“Nuclear war must be the most carefully avoided topic of general significance in the contemporary world. People are not curious about the details. . . . almost everyone seems to feel adequately informed by reading one book about nuclear war.”
– Paul Brians

Fear of nuclear war isn’t the only reason that we avoid the subject. Since the end of the Cold War, most of us think the threat has all but evaporated. If tensions between the United States and Russia came to a head again, we always have deterrence. Of course, concern about nuclear terrorism is on the rise, but it’s left in the dust by the economy.

Meanwhile, many of us who derive scant solace from deterrence and would just like the world to be free of the cursed devices have noticed that President Obama seems to have a soft spot in his heart for disarmament. Finally, we can take a deep breath and relax. Right? Uh, no.

The president’s watered-down approach to other reform aside, “while progressive peace and security advocates clearly have an ally in President Obama. . . there is much work to be done with the Presidential advisors, Members of Congress, and (the target of the recommendations in this report) the American public, to ensure that this vision becomes a reality.”

Wait — more disarmament recommendations? Haven’t they been done to a fare-thee-well (no disrespect intended) by assemblages as august as Global Zero and the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament? These, however, aren’t recommendations for disarmament, per se, but for Talking about Nuclear Weapons with the Persuadable Middle (the title of the report quoted above).

Generated by an organization called U.S. in the World (USITW) last year, they’re “based on the analysis of the three research projects. . . and on other research projects undertaken on behalf of USITW” to facilitate communication with what might be called political independents. Among its recommendations:

Peace and security advocates should. . . “re-frame” the issue [of nuclear weapons] to help people see that it is the existence of the weapons themselves — not who has them – that poses the primary threat to global and national security. The fact that nuclear weapons are a source of risk — not the fact that they are morally wrong — should be presented as the underlying reason why the issue of nuclear weapons matters. [Emphasis added.]

Actually, by USITW’s reckoning, the risk needs to be placed on “the weapons themselves and not primarily with who has them. [Otherwise] there is no real case to be made for the U.S. addressing our own nuclear arsenal since most Americans view the U.S. to be a good and decent country.” In fact, “For many people, the very destructiveness of these weapons is the reason for having them (for deterrence purposes).”

Meanwhile, the phrase from the report that reads “not the fact that they are morally wrong” offers an opening to insert another personal-favorite quote:

“I just think that in the nuclear world, the true enemy can’t be destroyed. … In my humble opinion, in the nuclear world, the true enemy is war itself.”
– Denzel Washington in “Crimson Tide”

Bear in mind, USITW points out, “The Risk Reduction Frame is different from the Safety Frame. A Risk Reduction Frame points to a process by which we can enhance security.” Whereas, “A Safety Frame. . . often used. . . by those who favor maintaining or enhancing our nuclear arsenal. . . points to security under threat and suggests. . . we are either safe or unsafe [Black or white, no gray -- RW] which can lead people to want to hold onto our ’strongest/best’ weapons.”

Another hazard to skirt when communicating with PMs (persuadable middles): “. . . advocates must. . . understand the public’s perception of peace and security advocates and their agendas (pushing a particular ideology, promoting pacifism, etc.) and the role that validators and outside messengers can play.” In other words, lacking credibility with PMs, peaceniks need to fade into the background and cede the stage to “validators and outside messengers” such as generals, current and retired, who have seen the light about nuclear weapons.

The final point we’ll highlight: “When introducing the Risk Reduction Frame, advocates should be focused on the risk posed by nuclear weapons — not just the risk of vulnerable fissile materials (i.e., nuclear terrorism).” It seems that when using “nuclear terrorism as our starting point. … the public starts seeing the entire world as a scary place, full of enemies whose behavior cannot be modified or controlled in any way except through crushing them” with the aforementioned “strongest/best” weapons.

Nothing could be more counterintuitive to disarmament advocates. They instinctively invoke nuclear terrorism to make the case for disarmament. It’s tough to disagree with USITW, though, that it’s a stone better left unturned.

However valuable, USITW’s recommendations fall short of enlightening the public to some of nuclear weapons’ underlying issues. For example, helping people understand that nuclear war is but war write large. When states retain conventional weapons capable of mass extermination, disarmament is but a Pyrrhic victory.

Ultimately we need to face our shadow selves and stop demonizing other states or races. Author Paul Levy quotes Carl Jung, who wrote of “the overweening pretensions of the human shadow, which we so gladly project on our fellow man in order to visit our own sins upon him with apparent justification.” Levy adds: “Projecting our own evil outside of ourselves seemingly relieves us of the burden of having to deal with the evil within us. And yet [it's] the primal act which generates the very ‘evil’ that we are attempting to avoid in the first place.”

Obviously, even if universal health care came to pass, the public isn’t going to flock to psychotherapy in search of its shadow self. What’s more important is that we turn our attention to raising children disinclined to project their darker impulses unto others. As psychohistorian Jerrold Atlas phrases it, we’ve been “too slowly improving childrearing and too fast evolving destructive technology” such as nuclear weapons.

Simply put, children must be kept safe from violence and sexual abuse. As the noted Swiss psychotherapist and author Alice Miller wrote: “The total neglect or trivialization of the childhood factor operative in the context of violence. . . sometimes leads to explanations that are not only unconvincing and abortive but actively deflect attention away from the genuine roots of violence.” In other words — surprise, surprise — abusing a child predisposes him or her toward violence and, arguably, an inclination to advocate or support violent solutions to international conflict.

