The Visionist - Out of the Box Global Solutions

Sorry to be out of touch

2011-11-08T19:56:00.000-08:00

I am not sure if anyone missed me, but I am sorry I have left my blog go so fallow for the past seven months. Perhaps it was the impact of the major change going on where I work as a defense contractor. During this period, US Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) was "disestablished" as one of the twelve major DoD so-called Unified Commands as an early budget reduction or "efficiencies" measure. After closing down its superstructure of General Officers and most of its staff, only certain parts of the Command were allowed to remain and were each assigned to other DoD entities. As it happens, I worked in the J7 or Training Directorate, which was continued, and we are now under the Joint Chiefs of Staff as part of the Joint Staff's J7. So as some would say, I "survived" JFCOM's demise. Some might even call it a promotion. No doubt the dust still has not settled on JFCOM. There is new leadership in the J7 and a restructuring, lots of moving of offices and new initiatives. However, the fundamental work of the training arm, the only Joint Trainers in the US military, continues on in pretty much the same way as it did before. Nobody who did make it through the "transition" feels totally secure in their position. After all the state of the economy and high unemployment do not lend themselves for people to take their jobs for granted now, if they ever foolishly did. People are working hard to demonstrate their value added to the new organization. The big buzz word of the transition was that we would be an organization which functioned on a "demand signal." In other words, the fate of the organization and everyone in it, especially contractors, would be based on how much of its services were requested by its "customers," in most cases referring to its regional Combatant Commands. So far, the demand signal has been strong. Nonetheless, any reorganization introduces a set of uncertainties, as old structures and functions are reassessed and evaluated for their contributions to the overall effort. So, I would say, so far so good, and I do hope to write more frequently in my blog now that our work has become somewhat normalized. See you soon!

The Civil War Around Us

2011-04-09T11:35:00.000-07:00

These days I am watching Ken Burns' "Civil War" series on PBS and seeing Abraham Lincoln's picture on the front page of "Time" magazine.    OK, we are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, an appropriate time to remember that important and horrible event in US history.   But there is another spectre hovering over this country. "Time" asked if the Civil War is over. That refers strictly to the matter of if Americans agree on the causes of the war, and the broad denial that race was its central or perhaps its only cause.

But is all this focus on the Civil War also a wake up call to our present dilemmas.   The country almost stopped last night until minutes before a government shutdown, an agreement was struck by reluctant Democrats and Republicans to keep the government going. Underlying this near collapse of our government, were deep seated and building conflicts within the body politic of our nation which threaten even wider rifts and more severe consequences.     Are we on the brink of a new Civil War?

I don't want to be cute or provocative.   I believe a case can be made that our country is entering a great divide. The divisions are over: yes, race, class, regions, cultural beliefs, ignorance, immigration, globalization, economics and foreign policy goals.

Although we were mostly all proud that we had elected the first African American President (actually he is biracial and he did not come from slaves but the marriage of an African foreign student with an American woman), in truth, from the very beginning of his Presidency, he was under attack for being a secret Muslim, not born in the United States (incredibly even Donald Trump has now gotten on this issue) and for being a "community organizer," all of which could be considered code words for his race, as is the term "Obamacare."

We have an unusual class divide buiding, not between the rich and the poor, but between the very rich who run corporate America (not all of them, certainly but enough of them, and certainly characterized by the Koch brothers) who are stoking the fires of attack on the President and his policies, and sectors of the white working and lower middle classes that are joined in opposing big government and in some cases  any government at all.   The solid middle and upper middle classes, organized workers, minorities and the intellectual, cultural and enlightened business elites are arrayed against them.

Unfortunately, we remain divided along lines similar to that of the original Civil War: South against North, Coastal America against the hinterland; we now call it Red and Blue States. Demographic shifts have made these boundaries less precise and in some cases we now have swing states, that shift back and forth at least in electoral contests. One of these is my own state of Virginia.   I only had to go down the street to the corner where we have a few village stores to find Johnny Reb tee shirts (actually that store was destroyed last year in a tornado.)

We are deeply divided culturally.   Our constitution provides for a clear separation of church and state, yet there are those who wish to impose their own religious beliefs on others. This applies primarily to women's reproductive rights and gay rights, but also to what is taught in the classroom about things like sex education, history and evolution. Increasingly, the religious right is imposing its beliefs on the rest of the country. They have become increasingly powerful, organized and media-savvy.    There is still a legacy of the 60s, which is reflected in many of the beliefs of the Baby Boomers, who lived through that period of cultural awakening and sexual and freedom.

The ignorance gap is something not often explored and I am not simply saying that there are people who are intelligent or stupid.   I am speaking more about people who rely on science versus those who depend solely in belief. This applies particularly to the debates about evolution and stem cell research.   This is something that goes back to the days of the Scopes Trial and persists today. Our capacity to survive on this planet is most linked to our ability to apply science to the problems that confront humanity, but efforts to hold back scientific discovery, knowledge and implementation will continue to make this effort difficult.

We are an immigrant society, par excellence, yet we are divided over immigration. We occupied a good part of Mexico. We filled our cities with immigrants from Europe and more recently from the rest of the world. We continue to depend on immigrants to do work that most American-born citizens would not care to do.    Yet there is a whole group of Americans who fear immigration. Because of this, we have more, not less illegal immigration because our politicians cannot agree on a orderly immigration policy.   No matter what we try, we cannot stop immigration, only slow it down at a great cost. People will lie on their visa applications, sneak in through, around and under our land borders.    But the false dichotomy of being for or against immigration or seeing it strictly as a law enforcement and not also an economic and social problem drives us to failure and conflict. Most importantly, anti-immigrant sentiment is focused on flows from Latin America, mostly Mexico and Central America.   Of course, this concern is increased by the amount of crime taking place across the border as well as some spillover due to the nature of illegal trafficking both of narcotics and humans. However, a lot of this anti-immigrant sentiment, in my opinion, is purely racism and nativism. A fear of foreigners, their cultures their beliefs,their way of life and their poverty. Of course, these attitudes are given justifications such as "they are taking jobs away from Americans," and "they are a burden to our social welfare policies." But few immigrants take jobs on farms, on construction sites, in restaurants or in hotels that Americans really want, despite the depressed jobs market. And in general, the immigrants who come here are hard working and conscientious, seeking a living for themselves and their families, many of whom are still back in their home towns down south.

Globalization and economics divides us. There are those who are better and worse prepared to confront the challenges of globalization, which are inevitable. Those whose jobs are being displaced because employers, mostly industrial but also services, can no longer afford to pay people in this country 10-20 times the wages paid abroad.   There are many other challenges of globalization, such as the use of the social media tot divide us between those who use and those who do not use them or understand technology, which is the root cause of globalization. Our counry has increasingly been creating a gap in income levels that has left a large number of people poor and undereducated, leading further to their economic marginalization. The cost of education, the greatest tool for overcoming barriers to increasing income, has become prohibitive.

Finally, we are divided over the role of our country in the world. This is not an easy issue on which to see a clear divide, because more than anything you find elites on both sides of the political party barrier finding a common position, versus the opinions of many ordinary Americans. Both parties support our current policies in both Iraq and Afghanistan, while most Americans are going along with Iraq because we are leaving but have problems with Afghanistan because we cannot leave fast enough for them. In truth, our current policies are to stay as long as we have to, but no President can say this so starkly and neither can Republicans who are hard liners when it comes to fighting terrorism.    The delicate nature of the problem is our current polices with regard to Libya. Everyone hates Qaddafi, but few Americans really want to see our country get deeply involved in a third war with "boots on the ground," or with hemorrhaging expenses.   This is an issue where Republicans are also divided so it is not a partisan issue at this time, but could become one. At root here also, besides those issues of "blood and treasure" that always emerge with foreign involvements, are deep seated sentiments of isolationism vs. internationalism. These are more deeply rooted in class than in differences among elites. For the present, however, anti-war sentiment has not been a major issue in our political campaigns, although Iraq was the root of BarrackObama's 2008 campaign.

These differences are often referred to as "cleavages" by political scientists. If enough of these overlap, they are the basis for a large conflict within a society.   Are we moving in this direction? Have we already arrived?    I am not sure, but I am fearful.   We entered 2009 on a note of hope and unity. We are far from that today. Let us hope for leadership that can move us back in this direction.   I have not specifically mentioned the issue of debt or the Tea Party, but these are obviously large factors of division in the country. The Democrats have largely thrown in the towel on the debt issue, acknowledging the need for drastic debt reduction.   But the Tea Pary wants more than Democrats are willing to give and they are also salting their demands increasingly with cultural issues that make coming together even more difficult that purely over fiscal matters.

Qaddafi Cannot Win

2011-04-08T16:39:00.000-07:00

As we watch the situation in Libya ebb and flow, there is a sinking feeling that the rag tag rebel army is not doing well and is in retreat against the onslaught of Qaddafi's better armed, better trained, more disciplined forces. The international coalition that is supporting UNSC Resolution 1973 is learning that the tools it decided on to stop Qaddafi's forces, a no fly zone and air attacks against his ground forces, is not enough to tip the balance in favor of the opposition forces. The recent unintentional NATO attack against opposition armored vehicles only underscores the precarious nature of outside assistance.

Several escalations have been discussed. First, arming and training the opposition forces. Second, use of more sophisticated air power such as A-10 Worthogs and AC-130 gunships. But if only air power is to be used, a better system of air control needs to be introduced. There are already stories of CIA teams in Libya but no indication that they are directing air strikes as they did in Afghanistan in 2001. Finally there is the possibility of "boots on the ground" of foreign troops. The West would want these to be Arab troops, but that is unlikely at this time. Most Western governments have ruled out use of their own troops in Libya. And the UN resolution specifically rejects any foreign intervention on the ground. So where do we go from here?

The NATO led coalition needs to rethink the question of the use of ground power. This would be very unpopular among most publics. The US fears getting involved in a a third ground war. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates even said it would not happen "so long as I am the Secretary of Defense." The implication there is that the option still exists with Gates' planned departure from DoD, athough his departure has not been specified. Nonetheless, there is now serious talk about CIA Director Leon Pannetta taking over his job (and General Petreaus, taking Pannetta's.) All of this is probably not intentionally linked to Libya, but it could facilitate a policy shift. I know that nobody thinks we are going to dive into a ground war in Libya. However, can anyone imagine that we would stand by while Qaddafi vanquishes the opposition forces in Benghazi? I, for one, cannot.

What Ever Happened to Idealism?

2011-04-06T20:22:00.000-07:00

As I view the current landscape I am struck by the absence of idealism. Too bad, because I have long defined myself more as an idealist than any other character trait.   It was easy to be an idealist in the past. I was an idealist about being an American in a world in which few countries offered both the standard of living and the liberties of the United States. It was easy being an idealist in the 1960s with the Civil Rights movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement and the Peace movement and Youth movement.   It was easy to be an idealist as a liberal.   It was easy being an idealist during the Carter human rights era of the late 70s, the return to democracy in Southern Europe and Latin America in the 80s and during the 90s when there was a flourishing recoginiton of the role of women and civil society.

9/11 killed idealism. It threw us all into an abiss of fear and militarism. I can't go through an airport screening process without thinking how naive we all were.   Where the hell did those guys come from. We didn't have a clue that our entire society would be challenged by a bunch of guys living in the most backward parts of the globe, who responded to an 8th century creed.

