Friday, November 13, 2009

Shuffle off to Cefalu  I have here a picture of Navy RA5C flying over an antique town circa 1975 or 1976. I have paired it with a picture of the same area, approximateing the same angle, in current (Internet era) times pulled from Google Earth. Google Earth easily one of my favorite www programs. Google please don't sue me for using this picture. RA5C over Cefalu Sicily Cefalu in Google  Call it recreation of an aerial photo. What else is someone who briefly trained as a photo interpreter in the Navy but never had an opportunity to use it afterwards going to do. I had this idea for a while but was stymied by not knowing what town was in this picture. The picture was from before my time in the Navy. One of RVAH-7's earlier deployments. On the USS Forestall to the Mediterranean in the mid 1970's. I recalled a another version of the picture that had a frisket on it. A frisket in our parlance was a small acetate overlay template on which we would use a Leroy lettering set to mark certain data: the date, location, altitude, focal length of camera used etc. Eventually I was able to remember the frisket indicated this picture was taken over Cefalu Italy. Which proves to be a town on the north coast of Sicily Cefalu Sicily - Google Maps.  RVAH-7's USS Ranger cruise to the western Pacific, the one I participated in, didn't give up any post-card ready snaps like this. I can't think of any overwhelming reasons why not. Why a decent shot of the Intermuros or Baguio or Alaminos City with an RA5C in the foreground couldn't have been obtained? The latter two both lovely towns with colonial era architecture. A coworker of mine in McKeldin library, Nina, owns part of a sea salt bed with her husband's family in Alaminos city.  There were a number of ordinary reasons why that last deployment didn't net a lot of trade and gift shots (we had a word for that which I can't remember right know). RVAH-7's embarkation on the USS Ranger was the last deployment of the RA5C's. The squadron, planes and program all decommissioned as soon as we returned to NAS Key West. We emptied our filing and storage cabinets into the dumpster behind the fleet hanger only dividing the nicer prints it seemed a shame to throw out among ourselves. The Navy was not spending money on the system and in truth our three planes were not flying much that last year. The squadron was off the ship through much of the mid summer so there may be be pictures of the Philippines I never saw. Since that was the interval of the port call to Hong Kong, which I stayed with ship's company for, there were no pictures of RA5C's against Victoria Peak produced. Pity. The phrase ADIZ line floats through my upper consciousness now in any regard.  What; though, of the port call to Phattya beach? Surely one of RVAH-7's planes must have struggled off the flight deck at some point in the fortnight we were in those waters and done a low level fly-by of the beach. I would rather think that it is simply that I don't have those pictures, rather than that they don't exist.  When I look at the pictures I do have. One thing jumps out. The pictures are either from earlier deployments, before I was in the squadron, or they are from the work-ups to this deployment, and are of southern Florida, or the southern California op-area. Once the cruise began, almost nothing from the RA5C Vigilante's assortment of large format sophisticated precision aerial photo cameras. What there is, is from the Navy's other photo reconnaissance system (see illustration at bottom here from one Marco Antonetto's web site Topcon Info ) and gives the appearance of mostly being taken by the RAN of an F-4 while flying upside down at 600 mph. This is because well, they probably were. I'll have to scan some of those sometime. Oh mighty, and largely indestructible, Topcon; the last laugh here seems to be yours. 11:48:10 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Saturday, November 7, 2009

Fort Hood   Normally I don't pick up on a topic I think is being adequately covered in the media, being dealt with by professionals who are getting paid and able to spend all day sorting the details. I get paid to copy catalog. The library gets the attentive hours of my day, the landlord gets the money.  When I feel an issue is being under-covered, a dimension is being missed. When an unhelpful reticence or over-focus has crept into an issue. I try to write something. With the tragic mass shootings at Fort Hood by Army Major Nidal Hasan Army Doctor Held as Fort Hood Rampage Kills 12 - NYTimes.com, it is critical to try to separate what it was from what it wasn't. It is an issue with deep implications for those of Middle Eastern heritage serving in the U S armed services, and potentially many others as well. It is not the first time issues like this have come to the fore either. In virtually all conflicts, situations involving national religious or ethnic loyalties are involved.   Beyond these issues there are considerations for the manpower levels and of the deployment schedule pressures the armed services are trying to maintain.  It was in many ways a classic Lone Gunman shooting. Similar to many other lone gun man style mass shootings. To the Virginia Tech Shootings. To the New York state shootings; where Jiverly Voong a 42 year old Vietnamese immigrant shot 13 people to death in an Binghamton NY immigration Center in April of this year, attracting relatively little attention at the time In Binghamton, Failure and Paranoia Preceded a Massacre - NYTimes.com. It shares traits with a multiple shooting in Iraq during an in-country stress counseling session, last year or the year before  Nidal Malik Hasan case: Are Army psychiatrists overwhelmed? | csmonitor.com. It is similar to Columbine before that. The small arms massacre form seems to be a particular violence pathology.  It is notable that issues of ethnicity, minority identity and existence run through many of these incidents.  It almost certainly involve pathology and psychosis, Mental illness.  Even if that seems too easy a dismissal of what was involved. It is similar enough that so we can see missed signs. Recognize the disinclination to intercede, question or judge the slipping and confrontational behavior of another Fort Hood Gunman Gave Signals Before His Rampage - NYTimes.com.  We can see this was premeditated. Acting out un-contained murderous rage on long-standing perceived and nurtured grievances. Born from a brooding personality Fort Hood shooting suspect: a man of contradictions | csmonitor.com. His personal doubts; whether his sense of who he was, his persona was strong enough to withstand the pressures and contradictions inherent in being a Muslim soldier in the U S Army. In potential overseas deployment; being an American soldier in a Muslim country. He seemed to believe that alone might destroy him. He may have been aware of mental illness existing in himself by this point. It had nothing to do with any warrior ethos, he became no soldier of Allah. Unless you admit war is essentially organized violence against the helpless. It was an act of deliberate cowardliness striking at the unarmed in a zone of safety.  If the question arises is Hasan a traitor? The answer is certainly Yes. He was A U S soldier and had sworn an oath and took a uniform. He was in that uniform at the time he killed his comrades. A doctor as well and sworn to a transcendent Hippocratic oath to do no harm. His options were to sue for release from his commission and pay whatver financial penalty was required for his medical training, refuse to serve overseas and accept courts martial, or to go even to simply go AWOL and accept whatever punishments might result from that. What it wasn't was some case of immediate "snapping". Rapid onset mental illness dissipating responsibility. It was not likely Post or pre Traumatic Stress Disorder. Since he had only anecdotal if clinical information of the conduct of the wars in the middle east, not direct experience. As one soldier noted dryly PTSD does not generally lead one to become more organized and carry out complex tasks.  It also does not seem to be actual terrorism. Evil Islamic terrorism or otherwise. No reason to go there unless you want already to go there. Unless you want to brand Islam as only a theology of violence and evil. Unless you desire to transition Arabs and Muslims to a second class citizenship throughout the west  Lieberman Suggests Army Shooter Was 'Home-Grown Terrorist'. Terrorism is by definition a political act. To affect the thoughts and emotions of a populace through fear and achieve some deliberate end. In this it is often crippled by the fact that it is applied against an /other, who the instigators of terror often do no understand well. Ironically making it an essentially pointless act in the end. Maj. Hasan's murders were nearly (but not purely) reactive;  a desperate and irrational act to destroy or alleviate suffering. Violence performed as anodyne. Nidal Hasan seems to have attempted to reposition his fears as a counter-crusade. A selfless act of self destruction such as the Japanese Kamikaze pilots. Engaging in a removed radicalization to create a rationalization of heroism in his own mind.  Showing only the ugliness of his convictions  Hasan on Islam - washingtonpost.com The strains his pathology had taken went beyond beyond anything obtainable through direct reason.   Hasim's other rationalization; injunctions against Muslim taking arms against other Muslims is red herring. Agit Prop by those in extremist communities seeking to distance radicalize. Requiring them to overlook widespread wars and internecine violence of the last twenty years as Islamic society struggles primarily with itself.  As some seek power and seperation, others to find points of reconciliation with the larger world, West or East. The Hasan murders are also not a marker of reasonable due diligence by the Army or US intelligence agencies. Paralleling the disinclination by his acquaintances and coworkers to deal directly with potential signs of mental instability, is the disinclination of the military authorities to confront the signs that a soldier was turning openly against his mission, becoming increasingly radicalized not merely losing his ability to carry out his duty, but becoming a active threat to his comrades Blame game erupts over probe of Fort Hood suspect - Yahoo! News.  For the US to try to maintain the same level of military involvement in conflicts in the Middle East in the coming decade as we committed ourselves to in the previous decade, without a substantial reduction in the level of violence is a peril that runs as a dark undercurrent throughout this sad story. 4:47:34 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Monday, November 2, 2009