To decrease violence against children in recent years, laws banning corporal punishment and programs that teach high-school students childrearing and provide children with empathy training have been instituted, along with community centers to teach parenting skills. The more they’re implemented, the more children will grow up unmarked by abuse. In short order, fewer individuals in positions of authority will find that strategies putting enormous numbers of individuals in harm’s way make sense.

In the interim, while USITW is not posting trail markers to world peace, we should be grateful that it’s presenting us with “a public education campaign that pursues short-term policy gains while advancing the long-term objective of the complete elimination of nuclear weapons.” If disarmament advocates tweak their “messaging” to accord with USITW’s recommendations, they might find that they could get used to their newfound success communicating with the public.

The waitresses were all tall, pretty and young.  They wore long tent-like, flowing dresses that hung loosely on their thin frames.  Their long black hair was pulled back tight in ponytails, and they wouldn’t stop smiling.

We were dining at one of the handful of North Korea government-run restaurants in Shanghai.  And it was all a bit surreal.

The food itself was similar to what I’ve had in South Korean restaurants: kimchi, cold noodle dishes, spicy soups with cabbage and tofu and lettuce-wrapped barbecued meat (although, unlike in L.A.’s Koreatown, I’m pretty sure the dog meat on the menu was real.)

The entertainment was more intriguing than the food.  As we ate, the young women, all in their early 20s, played music, sang and danced on a central stage.  The setting and the performers reminded me of an elementary school talent show or a ballet recital.   The dancers wore puffy pink gowns with ruffles that looked like a 80s prom dress someone’s mother might have made with discounted fabric.   While the dancers smiled sweetly and twirled innocently, another woman in a turquoise crinoline gown played the bass.  Her bright grin did not waver as she rocked side to side, her long black ponytail swinging.

At one point, the performers brought out a map of North Korea with a big red star in the center and danced around it in homage.  Sometimes, they’d escort diners up to the stage, handing them a fake flower bouquet as they stood there awkwardly and tried to sing along.

“This is just like China in the 1970s,” said one of my dining companions, who had grown up in China during that period. “The innocence, the purity, even the clothes - it’s all a little nostalgic for the older Chinese here.”

She went on to explain that today materialism reigns in China, and we’d be hard pressed to find a scene like this.  Capitalism has dramatically altered the landscape, and there’s no going back.

“This is just so contained,” she said, motioning to the women and their pleasant smiles. “Now, China is much more dynamic, explosive.”

We tried to ask our waitress a few questions, which she answered in fluent Chinese.  The waitresses and dancers all studied Chinese in college and graduated with degrees in hospitality, she explained. Now, they work for Pyongyang’s top government-run restaurant and hotel. They’re well-trained in choreography and dancing from elementary school onward,  like many North Koreans, she explained.   These women are sent to China for two-to-three year work stints, where they live together in dormitories and work in the restaurant.

When we tried to get a little more personal - what has been different about life in Shanghai, we wondered- she gave us a clearly rehearsed answer: “The language, the culture and living without my family.”

Before we could try once more to get beyond the costumes and the made-up faces, another robed girl came to whisk her away. Their smiles never faded.

Photo by giladr

All of these events certainly had significant impacts on the world, or on part of the world, but focusing too much on how events like September 11th changed the world only tells one side of the story.  This is exacerbated by a media and punditry that focuses often overstate the impact of political events.  The other side of the story, that even world changing events are usually as much about continuity as change, does not get as much attention, but is also important.  Ignoring this continuity, or focusing on the changes to a degree that precludes and understanding of the continuity is a mistake.

To use a dramatic example, it has become broadly understood that September 11th changed the world, initiated a new era in global affairs and was one of those moments that bifurcate history into before and after.  In a very literal sense this is true because all events change the world in some ways, but that is not what pundits and analysts mean when they discuss the impact of September 11th.  In a more serious way, the effect of September 11th was profound.  It reoriented American foreign policy making fighting terrorism a top priority.  It was the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, raising concerns in the US about our vulnerability to future attacks and about whether or not the US was still the hyper-power it was following the Cold War.

The economic downturn which began in late 2008 was also viewed as having a similarly holistic and dramatic impact on the world.  It destroyed the wealth and retirement funds of millions, caused some economies like Iceland’s to collapse entirely while dealing a major blow to other economies including, for example, Russia.  The downturn raised enormous doubts about the international financial system as well as in the American economic model which had spread to most of the world during the two decades preceding the crisis.

This is, of course, the way we have come to understand both September 11th and the financial crisis, but there is more to the story than that.  An equally accurate way to understand September 11th is that on September 10th, 2001 there were large numbers of Muslims angry about American foreign policy, some of whom were willing to take up violence to show their anger; the U.S. was the most powerful country in the world, but countries such as China and Russia were beginning to exert substantial regional influence; the U.S. military was the strongest in the world, but had encountered challenges in fighting unconventional foes.  All of this remains true after September 11th.

In a similar vein, the global economic system before the economic crisis was characterized by risky economic behavior, troubling disparities between the wealthy and the poor, global economic inter-dependency, while Americans wrestled with huge personal debt and economic uncertainty.  While the global economic downturn made all these things worse, it did not introduce these things for the first time.

