Certainly different

From our Glastonbury correspondent

Fear is becoming a way of life here

A Sensible View of ISIS

Michael Flynn certainly has a strong background in intelligence - director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where he was the nation's highest-ranking military intelligence officer. Previously, he served as assistant director of national intelligence. He was also commander of the US special forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he hunted down al-Zarqawi. This is an excerpt from an interview with Der Spiegel.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: How should the West fight this enemy?
Flynn: The sad fact is that we have to put troops on the ground. We won't succeed against this enemy with air strikes alone. But a military solution is not the end all, be all. The overall strategy must be to take away Islamic State's territory, then bring security and stability to facilitate the return of the refugees. This won't be possible quickly. First, we need to hunt down and eliminate the complete leadership of IS, break apart their networks, stop their financing operations and stay until a sense of normality has been established. It's certainly not a question of months -- it will take years. Just look back at the mission we created in the Balkans as a model. We started there in the early 1990s to create some stability and we are still there today. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Is the Balkans mission a model for the current war?
Flynn: We can learn some lessons from the Balkans. Strategically, I envision a breakup of the Middle East crisis area into sectors in the way we did back then, with certain nations taking responsibility for these sectors. In addition, we would need a coalition military command structure and, on a political level, the United Nations must be involved. The United States could take one sector, Russia as well and the Europeans another one. The Arabs must be involved in that sort of military operation, as well, and must be part of every sector. With this model, you would have opportunities -- Russia, for example, must use its influence on Iran to have Tehran back out of Syria and other proxy efforts in the region.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: For that to happen, the West would have to cooperate fully with the Russians.
Flynn: We have to work constructively with Russia. Whether we like it or not, Russia made a decision to be there (in Syria) and to act militarily. They are there, and this has dramatically changed the dynamic. So you can't say Russia is bad, they have to go home. It's not going to happen. Get real. Look at what happened in the past few days: The president of France asked the US for help militarily (after the Paris attacks). That's really weird to me, as an American. We should have been there first and offered support. Now he is flying to Moscow and asking Putin for help. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: A Western military intervention runs the risk of being seen as a new attempt to invade the region.
Flynn: That's why we need the Arabs as partners, they must be the face of the mission -- but, today, they are neither capable of conducting nor leading this type of operation, only the United States can do this. And we don't want to invade or even own Syria. Our message must be that we want to help and that we will leave once the problems have been solved. The Arab nations must be on our side. And if we catch them financing, if they funnel money to IS, that's when sanctions and other actions have to kick in. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: In February 2004, you already had Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in your hands -- he was imprisoned in in a military camp, but got cleared later as harmless by a US military commission. How could that fatal mistake happen? Flynn: We were too dumb. We didn't understand who we had there at that moment. When 9/11 occurred, all the emotions took over, and our response was, "Where did those bastards come from? Let's go kill them. Let's go get them." Instead of asking why they attacked us, we asked where they came from. Then we strategically marched in the wrong direction. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The US invaded Iraq even though Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11.
Flynn: First we went to Afghanistan, where al-Qaida was based. Then we went into Iraq. Instead of asking ourselves why the phenomenon of terror occurred, we were looking for locations. This is a major lesson we must learn in order not to make the same mistakes again. 

SPIEGEL ONLINE: The Islamic State wouldn't be where it is now without the fall of Baghdad. Do you regret ...
Flynn: ... yes, absolutely ...
SPIEGEL ONLINE: ... the Iraq war?
Flynn: It was huge error. As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him. The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision.

Multi-tasking in the OR

The question is: should surgeons multi-task in the operating room. Multi-tasking in this case being defined as operating on two patients at the same time. This practice is known as concurrent surgery. To make it happen the chief surgeon relies on assistance from general surgeons or trainees.  The hospitals argue that it saves time and it is an efficient way to deploy the talents of their most in-demand specialists while reducing wasted operating room time.

This has become a major issue at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), one of the country's leading hospitals. A cadre of MGH's surgeons assert that it jeopardizes patient safety and prevents patients from getting the best medical care possible. But perhaps a bigger concern is this practice is known by the doctors and the nurses and the anesthesiologists and the billing clerks and everyone else. That is, everybody but the patient.

Can Germany teach us something about the future?

Melting glacier equals more water?

2 inches deeper every month

That's what's happening to the ground in California's Central Valley, which happens to produce about 40% of the country’s fruits, nuts and vegetables. As the land sinks, it destroys roads, bridges and farmland,  collapses levees, buckles irrigation canals, and the water rises up over bridges and sloshes over roads.  