The electiion of Barack Obama seemed to represent a return to idealism.   He won an election through inspiration.   We for the most part believed him. Imagine electing the first African American ever to the Presidency.   It seemed something that only happened in the movies.   But we barely realized that we had already been hit with a sledge hammer of recession.   And we were already struggling through two major wars that were legacies of 9/11.     If politics was for a moment inspiring, it no longer is.   Antibodies to the election of a liberal Black President immediately began to build and have developed into a poisonous mixture of nativism, reaction to the health care legislation, vituperatively labeled as "Obamacare" by all those who seek to denigrate the President and his accomplishments.    And while the President has successfully pulled us out of the recession, he has been continually attacked for the sluggish jobs recovery and now for the Federal deficit, neither of which were of his making.

Ah, the Arab Spring!   It is truly inspiring, perhaps one of the most important developments of our time. But it is being met with a high degree of cynicism and fear.   We think that these revolutions could well get out of control. We fear that a certain stability we have enjoyed in the Arab world is now at risk.   And we hesitate to know how far to go to support the broad revolution taking place differently in each country in the region. Meanwhile the cost of a gallon of gasoline keeps creeping up, and we can no longer trust our energy future to the power of the atom.   We once again fear nuclear annihillation.

So where are the idealists? Where are the idealistic causes and what can we be idealistic about in the future?

I have questions, but at this moment no answers. Maybe tomorrow or the next day.

Eleanor's War

2011-03-27T18:25:00.000-07:00

I have commented in past blogs about how the President and the Secretary of State have persistenty referred to "universal human rights" as a basis for our policies abroad, from China to Libya. Hillary again refered to it on today's "Meet the Press," where she was unusually inteviewed side-by-side with Defense Secretary Robert Gates about our i ntervention in Libya.

It occurs to me that our country has entered into a new foreign policy, that of "the defense of universal human rights." Very few people seem to know the origins of this phrase. However, as the former Executive Director of the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill (ERVK), Mrs. Roosevelt's former home, I am deeply aware that this is a reference to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which was the main accomplishment of Mrs Roosevelt's career. In 1998, ERVK ran a multi-part program to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the UDHR. It included a town hall meeting on the day of the anniversary, December 9, at Marist College, in the Roosevelt's home of Dutchess County; a 7 part college lecture series around the country on human rights that included then First Lady Hillary Clinton, former Nobel Peace Prize winner and President of Costa Rica Oscar Arias; Gloria Steinem and others. We also sponsored several teacher training courses on human rights and a local Welfare Reform Monitoring Program that used the UDHR as the standard for evaluating the results of Welfare Reform. It was an ambitious program for a small organization.

Few people understand that the UDHR is contained in a UN General Assembly Resolution, at the time adoped by all the members of the UN (with some abstantions). To read the relatively short text and background, I would recommend the website set up in 1998 by a coaliton of non-governmental organizations that banded together to promote the UDHR's 50th anniversary, of which ERVK was only one: http://www.udhr.org/index.htm. (Do not access the Declaration from the left hand column of the site, which is a dead link, but yes from the first line of the main page where it is hyperlinked.)

I beleive that a good argument can be made that we went into Libya because the current administration believes deeply in the UDHR. Therefore, I am not ashamed to say that Libya could be called "Eleanor's War."

Sunday Nonsense

2011-03-27T17:40:00.000-07:00

When I was teaching political science at Tidewater Community College as an adjunct lecturer, I made my students watch and report on at least one of the Sunday talk shows.. These reports became the basis of our discussions of current political events at our Monday evening class. I always thought that the best discussions of the previous week's events were found on these Sunday shows, which continue to evolve with the addition of such programs as Farid Zakaria's GPS and Cristine Amanpour's show.

But I have been disappointed in the disucssions for the past two weeks on these shows about Libya. There continues to be a reserve on the part of most commentators on the wisdom of our military intervention there. Some observers are clearly in favor of the President's decisions, but even they do not firmly resist some of the allegations of those who opposed him. Richard Haas of the Council of Foreign Relations has been especialy critical.

One of the most insistent points made by Haas and other critics is that we simply do not know who the Libyan opposition is so should not have rushed to support them. Even John Negroponte, a supporter of Libyan policy, ceded this one to Haas and urged the State Department to get diplomatic representatives to Benghazi to meet them. All this talk seems to ignore the fact that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton herself met with these leaders as did earlier French President Sarkozy. (The story of how French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy travelled to Benghazi to meet them and then arranged for them to meet with Sarkozy is one of the fascinating turns of fate of this matter.) While I agree with Negroponte that we should dispatch diplomats to Benghazi, all this talk seems to ignore information already available about the Libyan opposition. For one, an excellent piece abou the origins of the revolt and the nature of it was published in the recent issue of "The New York Review of Books," by Nicolas Pelham called "The Battle of Libya:" http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/apr/07/battle-libya/?page=1)

My hope is that the rebels, after a most successful air intervention by the anti-Coalition, will continue their westward sweep and that all this doubt and angst will also be swept away by their victory and the President's and Hillary's wisdom and compassion will have been confirmed.

The Fourth Wave

2011-03-26T12:15:00.000-07:00

I met Samuel Huntington, the noted late Harvard political scientist, only once when I was a young vice consul in Brazil and he had come there to advise the Brazilian military regime on their desire to make a slow return to democratic, civilian rule. Unfortunately, I was not invited into his private meeting with the American Consul General in Rio, but when he came out of the meeting, the CG turned to me and asked me to help Dr. Huntington with something: could I help him buy a parrot to take back to the US with him. I did. Huntington, from all I could gather, actually was a main architect of the Brazilian process of "distension:" the "slow, secure but steady" evolution towards democracy devised by the regime's intellectual leader, Gen. Golbery do Couto e Silva.

Huntington wrote a book in 1993 called "The Third Wave," about the wave of democratic transitions that took place in Southern Europe and Latin America, including Brazil, in the 1980s and 90s. The first two waves of democracy had taken place between 1828-1926 and 1945-1962, he noted. He explained a series of factors that made this third wave possible, but did not go on to say they had been inevitable. The last place that Huntington thought there would be democratic change was in the Islamic world. Most students of the Middle East and Central Asia would have agreed with him.

However, Huntington would have surely been one of the first to identify the current democratic uprisings in Northern Africa and the Middle East as a likely fourth wave of democratization. Though the dust certainly has not settled on the region and many properly express concern that these revolutions could be "high-jacked" by militant Islamic extremists, there are not concrete indications that this is happening or, even more important, that Islamic fundamentalism is at the root or even a part of these movements.

This is why I remain nonplussed by the consistent note of scepticism about these democratic revolutions and especially the decision of the international community to go in to protect and support the revolution in Libya. This is an unparalleled opportunity to see the entire Arab world move in the direction of democracy and modernity. Whether these revolutions have external support could be critical, if we read Huntington, to their success. It is easy to say, "this is not my fight," but in fact we have huge interests, global interests, in their success. I hope others can see it this way.

Not Far Off on Libya

2011-03-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

I was pretty close to interpreting what had happened within the Obama administration over Libya in my previous blogpost according to the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/world/africa/19policy.html

Several commentators on today's Sunday talk shows, based on the NYT piece, have noted that the shift in policy in favor of a military solution was the work of a group of women policy makers, including Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power and UN Ambassador Susan Rice. One said, "the girls prevaled" against the boys, namely Robert Gates and Admiral McMullen and Tom Donilon. This had already occurred to me, and I think it is important to think why this happened. Some associated this with the Clinton administration's failure to respond adequately on Rwanda and the roles of these women at that time. I believe this is valid, but it goes beyond Rwanda. The Obama adminstration, as I have noted in previous blogs, has embraced fully the doctrine of universal human rights--without properly citing the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights--including again today during the President's speech in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I believe that this deep seated adherence to universal human rights and the importance given specifically to the new doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (P2P) drove the Obama decision. I would further venture the opinion that for whatever reason that one may chose to identify, women in general have been more dedicated to human rights than men, and the rise of women to positions of the highest power in government has influenced our foreign policy.

Miiracle at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

2011-03-17T19:57:00.000-07:00

Something extraordinary happened this afternoon in New York at the United Nations. The Security Council, charged with defending world peace and security, voted 10-0 with 5 abstentions to defend the Libyan revolt against Muhammar Gadaffi, against the wierd and dangerous tyrant's military might that was about to come crashing down on it. Far superior weapons and better organized, paid and led professional soldiers and mercenaries under Gadaffi's and his sons' leadership were winning a succession of victories against the rebellion and closing in on Benghazi, the rebel "capital."

The United States seemed for a long while not to sense what was at stake in this conflict. A repeated call by the rebels themselves and their supporters for a "no-fly zone" appeared to stir concern and preoccupation with the complexities of carrying this out, the fact that, duh!, it would require taking out Gaddafi's air defenses, and would thus be getting involved in, well, a war. Obviously, US defense and military leaders, spooked by the hobgoblins of Iraq and Afghanistan, were loath to get involved in another "war" in a Third World hell hole, I mean "send a land army into Asia, the Middle East or Africa." They took the lead in the administration in expressing this view.

But in other recesses of the Administration, other views were being expressed. In the White House itself, the President had already made some bold statements in support of the rebels and that Gaddafi "had lost his legitimacy, and must go." But that was when rebel victories were piling up and ultimate victory seemed as inevitable as those of democratic forces in Tunisia and Egypt. But Libya is not either of those two countries, where leaders were toppled by peaceful protests and where the armed forces played a first neutral and then decisive role in dictators stepping down. Perhaps nobody in the US government thought that Gadaffi, crazy as a loon, could rally his forces to push back. But he and his regime proved much more resourceful. Crazy like a fox, seemed a more appropriate characterization.

As Gaddafi's forces took the initiative and rolled over the rebels, a debate of major proportions must have been going on within the administration. I believe that liberals in the White House and the State Department felt that we needed to be firmly on the side of history in this conflict and were also moved by the spector of a nationwide massacre of civilians associated with the revolt similar to a Bosnia and maybe even a Rwanda, or something that could be so characterized. In the White House, such a voice would be coming from foreign policy advisor Samantha Power (of "A Problem From Hell," about the genocide in Rwanda), and other "liberals." At the State Department, I am quite sure that people around Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were interpreting the importance of the wave of Arab rebellions and urging military action. However, the White House and State Department were spooked by their own hobgoblin, that of unilateral US action, stemming from Iraq, without UN authorization. The only problem is that the US was not taking the lead at the UN in seeking military action.

Then everything changed when the Gaddafi forces started rolling back the rebel cities, one after another, and a major human tragedy appeared in the making. Suddenly something clicked. But it is more than that. An activist position was a secret desire of Administration liberals but they were unwilling to appear to be taking on the Defense Department's wariness of another major military commitment. (I am sympathetic to some extent because Afghanistan is really hard and has required an enormous commitment by DoD and the military, remains a delicate and dangerous problem, but issue should crowd out another of national importance. Inevitably, we must fight the wars we have to fight, not the one's we choose to fight.) But the key element that added to this switch was the position of conservative Republicans and neocons who from the very beginning favored a more activist and militarist position. This both embarrassed the administration but also gave them political cover to do what they really wanted to do but were scared to do.

What followed was both a miracle at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and one at 1st Ave. and 44th St. in New York.

Is the World Becoming Unhinged?