Smaller events such as the end of apartheid, the Color Revolutions, the Georgia-Russia war or both recent wars in volvinb Israel are often described as having a game-changing effect regionally, but it is more frequently the case that these events change everything and change nothing.  Following Israel’s wars in 2006 and 2008, for example, negotiations between the Palestinians and Israel were very difficult, Palestinian anger contributed to a constant terrorist threat facing Israel, Israeli politics were highly polarized and most of the world, other than the U.S., viewed Israel as a pariah.  This had all been true, for years, and would have almost certainly have remained true had the war not happened. The same type of story can be told about the other events as well.

The point here is not to argue that nothing ever changes; that is not the case.  The recent wars involving Israel have made the problems worse, but that is more a difference of degree than of kind.  The global economic downturn has had effects that are extremely far-reaching and unprecedented, but is simultaneously a continuance of the economic problems much of the globe has faced for decades.

Sometimes, however, events need to be viewed not in terms of what they change, but of what they do not change.  In the next years if Iran gets nuclear weapons, domestic instability grows in China or more European economies collapse, the analysis will instantly focus on how this has changed the political world and the challenges we face.  That is the natural reaction, but it is not always the most useful or balanced one.  Continuity is less exciting, but it is equally important and often provides a more useful approach to understanding events.

For the unmanned military systems often referred to as “drones” or “robots” the future is now. Today there are around 50 countries investing in the research, development and purchase of unmanned systems in order to add them to the fabric of their armed forces. The utility of unmanned systems has become readily apparent to military commanders during this era of irregular warfare, with their usage spreading to operational theaters as diverse as Afghanistan, Gaza, Georgia, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Sudan and Yemen.

Among the heaviest investors in unmanned platforms are the U.S. and Israel - two countries that have engaged in difficult theaters where intelligence-gathering and reconnaissance have proven invaluable for troops on the ground.

Though it had only a smattering of unmanned aerial drones on the eve of the Iraq invasion in 2003, today the U.S. has nearly 7,000 aerial drones in its military inventory, plus another 12,000 ground robots. Israeli industry is developing some 40 different unmanned aerial systems and Ministry of Defense labs are exploring innovative concepts for ground systems.

The most famous unmanned system currently in American service is the Air Forces’ MQ-1 Predator Medium-Altitude Long-Endurance (MALE) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which is primarily utilized for surveillance but can also be outfitted with laser-guided missiles such as the AGM-114 Hellfire for use in targeted air strikes.

The Predator and its newer and larger relation, the MQ-9 Reaper, have seen increasing usage in the Afghan and Pakistan theaters, which in turn has elicited debate in the intelligence community as to the practicality of drone attacks in counterinsurgency operations. While no one disputes the value of these UAVs in providing useful intelligence to ground troops via video feeds, questions have been raised as to whether such air strikes create a negative perception of U.S. tactics amongst civilian populations, therefore helping fuel the very insurgencies American forces hope to quell.

This discussion aside, the U.S. Air Force has come to accept that UAVs are a crucial tool for modern combat operations. Evidence of the service’s transformation became apparent in 2009 when it trained more pilots for operating unmanned aerial systems than for manned fighter and bomber aircraft. Under its 30-year “Aircraft Investment Plan” the Air Force is planning on the $820 million purchase of 372 MQ-9 Reapers during the period between 2011 and 2018, plus some 60-odd RQ-4 Global Hawks. Overall, from 2008 through 2013 the Pentagon expects to invest more than $16 billion on the development and purchase of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

For their part, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have been utilizing UAVs in combat since 1982 when they first used them against Syrian air defenses in Lebanon. Faced with a complex operational environment involving a blend of urban combat and guerilla warfare, the Israelis have invested heavily in unmanned platforms and as a result are considered pioneers in the field. Led by Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), the Israeli defense industry has witnessed its UAV exports explode in the past decade, with clients such as Georgia, India, Poland, Turkey, and even Russia scrambling to get their hands on the platforms.

But it is for the purpose of outfitting their own forces that Israeli industry places its greatest emphasis on developing unmanned systems. The Israel Air Force recently declared its Heron TP high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) UAV (referred to as “Eitan” in Israeli service) to be operational. The 5-ton Eitan is capable of operating above 40,000 feet and remaining airborne for 24- to 36-hour periods. It will serve as one of the principal platforms in the Israel Air Force’ UAV squadrons, along with the mid-size, long-endurance Hermes 450 (”Zik”) and the Heron-1 (”Shoval”).

In addition, Israeli ground forces battalions will be receiving 100 Skylark 1 LE mini-UAVs produced by domestic manufacturer Elbit Systems under a $40 million contract extended by the Israeli Ministry of Defence under its “Sky Raider” program. The Skylark mini-UAVs have also been procured by countries such as Australia, Canada, France and Sweden.

Not content simply with unmanned aerial systems, the Israelis are increasingly utilizing unmanned ground systems such as the Guardium ground vehicle and the “Dawn Thunder” Caterpillar D9 bulldozer for operations in mine-laden areas and clearing improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

While the Israelis forge ahead in terms of land-based unmanned alternatives, the U.S. and U.K. are the leaders in the research and development of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs). Both countries are putting more and more emphasis on UUVs for harbor surveillance, submarine detection and mine-clearance purposes.

