JAEBM-2

Carrington; Morning Watch

2011-02-15T07:59:00.001-05:00

Carly woke up when her brother Sam touched her on the arm. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t need to. She quickly got dressed, strapped on her revolver, put on her boots and went downstairs. Sam was in the kitchen, yawning. The kitchen was dimly lit, only a faint glow came through the glass panel of the wood stove. It was four in the morning.

“‘Anything new,” she asked while stretching.

He shrugged. “The chickens were making a little bit of noise, but I didn’t see anything.”

“Did you use the flashlight?”

“No.”

Carly nodded. Uncle Max was big on not showing light at night. It had better be a dangerous situation to justify using a light. Uncle Max said that lights attract attention, especially the bad kind. More than one of the kids had taken a beating for it.

“What’s it like out,” she asked.

“Not too cold, maybe 40 or so. No wind, clear sky. Moon is still up, but it’ll set in an hour or so.”

Sam handed her an orange whistle on a lanyard cord, the night watch rifle and two spare magazines. Carly removed the magazine from the rifle, checked to verify that there was a round in the chamber and re-inserted the magazine. The rifle was a Ruger 10/22 with a flashlight and a silencer that Uncle Max had built. The silencer had been illegal at one time, but nobody had seen a cop in four years. Uncle Max was fond of saying that the law was what was in your holster. The whistle was to be used only in an utter emergency. Sound carried these days, since there wasn’t any background noise to speak of.

She put on her coat, hat and gloves, picked up the rifle and went into the light lock. The “light lock” was a mud room with a door on either end, one into the kitchen and one to the porch. The inside was painted flat black. At night, the windows in the doors and in the mud room were covered with heavy drapes. Carly figured that the term “light lock” came from her cousin Tyler’s love of science fiction.

Carly paused on the porch to let her eyes adjust, which didn’t take very long. It was scarcely brighter in the kitchen than it was outdoor, She thought for a few seconds, then opened the door to the mud room and pulled out a white poncho, more of a cloak, really. She didn’t know if anybody was about, but why give them an edge, she reasoned.

She went out and made her rounds. The barn was secure, the sheep, chickens and the few cows were quiet. She still was not used to how few animals there were in the barn anymore. It was a lot harder to make good hay ever since the nights that the sky burned, which meant that fewer animals had be fed through a winter. The pigs were long gone, there was hardly enough food for the people, let alone scraps for pigs.

The night security watches, when everyone else was asleep, were the only times that Carly made the next stop on her rounds: The family graveyard. There were no tombstones, only carved wooden boards. She stopped at the grave of Billy, her brother. People once called her and Billy “Irish twins;” Billy had been eleven months older that her.

Fourteen months ago, Billy got a bad cut on his arm as he and Sam were skinning a deer. Back in the old days, that would have meant a trip to the emergency room for some stitches and ten days’ worth of antibiotics. Billy might have then had a small scar to talk about. Now there were no ambulances, no emergency rooms and no antibiotics. Billy had died of blood poisoning five weeks later. They couldn’t even bury him until the Spring thaw.

There was a little snow on the marker. Carly brushed it off with a gloved hand. There had been no real time for her to mourn or grieve. Life was hard since the skies burned and it seemed to her that each year was harder than the one before. If it wasn’t for having been Billy’s primary nurse as he slid down towards death, Carly would have thought that he was the lucky one.

It was getting on towards sunup. Carly went back to the house. She built the makings of a fire in the wood cookstove in the kitchen, then used a stick to transfer fire from the wood stove to the cookstove. The cookstove had been in the basement of the small barn for decades, too heavy to take away and too beat-up to sell. It had taken the men and boys days to move it into the kitchen and to move the propane stove out to the small barn. They counted themselves lucky to have it; lots of families were cooking now in their fireplaces.

Carly then went to the sink in the basement and used the hand-pump to draw water for the morning meal, She was carrying the second pail up from the basement when she felt the first kick. Hell of a thing to be born in this day and age, Carly thought.

Carly was sixteen years old.

Easy Bread From Scratch

2011-01-08T13:57:00.005-05:00

Making white bread is fairly easy. Fresh bread is very tasty without all of the preservatives and other crap. It does take time, but most of the time is spent waiting, so you can read, screw around on your computer or go for a walk during some of the waiting times.

This recipe will yield one loaf. It will scale up for two loaves by doubling the ingredients; you'll also need to double the flour addition steps (see #2 and #4).

Ingredients and Gear:

1 package of active dry yeast (¼ oz.)
1¼ cups of warm water (100-115degF)
1½ tablespoons of white sugar
1½ tablespoons of softened butter
½ tablespoon of salt
3¼ cups of bread flour-- some wizened old lady in the store told me that King Arthur flour is the best to use.
Vegetable oil
1 2-qt pan of water (optional)
Heating pad and cloth towel (optional)
2 large bowls
1 5x9 loaf pan (two for two loaves)
Plastic wrap or wax paper
Cooling rack
Measuring stuff
Stand mixer or food processor with a dough blade (optional)

1. Put the warm water into a large bowl. Whisk in the yeast and the sugar. Let it stand for ten to fifteen minutes. You should see signs that the yeast is growing.

2. Stir in a cup of flour, mixing well. You can use a mixer, though a hand mixer will not handle the entire mixing process. A sturdy food processor with a dough blade or a heavy stand mixer will work nicely.

3. Mix in the salt and the butter. (If you add the salt before you mix in the first cup of flour, you will kill off most of the yeast, the dough won’t rise and the result will have the consistency and the taste of drywall.)

4. Add flour, a ¼ cup at a time, mixing it well. Towards the end, you are probably going to be mixing it in with your hands (unless you're using a powerful food processor or a stand mixer). Keep mixing the dough until it has all pulled together. It may take you a time or two to know when this happens; the dough will have picked up almost everything in the bowl.

5. Lightly flour a large flat surface (this is a reason to keep your countertops clean). Start kneading the dough. There are a bazillion techniques, one is to push the dough flat, fold it over on itself, turn it a ¼-turn, push it flat and keep repeating, adding flour as necessary to the surface. You need to do this for about ten minutes. You'll be finished when the dough becomes somewhat elastic and it won’t be sticky. What you are doing is breaking down the gluten so that the bread will rise properly. (If you use a stand mixer or a food processor to do the kneading, you may need to add additional flour or the dough will be too sticky.)

6. Optional: If you have a cold kitchen, half-way through the kneading process, either put the pan of water on the stove and boil the water or turn on the heating pad.

7. When you are done kneading, put a little bit of vegetable oil in the other large bowl. Put the ball of dough in the bowl and turn it over so the entire ball is lightly covered with oil– this keeps it from sticking to the sides. (Don’t clean up the flour left on the countertop, you’ll need it.)

8. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or wax paper, cover with a towel and set aside to rise. If your kitchen is cold, put the bowl on top of a heating pad and then put a towel over the bowl. Or you can put the bowl the top rack in a cold oven. Put the pan of very hot water on the bottom rack. This will warm the inside of the oven to 80-90deg. If you leave it out on the counter in a cold kitchen (like up here in South Cryogenica in the winter), it won’t rise property. Given a choice between the "hot water in the oven" method or the "heating pad" method, the heating pad is far easier to use.

Be careful here if you use the "hot water & oven" method. You can over-rise the dough. In a 63degF kitchen, I've found that using a heating pad for the first rise works the best.

Let it rise for an hour, it will double in size. If it rises too much or too little, adjust your rising time as need be.

9. (If you are using a cold oven to rise the dough, take the pan of water out of the bottom rack and put it back on the stove to reheat it.) Take the wrap of the bowl and punch the dough down to deflate it. Dump the dough onto the floured countertop. (If you doubled the recipe for two loaves, this is where you must cut the dough into two equal amounts.) Flatten the dough out and shape it into a size that will fit the loaf pan(s). A little kneading in this step doesn't hurt, but don't go nuts. You can over-work the dough.

10. Lightly grease the inside of the loaf pan. Put the dough inside. Lightly coat one side of a sheet of plastic wrap or wax paper with vegetable oil and lay it over the top of the loaf pan, oiled side down. Do not stretch plastic wrap tight.

11. Put the loaf pan aside to rise for 45 minutes. If you have a cold kitchen, put the loaf pan back in the cold oven on the top rack and the pan of hot water on the bottom rack for 30 minutes. Or you can put the loaf pan(s) on a heating pad and cover them with a towel.

12. Take the loaf pan and the water pan out of the oven and set the loaf pan on a countertop. (Do whatever you want with the hot water). Set the oven rack so it is in the middle of the oven.

13. Preheat the oven to 425deg. Once the oven is up to temperature, turn it down to 375deg.

14. Remove the wax paper/plastic wrap from the loaf and put it in the oven for 30 minutes. You can test for doneness by taking the loaf out of the pan and tapping it on the bottom, it should sound somewhat hollow. If you want the sides to be a little crusty, take the loaf out of the pan 5 minutes early and then put the loaf back into the oven.

15. Remove the loaf from the pan (if you didn’t in the previous step) and set it on a cooling rack. Let it cool almost all the way to room temperature (by touch) before you slice into it. Store in a bread bag.

The Chechen War

2010-12-05T20:10:00.000-05:00

From WikiLeaks, this cable from 2006 examines the War in Chechnya.

Grozny is the capital city of Chechnya. It is worth keeping in mind that "grozny" is an adjective in Russian that means things like "threatening, dread, terrible, menacing".

With that.....

VZCZCXRO0843
PP RUEHDBU
DE RUEHMO #5645/01 1500927
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 300927Z MAY 06
FM AMEMBASSY MOSCOW
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 6600
INFO RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHXD/MOSCOW POLITICAL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 10 MOSCOW 005645

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

EO 12958 DECL: 05/25/2016
TAGS PREL, PGOV, MARR, MOPS, RS
SUBJECT: CHECHNYA: THE ONCE AND FUTURE WAR
REF: MOSCOW 5461 AND PREVIOUS

Classified By: Ambassador William J. Burns. Reason 1.4 (b, d)

¶1. (C) Introduction: Chechnya has been less in the glare of constant international attention in recent years. However, the Chechnya conflict remains unresolved, and the suffering of the Chechen people and the threat of instability throughout the region remain. This message reinterprets the history of the Chechen wars as a means of better understanding the current dynamics, the challenges facing Russia, the way in which the Kremlin perceives those challenges, and the factors limiting the Kremlin’s ability to respond. It draws on close observation on the ground and conversations with many participants in and observers of the conflict from the moment of Chechnya’s declaration of independence in 1991. We intend this message to spur thinking on new approaches to a tragedy that persists as an issue within Russia and between Russia and the U.S., Europe and the Islamic world.

Summary
--------

¶2. (C) President Putin has pursued a two-pronged strategy to extricate Russia from the war in Chechnya and establish a viable long-term modus vivendi preserving Moscow’s role as the ultimate arbiter of Chechen affairs. The first prong was to gain control of the Russian military deployed there, which had long operated without real central control and was intent on staying as long as its officers could profit from the war. The second prong was “Chechenization,” which in effect means turning Chechnya over to former nationalist separatists willing to profess loyalty to Russia. There are two difficulties with Putin’s strategy. First, while Chechenization has been successful in suppressing nationalist separatists within Chechnya, it has not been as effective against the Jihadist militants, who have broadened their focus and are gaining strength throughout the North Caucasus. Second, as long as former separatist warlords run Chechnya, Russian forces will have to stay in numbers sufficient to ensure that the ex-separatists remain “ex.” More broadly, the suffering of an abused and victimized population will continue, and with it the alienation that feeds the insurgency.

¶3. (C) To deal effectively with Chechnya in the long term, Putin needs to increase his control over the Russian Power Ministries and reduce opportunities for them to profit from war corruption. He needs to strengthen Russian civilian engagement, reinforcing the role of his Plenipotentiary Representative. He needs to take a broad approach to combat the spread of Jihadism, and not rely primarily on suppression by force. In this context there is only a limited role for the U.S., but we and our allies can help by expressing our concerns to Putin, directing assistance to areas where our programs can slow the spread of Jihadism, and working with Russia’s southern neighbors to minimize the effects of instability. End Summary.

The Starting Point: Problems of the “Russianized” Conflict
--------------------------------------------- --------------

¶4. (C) Chechnya was only one of the conflicts that broke out in the former Soviet Union at the time of the country’s collapse. Territorial conflicts, most of them separatist, erupted in Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, South Ossetia, North Ossetia/Ingushetia, Abkhazia and Tajikistan. Russian troops were involved in combat in all of those conflicts, sometimes clandestinely. In all except Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian troops remain today as peacekeepers. Russia doggedly insists on this presence and resists pulling its forces out. Its diplomatic efforts have served to keep the conflicts frozen, with Russian troops remaining in place.

¶5. (C) Why is this? The charge is often made that Russia’s motive for keeping the conflicts frozen is geostrategic, or “neo-imperialism,” or fear of NATO, or revenge against Georgia and Moldova, or a quest to preserve leverage. Indeed, the continued deployments may satisfy those Russians who think in such terms, and expand the domestic consensus for sending troops throughout the CIS. However, while one or another of those factors may have been the original impulse, each of the conflicts has gone through phases in which the conflict’s perceived uses for the Russian state have changed. No one of these factors has been continuous over the life of any of the conflicts.

¶6. (C) We would propose an additional factor: the determination of Russia’s senior officer corps to remain deployed in those countries to engage in lucrative activity outside their official military tasks. Sometimes that
MOSCOW 00005645 002 OF 010
activity has been as mercenaries -- for instance, Russian active-duty soldiers fought on both sides in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict from 1991-92. Sometimes it has involved narcotics smuggling, as in Tajikistan. Selling arms to all sides has been a long-standing tradition. And sometimes it has meant collaborating with the mafias of both sides in conflict to facilitate contraband trade across the lines, as in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The officers and their generals formed a powerful bloc in favor of all the deployments, especially under Yeltsin.

¶7. (C) This “military-entrepreneurial” bloc soon formed an autonomous institution, in some respects outside the government’s control. There are many illustrations of its autonomy. For instance, in 1993 Yeltsin reached an agreement with Georgia on peacekeeping in Abkhazia. When the Georgian delegation arrived in Sochi in September of that year to hammer out the details with Russia’s generals, they found the deal had changed. When they protested that Yeltsin had agreed to other terms, a Russian general replied, “Let the President sit in Moscow, drink vodka, and chase women. That’s his business. We are here, and we have our work to do.”

The Secret History of the Chechen War
-------------------------------------

¶8. (C) The lack of central control over the military, as well as officers’ cupidity, may have been a prime cause of the first Chechnya War. Immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union, energy prices in the “ruble zone” were 3 percent of world market prices. Government officials and their partners bought oil at ruble prices, diverted it abroad, and sold it on the world market. The military joined in this arbitrage. Pavel Grachev, then Defense Minister, reportedly diverted oil to Western Group of Forces commander Burlakov, who sold it in Germany.

