Courtesy: InkHong – flickr.com

In 2001, an unwise law came into effect all over the nation. Nobody can kill a stray dog anymore. Within the next ten years, India’s stray dog population skyrocketed, with the result that no other country suffers so much from dog bite and rabies. Numbering in hundreds of millions, they bite millions of people every year, and kill around 20,000 people every year with rabies. That number is more than a third of the global rabies toll!

According to a New York Times report on this great menace in India, ‘the stray population has increased so much that officials across the country have expressed alarm’. But still, nobody can euthanize a stray, and the dogs are now rapidly taking over the city lanes.

One of the solutions suggested by a member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly, although seemly a practical solution, was not taken seriously by the lawmakers. He proposed exporting the strays to China — where dogmeat is in demand — after more than 15,000 people in the state reported being bitten during a year.

Writes The New York Times:

‘India’s place as the global center for rabid dogs is an ancient one: the first dog ever infected with rabies most likely was Indian, said Dr. Charles Rupprecht, chief of the rabies program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.’

The main reason that India is hesitating in doing something concrete to eradicate rabies is because of the special relationship that Indian pariah dogs have been maintaining with Indians since ancient times.

‘While that relationship has largely disappeared in the developed world, it remains the dominant one in India, where strays survive on the ubiquitous mounds of garbage. Some are fed and collared by residents who value them as guards and as companions, albeit distant ones. Hindus oppose the killing of many kinds of animals.’   ‘Where Streets Are Thronged With Strays Baring Fangs’, The New York Times – nytimes.com 

India does not have much time left. Unless it acts with utmost urgency to solve this problem, it is not only exposing itself to increased dog attacks, but to a rabies pandemic that could kill potentially millions of people.

‘More than a dozen experts interviewed said that India’s stray problem would only get worse until a canine contraceptive vaccine, now in the lab, became widely and inexpensively available.

Dr. Rosario Menezes, a pediatrician from Goa, said that India could not wait that long. Dogs must be taken off the streets even if that means euthanizing them, he said. “I am for the right of people to walk the streets without fear of being attacked by packs of dogs,” he said.’   Ibid

Widespread fatal attack of humans by ‘beasts’ is one of the four calamities foretold in the Bible that would destroy a quarter of the world’s population. And the stray dog, unless eradicated, could be the most numerous of such attackers.

Pappa Joseph

‘Before you are dragged into court, make friends with the person who has accused you of doing wrong. If you don’t, you will be handed over to the judge and then to the officer who will put you in jail. I promise you that you will not get out until you have paid the last cent you owe.’¹ 

A mid-Victorian depiction of the debtors prison at St Briavel Castle, England (1858)

In ancient Greece, bankruptcy did not exist. If a man owed and he could not pay, he and his wife, children or servants were forced into ‘debt slavery’, until the creditor recouped losses through their physical labor.

Bankruptcy is also documented in ancient East Asia. According to al-Maqrizi, the Yassa of Genghis Khan contained a provision that mandated the death penalty for anyone who became bankrupt three times.

During Europe’s Middle Ages, debtors, both men and women, were locked up together in a single large cell until their families paid their debt. Debt prisoners often died of diseases contracted from other debt prisoners. Conditions included starvation and abuse from other prisoners. If the father of a family was imprisoned for debt, the family business often suffered while the mother and children fell into poverty. Unable to pay the debt, the father often remained in debtors’ prison for many years. Some debt prisoners were released to become serfs or indentured servants (debt bondage) until they paid off their debt in labor.

In UK, until imprisonment for debt was abolished in 1869, life in the debtors prison was a miserable experience, and the inmates were forced to pay for their keep. Samuel Byrom, son of the writer and poet John Byrom, was imprisoned for debt in 1725, and in 1729 he sent a petition to his old school friend, the Duke of Dorset, in which he raged against the injustices of the system:

‘What barbarity can be greater than for jailers (without provocation) to load prisoners with irons, and thrust them into dungeons, and manacle them, and deny their friends to visit them, and force them to pay excessive fines for their chamber rent, their victuals and drinks; to open their letters and seize the charity that is sent to them! And when debtors have succeeded in arranging with their creditors, hundreds are detained in prison for chamber-rent and other unjust demands put forward by their jailers, so that at last, in their despair, many are driven to commit suicide…law of imprisonment for debts inflicts a greater loss on the country, in the way of wasted power and energies, than do monasteries and nunneries in foreign lands… Holland, the most unpolite country in the world, uses debtors with mildness and malefactors with rigour; England, on the other hand, shows mercy to murderers and robbers, but of poor debtors impossibilities are demanded.’  (Manchester Times, 22 October 1862)

That letter would be still very relevant to many of the leaders of the nations where debtors’ prisons still exist.

Dr Samuel Johnson almost landed in a debtors’ prison in England for not being able to pay a trivial amount.

‘He [Dr Samuel Johnson] was arrested for debt. The man who was the ‘chief glory’ of his age, whose life had been laborious and frugal, could not pay five pounds eighteen shillings. It was by the benevolence of Richardson the novelist that he was saved from that ‘picture of hell upon earth’, a debtors’ prison.’   From the introduction to The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

Modern Debtors’ Prisons

In modern times, several countries still practice the primitive and inhumane system of sending debtors to ‘hell upon earth’.

Greece still practices it, with one change; imprisonment for debts to the government was declared unconstitutional in 2008. Imprisonment, however, is still retained for debts to private banks.

Other prominent countries which still practice to the full extent this ancient system of sending debtors to prison are the United Arab Emirates and China. Hong Kong has long imprisoned debtors from its tradition as a British colony. The first mainland prison sentence for unpaid debts was handed down in 2008. Life imprisonment is possible for non-repayment of debts incurred with ‘malicious intent’.

