers now outsell ones for babies, municipalities have been consolidated as towns age and shrink. In Sweden, some cities have shifted resources from schools to elder care. And almost everywhere, older people are being asked to keep working. Germany, which previously raised its retirement age to 67, is now considering a bump to 69.
    10. Going further than many other nations, Germany has also worked through a program of urban contraction: Demolitions have removed around 330,000 units from the housing stock since 2002. …
    11. Demographers warn against seeing population decline as simply a cause for alarm. Many women are having fewer children because that’s what they want. Smaller populations could lead to higher wages, more equal societies, lower carbon emissions and a higher quality of life for the smaller numbers of children who are born.
    12. ANDREW: I think the big takeaway is in the last paragraph of the previous story. Population decline is not necessarily a bad thing, and isn’t necessarily caused by bad things. Personal choice is a significant factor. Plus, more and more climate analysis is coming to the conclusion that the only way to avert disaster is to reduce how much we produce (hey, that rhymes!). Obviously, overthrowing capitalism is a great way to do that because wasteful overproduction is a core tenet of a so-called “unplanned” economy, but failing that, reducing how many people are on the planet reduces the amount of consumers and should in theory reduce production. Of course, we need to make sure production actually slows down and that people are dying of old age and not, you know, preventable diseases or deadly conditions, otherwise the population reduction is going to come disproportionately from the working class (and Black, brown, LGBT, and disabled people) rather than the owning class.
    13. Elon Musk laments the declining birth rate: ‘If there aren’t enough people for Earth, then there definitely won’t be enough for Mars’; By Huileng Tan | BUSINESSINSIDER.COM | Jan 19, 2022, 3:36 AM
    14. MIKE: Elon is so worried that he tweeted a link to this 2-year-old article from the BBC (Fertility rate: ‘Jaw-dropping’ global crash in children being born) which said in part:
    15. The fertility rate – the average number of children a woman gives birth to – is falling.
    16. If the number falls below approximately 2.1, then the size of the population starts to fall.
    17. In 1950, women were having an average of 4.7 children in their lifetime.
    18. Researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation showed the global fertility rate nearly halved to 2.4 in 2017 – and their study, published in the Lancet, projects [the global fertility rate] will fall below 1.7 by 2100.
    19. GRAPHICS: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53409521.amp
    20. GRAPHICS: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53409521.amp
    21. MIKE: I have a saying: The only thing worse than too much business is not enough. The same may be true for population. For various reasons, populations have always waxed and waned. But infrastructure is complex and expensive; building it is time-consuming and expensive, and abandoning it wastes those resources. Oddly, even a steady-state population is considered economically problematic because of the shift in demographics. As Rosanne Rosannadanna used to say, it’s always something.
    22. ANDREW: I think the big takeaway is in that last paragraph. Population decline is not necessarily a bad thing, and isn’t necessarily caused by bad things. Personal choice is a significant factor. Plus, more and more climate analysis is coming to the conclusion that the only way to avert disaster is to reduce how much we produce (hey, that rhymes!). Obviously, overthrowing capitalism is a great way to do that because wasteful overproduction is a core tenet of a so-called “unplanned” economy, but failing that, reducing how many people are on the planet reduces the amount of consumers and should in theory reduce production. Of course, we need to make sure production actually slows and that people are dying of old age and not, you know, preventable diseases or deadly conditions, otherwise the population reduction is going to come disproportionately from the working class (and Black, brown, LGBT, and disabled people) rather than the owning class.
11. BUT POSSIBLY JUST IN TIME FOR THE WORLD’S POPULATION COLLAPSE, from science fiction to science faction: Last week, we discussed, The robot work force isn’t coming. It’s already here; By Melissa Repko (@melissa_repko) | CNBC.COM | Published Mon, Dec 27 20217:00 AM EST, Updated Mon, Dec 27 202110:48 AM EST
12. To quote “George the Time Traveler” from the movie, “The Time Machine (1960)”, “It seems people aren’t dying fast enough these days. They call upon science to invent new, more efficient weapons to depopulate the Earth.”
13. Ethiopian government rejects Tigrayan fighters’ ceasefire call, dashing hopes of an end to the conflict; By Niamh Kennedy, Zeena Saifi and Larry Madowo, CNN | Updated 2:12 PM ET, Tue December 21, 2021
    1. The Ethiopian government has dismissed calls for a ceasefire from Tigrayan fighters in the north of the country, saying the olive branches it previously offered them have been rejected many times.
    2. The leader of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region had announced a withdrawal of rebel forces from neighboring areas in the country on Sunday, a move that raised hopes of a ceasefire after 13 months of war.
    3. But Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s spokesperson Billene Seyoum on Tuesday cast doubt on the motives of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.
    4. Foreign Drones Tip the Balance in Ethiopia’s Civil War; Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed pulled off a stunning reversal in the year-old conflict with the help of armed drones supplied by the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Iran. By Declan Walsh | NYTIMES.COM | 20, 2021
    5. After Ethiopia’s embattled prime minister pulled off a stunning military victory earlier this month, reversing a rebel march on the capital that threatened to overthrow him, he credited the bravery of his troops.
    6. “Ethiopia is proud of your unbelievable heroism,” the jubilant leader, Abiy Ahmed, told his troops on the battlefront at Kombolcha, on Dec. 6. “You were our confidence when we said Ethiopia would never lose.”