2011-02-28T09:57:00.000-08:00

The sweeping changes taking place in North Africa and the Middle East and demonstrations against draconian cuts in the US in state budgets, all seem to be coming together to make a "perfect storm" of upheaval that is rocking the world. Are these profound changes simply coincidental or is some larger process at work that is shaking up institutions globally? I would say, well, both. As previously stated, there is no question that globalization is transforming our world. This may be from underlying processes like seismic shifts that send shock waves to the surface. Or it could simply mean that there is a "demonstration effect," where people seeing protest work as a means for bringing about change in one part of the world see it as a way forward in other parts of the world. Is the US copy catting Egypt?

But there is a third factor at work in all of this and that is the power of liberal (classic liberalism) democratic ideals in the postmodern world. I say "postmodern" intentionally, because we are no longer in the indusrial modern age and have long moved on to the postmodern postindustrial age. The postmodern age is not driven principally by issues of class, but by issues of identity. Information is inherently liberating and democratizing. If the events of today seem to have a common thread, it is that democratic ideals are quickly moving through and being embraced globally.

I find most interesting that both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton now speak frequently about "universal human rights," in relation to the reaction of authoritarian regimes to legitimate protest. But this is not the first time: during the January visit of Chinese Premier Hu Jintao's visit to Washington, President Obama used the same phrases in relation to China's suppression of dissent. The reference to universal rights unfortunately has been left somewhat vague in the President's declarations. He should more specifically say not only that "we believe in universal human rights," but the concept has been enshrined in international human rights law in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the most important legacy of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and the two treaties (called covenants) that followed protecting civil and political and economic, social and cultural rights, respectively. China voted for all of these human rights documents, and it and all other governments should be held to this universal standard. They should never be let off the hook with the argument that such governments obey a different "cultural tradition."

A Global Social Revolution

2011-02-23T19:55:00.000-08:00

As we see what has been happening in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and now Lybia and other places in the Middle East and North Africa, it is easy to say how shocked we all are that this is happening. "Nobody forsaw it." "The CIA was caught off guard." All of this now, however, should seem to have been inevitable. Why are we so shocked by the consequences of globalization that is transforming ou world? If you go back to my slideshow on globalization, you will find one slide on the globalization of democracy and also one on the globalization of private empowerment. In the Arab world, these two trends came together to create a special chemistry that produced an irresistable social and political movement.

Now one other thing happened that is really key to this movement, the rise of a new generation, a youth movement, to fuel this revolution. One cannot separate the emergence of new generations from the thrust of new technology. This has certainly been the "Facebook Revolution." But it has also been the rise of a generation of internet savvy and dependent young people who have set new standards for themselves of freedom and possibilities. I have already written in this blog about the Millennials. In a great sense, the youth movement in the Middle East is part of this Millennial Generation which we are familiar with in the US. I described them in my article, "The Kids from Cleveland," found in an earlier blog. It is not surprising to find generational change across global boundaries. It clearly happed in 1968 and it is happening now.

I had and have great faith in this new generation. First of all, they are liberal and cannot be swept up by dogmas or extremism. That is why their rising is so hopeful for the ME and the rest of the world, presening an alternative to the next generation to extremism. In most ways, these youths speak the language of the West. Let us welcome them in. It gives great hope that we are moving to a global democracy instead of a Clash of Civilizations.

The Future of Education

2011-02-22T20:51:00.000-08:00

A couple of things made me want to write about education and educational reform in America. I just saw an interview on Charley Rose with Wendy Kopp, the founder and CEO of Teach for America (now Teach for All). And I also recently sat on a plane next to the deputy superintendant of public schools of Kansas City, Kansas, and had a bit of a conversation with her. Both brought to mind my own experience seven years of working in the New York City schools as a Teaching Fellow, people who are hired based on life experiences who don't have a Masters Degree in Education, but who agree to go to grad school to earn one while they work in the system. I have always been interested in education and believe deeply in the importance of education for human fulfillment, socio-economic advancement, democracy and human rights. Of all the things that can make the world a better place, education along with health, tops the list.

I went to teach in NYC as part of an experiment, following the takeover of the schools by Mayor Bloomberg and his appointed Chancellor Harold Levy. I had taught at the college level before for a few semesters and also spent a lot of time in schools. I approached teaching with some idealism, although I was not sure I was ready to face a classroom full of teenagers every day, quite different from the work I had done as a diplomat and nonprofit manager. I did not succeed as a middle school teacher in the Bronx, trying to do bilingual teaching to Spanish speaking 13 year olds. But I did experience the new philosophy and the new techniques being introduced into the schools by a reformist administration. It turned out to be a learning experience for me. Teaching fellows taught alondside Teach for America teachers as well as otherteachers being employed in New York, such as teachers from the Philippines and Australia. Of course there were the older teachers who remained the most numerous. Some represented continuity while others represented "the problem," imqualified teachers who had stayed on for years, some of which had not even passed the basic exam to hold a teaching credential.

I have been observing the debate about school reform. They make it seem like the only thing you can do to improve kids education in tough inner city schools is to find great teachers and put them in the classrooms and weed out teachers who do not suceed in raising test scores. I did not stay in teaching long enough to be evaluated, but it seemed to me that even good teachers confronted problems in these schools that would be difficult to overcome.

It would be easy to blame a lot of the problems in the schools as a result of the social milieu in which they operate: students come from poor, dislocated families with little education, high levels of family breakup, constant moving around and little discipline. This comes directly into the schools with the kids. Second, with middle school kids, one confronts what some teachers call "raging hormones." Both boys and girls are feeling their sexuality and spend a lot of time trying to impress each other by doing outrageous things and behaving badly.

However, I would say a lot of the problem is that the schools are not organized to help teachers teach. First of all, one cannot teach without what is called "classroom management." Discipline is the first barrier to teaching. Classrooms are on the edge of breaking into chaos without a very firm hand on the part of the teacher. But the schools do not help in this regard. The biggest threat a teacher had against a misbehaving student is to call his or her parents (actually the boys are the biggest problem), but it is nearly impossible to get a phone number for them. Kids are allowed into or return to school without administrators making sure they have a working number for a parent. Kids will intentionally give you false numbers to avoid having their parents informed of their shenanagans.

We were taught some methods to gain control of a classroom, but from what I saw, the most successful teachers in this regard were those who I liked to called "Nazis." These were really tough teachers who could scare the kids into compliance through screaming or different forms of intimidation. Having a thick New York accent helped a lot. Of course there are other methods. One is keeping kids so busy they can't get out of control. Another sure method of calming down a class is to engage in reading to them or making them read to each other. It is amazing how kids like stories. But you can't do this all day. Some teachers do very well by using slides, transparencies and projectors to teach, which takes advantage of the inherent instinct of kids to be captivated by visualizations. When I started teaching, nobody prepared me to prepare this kind of teaching tool or even how to get the use of a projector. Of course, today where I work in the military and business world, powerpoint presentations are the principal means of communication, but it was something of a novelty for me seven or eight years ago.

One would think it would be easy to begin a new semester by being assigned classes and the books for the classes. What I found, however, was that I had to find and figure out which textbooks to use and where in heaven's name they were kept. All this only started the same week school began. It was a race against time to get and assign books, let alone familiarize myself with them or begin to figure out what I was supposted to be teaching. The dirty little secret is that nobody actually tells you what you should teach.

Now, I have to admit that I learned a lot in the graduate courses we had in the summer before we started teaching, although they were focused on the subject matter I was assigned to teach, namely English as a Second Language (ESL). The teachers who taught those courses were of course model teachers. We were also taught to "teach to the standard," following a methodology called standards-based teaching. You make a connection from the State teaaching standards to your required daily lesson plans. We did get tips and lessons on how to teach ESL. Too bad I was not assiged to an ESL job. Althought the NYC schools had hired a bunch of us for ESL, when it came to finding a job within the system, the jobs were not there. What I learned was that the schools hold back hiring ESL teachers until they know how many non-English speaking students will be enrolled, which apparently changes considerably from one year to the next. So when I saw the opportunity, I grabbed onto a bilingual ed teaching slot instead of waiting any longer. Unfortunately, in addition to English, I found myself teaching both math and science in Spanish with no realy preparation and also was happy to teach social studies in Spanish. But I had no real clue about how or what to teach in these subjects beyond the textbook.

There was a big push in the NYC schools to teach reading and math. I appreciated the short seminars we attended that focused on reading. I did not attend the math prep courses which were only for math teachers. We were actually given in each classroom a small library of about 200 books to work with. This was great but at times, the books only served for students to break out into pandemonium and start throwing the books at each other or all over the classroom. Now some of my students, the boys, loved to play a trick on the girls: we had a large coat closet in the room and the boys' greatest pleasure was to shove a girl into the closet and hold her in there as long as possible. The girls usually came out laughing and happy as opposed to being scared or crying. It was all part of the rituals of spring, I suppose.

One of the biggest threats a teacher has over a student is forcing him to miss recess or lunch, keeping them to detention. It became more and more clear to me that the wilder students actually liked detention and the more they were placed there the more other students wanted to be with them in detention. I was quickly informed that while I could detain students during the lunch period, I could not make the actually misss lunch. It was a bizarre situation, but it was even hard to punish misbehaving students in any way that made them feel some degee of contrition.

So when people tell me that educational reform is all about the teachers, I think, well yes maybe. But it is also about the kids, their fmailies and the schools themselves who don't always make it easy for teachers, especially new teachers to figure out how to teach with the best of intentions.

Oh yes, when I left my Middle School,a bit precitiously I should say, to take this job with the military in Virginia, I went to see the Vice Principal, who had been nice to me, to say goodbye. When I told her where I was going, she said, "Can you take us with you?" I guess I was not the only one to feel frustrated at the systemic difficulties of teaching in an inner city "under-served" school. And when I said goodbye to the principal, who tried to manage the chaos, feeling a little guilty I was bailing out, he said to me, "Don't worry, you didn't do too much damage."

A World Defense Force?

2011-02-13T19:52:00.000-08:00

While nobody wants to admit that we are moving towards a form of world government, it is evident that there is a constant movement towards world governance, i.e., efforts by the international community to find solutions to global problems. The hardest part of governance is enforcement. At the international level it is even more difficult because it depends on decisions by international organizations and the voluntary contribution of troops. We have now had about half a century of UN peacekeeping experience and now there are currently 15 peacekeeping operations all over the world and have been over 50 from the UN's beginning. Peacekeeping missions are something like a boy with his finger in the hole in the dike, holding back a flood. They rarely are decisive in ending conflict and merely suspend it. Now NATO--or some other regional organizations like the OAS in Haiti or the OAU in Somalia--interventions have been more vigorous, in Bosnia, Kosovo and now Afghanistan. They can actually lead to a new status quo with hopes of solutions to conflict. But it also means a willingness to engage in armed conflict to defeat one side or another in a conflict.

There are lots of drawbacks to both peacekeeping and NATO interventions. Countries must volunteer troops or other assets, and they usually joint with certain "caveats" that prevent them from engaging fully in all aspects of conflict. NATO countries often commit themselves to a tentative engagement and struggle with public opinion that is often pacifistic and tentative. We are seeing in Afghanistan, for example the withdrawal of certain countries from the field or to forms of support that remove their troops from the battlefield such as the training and advisory missions (which are also essential, but with less risk).