‘Debtors in the United Arab Emirates, including Dubai, are imprisoned for failing to pay their debts. This is a common practice in the country. Private banks are not sympathetic to the debtors once they are in prison so many just choose to leave the country where they can negotiate for settlements later. The practice of fleeing UAE to avoid arrest because of debt defaults is considered a viable option to customers who are unable to meet their obligations.’   Wikipedia

At present a comparable concept to debtors prison still exists in various forms in Germany. A maximum six months of ‘coercive arrest’ is still practiced for refusal of payment or fine.

In UK, debtors can still be sent to jail for upto six weeks if they had the means to pay their debt but did not do so.

More than a third of US states allow debtors to be jailed for non payment. A year long study released in 2010 of fifteen states with the highest prison populations by the Brennan Center for Justice, found that all fifteen states sampled have jurisdictions that arrest people for failing to pay debt or appear at debt related hearings. To what extent a debtor will actually be prosecuted varies from state to state.

‘In 1970, the US Court ruled in Williams v. Illinois that extending a maximum prison term because a person is too poor to pay fines or court costs violates the right to equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. During 1971 in Tate v. Short, the Court found it unconstitutional to impose a fine as a sentence and then automatically convert it into a jail term solely because the defendant is indigent and cannot forthwith pay the fine in full. And in the 1983 ruling for Bearden v. Georgia the Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment bars courts from revoking probation for a failure to pay a fine without first inquiring into a person’s ability to pay and considering whether there are adequate alternatives to imprisonment.’   Wikipedia. Emphasis mine.

Several countries today still practice the primitive and inhumane system of sending debtors to prison.

India’s prevalent bonded labor system, although officially banned, is a severe form of debtors’ imprisonment. Farmers and their families are held in bondage to their landlords for failure to repay loans and forced to work on their creditor’s lands for just the barest means of survival. This bondage usually lasts the entire life of the farmer, and the bondage is then passed on to his children.

In 1976, Article 11 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights came into effect. It states, ‘No one shall be imprisoned merely on the ground of inability to fulfill a contractual obligation’.

May every nation that still sends debtors to prison take deeply to heart this international covenant:

‘No one shall be imprisoned merely on the ground of inability to fulfill a contractual obligation.’

Pappa Joseph

¹ Matthew 5:5-26  Contemporary English Version

After years of research, the first bionic eye is available on the market, giving hope to the blind around the world.

Developed by Second Sight Medical Products, the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System has helped more than 60 people recover partial sight. Consisting of electrodes implanted in the retina and glasses fitted with a special mini camera, the bionic eye, called Argus II, is the world’s first to go on the market.

Other researchers are also developing bionic eyes of their own that would offer higher resolution images with more electrodes implanted in the retina.

According to the manufacturers, the bionic eye is ‘a far cry from restoring 20/20 vision’. What it could do now is provide ‘low vision’ to blind people – which is a remarkable achievement in itself.

Once-sightless patients fitted with bionic eyes can see motion and can avoid stumbling into large objects. They ‘are able to follow a person walking down the street and discern a street curb without using their canes’. They can differentiate between a cup, a plate and a knife. The bionic eye that provides this capability has just 16 electrodes, and researches are now going up to 60. In about 5 to 7 years, they expect the models to have 1000 electrodes, which will be enough for face recognition.

Bionic vision has the potential to help millions of people around the world. However, presently the benefit extends only to people whose sight is impaired because the thin layer of tissue that lines the eye and processes images is deteriorating. But the world is waiting for research to come up with artificial eyes that can give sight to people with any form of blindness.

Whether research eventually comes up with such a device or not, very soon, possibly in our generation, every blind person in the world will receive total sight through God’s direct provision when he comes to rule the earth.

‘Energize the limp hands, strengthen the rubbery knees. Tell fearful souls, “Courage! Take heart! God is here, right here, on his way to put things right and redress all wrongs. He’s on his way! He’ll save you!” Blind eyes will be opened, deaf ears unstopped, lame men and women will leap like deer, the voiceless break into song.’   Isaiah 35:3-7 The Message

Pappa Joseph

‘I heard a story once about the white noise caused by Niagara Falls. A long time ago, a bunch of spring ice jammed up the river so much that the falls stopped. The silence was so deafening that it woke up everyone living around the falls.’    w5.montreal.com

Courtesy: Ujjwal Kumar

Noise pollution is causing more damage to the balance of human life than people generally realize.

Noise affects both health and behavior. Unwanted sound can cause annoyance and aggression, hypertension, high stress levels, tinnitus, hearing loss, sleep disturbances, and other harmful effects.

Chronic exposure to noise may cause noise-induced hearing loss. There is no great difference whether noise-induced hearing loss is brought about by outside (i.e. trains) or inside (i.e. music) noise.

Older males exposed to significant occupational noise demonstrate significantly reduced hearing sensitivity than their non-exposed peers. A comparison of Maaban tribesmen, who were insignificantly exposed to transportation or industrial noise, to a typical U.S. population showed that chronic exposure to moderately high levels of environmental noise contributes to hearing loss.

High noise levels can contribute to cardiovascular effects and exposure to moderately high levels during a single 8 hour period causes an increase in stress and vasoconstriction leading to increased blood pressure as well as to increased incidence of coronary artery disease.

Noise can have a detrimental effect on animals, increasing the risk of death by changing the delicate balance in predator or prey detection and avoidance, and interfering the use of the sounds in communication especially in relation to reproduction and in navigation. Another impact of noise on animal life is the reduction of usable habitat, which in the case of endangered species leads to a speedier extinction. Noise pollution has caused the death of certain species of whales that beached themselves after being exposed to the loud sound of military sonar.

Governments until the 1970s viewed noise as a ‘nuisance’ rather than an environmental problem. In the United States, there are federal standards for highway and aircraft noise; states and local governments typically have very specific statutes on building codes, urban planning and roadway development.

Noise laws and ordinances vary widely among cities. An ordinance may contain a general prohibition against making noise that is a nuisance, or it may set out specific guidelines for the level of noise allowable at certain times of the day and for certain activities.