The boon in development, procurement and usage of unmanned systems is a reflection of their practicality within the battle-space. For instance, unmanned aerial systems serve as an effective force multiplier, enhancing the stand-off attack capabilities of the forces who wield them while also providing “over the hill” surveillance and real-time intelligence feeds. These systems also reduce the risk of friendly casualties, be they pilots in the air or soldiers on the ground. Unmanned aerial drones can loiter in the air longer than jet aircraft which rely upon the physical endurance of the fighter pilot. Finally, UAVs are a cost-effective alternative to expensive combat aircraft - though for now they remain a supplement to, and not a replacement for, jet fighters.

But with the positive factors also come negatives. These include the vulnerability of UAVs to signal-jamming, video feed hacking, and integrated air-defenses. The latter is of particular importance as American and Israeli drone operations have yet to confront robust air-defense networks where their UAVs lack of countermeasures renders them defenseless against enemy fire. There are also ethical concerns involving the use of unmanned systems. Governments may be led to believe that their use in the stand-off attack role shields them from public opprobrium since their own soldiers’ lives are not directly placed at risk. This in turn might lead to more liberalized use of drone strikes under the false assumption that these attacks carry with them few adverse consequences, such as unintended civilian casualties.

Despite these negatives, the pursuit of unmanned military systems from all corners has gone from a trickle to a flood. Most ominously, non-state actors have gotten into the game as illustrated by Hezbollah’s use of Iranian-made Mirsad-1 UAVs to penetrate Israeli airspace. Through the experience of their own operations in Afghanistan, NATO members have recognized the benefit of unmanned systems and have scrambled to outfit their deployable forces with them. Russia, too, has learned from battlefield experience, and after its brief war with Georgia in August 2008 the Russian military purchased 12 Israeli systems and is seeking a further 100 UAVs.

While the U.S. and Israel have been at the forefront of unmanned warfare so far, the gap between the haves and the have nots is shrinking. As that gap shrinks what was heralded only a few years ago as the wave of the future in military operations has suddenly become a practical tool for the wars of today.

Photo by The U.S. Army.

Three nights ago over dinner, in the conservative Free State, a Boer farmer and I were comparing the problems of our two countries. I said I thought ours were bad, but theirs were worse. He did not think so. The U.S., he opined, is an old, rich democracy, yet we keep making the same stupid mistakes. “South Africa is young. We want it to work. We will make it work.” This from a man whose father had casually used the n— word with me, and when he saw how shocked and unhappy that made me, added a dollop of the usual pabulum. (More on the Boer farm family next week.)

As it happens, I’m lodging in the near vicinity of a microcosm of the R.N. A five-minute walk from my guest house brings me into a time warp: Greenwich Village, early 60’s (when, as it happens, I lived on East 4^th & Avenue B). I refer to Seventh Street, the main drag in Melville, Johannesburg, which my guidebook characterizes as having a “laid-back and artsy feel.” (Rough Guide redux, p..526). Bookstores, cafes, gay bars, jazz bars, funky restaurants, gee-gaw shops, street peddlers selling animals made of wire. A scruffy neighborhood, easy to be comfortable in, and with more racial mixing than you can probably see most places in New York: blacks, whites, Asians, mixtures.

I was introduced to a Melville-type at “Wish,” an internet café, while I was interviewing another guy, who turned out to have been the guy’s college classmate.  He (the Melville type) was decked out in full sixties regalia: dashiki (uncommon here, most have gone western), beard, little glasses, long dreads, hands clasped in peace at the intro, and palpable street creds. (”See you in Soweto next time, my brothers.”) When he went back over to his computer, my interviewee said the guy, who looked to be in his thirties or early forties, came from a rich family, but was working as a d.j. “He’s really just spending time. His sister is, too.” My guy is an entrepreneur/philanthropist who runs double marathons. That other guy was sooo “Sixties.”

An extreme Seventh-Street oddity was a pizza place, where I ate twice. It was about, like, the music, like, man. Dig? I mean, talk about a time warp: this place had two time warps, the 60’s and the 50’s: “Save the Last Dance for Me,” “Hit the Road, Jack,” “Blue Moon” (L. Armstrong), heavy on L. Prima/K. Smith and B. Darren; conspicuously absent, L. Richard, C. Berry, and anything that might be called “rock.” (Real pop music aficianados can correct me here, please.)

Do they, the Melvilleans, know about Greenwich Village? They must. Don’t they mind being a simulacrum?

Another night, another meal. This time, I saw four Indian women eating at a Vietnamese-Thai restaurant. I’m by no means confident I understood what was going on, but this is what I think. Three looked churchy and, possibly, gay. The fourth, who came in late, was fifteen years younger and much slimmer than the others. The outfits of the older three were blowsy (skirts, shirts, dresses); hers, more up-to-date (tight jeans and a cute shirt not covering her mid-section). Although they were solicitous of her getting enough dainty morsels, she was not the daughter of any of them. They were talking about relationships, like a therapy group. .(Je snoop, donc je suis.) Then, her cell phone rang, she apologized, and went outside. When I left the restaurant half an hour later, she was still on the sidewalk, still talking on her telefonino, a full member of the global chattering classes.

At my low-to-middle-end guest house, a cozy, also funky place, we are quite a potpourri, with rainbow overtones. In my two weeks, the guests have comprised lots of people from northern Europe, for some reason –perhaps the Dutch connection-one from Australia, no other Americans, and two South Africans, a black woman and a guy of mixed race. Both indigenes are beautiful people, here several weeks for an intensive course in hotel management. They come from (coincidence) Free State.