However, I would put forward that gradually but clearly a form of international defense force, loosely organized, is taking shape. My most significant experience is with the NATO and ISAF effort in Afghanistan. I find it quite amazing that armed forces from almost fifty countries manage to coordinate and work together in as complicated a task as security. I have worked with officers from a number of NATO countries who work side by side with American counterparts. What strikes me as most interesting is that soldiers from different countries, who often speak different languages, share a common military culture, use the same professional vocabulary and the same procedures for conducting military operations. It took me quite a bit of time as a civilian to adapt to military langauge and acronyms. However, foreign officers are fully steeped in the stuff. And even more interesting is how well this is a coaliton of warriors who work together and respect each other's national differences. The normal military comraderie is made stronger by the multicultural nature of the effort.

What is also clear is that this culture is largely American-made, the result of the undeniable fact of American military predominance in the world. Countries are not "doing us a favor" by joining us in Afghanistan. There is a common understanding of the stakes there, perhaps more among the military than their civilian masters or their publics. Ultimately, however, these officers could not participate in coalition warfare without a basic guarantee of political and diplomatic commitment at the level of the NATO political leadership.

I see this development as progressive although slow to evolve, but inevitable nonetheless. The international community can no longer afford to have terrorism, piracy and rogue regimes and non-state actors without some force to count on to bring enforcement of international law and norms. This is an extremely hopeful trend.

Globalization Encore

2011-02-07T13:25:00.000-08:00

When I first started this blog, I was smitten with globalization as a force reshaping the world. It is easy to forget how important this force really is. A recent email from a cousin reminded me of it. He said of himself and his wife, "We both feel a major worldwide transformation happening before our eyes especially in the areas of money, energy, technology, food, health and privacy and more. Kinda like what our parents have told us about but worse. I feel powerless to do much about it at this time. Just dealing with life a daily basis and trying to stay positive and creative." I guess I just forgot this underlying transformation that indeed helps to explain most things going on in the world, even what is happening in North Africa and the Middle East right now.

So I decided to post the slideshow I produced for Tidewater Community College two years ago. I had only posted portions of it at that time. You can view the whole thing by cutting and pasting this link:

http://www.tcc.edu/searchtcc.php?cx=006178599676751450285%3Ah_mmpdlcnim&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=%22Political+dimensions+of+Globalization%22&sa=Search#242

I am a SME

2011-02-07T06:09:00.000-08:00

Recently I updated my entry in Linkedin, the professional/business connection website, kind of a Facebook for serious people. Linkedin cleverly asked me if I wanted to connect to everyone in my private address book who were also members, so I said yes. This has resulted in an amazing set of reconnections to people I had not been in touch with for years and I am actually having fun with that. However, when asked to update my profile, I realized that I had placed a job title at my company that had mysteriously been switched from Senior Technical Director to Subject Matter Expert, or SME. Of course, in the military environment and in the IT company where I work, the term SME is quite common. But I had never really looked into the meaning of the term beyond its obvious meaning if you break down the words.

So I did some online research and came up with the following defintiions of a SME, which I found interesting in more specifically indicating the situations in which a SME is used within an organization. I had not really thought of myself in this way. And the term SME is used more specifically in the IT world than in the military world. For the military, anyone who brings some specific knowledge to any job is a SME. In that case, I am a political and governance SME. More commonly, however, I am referred to at work as a political analyst and a governance theme manager. I should say that while I do think of myself as a political specialist, I consider myself more essentially to be a generalist as you would expect from someone who aspires to be a visionist. Plus, any form of social science expertise would certainly be less technical than expertise in engineering, IT, or the physical and natural sciences. But no matter. In the current world of work, in which terminology is changing, being a SME is not a bad profession as it is in synch with current information age changes that are transforming our world. So here is what a SME is according to various sources:

subject matter expert
someone particularly knowledgeable about a certain topic
Sales and Marketing Glossary

Specialty Expressions: subject-matter
Subject-Matter Expert
Environment
An individual recognized by his or her peers as an authority on a specific topic. (references)
Webster’s Online Dictionaryexpert

Definition
Professional who has acquired knowledge and skills through study and practice over the years, in a particular field or subject, to the extent that his or her opinion may be helpful in fact finding, problem solving, or understanding of a situation.
From BusinessDictionary.com

Definitions of Subject matter expert on the Web:
• A subject matter expert (SME) is a person who is an expert in a particular area or topic. When spoken, sometimes the acronym "SME" is spelled out ("S-M-E") and other times voiced as a word ("smee").
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subject_matter_expert
• (or Data Expert): A Subject Matter Expert (SME) is the individual or unit responsible for advising on the appropriate use, protection, access, degree of sensitivity, criticality, and risk tolerance of a specific data set. ...
its.ucsc.edu/security/policies/glossary.php
• Staff possessing special expertise in an ES&H program, for example, industrial hygiene, confined space entry, or lead abatement. Some SMEs may be outside of the ES&H Division, for example, hoisting and rigging SMEs reside within the Conventional and Experimental Facilities Department.
www-group.slac.stanford.edu/esh/general/general_policy/p_definitions.htm
• The term subject matter expert, or SME, is used to refer to personnel who are used at different phases of the test development process because of their extensive knowledge of the content and competencies being assessed by the exam. ...
www.proftesting.com/test_topics/glossary.php
• An expert in a particular field who contributes or verifies the accuracy of specific information needed by the project team.
www.inspiredprojectteams.com/
• An individual who exhibits the highest level of expertise in performing a specialized job, task, or skill within the organization.
www.cmpp.net/CMS/Media/Docs/ITIL/ITIL%20Glossary%20of%20Terms01.doc

ThinkTank Blog
Social Networking: The Subject Matter Expert
Posted by Gordon Plutsky on Fri, Nov 07, 2008 Are you a subject matter expert? A subject matter expert is the “go-to” person for their customers and social network contacts. These experts are seasoned professionals with references and a portfolio of proven success. Subject matter experts get the customers, win the bids and are answering the phone rather than cold calling
Interested in being an expert? Then begin thinking like one. An expert by definition is “having, involving, or displaying special skill or knowledge derived from training or experience.” In other words if you can demonstrate that you know more than most and are recognized as a leader within a community you are an expert.
In the 1980’s it could take you years to establish yourself as an expert. With today’s social networking communities you can be recognized almost overnight. Let’s look at two communities and how to position you and your business as leaders.
LinkedIn:
LinkedIn is established to be a business networking community. You have the opportunity to ask questions, answer questions and participate in discussions. The more time you dedicate to positioning yourself the more you will differentiate yourself. Include links to your sites (blogs included) and where possible share your books or white papers on the subject. References also speak volumes. Anytime you can say “don’t take my word for it, read what my customers think” the more credible your opinions and suggestions become.
You can also join “like-minded” experts on LinkedIn. These are small groups inside of the larger community that often focus on a discipline (e.g. marketing, sales, recruiting, human resources, or accounting) or on a specific interest (e.g. events, public relations, consulting). Groups are reflected on your profile and allow people to see your affiliations and interests.

SME - Subject Matter Expert
By: Bruce Bahlmann

A person whose up to date experience and knowledge exceed that of the rest of the project team or organization. Frequently, the SME is an expert contracted or assigned by an organization to consult on a specific project or is a member of a Technology Advisory Board (TAB). SMEs know what is critical to the performance of the task and what is nice-to-know. SMEs typically have participated with standards bodies and/or have development or operations experience that dates back to the inception of their area of expertise that provides them with uncommon wisdom and patience.

Subject Matter Expert Job Description
By Alyssa Guzman, eHow Contributor
updated: May 25, 2010

A subject matter expert is the definitive source of knowledge in a specific subject area.
A subject matter expert (SME) is the definitive source of knowledge, technique, or expertise in a specific subject area, such as business management, information technology, software development, process engineering, plus others. The SME functions as the organizational ambassador for their knowledge area, and applies their expertise to support an organization's vision and strategic direction.
Main Duties and Responsibilities
1. A subject matter expert understands, articulates, and implements best practices related to their area of expertise. Depending on the work environment, the subject matter expert may lead or be an active participant of a work-group with the need for specialized knowledge. The subject matter expert provides guidance on how their area of capability can resolve an organizational need, and actively participates in all phases of the software development life cycle.
Software Development
2. During software development assignments, the subject matter expert is responsible for defining business requirements and recommending a technical approach to meet those needs. He also generates design specifications for software development, which typically involves translating business requirements into detailed algorithms for coding. The SME oversees the development, testing, and implementation of the technical solution, and validates the final product satisfies the defined requirements. He reviews technical documentation, such as user guides, training manuals, and system specifications, prior to distribution to end-users, and ensures their subject area is accurately represented.
Business Relationship Management
3. A subject matter expert must cultivate and maintain effective working relationships with a variety of stakeholders, including end-users, project managers, engineers, and senior staff members. The nature of the position involves actively participating in multiple work-groups at one time, and disseminating information across all levels of the organization. The subject matter expert is articulate and communicates information effectively to diverse audiences. She translates subject matter terminology into business terms, and recommends alternatives to both senior management and software developers. The SME also performs product demonstrations in a variety of settings, including internal meetings, training sessions, and trade shows.
Qualifications
4. Employers generally require candidates to have completed a bachelor's degree program; individuals with a bachelor's degree in business, or an MBA/advanced degree are preferred. In addition to certification(s) in the individual's area of expertise, Six Sigma Black Belt or Green Belt professional certifications are highly desired credentials. Individuals interested in pursuing the position of subject matter expert must have a minimum of ten years of directly related work experience in their area of expertise. Related knowledge and experience in business management, core system configuration, software development life cycle (SDLC), RICEF (Reports, Interface, Conversion, Enhancement & Forms) development, systems testing, and business process re-engineering are considered beneficial. Individuals who have worked in a global, highly matrixed business environment are especially effective in this position.
Compensation
5. According to salary data from Glassdoor.com, the median expected salary for a subject matter expert in the United States is $77,560 as of 2010, while the average salary of jobs with related titles, including intelligence specialist, program manager, and systems/applications developer, ranges from $58,000 to $134,000. Factors such as employer, industry, experience and benefits can dramatically affect a subject matter expert's compensation.
Project Mgmt Templateswww.ITBusinessEdge.com/ProjTemplate
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Read more: Subject Matter Expert Job Description | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/about_6549153_subject-matter-expert-job-description.html#ixzz1DCTiZZOY

Subject Matter Expert - SME
The Subject Matter Expert is that individual who exhibits the highest level of expertise in performing a specialized job, task, or skill within the organization.

An SME might be a software engineer, a helpdesk support operative, an accounts manager, a scientific researcher: in short, anybody with in-depth knowledge of the subject you are attempting to document. You need to talk to SMEs in the research phase of a documentation project (to get your facts straight) and you need to involve them in the technical validation of your drafts (to make sure that your interpretation of information matches theirs).
Six Sigma Principles

Solutions for Egypt

2011-01-31T19:54:00.000-08:00

I have been watching with fascination the popular revolution taking place in Egypt during all my non-working, non-sleeping hours. I now remember why I like CNN: it offers the most comprehensive and continuous information on an ongoing crisis of any TV news network. What has become quite clear from watching the ongoing drama in Cairo, much as it was clear in Tunisia, is that a critical turning point in history is taking place. And to my relief, in the most volatile and dangerous part of the world--what Zbigniew Brezinski once called "the Arc of Crisis"--a truly democratically inspired revolution is taking place.