    7. In reality, the reason for the reversal in Mr. Abiy’s fortunes was hovering in the skies above: a fleet of combat drones, recently acquired from allies in the Persian Gulf region and elsewhere who are determined to keep him in power.
    8. Over the past four months, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Iran have quietly supplied Mr. Abiy with some of the latest armed drones, even as the United States and African governments were urging a cease-fire and peace talks, according to two Western diplomats who have been briefed on the crisis and spoke on condition of anonymity.
    9. The motives of Mr. Abiy’s suppliers varied: to make money; to gain an edge in a strategic region; and to back a winner in the spiraling conflict that has engulfed Africa’s second most populous nation. But the impact of the drones was striking — pummeling Tigrayan rebels and their supply convoys as they pushed down a major highway toward the capital, Addis Ababa. The rebels have since retreated roughly 270 miles by road to the north, erasing months of battlefield gains. …
    10. The demonstration of drone power confirmed that Ethiopia’s year-old conflict, largely a regional affair until now, has been internationalized. And it adds the country to a growing list of conventional conflicts, like those in Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh, where combat drones have become a significant factor in the fight, or even the dominant one.
    11. “Increasingly, unmanned systems are becoming a game changer,” said Peter W. Singer, an expert on drone warfare at New America, a research group in Washington. “It’s not just about the raw capability of the drones themselves — it’s the multiplying effect they have on nearly every other human and system on the battlefield.” …
    12. Singer … said the experimentation with drone warfare in Ethiopia and Libya has parallels with the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s, when outside powers used the fight to test new military technologies and to gauge international reaction to determine what they could get away with. “It’s a combination of war and battle lab,” he said.
    13. MIKE: Essentially, the best practice for warfighting – whether tactics or technology — is actual warfighting.
    14. ANDREW: The comparison to the Spanish Civil War is concerning, especially since that war ended in fascists overthrowing a left-wing government. It’s not one-to-one, as the rebels are the left-wingers this time, but we certainly don’t need any more conflicts that might end in a fascist victory. The proliferation of drones is also concerning. If some nations are trying to see “what they can get away with”, I’d like to see the rest of us say “hell no.” Unfortunately, the next article suggests that may not be where things are going.
14. UN talks to ban ‘slaughterbots’ collapsed — here’s why that matters; By Sam Shead (@Sam_L_Shead) | CNBC.COM | Published Wed, Dec 22 2021, 9:10 AM EST, Updated Wed, Dec 22 20219:45 AM EST
    1. A UN conference failed to agree on banning the use and development of so-called “slaughterbots” at a meeting in Geneva …, raising alarm bells among experts in artificial intelligence, military strategy, disarmament and humanitarian law.
    2. Slaughterbots are weapons that select and apply force to targets without human intervention. Instead, they make their decisions with artificial intelligence software, which is essentially a series of algorithms.
    3. For the first time ever this year, the bulk of the 125 nations that belong to the United Nations’ Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) said they wanted new laws to be introduced on killer robots.
    4. However, some countries that are developing these weapons including the U.S. and Russia, were in opposition, making a unilateral agreement impossible. The U.K. and several other nations also objected. …
    5. Despite what some people may think, slaughterbots are already being used on the battlefield today.
    6. In Libya, Kargu drones made by Turkey’s STM have been used in the nation’s civil war, according to a UN report published in March.
    7. These Kargu drones are small portable rotary wing attack drones that provide “precision strike capabilities for ground troops,” according to STM’s website. The Kargu drones were used in Libya to hunt down retreating soldiers, according to the UN report. …
    8. Companies making these drones are trying to develop AI systems that can identify the thermal signature of a human target or identify their face via a camera. But distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants requires accuracy and precision.
    9. It’s drones like STM’s that campaigners are most worried about. These drones, which look similar to a normal consumer drone but have a gun attached, are fairly inexpensive to buy and relatively easy to mass produce.
    10. Max Tegmark, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the president of the Future of Life Institute, told CNBC that gangs will look to try and use slaughterbots if they’re affordable.
    11. “That’s going to be the weapon of choice for basically anyone who wants to kill anyone,” he said. “A slaughterbot would basically be able to anonymously assassinate anybody who’s pissed off anybody.” …
    12. Richard Moyes, coordinator of the Stop Killer Robots campaign, said in a statement that government leaders need to draw a moral and legal line for humanity against the killing of people by machines.
    13. “A clear majority of states see the need to ensure meaningful human control over the use of force,” he said. “It’s time now for them to lead in order to prevent the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of killer robots.” …
    14. MIKE: Whether it’s SKYNET or COLOSSUS, the real question may be how to cope with our robot overlords.
    15. ANDREW: They’re called “slaughterbots”, people. Push the big red button that says “NO” and pop the champagne. In seriousness, this is a perfect example of why the Security Council shouldn’t exist. Having a few nations that can override the votes of every other nation in the UN is a terrible idea. This decision wasn’t made by the Security Council, but I see the consensus requirement here as an extension of that attitude. Powerful people and nations don’t give up that power if you ask nicely– if you don’t want to fight it out, sometimes you have to just override objections. Systems that don’t let you do that are designed that way for a reason.