¶9. (C) Chechnya was a major entrepot for laundering oil for this arbitrage. It appears to have been used both by the military (including Grachev) and the Khasbulatov-Rutskoy axis in the Duma. Dudayev had declared independence, but remained part of the Russian elite. Chechnya’s independence, oilfields, refineries and pipelines made Chechnya perfect for laundering oil. Planes, trains, buses and roads and pipelines to Chechnya were functioning, allowing anyone and anything to transit -- except auditors. In the early 1990’s millions of tons of “Russian” oil entered Chechnya and were magically transformed into “Chechen” oil to be sold on the world market at world prices. Some of the proceeds went to buy the Chechens weaponry, most of it from the Russian military, and another lucrative trade developed. Dudayev took much of his cut of the proceeds in weapons. The Groznyy Bazaar was notorious in the early 1990s for the quantity and variety of arms for sale, including heavy weaponry.

¶10. (C) Chechnya was the home of Ruslan Khasbulatov and served various purposes for his faction of the Russian elite. He took advantage of the army’s independence from Yeltsin’s control. An informed source believes that it was Khasbulatov, not the “official” Russian government, who facilitated the transfer of Shamil Basayev and his heavily-armed fighters from Chechnya into Abkhazia in 1992, and who ordered the Russian air force to bomb Sukhumi when Shevardnadze went there to take personal command of the Georgians’ last stand in July 1993. The Yeltsin government always denied that it bombed Sukhumi, despite Western eyewitness accounts confirming the bombing and the insignia on the planes. Given the confusion of those years, it could well be that the order originated in the Duma, not the Kremlin.

¶11. (C) After Khasbulatov and Rutskoy were written out of the Russian equation in October 1993, so was Dudayev. Clandestine Russian support for the Chechen political and military opposition to Dudayev began in the spring of 1994, according to participants. When that proved ineffective, Russian bombing was deployed. (One Dudayev opponent recounted that in 1994 a Russian pilot was given a mission to fire a missile into one of the top-floor corners of Groznyy’s Presidency building at a time when Dudayev was scheduled to hold a cabinet meeting there. Not knowing Groznyy, the pilot asked which building to bomb, and was told “the tallest one.” He bombed a residential apartment building.) When air power, too, proved ineffective, Russian troops were secretly sent in to reinforce the armed opposition. Dudayev’s forces captured about a dozen and put them on television -- and the Russian invasion began shortly thereafter.

¶12. (C) Given the gangsterish background of the war, it is no surprise that the military conducted the war itself as a profit-making enterprise, especially after the capture of
MOSCOW 00005645 003 OF 010
Groznyy. By May 1995 an anti-Dudayev Chechen could lament, “When we invited the Russian army in we expected an army -- not this band of marauders.” Contraband trade in oil, weapons (including direct sales from Russian military stores to the insurgents), drugs, and liquor, plus “protection” for legitimate trade made military service in Chechnya lucrative for those not on the front lines. This profitability ended only with the August 1996 defeat of Russian forces in Groznyy at the hands of the insurgents and the subsequent Russian withdrawal -- a defeat made possible because the Russian forces were hollowed out by their officers’ corruption and pursuit of economic profit.

¶13. (C) Before they lost this “cash-cow” to their enemies, Russian officers went to great lengths to keep their friends from interfering with their profits. On July 30, 1995, the Russians and the Chechen insurgents signed a cease-fire agreement mediated by the OSCE. It would have meant the gradual withdrawal of Russian forces. Enforcing the cease-fire was a Joint Observation Commission (“SNK”). The head of the SNK was General Anatoliy Romanov, a competent and upright officer -- very much a rarity in Chechnya. After two months at this assignment he was severely injured by a mine inside Groznyy, and has been hospitalized ever since. Informed observers believe Romanov’s own colleagues in the Russian forces carried out this murder attempt. The cease-fire, never enforced, broke down.

¶14. (C) When the second war began in September 1999, Russian forces again started profiteering from a trade in contraband oil. Western eyewitnesses reported convoys of Russian army trucks carrying oil leaving Groznyy under cover of night. Eventually the Russian forces reached an understanding with the insurgent fighters. Seeing one such convoy, a Western reporter asked his guerrilla hosts whether the fighters ever attacked such convoys. “No,” the leader replied. “They leave us alone and we leave them alone.”

No Exit for Putin
-----------------

¶15. (C) Sometime between one and two years after Russian forces were unleashed for a second time on Chechnya, Putin appears to have realized that they were not going to deliver a neat victory. That failure would make Putin look weak at home, the human rights violations would estrange the West, and the drain on the Russian treasury would be punishing (this was before the dramatic rise in energy prices). Putin could not negotiate a peace with Maskhadov: he had already rejected that course and could not back down without appearing weak. The Khasavyurt accords that ended the first war were the result of defeat; a new set of accords would be seen as a new defeat. In any case, the history of the war (and the fate of General Romanov) made clear that negotiations without the subordination of the military were a physical impossibility.

¶16. (C) Putin thus found himself without a winning strategy and had to develop one. He has taken a two-pronged approach. One prong was subordinating the military. The appointment of Sergey Ivanov as Defense Minister appears to have been aimed at subjecting the military to the control of the security services. A series of reassignments and firings is the surface evidence of the struggle to subordinate the military in Chechnya. Southern Military District commander Troshev, who led the 1999 invasion, refused outright the first orders transferring him to Siberia in November 2002, and went on television to publicize his mutiny. He was finally removed in February 2003. Chief of the Defense Staff Kvashnin, who had held the Southern District command during the first Chechen war, hung on in a combative relationship with Ivanov for three years until he, too, was replaced in 2004 (and also sent to Siberia as the Presidential Representative in Novosibirsk). The spring 2005 dismissal of General Viktor Kazantsev, Putin’s Plenipotentiary Representative in the Southern Federal District, was reportedly the final link in the chain. Military corruption, and feeding at the trough of Chechnya, has not ended, but the corruption has reportedly been “institutionalized” and more closely regulated in Kremlin-controlled channels.

Chechenization, Ahmad-Haji Kadyrov, and the Salafists
--------------------------------------------- --------

¶17. (C) The second prong of Putin’s strategy was to hand the fighting over to Chechens. “Chechenization” differs from Vietnamization or Iraqification. In those strategies, a loyalist force is strengthened to the point at which it can carry on the fight itself. Chechenization, in contrast, has meant handing Chechnya over to the guerrillas in exchange for their professions of loyalty, the formal retention of Chechnya within the Russian Federation, and an uneasy
MOSCOW 00005645 004 OF 010
cooperation with Federal authorities that in practice is constantly re-negotiated.

¶18. (C) Chechenization is associated with Ahmad-Haji Kadyrov, the insurgent commander and chief Mufti of separatist Chechnya. After he defected to the Russians, Putin put him in charge of the new Russian-installed Chechen administration. Chechenization was reportedly agreed between Kadyrov and Putin personally. But the seeds of the policy were sown by a split in the insurgent ranks dating to the first war. That split that took the form of a religious dispute, though it masked a power struggle among warlords. The split is the direct result of the introduction of a new element: Arab forces espousing a pan-Islamic Jihadist religious ideology.

¶19. (C) The traditional Islam of Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia is based on Sufism, or Islamic mysticism. Though nominally the Sufi orders were the same as those predominant in Central Asia and Kurdistan -- Naqshbandi and Qadiri -- Sufism in the Northeast Caucasus took on a unique form in the 18th-19th century struggle against Russian encroachment. It is usually called “muridism.” Murids were armed acolytes of a hieratic commander, the murshid. Shaykh Shamil, the Naqshbandi murshid who led the mountaineers’ resistance to the Russians until his capture in 1859, was both a spiritual guide and a military commander. He also exercised government powers. The largest Sufi branch (“vird”) in Chechnya is the Kunta-Haji “vird” of the Qadiris, founded and led by the charismatic Chechen missionary Kunta-Haji Kishiyev until his exile by the Russians in 1864. Although the historical Kunta-Haji died two years later, his followers believe that Kunta-Haji lives on in occultation, like the Shi’a Twelfth Imam.

¶20. (C) When Arab fighters joined the Chechen conflict in 1995, they brought with them a “Salafist” doctrine that attempts to emulate the fundamental, “pure” Islam of the Prophet Muhammad and his immediate successors, especially ‘Umar, the second Caliph. It holds that mysticism is one of the “impurities” that crept into Islam after the first four Caliphs, and considers Sufis to be heretics and idolaters. The idea that Kunta-Haji adepts could believe their founder is still alive -- and that they worship the grave of his mother -- is an abomination to Salafis, who believe that marked graves are a form of pagan ancestor worship (Muhammad’s grave in Arabia is not marked).

¶21. (C) Wahhabism-based forms of Islam started appearing in Chechnya by 1991, as Chechens were able to travel and some went to Saudi Arabia for religious study. But the true influx of Salafis (usually lumped together with Wahhabis in Russia) came during the first Chechen war. In February 1995 Fathi ‘Ali al-Shishani, a Jordanian of Chechen descent, arrived in Chechnya. A veteran of the war in Afghanistan, he was now too old to be a combatant, but was a missionary for Salafism. He recruited another Afghan veteran, the Saudi al-Khattab, to come to Chechnya and lead a group of Arab fighters.

¶22. (C) Al-Khattab’s fighters were never a major military factor during the war, but they were the key to Gulf money, which financed power struggles in the inter-war years. Al-Khattab forged close links with Shamil Basayev, the most famous Chechen field commander. Basayev himself was from a Qadiri family, but he was too Sovietized to view Islam as anything more than part of the Chechen and Caucasus identity. In his early interviews, Basayev showed himself to be motivated by Chechen nationalism, not religion, though he paid lip-service -- e.g., proclaiming Sharia law in Vedeno in early 1995 -- to attract Gulf donors. Basayev’s initial interest in al-Khattab, as indeed with other jihadists starting even before the first war, was purely financial.

¶23. (C) After the first war, al-Khattab set up a camp in Serzhen-Yurt (“Baza Kavkaz”) for military and religious indoctrination. It provided one of the few employment opportunities for demobilized Chechen fighters between the wars. Young Chechens had traditionally engaged in seasonal migrant construction work throughout the Soviet Union, but after the first war that was no longer open to them. The closed international borders also precluded smuggling -- another pre-war source of employment and income. The fighters had no money, no jobs, no education, no skills save with their guns, and no prospects. Al-Khattab’s offer of food, shelter and work was inviting. As a result, between the wars Salafism spread quickly in Chechnya. (Al-Khattab also invited missionaries and facilitators who set up shop in Chechnya, Dagestan and Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, whose Kist residents are close relatives of the Chechens.)

Battle Lines in Peacetime
MOSCOW 00005645 005 OF 010
-------------------------

¶24. (C) Chechen society is distinguished by its propensity to unite in war and fragment in peace. It is based on opposing dichotomies: the Vaynakh peoples are divided into Chechens and Ingush; the Chechens are divided into highlanders (“Lameroi”) and lowlanders (“Nokhchi”); and these are further divided into tribal confederations and exogamous tribes (“teyp”) and their subdivisions. Each unit will unite with its opposite to combat a threat from outside. Two lowland teyps, for example, will drop quarrels and unite against an intruding highland teyp. But left to themselves, they will quarrel and split. After the Khasavyurt accords, when Russia left the Chechens alone, the wartime alliance between Maskhadov and Basayev split and the two became enemies. Other warlords lined up on one side or the other -- the Yamadayev brothers of Gudermes, for example, fighting a pitched battle against Basayev in 1999. But the rise of Basayev and al-Khattab undermined Maskhadov’s authority and prevented him from exercising any real power.

¶25. (C) This power struggle took on a religious expression. Since Basayev was associated with al-Khattab and Salafism, Maskhadov positioned himself as champion of traditional Sufism. He surrounded himself with Sufi shaykhs and appointed Ahmad-Haji Kadyrov, a strong adherent of Kunta-Haji Sufism, as Chechnya’s Mufti. Kadyrov had spent six years in Uzbekistan, allegedly at religious seminaries in Tashkent and Bukhara, and seems to have developed links to other enemies of Basayev, including the Yamadayevs.

¶26. (C) The religious division dictated certain policies to each side. The Sufi tradition of Maskhadov and Kadyrov had been associated for over two centuries with nationalist resistance. Basayev, with his new-found commitment to al-Khattab’s Salafism, adopted the Salafi stress on a pan-Islamic community (“umma”) fighting a worldwide jihad, notionally without regard for ethnic or national boundaries. Al-Khattab and Basayev invaded Dagestan in August 1999, avowedly in pursuit of a Caucasus-wide revolt against the Russians. They brought on a Russian invasion that threw Maskhadov out of Groznyy.

Chechenization Begins
---------------------

¶27. (C) The second Russian invasion did not unite the Chechens, as previous pressure had. Perhaps the influence of al-Khattab and his Salafists, as well as the devastation of the first war, had rent the fabric of Chechen society too much to restore traditional unity in the face of the outside threat. (We should also remember that unity is relative. Only a small percentage of the Chechens actually fought in the first war, and many supported the Russians out of disgust with Dudayev.) Kadyrov and the Yamadayevs separately broke with Maskhadov and defected to the Russians. Kadyrov began to recruit from the insurgency non-Salafist nationalist fighters who were highly demoralized and disoriented by the disastrous retreat from Groznyy in late 1999. Kadyrov began to preach what Kunta-Haji had preached after the Russian victory over Imam Shamil in 1859: to survive, the Chechens needed tactically to accept Russian rule. His message struck a chord, and fighters began to defect to his side.

¶28. (C) Putin appears to have stumbled upon Kadyrov, and their alliance seems to have grown out of chance as much as design. But they were able to forge a deal along the following lines: Kadyrov would declare loyalty to Russia and deliver loyalty to Putin; he would take over Maskhadov’s place at the head of the Russian-blessed government of Chechnya; he would try to win over Maskhadov’s fighters, to whom he could promise immunity; he would govern Chechnya with full autonomy, without interference from Russian officials below Putin’s level; and he would try to exterminate Basayev and Al-Khattab.

¶29. (C) If the objective of Chechenization was to win over fighters who would carry on the fight against Basayev and the Arab successors to Khattab (who was poisoned in April 2002), it has to be judged a success. The real fighting has for several years been carried out by Chechen forces who fight the war they want to fight -- not the one the Russian military wants them to -- and who appear happy to kill Russians when they get in the way. The Russian military is “just trying to survive,” as one officer put it. Not all the pro-Moscow Chechen units are composed of former guerrillas. Said-Magomed Kakiyev, commander of the GRU-controlled “West” battalion, has been fighting Dudayev and his successors since 1993. But at the heart of the pro-Moscow effort are fighters who defected from the anti-Moscow insurgency.

The Military Overstays Its Welcome
MOSCOW 00005645 006 OF 010
----------------------------------

¶30. (C) The development of Kadyrov’s fighting force, along with that of the Yamadayev brothers, left the stage clear for a drawdown of Russian troops, certainly by early 2004 (leaving aside a permanent garrison presence). But those troops, still not fully responsive to FSB control, did not want to leave. Especially now that Chechens had taken over increasing parts of the security portfolio, the Russian officers were free to concentrate on their economic activities, and in particular oil smuggling.

¶31. (C) Kadyrov could not be fully autonomous until he -- not the Russians -- controlled Chechnya’s oil. He therefore demanded the creation of a Chechen oil company under his jurisdiction. That would have severely limited the ability of federal forces to divert and smuggle oil. On May 9, 2004, Kadyrov was assassinated by an enormous bomb planted under his seat at the annual VE Day celebration. The killing was officially ascribed to Chechen rebels, but many believe it was the Russian Army’s way of rejecting Kadyrov’s demand. Under the circumstances, one cannot exclude that both versions are true.