This raises the question of US foreign policy in the face of this crisis. The US is historically a revolutionary power. The first democratic revolution in history, the American Revolution inspired democratic transformation across the world, first in Europe and then in Latin America. The US also inspired what the late Samuel P. Huntington called the "Third Wave" of democratization that swept the Third World beginning in the 1970s. However, Huntington was also the coiner of the concept of the "Clash of Civilizations." So the question for US policy is whether we believe that the operating principle in the emerging transformation of the Middle East and North Africa is Huntington's theory of the spread of democracy or his concept of the spread of Islamic fundamentalism.

The answer to that question should be coming from those making the revolution itself. There is no or little anti-Americanism, Islamic fundamentalism or even Islamic language coming out of the demonstrators in Cairo and other Egyptian cities. What I see is mostly young people, middle class people, students whose main chant is the removal of a dictator named Mubarak. The US is clearly concerned that it may be about to lose a bulwark for stability and peace in the volatile Middle East. We held our nose while supplying his regime with billions in economic and military assistance. Indeed, we have done in the Middle East what we abandoned as a policy thirty years ago in Latin America: the support of friendly military dictatorships. In Latin America, such friendships were rooted in the Cold War and fear of the spread of the Cuban Revolution. In the Middle East it was strategic interests surrounding the importance of petroleum resources, the Suez Canal and the Arab-Israeli Conflict and more recently the spread of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism from within its midst.

However, now is the time for a strategic shift in policy. There is little the US can do to change history in this case. But we do run the risk of coming out against the thrust of history to the detriment of our own position when the dust settles over the rolling revolution taking place. No doubt the Mubarak administration is more resilient than the Tunisian dictatorship. It may or may not find itself suddenly ousted. But it inevitably will give way to a new political system in Egypt.

US media commentators continue to throw up the specter of a possible Islamist takeover of the Egyptian Revolution as a reason for the Obama administration to be cautious in its support of the revolution. This concern seems rooted more in ignorance than anything else. The Muslim Brotherhood undoubtedly will play a role in the new reality, but it will only be one of many forces vying for power. The revolution itself is eminently secular and democratic. This does not mean that the new Egypt will be as malleable to US interests as the Mubarak government. It may also not be as firm a partner in the Arab-Israeli peace process. However, it is unlikely to significantly abandon its peace treaty with Israel or its relationships with the United States. Also, nothing in the current constellation appears to threaten the role of the Army within the Egyptian power balance, although over time its autonomy from civilian rule is likely to shift significantly.

The questions asked by the media are also very naive concerning "who will replace Mubarak?" It is not a question of who, but what. If they get the right what, the who will follow, not before. That is why it is so important that the process move forward for the transition. In this, the Obama administration has been spot on in insisting for a speedy transition. It is clear that the Administration has not and should not specifically ask for Mubarak to step down, although it clearly would like him to. In the end, it won't matter as long as if he remains, it is in a purely ceremonial position until he can "gracefully" leave office.

That is why I was not pleased by Sen. Kerry's response on today's "Meet the Press" that it was up to Mubarak to set a timetable for reform and transition. This is absolutely wrong. Mubarak has only to fully pass to his Vice President the reins of power and let him and his new government work out arrangements and timetables with the opposition. To even think that prior to discussions and negotiations that a timetable is possible is quite naive. I respect Sen. Kerry, but he has no diplomatic experience, only foreign policy experience. There is a big difference. Meanwhile, I was appalled at the statements made by former ambassador to Egypt. Frank Wisner. He must have known that he was not speaking for the Administration when he said that Mubarak should stay on. Again, while he might believe that Mubarak, an old friend, should be allowed the dignity of a prolonged exit, he should never have made such a statement. Wisner is a very seasoned diplomat, someone whom I met in Vietnam 40 years ago when he came to inspect my work there. But even seasoned diplomats make mistakes. Indeed, Wisner is from the old school of realists in the Department, and his preference to stand by old friends, no matter how they have treated their people, is typical of his generation.

In the end, let's give Egypt a chance to work out its own future. Once arrangements are made, there will be plenty of space for the West to help. I spent two years working on democracy promotion programs during the last two years of my Foreign Service career. There are good techniques and programs to help promote free and fair elections, to help develop political parties, civil society and the media in a free society and to perfect the legislative and judicial branches of government and improve civil-military relations. I hope we will expend considerable resources in helping Egypt in this way.

The Great American Religion - Sports

2011-01-30T18:17:00.000-08:00

I would not be the first person to note the similarity between religion and sports, and there are serious studies about it. However, I believe more specifically that sports is the American religion. This is not to diminish the American affinity for religion as has been documented in opinion polls that show Americans to be more religious than inhabitants of any other country based on the percentage who actually attend religious services of all kinds on a regular basis.

However, I can honestly say that Americans do not always talk about religion. They do always talk about sports. I probably did not feel this as much as I have recently, since going to work in a military environment. Where I work, people either talk about their work or they talk about sports. On the edge, their might be some chatter about family, good places to eat or people's vacations, but the reference to sports is constant and continuous. Americans love their sports. They can get passionate about their teams or favorite players, can recite sports statistics and make predictions about the future outcomes of games and sports tournaments.

So you say, "Well, what would you expect from the high testosterone military?" While that question might contain an element of truth, it is important to note the degree to which the military is representative of the country at large, one which may be somewhat ignored by the intellectual and financial elites in our country. Just turn on your TV set and realize the number of channels and shows dedicated to covering sports, all sports. In some parts of the country, most channels are sports channels. Also, today you cannot walk into most bars without being flooded with big screen TVs with total coverage of whatever game is on at the moment. I walked into a "wing bar" the other day in Texas which had more big screen TVs than I have seen in any military "war room." They showed football, golf and tennis games going on simultaneously. OK, it was a "sports bar," but most bars are becoming sports bars.

Don't get me wrong, although I have never been very interested in sports, I have nothing against them. My problem is with any type of obsession. And the national obsession with sports is what concerns me. It concerns me more because sports occupies our waking hours to such an extent that it crowds out all other discussions and activities. I hardly go to a party at friends' homes where the TV is not on in a family room, sometimes with all the men gathered around and the women off in the living room socializing. I find myself with the women! Politics, world events, serious social issues are not discussed at all. Now take this to a national level and what we have is a national tendency to escape into sports as a way of avoiding discussing important national international issues. Well, maybe these are being discussed on college campuses, on PBS, CNN, on C-Span, on NPR and the BBC. Well, yes. That's where I go for environments where these things are discussed, but how many of us live in these spaces?

So what are the latest scores?

Oprah...Aw, Shucks!

2011-01-17T18:31:00.000-08:00

I am sitting here watching the first interview on the new Piers Morgan show with Oprah Winfrey and thinking, "Aw, shucks I should have gotten her first." No I do not have my own TV show, but I did have the responsibility of "recruiting" honorees for our annual award ceremony at the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val Kill, in Hyde Park, New York, where I was the Executive Director for seven years following my career as a US diplomat. Of all the things I did at the Center, including starting what has become a premier leadership program for high school girls, the annual Val-Kill Medal Ceremony was the high point of my work there. It was the most visible and important aspect of our work as it was the one day each year that about 500 people came to Eleanor Roosevelt's Val-Kill home to see deserving award winners acknowledged for the work they did that reflects the humanitarian legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt.

I should say that the legacy of Mrs. Roosevelt is huge and covers her work in promoting the rights of women and African Americans, to human rights in general and support of the United Nations, expanding the role of First Ladies into the social and humanitarian arenas, her role as a social activist and advocate for social reform, her work for refugees and politically persecuted people of all kinds,her efforts for poor people, her role as a journalist and educator. The list of her achievement could go on and on. Although ERVK is a small nonprofit, it carries the enormous responsibility of promoting her legacy, unlike any other organization that carries her name. Its place on the site of her historic home, rooted on the role of the organization in saving Mrs. Roosevelt's home from likely destruction, gives ERVK a status that raises high above the size of its staff or its budget. The annual Val-Kill Medal Ceremony succeeded in honoring such individuals as Mrs. Hillary Clinton, Queen Noor, Lea Rabin, Amb. Richard Holbrooke, Cristopher Reeve, Dorothy Height, Richard Gere, former Brazilian First Lady Ruth Cardoso, Bill and Judith Moyers, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Vartan Gregoian and many others.

We had a remarkable process at ERVK in deciding on people to invite to be our honorees. A Medals Selection Committee pondered for months over potential nominees and suggestions. There were criteria as well for achieving balance and diversity in the annual ceremony which usually honors four individuals: a balance between men and women, ethnic groups, local, national and international honorees, and among backgrounds in history, journalism, social, human right and humanitarian pursuits, philanthropists, civil rights figures.

Once decisions had been made, I was in charge of approaching and securing the honorees. That's when the fun began, because one of the things you learn in approaching famous people is that they are not easy to approach. They are surrounded by barriers to access and their contact information is often very difficult come by. More importantly, in seeking to capture the time and attention of very busy and important people, it often required more than just an address or a phone number. How do you marshall some support for your approach to them? All of this require considerable research, from the selection phase to the recruitment stage.

Oprah Winfrey was a natural selection for our committee. She is adored by millions of people around the world for her humanitarianism and empathy for ordinary people and those struggling with life's difficulties. It was interesting that Piers Morgan succeeded in getting Oprah to go on his show by going through her best friend Gail King. Well, I too went through Gail. I am not sure how I discovered who Gail King was, but I did, and I also happened to have met somebody from Hartford, Connecticut who knew her phone number. I called her and got her advice as to how to contact Oprah through her Harpo Entertainment Group in Chicago. This was in the year 2000. I wrote Oprah and waited, had contact with an aide, and did receive a response from her. Unfortunately, she said she could not accept the award that year because she was "over-extended" for the year, though this was just February. This was understandable, although I must admit it was a disappointment. After all, Mrs. Roosevelt had done so much for women and for African Americans. Oprah seemed in some ways to be the ideal beneficiary of her efforts. I do not remember clearly why we did not persist in seeking her for another year. I guess it was because we feared she would have the same reason for refusing us in the future. Perhaps I should have tried to get Gail King to give us more direct support for our request. Piers Morgan apparently did just that and succeeded where I had failed. Of course, ERVK is not CNN.

A Miracle in Haiti

2011-01-14T13:57:00.000-08:00

As we stop to acknowledge the first anniversary of the earthquake that ravaged Haiti, I find it interesting that nobody is noticing a major miracle that has occurred. With over 300,000 dead and more than a million people homeless still after so many months, most of the commentary is on how little has been done for the survivors. The presidential palace, symbol of power in Haiti and once the bastion of the Duvalier family, remains a total wreckage and the formerly empty park facing it, the Champs du Mars, is now a tent camp. But there is one thing that has not happened: no boat people. I was the Haiti desk officer in the mid-1970s when the Haitian boat exodus began. We used strict criteria in determining which of these boat people were legitimate refugees. Unfortunately, most were really economic and not political refugees and not in danger of being returned to persecution (known legally as refoulement)at the hands of the state, but yes to hardship and even hunger. However, it was largely a crisis that resulted from the retrograde political system that had existed under the Duvaliers and indeed for much of Haitian history.