Acts of Commission   The FCC has been generating a fair amount of press lately.  Much of what the FCC involves itself with, the internet and radio, surround me and touch me daily. But this is technical and legal public policy. It's not clear how well these issues can be followed by laymen. This is something that I am reminded of often by my sister Ann who is a lawyer in the FCC General Councils office. So I'll follow it the way I follow all other things the media and newspapers tell me about that I do not think I will experience directly until they have already changed the world I live in.  What is the FCC up to with Julius Genachowski as  the new chairman? A rhetorical question,  I lay out tea leaves regardless. There is the legacy of previous administration's schizophrenic approach to libertarianism and enforcing the social conservative's nanny state. Mergers and nothing that offends the sensibilities of the new right was the way forward then. Guarding sensitivities; however, is a pantheistic religion, There will be no turning that ship around anytime soon. As well arguments against market and media consolidation will have to be built again entirely anew,  as they were utterly vanquished by Powell and Martin.  Numerous as these issues are there are some broad outlines to the FCC's intent. The first of these is to shore up a barely-there commitment to the public on net neutrality Hurdles remain as FCC ponders Internet data rules. This is a question of constituency - the FCCs attention caught more by Google on one hand and ATT or Verizon on the other, than with consumer advocacy groups like  Free Press | Media reform through education, organizing and advocacy or even an academic concern like the Center for Democracy and Technology.  The FCC now has a new rule set to guide them and even if it seems somewhat of an under-reach (GOP to FCC: analysis first, then net neutrality rules - maybe - Ars Technica) for Net Neutrality as a public rights issue,  Chairman Genachowski at least got a unanimous vote from the whole commission on it  Post Tech - FCC moves forward on net neutrality rule-making in unanimous vote. There are six rules as Ars Technica lays it out  FCC proposes network neutrality rules (and big exemptions) - Ars Technica The FCC is already committed, for a few years now to a group of rules for the internet. Ones that in theory they have been committed to for the entire telephony era. With the world wide web the public has the ability to view any matter and use any software application to set up or view matter as long as it crosses with no existing law. Add to that, software, consumer communication and computing devices and the expectation that there will be competition to supply these things in an open and fully disclosed manner to the consumer. Things do what they say they do and do nothing they don't say they do. That last point is where the caveats begin. The FCC's rule set ends by including the potential right to control all things unlawful or unreasonable to a telecomm company. The exceptions seemed designed to include all content that cannot prove itself to be rightfully in motion, and as adjunct to that, the Telecomm companies reserve the right to perform examinations of all content so that they may know this.  There is among the large  corporations AT&T and astroturf: is "following the money" enough? - Ars Technica and national security organizations that run the the information superhighway, a certain fear of an unexamined net life.  In the current tangle of platforms and suppliers the FCC ought to be careful to ensure that the same rules apply to any business offering similar services. If Google is going to quack like a duck, then it is a duck regardless Is AT&T targeting Google Voice to stop "traffic pumping"? - Ars Technica. Any organization that sets itself up to carry traffic (obtains a public charter to do so) should/ought/must carry all traffic that presents itself Common carrier - Wikipedia. Unless there will be 6 to a dozen lines in and out of every household with ability to switch between them at will moment to moment carriers ought to be neutral as to content over the line as were telephones. The Cape May ferry doesn't ask  why you want to be in New Jersey or what you might be doing in Delaware, though they may charge against  car truck or pedestrian.  The other and perhaps greater concern of the FCC is Broadband Rollout. Its been no secret that this has been slow that the US was late moving off dial-up, and much US broadband is only medium internet.  What is true broad band? DSL, cable, fiber-optic etc. what mip, what level of ubiquity?. Where does it lie?  In the first, middle, or last mile.  To answer these question the FCC commission a report from Harvard's Berkman Center:    Berkman Center broadband study for FCC available for public comment.  It specifically tries to identify what incentives and policy structures will move us forward. One critical consideration lurking in the background is that mobile and 3g and 4g networks by their very nature pull more bandwidth that the relative passivity of the stationary http protocol. Supporting these will consume very large amounts of radio spectrum. The Berkman report starts with some comparisons with other countries. In terms of raw speed, availability to the public, and pricing of true broadband a dozen or more nations rank ahead of the US. The prime considerations that can be identified for this  are the decisions of most other nations to keep open access regulations in place, and to make a genuine and rigorous attempts to find the correct level and place for public infrastructure investment.  As the report tries to emphasis this is not just entertainment time, diversion. This is the US's the ability to possess information in a timely and effective fashion. This is the way of commerce, invitation to the club of the future.  If we fail this benchmark test we move toward the center of of this century as second tier nation. 11:42:26 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Federal Truncheon Commision  The FTC have had a bit of a rule overreach with their recent guide for endorsements and testimonials  FTC Publishes Final Guides Governing Endorsements, Testimonials .  This is the blog specific rule set released earlier this month. It is a rather detailed document too running eighty plus pages! The main and obvious weakness is that these rules don't apply to existing print and broadcast media: Magazines, Newspapers TV Ad group: FTC blog rules unfairly muzzle online media - Ars Technica. There would be no business to be in if they did. Perhaps the FTC figures bloggers more publicly collegial, more peer normed than the media. And more trusted therefore. I don't suppose it ever fooled anyone when Woofer Review monthly would glowing review a speaker or turntable opposite a full page ad from the same. The FTC seems inclined to place web-loggers in a category not unlike celebrity endorsements. And of course if Mikey likes it that's good enough for me. The denizens of the world wide web are aghast. The Wild Westerners especially: this is that particular breed inclined to think of the internet as some wide open libertarian rule-less frontier.  The Wild West is nearly a synonym for the very desire to behave badly - to extend your boundary over someone else on the myth that it is a boundless plain. Spam Kings and Trolls.  The great concern is that ordinary people may be representing to other ordinary people not out of dispassionate estimate alone.  I never tell people about anything I don't believe is isn't worth their consideration not simply mine Communicating with other people is something fraught with peril and pitfalls to be sure. Lets look at how this works, I'm sure I can invent a small example to illustrate this  I have in the past praised the noisy and fuzzy but clever and inventive San Francisco band the Sic Alps. I was quite pleased when their most recent single "L. Mansion" turned up on Slumberland records. This is a good and harmonious thing I thought - and I've now written it here. Yet within in me doubts rose and I went to the bookcase where I keep various 7" records and discovered I have a copy of Slumberland no.1 "What Kind of heaven do you want?" I didn't buy that record either - It was given to me; by someone named Mike or Dan or Archie, or maybe Pam. The exact details escape me. Suddenly in a cold sweat I realized the true origins of my mention, my endorsement of the Sic Alps. Naked consideration for a Velocity Girl/Black Tambourine/PowderBurns 7" compilation ep given to me twenty years ago. After I spent an afternoon helping Dan and Mike cut-out images photocopied from a Winsor Mackay book.    The real story here is modern Marketing outreach rather Marketing co-option. There  is a very large body of literature on how the Internet and Social Media tools can help you sell your product ( Internet Marketing ). The idea here is that if you can identify the opinion leaders the high traffic sites and turn them, no more efficient marketing strategy could be imagined. Frankly with some inherent skepticism I think if the FTC gets the idea that what is going on here is more in the nature of Astroturfing and gorilla marketing by established corporate bodies, with lobbyists on retainer, and that web loggers are merely docile bodies in their hands, lacking agency. They may then decide then, that it all just the free market at play, and no great concern after all. Well, we'll always have caveat emptor.      11:36:27 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Friday, October 16, 2009