In the Reign of Ramzan
----------------------

¶32. (C) Kadyrov’s passing left power in the hands of his son Ramzan, who was officially made Deputy Prime Minister. The President, Alu Alkhanov, was a figurehead put in place because Ramzan was underage. The Prime Minister, Sergey Abramov, was tasked with interfacing between Kadyrov and Moscow below the level of Putin.

¶33. (C) Ramzan Kadyrov has none of the religious or personal prestige that his father had. He is a warlord pure and simple -- one of several, like the Yamadayev family of warlords. He is lucky, however, in that his father left him a sufficient fighting force of ex-rebels. Though they may have been lured away from the insurgency for a variety of reasons, it is money that keeps them. Kadyrov feels little need for ideological or religious prestige, though he makes an occasional statement designed to appeal to Muslims, and makes a point of supporting the pilgrimage to the tomb of Kunta-Haji’s mother in Gunoy, near Vedeno (though that is in part to show he is stronger than Basayev, whose home and power base are in the Vedeno region). Kadyrov must only satisfy his troops, who on occasion have shown that, if offended or not given enough, they are willing to desert along with their kinsmen and return to the mountains to fight against him. He must also guard against the possibility, as some charge, that some of the fighters who went over to Federal forces did so under orders from guerrilla commanders for whom they are still working.

¶34. (C) Kadyrov is also fortunate in that the FSB, with whom he has close ties, has by this time emasculated the military as “prong one” of Putin’s strategy. Kadyrov has slowly but surely also taken over most of the spigots of money that once fed the army, and like his father he has started agitating for overt control over Chechnya’s oil (while prudently ensuring that others take the lead on that in public). Kadyrov is at least as corrupt as the military, but the money he expropriates for himself from Moscow’s subsidies is accepted as his pay-off for keeping things quiet. And indeed Kadyrov and the other warlords are capable of maintaining a certain degree of security in Chechnya. The showy “reconstruction” developments they have built in Groznyy and their home towns demonstrate that the guerrillas cannot or at least do not halt construction and economic activity. Moreover, there is enough security to end Putin’s worries about a secessionist victory. That has allowed Putin to demonstrate a new willingness to be increasingly overt in support of separatism in other conflicts (e.g., Abkhazia, Transnistria) when that advances Russian interests.

¶35. (C) Despite its successes to date, however, Putin’s strategy is far from completed. He still needs to keep forces in the region as a constant reminder to Kadyrov not to backtrack on his professed loyalty to the Kremlin. Ideally, that force would be small but capable of intervening effectively in Chechen internal affairs. That is unrealistic at present. The current forces, reportedly over 25,000, are bunkered and corrupt. When they venture on patrol they are routinely attacked. One attempt to redress this is to position Russian forces close but “over the horizon” in Dagestan, where a major military base is under construction at Botlikh. However, that may only add to the instability of Dagestan. A Duma Deputy from the region told us that locals are vehemently opposed to the new military base, despite the economic opportunities it represents, on grounds that the soldiers will “corrupt the morals of their children.”
MOSCOW 00005645 007 OF 010

¶36. (C) Another approach is the Chechenization of the Federal forces themselves. Recently “North” and “South” battalions of ethnically Chechen special forces -- drawn from Kadyrov’s militia -- were created to supplement the “East” and “West” battalions of Sulim Yamadayev and Said-Magomed Kakiyev. Those formations are officially part of the Russian army. The Kremlin strategy appears to be to check Kadyrov by promoting warlords he cannot control, and to check the FSB from becoming too clientized by allowing the MOD to retain a sphere of influence. In Chechnya, that is a recipe for open fighting. We saw one small instance of that on April 25, when bodyguards of Kadyrov and Chechen President Alkhanov got into a firefight. According to one insider, the clash originated in Kadyrov’s desire to get rid of Alkhanov, who now has close ties with Yamadayev.

What Can We Expect in the Future?
---------------------------------

¶37. (C) The Chechen population is the great loser in this game. It bears an ever heavier burden in shake-downs, opportunity costs from misappropriation of reconstruction funds, and the constant trauma of victimization and abuse -- including abduction, torture, and murder -- by the armed thugs who run Chechnya (reftels). Security under those circumstances is a fragile veneer, and stability an illusion. The insurgency can continue indefinitely, at a low level and without prospects of success, but significant enough to serve as a pretext for the continued rule of thuggery.

¶38. (C) The insurgency will remain split between those who want to carry on Maskhadov’s non-Salafist struggle for national independence and those who follow the Salafi-influenced Basayev in his pursuit of a Caucasus-wide Caliphate. But the nationalists have been undercut by Kadyrov. Despite Sadullayev’s efforts, the insurgency inside Chechnya is not likely to meet with success and will continue to become more Salafist in tone.

¶39. (C) Prospects would be poor for the nationalists even if Kadyrov and/or Yamadayev were assassinated (and there is much speculation that one will succeed in killing the other, goaded on by the FSB which supports Kadyrov and the GRU which supports Yamadayev). The thousands of guerrillas who have joined those two militias have by now lost all ideological incentive. Since they already run the country, they feel themselves, not the Russians, to be the masters, and are not responsive to Sadullayev’s nationalist calls; Basayev’s Salafist message has even less appeal to them. Even if their current leaders are eliminated, all they will need is a new warlord, easily generated from within their organizations, and they can continue on their current paths.

¶40. (C) We expect that Salafism will continue to grow. The insurgents even inside Chechnya are reportedly becoming predominantly Salafist, as opposition on a narrowly nationalist basis offers less hope of success. Salafis will come both from inside Chechnya, where militia excesses outrage the population, and from elsewhere in the Caucasus, where radicalization is proceeding rapidly as a result of the repressive policies of Russia’s regional satraps. There are numerous eyewitness accounts from both Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria that elite young adults and university students are joining Salafist groups. In one case, a terrorist killed in Dagestan was found recently to have defended his doctoral dissertation at Moscow State University -- on Wahhabism in the North Caucasus. These young adults, denied economic opportunities, turn to religion as an outlet. They find, however, that representatives of the traditional religious establishments in these republics, long isolated under the thumb of Soviet restrictions, are ill-educated and ill-prepared to deal with the sophisticated theological arguments developed by generations of Salafists in the Middle East. Most of those who join fundamentalist jamaats do not, of course, become terrorists. But a percentage do, and with that steady source of recruits the major battlefield could shift to outside Chechnya, with armed clashes in other parts of the North Caucasus and a continuation of sporadic but spectacular terrorist acts in Moscow and other parts of Russia.

¶41. (C) Outside Chechnya, the most likely venue for clashes with authorities is Dagestan. Putin’s imposition of a “power vertical” there has upset the delicate clan and ethnic balance that offered a shaky stability since the collapse of Soviet power. He installed a president (the weak Mukhu Aliyev) in place of a 14-member multi-ethnic presidential council. Aliyev will be unable to prevent a ruthless struggle among the elite -- the local way of elaborating a new balance of power. This is already happening, with assassinations of provincial chiefs since Aliyev took over.
MOSCOW 00005645 008 OF 010
In one province in the south of the republic, an uprising against the chief appointed by Aliyev’s predecessor was suppressed by gunfire. Four demonstrators were shot dead, initiating a cycle of blood revenge. In May, in two Dagestani cities security force operations against “terrorists” resulted in major shootouts, with victims among the bystanders and whole apartment houses rendered uninhabitable after hits from the security forces’ heavy weaponry. It is not clear whether the “terrorists” were really religious activists (“Whenever they want to eliminate someone, they call him a Wahhabi,” the MP from Makhachkala told us). But the populace, seeing the deadly over-reaction of the security forces, is feeling sympathy for their victims -- so much so that Aliyev has had to make public condemnations of the actions of the security forces. If this chaos deepens, as appears likely, the Jihadist groups (“jamaats”) may grow, drift further in Basayev’s direction, and feel the need to respond to attacks from the local government.

¶42. (C) Local forces are unreliable in such cases, for clan and blood-feud reasons. Wahhabist jamaats flourished in the strategic ethnically Dargin districts of Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi in the mid-1990s, but Dagestan’s rulers left them alone because moving against them meant altering the delicate ethnic balance between Dargins and Avars. Only when the jamaats themselves became expansive during the Basayev/Khattab invasion from Chechnya in the summer of 1999 did the Makhachkala authorities take action, and then only with the assistance of Federal forces. Ultimately, if clashes break out on a wide scale in Dagestan, Moscow would have to send in the Federal army. Deploying the army to combat destabilization in Dagestan, however, could jeopardize Putin’s hard-won control over it. Unleashing the army against a “terrorist” threat is just that: allowing the army off its new leash. Large-scale army deployments to Dagestan would be especially attractive to the officers, since the border with Azerbaijan offers lucrative opportunities for contraband trade. The army’s presence, in turn, would further destabilize Dagestan and all but guarantee chaos.

¶43. (C) Indeed, destabilization is the most likely prospect we see when we look further down the road to the next decade. Chechenization allows bellicose Chechen leaders to throw their weight around in the North Caucasus even more than an independent Chechnya would. A case in point is the call on April 24 by Chechen Parliament Speaker Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov for unification of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan, implicitly under Chechen domination (the one million Chechens would constitute a plurality in the new republic of 4.5 million). The call soured slowly normalizing relations between Chechnya and Ingushetia, according to a Chechen official in Moscow, though the Dagestanis treated the proposal as a joke.

What Should Putin Be Doing?
---------------------------

¶44. (C) Right now Putin’s policy towards Chechnya is channeled through Kadyrov and Yamadayev. Putin’s Plenipotentiary Representative (PolPred) for the Southern Federal District, Dmitriy Kozak, appears to have little influence. He was not even invited when Putin addressed the new Parliament in Groznyy last December. Putin needs to stop taking Kadyrov’s phone calls and start working more through his PolPred and the government’s special services. He also needs to increase Moscow’s civilian engagement with Chechnya.

¶45. (C) Putin should continue to reform the military and the other Power Ministries. Having asserted control through Sergey Ivanov, Putin has denied the military certain limited areas in which it had pursued criminal activity -- but left most of its criminal enterprises untouched. He has done little if anything to form the discipline of a modern army deployable to impose order in unstable regions such as the North Caucasus. Recent hazing incidents show that discipline is still equated with sadism and brutality. The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) has undergone even less reform. The Chechenization of the security services, despite its obvious drawbacks, has shown that locals can carry out security tasks more effectively than Russian troops.

¶46. (C) Lastly, Putin should realize that his current policy course is not preventing the growth of militant, armed Jihadism. Rather, every time his subordinates try to douse the flames, the fire grows hotter and spreads farther. Putin needs to check the firehose; he may find they are spraying the fire with gasoline. He needs to work out a credible strategy, employing economic and cultural levers, to deal with the issue of armed Jihadism. Some Russians do “get it.” An advisor to Kozak gave a lecture recently that showed he understands in great detail the issues surrounding the growth
MOSCOW 00005645 009 OF 010
of militant jihadism. Kozak himself made clear in a recent conversation with the Ambassador that he appreciates clearly the deep social and economic roots of Russia’s problems in the North Caucasus -- and the need to employ more than just security measures to solve them. We have not, however, seen evidence that consciousness of the true problem has yet made its way to Moscow from Kozak’s office in Rostov-on-Don.

¶47. (C) We need also to be aware that Putin’s strategy is generating a backlash in Moscow. Ramzan Kadyrov’s excesses, his Putin-given immunity from federal influence, and the special laws that apply to Chechnya alone (such as the exemption of Chechens from military service elsewhere in Russia) are leading to charges by some Moscow observers that Putin has allowed Chechnya de facto to secede. Putin is strong enough to weather such criticism, but the ability of a successor to do so is less clear.

Is There a Role for the U.S.?
-----------------------------

¶48. (C) Russia does not consider the U.S. a friend in the Caucasus, and our capacity to influence Russia, whether by pressure, persuasion or assistance, is small. What we can do is continue to try to push the senior tier of Russian officials towards the realization that current policies are conducive to Jihadism, which threatens broader stability as well; and that shifting the responsibility for victimizing and looting the people from a corrupt, brutal military to corrupt, brutal locals is not a long-term solution.

¶49. (C) Making headway with Putin or his successor will require close cooperation with our European allies. They, like the Russians, tend to view the issue through a strictly counter-terrorism lens. The British, for example, link their “dialogue with Islam” closely with their counter-terrorist effort (on which they liaise with the Russians), reinforcing the conception of a monolithic Muslim identity predisposed to terrorism. That reinforces the Russian view that the problem of the North Caucasus can be consigned to the terrorism basket, and that finding a solution means in the first instance finding a better way to kill terrorists.

¶50. (C) We and the Europeans need to put our proposals of assistance to the North Caucasus in a different context: one that recognizes the role of religion in North Caucasus cultures, but also emphasizes our interest in and support for the non-religious aspects of North Caucasus society, including civil society. This last will need exceptional delicacy, as the Russians and the local authorities are convinced that the U.S. uses civil society to foment “color revolutions” and anti-Russian regimes. There is a danger that our civil society partners could become what Churchill called “the inopportune missionary” who, despite impeccable intentions, sets back the larger effort. That need not be the case.

¶51. (C) Our interests call for an understanding of the context and a positive emphasis. We cannot expect the Russians to react well if we limit our statements to condemnations of Kadyrov, butcher though he may be. We need to find targeted areas in which we can work with the Russians to get effective aid into Chechnya. At the same time, we need to be on our guard that our efforts do not appear to constitute U.S. support for Kremlin or local policies that abuse human rights. We must also avoid a shift that endorses the Kremlin assertion that there is no longer a humanitarian crisis in Chechnya, which goes hand-in-hand with the Russian request that the UN and its donors end humanitarian assistance to the region and increase technical and “recovery” assistance. We and other donors need to maintain a balance between humanitarian and recovery assistance.

¶52. (C) Aside from the political optic, a rush to cut humanitarian assistance before recovery programs are fully up and running would leave a vacuum into which jihadist influences would leap. The European Commission Humanitarian Organization, the largest provider of aid, shows signs of rushing to stress recovery over humanitarian assistance; we should not follow suit. Humanitarian assistance has been effective in relieving the plight of Chechen IDPs in Ingushetia. It has been less effective inside Chechnya, where the GOR and Kadyrov regime built temporary accommodation centers for returning IDPs, but have not passed on enough resources to secure a reasonable standard of living. International organizations are hampered by limited access to Chechnya out of security concerns, but where they are able to operate freely they have made a great difference, e.g., WHO’s immunization program.

¶53. (C) Resources aimed at Chechnya often wind up in private pockets. Though international assistance has a better record
MOSCOW 00005645 010 OF 010
than Russian assistance and is more closely monitored, we must also be wary of assistance that lends itself to massive corruption and state-sponsored banditry in Chechnya: too much of the money loaned in a microfinance program there, for example, would be expropriated by militias. Presidential Advisor Aslakhanov told us last December that Kadyrov expropriates for himself one third off the top of all assistance. Therefore, while we continue well-monitored humanitarian assistance inside Chechnya, we should broaden our efforts for “recovery” to other parts of the region that are threatened by jihadism: Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Ingushetia, and possibly Karachayevo-Cherkessia. Among these, we need to try to steer our assistance ($11.5 million for FY 2006) to regional officials, such as President Kanokov of Kabardino-Balkaria, who have shown that they are willing to introduce local reforms and get rid of the brutal security officials whose repressive acts feed the Jihadist movement.