I was struck by one commentator who opined that the international community had intervened after the earthquake to shape Haiti in a way that would benefit itself. I had trouble holding back a laugh because the only reason that international community intervenes in Haiti, aside from long standing humanitarian concern for a noble but battered people, is to prevent the outflow of people that would flood the beaches of neighboring countries, especially the United States. In 1994, when the United States intervened to restore President Aristide to power it was to end a politically deteriorating situation that was generating large numbers of so-called refugees. So why now is Haiti not generating thousands of people trying to escape the hardships of life after the biblically monumental disaster? Frankly, I don't have the answer. It could be that they are simply still in shock, too disorganized or not capable of leaving behind other family members. Or perhaps the people still believe that international help is still on the way and are awaiting a major opportunity to rebuild their homes and lives. I would love to know the answer to this question, but do know that the fact that they have not abandoned their homeland for a better life abroad, remains a major miracle.

Just Plain Folks

2011-01-13T17:20:00.000-08:00

About a decade ago, I started to hear "folks" used a lot. What ever happened to people? Just ordinary people. Nobody seems to acknowledge that the world is inhabited any more by people. Now the world is made up of "folks." I hear folks all over the place: at the office, among my kids' generation, on TV and the radio. I hear the President of the United States refer to people as folks. A young Hispanic woman used the term twice in the same sentence on the radio. The other day when three experts on violence were discussing the Tuscon tragedy, they all referred to folks, not people. Sarah Palin also talks about folks.

What is it about using folks? Folks comes from a German word, Volks, yes, the same as in Volkswagen. It means people, or the people. It is not a new word. We have studied folklore for over a century, referring to the popular behaviour and ways of the common people in far off parts of the world,in our own hinterland or in the past, like the Middle Ages. These are often quaint and lusty, as in a Bruegel painting.

Politicians are quick to use "folks." It brings them immediate familiarity with the people whom they are addressing. It is, well, folksy. It is not distant or clinical. Folks are just like us. We are folks too, and we want everyone to feel like they are just plain folks. But do we always want this kind of familiarity when hearing from experts or our leaders, or do we want some degree of distance and respect, our respect for them. But we live in an age when such respect, dignity or any pretensions of superiority are simply not tolerable. Why do we call our most exalted leaders Jimmy, Bill or Mitch. Why not use a nickname when the opportunity arises? Well, George or Barack do not seem to fit the pattern, but how could they? There must be some political mileage in trying to demonstrate that you, though an elected member of Congress, are just like ordinary folks. We like our leaders to be like us. We do not like "elites." So even though our leaders enjoy a huge advantage over the rest of us in terms of wealth, power and influence, it is comforting to think that they are just "folks," so no real threat to our own self-esteem.

"Democrat" Party

2010-09-11T10:37:00.000-07:00

I am certainly not the first person to analyze and discuss the use of the term "Democrat Party" vs. Democratic Party, but I continue to hear this usage so frequently, most frequently but not exclusively by the leadership of the Republican Party and must say that this usage really grates on my nerves. I am apparently not the only one: a totally non-scientific online pole showed that a plurality of those taking it consider this usage to be like "scraping one's fingernails on a blackboard." One blogger said that the use of the term "Democrat" as an adjective was used by the republicans because it is "not as euphonious" as "Democratic," which is true.

But I think that the annoyance of this usage stems more from the fact that a perfectly proper and historically rooted name of a major political party dating back to Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson has been hijacked by those who wish to denigrate the name by clipping it down to something that is simply not authentic and thereby offensive. One can say, as former President George W. Bush did, that it came simply from his poor grasp of English. Perhaps it is just ignorance and thereby its usage reflects mostly on those who misuse it and not on the original institution. But that does not really scratch the itch of this question. One blog indicated that the Republican Party actually focus grouped the use of this misnomer and found it to be effective in undermining the legitimacy of the Democratic Party. Such word manipulation is certainly an important component of any propaganda campaign that tends to negatively brand one's adversary.

I am also thinking of the way that President Reagan drove liberals underground with the use of the term "the L word" as if it were a dirty or taboo word, like "the F word" or "the N word." Now we are hearing also the use of the term "Obamacare," as if to brand the recently passed health care law, which is now the law of the land approved by the democratically elected US Congress, as the personal product of our President. And what if anything is wrong if the legislation, promised by Mr. Obama in his electoral campaign and considerably watered down to accommodate broader support to be associated with him? Are some people, again namely Republicans, seeking to stir up animosity to anything linked to the President, drawing on widely held prejudices about the Presidents race, alleged Muslim religious allegiance and his, yes, liberal political history and profile. This is not unlike former Mayor Rudy Giulliani's effort to brand Mr. Obama as a "community organizer" as if this in itself was somehow a bad thing the be.

Another word manipulation that is totally unethical is the labeling of the Obama administration as "elitist." How can Republicans and other conservatives who regularly defend the interests of economic elites, the really moneyed and priviledged segments of our society, honestly refer to Mr. Obama and members of his cabinet as "elites" just because they succeeded in attending the best colleges and universities and because they are don't speak like "ordinary folks." Smart people usually don't. This does not make them "elitist," which, by the way is never, ever defined by those who so use it.

What has characterized the response of Democrats, liberals and social democrats promoting public health care has been a certain cowardice in taking on these verbal assaults and a tendency to just try to ignore them. What Democrats should do, in the case of the use of the term "Democrat Party" is to always respond publicly and negatively to this misuse and to point out that it is an attempt to undermine the party's legitimacy. And if they have to start referring to the Republican Party as the "Republic Party," so be it.

Why So?

2010-08-12T16:23:00.000-07:00

I like to think of myself as a person who is very sensitive to the nuances of language. Indeed, I love language and have demonstrated that throughout my life. Even in high school, I was the star of my senior English class, so much so that my teacher, Mr. Stephenson, sent an essay I had written for the class in 1963 to a major educational publication which published it. I was pleased to find an abstract of that article on line (http://bul.sagepub.com/content/47/281/99.abstract
). In college, I went on to take English composition and English literature courses. Moreover, I also loved foreign languages, and had studied Spanish, Portuguese and French by the time I graduated from college and later mastered Vietnamese.

All of that aside, I am very sensitive to changes in language as well as the meaning of words. A great deal of my work today involves trying to get American military officers think more clearly about the meaning of the words they use in describing the conflicts in which the US is engaged. In addition, one aspect of my alertness to language comes from the fact that I spent a good part of my life leaving and returning to the US and discovering that American English usage was constantly changing, but it was more of a shock not having been immersed in the society and only gradually becoming used to these changes. It was a bit of an awakening to return to the US and discover that the word "awesome" had come to be the most popular way of describing something good. I love youth culture and its freshness,once considered myself part of the youth culture of the 1960s and have written admirably about the current youth of the Millennial generation (see my blog post on this). However, I do not always find the way youth uses language very "comfortable." I still do not like it when I hear a lot of people under 30 consistently raising the tone of their voices at the end of sentences when they are making a statement and not asking a question and believe that this usage actually means something about the degree of confidence they have in their own statements. This habit it appears began with young women in the 90s and later was adopted by their male cohorts.

The new language usage that I have discovered just in the past month or two has been the tendency of people to answer a question with the word "so." What do you think is the justification for the war in Afghanistan? So,.... I do not think this has always been the case. I just can't recall it being consistently used. But I find it used everywhere all of a sudden, including when I hear Europeans being asked questions in English by the media. So it seems to have flown quickly among the culture of English speakers. Now why are people answering a question with the word "so?" It seems to me that these are people who are normally being asked a question due to their expertise on a subject. Because of that, they want to set the stage for making expert statements. The word "so" sets the stage for this, as in "So.... (now listen to what I am going to say because it is hard to understand but definitely authoritative)."

Now, I find this rather annoying. Maybe I just don't like people messing with the language. I guess I am a language conservative. Although I have studied linguistics at the graduate level, I am still not comfortable with the idea that anything goes in language. Of course, saying "so" does not violate any rules, but I just do not like the superior attitude that if reflects in the speaker. However, to be honest, most people are using "so" just because they have heard it over and over and are simply using a new form because everyone else is. So "so" is probably here to stay, especially as it may fill a need in our society for people to express their expert knowledge in a world increasingly marked by specialization. Oh, yes, I also do not like the phrase "good to go," which seems to have crept its way into our language from military culture as has the term "skill sets." I only heard these phrases when I came to work with the military in 2003, but quickly found it being used everywhere by everyone. I got hired, I discoverd, because I had the right "skill sets." Lucky me!

Saving Dan Rostenkowski

2010-08-12T15:23:00.000-07:00

Former Congressman and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski has just died. A lot of attention was suddenly paid to a Washinton powerbroker who wound up humiliated, disgraced and imprisoned due to the hubris of politics and the DNA of Chigago politics.

My own thoughts drew to the time back in 1987 when Rostenkowski and his committee visited Rio de Janeiro when I was a US consul there. One thing you get to do in the US Foreign Service is receive CODELs, Congressional delegations, and to meet some of the great names in American politics. Of course to most diplomats CODELs are mostly a big pain, as every little detail of a visit of anything from a single Congressman to a group of 20 plus spouses can become tedious and challenging. I always welcomed them, because since Latin America is often ignored by American policy makers, a CODEL could be used to raise the US government's profile and to introduce certain issues on the official agenda. Or course, for most Congressman, the CODEL is the offical version of the boondogle. Some take them as serious work; most see them as a chance to travel abroad at the expense of the American taxpayer.

I have no idea if Rosty's visit focused on any major issues of US-Brazilian relations; I just don't remember. What I do remember was the boad ride. Any VIP visit to Rio had to include a ride on a boat around Guanabara Bay and past the famed Sugerloaf and a view of the vast beaches that ringed the Bay and that made it a major port and tourist attraction with the contrast of a big city and nature running up against the sea.

For Rostenkowski's delegation, a small boat was not in the cards. Rather, we at the consulate went after the biggest private yacht in town, the 105 foot yacht owned by the late Globo media magnate Roberto Marinho. We took a late afternoon cruise. Very nice oeres deurvs and plenty of alcohol was served by host Marinho, already about 90 but spry and his glamorous somewhat younger wife Lily. We were up on the upper deck of the yacht without any railings, standing in a tight circle, Rosty, me and a few other Congressmen and guests. Rosty had had more than a couple of drinks and was a little wobbly, when the yacht rolled a bit and I saw him tilting over towards the edge of the deck and suddenly reached out, grabbed his lapel and pulled him back towards me. It was only an instant and one that was soon forgotten, but I will never forget the time that I saved Dan Rostenkowski.

Petraeus for Afghanistan

2010-07-14T16:42:00.000-07:00

On January 14, 2009, shortly after beginning this blog, I made the following Out of the Box proposal to solve the war in Afganistan:

"So here is the simple solution for Afghanistan: General David Petraeus, Commander of U.S. Central Command in Tampa, responsible for the area of the Middle East and Central Asia, should move his headquarters to Kabul and assume full responsibility for working with the Karzai government to take full control of Afghanistan and to defeat the Taliban. Petraeus is already in charge of the region for the U.S., but the movement of his headquarters "to the front" would send a clear message that the United States considers this issue of utmost priority and move Petreuas himself in closer control of his forces in country. He should also be named as the Commander of all NATO forces in Aghanistan, although being dual hatted as both CENTCOM Commander and NATO forces commander would be unconventional, with all US and NATO forces unified. This would be totally consistent with the views expressed by President-elect and former candidate Obama.