In UK, thousands of confiscations have been authorized involving the removal of powerful speakers, stereos and televisions.

In the US, Portland, Oregon, instituted the first comprehensive noise code in 1975. The Portland Noise Code includes potential fines of up to $5000 per infraction and is the basis for other major US and Canadian city noise ordinances.

In Nigeria, the Lagos state government, in response to the public outcry, renewed its war against noise pollution in the state. It issued a stern warning to various religious groups, music studios, video clubs and others to reduce the noise level in their activities or face the wrath of law.

Noise pollution is a major problem in countries like India during the festivals of Diwali, Navaratri and Ganpati. The Government of India has regulations against firecrackers and loudspeakers but enforcement is extremely lax. Awaaz Foundation is an Indian NGO working to control noise pollution from various sources in Mumbai through advocacy, public interest litigation, awareness and educational campaigns since 2003.

A Qantas Boeing 747-400 approaching runway 27L at London Heathrow Airport, England. The houses are in Myrtle Avenue, at the south east corner of the airport. Photographer’s note: I know this aircraft looks as though it was inserted in a graphics program but the picture is genuine. Aircraft pass close to Myrtle Avenue every 2 minutes when 27L is in use, so getting shots like this is easy.  Photographed by Adrian Pingstone.

Some Suggestions for Noise Reduction

Roadway noise can be reduced by the use of noise barriers, limitation of vehicle speeds, alteration of roadway surface texture, limitation of heavy vehicles, use of traffic controls that smooth vehicle flow, which reduces braking and acceleration, and redesign of tire.

Roadway noise includes signal noises – car locking beep, horns, truck backing up. Another severe noise source are ‘the aural terrorists who ride motorbikes that shake people awake or who drive a car with a [sound] can attached’.

Aircraft noise can be reduced by using quieter jet engines. Altering flight paths and the use of runways has benefited residents near airports.

Industrial noise can be addressed by the redesign of industrial equipment, shock mounted assemblies and physical barriers in the workplace.

‘The mechanisms at work that can cause noise need to be clearly identified, understood, and modeled. In the battle against noise, computer modeling has an important role to play. It makes it possible to identify the sources of noise, model their behavior, predict the way in which the sound carries, and test solutions to reduce noise. When a new product is designed, whether it be a vehicle, a tool, or a household appliance, simulations like these help find ways of reducing noise in early stages of the manufacturing process, sometimes even before a prototype is made.

‘There are many areas of research specifically dedicated to fighting noise pollution. One such field of study is the characterization and development of sound-absorbing or damping materials. Another pertains to complex situations like multisource (planes, trains, cars, etc.) and multisensory (noise and light, noise and vibrations, etc.) exposure. This type of research frequently needs to include other aspects associated with noise such as mechanical and safety factors. But above all, they also need to include the human factor–how we perceive noise. Research is underway to clarify the definition of annoyance, a highly subjective notion linked in particular to culture and education, and to determine its characteristics using reliable indicators.

‘Lastly, the battle against noise involves describing and planning the urban acoustic environment. And Europe has taken a keen interest in the matter: the 2002 European Directive makes it compulsory to draw up noise maps for large cities and major routes of transportation, whether it be road, rail, or air. The number one priority is to inform and create a public dialogue about this issue, in order to lay out comprehensive urban traffic maps.’   National Center for Scientific Research – www2.cnrs.fr

On the personal level, you as a city resident can ponder initiating several actions within your power or influence to mitigate noise in your community or even in your home (remember,

The world is getting louder by the year and there is great need for noise busters to rise and join the crusade to bring peace and quietude to the world.

Pappa Joseph

Children imprisoned in the Bannu Jail in Pakistan. According to Wikipedia, the conditions in the jails in Pakistan are deplorable; most of the prisons are more than 100 years old.

Until a new world order emerges – which will surely emerge if there is a good God somewhere in the universe waiting to usher it on earth – there will always be criminals in every society, and there will always be prisons to contain crime and restrain the criminals.

The alarming truth is that, only a fraction of people who deserve to go to jail are behind iron bars today. I don’t mean the murderers and the terrorists and such supercriminals. I mean the lesser criminals, who are spending a few months or a few years in their cells for crimes ranging from embezzlement and robbery to wifebashing and social menacing – any of those acts considered grave enough to justify a prison sentence.

I think less than one percent of one percent of such criminals are caught and incarcerated. 99.9 percent of such criminals are walking free in our midst as our ordinary neighbors, colleagues, fellow commuters, fellow citizens. I personally know not just a few, but many such ‘criminals’ who would have been sentenced to long terms in prison had they been caught. All of them are ordinary people, of no real harm beyond causing a little undetected damage to society now and then.

The point is, if you exclude the rapists and the killers and the kidnappers, the prisons are filled with people who are not a danger to society and who do not deserve to serve time in the same way or same place as the deadly criminals. These people should be shown mercy. A new way to bring such criminals to justice should be urgently conceived and implemented by all conscientious governments.

As for the deadly criminals, they are our fellow humans. They have turned beast because of circumstances, or upbringing. They cannot be released into society until there is evidence of their reformation. However, in administering justice, mercy should never be overlooked. Mercy in the cases of criminals who cannot be let out into society lest they endanger more lives, can be shown through a reformed prison system.

Mercy is not bound by the limits of criminality. Mercy can be shown at any level of lawbreaking. How this mercy can be shown, without compromising on public safety, is one of the core messages of this website.

My message, ‘Punish the Criminal, Not His Family Too’, covers the first and most important aspect of mercy to prisoners. Please read it, and see if you can use your influence to contribute in some small or significant way to initiate a great reformation in your country’s prison system.

Pappa Joseph

Her hands are busy exploring and interacting with other parts of her body. She feels a hair stroke on her cheek and makes protective movements to avoid it. She then makes graceful stretching and rotational movements of her head, arms and legs. She also makes hand to head, hand to face, hand to moth movements, with her mouth opening, closing and swallowing. Her swallowing increases with sweet tastes and decreases with bitter and sour tastes.