¶54. (C) We also need to coordinate closely with Kozak (or his successor), both to strengthen his position vis--vis the warlords and to ensure that everything we do is perceived by the Russians as transparent and not aimed at challenging the GOR’s hold on a troubled region. The present opposite perception by the GOR may be behind its reluctance to cooperate with donors, the UN and IFIs on long-term strategic engagement in the region. For example, the GOR has delayed for months a 20-million-Euro TACIS program designed with GOR input.

¶55. (C) The interagency paper “U.S. Policy in the North Caucasus -- The Way Forward” provides a number of important principles for positive engagement. We need to emphasize programs in accordance with those principles which are most practical under current and likely future conditions, and which can be most effective in targeting the most vulnerable, where federal and local governments lack the will and capacity to assist, and in combating the spread of jihadism both inside Chechnya and throughout the North Caucasus region. There are areas -- for example, health care and child welfare -- in which assistance fits neatly with Russian priorities, containing both humanitarian and recovery components.

¶56. (C) We can also emphasize programs that help create jobs and job opportunities: microfinance (where feasible), credit cooperatives and small business development, and educational exchanges. U.S. sponsored training programs for credit cooperatives and government budgeting functions have been very popular. Exchanges, through the IVP program and Community Connections, are an especially effective way of exposing future leaders to the world beyond the narrow propaganda they have received, and to generate a multiplier effect in enterprise. In addition to the effects the programs themselves can have in providing alternatives to religious extremism, such assistance can also have a demonstration effect: showing the Russians that improved governance and delivery of services can be more effective in stabilizing the region than attempts to impose order by force.

¶57. (C) Lastly, we need to look ahead in our relations with Azerbaijan and Georgia to ensure that they become more active and effective players in helping to contain instability in the North Caucasus. That will serve their own security interests as well. Salafis need connections to their worldwide network. Strengthening border forces is more important than ever. Azerbaijan, especially, is well placed to trade with Dagestan and Chechnya. The ethnic Azeris, Lezghis and Avars living on both sides of the Azerbaijan-Dagestan border and friendly relations between Russia and Azerbaijan are tools for promoting stability.

Conclusion
--------

¶58. (C) The situation in the North Caucasus is trending towards destabilization, despite the increase in security inside Chechnya. The steps we believe Putin must take are those needed to reverse that trend, and the efforts we have outlined for ourselves are premised on a desire to promote a lasting stabilization built on improved governance, a more active civil society, and steps towards democratization. But we must be realistic about Russia’s willingness and ability to take the necessary steps, with or without our assistance. Real stabilization remains a low probability. Sound policy on Chechnya is likely to continue to founder in the swamp of corruption, Kremlin infighting and succession politics. Much more probable is a new phase of instability that will be felt throughout the North Caucasus and have effects beyond. BURNS

Let's Not Be Beastly to the Hun

2010-10-24T21:20:00.002-04:00

Actually, the song is "Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans". Noel Coward wrote it in 1943. The humor apparently didn't come across on the radio, the BBC banned it.

But here it is:

Don't let's be beastly to the Germans
When our victory is ultimately won,
It was just those nasty Nazis
Who persuaded them to fight,
And their Beethoven and Bach
Are really far worse than their bite!

Let's be meek to them
And turn the other cheek to them,
And try to bring out their latent sense of fun.
Let's give them full air parity
And treat the rats to charity
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun!

We must be kind,
And with an open mind
We must endevour to find a way
To let the German know that, when the war is over
They are not the ones who'll have to pay.

We must be sweet,
And tactful and discreet,
And when they've suffered defeat
We mustn't let them feel upset,
Or ever get the feeling
That we're cross with them or hate them,
Our future policy must be to reinstate them.

Don't let's be beastly to the Germans
When we've definitely got them on the run.
Let us treat them very kindly
As we would a valued friend;
We might send them some bishops
As a form of lease and lend.

Let's be sweet to them,
And day by day repeat to them
That sterilisation simply isn't done.
Let's help the dirty swine again
To occupy the Rhine again,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun!

We must be just
And win their love and trust,
And in addition we must be wise,
And ask the conquered lands
To join our hands to aid them,
That would be a wonderful surprise!

For many years
They've been in floods of tears,
Because the poor little dears
Have been so wronged,
And only longed
To cheat the world,
Deplete the world,
And beat the world to blazes;
This is the moment when we ought to sing their praises!

Don't let's be beastly to the Germans,
For you can't deprive a gangster of his gun!
Though they've been a little naughty
To the Czechs and Poles and Dutch,
I don't suppose those countries
Really minded very much.

Let's be free with them
And share the BBC with them,
We mustn't prevent them basking in the sun.
Let's soften their defeat again
And build their blasted fleet again,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun!

Don't let's be beastly to the Germans
When the age of peace and plenty has begun.
We must send them steel and oil and coal
And everything they need,
For their peaceable intentions
Can be always guaranteed!

Let's employ with them,
A sort of "strength through joy" with them,
They're better than us at honest manly fun.
Let's let them feel they're swell again
And bomb us all to hell again,
But don't let's be beastly to the Hun!

Carrington, Pt. 2

2010-08-26T17:16:00.005-04:00

Carly met her father, her uncle Max and her brothers Sam and Josh when she was half-way back to the homestead. All were carrying rifles or shotguns, which told Carly that they had heard the shot she had fired and were coming to investigate. Uncle Max was very strict about not using firearms for hunting, only for emergencies, such as fighting. “Bows for hunting, guns for killing,” Uncle Max liked to say.

The concern on her father’s face lessened somewhat when he saw that she was alive and walking. “We heard a shot,” he said.

She nodded. “Frank Anderson wanted to rape me.”

“You get him?”

She nodded again and pointed back up the trail. “He’s a few hundred yards from the river.”

Her father looked at her gravely. “Go on back home with the water. Boys, you go with her, get a couple of shovels, a pickaxe, a heavy rake and meet your uncle and me back up near the river. Don’t leave your guns home.”

Uncle Max added: “Don’t any of you say anything to anyone else. There will be consequences if you do.” When Uncle Max spoke of “consequences”, that meant anything from extra work to an ass-whipping. Carly and her brothers were ten yards down the trail when Uncle Max added: “You come back with them, Carly.”

The three were out of earshot of their father and uncle when Sam asked: “So what happened, Carly?”

Carly shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

She didn’t. It took them 20 minutes to walk home. Carly slowed them up a little as she was carrying the water. Neither one of her brothers offered to help her with the load. When they got home, Carly took the water to the tank. There, at least, Sam helped her pour the water into the tank. She had almost finished putting the yoke and jugs away when her mother came up behind her. “Carly, come help me with the baking.”

Carly shook her head. “Can’t, Mom. Dad and Uncle Max told me to go back with Josh and Sam.”

Her mother looked sharply at Carly’s face. “What happened, dear? Are you all right?”

“I’ll be fine, Mom. But you have to ask Dad.” Carly’s mom moved to hug her daughter, but Carly shook her off, muttering that she had work to do. She went to the gun room, picked up her rifle, a .30-30, made sure it was loaded, grabbed some extra shells, and slung the rifle. Josh and Sam were waiting for her in the yard. Josh handed her a rake and a shovel to carry; he and Sam had two pickaxes and two more shovels. They set off back down the trail to the river.

----------------------------

Uncle Max and Carly’s father, Bill, were examining the body. Max looked at the hole in Frank’s face. “Your daughter’s a pretty good shot,” he commented. “Doubt if ol’ Frank here felt a thing.” He turned Frank’s head and saw the large exit wound in the back of his head. “Nope, he probably didn’t.”

Bill was of the opinion that Frank should have suffered terribly, but he kept quiet. “How far away you think she was?’

Max looked closer at Frank’s face. “No powder marks on him, it wasn’t too close.” Max noted that there were brain and blood spatters in one direction. He stood up and moved slowly down the trail in the opposite direction, looking at the scuff marks in the dry dirt. “Looks like about here’s where she was.” He looked back at Frank’s corpse. “Fifty feet or so? Doubt if Frank would have stood still and let her take a bead on him, so she had to have shot quick. Damn fine shooting.” Max looked around. “Let’s find a spot for him.”

--------------------------------

By the time that Carly and her brothers returned, their father and uncle had found a likely spot and had dragged Frank over to it. Uncle Max ordered Josh to go further down the trail to the rise, hide, and hotfoot it back if he saw anyone coming. Then the four of them began the work of digging the hole. It took them four hours to dig a hole five foot deep; two working, two resting and on lookout.

They were ready to toss Frank into his grave. Bill said: “You think we should strip him?”

Max thought it over. “Yeah, we can use his stuff for mending and patching. Leave him his underwear, though. And toss his hat and knife in, those are kind of distinctive.” He turned to Carly. “You do it.”

Uncle Max’s tone was no-nonsense, Carly did what she was told. She bundled up Frank’s boots and clothes in a bundle made from his shirt. Then they rolled Frank into the grave. They threw in a layer of dirt, then some heavy rocks to discourage scavengers from disinterring Frank, then they filled the grave, occasionally stopping to tamp down the dirt layers.

When they finished, the rest of the dirt was scattered about. They raked over the grave to remove marks and then threw some branches and leaf litter onto it. They also raked over the spatter from the shooting. Bill sent Sam to go find Josh and when the two returned, they all went home.

Nobody missed Frank. Nobody in the homesteads in the area ever mentioned him. His family didn't go looking for him.

It didn’t bother Carly at all. Too much bad shit had happened since the Day and shooting Frank was, to her, a minor thing.

Kathy Had a Blog

2010-07-15T20:51:00.004-04:00

(Flash fiction entry to this challenge)

Kathy had a blog. It was a bit of an adult one in content, for she was very much into the “alternative lifestyle”.

All right, let’s be honest: Kathy was kinky. The blog was open to all, it was on a website that Kathy owned through an offshore shell company. The website, which hosted in a small island nation, provided for a fair number of sexual offerings, all for a fee, of course. The website had some rigorous security protocols, for which Kathy paid a lot. The website made her more than that. A lot more than that. She had a nice house on a large piece of land in the North Carolina hills; the website made the mortgage payment and more.

Kathy thought that she was pretty careful. But one day, some asshole began hassling her about what she did to make a living. It started with snide comments on her blog about the “whore of Babylon”. Kathy was not religious and her first thought that the writer was referring to Donald Rumsfeld’s deal in the `80s with Saddam Hussein. But the comments soon became nastier and more personal.

She deleted them as fast as she could. Then she put on full comment moderation. The asshole retaliated by coordinating with some of his zealot buddies, they tried to take down her site with a denial-of-service attack and they came close to doing it. Her IT consultants set up mirror sites in other countries to prevent that from ever succeeding.

The asshole then ratcheted matters up. He began sending her e-mails with more and more personal data. When he sent her an e-mail with her real name and address, Kathy went to the cops. They were amused, at best, and told her that until the clown did something other than send her nasty e-mails, to just ignore him.

When she found her cat on her front porch, gutted from sternum to anus, Kathy stopped being scared. She got mad. The obvious steps were to install an alarm system, better locks, and start carrying her Glock 23. Her daddy had always told her that the way to win a fight was to not wait for her enemy to strike, but to take it to her opponent.

So Kathy did.

She set up another bank account in the Cayman Islands. Then she went to an Internet café and researched hackers. She found a hacking forum, joined it and posted that she was being cyber-stalked, she wanted to know who the guy was, and that she would pay for the information. She struck a deal. In four days, she had the name and information she needed. She put the agreed-upon amount into the bank account and gave her hacker the account number and transfer codes.

An attorney friend of hers in Boston sent the asshole a cease-and-desist letter.

Asshole sent her a truly threatening e-mail, along the lines of “no attorney can stop me from bringing down the wrath of the heavens upon you, you whore.” That pretty much was the opening salutation. It went downhill from there.

Kathy contacted her hacker friend and asked if he could hack into asswipe’s computer and not leave any traces. He said he thought so. Kathy told him what she wanted to have done. The hacker demurred, he was worried about his legal risk. But he vouched for her to a group of Ukrainians in Kiev, who were more than willing to look into doing what Kathy wanted.

Two weeks later, they e-mailed her hotmail account to tell her they could do the job. Kathy set up another bank account in the Cayman Islands and had her agent there manually deposit the down payment, in cash. (Kathy was no fool, she was not willing to do a wire transfer with hackers of this caliber on the other side.)

-----------------------------------------------------

AP WIRE. Virginia Beach, VA.

A third year law student at Regent University was arrested early yesterday morning in a raid conducted by FBI agents and local police. Sources in law enforcement say that the student had over one hundred images of child pornography on his laptop computer.

Possession of child pornography is a Federal crime, punishable by up to twenty years in prison.

The name of the law student was withheld by police.

-----------------------------------------------------

Kathy had her agent in the Cayman Islands deposit the rest of the fee for the Ukrainians. She added a 20% gratuity.

Carrington

2010-04-16T21:55:00.004-04:00

Carly walked down the long path that led from her family’s home to the river. She lightly carried a wooden yoke. Dangling from either end of the yoke was a woven sling. In each sling was an empty clear plastic jug with a blue top. Carly also carried a bucket with a funnel that had a screen. The well at the house was not providing a lot of water these days. It was necessay to supplement the well water with water from the river, which was a mile or so away.

It was a coldish day. Carly wore work boots, jeans and a sweatshirt. Over that was a knee-length denim coat that had been lined with flannel. A wool watch cap and gloves completed her ensemble. There was nothing stylish about it, only functional. The concept of “fashion” had disappeared years ago. Surviving was what people worried about.

She reached the river, which was sort of a glorified stream. Carly set up her equipment. Her routine was to draw a bucket of water, let it sit for a minute, pour off what was on top and then slowly pour three-quarters of what was left in the bucket through the funnel and into the jugs. The last bit of water was dumped back into the river. Then Carly would rinse out the bucket, back-wash the screen and repeat the process. It probably took her a half-hour to fill the jugs.

Carly shouldered the now heavy yoke, picked up the pail and the funnel and started back for home. She was about three hundred yards from the river, moving through a patch of woods, when she thought she heard something. She stopped and listened. She heard another noise. Carly didn’t think it was an animal.

“Who’s there,” she asked in a quiet tone.

A man wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, a denim jacket, boots and a brimmed hat stepped out from behind some trees about sixty feet away.

“Frank,” she said. It was a statement, not a greeting.

“Hi, Carly, it’s been a long time.” Frank had been a rough kid, back when the high school was still open. He looked rougher now.

Carly asked: “What do you want?” She was pretty sure she knew what he wanted.

“Well, now, I thought we might have a bit of fun, you and I.” The way Frank answered her made it clear to Carly what sort of fun he had in mind.

“Frank Anderson, I don’t have time for your foolishness.”

Frank started walking towards her. As he walked, he reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a heavy folding knife, the “commando” kind, which could be opened with one-hand and had a blade that locked open. The click was audible as he flicked it open. “Well, that just makes it even more fun for me,” he said with a look that was both predatory and anticipatory.