The guests mix, in various styles and with various degrees of ease (the English are the stiffs) with the two women who run the place, who do the work. Both of these women are from the same ethnic group, Sotho, one (the boss, big and wonderful) from Botswana, and the other (younger, smaller, with sharp barometric swings) from this side of the Botswana border. Look for more on these two women in a future dispatch.

Yebo. (Hello.) “Yebo Millionaires” is a game show here.

Back up the road to Melville. Sidewalk cafes, too. What, exactly, is going on (going down) in Melville? There are Iron Age smelters nearby, but I can’t find who the place was named for: Herman, I hope.

In Melville, you see the new rich, the new non-poor, acceptance, niceness, lots of hair, lots of beer and wine. One restaurant has closed since I arrived. Before it closed, the owner explained that too much of the serious money has been moving to the northern suburbs. In the past decade, or so, much of downtown Jo’burg has relocated to one particular, ritzy burb called Sandton. (Does that remind you of anything? The really, the truly,  literate will know that Jane Austen’s last, unfinished novel about real-estate development on England’s south coast is called Sanditon.)

Seventh Street seems callow, but nice. More may be going on than meets the eye. Here comes a Hippo-Sized Hypothesis:. This is the new South Africa. These people in the cafes and bars are recovering from apartheid, like the Lost Generation in Europe, who were trying to get past WW1. Do you believe that hypothesis? It’s probably nonsense.

By way of contrast with Melville hippies, consider the clerk at the chain store in a nearby mall where I bought my cell phone (mobile). She told nosey me that she commutes in slow-lane vans called “taxis” to and from, again, Soweto, the nation’s -maybe the world’s–signature township. She was wearing the mobile phone company blazer, sprayed hair, and heavy make-up.

After she sold me the phone, she remarked matter-of-factly, “I have no money for lunch.”

“What do you think my wife would think [i.e., if I bought you lunch]?”

“I was just joking,” she retreated.

After I finished shopping, I brought her back some fruit and a roll from Pick & Pay, the supermarket in the mall, handing it to her with a wink, then fleeing, while she tended to a middle-aged white couple, who gave me a subdued stink-eye. She nodded her thanks.

Is the phone woman the old South Africa? the old and the new? Certainly the wonderful place I found to play squash at, in a leafy, nearby suburb, is the O.S.A. I’ve been there four times now. Almost all the players are white; the staff, mostly black. There are a few Indian players, no blacks.

Or what about this? (Old and new?) To keep the reader of Dispatch #1 from dying of empathic mortification, your correspondent, Candidus Americanus, omitted his first, post-flight, pre-getting lost, disaster. Here it comes now, two weeks later. Embarrassment, where is thy sting?

A few miles (kilos) from the airport, driving on the left, you understand, in speeding, heavy traffic, I hit some debris as I tried to navigate a construction zone. (Jo’burg roads are a construction zone.) Both left tires immediately blew. I pulled off the highway into the area where the crew and their equipment were situated. Since I had not yet bought a mobile, I asked one of the orange jump-suited employees if I could pay to use his, to call the car-rental people.

(Shortly after majority rule, which came in1994, South Africa paid off a huge chunk of debt, and government has used the augmented revenues for huge infrastructure projects like roads. Laudable, even though this has made hardly any inroads into the huge unemployment problem. I won’t even offer an unemployment stat -all are horrific, all are problematic. Anyway, there seem to be thousands of young men in blue or orange jump suits with yellow glow vests working on the roads.)

More kindness of strangers (See Dispatch #1.) Two young guys (orange suits) came over to cluck at my flat tires. One did have a phone, but it was empty. They offered to guide me to a phone. I locked the car, and we clambered up a grassy bank into an enclave I can’t pretend to have comprehended. There was a big police station on the road, in front of which a big, scary squad was doing  serious paramilitary drill, presumably in preparation for crowd control at the World Cup, in June. There were also a post office, a hotel, and scattered shopping and office complexes. The neighborhood, or enclave, seemed half-built, perhaps a recession victim.

We tried the P.O first. A gaunt woman of about forty, white, speaking British-y English, tried the car-rental number for twenty minutes; the line was never free. (Later, the car renters explained that Fridays are mad busy.) Then, we trudged down the tarred road for fifteen minutes toward the hotel. It was about nine-thirty or ten by now, getting hot, me in my long pants from the plane and carrying a heavy backpack with my computer, etc.(clothes locked in the car).

As we walked along, I asked my two helpers how they got to work every day, out on the highway in the middle of what must have been, for them, nowhere. They said they take a train from the township, which must mean something on the order of sixteen-hour days. They, in turn, inquired as to whether I smoked ganja (negative), and asked if it was true that, if you approached someone on the streets of New York for directions, they would charge you a fee to answer. (Might this have been a hint that I should not omit tipping them?)

At the hotel compound’s entrance, I had to sign in at a gate while my two new friends watched. Then, one flashed his mobile at the woman security guard, suggesting he do her the honor of entering her number. Nothing doing. Inside the small lobby, we all needed a cold drink, but they did not take U.S. money. A water fountain? You buy water in places like this. In fact, there was a nice little bar at the back of the lobby, just past which a bunch of idle, bling-heavy pleasure lovers, were drinking and yakking it up, poolside. No one was actually in the pool. I considered plunging in, fully clothed, but controlled the impulse. When I asked the barman for three glasses of water, he somatized, experiencing temporary deafness.