She is a good listener too. She hears her mother laugh, and she immediately makes a movement in delightful response. She hears music, and the pleasant sound causes changes in her metabolism. ‘Brahms’ Lullaby’, which she has been hearing several times a day, is having the effect of producing faster weight gain in her than voice sounds played on the same schedule.

Her vision is so sensitive that even when her eyelids are closed she detects the location of a needle approaching her and she shrinks away from it. When the needle keeps coming and nicks her, she turns and attacks the needle barrel with a fist.

Then she feels another baby nearby, and have no trouble locating her twin lying close by. She touches the other baby’s face and holds her hands.

She dreams a lot and makes a lot of rapid eye movement and facial movements in synchrony with the dream itself, manifested in markedly pleasant or unpleasant expressions.¹

Then, suddenly, the baby experiences terror and excruciating agony as forceps grip her body and she is decapitated and the rest of her body dismembered by an abortionist.

All that the baby had been experiencing till she was destroyed is now scientifically established facts.

A baby in the womb experiences everything that a newborn baby does.

And yet, according to WHO, every year in the world an estimated 40-50 million women faced with an unplanned pregnancy decide to have an abortion. This corresponds to approximately 125,000 abortions per day.

In the USA, where nearly half of pregnancies are unintended, and 4 in 10 of these are terminated by abortion, there are over 3,000 abortions per day. 22 percent of all pregnancies in the USA (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion. I don’t have the statistics for the other countries. But I have for the whole world.

As I write this, since January 1 this year until today [June 2, 2013] – less than 6 months – more than 17 million babies have been dismembered and cast into incinerators or thrown away as trash. Just today alone, more than a hundred thousand little lives would be forcepsed or poisoned to death around the world.

The Creator, who made these aborted babies in his own image and likeness, and who loves them more than you or I can ever love our own children², has heard every silent scream of the infants being torn apart. He has seen the ashes or the dismembered body of every child that was burnt in the incinerators or cast into the trashbin in an abortionist’s clinic. And their Maker is not going to wait much longer.

‘The Lord answered, “Could a mother forget a child who nurses at her breast? Could she fail to love an infant who came from her own body? Even if a mother could forget, I will never forget you’²

The nations that are allowing this infant holocaust are going to pay a terrible price in genocidal scales. They have allowed the little ones to be destroyed, and so now just before God restores his rule on earth and stops the mass slaughter of the innocents, he will withhold his protective hand when endtime events sweep through the nations and cause the genocide of hundreds of millions of parents and government authorities who are responsible for the horrific deaths of uncountable number of children.

Pappa Joseph   

¹ Based on clinical facts presented in the article ‘The Fetal Senses: A Classical View’ by David B. Chamberlain, PhD. Article can be assessed online – just enter the title in your search engine.
² Isaiah 49:15 Contemporary English Version

Courtesy: niko_Proust – flickr.com

The nations today are educating their people to disbelieve in God and to disobey his laws. That is the single most tragic consequence of the educational system in every nation that teaches its citizens from kg to phd that they are the evolutionary offsprings of slimy creatures that finally evolved into apes which ultimately devolved into the more dangerous species, man.

Even when schools in the West taught their little ones to trust their apenine and asinine origins, they, until the 60s, were also teaching them to pray in school to the One they officially didn’t believe in. Until the actions of a few atheists caused the US and other nations with a similar culture to clamp down on this hypocrisy by banning prayer in school, completing the evolution of man into absolute atheists.

The consequence of banning God in the American school was terribly calamitous. God does not enforce his protection on institutions that do not want him there.

On June 25, 2012, the American nation celebrated its 50th anniversary of the prayer ban in its public schools. It was on this day in 1962 that the US Supreme Court first ruled that prayer in public schools is unconstitutional. The common prayer, which the children had been praying daily in school until then, read:

‘Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our nation.’

Since then the nation has reaped the consequences of eliminating God from the schools – a dramatic increase in crime, venereal disease, premarital sex, illiteracy, suicide, drug use, public corruption, and other social ills. A report entitled ‘America: To Pray or Not to Pray’, produced by Specialty Research Associates, gives some statistics:

A.  Young People

1.  For 15 years before 1963 pregnancies in girls ages 15 through 19 years had been no more than 15 per thousand After 1963 pregnancies increased 187% in the next 15 years.

2.  For younger girls, ages 10 to 14 years, pregnancies since 1963 are up 553%.

3.  Before 1963 sexually transmitted diseases among students were 400 per 100,000. Since 1963, they were up 226% in the next 12 years.

B.  The Family

1.  Before 1963 divorce rates had been declining for 15 years. After 1963 divorces increased 300% each year for the next 15 years.

2.  Since 1963 unmarried people living together is up 353%

3.  Since 1963 single parent families are up 140%.

4.  Since 1963 single parent families with children are up 160%.

C. Education

1.  The educational standard of measure has been the SAT scores. SAT scores had been steady for many years before 1963. From 1963 they rapidly declined for 18 consecutive years, even though the same test has been used since 1941.

2.  In 1974-75 the rate of decline of the SAT scores decreased, even though they continued to decline. That was when there was an explosion of private religious schools. That could have an impact if the private schools had higher SAT scores. In checking with the SAT Board it was found that indeed the SAT scores for private schools were nearly 100 points higher than public schools. In fact the scores were at the point where the public schools had been before their decline started in 1963 when prayer and Bible reading/instruction was removed from the schools.

3.  Of the nation’s top academic scholars, three times as many come from private religious schools, which operate on one-third the funds as do the public schools.

D.  The Nation

1.  Since 1963 violent crime has increased 544%.

2.  Illegal drugs have become an enormous & uncontrollable problem.

3.  The nation has been deprived of an estimated 30 million citizens through legal abortions just since 1973.

Another report, from Time and Newsweek magazines, show that suicide rate among US teens has risen 118 percent in the last 15 years while drug use has risen almost 90 percent since 1992.