Octogenarian women talk sex and marriage

The Secrecy Administration

That's what the Obama Administration may be known as in the future. It seems committed to negating the power of the Inspectors General, which was the result of Watergate. The 1978 law which established IGs in most government agencies has served America well. But Obama thinks that many of the IG investigations have resulted in the release of secret information. 

Currently there are twenty investigations that are stymied because if Obama's policy. "The bottom line is that we’re no longer independent,” Michael E. Horowitz, the Justice Department inspector general, said in an interview. 

Ice speaks

It's a fearful country

The Senior Center

I found this sad. You may not.

Do you drink bottled water?

California is a funny place

The entire state is experiencing drought conditions. Yet, some who use 178 gallons per person each day are being fined. While others who use 30,000 gallons of water each day are not fined. This is due to the fact that the state has 411 separate water districts which make their own rules. Some districts are mainly middle or lower class, some in the 1%. In Bel Air one person used more than 11 million gallons of water in the year that ended April 1. The top 10 users in LA totaled over 80 million gallons a year. 

I think California should adopt the Israeli practice of just one water authority. 

Gifting

Some intelligent words about dealing with ISIS

From Boaz Ganor, the director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, Israel. 

The American and Western approach is not to relate to the religious element behind ISIS, to refer only to violent extremism. That’s a grave mistake, in my view. One of the greatest enemies of the war on terror is political correctness. In this war, we need to agree on who is the enemy, on the instrumental causes, on what goals they are trying to achieve. 

That doesn’t mean that Islam is the problem. We are talking about a small group within Islam — the Salafi jihadists — who are seeking to hijack the religion. But to deal with ISIS, you cannot disconnect from the religious aspect. It cannot be done with winks and hints. So the Muslims themselves have to come out against the jihadis. We, the Western world, are here to help. But it is the Muslims’ problem first and foremost.”

An Open Door Policy

Pope Francis thinks the Church should have an open door policy. His comments:

“Please, no armored doors in the church, everything open”. There are places in the world where doors should not be locked with a key. There are still some but there are also many where armored doors have become the norm.

We must not surrender to the idea that we must apply this way of thinking to every aspect of our lives. To do so to the Church would be terrible.”

The AMA and drug ads

Eight years ago the American Medical Association voted to allow drugs to be advertised on television. And drugs are advertised; the revenue for the tv people from the ads in 2014 was about $4.5 billion. The ads do include the potential negative side effects of the drugs but they are recited when the scene is very placid and are difficult to understand. Only two countries in the world allow drug companies to engage in direct-to-consumer advertising that includes product claims - the U.S. and New Zealand.

Now the association has had second thoughts and want to ban advertising as it makes patients seek out expensive treatments and artificially inflates demand for the drugs.

Words from the Dalai Lama

People want to lead a peaceful lives. The terrorists are short-sighted, and this is one of the causes of rampant suicide bombings. We cannot solve this problem only through prayers. I am a Buddhist and I believe in praying. But humans have created this problem, and now we are asking God to solve it. It is illogical. God would say, solve it yourself because you created it in the first place.

We need a systematic approach to foster humanistic values, of oneness and harmony. If we start doing it now, there is hope that this century will be different from the previous one. It is in everybody's interest. So let us work for peace within our families and society, and not expect help from God, Buddha or the governments.

$50,000,000 reward

Russia has determined that the plane that exploded over Egypt was the work of terrorists. A home-made bomb was placed on the plane. 

Russia has announced a $50,000,000 (that's dollars) reward for information leading to the arrest of those responsible.

Another addition to the Fear of Terrorists list.

Almost human

Courtesy of our Arlington correspondent

Total Face Transplant

Comments on our medical care

Sunset at Scottsdale, Az, in October

Courtesy of The Peak

Fearing Fear Itself

That's the title of Paul Krugman's op-ed about the Paris attacks. Yes, the attacks were frightening but we need to remember that the purpose of these attacks is to scare us, to make us panic.  We must also remember that we live in a world where nothing is perfect. There are many dangers in the world. Terrorism is not the only one and not the worst one. It won't destroy the world physically, climate change will. Krugman concludes, "Again, the goal of terrorists is to inspire terror, because that’s all they’re capable of. And the most important thing our societies can do in response is to refuse to give in to fear."

Berlin, July 1945

Courtesy of The Peak

A new containment policy

That's what Andrew Basevich proposes with regard to the Middle East. He recognizes that Russia failed in Afghanistan and we failed in Iraq. Maybe it's time for the Middle East to try to solve its problems. Basevich's summary:

Rather than assuming an offensive posture, the West should revert to a defensive one. Instead of attempting to impose its will on the Greater Middle East, it should erect barriers to protect itself from the violence emanating from that quarter. Such barriers will necessarily be imperfect, but they will produce greater security at a more affordable cost than is gained by engaging in futile, open-ended armed conflicts. Rather than vainly attempting to police or control, this revised strategy should seek to contain.

