Year in Review

2023 was one to be remembered... is that a good thing?

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The year 2023 was one to be remembered, though perhaps one can say that about nearly every one of them. After 2020, it seemed that the profundity of events of that deplorable year might not be matched for decades or centuries to come. A society that is in many ways entranced with the alacrity of its supposed development somehow came to a complete stop as the result of the spread of a microscopic organism. During that time, people squabbled over long-understood preventative measures, such as vaccinations and masking. People proffered arguments virtually identical to those made over a century before during the 1918 Influenza outbreak, as if they were new. They shared memes of utter absurdity. Governments resisted taking measures that past pandemics clearly indicated reduce the levels of infection and the number of deaths. Overall, the first year of this decade was an eminently avoidable disaster, driven by fear and stupidity.

The picture sums it up. Credit: escape.com.au

Thankfully 2020 is long past and the idiocy has been shed, right? Well, in 2023 there was good, bad, and ugly. In an effort to ring in the New Year with an optimistic tone, let’s dust off the bad and end with the good.

The Ugly

In the United States, 2023 saw jaw-dropping headlines that exposed its highest court of the land as little more than a pay-for-play cesspool. ProPublica revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas could simply not live off a salary that hovers just under $300,000 per year. Intent on living higher on the hog, he decided to leverage his judicial vote by selling it to the nearest bidder. Decades ago, Chief Justice William Rehnquist learned of this “delicate matter” of Thomas’s greed, but apparently did little about it. Thomas, unimpeded by the feckless former Chief Justice, cozied up to anyone sufficiently wealthy and morally corrupt to engage in what looks an awful lot like bribery. Harlan Crow, apparently, has just the depraved character and funds Thomas needed—and Thomas has just the position Crow wanted—for the two to become fast “friends.” Crow showered Thomas with lavish gifts, paying his bills, and supporting his family, all while Thomas failed to report almost any of it. (Thomas claims he didn’t understand that he needed to). Meanwhile, Thomas also apparently didn’t realize he should not handle cases in which Crow had an interest, so he elected to do so in every instance.

Thomas’s vocabulary does not contain the word recuse. In addition to dutifully ruling on cases of interest to his benefactor, Thomas attempted to use the court to shield the release of damaging documents that indicated his wife is a seditious conspirator. Ginni Thomas took an active role in the plot to overthrow the United States government, and Justice Thomas (a title employing no small hint of irony) used his role as a member of the Supreme Court to try and maintain the coverup. Congress called Seditious Ginni to testify about her role in the attempt to overthrow the government when it learned of the existence of emails between her and indicted coup conspirator John Eastman. Curiously, she prefaced her testimony to Congress with, “I am concerned that there may be more than a few questions about my husband's [Justice Thomas’s] work, which I do not believe is within the scope of this committee's jurisdiction.” One of the first things she felt compelled to do during her testimony was to hide the ostensibly supportive activities of her Supreme Court Justice husband. While the Thomas’s corruption and perhaps participation in attempting to usurp their own government is a most indictable offense, he’s not the only vile creature on the court.

Justice Samuel Alito, among the several justices beholden to the filth-ridden Federalist Society, is quite likely on the take himself. ProPublica exposed this dirt bag’s purchase price:

The Supreme Court justice was on vacation at a luxury fishing lodge that charged more than $1,000 a day, and after catching a king salmon nearly the size of his leg, Alito posed for a picture. To his left, a man stood beaming: Paul Singer, a hedge fund billionaire who has repeatedly asked the Supreme Court to rule in his favor in high-stakes business disputes.

Singer was more than a fellow angler. He flew Alito to Alaska on a private jet. If the justice chartered the plane himself, the cost could have exceeded $100,000 one way.

In the years that followed, Singer’s hedge fund came before the court at least 10 times in cases where his role was often covered by the legal press and mainstream media. In 2014, the court agreed to resolve a key issue in a decade-long battle between Singer’s hedge fund and the nation of Argentina. Alito did not recuse himself from the case and voted with the 7-1 majority in Singer’s favor. The hedge fund was ultimately paid $2.4 billion.

Alito did not report the 2008 fishing trip on his annual financial disclosures. By failing to disclose the private jet flight Singer provided, Alito appears to have violated a federal law that requires justices to disclose most gifts, according to ethics law experts.

Experts said they could not identify an instance of a justice ruling on a case after receiving an expensive gift paid for by one of the parties.