I have given the sick state of America’s educational system as an example of what happens to any nation when God’s protection and blessings are forbidden to be asked for in schools. Tragically, what is happening in schools in America is being replayed in other nations such as UK, South Africa, Canada and such countries that once held up prayer as the first activity before anything else in school.

A nation can continue to be protected and grow in greatness only so far as it looks to the Great God as its only Source of every blessing.

The only way a nation can educate its children to a great future is to teach them first to honor and obey the immutable spiritual laws – summarized in The 10 Commandments – and then to teach them the laws in physics and other subjects.

America was founded on the prayers of its founding fathers who feared God and kept his commandments. Thus an ardent community of a few hundred Godbelieving refugees grew to become the greatest nation in history. And now, without God’s laws being taught in its core educational programs, we see a shocking reversal of trends. Every year the statistical figures of children falling victim to violence and vulgarity in schools is shooting up at a phenomenal rate, and the rate will continue to grow exponentially each year…unless there is a nationwide turning of the people’s hearts to their God again.

Take to heart what George Washington, one of the founding fathers of his country, said about those leaders today who suppose that they can educate a young generation to a prosperous future by banning God in their schools:

‘Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports – And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion – reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.’

Pappa Joseph

Courtesy: publik15 – flickr.com

In 2003, US Supreme Court justices struggled with the question of whether inmates have a constitutional right to visits with friends and family. The state of Michigan had imposed stricter visitation policies to ‘better protect visitors and to stop the smuggling of drugs and weapons’.

The restrictions applied to visits by minors who weren’t an inmate’s child or grandchild. Former prisoners, unless they were immediate family, were also no longer allowed to visit. Inmates with two substance abuse violations in prison could have visitation privileges taken away altogether.

Now this message is not about prisoner visitation rights, which is what the supreme court was pondering. Let every right be taken from prisoners, if necessary, but no human court has the right to impose restrictions on the members of a prisoner’s family. It is the rights of the families of the incarcerated people that the courts should be pondering.

Until God intervenes in human affairs and abolishes the prison system altogether with a far more effective way of meting out justice, millions of people will have to languish for long years, many for their entire lives, behind iron bars. These are people who have family members –spouses, children, parents, siblings – just like people outside the prison walls do. They have the same emotional and physical needs like any free people. The Great Judge of all humanity has not granted any human court the authority to deny these needs to any person, even if he is a deadly criminal.

Obviously, dangerous prisoners cannot be let out to visit their families. But families should be allowed not just to visit their beloved one in prison, but to interact with him or her to their total satisfaction. This means, above all, that governments should allocate far more funds for construction of prisons that incorporate family accommodation for every prisoner with family.

Every prison should have a section where at least the prisoner’s immediate family can stay with him or her every day, if they so wish, or for as many days as they desire. This will ensure that even as the prisoner does time, he is not deprived of his time with his family. And any person who deprives another person of his intimate life with his family will be condemned with a greater condemnation than that which landed the prisoner in jail.

Courtesy: Judy Baxter – flickr.com

Governments that are ready to show this mercy, not to prisoners, but to their families, will find mercy in these sooncoming endtimes. But those authorities who deprive wives and husbands, sons and daughters, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, of their God-given right to live with their family member, ‘it would be better for them’, in the words of a great prophet, ‘if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea’.¹ 

Governments will have to devote much money and effort to find practical ways to bring about his revolutionary change in prison life. They have to devise ways to ensure this right of family members is not abused. But, if they really want to, they can, because they will have the support of the One who keenly desires reformation in the world’s justice system and who will guide any willing government to devise merciful ways of dealing with wrongdoers.

The Great Judge waits for a man in authority today who has both the compassion and the boldness to help initiate, in whatever small way he possibly could, a great transformation in his country’s prison system.

Pappa Joseph

¹ Luke 17:2

The greatest nation on earth, not in might or wealth or size, but in the caliber of its national soul, is the one that most earnestly governs its people with the same four vital qualities of its great leaders. These four qualities, as mentioned in my message, ‘Becoming a Leader Who Is Great in the Sight of Man and God’, are: faithfulness, mercy, compassion, humility.

A nation, represented by the government and its leaders that rule the country, is, above all else, faithful to its citizens in any situation, inside the country, or outside.

The degree of faithfulness is seen in the extent of its citizens’ sense of personal freedom and their sense of security in society. This, I know, may seem like a platitude, since every government claims its aim is to provide its citizens with a sense of security and personal freedom. But a greater nation is recognized by a greater sense of wellbeing in its citizens.

I have seen the common citizen walking around in repressed fear and a sense of general helplessness in one country, while the average citizen in a neighboring country goes to work with a stride that bespeaks his confidence and pride in what his nation is doing for him.

A country’s responses to the needs of its citizens traveling or working abroad, is one of the surest indicators of the faithfulness of a nation to its people beyond its borders. A great nation takes great care of its children abroad. But what a blemish on a nation’s character when its representative – its embassy – in another country takes a slow or lackadaisical response to its citizens who are in trouble there.

I do not wish to embarrass any nation’s leaders or people by giving the many instances where embassy officials, who represent their nation, showed indifference towards the needs of their fellow citizens in a foreign country. Every embassy official should take the utmost care in guarding his motherland’s reputation by guarding his individual dealings with the expatriates of his country.

A nation is great also by the extent of the mercy it shows to its erring citizens. Nowhere is its mercy more revealed than in its prison system. My messages, ‘Show Mercy to Those You Are Keeping Behind Iron Bars’ and ‘Punish the Guilty But Not Their Families Too’, takes a heart look into this aspect of a nation’s character.