Culture Clarifications   After closing the last post and not intending to revisit it immediately. I find myself heading in that direction anyway. In a fairly parallel scenario to iTunes' and other similar sound bite samples of songs constituting a performance, a Federal Court has ruled that ring tone versions of songs do not represent a separate billable concert performance of a song for songwriter royalty purposes Judge: Cellphone Ringtones Are Not Concerts | Threat Level | Wired.com.  I'm sure some might say there is a certain marked spirit evinced in even asking additional payment for such ephemera. More of it is dullness and lack of imagination.  These 30 second battles though are merely skirmishes in a larger and more centrally contested battle. One between the Record Labels, their traditional products and marketing, their shrinking profits and shrinking seat at the table and the new entities and technologies in the popular-music consumption game. Internet Music concerns pay both performer and song-writing royalties, whereas traditional radio pays only song-writing royalties. This can amount to a lot of money. A century of wrangling had worked out that a certain benefit or value was supposed to flow to the performer of recorded music by its being aired over the radio and being heard being known. In the new millennium all bets were off and The performance rights act is being snaked through congress to deal with it  Radio "pay to play" law ready for vote in House, Senate - Ars Technica. The NAB is not amused.  Largely, it doesn't currently concern what I care about. The various tribes of indie music are not where the money is. Smaller internet radio and non-profit radio have different less onerous fee structures. This essentially seems to be a battle of big business with the emphasis on big. I can watch this one from the sidelines  At the same time it seems a good point to further emphasis the point I made in the last post. Mass reproduced pop music, dependent on mechanical mass consumption, is more related to other like mass pop cultures, and less to music culture even for being music. It is not like going to see a live performance of a string quartet, a Mariachi band, or even a busker on a city sidewalk. Pop music culture is not Music culture. Not strictly even a subset of it. Pop music is also a partial thing as created, even in the hands of your favorite band (fill in name of your favorite band / artistes here {_______} ) It does not become whole, let along develop its final value until an audience reaction is achieved until a general opinion or affinity is rendered and registered. Until the people decide what it signifies, as its multiplicity of performances grinds through its moment.  I put together a reading list on pop music culture a few months,  books I knew were in the library where I work, with the intent of reading a few things that might place this in a more rigorous context. I might dig that out.  On preview I feel strongly that the complex interplay of popular music culture, the publics role in the distributed nature of its valuation speak against simplistic notions of property rights the record labels hold. Craft intellectual property entities like pop music have copyrights as a reward and living convenience to the creator and were not intended to become another category of permanent and generalized property.   It impoverishes a societies culture to treat it that way. 11:50:19 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Thursday, October 8, 2009

4 Regimes of Music  I need a post that doesn't require me to consume significantly large amounts of reading, even newspaper reading. Or think much. Hopefully this piece is it.  Every day within about a fifteen minute time frame I encounter four different regimes of everyday music. This is due to passing through a number of shops at the student union during lunch, and their having store PA systems tuned to a variety of radio stations. The effect is not simply like spinning the knob on a radio tuner; though, each of these localities is a micro-culture all immersed in a music that shapes those who work there.  At the Food Co-op it can be anything from growl core (pehaps not the technical term ) to Queen. The Food Co-op is the only stop where the workers program their own music. They never play much techno or folk there. It is a place where generally load fast, or at least inscrutable, rules. In fairness there is a sign by the cashier that states: "This music isn't playing for you"  The lower level of the campus bookstore (a Barnes and Noble in disguise) is the next stop.  Here I've heard Pink singing about Vietnam (Is that right, does Pink do a song about Vietnam? Are these my notes or did I pick up somebody else's again?).  I've also heard the Talking Heads cover of Al Green's "Take me to the River. " A song I first heard while buffing a water emulsion waxed floor in a BEQ at NAS Key West. A good song to buff floors to. Oddly, one level up in the same bookstore - where it transitions into a U. Maryland branded UnderArmour clothing store - they are often listening to something different, contemporaneous and unmemorable generally. Although once it was Karen O explaining that "...they; will never love you like I love you." I nearly bought a red and white hoody pullover before the song ended. A turn of the corner and a few feet down the main hallway to the Stamp union convenience store and its Reggaeton, or one of the varying forms of latin hip hop. When lunch over its back to my quarter cubicle at McKeldin, where the sound regime is whatever WFMU is playing: the Melvin's Live at their All Tomorrows Parties gig in the Catskills by dj Liz Berg as it happens. Everything is back to normal. The only other exposure to music culture I get is what tunes the television advertising industry has come across and thinks I might respond too. My favorites from this effort or at least ones I recognize: a techno version of the Church's "Under the Milky Way", I used to like that song. Similarly a techno version of BOC's "Burning for you".  The car companies like the techno covers. Cadillac is hawking their SRV with Phoenix's 1901.  Cat Stevens for the Google/T-Mobile Android phone. It's hard to miss boy is that commercial on the air a lot , but: "Be me...be you." What is he talking about? Makes Van Morrison seem sensible. Why haven't any of these microwave telephony companies gone with "Radar Love"?   Or maybe the Jam's "Girl on the Phone."  I read recently that we could be paying soon, directly or indirectly, for those 30 second sound samples. This is the  royalty rights group's latest gambit. Songwriters want to get paid for 30-second song previews - Ars Technica Those snippets of a song you listen to before making a purchase need to be paid for as they constitute a "performance". The sense of entitlement here is truly astounding. If this overheated position is indication the IP (intellectual property) people around the music industry are genuinely and completely clueless.  A piece of mass-(re)produced pop music alone is only a thing of partial value as created. A burnt offering to the times.  IP owners and managers impart little or no added value. Whatever part of a pop song's success is played by marketing capital at first, diminishes and disappears over time. Whose music is it really? Only when accepted by the public, becoming a marker of an age and outlook, part and representation of the culture it was born out of, does it have the associative power they desire. But never in guarded isolation, it has to get out to the people, out by word of mouth and organic process, dropped off between Clark and Hillsdale. Developing an independent life away from those who created or capitalized it. Pop music knicked by a thousand little cuts to produce a thousand little profit streams will die slowly, irrelevant and infinitely elastic. Its attempt to monopolize the category of music culture rejected. 11:40:10 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Afghanistan  The wars in the middle east, mainly Afghanistan have chipped their way back into the news. Public and policy maker alike divide their opinion between packing up and going home or developing the resoluteness of Ton-kin. Just a few more soldiers and we got this thing right  Military Chief Says More Troops Needed for Afghan War - NYTimes.com.  Afghanistan gets compared to the Iraqi situation. I can see that that suggests itself but Iraq was almost well defined by comparison. Three main ethnic groups Sunni's Shiites and Kurds. Shiites are a majority population subjugated, the Sunni's a minority population but long dominant; politically, educationally, and in bureaucracy. Kurds, since the first Gulf war have lived almost as a separate nation strong enough to stand against Sunnis or Shiite, but perhaps not both. We took power from the Baathists (mainly Sunni) and gave it to the Shiites, who were a submerged political force with major fault lines running through them. Among these considerable radicalism, after many years as an oppressed minority. Close ties to Iran and strong sect rivalry's, beyond that. Shiite groups fought us to achieve long standing goals, the Sunnis fought us to regain power. Islamist extremists fought us under the banner of al Qaeda Iraq, because we were there. They all fought each other.  Eventually we brought in more troops re-deployed to a population protection stance -- to keep them all separated. This we branded The Surge (tm). We paid every Sunni we could, to form local militias against the extremists, to stay in their neighborhoods, and stay out of trouble. To have a single government that could contract petroleum deals and be less that a total adjunct of the Iranian government in Tehran, was the new face of victory. Anyway we would always have Kurdistan.       The first thing you hear about Afghanistan is that the situation found there is more complex than Iraq. More tribes more divisions more poverty, more and more varied terrain. The harder road in more ways than one. The long southeastern border is an open unsecured frontier and the territories of Pakistan adjacent are an ungoverned sanctuary for the Taliban and other rebel forces. The chief commodity of Afghanistan essentially is heroin. It is a least a major cash crop. Narcotics profits and the criminality associated with the drug trade fund the fighting. The Afghan government in Kabul wants neither to alienate the farmers or give up the portion of poppy money that flows to them. US Forces share this ambivalence on the narcotics trade believing it is a distraction to tackle this issue now, not wishing to drive people to the arms of the Taliban, even as the Russians complain Afghan heroin flows primarily in their direction. The recent election rather than bolstering our handcrafted and preferred government seemed fraudulent enough to make Karzai's government, precariously seated as it was, disappear from legitimacy altogether.  