While the young, white, flamboyantly gay desk clerk kept trying the car rental place, we sat down and waited uneasily, the two guys in orange suits and the sweaty stranger, equally sore thumbs. The conversation having long since lapsed, my two Samaritans began to look increasingly nervous, so I suggested they get back to work before the boss went ballistic. Without a mote of conviction, I said I’d sort things out, then see them back at the site. They promptly left, after which I asked the clerk, and he had the barman give me a (free) glass of ice water. Why hadn’t I thought of asking the clerk for three glasses of water? I had, but it had seemed much.

The upshot was that the clerk, also unable to get through to the car rental place, got me a cab, expensive, back to the airport. The car rental clerks had me fill out a report and gave me a new car, directing me to return with the keys to the construction site, where their towing guy, to whom they relayed my shaky directions, would meet me. I changed some money, started back, and, to my mild surprise, readily found the place. The “towing guys,” who were waiting, turned out to be a cheerful young tattooed white couple. I gave my two helpers a nice, but not ridiculous tip. We did that elaborate handshake with fists, snapped fingers, slaps, etc I can never get it right, probably because I was never in the Boy Scouts. (Baden-Powell was inspired to start the B.S. by his British army experience in -yes– South Africa. Off I went -to get lost in the city.

recommended books:

Zakes Mda, Ways of Dying (a novel about ways of surviving)

Meanwhile, many of the president’s supporters, along with the disarmament community (however much the two overlap) “fear that over the past year he has moved too cautiously” thus leaving open “the possibility that the United States might use nuclear weapons in response to a biological or chemical attack, perhaps against a nation that does not possess a nuclear arsenal.”

An ostensibly critical feature of our nuclear-weapons program is the Triad — three different delivery systems: the first two, land-based silos and submarines from which to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles, and the third, bombers. Disarmament has a triad too — of, not persons, but policies non grata — which we’ll instead call the Tripod. The first leg — retention of the right to first use of a nuclear attack; the second, the option to respond to a non-nuclear attack such as biochemical; the third, the option to attack a non-nuclear nation. If disarmament supporters’ concerns about the Nuclear Posture Review come to pass, the Tripod remains intact.

As if that’s not enough for those who believe in disarmament, “Mr. Obama has already announced that he will spend billions of dollars more on updating America’s weapons laboratories to assure the reliability of what he intends to be a much smaller arsenal. … At the same time, the new document. … relies more heavily on missile defense.” As it did with Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, missile defense is clogging the pipelines of the START II negotiations with Russia as we speak.

That said, at Slate, the estimable Fred Kaplan writes:

This posture review, like the two before it. . . will almost certainly not result in anything new, even if it alleges otherwise. Even if President Barack Obama does pursue some new nuclear policies. … whether that happens will not be determined by the conclusions of an executive review.

Still, there’s another troubling feature of the Nuclear Posture Review that’s going unnoticed by most. Before alluding to it, Shanker and Sanger cite another review: “Mr. Obama’s recently published Quadrennial Defense Review [which] includes support for a new class of non-nuclear weapons, called ‘Prompt Global Strike,’ that could be fired from the United States and hit a target anywhere in less than an hour.”

Those targets include:

. . . the leadership of Al Qaeda in the mountains of Pakistan, or. . . an impending missile launch from North Korea. But under Mr. Obama’s strategy, the missiles would be based at new sites around the United States that might even be open to inspection, so that Russia and China would know that a missile launched from those sites was not nuclear — to avoid having them place their own nuclear forces on high alert.

But Russia watcher Alexander Zaitchik (also the author of Common Nonsense: Glenn Beck and the Triumph of Ignorance, to be published shortly) doesn’t find that too reassuring:

“Prompt Global Strike” scares the hell out of me. The idea that inspections are going to allow Moscow to remain calm in the event that a “large strike” emanates from the U.S. does not seem credible. What’s to say mobile launchers weren’t wheeled in the next day [after an inspection]? A bunch of ICBM blips on a radar screen are still a bunch of ICBM blips. In such a small decision window, I don’t want jittery paranoids in bunkers having to do calculus in which the biggest factor is U.S. claims of, “Trust us! They’re conventional!”

A product of DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), Prompt Global Strike can be launched from submarines too and — if the Pentagon has its way (and the money) — space one day. Sanger and Shanker refer to Prompt Global Strike as Obama’s strategy, but it’s actually been “in slow development since the 1990s, and now quickly coalescing in military circles,” according to Danger Room’s Noah Shachtman for Popular Mechanics in 2007.

Eventually, he wrote, “Prompt Global Strike could encompass new generations of aircraft and armaments five times faster than anything in the current American arsenal. One candidate: the X-51 hypersonic cruise missile. . . is designed to hit Mach 5 — roughly 3600 mph.” In other words, as Global Security Newswire points out, it’s “the first weapon other than a ballistic missile to fly at hypersonic speeds.”

Returning to how liable they are to become the victim of mistaken identity Shachtman addressed the question of “whether such an attack can be deployed without triggering World War III: [the Tridents] look, and fly, exactly like the deadliest weapons in the American nuclear arsenal.” Also, “The Navy’s plan calls for arming Ohio class subs with two conventional and 22 nuclear Trident II missiles.” Talk about your recipes for disaster: “To outside observers, the subs’ conventional and nuclear weapons would appear identical.”