The next two criterions to judge a nation’s greatness is how compassionate and how humble are the hearts of its leaders. It is the compassion and humility of leaders such as Gandhi and Lincoln that roused the hearts of an entire nation and changed the course of their people’s destiny towards a greater future. My forthcoming messages will delve deep into these two vital aspects of personal and national greatness.

Where does your nation stand in your own evaluation of its greatness? The evaluation criterions I have given in this message is based on principles of individual and collective greatness revealed in a book of practical wisdom given by the Creator so nations and individuals can find true greatness. The nation and its leaders that govern by these principles will reap the joyous fruits, but the nation and its leaders that ignore them will surely suffer the bitter consequences, generation after generation

‘He makes nations great and then destroys them; he makes nations large and then scatters them. He takes understanding away from the leaders of the earth [who disdain God’s laws] and makes them wander through a pathless desert. They feel around in darkness with no light; he makes them stumble like drunks.’¹

Greatest is the nation that acknowledges its Creator and heeds his laws in all aspects of its governance!

‘That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as pillars, sculptured in palace style; that our barns may be full, supplying all kinds of produce; that our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in our fields; that our oxen may be well laden; that there be no breaking in or going out; that there be no outcry in our streets. Happy are the people who are in such a state’²

Pappa Joseph

¹ Job 12:23-25
² Psalm 144:12-15

‘We stand on the threshold of the most profound and transformative event in the history of humanity, the “Singularity” ‘, declared Ray Kurzweil, probably the savviest scientific visionary today.

The Singularity is the sooncoming era – expected to begin in the next 10 to 25 years, as estimated by scientists, when technological progress will happen so fast that the daily life of every man and woman on earth will be drastically and irreversibly altered in ways that the best of human minds can hardly even contemplate today.

There are leaders in many nations today who haven’t the faintest clue what awaits them and their nation in their lifetime. Their unpreparedness is actually making their nations at great risk of being left behind and at the mercy of those nations that foresaw the paradigm shifts about to overtake them and acted swiftly to cope with them.

Says Ray Kurzweil:

‘This merger of man and machine, coupled with the sudden explosion in machine intelligence and rapid innovation in the fields of gene research as well as nanotechnology, will result in a world where there is no distinction between the biological and the mechanical, or between physical and virtual reality. These technological revolutions will allow us to transcend our frail bodies with all their limitations. Illness, as we know it, will be eradicated. Through the use of nanotechnology, we will be able to manufacture almost any physical product upon demand, world hunger and poverty will be solved, and pollution will vanish. Human existence will undergo a quantum leap in evolution. We will be able to live as long as we choose. The coming into being of such a world is, in essence, the Singularity.’¹

When is the Singularity expected to explode upon the world? It’s closer than most people in the world realize.

According to Kurzweil, by the mid to late 2020s, the effects of the nanotech and genetic revolution will be felt globally in every society. It will affect your life and mine drastically, if we are going to be around for another decade or so. It will radically transform the way we work, play and rest. At the end of the 2030s, artificial intelligence (AI) will exceed human intelligence – it means, in layman’s language, a robot will be more intelligent than even the brainiest human scientist in the world then. And when that happens, what’s the need for human beings in most of the workplaces and offices today?

The Singularity will be the single greatest work, lifestyle – and let me emphasize this – government system altering event since society began, far exceeding the impact of the industrial revolution, or the discovery of electricity, or the invention of the computer, or the institution of democracy.

Consider the implications of a society where AI is vastly superior to BI (brain intelligence).

Probably the immediate impact would be felt by both white- and blue-collar workers. Most of what they do now with their human brains and hands can be done much better by robots with intelligence and capabilities far exceeding those of humans. Present professional skills will become redundant. Society will have to discover new uses for human input.

Another area that will see amazing advances is the human body itself.

With the use of AI, medical science will be able to redesign and rebuild – molecule by molecule – our bodies and brains, so as to eliminate many diseases and increase the capacity of the human brain. But note this, scientists also admit that no matter how much we can improve human intelligence, BI will never reach a stage where it will be able to match the capability of AI. In the words of Hans Moravec of Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, man will always be ‘second-class robots’. Let me remind you that we are talking of events that are expected to happen within one or two decades from now!

How prepared is your nation for this greatest event in the sociological, political and cultural history of the world?

Now, what is the reason that most government authorities are not as earnest as the AI technologists in anticipating the advent of the Singularity?

Since the beginning of history until this generation, our forbears expected life and society to remain much the same as it had always been, with just improvements to what had already been invented and discovered. Even the industrial revolution was a culmination of generations of innovative developments in mechanics. But the technological developments since the invention of the computer and the internet (with satellite tv also contributing in a major way) suddenly altered the way people had worked and lived for generations until then. Many nations were simply unprepared and neglected taking drastic steps to prepare for the historic changes that began to sweep society, the homes and the workplaces globally. I remember with sadness that in my own state the decisionmakers did not have the prescience to grasp the opportunities that came their way to make their state the leader in the nation’s IT revolution. When computers first made their tentative appearance in my state’s offices, they were violently resisted. A local newspaper, decades later, reported,

‘Reminiscing about how the first computer installed in the government sector a decade back was brutally smashed and broken by agitators who called it “an enemy of the unemployed youths”, the chief minister said these very computers are going to bring employment in the country.’

The opportunities that came first to my state eventually went to some other states and these states today are the locales of the globally renowned IT centers in this country.

Drastic change, for the common leader, is not easy to accept, if they think it is going to disrupt the way they have been working and thinking all the past years. When calculators first made their way into offices in my state in the 70s, there was a huge outcry among many political leaders that it would adversely affect the economy of the state as fewer human calculators would be needed to be employed as a result. But nobody could sweep away the avalanche of calculators falling onto the office desktops (desktops once used to mean the top of an office desk). Then came the conquest of the workplaces by the computers, then came satellite tv…and then on nobody wanted to watch the state-run dreary channels anymore. New innovative minds had to quickly replace ossified and job-secured government employees producing the same old programs for a helpless audience who had no choice of channels. The technological advance on various fronts was so forceful and global that no government could stop this juggernaut from rolling through the midst of their people and disrupting everything that had been remaining unshaken for generations and centuries.