At precisely this point a report written by the office of General McChrystal, the Officer responsible for Afghan operations is leaked; saying the war is in dire and unsure status McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure' - washingtonpost.com. Most interpret this as pressure to double down with a further surge similar to Iraq's Obama to Weigh Buildup Option in Afghan War - NYTimes.com. This seems to be the view of McChrystal, and his supporters in Washington (in the Pentagon, in the White House, elsewhere) General McChrystal Asks Obama for More Troops - NYTimes.com. Additionally only a relative silence or quiet acquiescence by other theater commanders such as Cent-Com Gen. David Petraeus. The meanings of the leak to Bob Woodward in raw political terms is beyond me, but I imagine the Obama administration rather desired decisions concerning the Afghan and Iraq wars to occur as automatically as possible. The current situation allows them to follow the recommendation of the military professionals  Obama Considers Strategy Shift in Afghan War - NYTimes.com with the latitude offered by the military being seen as overplaying their hand . McChrystal Rejects Scaling Down Afghan Military Aims - NYTimes.com  This is now the eighth year of this war, not the first, the second or even the fifth. This is the first place to start your thinking about the situation. After putting in 20,000 troops half a year ago to hold and stabilize the situation President Obama finds it has accomplished little casualties rise. The war effort slides beyond our control. One Friedman unit ( 6 mos.) into this administration and the military and various vectors of neoconservatives are openly declaring the strategy unworkable and the war nigh on unwinnable. McChrystal's Review Creates Divide on War in Afghanistan - washingtonpost.com. The election was the precipitating incident of the current concern. It made it difficult to defend the prevailing government (politically if not militarily). It becomes problematic to claim before a skeptical world and unconvinced Afghan people that the military effort is the front of the Afghan people. Karzai attempted to present this as a fait accompli, and leave it to the US to adapt to his reality within his demimonde. The US can respond by establishing unilateral arrangements with segments of the populace until they believe their effort speaks for a true majority. They can bring as much of the former taliban in as stake-holders as possible  If the Powell doctrine has any relevancy left I would say give the Afghanistan theater the extra battalions it asks for, as long as the Army can support it. Particularly if this happens in conjunction with a ongoing draw-down in Iraq. I say this because technology is not the force multiplier, the panacea, that so many in the military were lead by their systems analysts to believe it was.  Simple uneducated opposition can demonstrate remarkable levels of training resilience and adaptation, confounding static approaches  Changes in Afghanistan, Washington May Require Shift in U.S. War Strategy - washingtonpost.com.  There are no true small wars. It takes soldiers to control violent opposition, as much as assassinations. Those thinking further through the Powell doctrine, point out that in recent polling the public has largely turned away from the war (wars), yet they were around and for them when we started them. The notion that if you break you've bought it stands. Afghanistan needs what-ever combination of new tires and a paint-job it takes to get someone to buy the title from us. That, it should be understood, means being able to leave a government in charge with a majority of coercive force in hand. We take charge, with the force needed to build a majority coalition and a policing force, of people signaling they are willing to be citizens of an Afghan state U.S. Plans to Shift Forces to Populated Areas of Afghanistan - washingtonpost.com. This may take a few years: Meet-the-Afghan-Army-Is-It-a-Figment-of-Washingtons-Imagination - Metafilter. Then we leave. We don't worry about whether we have won the Program for the New American Century's idiot war or not, we leave.  The Obama administration already signaled, by retaining Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense that the military had a comparatively free hand to work out solutions to these affairs on their own terms. Conduct counter-insurgency with general purpose troops according to best practices.  Conduct counter-terrorism with special operations and special applications.  We must decide our true national security interest in these matters, and particularly when it comes to American soldiers, to American lives it must be defined narrowly. A few years ago it was commonly viewed that the world had a basic divide between Integrating / Non Integrating population areas. Integrating areas were those belonging to or being drawn into the worlds trade and commercial system. These areas were considered unlikely to form existential threats to other peoples or nations. Non integrating populations were Paul R. Pillar - Terrorists' Real Haven Isn't on the Ground, It's Online - washingtonpost.com. The idea was not so much to destroy them, but to peel people away from their recalcitrant leaders until they lead nothing.  We cannot be the world's policemen, though. We cannot be everywhere, we do not and never will have the level of manpower and fortune to do such enforcement. Moreover it weakens the principle of sovereignty. The idea that the world's nations must rule (and control) their affairs is what we ought seek to preserve. Bottom up order is the only stable order.  The goal is to bring the populations of the world grinding away at the periphery in poverty into the prevailing world economy and integrating them into its rule based meta-society. Imperfection is acceptable. It's an imperfect world. 11:55:33 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Friday, September 18, 2009

Interdicting  A spat of recent naval incidents caught my attention, as a former sailor, and I made note to circle back and mention them when I had time. The Kang Nam was a small and marginal cargo ship that sailed from from North Korea early this summer, supposedly containing a shipment weapons or ammunition bound for Burma (Myanmar if you insist) Whither the Kang Nam, North Korea's suspect cargo ship? | csmonitor.com. It is unclear how this determination was made, but once it was, the ship was set upon and tracked continually. The outcome was an apparent success. After being shadowed by U S ships as it sailed slowly down the Chinese coast, very publicly thanks to the U S Navy, it eventually turned around and sailed back to North Korea US Navy well-versed in interdicting suspect cargo ships | csmonitor.com.  A very different incident was the disappearance of the Russian ship Arctic Star. That was the first mystery. Speculation ran from smuggling, illicit arms trading, piracy, or simple theft  BBC NEWS | Special Reports | 'Ransom threat hit hijack ship'. After a week or so the lost was found, or perhaps was never really lost. Russian naval forces effected a self interdiction quietly in mid-ocean and escorted the ship back to Russia. Then began the second period of mystery. The Russian maritime expert who first raised alarm, flees county saying he has received strong threats  BBC NEWS | Europe | Russia ship mystery editor flees. Speculation now turns on involvement by Russian oligarchs and or  sectors of Russian Government. There are hints of involvement of by Israeli special operations the scenario here is that the ship contained advanced weapons of some sort perhaps anti-aircraft missile systems bound for Syria or Iran that had not been formally cleared by the Russian Government . At least the world's navies can locate and track ships at sea, when they want to.    Using Naval resources to accomplish anti-terror / anti proliferation goals turns on three abilities (1) Human resources: Training and teams. Certainly at the most specific level - physical interdiction and vessel searching.  (2) Material resources: ships in (the right) place. This depends greatly on cooperation regimes with other services and other nations. As well the ability to quickly enter into operational Intel networks with these regimes, aspects of these networks are evolving along lines not dissimilar to social networks (and social networking software types) familiar to ordinary experience.  (3) A legal mandate. The Proliferation Security Initiative: A Means to an End for the Operational Commander  Traditional definitions of Ocean Surveillance aims, more broadly Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA), involves knowing where US and Allied trade assets (merchant shipping) that need protecting are. Where what would harm them is also. Keeping the sea lanes open. At the moment this has been made easier as half the world's merchant fleet is riding empty at anchor in the Malacca straits off of Singapore  Revealed: The ghost fleet of the recession | Mail Online. The  Increasing commitment to Anti- terror, proliferation and even piracy missions is an added tasking  Navy Role in Irregular Warfare and Counterterrorism: Background and Issues for Congress: RS22373.pdf.  A primary interest here for me at least is seeing what the new administration's inclinations on this topic are, particularly as the QDR (Quadrennial Defense Review is underway which will set the tone for the next few years.  At the moment it seems the Navy will continue to be a primary tool of Non-proliferation efforts.  The PSI (Proliferation Security Initiative) dates from May 2003 originating with John Bolton under[deputy] secretary of state at the time was/is a State Department program.  John Bolton is something of a prat. commonly given to over the top dyspeptic rhetoric unbecoming someone at his supposed level. President Bush era aggressiveness and unilateralism are woven in the very fabric of the NSCWMD (National Strategy for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction out of which the PSI grew The proliferation security initiative as a new paradigm for peace and security. There are a number of useful general assessments of the PSI and its history written towards the end of the last administration  The Proliferation Security Initiative: A Glass Half-Full | Arms Control Association. One from an Australian perspective seemed especially succinct: The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI): An Assessment of its Strengths & Weaknesses The PSI is primarily as an activity, an agreement towards potential bilateral cooperation with only a 3 page statement of principle governing it.  