Carly’s right hand barely seemed to move as she apparently made a large caliber revolver appear from nowhere. Frank had time to widen his eyes in surprise as his brain registered the sight of a weapon being pointed at him and the sound of the hammer of the revolver being brought back.

The heavy lead slug from Carly’s pistol caught him low in the center of his forehead. He was dead before his knees buckled.

Carly stood stock-still, listening for any movement, any sign that Frank was not alone. She then removed the fired cartridge case, replaced it with a fresh round, re-holstered her sidearm and resumed her trip back home.

She would send her brothers to bury Frank.

Hilary's Scars

2010-04-01T06:59:00.010-04:00

(A response to this post)

Hilary took her shower that morning as she had for the last three years- with the lights of the bathroom off. She did not turn the lights on until after she had taken her shower, toweled herself off and put on her robe. Hilary changed clothes and got dressed either with the lights off or her eyes closed. When she went to the gym, she came and went in her exercise attire, she never showered there.

The reason was simple, really. Below where her cleavage started, there were scars. Scars crisscrossed her once gorgeous breasts. There was a deeper scar in her abdomen and there were surgical scars in the same part of her body. Scars from where surgeons had cut in. Scars from drains.

Three years ago, Hilary had been dancing at a nightclub. A man tried to dance with her, she spurned him. He grabbed her arm, she threw a drink in his face. He tried to hit her and she kneed him with some force. The bouncers ran him out the hard way.

He grabbed Hilary two blocks away from the club and Hilary fought back. He knocked her senseless, carved up her breasts, raped her and then stabbed her in the belly. He left her for dead in the alley but Hilary didn’t accommodate him. She dragged herself into the street and was found by a passing hack, who called 911. The doctors were more interested in making sure that they stopped the bleeding and repaired her insides rather than worrying about minimizing the scarring. And scar up she did.

There was no DNA recovered from the attacker. There were no security cameras at the bar. Hilary was very good with faces. She never forgot anyone she met. She sure as hell didn’t forget him. But all the cops would have had to go on was her memory. Hilary told the cops that she never saw his face. She didn't tell the cops that the jerk on the dance floor had attacked her. After Hilary gave the detective on the second interview her "I'm sorry, I don't remember anything" schtick, the detective gave Hilary his card, asked her to call if her memory returned, and he moved on to other cases.

Hilary had friends who were willing to do her favors and then forget that they had done them. One of them had pulled all of the credit-card slips from the nightclub for the three weeks prior to the night she was nearly killed. Another cross-referenced the credit card slips with records from the Registry of Motor Vehicles. Hilary was given copies of those licenses. She had a match.

Hilary now had a name. She had an address. Once she was out of the hospital, as recovered as she was going to ever be, she began to plan. First, she confirmed that the photo on the license was indeed the attacker.

Hilary's attacker likely saw Hilary a number of times after she had recovered. Whenever he did, however, Hilary was always wearing large glasses and she had her hair pulled back in a ponytail. Hilary had 20/15 vision and never wore her hair pulled back.

Every morning during the work week, between 11 and 11:30, Hilary’s attacker walked from his office to a coffee shop. The trip took two blocks. Hilary noticed that there was a nondescript and old brick apartment building across the street just before the coffee shop, which offered furnished rooms and “move-in” specials.

Hilary took a furnished room. Paying double the security deposit, in cash, worked to waive the credit check. Hilary wore leather gloves the entire time and told the apartment superintendent that her hands were damaged “from an accident of industry.” Hilary told the super that her name was Ivana Petrova. She had ID in that name. He didn’t ask to see her ID, the Benjamins that Hilary gave him were all that he needed to see.

Hilary never stayed overnight in the room. The super seemed to think that she had rented a tryst-pad and Hilary let him think that. The few times that Hilary spoke with the super, she spoke in a very correct, very formal and almost stilted manner. The super complemented her on her English, he thought she was Russian and Hilary let him think that. Hilary paid the monthly rent in cash. The super never gave her a lease or receipts and she didn't ask for either. She assumed that the super was skimming the cash and that there would be no record of the apartment being rented. She was right.

Hilary had other friends. Friends who had the ability to modify hardware in ways that were heavily frowned upon. Which is why, one day, Hilary’s attacker, who was returning to his office and carrying a venti latte with extra foam, dropped dead on the sidewalk from a heavy 9mm bullet which had been very quietly fired from a third-floor room across the street and which had smashed into his skull.

He never knew why.

After all, confronting the target of one’s vengeance was an act of an amateur.

For Hilary was on a busman’s holiday.

An Amazing Life

2010-01-21T07:15:00.001-05:00

Thomas Lanman Hine

Old Lyme - Thomas Lanman Hine died in his sleep at Bride Brook nursing home on Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010, following a long illness.

Tom was born Nov. 21, 1918, in Berkeley, Calif. He was the son of Dr. Thomas Buck Hine and Faith Lanman Hine.

Raised primarily in Cambridge, Mass., Tom graduated from Harvard in 1940, with a degree in engineering. He worked briefly for Bethlehem Steel, but knew World War II was coming and soon joined the Navy.

Tom had earned his pilot's license in 1939, and became a Naval aviator. Sent first to the Navy's aviation training center in Jacksonville, Fla., he was first in his class and was kept on as an instructor. In early 1943, he was sent to the South Pacific, where he flew PBY "Black Cat" Catalina seaplanes on night missions for the next two years. Awarded two Distinguished Flying Crosses and the Air Medal, Tom was instead most proud of the two Presidential Unit Citations presented to his crew and Patrol Squadron 11.

This was typical of a man who thought first of others and who was innately egalitarian. Shot down at night one mile off shore from a Japanese held position he and his crew had been bombing for over a month, Tom took a vote as to whether they should paddle their rafts toward the island or away. It was unanimous to paddle away. Three days later they were rescued, 110 miles from where they went down. The Army Air Corp seaplane pilot who found them, purely by chance while on another mission, had never taken off in the open sea, so Tom took the controls and brought his entire crew home safely.

Returning from the war at Christmastime 1944, Tom served as a test pilot at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station. In 1946 he entered the Naval Academy's graduate program in electronics engineering. Tom's Academy roommate invited him along to meet the nurse he had been dating. Tom was introduced to Helen Tappan, and when his roommate transferred overseas, Tom gave her a call himself. They married on Dec. 20, 1947, in the Naval Academy chapel, in Annapolis, Md. The groom calmly took a final examination in advanced mathematics the morning of his wedding day. Tom and Helen celebrated their 62nd anniversary last December.

Tom spent 21 years in the Navy. As a test pilot in the 1950s, he was one of the very first men ever to fly a jet aircraft, he did multiple tours on aircraft carriers, and served in naval intelligence posts at the Pentagon, before retiring as a Commander in 1962. Tom then went to work for Grumman Corporation, the builders of some of his favorite planes. An aerospace engineer with expertise in optics, Tom invented the 'heads up' targeting display that helped to make the F-14 the Navy's primary fighter plane. The optics group he led also developed crucial components of the Lander used when men touched down on the moon. Meanwhile, in his spare time he and a partner bought a 1947 Bonanza light plane and he continued flying and working as a flight instructor.

Tom loved flying. Before he finally had to relinquish his pilot's license, in 2003, at the start of his final illness, Tom had flown, as pilot, more than 15,000 hours, nearly one and three-quarters years spent entirely in the air. He crashed four times and walked away after each, not the least put off about going up the next time. He began work on a homebuilt plane with his good friend and fellow pilot, Bob Taylor, who he hoped will one day fly it for both of them. A member of the AOPA, the Experimental Aircraft Association, and even the United Flying Octogenarians (the UFOs), Tom Hine was well known to local pilots and will be missed by many.

When not in the air, Tom was with his family. His endless patience and seeming immunity to anger, along with a witty sense of humor and love of puns, made him a great husband, father and friend. In addition to his beloved wife, Helen, Tom leaves three children, Peter Hine and his wife, Candis, of Amston, Conn., Pamela Hine of Old Lyme, and Nancy Juliano and her husband, Frank, of Milford. He will be greatly missed by his five grandchildren and their families as well, Thomas Hine of New York City, Katherine Hine Smith and her husband, Corey, of Middlebury, Conn., Theodore Hine and his wife, Gwyneth, of Amston, Alexander Hine of Old Lyme, and Peter Hine of Old Lyme. Tom was thrilled to be great-grandfather to Madeline and Ian Smith, and Luther Thomas Hine.

Tom retired from Grumman in 1979, and he and Helen built their home in Old Lyme, three miles from Tom's much-loved twin brother, Jonathan Hine. Though Jack predeceased him in 2007, Tom continued to enjoy the company and affection of Jack's widow, Janet Simpson Hine, and his nephews, Charles Hine, William Hine, and Jack Hine, and their families. Tom is also survived by his beloved sister, Margaret Gean, of Keller, Tex.

A memorial service celebrating Tom's amazing life will be held at 4 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010, at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme. Interment of his ashes, next to his twin, will take place in the spring at Old Lyme's Duck River Cemetery.

On Hunting

2009-12-01T09:29:00.001-05:00

It has been a very long time since I last took to the woods with a rifle. I used to hunt fairly regularly. But my opinions on it have not changed.

As I see it, there are three broad categories to hunting: Trophy hunting, meat hunting and varmint hunting. To my mind, the latter two categories are honorable, the first is not.

Meat hunting is honorable, far more honorable than going to the supermarket and buying a shrink-wrapped portion of a critter. The hunter, at least, is intimately familiar with where his or her meat is coming from, as opposed to the supermarket shopper, who usually has barely an idea of what a steer even looks like, let alone how the steers are treated. In some rural areas, the only meat that appears on the kitchen table was taken by hunting.

Varmint hunting is done to control population levels or to stop predation. It can be combined with meat hunting, such as in areas where the numbers of deer have exploded. There once was, and may still be, a predator control law in Vermont that was passed in the 1850s, when the state was a major producer of wool. It allowed farmers to kill predators by any means other than nuclear weapons, which were not permitted only because they didn't exist back then.

I have problems with trophy hunting. It would seem to me that going out and deliberately removing from the population the fittest adult male members of any species is counter to the long-term health of that species. It would be like identifying the smartest students in a college and then killing them so that someone could have a collection of the heads of valedictorians.

I've done varmint shooting to control predators and pests. Not much to say about that, it's what needed to be done at the time. Electric fencing around the chicken coop worked well, too, and was far more reliable.

Opening Day of whitetail season in some states is an unofficial holiday. I lived in one of those states for a time and would go back for years afterwards. We'd meet at the house of a friend who lived adjacent to a forest. It would be full dark, around 5:30 AM. Eggs, bacon, toast and coffee were what was prepared and served up in copious amounts. Everyone pitched in to help prepare, cook and clean up, so that the pans and dishes were washed and the kitchen was clean when it was time to go into the woods. (For those hunters who did not have a place to go for breakfast or who didn't want to make one, the volunteer firehouse served a hunters' breakfast on Opening Day, beginning at 4:30.)

As soon as it became light enough to see, we would make our way into the woods to where each one of us wanted to be and wait for sunrise, which was just after 7AM. Usually, nobody would see a buck, only does. I've had does walk right by me and look at me as if to say "we know you can't shoot us." Every few years, somebody would manage to shoot a buck, which would be dressed out, taken to the game-check station and then butchered.

The bucks were smart as hell. You wouldn't seen them out in the fields during the day from just before the beginning of bow season, through rifle season and then to the end of muzzle-loader season. After hunting season was over, you'd see bucks during the day. One year, I was out in the woods several days after Opening Day. I managed to get a glimpse of a buck and he saw me at the same time. He ran for a few seconds, bounding through the woods, and then dropped to the ground, completely invisible against the leaf litter, rocks and sticks. I tried walking him down, but whenever I got close, he'd bound up and run, weaving through the trees. He seemed to know how long it would take me to bring up the rifle and get a bead on him, for just as soon as I managed to swing the front sight onto him, he'd drop to the ground and disappear. That buck, a six-pointer, also seemed to work it so that the one time I had a clear shot, there was a house down in a valley which was in the line of fire. I gave up then, it was almost sunset.

Another year, it was cold, lightly snowing, and I was in the woods with a Garand.[1] I had been sitting on a fallen tree, which had come to rest against another tree, with the rifle in my lap. It was sort of out of the snow and it was pretty comfortable. A red squirrel's curiosity overcame its caution and it came out to investigate me. It walked down that log, jumped up onto the handguard of the rifle and looked me over. I guess it was satisfied that I posed no threat to it, for it jumped back onto the log and sauntered away.

Snow in November is almost magical, as it often falls with still air. The flakes of a Fall snow are usually fat ones that drift down among the trees and deposit the first coat of white of the season. There is little traffic noise out there, just an occasional vehicle on a paved road over a mile in the distance and the falling snow muffles even that sound. The quiet is only broken by the faint whine of a passing airliner, six miles above. The woods are second or third growth, that entire area was clear-cut in the 18th and early 19th Centuries for sheep and crop farming. The woods began to come back after the Civil War and the building of the railroads, when farmers went to the Midwest to farm land that was neither hilly or filled with rocks. Now there are probably more woodlands in New England since the time of the Revolution.

Several minutes after the squirrel left, I heard heavy steps in the leaves on the floor of the woods. (By Spring, the leaves would have composted themselves and one could move through the woods silently, but that was almost impossible to do in the Fall.) I shifted around, pointed the rifle in that direction, keeping my finger out of the trigger guard.[2] It was a buck and one of decent size, a six pointer. I snugged the butt of the rifle into my shoulder, quietly disengaged the safety and settled the front sight on his chest. As I took up the slack of the two-stage trigger, the thought came to me, or something spoke to me, but either way, the message was clear: "You don't really need the meat." I took my finger off the trigger, thought "bang, I've got you" and clicked the safety on, making no attempt to hide the metallic snick. The buck whirled his head around, saw me, and took off.

The times I went deer hunting after that were for social reasons. I left the Garand at home and carried a 6" Smith Model 29, telling everyone: "Hell, I never see a deer anyway, so I might as well carry something light." But the real reason was that since I wasn't going to shoot anything, the revolver was just for show.

[1]I had some five-round clips for my Garand, which made it legal to use.

[2]Yes, I know, you're supposed to verify your target before you point a gun at it. But if you make that much movement in those woods within eyeshot of a deer, it will see you and be gone before you can fire.

On Insurgency and the Afghan War

2009-09-06T19:12:00.003-04:00

I claim no expertise in what I have written. These are only my thoughts. I probably won’t go through the effort of sourcing things, thought I might come back and do it later.

I think the Afghan War was winnable. I say that in the past tense, as I am not at all certain that it can be won now.

A successful insurgency has three principal legs of support. They are: 1) A base of operations that the government cannot reach; 2) support of a foreign entity; and 3) popular support. All three are required in order for the insurgents to win.

The base of operations is necessary for the insurgent forces need a place where they can rest, regroup, train and rearm. Before the rise of air power, that base could be within the territory under dispute. It had to be remote enough that the government forces could not reach. During the American Revolution, the British could not or did not exercise control over the entirety of the thirteen colonies. The rebels could operate everywhere else. Nowadays, the rebels need a neighboring nation that is either sympathetic, in part, to the rebels or is so weak that they can do nothing about the presence of the rebels.