I repeat the crucial question: What is the reason that most government authorities are not as earnest as the AI technologists in anticipating the advent of the Singularity? The answer can be nutshelled in one sentence: They, in the words of Ray Kurzweil, couldn’t understand the ‘quickening nature of technological innovation’. Or in other words, they continue to think of progress in the linear perspective and not in the exponential perspective.

Says Ray Kurzweil, ‘I emphasize the exponential-versus-linear perspective because it’s the most important failure that prognosticators make in considering future trends.’

This failure of perspective is the biggest reason why most government leaders in the past were caught unprepared for the massive paradigm shifts that happened as a result of the IT revolution, and why most government leaders today are not doing enough to prepare for the imminent incredible changes in both government functioning and societal requirements.

If you are a government decisionmaker, your refusal to transcend your linear perspective will prove in a few years time to be your biggest failure in preparing your citizens to successfully cope with the coming paradigm shifts in the way they work and live. If you are a corporate leader, this failure will mean that your business is swiftly headed in the direction of becoming a dinosaur within a decade or two.

Courtesy: Sarah Worthy – flickr.com

So what’s linear and exponential perspectives?

Until about the beginning of the 20th century, human progress since the first man took his first breath was anticipated and experienced at a slow and unnoticeable rate. Our ancestors expected the future to resemble what they had already experienced with some obvious advancements here and there. The bow and arrow, for example, that the first hunter (possibly Nimrod, the founder of Babylon) used wasn’t much different from what William the Conqueror’s archer used in downing King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings more than 5000 years later. Some paradigm shift occurred when gunpowder was discovered. Then again, progress continued from this new line. The balls fired from the cannons used in the battle of Gettysburg went a further distance than did the iron shots of George Washington’s time, but followed basically the same technology…until the cannonballs were replaced by shells. Artillery development took a new turn from that point.

The pace of linear development in the military sphere was also the pace of progress in all other areas of human endeavor. Until the 20th century.

Beginning around the turn of the 20th century, the rate of change saw a sudden acceleration. Technological expansion which had been had been linear until then – that is, expanding by additions of a constant, say, a machine capable of producing 10 units improves to 20, then to 30, 40 and so on – suddenly became exponential, that is, expanding by multiplication of a constant, 10 units becomes 100, then 10,000, then 1,00,000,000 units, in the same period of time that a linear expansion took to produce 40 units.

But so far the rate of the exponential change itself remained low; nevertheless high enough to turn many traders in my town to switch from using mainly the bullock-cart driven country roads to trafficking mainly on the global cyber highways in just about 30 years. Now what is happening is that the rate of exponential progress itself has become exponential.

The exponential growth that the 20th century saw in its 100 years was achievable in just 20 years at the rate of the exponential growth experienced in the year 2000! But that rate of change seen in 2000 has kept increasing, so much so that in just 14 years (by 2014) we would have achieved as much as the entire 20th century did. The exponential rate will keep increasing so that in just 7 years from 2014, that is, by 2021, technology will achieve as much as it achieved in the 100 years of the 20th century. To sum up, it is estimated that the 100 years of our present century will see the equivalent of 20,000 years of progress at today’s rate. But note carefully, it is 20,000 years at today’s rate. But today’s rate is also increasing exponentially, so the actual progress will be much, much more!

Because the common man, and government leaders in general, have not really grasped, not that the present progress is exponential, but that the rate of exponential progress itself is accelerating, they are going to be shaken to the core of their beings by what’s going to happen to their lives and their countries in the very near future. The social, cultural, political and technological scenarios that are coming in their very lifetimes will stun them all beyond belief.

Here are some of the scenarios, for your personal and professional preparation, based on the estimates of scientists such as Ray Kurzweil.

Beginning in about 10 years, society will be radically transformed by tremendous changes in three related areas of human endeavor – genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. These transformation will usher in the Singularity.

By the year 2020, the genetic revolution will happen in full swing globally. Nanomedicine researchers predict that by then 50 percent of naturally occurring medical problems will be eliminated, and that will cause human life expectancy to jump within one generation to 150 years. When we able to prevent 90 percent of naturally occurring medical problems, we’d live to be more than 1,000 years old.

In the field of nanotechnology, even more amazing changes are predicted for the near future. With nanotechnology, scientists will be able to rebuild our physical world, including our bodies and brains, molecule by molecule, atom by atom. (estimated date, 2020s)

An exciting application of nanotechnology is in the administration of medication into the body to fight diseases. Nanoparticles, controlled wirelessly from outside the body, can navigate drugs inside the body and release them in specific locations where treatment is required. Once they reach the targeted areas, they will destroy pathogens, correct DNA errors, eliminate toxins, and perform many other tasks to eliminate disease and rectify damage. Man’s average lifespan, consequently, will increase dramatically to several centuries.

And now they are on the verge of being able to carry out cloning processes that can replace damaged and aging cells and organs. Got a damaged heart? No probs, just get it replaced with a brand new clone of it. Somebody lost a limb in an accident? Nothing to panic. He or she can have their hand or leg back as good as, or even better than the old one.

How long before this clone replacement becomes common practice in hospitals? The report is that they are ‘on the verge’. According to Kurzweil, ‘by the mid to late 2020s, the effects of the nanotech revolution will be wide spread and obvious’.

The most earth-changing application of the nanotechnology, expected around 2030, will be the merger of human mind and machine intelligence, which will ‘greatly boost our pattern-recognition abilities, memories, and overall thinking capacity, as well as to directly interface with powerful forms of computer intelligence. The technology will also provide wireless communication from one brain to another’.

Wireless communication from one brain to another? That’s telepathy! The age of being able to communicate with other human beings just by thinking is almost upon us! We are talking about events that will break upon the world in our lifetime – in the next 15 to 20 years!