Alito whined about ProPublica’s coverage in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial board also jumped to his defense writing, “The political assault on the Supreme Court continues, and the latest Justice in the grinder is Samuel Alito. As usual, this is a non-scandal built on partisan spin intended to harm the Justice and the current Court majority.” Both penned their tear-ridden notes without actually addressing the story’s substance or responding to inquiries from ProPublica to convey Alito’s side of the story. Telling, indeed. Alito also evidently shares his decisions on hot-button cases with political allies before they are published. Perhaps to ensure they suit his handlers’ desires?

Neil Gorsuch also seems happy to make suspicious transactions with entities with cases before him. After trying to sell a piece of land for over two years, Gorsuch and other owners of the land suddenly received an offer of $1.825 million… nine days after Gorsuch became a Supreme Court Justice. What luck. Gorsuch recorded his profit from the sale, but did not disclose the buyer, who happened to be the chief executive of Greenberg Traurig—a firm with a lot of business before the Court.

There is a very long history of corruption on the Supreme Court. Today, however, the majority utterly stinks of it. There is the litany of conduct for which any other judge would face bribery charges. There are the ideological perversions of law dressed in just enough legalese to pass muster with an apathetic American public. There is the systemic unfairness that trickles down the tiers, leading to a system of injustice for any litigant of the wrong economic or demographic class. The current Chief Justice, John Roberts, chickened out of testifying before Congress about the current objectively poor state of the Court. Justice in the United States may be blind, but Lady Justice certainly can feel the coins dropped in her pocket. 2023 may have spelled the end of legitimacy for America’s highest court, and by extension its entire paradigm of due process.

The Bad

The imminent collapse of the once-vaunted US Supreme Court represents an ugly development not just for American citizen-litigants who will suffer its nefarious intent and trickle-down effect. States may eventually opt to disregard the Supremely Corrupt court’s rulings altogether, leading to no end of discord. But it is worse than that as lower courts, too, grow increasingly infected with ideological corruption. So much so that to win a case in the federal system may depend more on the selected forum than on the merits of the case (here’s a wink to you, Aileen Cannon and the whole 5th circuit). This portends a bad omen for most regular citizens. The puppeteers of these courts couldn’t care less about rights, fairness, or justice—eventually there will no longer even be the illusion of any of these things. But it also depletes one of the principles that made the country successful—the notion of a free landscape laden with opportunity protected by due process and equal rights. Although that conceptualization requires overlooking an abundance of historical unfairness and discrimination in a number of areas, it nevertheless resulted in a great deal of innovation and wealth-building by citizen and immigrant alike. If the current turpitude continues unhindered, say goodbye to foreign investment, innovation, and development. Whether they think so or not, Americans cannot carry the mantle of progress alone. When courts and the justice system are unpredictable, or undeniably corrupt, people will take their business elsewhere.

Pernicious courts and a shockingly incompetent legislature has led to an oligarchic reordering of society where arrogant imbeciles—who also happen to be billionaires—are capitalizing on this corruption and apathy to co-opt innovation and promulgate destructive behavior. Artificial Intelligence and Data Privacy remain woefully unregulated in the United States. The theft and abuse this indifference has allowed permeates the rest of the globe like flatulence silently dropped in an elevator. Some jurisdictions, like the EU, have enshrined their own regulatory regimes and seem intent on outpacing the United States, desperate to leave behind the useless executive kleptocrats of Silicon Valley. But so far, no jurisdiction has done a particularly good job at this. Meanwhile, the theft of our own integrity lies at stake.

The Good

It is easy to focus upon the bad—often it is more compelling to write, to read, and to discuss these things. Putting our eyes only there, however, might lead us to despair or discontent. Despite the prolific amount of bad news crammed into our heads through legacy media that financially thrives upon it, and ne’er-do-wells on social media, some really fascinating things happened in 2023. To leave you all with a sense of optimism and hope, I will lay out several of which I became aware. Feel free to leave more in the comments or in emails to me.

On a broader scale

A long time back, when I had just a few subscribers, I wrote about the efforts people were undertaking to preserve the exquisite snow leopard. In Nepal, two groups—the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) and Shey Phoksundo National Park (SPNP)—endeavored to see the return of the elusive animal to its home territory, and their strenuous work has led to extraordinary results. With support of the World Wildlife Fund Nepal (WWF) they have managed the following:

• The Nepal government prioritizes research to better understand the species for informed conservation.

• Preservation organizations have engaged with the community to reduce human-livestock-leopard interactions thereby reducing violence among them.

• This has led to better outcomes for all, including increasing numbers of the great cat.