It was designed to fill in the gaps between existing international non proliferation frameworks and to especially close down transfers of mass destruction weapons to non-State actors. This received strong affirmation in the form of Security Council resolution 1540 in 2004. Beyond this framework, there are only a fairly light rounds of operational and command center exercises to flesh the intent out.  The desire of the core members of the program has always been to move against both weapons and their delivery systems. Against acquisition of precursor materials even those acknowledge as having dual (civilian and military) use. Against networks of materials trade, and weapon design expertise and information. All for the purpose of making this trade more costly and more difficult.  I haven't read it,  but this book treats the subject at length: Combating weapons of mass destruction : the future of international nonproliferation policy [WorldCat.org] There are acknowledged knocks against the initiative. Mostly involving its thin legal grounding. Also difficulty assessing its efficacy amid secrecy surrounding the initiatives activities, and claims that some acknowledged successes were the product of multi-faceted efforts.  Lastly its extensiveness. That the PSI will only be effective if a certain and sizable set of nations participate in its activities. It started with only 10 nations in 2003, by mid 2007 73 nations were involved in one fashion or another many in the periphery  Origin, Developments and Prospects for the Proliferation Security Initiative : JFD_2006_PSA_Yamazaki.pdf.   Legal objections to use of force in international waters extend from a firm and fixed principle that the flag a vessel sails under constitutes it as sovereign territory of that nation. There is the possibility allowed in theory that this might happen in redress of a past injury. Injury a non transferrable or non diffusible concept, that is it cannot extend to others to form a negative common good  Interdicting Vessels to Enforce the Common Interest.  Largely these Legal objections are answered by they suffer from impracticality. The law at the International level for all its resemblance to statue law or aged common law is more a balance of actions. For those nations inclined to look on the world as an organized or tuned affair, it becomes a matter of passive deterrence vs. preemption of threats. This turns on notion that catastrophic lethality cannot be contained in  notion of equivalency to conventional categories of injury the law supposes. As in the case of Guilfoyle's [above] continual referral to nations in a fishing dispute seizing each others boats and catches as a suitable paradigm for injury. Commensurate action in nuclear non proliferation is interruption of their trade. Reading through the various summaries and their description of the legal difficulties it seemed that some nations may be telling the core nations of the PSI that they wished that the Initiatives activities were more clearly tied to traditional notions of risk assessment. Balancing the level of probability of occurrence against the severity of loss. At least as it pertains to the lengthy lists of banned commodities and the U S's zeal for interdicting them. There is also the sense that the cost of overly isolating target nations ought be added to the assessments. However most accept there is a near certain likelihood that non state actors would use weapons of mass destruction if the international community did not work to make it exceptionably difficult. There is also an increasing acknowledgment that existing models and assumptions of nuclear deterrence would fray and break down once the number of nations possessing nuclear weaponry rises to a dozen or more nations. The nine nations that currently have atomic weapons have set off more than two thousand nuclear detonations since they were developed Nuclear weapons testing - Wikipedia,   Informal policy statements around PSI make it clear the initiative is aimed at particular nations such as North Korea, Syria and Iran. This promotes buy-in by some nations who take this as an assurance that this initiative will not interfere with their own arms trade. Others will see in this a double standard absenting nations the United States favors including ones they disfavor, and see behind it all a U S hegemony.  For those inclined to caution and taking the very long view. Pushing such a way of proceeding into de-facto international law; consider that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. There may come a time in the not-that-distant future where others seek to stop U S shipping from what they deem inappropriate technology or weapons transfer.  North Korea's recent apparently successful test of nuclear device so alarmed the international community that the U N security council passed a further resolution forbidding them to traffic in weapons technology and called on all U N members to search vessels, with consent, anytime it is reasonably believed, such forbidden cargo is aboard a vessel India Detains North Korea Ship, Citing U.N. Resolution - NYTimes.com. There are some indications that recent North Korean maritime activity show possible signs of a probing for weakness in the PSI's capabilities N Korea: In Deep, Illicit Water / ISN.  Non-proliferation and anti-mass destruction weapons trade is a process and PSI is a part of that process the idea is to provide redundant blocks to spread of dangerous weapons.  The PSI needs to grow in membership, become normalized and partially institutionalized. For funding and training purposes and for effective international cooperation. So that its process: leveraging existing national authorities for extra border coercive police action attains the status of recognized international principle rather than an activity that is a cipher (the U S is not yet a signatory to UNCLOS). The UN can hamper nuclear arms trade through Security Council resolutions. Further acquisition of nuclear weapons is de-legitimized by these means. This paves the way for blocking arms trade by nations that continue to develop nuclear weapons regardless -- by international agreements authorizing searches and seizure of any vessel carrying on such sanctioned trade.  Ultimately the success of the PSI and acceptance of its aims by a critical mass of nations will be the degree to which it is guided by the principle of the eventual decommissioning of all nuclear weapon arsenals by all nations. It is here that I suspect I diverge from Mr. Bolton's vision most, who will give up mass destruction last of all. 11:59:55 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Hearts of Oak   Every time I'm inclined to read any singularity or uniqueness to the current noise-some dogmatic populism on the right these days I have only to reflect on Acorn ( Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now - Wikipedia ) to keep it in perspective. The Tea-baggers are out there in their very own wild blue yonder, a high styled paranoiac thrill ride. I'll take nothing off the top of that. They might notice the major policies of this country haven't changed much and won't because the President is pragmatically inclined and moderate in his sensibilities. That is if they weren't running around asking each other: "Now what part of White-House don't that boy understand."  Acorn made themselves a target of the right and shouldn't wonder really at the arrows lodged in their back  Conservatives Draw Blood From Acorn - NYTimes.com. They are there for their many years of community activism. Their work on housing discrimination, and voter registration drives. They've spent years putting African and Hispanic Americans on the voting rolls - that made them a target first of all. Second for was their diffuse seemingly chaotic organization, and particularly their thin veneer of somewhat inept leadership. They knew they were under close examination for more than a year now, and at no point did they seem to tighten up procedures or undertake any sort of policy review. This last forms a third way they made themselves a target. The sense of self-justification they had about their work. The idea that if you were "fighting the man" it was all good, it was all covered.  There are sectors of the left, among the progressives I recall from my college days, and others, where this feeling runs very deep. It does not admit to the validity of other viewpoints. It does not even genuinely allow the complete corporal existence of those who might hold these opinions. This last ought to evoke echos of familiarity with the rhetoric of the Birther or Tea-bag movements. This is the partisan error: desiring to rule as though those holding other views were secondary, illegitimate, vacant.  Acorn did not review their way of operating because their sense of righteousness did not request it of them. Those that opposed them were just so many ghosts.  If Acorn wants to protect remaining any remaining value to their brand they need to recognize they are engaged in a PR battle, not a street fight, not a legal fight, or even really a straight forward policy fight. The Metafilter troll in the thread  ACORN under fire | MetaFilter was correct: the web site Big Government's tapes were well executed text-book long form gorilla journalism. That this site is carrying an air of more and deeper organizational structure behind it is unmistakable, but what of it?   Acorn needs to determine and protect core enterprises. They need to resist the impulse to sue, particularly on grounds of clandestine recording and entrapment. This is weak legally and PR poison beyond that. Resist all temptation to engage in escalating counter-rhetoric. Or continue their "a few bad apples" defense against a well prepared and well layered attack. The Big Government "journalists" were able to repeat this exercise in a number of different and unrelated localities. Across the board they need to admit that what these tapes captured is utterly indefensible, even criminal. No public organization can operate this way. Acorn's apologists should cease trying to offer Acorn's attackers guile and hostility as a defense of their own conduct. Other's behavior speaks for itself as much as it needs to.  Acorn should be prepared to make a quick and radical move towards a significantly tighter and more professional organization. To bring in new leadership, move part-time volunteers to a supervised and vetted exterior tier. Hire or gain volunteer professional lobbyists to stabilize their reputation. Only at this point will Acorn have given their political friends enough cover to come forward in their defense House Votes To Strip ACORN Of All Federal Funds | TPMMuckraker. If Acorn is unable to collapse to a core of good work and demonstrate their worth, then what good they do and good people they have need to migrate to other organizations and continue their work there. Yes,  this post's title is a Ted Leo song. Also this post written on 16 and 17 Sep 09 is landing in a slot dated 10 Sep 09 because the yet uncompleted post that was there, agreed to swap places with it. 11:54:04 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Friday, September 4, 2009