Insurgencies, like any other armed force, need arms, money, and supplies. The American Revolution would have probably failed without the support of nations in Europe, primarily the French, who were interested in stirring up trouble for England. French arms, gunpowder, shot and even several battalions of troops bolstered the cause of the rebels. The French fleet fought the Royal Navy to a stalemate in the Battle of the Chesapeake, which stranded General Cornwallis’s army and led to the surrender of the British at Yorktown.

Popular support does not mean the support of the majority of the population or anywhere near close to it. A minority is enough, maybe 20% or so, provided that an overall majority is not on the side of the government. If, when added to the supporters, enough of the population is indifferent so that the total of the supporters plus the indifferent is a clear majority, that is enough. In the American Revolution, probably no more than a third of the population were active supporters of the rebellion. At least that many were indifferent and only wanted to be left alone. Possibly a quarter to a third of the population were Loyalists.[1]

The battlefield in an insurgency (and in a counter-insurgency) is the people. It is not the lowlands of South Carolina, the farms of Eastern Massachusetts or, for that matter, Helmand Province. It is the people. If one is going to prevail against an insurgency, and truly prevail, not just kick-the-can down the road for another decade or a generation, the government forces must win over the people. This involves something that is very difficult to accept, much less carry out: The government must take a hard look at the grievances of the population which is supporting the insurgency and honestly address them in order to drain the rebellion of the support for a violent insurgency. One can only imagine how history would have been different if the British government in the 1760s had forthrightly addressed the rising tide of grievances being expressed by the Colonists.

The government has to provide the sort of basic services that people expect from a government. Good roads are one, so are education, clean water, security and, where possible, electricity. The government has to provide an honest and fair legal system, one where people have a chance for justice, not one where law enforcement and the judiciary are wholly corrupt and in the pocket of the wealthy. The government itself cannot be overly corrupt. And last, but by no means unimportant, government has to provide a mechanism whereby people’s complaints about the government itself are dealt with in a fair manner.

The problem most governments face is a reliance on conventional armed forces to defeat an insurgency. Armed forces are designed to go into hostile places and break things, to defeat a hostile force on a battlefield, where it is of little import if the battlefield is torn up and devastated by the fighting. But in an insurgency, the battlefield is the people.

Conventional military actions almost always result in civilian casualties. If a man with a rifle hides behind a family’s house and shoots at a government patrol and, in response, the government forces call in an airstrike which destroys the house and the neighboring homes, those families who were displaced will probably blame the government forces. If family members died in the destroyed houses, it is more likely than not that the young men of those families will go to fight for the insurgency. Indeed, it is a tactic of insurgents to provoke government forces into causing civilian casualties.

Armed forces promote officers who are good fighters and who are successful at leading soldiers in combat. A commander may receive a medal or a good evaluation based on a combat action against an insurgent force. Commanders are not given medals for providing potable water to a village. They are not given awards for building and staffing schools. Commanders are not relieved because in an action against insurgents, two villages were destroyed. The destruction of those two villages create more anger against the government and provide fertile soil for the insurgency.

Northern Ireland is, so far, a case study in how to do it right. The Catholic minority had real grievances against the British. The insurgency ended when the British government began to seriously address those grievances. The British have taken pains to make sure that the Catholics feel that they are stakeholders in the governance of Northern Ireland. By doing so, they have drained the support from the Irish Republican Army. There are still some radicals from the IRA who are committing acts of murder and terrorism in order to provoke a heavy-handed response by the British against the Catholic population. So far, the British have not taken the bait.

Sri Lanka is an example of the defeat of an insurgency by denying it a safe haven. The problem for the Sri Lankans is that the government has not addressed any of the grievances of the Tamil minority and indeed, by the actions taken against the Tamil people, have provided the soil for the rise of another insurgency in a decade or a generation. Like the French in Algeria, a victory against a rebel group may lead to ultimate defeat.

We cannot crush the Taliban's bases in Pakistan. We cannot widen the war into Pakistan without inflaming the Pakistani people. Pakistan's army is incapable of doing so. Worse, the Taliban may be funded by Pakistan's intelligence service, which views the Taliban as a counterweight to India, which has provided some support to the current Afghan government. If the Afghan War is to be won, the Afghan people must be won over.

The Afghan War may have been winnable, at one point, but it almost certainly has slipped from our grasp. The current Afghan government is wholly corrupt and thoroughly incompetent. President Karzai has been derided as the “Mayor of Kabul.” There are persistent allegations that his brother is one of the major heroin traffickers in the country. The Afghan police are notoriously corrupt; they have a track record of setting up checkpoints which function mainly as places for the extortion of bribes from travelers. Seven years into the creation of the Karzai government, the Afghan Army is seriously understrength. Afghanistan has several million more people than Iraq, yet the current Iraqi Army is several times larger than the Afghan Army.

The time to make a serious push to bring some development and improvement in the lives of the Afghan people was between 2002 and 2005, but this was almost completely ignored by the Bush Administration. Worse, the Bush Administration and the Karzai government cut deals with various Afghan warlords to provide some level of nominal national flag control over the nation. The result of that was that the warlords were, of course, adverse to any development which strengthened the power of the central government.

Underfunding and underresourcing the security efforts against the insurgents resulted in an unhealthy reliance on air power. There is no such thing as a "surgical strike", air power is a blunt instrument. Dropping bombs on people almost always results in civilian casualties. In a tribal society, where ancient notions of honor and vengeance run strong, killing civilians creates more enemies. Brutal and heavy-handed tactics result in areas where the people are, if not anti-government, unwilling to cooperate with the security forces.

Rampant corruption of both the Karzai government and the local warlords have opened the door to the Taliban. The Taliban are not popular, they were and are a brutal bunch, but their former government provided some things that the Afghan people prized: The Taliban regime was not noted for its corruption, there was reasonable security and there was a rough, albeit brutal form of justice.

We cannot win if our goal is to prop up a kleptocracy. Until the corruption of the Karzai government is dealt with, until the corruption of the Afghan security forces is dealt with, until the warlords are dealt with, then sending more troops to battle the Taliban will be a fool’s errand. The cost of which will be paid for with the blood of American and NATO soldiers and with the blood of the Afghan people.

[1]Their descendants make up the bulk of the GOP and the viewership of Fox News.

Coal Ash Ponds

2009-06-13T18:30:00.001-04:00

Power plants in each state with coal ash ponds and the amount in tons stored, according to an Associated Press analysis of Energy Department data from 2005, the latest year statistics were available.

ALABAMA

Alabama Electric Cooperative Inc. - Washington County - 28,400 tons

Alabama Power Co. - Mobile County - 282,900 tons

Alabama Power Co. - Etowah County - 34,100 tons

Alabama Power Co. - Walker County - 304,900 tons

Alabama Power Co. - Greene County - 211,900 tons

Alabama Power Co. - Jefferson County - 61,500 tons

Tennessee Valley Authority - Colbert County - 29,200 tons

Tennessee Valley Authority - Jackson County - 407,600 tons

ARIZONA

Arizona Electric Power Cooperative Inc. - Cochise County - 33,000 tons

Arizona Public Service Co. - Navajo County - 258,000 tons

ARKANSAS

Domtar Industries Inc. - Little River - 40,300 tons

Southwestern Electric Power Co. - Benton County - 19,400 tons

COLORADO

Platte River Power Authority - Larimer County - 5,700 tons

FLORIDA

Gulf Power Co. - Bay County - 70,300 tons

Tampa Electric Co. - Hillsborough County - 200 tons

GEORGIA

Georgia Power Co. - Bartow County - 93,300 tons

Georgia Power Co. - Putnam County - 416,300 tons

Georgia Power Co. - Heard County - 536,700 tons

Georgia Power Co. - Monroe County - 470,600 tons

Savannah Electric & Power Co. - Chatham County - 10,000 tons

Savannah Electric & Power Co. - Effingham County - 15,000 tons

ILLINOIS

Ameren Energy Generating Co. - Crawford County - 31,000 tons

Ameren Energy Generating Co. - Morgan County - 48,000 tons

Ameren Energy Generating Co. - Jasper County - 109,000 tons

Dynegy Midwest Generation Inc. - Randolph County - 116,000 tons

Dynegy Midwest Generation Inc. - Mason County - 86,000 tons

Dynegy Midwest Generation Inc. - Putnam County - 20,800 tons

Dynegy Midwest Generation Inc. - Vermilion County - 13,700 tons

Dynegy Midwest Generation Inc. - Madison County - 14,200 tons

Springfield City of - Sangamon County - 72,100 tons

Ameren Energy Resources Generating - Peoria County - 52,000 tons

Ameren Energy Resources Generating - Fulton County - 63,000 tons

INDIANA

Alcoa Power Generating Inc. - Warrick County - 241,900 tons

Hoosier Energy R E C Inc. - Pike County - 39,800 tons

Indiana-Kentucky Electric Corp. - Jefferson County - 21,700 tons

Indianapolis Power & Light Co. - Marion County - 175,900 tons

Indiana Michigan Power Co. - Dearborn County - 140,600 tons

Indiana Michigan Power Co. - Spencer County - 11,800 tons

PSI Energy Inc. - Vermillion County - 210,900 tons

PSI Energy Inc. - Knox County - 11,500 tons

PSI Energy Inc. - Floyd County - 125,600 tons

PSI Energy Inc. - Vigo County - 192,100 tons

PSI Energy Inc. - Gibson County - 897,800 tons

Southern Indiana Gas & Electric Co. - Warrick County - 35,600 tons

Southern Indiana Gas & Electric Co. - Posey County - 165,750 tons

IOWA

Interstate Power & Light Co. - Allamakee County - 24,000 tons

MidAmerican Energy Co. - Pottawattamie County - 104,500 tons

MidAmerican Energy Co. - Woodbury County - 50,200 tons

MidAmerican Energy Co. - Louisa County - 23,000 tons

KANSAS

Kansas City City of - Wyandotte County - 10,200 tons

Westar Energy - Pottawatomie County - 184,100 tons

KENTUCKY

Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co. - Boone County - 172,900 tons

East Kentucky Power Cooperative Inc. - Clark County - 60,000 tons

East Kentucky Power Cooperative Inc. - Mason County - 4,300 tons

Kentucky Utilities Co. - Mercer County - 140,500 tons

Kentucky Utilities Co. - Carroll County - 634,700 tons

Kentucky Utilities Co. - Muhlenberg County - 30,600 tons

Kentucky Utilities Co. - Woodford County - 18,900 tons

Louisville Gas & Electric Co. - Jefferson County - 37,100 tons

Louisville Gas & Electric Co. - Jefferson County - 64,700 tons

Louisville Gas & Electric Co. - Trimble County - 150,900 tons

Tennessee Valley Authority - Muhlenberg County - 125,700 tons

Tennessee Valley Authority - McCracken County - 61,100 tons

Western Kentucky Energy Corp. - Henderson County - 12,300 tons

Western Kentucky Energy Corp. - Webster County - 21,800 tons

Kentucky Power Co. - Lawrence County - 298,300 tons

LOUISIANA

Cleco Power LLC - De Soto Parish - 51,900 tons

Louisiana Generating LLC - Pointe Coupee Parish - 139,400 tons

MARYLAND

Mirant Mid-Atlantic LLC - Montgomery County - 3,000 tons

Allegheny Energy Supply Co. LLC - Washington County - 25,100 tons

MICHIGAN

Consumers Energy Co. - Bay County - 108,800 tons

Consumers Energy Co. - Bay County - 69,900 tons

Consumers Energy Co. - Monroe County - 3,400 tons

Detroit Edison Co. - Monroe County - 482,000 tons

Lansing City of - Eaton County - 5,100 tons

MINNESOTA

Allete Inc. - St Louis County - 20,200 tons

Allete Inc. - Itasca County - 163,400 tons

Northern States Power Co. - Dakota County - 4,800 tons

Northern States Power Co. - Ramsey County - 10 tons

Northern States Power Co. - Hennepin - 6,700 tons

Northern States Power Co. - Sherburne - 355,700 tons

MISSISSIPPI

Mississippi Power Co. - Harrison County - 39,100 tons

Weyerhaeuser Co. - Lowndes County - 60,000 tons

MISSOURI

Associated Electric Cooperative Inc. - New Madrid County - 109,200 tons

Empire District Electric Co. - Jasper County - 53,500 tons

Independence City of - Jackson County - 29,750 tons

Kansas City Power & Light Co. - Platte County - 16,400 tons

Sikeston City of - Scott County - 11,300 tons

Ameren UE - Franklin County - 250,000 tons

Ameren UE - St Louis County - 111,000 tons

Ameren UE - St Charles County - 102,000 tons

Ameren UE - Jefferson County - 96,000 tons

MONTANA

PPL Montana LLC - Rosebud County - 963,600 tons

NEW MEXICO

Arizona Public Service Co. - San Juan County - 461,700 tons

NORTH CAROLINA

Progress Energy Carolinas Inc. - Buncombe County - 106,000 tons

Progress Energy Carolinas Inc. - Chatham County - 101,300 tons

Progress Energy Carolinas Inc. - Wayne County - 106,100 tons

Progress Energy Carolinas Inc. - Person County - 46,300 tons

Progress Energy Carolinas Inc. - New Hanover County - 166,000 tons

Progress Energy Carolinas Inc. - Robeson County - 47,000 tons

Progress Energy Carolinas Inc. - Person County - 212,800 tons

Duke Energy Corp. - Gaston County - 143,400 tons

Duke Energy Corp. - Rowan County - 121,900 tons

Duke Energy Corp. - Cleveland County - 96,900 tons

Duke Energy Corp. - Rockingham County - 28,500 tons

Duke Energy Corp. - Catawba County - 33,500 tons

Duke Energy Corp. - Gaston County - 93,100 tons

Duke Energy Corp. - Stokes County - 41,400 tons

NORTH DAKOTA

Basin Electric Power Cooperative - Mercer County - 194,800 tons

OHIO

Cardinal Operating Co. - Jefferson County - 490,400 tons

Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co. - Clermont County - 76,700 tons

Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co. - Hamilton County - 224,300 tons

Columbus Southern Power Co. - Coshocton County - 21,200 tons

Columbus Southern Power Co. - Pickaway County - 10,600 tons

Dayton Power & Light Co. - Adams County - 653,300 tons

Dayton Power & Light Co. - Adams County - 252,600 tons

Ohio Power Co. - Washington County - 143,400 tons

Ohio Power Co. - Gallia County - 90,700 tons

Ohio Valley Electric Corp. - Gallia County - 231,500 tons

OKLAHOMA

Western Farmers Electric Cooperative Inc. - Choctaw - 16,560 tons

PENNSYLVANIA

Pennsylvania Power Co. - Beaver County - 568,400 tons

PPL Corp. - Northampton County - 37,300 tons

Sunbury Generation LLC - Snyder County - 500 tons

SOUTH CAROLINA

Progress Energy Carolinas Inc. - Darlington County - 62,200 tons

Duke Energy Corp. - Anderson County - 63,500 tons

South Carolina Electric&Gas Co. - Colleton County - 101,100 tons

South Carolina Electric&Gas Co. - Aiken County - 12,500 tons

South Carolina Public Service Authority - Berkeley County - 10,900 tons

South Carolina Public Service Authority - Horry County - 7,000 tons

South Carolina Public Service Authority - Berkeley County - 34,900 tons

South Carolina Public Service Authority - Georgetown - 8,950 tons

TENNESSEE

Tennessee Valley Authority - Anderson County - 22,400 tons

Tennessee Valley Authority - Sumner County - 180,500 tons

Tennessee Valley Authority - Hawkins County - 10,000 tons

Tennessee Valley Authority - Humphreys County - 53,700 tons

Tennessee Valley Authority - Roane County - 325,900 tons

TEXAS

Topaz Power Group LLC - Goliad County - 63,500 tons

Lower Colorado River Authority - Fayette County - 39,910 tons

Southwestern Electric Power Co. - Harrison County - 120,000 tons

TXU Electric Co. - Milam County - 314,400 tons

UTAH

Los Angeles City of - Millard County - 96,700 tons

Kennecott Utah Copper Corp. - Salt Lake County - 34,300 tons

VIRGINIA

Appalachian Power Co. - Giles County - 5,800 tons

Virginia Electric & Power Co. - Fluvanna County - 85,000 tons

Virginia Electric & Power Co. - Chesterfield County - 322,600 tons

Virginia Electric & Power Co. - Chesapeake County - 34,800 tons

WEST VIRGINIA

Appalachian Power Co. - Putnam County - 391,900 tons

Appalachian Power Co. - Kanawha County - 1,600 tons

Appalachian Power Co. - Mason County - 9,500 tons

Central Operating Co. - Mason County - 137,100 tons

Ohio Power Co. - Marshall County - 48,700 tons

Ohio Power Co. - Marshall County - 307,400 tons

WISCONSIN

Wisconsin Power & Light Co. - Columbia County - 11,000 tons

WYOMING

Basin Electric Power Cooperative - Platte County - 79,100 tons

PacifiCorp. - Lincoln County - 119,000 tons

PacifiCorp. - Campbell County - 28,000 tons

The Greatest Security Threat to Our Nation

2009-05-31T10:43:00.003-04:00

Someone told me that the threat from terrorism was the greatest threat this country has faced in 70 years. When I questioned that and mentioned Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany and Communism, the response I got was that those dangers existed more than 70 years ago. So I asked what was the second greatest threat; ill-tempered Parisian waiters? I received no reply.