"The importance of leadership cannot be stressed enough. General Petraeus is our most distinguished and accomplished military commander. His success in Iraq has made him clearly the most popular military leader the U.S. has to offer, a leader of heroic dimensions. And he is really smart. As a model, Gen. Petraeus should use Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who moved his headquarters first to the United Kingdom and then to France with the advance of Allied Forces in Europe. A major war requires hands on leadership and I for one would like it to be in the hands of Gen. Petraeus.

"Nothing in this proposal would pit Petreaus against Holbrooke. Rather there would be clear division of labor between the diplomatic efforts of coordination between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the military and related Counter-Insurgency efforts within Afghanistan itself. Gen. Petraeus has already demonstrated how well he can work with State Department senior representatives in Iraq. He and Holbrooke would make up the key team, with US Ambassadors in both countries and senior military commanders in Afghanistan the second tier of leadership under their lead. Holbrooke should operate out of Washington, but have offices in our Embassies in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"I am quite sure that this arrangement would lead to a very quick turnNow around in the situation in Afghanistan and help resolve related problems in Pakistan and in the Pak-India relationship"

Now General Petraeus has been named as the Senior Commander for the US and for the NATO led coalition called International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan. Although, he is giving up the commmand of Central Command (CENTCOM), there can be no question that Petraeus is the man for the job and our premier military leader today. OK, it took a year and a half and a major media scandal that led to the "resignation" of Gen. Stanley McCrystal for someone to come up with my idea, but I believe I deserve some credit for having a prescient idea.

Interestingly, I tried this idea out at about the same time in early 2009 with a senior flag officer at a public forum of the World Affairs Council in Hampton Roads and was told that we should not think that because of Gen Petraeus's "celebrity" he was the only one for this job. He suggested there were many general officers who could replace the then outgoing General David D. McKiernan. He even challenged my assertion that Afghanistan is our most important war. Well.....?

Maturing Brazilian Defense Attitudes Revealed in new film "National Secuirity"

2010-05-13T21:52:00.000-07:00

I am down in Brazi and wanted to alert you to a fantastic new film released here earlier this week called "Seguranca Nacional". In my time at the State Deaprtment's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL), I was instrumental in getting the US financing of $1.4 billion for the Brazilian Amazon Surveillance System (SIVAM) project approved by the Secretary of State in 1994, The contract went to Raytheon and not a French firm that was competing. SIVAM was actually originally an environmental project, the big new Brazilian government idea to come out of the Rio Earth Summit of 1992 which Brazil hosted to relieve international pressure on its lack of protection of the Amazon rain forest. However, it had much broader law enforcement capabilities, especially in the area of counter-narcotics.

Well, ``National Security`` is all about how the success of the SIVAM and Brazil's shoot down policy in stopping Colombian drug flights results in a reaction from a big drug kingpin who threatens Brazil with terrorism. The story is about how the Brazilian government responds, the workings of the SIVAM system, involvement of the Brazilian CIA (ABIN) in fighting terrorism. The story has its own James Bond type Brazilian agent, who is very good looking and skilled at getting information and tracking down bad guys and getting the girl. In the story also, the President of Brazil is Milton Goncalves, a well known black actor--an obvious reference to the Obama effect. The head of the ABIN is a woman. The story is drawn from many US and British spy thrillers with shades of "Clear and Present Danger." It makes a very good representation of Brazilian intelligence, special forces and air force and is quite inspiring and patriotic. Lots of big Brazilian flags flying over Brasilia and some good shots of Florianopolis, one of my favorite cities here. Most important, however, is that it clearly defines narco-trafficking as a major issue of national defense and a treat to the nation's security and sovereignty. The US is never mentioned. Colombian traffickers and their Brazilian allies are made out to be the scum of the earth. If Brazilians pick up this message, that would be a great leap forward.

My only disappointment is that even in Rio, the film seems to be showing mostly in the poorer Zona Norte and suburbs. I had to go out to a shopping mall in the fast-growing Barra da Tijuca section of Rio to catch a 1 pm showing at which I was one of maybe four viewers, given the hour. So I am not sure the film will catch on, but hope so. If it represents a new maturity on the part of Brazilian opinion about Brazil's role in fighting global threats, that would be an important advance, getting away from the idea that the wars on drugs and terrorism are just American issues or even inventions of no concern to a maturing rising power like Brazil.

A Light at the End of the Tunnel......in Afghanistan

2010-02-22T18:13:00.000-08:00

We are just beginning to perceive a notable change in the fortunes of the international community, led by the United States, in the war in Afghanistan. President Obama, his civilian national security advisers and his generals and admirals deserve credit for having turned around a major foreign policy defeat in this most difficult environment. The decision to increase troop levels immediately upon taking office and adding another 30,000 troops in the surge was critical in this turn about.

Some might say, "What turn about?", but there is definitely a trend towards success. The surge itself is now allowing for the kinds of major operations in the volatile South, in Helmand right now, that will successfully clear these areas of entrenched Taliban control. And the capture in Karachi of the leading Taliban military commander Mullah Bareder and of two Taliban "shadow governors" are major breakthroughs. Meanwhile, the success of the London Conference on Aghanistan, with a new commitment by the international community and the Afghan government under Hamid Karzai gave some new impetus to the resolve of the coaltion working to save Afghanistan from the brink. In particular, the emphasis given to luring Taliban followers into "reintegration" programs, and a willingness to let the Aghan government seek reconcilliation talks with some Taliban leaders, are very important as they point the way to a real solution to the conflict there.

Much still needs to be done. The commitment of President Karzai to attack corruption remains to be demonstrated in real actions. Also, his commitment to take the Afghan government out to the countryside to deliver essential services needs to take place, but the US "civilian surge" taking place should facilitate that process. Finally, the expansion of the Afghan Army and police is vital to the country ultimately taking responsible for its own security. This will be a difficult and painful process, but it is encouraging to see Aghan troops taking the lead in the ongoing operation in Marjah.

As a political analyst, I would like to think that the success of winning this war lies in political solutions of more and better governance, less corruption and real economic and social development programs. But, all of this will not be able to take hold without what is essentially a numbers game: getting an overwhelming number of Afghan troops recruited, trained, equiped, led and organized to carry out the essential security functions throughout Afghanistan.

In all this, the role of the international community is essential: it provides the resources at this point required to make everything happen; it provides the security umbrella which will turn the tide in the battle and allow Afghan security and government institutions to develop and take control. The international community can also do a lot to help Afghanistan join the world economy and enable it to develop on its own and move away from the opium economy to which it is still addicted.

However, I am very optimistic at this moment and I hope it is not just a fleeting one. I also hope that the American people and their NATO and free world counterparts do not give up the struggle just as we are beginning to get results from our efforts. There will be more sacrifice in lives and treasure, but this sacrifice is worth the price. A Taliban and Al Qaida resurgence and possible takeover of Afghanistan would have been a slippery slope towards a greater unravelling in the Muslim world and an increased threat to the world community. I am optimistic that this administration understands that and will take necessary steps to defend our national interests over and above the often fickle trends in public opinion.

Tribute to Uncle Arnold

2010-02-16T21:43:00.000-08:00

Just before New Years, I was unexpectedly informed of the death of my mother's youngest brother and only living sibling, Arnold (Morris) Groveman. Uncle Arnold played a very special role in my life. He was a friend, a surrogate father (mine died when I was just 14) and a hero to me. Arnold's place as my favorite uncle belied the fact that he may have been among the least personally successful uncles, yet he had personal qualities and we shared a life story that made him especially dear to me. The photo above has been in my family all my life, on the walls of both my Mom and her late sister Lil's homes as well as my own. It is a historic photo of Uncle Arnold, face up, during the World War II landings in Salerno, Italy. This photo (which will blow up into full size if you click on it) can be found at: http://education.eastmanhouse.org/discover/kits/imageNotes.php?id=10
, with the caption:

"51. Unidentified U.S. Coast Guard photographer
UNDERNEATH DROPPING BOMBS
September, 1943
U.S. Coast Guardsmen and Navy beach battalion men are shown hugging the shaking beach at Paestum, just north of Salerno, as a Nazi bomber unloads on them. In the background of the photograph — one of the most outstanding of the war — debris from a bomb hit can be seen in the air. Coast Guardsmen said this was much worse than the Sicilian and North African invasions, in which the Coast Guard also participated."

I remember being in a library looking through WWII photo books and finding this photo in one of them. and saw it flashed briefly in a PBS special series on WWII, but only now found a copy of it online.

The War was both Arnold's glory and his wound. He suffered some kind of shell shock in Italy and was hospitalized. I never noticed any direct effects, but he did manage to get a disability ruling later in life which helped him quite a bit financially and in terms of his medical treatment at VA hospitals. What I remember most, however, besides the photo above were others of Arnold in uniform--good looking, in a leather and fleece Army jacket--and with the German Shepard he brought back to the States from Europe, a dog which sired Beauty, the dog with which I grew up in my early childhood that belonged to his brother, my Uncle Phil, and his family, with whom we lived in the same house in New York and with whom we spent a lot of time once they moved to California to live near us in the San Fernando Valley. A classic story in our family is how Phil's daughter, Nickie, my older cousin, "married" me and Beauty in an backyard ceremony in the Bronx in New York.

Like all of my Mom's siblings, Arnold survived not only the War, but a childhood of relative poverty as children of Eastern European immigrants and a mother left widowed when their father died in his early 30s of tuberculosis, and the Great Depression. As young children, they lived in bad housing and their mother traded in rags and remnants. They often lived off of the largess of better off relatives. My Mom remembers enjoying the chance to visit an aunt's appetizing store so she could dip her finger in the pickle barrel and lick it. Access to food was always a theme in my own childhood, not unlike many Jewish families. My Mom would walk instead of taking the bus places so she would have a few pennies to go to the movies. She also sold paper bags she bought for 2 cents for 3 cents.She held a life-long grudge against Arnold, who would come to the movies looking for her and telling the owners their mother wanted her, in order to sneak inside, but getting her sent home.

Before going to war, Uncle Arnold was a bit of a street punk and he always dressed that way, reminding me of John Travolta in he early roles in Saturday Night Fever and Grease. He had his bunch of street pals. My Mom said he used to spend his days as a kid playing marbles in the gutter and coming home smelling of the street. His street punk look, was also part of his vanity about how he looked. He also was a bit of a flirt, to the chagrin of his wife and daughter. During the Depression, Arnold and some of his friends went into the New Deal's Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and he spoke nostalgically about his days clearing fire breaks in national forests and living in a camp environment. My Mom would say it and the War saved him from turning into a gang member.

After the War, Arnold did not get very good jobs. He tried his hand, with my father, as a plumber, worked distributing bathroom sanitizers to restaurants and later worked as a cutter New York's fashion district, probably his most solid job. His family lived in a fourth story, one bedroom walk up off of Bronx Park in a largely still Jewish section and later, as the Bronx changed, moved to Coop City, a huge project in the east Bronx where a lot of Jews moved during the 1970s.

My relationship with Arnold and his family, my Aunt Margaret and cousin Carol, was unique in that they were the only members of my Mom's family not to move out to Southern California in the 1950s. They remained in the Bronx due to my aunt's close ties to her parents, who were wonderful people. I was the only nephew or niece to return to New York and thereby establish a very close relationship with Arnold, Margaret and cousin Carol. When I returned to the States by student ship from a year abroad in Spain in 1966, it was Arnold and Carol who met me at the dock and took me home to a wonderful warm Jewish meal that Margaret had waiting for us at their home.