An Etsy Post   My sisters Ann, Ellen and Susan, as well my niece Nicole go up to Baltimore every year in a February-ish season for the Baltimore Craft Show (properly the American Craft Council Show Baltimore; there are others across the country Atlanta, San Francisco : American Craft Council) I have a rough idea of the thing  though I've never been. The Baltimore craft show: like an Etsy you can walk through. On occasion I've even gone over to the Torpedo Factory (no torpedos  involved currently) aka  Torpedo Factory Art Center. Which lies broadly, even thickly along the continuum from arts & crafts through to Art. It facilitates a romanticized vision of the creative lifestyle I find I need to believe in sometimes.   Some people like their craftisomes new, and others aged. I appreciate, certainly, forms and objects that have survived time, I feel implicated in that even; however, I would not be set against an understanding of antique as simply a upscale word that means anti-new. There may be no intrinsic value in old. I find flea markets and yard sales a great temptation, as much for the bricolage time machine aspect as for anything.  I find I like the Shorpy Archive as well. But I would probably pass by any place calling itself "antique" this or that, unless I felt that by use of the word they were simply putting on airs and actually had good honest junk, the tchotchke of generations, on their shelves.   Online this territory is covered by eBay or Craig's list, neither of which I spend much time haunting. Trân has discovered that while she gets pennies on the dollar selling back her old textbooks in the campus bookstore, she can get list for them on eBay. This only confirms certain thoughts I have concerning eBay.  What is Etsy in this mix, Etsy :: Your place to buy and sell all things handmade? From their own description it is the "new economy" and a ethos of handmade made manifest. The pseudo night-human-activity map they have up (a clever and very Etsy idea) Etsy :: About shows Etsy is currently concentrated in the eastern and west coast United States, but surprisingly also England and Scotland which never struck me as being Arts, Crafts, or cottage industry sorts of places. Etsy's trade is the new: a democratic neighborly peer market in craftiness. Objects not only warm from the hand that made them, but of the ideas that inspired them. They facilitate sales of jewelry, wearables home furnishings and home accents. All in a  light minimalist interface replicating individual booths and exhibition tables in as many web 2.0 nodes. Wikipedia indicates the current CEO, Maria Thomas, apparently is a former NPR executive, Etsy - Wikipedia.   Over the past few months I've been asking around to see who's heard of Esty. I first learned of it through Mir's Dim Sum Diaries weblog. MetaFilter also turns up with Etsy-centric threads now and again  (there is even a node for MiFi Etsians Shops by MeFites | MetaFilter)   It took reading about it a couple of times before I really caught on to what it was.  My sister Ann had heard of it - through someone at her office. Of course, she is the premiere Baltimore Craft Show attendee in the family. My sister Susan had not. Few I spoke to had heard of it, or knew much about it. No men, I made inquires to, had heard of it at all. Not one. "Possibly not a guy thing," I entered into my small pocket notebook at this point.  A co-worker, my friend Nina had. Nina belongs to a crocheting circle that formed at the library, back in the spring. They meet once a week or so. I think Trân was participating in this as well during the summer, but she is back to taking classes now and lunch belongs to the textbooks. What Nina was working on was very nice. I told her so and added that she could probably sell her stuff on Etsy. "Oh no," she exclaimed gesturing at her work station screen then snapping a finger at the mouse to shake off the screen saver and show me: "Etsy is where we go to get our ideas." While I haven't bought anything off Etsy yet I wouldn't say I won't.   Being aware of Etsy at all is probably something of an outlier experience for me. As well I am passing out of the demographic that notices things at all. I'm on the fence about fighting my way back in. My money and yearnings are no longer of statistical significance to marketeers. People my age don't buy what they want to sell. We don't  respond reliably enough to advertising to make it worthwhile they're trying. They may suspect we have money, but they know better than to try to get it by talking to us. At last I am at liberty not to care unless I actually do care.   11:49:18 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Cheney isms   Attorney General Eric Holder has made a decision to continue investigations into detainee abuses and other legal elements of our nine year long War on Terror  Key Members of Both Parties Criticize Holder Decision to Look Into Alleged CIA Abuse of Detainees.  There has been a fair amount of conservative push back on this. Not least from the most centrally implicated of all in this, the former vice president  Cheney Criticizes Widening Investigation of CIA Counterterrorism Program. .    A plain rational for investigations is simply that Richard Cheney must be reproved or he will continue his campaign relentlessly until he is declared right, absolved, vindicated Cheney: Interrogations Probe Is a 'Political Act'.  He will insist on being placed in spirit, if not in literal being, back on the throne. If I use a word like throne understand I've chosen my words deliberately. Among the various slights of hand occurring is to get the American people to accept a supposed effectiveness in tortured interrogation as equaling the ethical high ground. Do men who trade so starkly in talk of strength and weakness, perceived and real, truly believe also in right and wrong, in good and evil? I don't think so. A genuine teleological sense is inconsistent of a world view of power and materialism. Empty talk of God and morality; though, is perfectly consistent with this, because so much here depends on what you can get people to believe.  At this point in the debate the Washington Post prints a strange article that purports to show "enhanced" interrogation delivers the goods  Terrorist Recast as CIA Asset.. Even reviewing their story at face value it doesn't really. A main break came from classical methods: he, KSM, talked thinking (being allowed to believe) interrogators already had certain information from another source. He was subjected to repeated cross examinations on various details and information and a meta dossier built up slowly from this. Even if an individual does not talk much various responses to stimuli (certain images, names evidences) will tell a story. Supermax prison systems are crushing and isolating enough in their manner of being that with the added full court press of Army prisoner interrogation standards you have what psychological pressure you need for the job. There seemed little useful in Khalid Mohammed's later infomercial ramblings that might not have been obtained through conventional professionally applied means. The unending rounds of waterboarding and campaign to break the wills of detainees was done for the personal satisfaction involved.  You interrogate to gain "information". You torture to fill a hunger, an emptiness in yourself.   The  CIA in particular is discontented even angry at being investigated. CIA must judge whether they made a mistake in deciding to let the Dick Cheney / John Yoo notion of ethics and national security be their cover. They had a larger national mandate to be guided by broader and more balanced approaches. Consistent with views of both political parties. Had they done this with due diligence they would not now be facing repercussions, over the potential illegality of their previous actions. This is no doubt a crisis of company morale occurring; however, this problem is a problem of their own making.  The other part of this twisted web of reaction is our army of the detained interred throughout the world in named and unnamed camps and the legal tabla gris they live off of. These are the prisoners of this war, the dangerous, the unwanted, the inconvenient.  I have said these things before, but as long a Mr. Cheney maintains his position, it bears repeating. The fundamental error is the a priori the assumption of guilt. Which flows back and forth between the interrogation and detainment issues infecting both.  POWs under international law can be detained and questioned because because they are from an state entity (if in uniform), declaring responsibility for them and can be foreseeably repatriated to that state entity upon cessation of hostilities. Irregulars and nonstate combatants, need their detainment to rest on some notion of criminality, unless some state-aspiring hierarchy can be assigned responsibility for them (this hierarchy either becomes a state or is reconciled to an existing state).  Some version of evidentiary rules obtains at this point and no notion of guilt or evil intent on which loss of liberty and secondary forms of information extraction depend can go forward without it. Attempting to deal with this by stuffing it into cracks of the law where you claim to be held to no rule, is questionable judgement, temperamentally questionable and unsupportable policy for legitimate government.   