But in thinking on this more, I am convinced that there is a threat to the United States that is wrapped up in the so-called Global War On Terror. That threat is internal and it comes from the political Right in our own country. That may sound provocative to some, but bear with me here.

The first threat to Americans (and by that, I mean the dominant Judeo-Christian types) was that of being wiped out by the indigenous peoples (from here on out, I'm going to refer to them by the term we grew up with: Indians. Sue me.). That threat was greatly eliminated by a fact that the first Europeans probably did not appreciate at first, which was that because people from second millennium Eurasian stock had a degree of resistance to a large number of rather nasty diseases; diseases that had arisen over a few thousand years because Eurasians had been living in close proximity to a large number of species of domestic animals. Those animals were unknown to the Americas, so the Indians had no resistance at all to those diseases. Smallpox apparently spread like wildfire and wiped out communities that had not seen a European and did not first see a European for a very long time afterwards.

(By the way, if you are wondering why the "bird flu" is giving nightmares to the infectious disease specialists, this is one of the reasons why.)

So when the Europeans arrived in significant numbers, the Indian population had already been greatly reduced. The Europeans had better weapons, better numbers and massacred the Indians that put up any resistance, which was what conquerors traditionally did. The Indians indeed were a threat at times, the Norsemen in the 1000s were not able to establish a permanent settlement, but once the Europeans showed up with guns, the Indians were never able to push them back into the sea. There were small-scale wars for almost four hundred years, but the Indians lost on the battlefield.

The most significant threat to what was to become the USA came from the mother country, England. England could have crushed the American rebels, but they had other fish to fry in that both a few of the other European powers took the opportunity to make some trouble for England and the French provided critical support. The French supplied weapons, funds, training and the intervention of the fleet of Comte de Grasse, which prevented the Royal Navy from evacuating the British forces pinned down in Yorktown. The British threat returned during what we call the War of 1812, they did burn a good chunk of Washington, D.C., but the War of 1812 was still a bit of a sideshow for the British when compared to the ongoing Napoleonic Wars.

I'll skip over the Civil War, since that was basically a family fight.

What was the next external threat? Maybe Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II, but probably not. The U-Boats were an issue for international trade, but it's hard to argue that Germany could have launched a trans-oceanic invasion. Without America's intervention in World War 1, the Germans might have been able to bring the U-Boat campaign to a successful conclusion and force Britain to sue for peace. Without the British in the war, France might have indeed fallen to Germany or at the very least been forced into an armistice under conditions far more favorable to Germany than the one that ended that war. The Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empires may have survived a bit longer. But still, there was no serious threat to the Western Hemisphere.

World War 2 was different to some degree. Germany may have eventually developed the technical ability to launch direct attacks on American soil, but it's hard to see how Germany would have been able to conquer the US. They had their hands full dealing with Russia. Maybe they would have pushed deeper without Germany having to prepare for and defend against attack from the Anglophone nations, but Russia is a huge country. Could they have conquered Russia, occupied it and then gone on to invade and conquer North America? I doubt it. Even without direct entry into the war against Germany, the US would have still poured supplies into Russia. And let's not forget that the Russians themselves made over 50,000 tanks.

Japan had the capability to mount an invasion of the Hawaiian island chain and possibly a larger chunk of Alaska than the two islands they took. Xenophobic hysteria aside, however, Japan did not have the capacity to invade, much less occupy, the rest of North America. They were already occupying a large chunk of China, which required hundreds of thousands of troops, if not a million or more. They didn't have the troops to take and hold both China and North America.

Probably the most serious threat to the US since the War of 1812 was posed by the Soviet Union. If a war had begun, the Soviets likely had the forces to be able to occupy the same European footprint that Germany had held. Absent nuclear weapons, they might have been able to carry out a Red Army version of Operation Sealion and invaded Great Britain. But executing a transoceanic invasion without a large base of operations near the point of invasion is a huge undertaking, even if they tried coming through Alaska. Even crossing the English Channel against an enemy whose bulk of its military forces were unavailable was a tough endeavor. The threat to the US was not from invasion, but from massive destruction by nuclear attack. But that would have resulted in a similarly massive retaliatory strike against Russia and neither side was too thrilled at the prospect of being obliterated. So while proxy wars were waged and much propaganda exchanged, a rough peace lasted for decades.

China may pose a threat in the far future. And whether Vladimir Putin can succeed in his quest to stamp out what democracy currently exists in Russia and re-form the Soviet Union remains to be seen.

Which brings me to the present day.

Al Qaeda clearly has the capability of mounting attacks on US soil. They succeeded in 1993 and 2001. They tried at least once, maybe more often, between the successful attacks, but those attempt(s) were foiled. (By the way, don't hold your breath while you wait for the Right to give any smidgen of credit to the Clinton Administration.) What al Qaeda cannot do and cannot hope to do is invade the US. They pose a threat that is beyond a nuisance, but clearly is not a mortal threat.

Remember what bin Ladin saw in the 1980s: The Moslem Mujahadeen in Afghanistan, with material assistance from the US, tied down and bled the Red Army to the point that the Russians gave up. What I suspect that bin Laden hoped to achieve by 9/11 was to provoke the US into a massive invasion of Afghanistan, one that could be used to rally the Moslem world to his cause. The US did not oblige him, but not because the Bush Administration saw the trap and avoided it. No, the Bush Administration had another war in mind and in invading Iraq, managed to put our troops into the situation bin Laden likely envisioned for Afghanistan. It probably was a dream come true for bin Laden as it probably has been far easier for al Qaeda to get propaganda out of Iraq and jihadists into Iraq than it would have been for Afghanistan.

But that still isn't a serious threat to the US.

The Right seems to often be of the opinion that the sole arbiter and instrument of American power is the military. Military power is significant, but if they think that's the driving factor, they are delusional. America's influence throughout the world come as much, if not more, from our economy, our freedoms, our civil liberties and our popular culture. I don't know of anybody who tuned into Radio Moscow to catch the music concerts, but the jazz programs on the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe were popular throughout the nations of the Warsaw Pact. American cultural influence continues to this day. American music, clothes, and movies are to be found around the globe. Less tolerant nations try to stop these influences with no real success.

Where we lose our influence is in many of the actions or inactions of our government. It is not a real stretch to say that overseas, democracy is something that we inflict on our enemies. If a nation is our friend or is useful, we tolerate all sorts of less-than-democratic forms of government. Only a coked-out drunk would even think of Saudi Arabia as being anywhere close to a democratic nation. Egypt held a sham presidential election a few years ago with no more than a "tut-tut" from the Bush Administration. Pakistan, until very recently, was led by a military dictator who dabbled with democracy, but tried not to let it go too far (with the support of the Bush Administration). Algeria crushed its democracy without a peep from the West when a fundamentalist party won the last election well over a decade ago. The CIA's overthrow of the Iranian government and re-establishment of its monarchy over fifty years ago has had unpleasant reverberations to this day. Chile. Argentina. Greece. The Bush Administration was happy to have bases in Uzbekistan until the fact that its leader had a penchant for torturing people by boiling them alive came to light. Even so, a state that practiced brutal torture was useful to a nation that styles itself as a beacon of liberty.

As I understand it, one of bin Ladin's arguments is that American commitment to democracy ends as soon as there is anything in it for America. Bin Ladin may also hope to prove to the world that the US is just another thug state and that its true commitment to democracy and liberty within its borders is a tenuous as a soap bubble. In this, his unwitting ally was George W. Bush. By running secret prisons, by engaging in and outsourcing torture, Bush took an attitude that respect for human rights is something for lessor nations.

The Right is largely complicit in this. The Bush Administration defended its right to torture people, the Right applauded. The Bush Administration worked to gut the protections against unreasonable searches and seizures, the Right seconded with the cry of "only the guilty need fear anything", a line that could well have been mouthed by the Gestapo. The Bush Administration moved to limit free speech by making sure that Bush never heard a peep of dissent and the Right stayed silent. Massive datamining. Monitoring telephone conversations and e-mails. Engaging in domestic spying on dissidents by the Army and the FBI. Maintaining an enemies list that was far larger than Nixon’s. Trying to set up a "spy on your neighbor" program. Terror threat alerts that seemed to be suspiciously tied to the 2004 election cycle. The Right applauded all of this as the Bush Administration sought to live up to Ben Franklin's dictum concerning liberty and security.

To be fair, not all of the Right marched in lockstep with the Bush Administration. There have been true conservatives who became alarmed at the power grabs of the Bush Administration. But they were few and far between. We have a written Constitution because the Founding Fathers did not believe in the "we know what is best, trust us" form of government. But that is what Bush kept saying, in effect, that we should all shut up and trust him. And the Right went merrily along with that. Even now, Dick Cheney is publicly arguing, in essence, that the only way to keep the country safe is to have a system of elected tyrants, where the president is above the rule of law and can do whatever he wants.

Bin Ladin cannot destroy or even cripple the US. We, however, can do it to ourselves and what bin Ladin may be trying to do is create the conditions where that comes about. The far Right's call to "round up all them ragheads", if carried out, would be a propaganda gold mine for al Qaeda. But we do not have to go that far, sacrificing our rights and liberties is enough to prove the point. In the formerly designated Global War on Terror, the Right became the "useful idiots" of al Qaeda.

It goes further than that, of course. The Right’s view of what course this country should take took a major blow in the 2006 and 2008 elections. The response of the Right has been from holding “tea-bagging” protests (largely orchestrated by Fox News) to suggestions from some Southern politicians that succession is an option to dark mutterings about a second civil war. It is clear, at least to me, that the Right’s devotion to democracy only lasts as long as they win (or steal) the elections. For when they lose, they, like the intellectual brats they have proven to be, are all too willing to destroy this country.

The Right is indeed the most dangerous threat to this country that now exists.

Battlestar Galactica- "Daybreak, Pt. 2" -- 1 month later

2009-04-27T21:36:00.002-04:00

No, I didn't go back and watch it again. I'm not going to. I'll stick with my original reaction.

I see that the DVD for the opening of the next series "Caprica" has been released. Frak that shit. I'm not going to trust those putzim again.

Battlestar Galactica- "Daybreak, Pt. 2"

2009-03-23T10:24:00.002-04:00

I was riveted by the final episode of Battlestar Galactica, right up to the point that the Galactica came out of her last jump and moved past the Moon over to Earth. Our Earth, not the Earth of the Thirteenth Colony. After that? Ecch!

It has been clear all along that the show had an undercurrent of divine intervention. But this was a little much for me. I understood that the Six inside Baltar's head and the Baltar inside Caprica Six's head were angels. Starbuck as an angel, though, seemed a bit much. So did the idea that all 38,000 Colonials and skin-job Cylons would willingly abandon all technology and become Stone-Age farmers and hunter-gatherers on a planet that has small groups of human hunter-gatherers, who are genetically-compatible with the Colonials/Cylons.

I guess the point that within a year or two, 95% of those people will have probably starved to death didn't make it into the cheeriness of the final episode.

It just doesn't sit right with me. Battlestar Galactica has spent just over five years (the miniseries aired in December, 2003) as one of the darkest SF shows around. It began with a surprise attack on the Twelve Colonies that killed tens of billions of people; from there it explored themes of hard-edged survival, occupation, resistance, medical experiments on people, torture, suicide bombings, rigged elections, and so on and so forth. The last hour of the show felt as though a pack of writers from Star Trek had parachuted into the show to bring light and love to the ending.

Compared to the darkness that permeated the show (miniseries, Razor and 73 episodes), the last episode was like dragging the needle arm across a record. So we have the hand of the Almighty bumping a dead Raptor to nuke the Cylon colony (presumably wiping out most of the remaining ones, fours, fives and eights) and making resurrection impossible for them and, in another bit of divine intervention, angel-Kara enters the numbers she derived from the Cylon-Song, which were the coordinates for our planet, into the jump computer. Plus, the idea that, after all that had gone on before, John Cavil ate his gun was a bit unbelievable.

And, of course, the Dying Leader Knew the Truth of the Opera House. Not to mention that Hera Agathon is the "Mitochondria Eve," the Great(x 7,500) Grandmother of us all.

Look, I expected the Colonials to find a habitable planet. But dropping onto our world 150,000 years ago, agreeing to abandon all technology, and acting as the spark to take humans on this planet from loose tribes of non-speaking hunter-gatherers to eventual civilization is a bit too much for me to swallow. In essence, the Colonials are acting as the Black Rectangular Stone from "2001, a Space Odyssey".

I expected the last hour to, well, be in tune with the rest of the show and not be so frakking cheery. I will probably watch the last three hours again to see if I still feel this way.

For now, color me "disappointed."

Battlestar Galactica, "Daybreak, Pt.1"-2

2009-03-15T17:05:00.002-04:00

If you are running an active sensor search, such as radar, sonar or, in the case of Battlestar Galactica, dradis, one of the basic principles of passive electronic warfare (and ASW) is that the emitting sensor is detectable at a far greater distance than the active sensor can detect a contact.

The Raptor scout mission which found the Cylon main base did so by sweeping it on dradis. Unless there is some weird effect on the Cylon EW detection suite, Cavil knows that he has been found and that an attack may be in the offing.

Next Friday's conclusion to the series should be very interesting.

That Ship is So Fraked!