Such an approach posits that, confronted with the responsibility to do so, the peoples of the Greater Middle East will prove better equipped to solve their problems than are policy makers back in Washington, London, or Paris. It rejects as presumptuous any claim that the West can untangle problems of vast historical and religious complexity to which Western folly contributed. It rests on this core principle: Do no (further) harm.

What about the 44 in Beirut?

The day before Paris was attacked by ISIS Beirut was attacked. Forty-four were killed and two hundred forty-nine injured. Yet, we heard nothing about this attack until the Paris story broke. And the Beirut story considered it an attack on a "Hezbollah stronghold".  Truth in media?

GJ 1132b

That's the name of a newly discovered exoplanet that has astronomers salivating. It's about the size of Earth and lives in a solar system roughly 39 light-years from Earth. But that's close enough for it to be studied for signs of life, although it's unlikely that life exists there as the temperature is 450 degrees Fahrenheit.

Why not Firemen's Day?

When I was a kid in the 1940s, it was pretty obvious that this nation was at war.  Everyone was involved in some activity to help the war effort. I and my friends collected aluminum foil.  My sisters knitted.  We went to the market with ration book in hand.  Every so often we prepared for an air raid.  My brothers served in the Battle of the Bulge and other combat.  All of my male cousins and most of the men I knew were drafted.  I learned to read via the headlines and the lead stories of the war that the newspapers carried every day.  I practiced my writing by writing letters to my brothers.  All of the men in East Cambridge were drafted.  It was pretty obvious why we should celebrate their efforts.  Hardly anyone was against the GI Bill.  I can fully understand why in the '50s and '60s Armistice Day was a big deal.  And, I can readily understand why Eisenhower renamed Armistice Day to Veterans Day in 1954.

However, I find it very hard to understand the brouhaha that is now made of Veterans Day.  When Nixon abolished the draft in 1973, people now had a choice as to whether they wanted to join the military or not, as they always had a choice whether they should join the police, become a teacher, practice medicine, fight fires, etc.  There are many professions where the goal is not making a dollar.  Soldiers are not the only ones risking their lives.  Police and firefighters also risk their lives.  The military is not the only important profession that keeps this country whole.  Where would we be without teachers or policemen?  Why don't we have a teacher's day or a policemen's day?

The fact of a volunteer army makes us more susceptible to go to war, especially because we know so few of the volunteers. As I said above, many of the people I knew in the '40s were drafted and risked their lives defending this country.  Some of my relatives served in Korea.  Friends served in Vietnam or moved to Canada.  Coffins landed in the military base in Bedford, MA almost every night.  We were all involved in these wars and realized their cost.  The President didn't tell us to avoid the fact that we were at war, we were all helping the war effort.  That was our duty as citizens, no matter our age or circumstances.

It is interesting that most of the politicians that will be speaking on Veterans Day have not served in any capacity in the military.  I'll end with a comment from Aaron O'Connell, a professor at Annapolis, "Uncritical support of all things martial is quickly becoming the new normal for our youth. Hardly any of my students at the Naval Academy remember a time when their nation wasn’t at war."

Corruption by State

The Center for Public Integrity has released a study on corruption in states. A summary of their findings is shown below. Note that only three states scored higher than D+.

Compare a Chinese and an American grammar school

Jocelyn Reckford is a high school student in China. She attended grammar schools in both China (Beijing) and North Carolina (Chapel Hill). She has built a web site that compares and contrasts the two. It is fascinating. Click here to investigate.

A voting machine primer

The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
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Interesting

A new Stingray

I don't mean a Corvette Stingray, which was the first car I bought. While the car is still being built, another form of Stingray simulates a cell tower and has become quite popular with government agencies for surveillance of cell phones. The Stingray, which is about the size of a briefcase, can strip metadata and sometimes content from your cell phone. What really excises people like the ACLU is that the agencies do not need a typical court order to use a Stingray.They require only a low-level court order called a PEN register, also known as a “trap and trace”.

 

Text of the TPP

Now that the full text of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has been released, the furor over it has increased. It looks as though it's worse than what had been revealed earlier. It gives the corporation the power to sue governments almost at will. For example, if a province puts a moratorium on fracking, corporations can sue; if a community tries to stop a coal mine, corporations can overrule them. It looks  like our food safety rules on labeling, pesticides, or additives are in jeopardy.

Further, from Chris Hedges:

The TPP removes legislative authority from Congress and the White House on a range of issues. Judicial power is often surrendered to three-person trade tribunals in which only corporations are permitted to sue. Workers, environmental and advocacy groups and labor unions are blocked from seeking redress in the proposed tribunals. The rights of corporations become sacrosanct. The rights of citizens are abolished.