Of all the technological revolutions that will mark the Singularity, it is Artificial Intelligence – robotics – that will rise to be the most life-impacting and world-changing event in modern man’s history.

By the end of this century, computer intelligence will be ‘trillions of trillions’ of times more powerful than biological brain capability. Robots will share knowledge and communicate with one another far more efficiently than can humans. Distinction between human and machine will become blurred, as more and more human functions are taken controlled by AI that will display human characteristics.

Entertainment and travel will enter a new dimension – all within the home itself. During the 2020s, our bodies will be able to experience ‘full-immersion virtual-reality environments’ – that is experience a simulated place or activity with all our senses. And, by the 2040s, it will not be a virtual experience; we will be able to do it in full reality. AI and nanotechnology can create any product, any situation, any environment that we can imagine at will!

What are the unknown implications of the awesome advancement in AI for governments and individuals? Already there are organizations that are working to prevent intelligent technology from overriding human control. One of them is the Foresight Institute, for technologists who agree to relinquish the development of machines that can self-replicate without the aid of humans and which can override outside influence.

‘As the Singularity approaches, we will have to reconsider our ideas about the nature of human life and redesign our human institutions. Intelligence on and around Earth will continue to expand exponentially until we reach the limits of matter and energy to support intelligent computation. As we approach this limit in our corner of the galaxy, the intelligence of our civilization will expand outward into the rest of the universe, quickly reaching the fastest speed possible. We understand that speed to be the speed of light, but there are suggestions that we may be able to circumvent this apparent limit (conceivably by taking shortcuts through ‘wormholes’, or hypothetical shortcuts through space and time.)’   Ray Kurzweil 

Says scientist Damien Broderick:

‘We will live forever; or we will all perish most horribly; our minds will emigrate to cyberspace, and start the most ferocious overpopulation race ever seen on the planet; or our machines will transcend and take us with them, or leave us in some peaceful backwater where the meek shall inherit the Earth. Or something else, something far weirder and…unimaginable.’

Leaders in government must change their whole attitude about the future of their country. Unless they are constantly at the edge of awareness of what’s happening in technology, they will be like the leaders in many countries who were caught unprepared when the computer and telecommunications technology began to sweep through their countries.

For example, one such government kept on expanding their wired telephone services for the public until the cell phone revolution swept away all their landline policies to oblivion. In another sector, they worked to improve their programs on national telecast channels until, with the coming of satellite transmission, nobody in their right visual senses wanted to watch them anymore and preferred more interesting private channels. Then, belatedly, they began to adopt to the new paradigms in public service, but not before the public was lured away to the services overtaken by enterprising private business.

Typewriter manufacturers kept making ever more innovative typewriters. Makers of fountain pens, camera film rolls, mastercrafted Swiss chronometers, and other innumerable such presently almost obsolescent stuff kept on adding innovative feature upon feature to their products. Until the global explosion of a totally new invention in their industry suddenly smattered to smithereens all they had worked and lived for until then. Where’s Remington, whose typewriters were once the preferred choice in government and corporate offices, today? Where’s the once-ubiquitous Kodak today?

‘During most of the 20th century Kodak held a dominant position in photographic film, and in 1976 had a 90 percent market share of photographic film sales in the United States. The company’s ubiquity was such that its tagline ‘Kodak moment’ entered the common lexicon to describe a personal event that demanded to be recorded for posterity. Kodak began to struggle financially in the late 1990s as a result of the decline in sales of photographic film and its slowness in transitioning to digital photography, despite having invented the core technology used in current digital cameras. In January 2012, Kodak filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In February 2012, Kodak announced that it would cease making digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames. In August 2012, Kodak announced the intention to sell its photographic film, commercial scanners and kiosk operations as a measure to emerge from bankruptcy. Kodak sold many of its patents to a group of companies, including Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, Adobe Systems and HTC.’   Wikipedia. Emphasis mine.

Sad. It’s not that they were unaware of what was coming. They were aware of the all emerging technologies that could obsolete their products, but never imagined that it would come so fast, that it would sweep away their world so suddenly and so thoroughly.

The most earth-changing application of the nanotechnology, expected around 2030, will be the merger of human mind and machine intelligence.

Not many governments are readying themselves sufficiently for the sooncoming paradigms in governance. But you, as a professional or a decisionmaker, can do many things to be fully prepared at the individual level.

The one global progress you should watch more alertly than any other development is Artificial Intelligence. This is the one technology that will soon radically change your personal life, your family life, your professional life, and everything else in your life.

Let me end this message with a true anecdote, one which I was a personal witness to.

Bjorn Borg was the greatest tennis player the world had seen in his time. Players then used only wooden rackets. There was no television in my land in those days for me to enjoy his matches, but I read in the newspapers with interest all I could about his matches. Then, in the prime of his glory, Borg decided to quit.

In the years following his retirement, the tennis equipment industry underwent a transformation. For the first 100 years of the modern game, rackets were of wood and of standard size, and strings were of animal gut. Then came rackets made of composites of carbon graphite, with synthetic strings that match the feel of gut yet with added durability. These modern materials enabled the production of rackets that yielded more power and dexterity. When Borg decided to reemerge as a professional player some years later, he came on court…with an wooden racket! All of Borg’s greater dexterity with the traditional racket was no match for the sheer power of the graphite rackets that all the other players used. Of course, Borg was speedily forced back into retirement after a few inglorious match.

I hope those mental factors that caused Borg to overlook the revolution transpiring in the tennis world will not cloud your alertness and that you will keep yourself in constant anticipation of awesome developments in Artificial Intelligence – developments that will change the fundamental way that every profession, every industry, and every government functions today. And I hope that you will do all in your power to influence decisionmakers in your nation’s government to ready your country for the greatest transformation in human history.

Pappa Joseph

¹ ’Reinventing humanity: the future of human-machine intelligence’ – kurzweilai.net