2009-02-18T08:56:00.001-05:00

A few things to keep in mind:

This is a shot of the USS Spruance in drydock. Ticonderoga-class cruisers were pretty much built on the same hull form. The big bulge at the bottom of the bow is the sonar dome. On a Tico, the bottom of the dome is 33' underwater.

This is a sonar dome for a SQS-53 sonar. A rubber window, which is a very large radial rubber belt, goes in the gap. The metal base underneath is known as the "banjo." Those black squares are transducer elements.

This is one of the screws from an Arleigh Burke class DDG. The Burke class uses the same engine as the Ticos, the LM-2500 gas turbine, so odds are the screws look about the same. ("Screws" are what you might call "props.")

Look closely at the base of the blades and you can see that they can be rotated. Unlike steam turbines, gas turbines cannot be reversed (the LM-2500 is, at the core, a jet engine from a jumbo jet), so if you want to back up, you have to twist the blades. Indeed, from 0-12 knots or so, the turbines rotate at the same speed; so at slow speeds, the ship's speed is controlled by the pitch of the screws. When the ship goes faster than that, the turbines speed up and the pitch stays the same.

The Port Royal went aground in 22 feet of water. A Tico cruiser has a displacement of over 9,000 tons. Take 9,000 tons of ship, run it into hard ground that is 11 feet shallower than the depth of water that the ship draws and Bad Things are going to happen.

Really bad things.

This is the aft vertical launcher for a Tico cruiser. Under each of those doors is a silo for a SM-2/3 ER missile. The missiles are just a skosh over 26 feet long.

If you were to twist the hull a lot, as you might in a grounding, you could twist the launcher doors out of true. That is a Bad Thing.

Last night, I posted that "officials" said that the screws were damaged and that the tips were"'sheared off." Those blades, as you can see, are one-piece right down to the hubs.

What I am told is this:

The blades for the screws were not damaged, they were destroyed. The screw blades were sheared off. The shafts were bent enough that the shaft bearing, which probably are large babbit-bearings, were damaged. The stern tube seals were damaged and the ship was taking on water into the shaft alleys. The base of the rudders were also grounded, driving the rudders up or twisting them. The reduction gears (between the gas turbines and the screw shaft) may have been damaged. One or more of the gas turbine engines might have been damaged. I don't know if there is a shear coupling in the power train between the gas turbines and the shaft; there could be, but it would have to be a huge-ass thing., so I tend to doubt it.

As you might imagine, the sonar dome was toast. The banjo was bent up, the transducer itself is probably badly damaged.

The twisting of the hull reportedly damaged at least one of the vertical rocket launchers and cracked the firemain system. A number of bulkheads throughout the ship were twisted and buckled. A number of fuel tanks leaked, though apparently not into the sea. Hull members (I-beams welded to hull plating) are likely twisted, cracked and/or buckled.

The firemain system is composed of piping that is pressurized with seawater; it is used for cooling as well as fire-fighting. When a ship runs around, the firemain can get clogged with bottom debris. The firemain on the Port Royal supposedly is clogged with sand and coral debris. Coral and sand are extremely abrasive, so the firemain pump(s) that were online at the time of the grounding probably will need to be torn down. The valves throughout the firemain may all need to be checked and the piping itself will have to be flushed.

Seawater is also used for cooling. The air-conditioning units on the ship (there are several large units) use seawater for cooling and those are probably all clogged with sand and coral. There is a lot of other damage to the ship that in other circumstances would be a serious "oh, shit," but now are almost minor in comparison.

The Port Royal was in her first day of sea trials after spending two months in drydock. She will be back in drydock for a very long time. The damage doesn't stop there, as the long-range scheduling committments for the ship will have to be filled by other ships, which will find their deployments extended and/or moved up. Maintenance work on other ships will be deferred or delayed, both because the Port Royal is occupying a drydock and because the work will suck up dollars already allocated. Given the amount of work that may be required to fix her up, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the Navy may decide to patch her up for now to make sure she doesn't sink, decommission her, refloat her, store her along a pier and fix her up later once money and resources are identified. (That's what the Navy did when the USS Belknap burned in the 1970s.)

And, of course, a number of the officers of the Port Royal had better start thinking of what they are going to do next, as their careers are over.

The Best Brain Surgeon in the Colonial Fleet

2009-02-15T21:43:00.002-05:00

John Hodgman.

He was called upon to remove a bullet from the brain of Sam Anders in the episode "No Exit," which aired in the US on February 13, 2009.

Ruminations on the Post-Coup Colonials

2009-02-11T22:13:00.001-05:00

I suppose it may seem ooky to some that I am thinking about this. After all, the world of Battlestar Galactica is a goddamn TV series. The show, however, has dealt with some very adult and contemporary themes. The most cutting-edge were the episodes set on New Caprica, which dealt with the year-long occupation by the Cylons and the resistance of the Colonials. There were examples of pre-emptive imprisonment and torture for interrogation used by the Cylons and their Colonial collaborators. The Colonial resistance used spying, assassination and suicide bombings. At times it seemed as though those topics were covered better by the show in 2006 than they were by the press and the pundits when those topics applied to Afghanistan, Israel and Iraq.

I would not have been surprised if the attempted coup by Zarek and Gaeta had been used as a way to terminate the show early, that the "ten episodes" of Season 4.5 turned out to be a deception. That would probably have been too dark for the show's writers.

Admiral Adama is now back in command of his ship and in command of a crew, a good number of whom he cannot trust. The Fleet is divided between ships that would have followed Zarek and ships that remained loyal to President Roslin. Eleven of the twelve members of the Quorum of Twelve, the legislature of the Colonial Fleet, were killed on Zarek's orders, only the representative of the survivors of Caprica, Lee Adama, remains alive. Zarek and Gaeda were summarily shot by a firing squad commanded by the Admiral.

There is no effective representative government left. Roslin now has basically a dictatorship; Zarek's objective was achieved, but his enemies got the benefit of it. Roslin and the Admiral could easily sink into a fair degree of paranoia, creating secret police from known loyalists and imprisoning known or suspected traitors.

They are also on the verge of running out of fuel and supplies. They took nothing from Earth, the planet was too radioactive. Since they restocked on their fuel "Tylium" in the first season, there has been no mention of further supplies, so they have to be running low now. There is also the rest of the Cylon fleet to contend with; the rebel Cylons of Twos, D'Anna (the one surviving Three), Sixes and Eights are apparently down to one battered BaseStar.

The Colonial Fleet is, in the old aviation saying, running out of altitude, airspeed and ideas at the same time.

Six episodes to go.

Battlestar Galactica- "Blood on the Scales"

2009-02-08T18:12:00.001-05:00

I thought the rebellion would end with either Starbuck putting a bullet in Felix Gaeta's head or shoving him out an airlock and Tom Zarek fleeing the Fleet.

I was wrong, of course on both counts. But not by much for Gaeta. Once Gaeta aligned himself with Zarek, their fates were tied to each other. The rebel forces fell surprisingly fast. Once word spreads around the Fleet that Zarek had the Quorum of Twelve shot, his memory will be cursed forever.

And you just know that Admiral Adama had to have taken no small pleasure in personally commanding the firing squad that shot both Gaeta and Zarek.

The Oath

2009-02-02T11:41:00.000-05:00

In this episode, Tom Zarek and Felix Gaeta trigger a bloody uprising on the Galactia. We don't get to see very much of the fighting, but as Apollo and Starbuck make their way around the ship, we see a shitload of expended rifle cartridge cases.

First off, I have to love Starbuck. When it comes to fighting, she is one cool woman. Apollo had been captured by a group of rebels; when she ordered them at gunpoint to release him and they refused, she shot two of them them and then said: "I can do this all day."

(Those pistols don't seem to have much killing power for the ball round. I don't know what they are, but they definately aren't .45s.)

Gaeta's forces took Admiral Adama and Col. Tigh; who overpowered their guards and escaped. As the episode ends, it appears that Adama and Tigh are going to go all "Butch Cassidy" against a large group of Colonial Marines.

I don't see the uprising ending quickly, but I am reasonably sure that it will end with Tom Zarek fleeing in a ship or a small group of ships. Felix Gaeta will probably wind up with Starbuck either putting a bullet in his head or shoving him out an airlock.

Still, in my opinion, the best hour of TV during any given week.

What Did You Expect?

2009-01-07T14:03:00.002-05:00

A very long time ago, I was eating dinner with a bunch of friends, mostly guys, back when Mike Tyson first became heavyweight boxing champion. For some reason (probably related to alcohol), the question was asked: "What would you do if you had to fight Mike Tyson?"

The best answer, and the one that shut everyone else down, was: "I'd shoot him in the back from 500 yards away with a .375 H&H." When asked why, the answer was two-fold: The .375 has a good sectional density, so it is highly accurate at long ranges, and more importantly, it would not be possible to call in an air strike on his ass.

I offer that story as a lead-in to this lengthy post.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I have made little comment on Israel's attack on Gaza for a few reasons.

First, war is not something done by the Marquis of Queensbury Rules. The only thing that matters about a war is who prevails and who does not. Playing nice and losing is for suckers.

Second, I am of the opinion that if Hamas had fired a barrage of missiles and hit an elementary school with a bunch of kids inside and killed several score of them, the reaction in the Arab Street would have been somewhere between silence and gloating. There would have been no storm of protest, no outrage. The comments from a lot of people in this country would have been along the lines of "that is truly a shame, but..." with the "but" being the prelude to reasons why such at attack is to be expected from Hamas and why they would be justified in killing Israeli children.

Third, I am Jewish. When Hamas issues a threat to kill Jewish children (not only Israeli children), yes, I tend to take that personally. It also makes me a little less interested in standing up to the lazy-ass Wingnuts who conflate terrorists with all Muslims. Stuff such as this, which when it occurred in this country after 9-11 and was widely condemned, passes without a peep from the apologists for the Palestinians.

Fourth, and I shout this out to all of the rest of the world:

Just What the Fuck Did You Really Expect of Us?

That is a serious question.

For centuries, Jews have tried to fit in wherever you ("you" as in "the rest of the world") would have us. If all you would let us do was farm, we became peasants. If you let us into business, we became bankers and merchants. If you let us attend universities, we became doctors and lawyers and scholars and scientists. Where you let us assimilate, we assimilated. For the most part, we stayed away from the profession of arms, usually because the local rulers wanted only "good Christian soldiers." In large measure, for century after century, we turned the other cheek and, when things got too gritty, many of us fled for another land. Those of us who stayed behind and tried to fit in, even converting to the local religion, often got killed off anyway.

For century after century, we tried to be good, to not make a fuss, and for our pains, we endured cycle after cycle of settlement, integration (as much as was permitted), discrimination, expulsion and murder.

Then came the 20th Century. I won't give you a recital of the horrors of the Holocaust, but only to observe that even in countries where Jews had been living for centuries, where some were fully assimilated, the Jews were rooted out and exterminated. People whose only connection to the practice of Judaism was by ancestry, people who spoke not a word of Hebrew or Yiddish and who had never set foot in a synagogue or touched a Torah were, nonetheless, packed into boxcars and set to their deaths. After it was all over, when many Jews who survived sought to go home, the locals killed them. Poland was probably the worst example of that.

You taught us a very hard lesson at a great cost: The only power that earns respect in this world comes from the barrel of a gun. We gave up, finally, on nonviolence. That shit only works when the powers that be have a conscience, which, as was shown in virtually all of continental Europe in the 1930s and 1940s, they did not. So we did what you have done for millennia: Find a place to call our own and, if the people who are already there do not want us there, fight them for it.

The land of Israel was our home a very long time ago and we went back in large numbers, mainly because no other place on the motherfucking planet would have us. You did not see the US, for example, offer to throw open its borders and take all of the people in the Displaced Persons camps after the war, did you?

Most of the Jews who survived the concentration camps went to the land of Israel and, although Europe might now pretend otherwise, they were more than happy to see the Jewish refugees leave. As much as the Arab countries may hate Israel, they took full advantage of the existence of Israel as a reason to expel, to Israel, their local population of Jews, many of whose families had been living there peacefully for over a thousand years.

You taught us this lesson, too: No land that is not controlled by Jews will ever be wholly accepting of Jews. We may live there a decade, a century, a millenia, but sooner or later, you will try to wipe us out or push us out because you regard us as "filthy Jews."

The people of Israel understand how the game is played in the Middle East: The strong thrive, the weak are hammered. The Sunni Muslims have discriminated against the Shi'a Muslims in most Arab lands with little protest from the rest of the world. The Kurds have been struggling against oppression for centuries. That is the way it is. The people of Israel know that should the Arabs ever gain the upper hand, they will push every Jew into the sea to drown. You might take note of the fact that a goodly percentage of the population of Israel came from Arab counties; you won't find too many voices among those Jews calling for peace with Hamas.

We Jews also know this: That, to the world, the phrase "never again" is an empty one. Rwanda. Cambodia. Bosnia. Sudan. Genocides and mass-murders have occurred since 1945 and the reaction of the rest of the world has been hand-wringing. Saddam Hussein had the Kurds gassed, killing thousands, and nobody did anything about it. Europe did jack-shit about Bosnia until the US stepped in to stop the fighting, possibly the only example of a genocide being stopped, mid-way, but only because Bill Clinton was likely haunted by his failure to intervene in Rwanda. The Bush Administration, being not so haunted, has done little to curb the genocide in Darfur, other than flapping their gums at it.

That all the rest of the world ever does is to flap their gums and wring their hands in the face of genocide is no surprise to Jews. It was true before, during and after the Holocaust. Hell, most of the world won't even recognize the first genocide of the 20th Century, the one that gave Hitler the idea he could get away with it, because the nation which perpetrated the genocide is an influential nation in a sensitive region of the world. Move it up two decades: How many people can name the location, let alone the perpetrators, of the massacre of hundreds of thousands of civilians in a single city?

The lesson of modern history is clear: If your people are unarmed and are being slaughtered, nobody will come to your assistance in a meaningful way. You might get some food and medical aid, but nobody will intervene to stop the bloodshed.

"Never again" to the Jews means that we will no longer perish without weapons in our hands and our enemies' blood being shed in copious amounts. If you do not like the idea of a heavily-armed Israel, of armed Jews in the world, then get over it. We tried playing nice before. Look what it got us.

Israel will negotiate, but when the Palestinian Arabs continue to press claims to *all* of Israel, to endorse the use of terrorism against the civilian population of Israel, you tell me: What is there to talk about? What is there to talk about with an enemy that regards negotiation as a step-by-step process to gain what it cannot gain on the battlefield?

The Jews are not leaving Israel. Until the Arabs, and that includes Hamas, understand that, until they understand that the state of Israel will not go away, then Israel will continue to play by Chicago Rules, rules that every party in the Middle East understands.

One final comment: Lots of people, as did I, thought that Israel screwed the pooch in going after Hezbollah and smashing much of the infrastructure of Lebanon to bits in 2006. But for all of the speeches and sloganeering and chest-beating by Hezbollah since that war, to my knowledge, Hezbollah has not fired a single Katyusha rocket into Israel, nor have they conducted any more cross-border raids to kidnap more Israelis. Hezbollah knows what it cost them to pick a fight with Israel and they seem to be very reluctant to repeat the experience.

That is, after all, the Chicago Way.

(UPDATE: Seems someone in Hezbollah may have gone off the reservation.)

(You probably came from here)