A quote from Ralph Nader, “It allows corporations to bypass our three branches of government to impose enforceable sanctions by secret tribunals. These tribunals can declare our labor, consumer and environmental protections [to be] unlawful, non-tariff barriers subject to fines for noncompliance. The TPP establishes a transnational, autocratic system of enforceable governance in defiance of our domestic laws.”

It's a huge document, 5,544 pages to be agreed upon by 12 countries comprising nearly 40 percent of global output.

Your job: Assemble the Space Station

Here's the plan, courtesy of a Duncaster correspondent

 

Leaving prison

Police Officers in Schools

The U.S. Department of Justice says that 76% of all high schools in the country have police officers working on the campus all day.

In California in the 2011-2012 school year the cops were called 31,961 times; that translates to 1 every 2.6 minutes.

Man and tapeworms

Is it coincidence that the BBC should have two stories about tapeworms and men? The first story tells about a man who died from tumors made of cancerous parasitic worm tissue growing in his organs, i.e. the tissue was not human. The patient had HIV and his weakened immune system allowed the worm-cancer to flourish. The dwarf tapeworm spends most of his time hatching eggs into the gut every day.

The second story tells of a larva of a tapeworm inside a man's brain. The doctor pulled it out and it was still wiggling. This condition is called neurocysticercosis; it affects about 1,000 people a year.

Marketing the military

We are becoming a nation of business, nothing else matters. We have seen it with colleges, hospitals, law firms and a heck of a lot of what used to be thought of as professions. Today we learn that our wonderful Pentagon has spent $53 million in the past three years on questionable marketing contracts with sports teams, including events to honor American soldiers at games as a recruitment strategy. 

Some of the deals: 

• $700,000 went to the New England Patriots for the recognition of a Massachusetts Army National Guard soldier at each home game as part of a “true patriot” promotion, among other costs.
• The Boston Bruins received $280,000 for a national anthem performance and color guard and reenlistment ceremony and other items such as a luxury box for 18 people and an executive view suite for 25 on a military appreciation night. 
•  The Boston Celtics received $195,000 in part to spotlight soldiers at home games. 

Many of these deals included game tickets, the use of team facilities and on-field recognition of high school football players and coaches.

Now, the Pentagon has said it would put an end to this type of marketing.

Prosperity vs. Pollution

Researching chemicals

There has been a battle underway for many years as to what is the best way to evaluate the effect of chemicals on the human body.  The government and other regulatory bodies think that computer simulations are best. The health effects researchers—endocrinologists, developmental biologists and epidemiologists, among others—draw their conclusions from direct observations of how chemicals actually affect living things.

Valerie Brown and Elizabeth Grossman have an extended paper on the subject and conclude that computer simulations are not the best way. They contend that the regulators are overly influenced by the manufacturers.

 VALERIE BROWN AND ELIZABETH GROSSMAN

Will Volkswagen last?

Another example of VW's cheating mentality has cropped up. The company announced that it had understated emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, for about 800,000 of its vehicles sold in Europe, and overstated the cars’ fuel economy. This will cost them about 2 billion euros, or about $2.2 billion, in possible financial penalties. This will bring the likely total financial penalties to almost 9 billion euros. This latest example has been going on since 2012.

First ever video of Omura's whale

An ad for JD Byrider

Plant Meat

Another $800,000,000 down the drain

It's amazing how many of my posts about Aghanistan have included the words "down the drain" in their titles. I have not added up the money wasted, but it is likely in the billions. 

The latest report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) talks about the Task Force for Stability and Business Operations (TFBSO). This Task Force was disbanded earlier this year after it had spent $800,000,000. When SIGAR started asking questions about the Task Force, DOD said that, since the Task Force was disbanded, there was no one to answer the questions.

Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction decided to concentrate on the Task Force's Downstream Gas Utilization project  to construct a compressed natural gas (CNG) automobile filling station in the city of Sheberghan, Afghanistan. The main purpose of the project was to demonstrate the commercial viability of CNG for automobiles in Afghanistan as part of a broader effort to take advantage of Afghanistan’s domestic natural gas reserves and reduce the country’s reliance on energy imports. 

The project cost SIGAR almost $43,000,000. Yet Pakistan was able to build a CNG station for $500,000. SIGAR could find no trace of a feasibility study to determine the potential return on the investment. Had they done so, they may have discovered that converting a gasoline-powered car to run on CNG would be very expensive for the average Afghan. TFBSO’s contractor, CADG, states that conversion to CNG costs $700 per car; other sources estimate that it costs up to $800.18 According to the World Bank, the average annual income in Afghanistan is $690. 

Was there a market for CNG?