The snow leopard faces a number of challenges—climate change, poaching, and human encroachment, among others. People as compassionate and stalwart as these are seeing to it that the most mysterious, and perhaps divine, creature of the mighty Himalayas will thrive as long as possible and with as limited human impact as possible. Read all about the present state of affairs here. Or click below to check out my original article.

On a Narrower Scale

I recently attended the graduation of students from the program I now oversee—ethical hacking, cybersecurity, and digital forensics—at Softwarica College in Nepal. Watching (some) students I taught in one capacity or another walk upon the stage and proudly receive their diplomas from me was, honestly, one of the cooler feelings I have ever felt. It was truly awesome to be a part of it. Congratulations to all the world’s next tech leaders! I am looking forward to the next group! You can watch any or all of the ceremony here.

At last

Here I just want to give a shout-out to some dear friends of mine who performed remarkable feats or overcame considerable obstacles this year. They should inspire you. Some of them are my subscribers. Of those, I hope you will share for your own well-deserved accolades; others are not, but are worthy of mention whether they ever know.

My friend Jeremy

Jeremy is a police officer in Hawaii who oversaw a significant part of the response to the tragic Maui fires. Commanding such a massive disaster requires intelligence, quick thinking and, most importantly, stamina. I know what he went through trying to manage that situation, one of epic, tragic proportions. My career put me in command of complex incidents, but never one of this capacity. There is a lot of debate about policing in the USA, some of it warranted, but let us not forget what these first responders do for us. Jeremy took on a role no one would ever ask for and did so with bravery, heroism, and tireless effort.

My friend Deepak

Deepak runs Volunteer Corps Nepal, and is at the forefront of disaster response in Nepal. This year, there were floods, fires, and earthquakes. Deepak and his organization always jumped in the middle of it, providing the necessary resources to help people find shelter, medical help, and other needs as soon as possible. Regardless of the event, Deepak put himself in the middle of the danger zone to ensure the safety of others, with little concern for himself every time.

My friend Craig

Craig is part of a small outfit keeping the Tibetan cultural and linguistic traditions alive. One of the leaders of the Dharma Farm, Craig and his organization endured a tragic loss this year when one of its founders, Bill Magee, passed away. In spite of that crushing loss, they persevere in teaching complex works like the Presentation of Tenets by Jay-dzün Chö-gyi-gyel-tsen, or ‘simpler’ topics like Pur-bu-jok, Introductory Path of Reasoning From Collected Topics on Valid Cognition. [Disclaimer, Craig taught me a lot about Tibetan language, and we even worked together on translating the dGa' ldan pho brang law codes of the 17th century Tibetan government]. If you want to challenge yourself or learn in detail about Tibetan culture and language, check out the Dharma Farm’s website.

Looking Ahead

There are a great many things about which to feel pessimistic—such is life. If we focus only upon them, though, we will become mired in negativity and unable to progress in the way we all deserve. Sometimes, we just have to fight. Other times, we must take a breath, relax, and enjoy the moment. Each year consists of whatever we make of it. Even in the face of trials and travails, our approach depends very much on our mindset, whether we can see the opportunity where it lies and disregard the oppressive noise that sometimes seems overwhelming.

For me, 2023 represented a banner year, one in which I took an incredible risk reaching toward a remarkable goal. The year brought plenty of obstacles, but it was well worth it. I implore you too, dear readers, to go out and seize whatever it is that moves you. Your happiness by itself makes the world an intrinsically better place. Here’s to you in 2024!

The Himalayan Mountains from Pokhara International Airport Nepal (photo by me).

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I am a Certified Forensic Computer Examiner, Certified Crime Analyst, Certified Fraud Examiner, and Certified Financial Crimes Investigator with a Juris Doctor and a Master’s degree in history. I spent 10 years working in the New York State Division of Criminal Justice as Senior Analyst and Investigator. Today, I teach Cybersecurity, Ethical Hacking, and Digital Forensics at Softwarica College of IT and E-Commerce in Nepal. In addition, I offer training on Financial Crime Prevention and Investigation. I am also Vice President of Digi Technology in Nepal, for which I have also created its sister company in the USA, Digi Technology America, LLC. We provide technology solutions for businesses or individuals, including cybersecurity, all across the globe. I was a firefighter before I joined law enforcement and now I currently run a non-profit that uses mobile applications and other technologies to create Early Alert Systems for natural disasters for people living in remote or poor areas.

Find more about me on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Mastodon. Or visit my EALS Global Foundation’s webpage page here.