Furthermore, Shachtman writes:

Traditionally, the U.S. strategy is to shoot missiles over the North Pole. But the current, most likely Prompt Global Strike targets, North Korea and Iran, lie south of China and Russia — which would put those countries right under a pole-launched flight path. “For many minutes during their flight patterns, these missiles might appear to be headed towards targets in these nations,” a congressional study notes.

All in all, Prompt Global Strike’s “nuclear ambiguity issues,” as the Senate Armed Services committee called them, don’t go a long way to inducing peace of mind. But while closing “the prompt global strike capability gap as quickly as possible remains a top STRATCOM priority,” said a STRATCOM spokesperson, it doesn’t expect to begin deploying until 2015.

Still, ultimately, write Shanker and Sanger, “the administration believes it could create a new form of deterrence — a way to contain countries that possess or hope to develop nuclear, biological or chemical weapons, without resorting to a nuclear option.”

Lost in the translation from the nuclear option to conventional weapons is exactly what kind of attack are we talking about? What does it feel like to be well and promptly globally struck? Shachtman again:

When the order [from the president to launch] comes, the sub shoots a 65-ton Trident II ballistic missile into the sky. … Up and over the oceans and out of the atmosphere it soars for thousands of miles. At the top of its parabola, hanging in space, the Trident’s four warheads separate and begin their screaming descent down toward the planet. … Just above the target, the warheads. … filled with scored tungsten rods with twice the strength of steel. … detonate, showering the area with thousands of rods. … Anything within 3000 sq. ft. of this whirling, metallic storm is obliterated.

Prompt Global Strike may result in fewer fatalities, less environmental damage, and no nuclear winter. But, for all intents and purposes, it appears to be a modern-day version of a Dresden firestorm. Using the phrase “conventional” weapons today doesn’t do justice to DARPA and the Pentagon’s warped imaginations, which are anything but conventional.

In fact, Prompt Global Strike beggars the question: What good is disarmament when what replaces nuclear weapons doles out a quality of death that’s at last as nightmarish as from a nuclear attack? Our overarching mission is clear. We need to ensure that nuclear disarmament, should it come to pass, is accompanied by the consignment of mass extermination as a national-security strategy to the charnel house of history.

Last week saw dueling sex scandals involving Hindu holy men. First, a television channel ran a sting operation in which it filmed Swami Nithyananda, an extremely popular godman who runs a major ashram just outside the IT hub of Bangalore, getting it on with a woman believed to be (her face is a bit blurry in the video) a well known Tamil film star (although there is some debate about whether it is Ragasudha or Ranjitha.)

Following airing of the tape, the swamis enraged followers - feeling betrayed by Nithyananda’s seeming hypocrisy — attacked his ashrams in both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. The police also filed charges against him for “cheating” and “enraging people’s religious sentiments.” (If only that were a crime in America too!) The swami was forced to release a statement assuring his followers that he had done “nothing illegal” — not exactly the strongest denial ever.

Then, in an even bigger scandal, a popular mystic named Shiv Murat Dwivedi was arrested by Delhi police and charge with running a prostitution ring involving up to 100 of his female devotees, including many “respectable” girls — college students and airline stewardesses — with middle class backgrounds or, at least, middle-class aspirations, as well as some “society women,” according to a report in The Straits Times. The report also said that “Dwivedi, who worked as a security guard at a five-star hole and at a massage parlour before taking to religion, was said to have amassed more than 600 million rupees ($10 million)  over a period of 10 years [through prostitution and other illegal activities.]” There are other reports that Dwivedi had a criminal record for prostitution previously and that he remade himself following his release from prison as a holy man. He may have lured the women into his prostitution ring with promises of access to the rich and powerful and then blackmailed them to get them in the game. According to another report, while some of the women volunteered to work in the guru’s sex business, others were coerced, perhaps because the swami had loaned them money to pay for schools or training courses.

It is always remarkable that more people don’t see these phony gurus for what they are: con artists. Belief in swamis and gurus seems particularly widespread in India, again even among classes of people who, in the West, would not be the sorts to fall for the acts of televangelists. For an interesting discussion of this phenomenon, I recommend the tail end of a chapter called “The Imaginary Horse,” in Edward Luce’s great survey of contemporary India, In Spite of The Gods.

The deal would have seen every Icelandic citizen fork out $135 every month for eight years — to repay the multi-billion dollar sum demanded by Britain and the Netherlands for having compensated investors  with Icesave accounts in the two countries (an online  brand of the Icelandic bank Landsbanki that collapsed in October 2008). That the Icelanders don’t want to pay is not surprising: they don’t see themselves as responsible for footing the bill.

Bullied by Bullies

The referendum result is indicative of the prevailing mood of the general public in Iceland, which seems to be one of feeling bullied by larger countries. The online Iceland Review summed up public sentiment regarding the terms of the debt repayments as “an attempt by the international community to kick the nation when it is already on its knees because of the economic disasters.” Anger has been directed at Britain in particular, with relations between the two countries having plummeted to their lowest level since the Cod Wars in the 1970s. Back then, the British government sent in its battleships to take on Icelandic trawlers in the dispute over fish (a fact not forgotten among Icelanders); this time around, at the time of the bank scheme’s collapse in October 2008, it used anti-terror legislation to freeze Icesave assets in Britain fearing that the bank’s collapse would harm the British economy. It is no wonder that Icelanders are aggrieved at what they perceive as unjust treatment, with the Icelandic prime minister demanding an apology from Gordon Brown.