11:51:51 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Health Care Antidisestablishmentarianism  I read a statement in the press last week - by blue dog democrat that universal coverage was not in his opinion one of the critical goals of health care reform. I combined this various other statements -- including some mixed messaging from the president himself that the "public option" or "single player" plans are not a necessary part of reform either. Even allowing that those last two terms seem to mean different things to different people. I really find myself asking at this juncture (I am prompted towards the past tense): "Then what was it all about?"   Is it all just a matter holding down costs? Perfectly valid in and of itself. A key point there, though is the more enrolled in the insurance pools of whatever varieties exist the more risk is apportioned, the more easily costs can be managed. Problems occur when segments such as the wealthy and the healthy calve off the main insurance pools. Also those referred to as the indestructables, 20 year olds believing themselves immune to sickness or harm, who opt out of health care altogether. They inflict costs on the system becoming sick or injured at the same rates as their demographic compatriots. The status quo will only produce accelerating costs.   A co-worker pointed to a Krauthammer column  The Great 'Prevention' Myth  as a singularity of reason and clarity. I read it and thought Krauthammer was dissembling. The column dealt with a minor and only somewhat useful distinction on merits between preventive care and curative care. Given that a disease or illness will (usually) fall short of afflicting 100% of the population. A health care regime might conclude to place the bulk of resources towards ameliorating the effects of a condition rather than efforts to prevent initial contraction of it, at lesser overall cost. This is a thin contentious argument that not only fails to fall free of the moral trap that affects the mythic though popular death panels, but as well the practical matter that diseases appearing to suggest themselves to this approach do so only because of the enormous preventive efforts already expended on their behalf. This was not Krauthammer's real point. The more emotional weighted language of the first paragraph made it clear his real concern and satisfaction derive from the perception that "In the 48 hours of June 15-16, President Obama lost the health-care debate" and that the Obama's forward momentum had been firmly and permanently halted only a few months into his despised Marxist presidency.  Richard Cohen  Echoes of McCarthyism From Sarah Palin and Harold Meyerson Lincoln's Prophecy for the GOP  in  separate opeds in the Washington Post this week make similar points about this cast of the health care debate. Republican slash and burn demogogory may indeed have limited even ended President Obama's ability to produce health care reform. But it comes at a cost to their own ability to positions themselves as responsible leaders. The ones hurt most are the working middle class. Killing the bogeyman of death panels doesn't keep those loved ones from dying, it just squeezes those discussions into rushed adhoc decisions in a hospital corridor. Meyerson similarly argues the republican party has evaporated more of their own reputation eroding Obama's political capital. A Pyrrhic victory. While they are in little danger of ceasing to be a political party, they are in the process of reshaping themselves as a subculture party.  Tort Reform standing in for health care reform is a misdirection. In a system that chooses to regulate industry as little as possible. The primary tool for citizens is to have ample market choice which the current spider's nest of oligopies simply does not provide, it does nothing to redress injury once it has occurred at any rate. The other possible recourse is to allow the free right to bring suit, and for juries to allow substantive damages that might impel a corporation to change its product or behavior. Tort reform would do little to rein in structural health costs, though it might promote buy-in by health care providers. It would lower medical malpractice insurance costs, but so would removing licenses from the dangerous and incompetent, which is and always has been under the medical communities control.   I am agnostic on the means of health care reform. No fixed interest in any particular approach. Not in making it a federal government project in order to ensure it as a thing of the American people. Nor in handing it over to the insurance companies to appease the sense of entitlement of the private sector. Fearing Government administration seems somewhat nonsensical though. Government programs, are composed of same people, having the same education and experience, as the rest of the nation. They are not intrinsically less capable, or more capable than a private incorporation set to the same task.  Any genuine reform  must at least attempt to provide elementary coverage plan for those who want one. It should not discriminate -- against the poor, against the the less healthy. It ought not produce coverage holes between jobs or among certain age groups. In care or prescription.  Structural cost containment probably can not be handled until the full health care mandate is owned up to and undertaken, and may present a logical second part to reform.  Addendum {Also via Metafilter -- Digital Roam: American health care on (4) napkins! A hand drawn power point gloss to the debate. Best viewed at the slideshow site: Healthcare Napkins All}.    After seeing what else has come by this summer I wasn't surprised by Sen. Joe Lieberman's (D-Conn) recent suggestion that at this point Health Care reform should be left for the next legislative term, or even some other time all together Lieberman says many health care changes can wait - Yahoo! News. A suggestion for Sen. Joe in return. Why doesn't he set aside his health care package and his family's until that day, when he deems it suitable to take up reform again, arrives?  The U S health care regime will not collapse catastrophically. It will decay unevenly, become ever more inefficient. Some segments of society will never be troubled directly by the ruin of American Health which will still serve them. In the very long run even they will be affected as the practice of medicine returns to bloodletting, magick, and placation of princes. But portions of this nation will have gotten there already by then.  11:15:23 AM    comment [];trackback [];

Thursday, August 6, 2009

SQRT Exceptional  I have a friend - someone I knew in college years ago - who I know is endeavoring to start up her own grade school. Her name is Nancy, well not her real name which is Micaela, but the name I'll use here. The school I believe will open for classes in a few weeks. The weblog portion of the 2e newsletter indicated things were on track for a fall opening as of mid spring  2e: Twice-Exceptional Newsletter: From the Week of March 1.  I don't know a lot about this. Most of what I know comes from conversations a year and a half ago at an earlier point of planning, and a few emails since then. Plus a delicate shake of the internet tree a few weeks ago. The school will be in Brooklyn where she lives. The impetus of the project was to create an decent educational environment for her own son where she perceived none existed. I have met this boy a number of times and believe her perception is correct. He always struck me as being extremely intelligent, but what was going on around him needed to be on a certain wavelength with him otherwise he tuned it out, and turned his attention elsewhere. Most schools - the ones I remember - just let this happen.  Starting your own school; though,  this is an impressive undertaking to say the least. Nancy was always the sort where if she decided something needed to happen, it happened.   The early period of this endeavor led her through the thicket of alternative education the white board jungle: Montessori and Sudbury schools - democratic curriculum schools. Trying to find a method and philosophy that gave structure and opportunity, but not rigid and reflexive structure.The direction my friend Nancy seems to have gone with is to set up a school following principles grouped under the term twice-exceptional children or 2e in briefer form. To create a comprehensive curriculum and learning environment around such approaches. To have her tell it in her own words: the Lang School. Named after, I believe I read, her favorite teacher from Walter Johnson high school).  The article Bordering on Excellence  EBSCOhost: Bordering on Excellence: A Teaching Tool for Twice-Exceptional Student [Sara Jeweler et al. Gifted Child Today. Spring 2008 vol. 31 no.2) gives a definition of twice exceptional as  students identified as gifted and talented, but also identified with a disability defined by federal or state criteria.  A similar description of 2e  exists in the first paragraph of the wikipedia article  Twice exceptional - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: 2e, is commonly applied to high-ability children who have learning difficulties [...2 to 5 percent of all gifted children] A 2e child may be one who is diagnosed with one or more disabilities such as dyslexia, visual or auditory processing disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, sensory processing disorder, Asperger syndrome, or Tourette Syndrome. The child might have a diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, with or without hyperactivity, or diagnoses of anxiety or depression. Some 2e children have no formal diagnosis, but do have learning differences of other kinds, such as in learning style or preference, that make it hard to function in a traditional classroom. There seems to a sense among some, that many of the issues facing 2e children are not formal clinical disabilities as much as learning difficulties or challenges.  And much of it reflects a reality that traditional instructional methods and environments will only ever be appropriate and effective for a certain percentage of children, and simply not for others.    