“Inglorious Basterds”

But while Icelanders are angry at what they see as big foreign bullies, the demonstrations (you can see a video here) surrounding the referendum also made it clear that public anger is directed at a coterie of “greedy” Icelandic bankers, politicians, and businessmen, as well as foreign investors, seen as partially responsible for the country’s economic mess. One placard depicted three well-known figures dressed in  black brandishing vacuum cleaners and hoovering up money under the caption “Inglorious Basterds,” with Iceland’s prime minister and finance minister in the background looking on.

What Next?

While the referendum was triggered by the Icelandic president refusing to sign the repayment deal passed by parliament at the end of last year, it had not stopped alternative solutions being looked at, as the government knew the result would likely be a resounding “No.” Negotiations with Britain and the Netherlands on how to repay the money are set to further continue. In a statement released yesterday by the Icelandic government, it was indicated that both countries may accept a solution that entails a significantly lower cost to Iceland.

It is clear, though, that the cost to the government is mounting. Not only had the Icelandic prime minister and finance minister endorsed a deal that was seen as “selling Iceland out” in the first place,  but they also downplayed the importance of the referendum, showing that they were out of tune with a large majority of the population who vented their displeasure. Indeed, the government has refused to link the result of the referendum with its own legitimacy — which has nevertheless been further undermined.

The government finds itself between a rock and a hard place, as if it is unable to come with a plan to repay the debt, it may see progress in its accession to the European Union and an IMF “rescue package” jeopardized. It’s a tricky situation for the  Icelandic government, with beleaguered Finance Minister Steingrimur Sigfússon asking journalists “Can you point out anybody who wants my job?” He might not have been joking.

But tonight, at least, the Icelandic people are celebrating. They have had their say.

Photo of protesters outside the Icelandic parliament by neate photos

As the latest victims to the vagaries of this winter’s  harsh weather, 51 ships, including passenger ferries and cargo ships, were stuck in the ice late last week — some having been so for several days. One of the ships — a Viking Line passenger ferry traveling between Finland and Sweden — with nearly one thousand people on board even collided with another boat  as the ice pushed them together, before ice breakers manged to free them. Arriving on Friday morning in Stockholm after a twelve hour delay, there had at one point even been thought of evacuating the passengers, according to Finnish public broadcaster YLE. Whether that meant depositing everyone on the ice and asking them to walk to land was not indicated (!)

I’ve taken the ferry (the same ship as in the photo above) numerous times between Sweden and Finland and, on the bottom deck, the sound of the ice scraping against the hull of the ship is disconcerting to say the least. Visions of ice cutting a gash through the side of the ship à la Titanic cross the mind.

In much of the Gulf of Bothnia (the northern part of the Baltic Sea) the sea habitually freezes every winter to form pack ice — and where the majority of ships get stuck. In the past, whole armies have marched across, notably in 1809 when the Russian army crossed over from Finland to attack Sweden. Further south, roughly level with Stockholm, the ice is typically more spread out.

But, normally, the ice is no problem for the bigger ships to plow through: this time, it was the strong wind that was the main culprit.

“The area from Stockholm and north in the Baltic is covered in ice … the ice is 40-50 cm thick … the problem it is very windy out there now … and that means the ice is moving rapidly … that is making a problem for the ships,” said a representative to Radio Sweden from the Swedish Maritime Administration. The organization went on to blame cruise ship captains for not heeding their advice and continuing with their journeys.

It’s not only an inconvenience to passengers with delays and losses for ferry companies due to cancellations, but it is a major headache for Swedish — and other Baltic countries’ — trade.

85% of Swedish trade is conducted via the sea, and with dozens of ships — many of them carrying goods — having been trapped this time around, delays cost money. Paper for the newsprint industry, for instance, is sourced from forests in the north of Sweden which has to traverse the ice-choked waters of the Bothnian Gulf. With Sweden’s seven icebreakers — as well as Finland’s – needing to be deployed round-the-clock to free the trapped ships, this has prompted questions over whether  the number of ice breakers patrolling the Baltic needs to be increased.

And with predictions that the ice is set to stay for another two months or more, there may yet be more disruptions to come.

Photo of Viking Line ferry in sea ice by wstyrder

]]> http://thefastertimes.com/world/2010/03/07/maritime-mayhem-on-the-frozen-baltic/feed/ http://thefastertimes.com/world/2010/03/05/in-unprecedented-move-police-officer-held-in-connection-with-kashmiri-youths-killing-2/ http://thefastertimes.com/world/2010/03/05/in-unprecedented-move-police-officer-held-in-connection-with-kashmiri-youths-killing-2/#comments Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:37:50 +0000 Jeremy Kahn http://thefastertimes.com/world/2010/03/05/in-unprecedented-move-police-officer-held-in-connection-with-kashmiri-youths-killing-2/ A commandant in India’s Border Security Force has been arrested in Jammu & Kashmir in connection with the murder of a 16-year old boy. A BSF constable arrested for shooting the boy had said he did so on orders from his commanding officer. In the 20 year history of Kashmir’s insurgency, a ranking officer in the Indian security forces has never been charged in connection with an extra-judicial killing. On the contrary, the security forces have tended to operate with complete impunity in Kashmir. Perhaps this is a sign that things are changing.