Best Practice notions have held  that education of 2e students should occur with other average to high achieving children rather than in a strictly remedial setting. The goal it was felt was to keep them at their true cognitive level. This is often called differentiated instruction within integrated classrooms. The Bordering on Excellence article's frame instruction tool  represents a teacher's organizing guide for such  differentiated teaching. A sheet for each type of instruction. (writing in the example) four columns border an empty space (teacher notes) listing possible stumbling blocks, teaching methods, instructional materials (classroom materials), and assisstive  technologies that may ameliorate disabilities.  All this is meant to occur within the frame work of traditional schools: made inclusive through IEP's (Individual Educational Plans). Double Tracked and doubled-down. Montgomery county is an example of this approach. They pride themselves on how well they've been able to make it work, and have recently been the subject of a Harvard Business School case study on management in a school system  Leading for Equity (the Post reviewd this somewhat: 6 Lessons From Montgomery County Public Schools That Mostly Missed the Point - washingtonpost.com). My sister Susan, who was during the previous two years head of the PTA at my nephew's school Kennsington-Parkwood Elementary in Montgomery county, pointed out there are some drawbacks to this approach as a practical matter. It places a great burden on the teachers dealing with multiple multitrack individuals in the classroom, not all teachers can make it work well. During periods of budget tightening the infrastructure and professional assistants which aid teachers in managing differntiated instruction are often cut or eliminated first, increasing the burden further.  As well there is no way to keep the children from become acutely aware of differentiated instruction among them, which may create hard to control dynamics among them as peers.  The new idea is a partly separated approach. To have whole schools for 2e children. To have all the resources of the school directed towards them. I had never heard of the 2e concept [ERIC] before this. My sister could not recall the specific term either, though she was familiar with what it represented. She asked some other parents and found some who were familiar with it, and they mentioned that there is an existing 2e school in Washington DC, the Lab School, already. One of my nephew Grant's friends exhibits some of these characteristics. A thirteen year old, he has an intense comprehensive knowledge of many subjects, a sharp but somewhat brittle confidence. He has hyper-interest in airplanes and flight, and a fair amount of apptitude going with it. He spent part of the summer at a flight camp in Oshkosh, and is resolutely set towards a career as a pilot at the moment.  My own education experience; call it the Square Root of Exceptional. A non-distinguished life beset by various in-abilities and dis-congruities. Education, all experience really in the end is a matter of challenge to the individual and it is the child individual who must respond. My eductional experience to the extent I can remember any of it now - more a half life remembered - was a painful clueless struggle between myself and various environments. Between adaptation and separation, assimilation and infiltration.  I don't recall ever having that sense of being on the cusp that is the mark of 2e individuals. Of encountering barriers that present themselves at the tipping point to success or high achievement. Possibly I had rolled well under the curl of that tipping point in the six or seventh grade without any idea I'd permanently wiped-out on a wave of seemingly trivial quizes and writing assignments. Looking backward, I see you are either in AP  classes and college bound, or you are not.  I read a book recently, written in the half year after the end of world war ii by a man who was educated and an occasional college professor. Reflecting on matters in his hometown (which was the point of his book), he questioned primary education's adequacy for college preparation. A study had come out indicating colleges increasingly were turning their first year over to matters that in an earlier generation a prep school would have covered. He noted that the high school/public school system's critical role in the new late-phase industrial post-war world. A world  of K-12 +4 education, may not have been fully explained to them (small town school boards) and represented in modern parlance, an unfunded mandate.  Schools were accustomed to their previous simpler role of generally preparing individuals to live in society productively and satisfactorly. This now grew with little warning logarithmically more complicated. The post-industrial world has little use for semi-skilled labor - use maybe, but not attention or concern. I can testify to this. School for me was a balancing act not successfully managed. Ending in terms never agreed to. Eloquence of language and reasoning not attained.    11:57:28 PM    comment [];trackback [];

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Art of the mundane There is a certain reduced excitement to a day of the semi-skill of copy cataloging. One that requires practicing the art of the mundane. I usually enjoy the time-warping subroutine of working on gift collections. Often these are from a professor, who on retiring, bequeaths his or her magic horde of books to the library. In this case the Charles Keesing Collection for the Performing Arts Library. One book in particular caught my attention a while back: Arts Integration Curriculum in Connecticut Public Schools. A yearbook covering the year 1973 Artists in the classroom [University of Maryland, College Park]. I flipped through it. There's always time in the day for a little of that. 1973: These are days I remember - however dimly - from similar halls and class rooms only one state further north. I like things that can collapse and compromise time, rolling it up like an old rug, so that  a single step might take you across it. The absolute present-minded and event-documenting sense of the book gave up a feeling like one of Frederick Wiseman's films "High School" or "Canal Zone". An encounter  with artifacts possessed of the power to put you in a place.   After I had glanced through the book, stuck a barcode on it set the item record in the catalog, I went on to other books. An hour or so later, I felt a strange pull  to look at the book again. There had been a picture that had been a cut above the rest. Most were simply illustrative. Snapshots in a random state government document. This one had the dignity or perhaps sympathy of a portrait. A subject seeming to have a certain reserve of character. He was a musician, a folk musician. A genuine mandolin handling folkie. I have a soft spot for musicians. Especially for anyone daft enough to try to make a living that way. He seemed that sort. I neglected to make a copy or scan of the picture when I still had it in hand, the book has gone off to a branch library elsewhere on campus.. From memory he was a young man perhaps in his late twenties. A full but understated beard that declared earnestness and dedication to craft. He rather reminded me of a thinner version of my high school geology teacher Mr. Tosti. His clothing I can't recall exactly, but I want to say it was a dark corduroy jacket and a hat. Something of the nature of a Greek or Portuguese fisherman's cap  I studied at the picture  for a few moments trying to draw some conclusion out of it the nature of which I couldn't identify. There is some scattered evidence that I was around during the late sixties, but I do not remember them, not culturally. That is, there is nothing out of the ordinary I remember of them. I had limited context for things. I do not remember protesters or flower children, hippies or yippies. I remember the tribes of the sixties only as they were just a few years later in the seventies. The war over, revolution in the rear view mirror. A world and a lifetime ahead of them.  I thought of a visit down to Spartanburg in 1977 to visit my friend George who had moved down there the year before. We made a trip up across the North Carolina border to Saluda or Ashville to visit a young couple who taught high school down in Inman school system but lived up in the mountains. There they lived a a quiet vegetarian semi off-the-grid life.  It made a significant impression on me at the time and I began to imagine thereafter there were many such souls hidden away in various off-beaten tracks.  A few weeks afterward I came across the scrap of paper on which I had written down the musicians name. Good, I thought, this is 2009 the second decade of the age of the Internet. Until the shadows fall across the world again and our cell phone and laptop screens darken, nearly all is discoverable. I typed the name into Google and got a hit:  Bill Wallach (2003).  I only needed that first hit. No need to rummage through the man's privacy.  From 2003 it was clearly the same person. The same beard - thirty years radiantly on. The same mandolin, I believe, as in some of the old pictures. Still a musician, still a folkie. It would be interesting to see what a typical Bill Wallach set list looks like, bluegrass, Renbourn? I couldn't say. The picture is from a website calling itself  Forum Coffee House, a Hartford thing I believe. The two pictures form a self-contained testimony.      Bill Wallach belongs to an American cohort prior to mine, the early boom generation - generations really. This "boom" was so large and varied that there is no one narrative that tells the story. A great deal and a great many from it just seemed to quietly go to ground as the seventies ran on to the eighties and again to the nineties. The cultural eye moved on. The thousands of movie screens, and millions of TV screens reflected other things. Little of it ever seemed to be talking to me.  Sometimes I set to thinking how big a crowd I need before its worth raising a toast to the Soft Boys or the Replacements. A bigger and harder to find crowd than for the Holy Modal Rounders? I couldn't say. Large enough.  A toast for today. Although you can't prove it through iTunes, Dave Thomas from Ohio's Pere Ubu once did a record with Richard Thompson (and Mayo Thompson). Not a thing that likely exists digitally, but a record in the back of somebody's closet I'm sure. 11:34:33 PM    comment [];trackback [];

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. 2009 P Bushmiller. Last update: 11/18/09; 1:17:22 AM.