A year later, following graduation from UCLA, I went back to New York to study International Affairs at Columbia University. Arnold's family became my main family during very formative years. Though I lived at a campus dorm, I visited them often and Carol, already in college herself, often came to visit me at Columbia. I actually lived with them during the summer of 1969 after finishing up at Columbia and before going to Washington to begin a career in the State Department. In the late 1970s, my wife Yeda and I returned to New York where I took up a position at the US Mission to the United Nations and we visited with the Grovemans often at their Coop City apartment on weekends. A very reliable bus service connected Manhattan with the distant housing development.

What I can say about my relationship with Arnold is that he always remained very loving towards me and very interested in my life as a student and in my career. He was one of those people who would ask a million questions of a young person, seeming both really interested, but also living vicariously through a young person;s successes.

When Arnold and Margaret finally did move out to California in the 1980s after Margaret's parents had passed away, it was to move into retirement along side my Mom and Phil in San Diego where they had moved from Los Angeles. My relationship with them there was just part of visits I would make, either from abroad or from Washington, DC, with Yeda and our two children, Andrew and Dana, to San Diego with a side trip up the the San Fernando Valley where my Aunt Lil and her husband and my cousin Nickie and her family still lived and to Los Angeles where my brother Averill and his family lived. Those visits had a certain routine, which included visits to San Diego's Old Town, Balboa Park, the Zoo, Sea World, the Ocean front, lunch at the spectacular La Valencia Hotel. However, a certain amount of time with Arnold and Margaret, and of course good Jewish meal at their home were always required. I also always had a special relationship with Margaret, who is a delicate, Czech-born woman of great sensibility whom I also love immensely.

I rembember one experience with Arnold in New York when both he and my familty were visiting, he from California and we, if I am not mistaken, from Washington, DC. We used to stay at the Murray Hill East hotel where we could get a big one bedroom apartment and it was in the same neighborhood where Yeda and I had lived in Manhattan in the late 1970s. Arnold came and stayed over at our hotel and we all went down to Katz's Deli on Housten Street on the Lower East side for lunch. Arnold never stopped being a kid, and he had to order an enormous pastramii sandwich and two hot dogs which he ate with gusto to satisfy the cravings in his soul for something out of his past. (He had a similar fondness for Chinese food, and you could not get anywhere near his plate of shimp in lobster sauce once it hit the table. Of course, shimp was taboo in his own Kosher home.) Indeed, he lived pretty much in the past, the old neighborhood in the Bronx, his boyhood friends, the War. His stories were of great amusement to me, but some of his siblings found him to be a broken record on these subjects.

Arnold and Margaret stayed in San Diego after Carol, her husband Don decided to move back to New York--Teaneck, New Jersey actually--seeking an Orthodox Jewish education for their four daughters. We saw Carol's family quite a bit during that period, as I had retired from the Foreign Service and moved to Poughkeepsie in 1996, to take a job at the Roosevelt historic sites in Hyde Park, New York. However, Arnold and Margaret reached to point where living on their own was less feasible due to health issues and aging, Carol and her husband Don helped to move them to Toronto where they had moved in 2001.

Arnold was never happy in Toronto. He loved San Diego, a paradise which had been denied to him for years when he stayed in New York, and where he had finally found happiness. In his last couple of years, he complained a lot and spoke often of wanting to return to San Diego, which was not very feasible, due to his health problems. He never stopped calling me and trying to keep up with me and my family. Although I was sad for him, there was not much I could do and did not have the opportunity to visit his family in Toronto. When Carol moved back to New York, late last year with her parents, I was looking forward to visiting them, but Arnold's unexpected death deprived me of a last chance to see him. Arnold in his old age had become cranky and argumentative, did not feel well loved by his own immediate family, despite the fact that his granddaughters doted on him and Carol and Don did everything they could to meet his and Margaret's needs, and seemed to depend more on his calls to his nieces and nephews for affection. Nevertheless, I will always remember him fondly. It could not be otherwise.

Gerardo Le Chevalier – no one better understood democracy’s prospects in the Americas

2010-02-09T16:21:00.000-08:00

From the Democracy Digest

By Michael Allen on February 2, 2010

More tragic news emerging from Haiti where the United Nations confirmed that Gerardo Le Chevalier, head of the UN Electoral Assistance unit, was killed in the 7.0 quake.
A Salvadoran citizen and former director of Latin America and Caribbean programs for the National Democratic Institute, he was among those who died when the U.N. headquarters in Port-au-Prince collapsed.

Democracy advocates are mourning his loss.
“For 10 years, NDI was fortunate to benefit from Gerardo’s expertise, first as a resident director in Haiti, Paraguay and Bosnia, and finally as the Latin America regional director,” said NDI President Ken Wollack. “There is probably no one who better understood democratization opportunities and challenges in the hemisphere or the political dynamics within each country in the Americas, or possessed such a broad range of contacts in the region.”
Carl Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy, recalled “his engaging smile, his sparkling eyes that could light up a room, his sense of humor, and above all his dedication to our work and values.” NDI is one of the NED’s core institutes.
NDI has established a “NDI Haitian Staff and Family Disaster Assistance Fund.” To make a donation, please follow this link.

4 responses to “Gerardo Le Chevalier – no one better understood democracy’s prospects in the Americas”
Martin Edwin "Mick" Andersen February 3, 2010 at 10:40 am Permalink
One of the things for which Gerardo should be remembered is his moral and physical courage. When he worked for Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte Gerardo faced down death squad leader Roberto D’Aubuisson during a television debate. Gerardo asked that D’Aubuisson be given a bar of soap, because the Christian Democrat’s mother had always said that if one was a liar, they needed to wash their mouth out with soap.
Gerardo’s left a large footprint in many of the countries where he worked. His efforts in Paraguay led his friends to call him the “ambassador” from that country. He was generous and self-effacing, and always had a joke or a good story to share. His vision remains, of a better world on the horizon, one just a bit farther away now that he is gone.

Norman F. Anderson February 4, 2010 at 4:26 am Permalink
Gerardo was a great man, one of the most hard-working and dedicated people I have ever met. He was, I think, not particularly easy to figure out, but very easy to like – whether on the streets of Paraguay, sitting on the floor in the São Paulo airport, playing squash (he was very good). He was Charismatic Humanity…a tremendous Force. We need more people like Gerardo, may he rest in peace.

Marta Digna February 4, 2010 at 5:18 pm Permalink
Gerardo Le Chevallier fue un hombre integro, respetuoso y amigable con todos los que trabajamos con el en el Partido Democrata Cristiano de nuestro pais El Salvador, me uno al pesar de toda la familia y que Dios les de conformidad por esta irreparable perdida, siempre le recordaremos en nuestras oraciones.QDDG.

Barbara Haig February 4, 2010 at 6:22 pm Permalink
Those of us who were on the NED Program staff back in the 1980s will remember how every now and then strange sounds would vibrate through the walls and from behind the office door of our then Latin America Program Officer, Chiqui. First was the repeated sound of her open hand slamming down on the desk; then came the exaggerated “nnno, mentira!”, followed by loud bursts of laughter; and eventually the sound of the phone hanging up. “What is going on?” I would always ask. And the response was always, “nothing, I was just talking with Gerardo.” He was a good friend to us in those days. It was a really dangerous time in El Salvador, but somehow, he was the one making us laugh in our little office in Washington, as if the whole world was a place where one could find mischief.

Dan Strasser February 8, 2010 at 11:43 pm Permalink I was saddened to read of Gerardo’s death after googling his name to see if there was anything about what had happened to him in Haiti. I met Gerardo back in 1994 when he and I first worked together on Haiti for NDI. I was a US foreign service officer on detail to NDI, who took over the Haiti program at NDI when Aristide was returned to power that year. Having been the Haiti desk officer at the State Department in the 1970s, I was glad to re-engage in Haiti’s political development. Gerardo was already a known quantity at NDI, so I cannot claim to have recruited him as the number two member of our team in Haiti, but I was very pleased to work with him as he seamlessly put together the democratic development project we developed in Haiti in a very difficult environment. Besides NDI’s classic political party development programs, he creatively developed a unique media program which established NDI Haiti as the focus of all election media activity. I had no idea that Gerardo would wind up dedicating most of the rest of his life to Haiti. He was always very empathetic to the Haitians, had a wonderful capacity to understand and deal with them, and when he took over the program, I had absolute confidence in his ability to manage it in this tough place. Later, he ran NDI’s Latin American program before returning to Haiti with the UN. We exchanged some emails while he was there. My heart sank when I heard of how badly the UN staff was hit by the earthquake but only now dif I learn that my worst fears had come about. Gerardo deserves a place in the pantheon of international civil servants who have given their lives to better those of their fellow human beings in less fortunate countries.

Dan Strasser February 9, 2010 at 1:32 pm Permalink Just to add another note about Gerardo that might be unknown among those who know of his role both in his native El Salvador and in Haiti: Gerardo’s father was a Holocaust hero, although an unheralded one. As the Salvadoran consul in Vichy France, Gerardo’s father was one of the few Latin diplomats who gave Salvadoran visas to Jews seeking to excape Nazi aligned France. Gerardo, learning of work I had done for the Wallenberg Committee, told me this story over dinner in Port-au-Prince. He said his father had earned the French Legion of Honor after the war but he had little other information. I said I would try to help dig up more information on his father’s role with the objective of it gaining some recognition among Holocaust organizations. On a trip to Paris, I visited the Holocaust museum, but found they had no information on Gerardo’s father. They did, however, put me in touch with the Legion of Honor, which confirmed that the honor had been bestowed, but unfortunately, there was nothing written down about why it was given. A letter to Yad Veshem, the Holocuast memorial in Isreal, showed they had no knowledge of Gerardo’s father and a letter to the French Nazi hunters, Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, was never answered. I reported my results to Gerardo and was sorry not to carry the investigation any further. I still remain curious, however, about his story.

The Kids From Cleveland and the New Millennium

2010-01-01T14:32:00.000-08:00

A couple of postings ago, I said I began this blog, exactly one year ago, due to some frustrations with the results of other things I was doing at the time. Most of all, it was because I had written a piece with great inspiration in late 2008 about something that I cared deeply about, namely my own kids and what they represented in terms of generational change. Unfortunately, I had absolutely no response from any of the magazines to which I sent the article. My response was to just go ahead and start this blog, thinking that I did not need a publisher to express myself. What I failed to do, however, was to post the article itself, probably because I thought it was much too long to be considered a blog posting. But thinking about it, what do I really have to lose by posting it now, on the first anniversary of The Visionist and the beginning of a new decade? This decision is also deeply driven by my recent desire to reimmerse myself in English literature. I chose English lit, because I have always considered the English superior to us Americans in expressing themselves in our common language. This project has not been hard to do: I merely pulled out my two volume Norton's Anthology of English Literature, in its original edition which I still have in my library from my years in college, and started reviewing it.

But my purpose here is not to go on about my inspirations, but to actually post the article for anyone who wishes to read it. I hope you enjoy it. Bear in mind that it has not been updated since August of 2008.

The Kids from Cleveland: The Millennials Take New York

New York City is considered the capital of the universe by many people. It is undoubtedly the world's most cosmopolitan city, the financial center of the planet, home of the closest thing to a world government, a city who’s Statue of Liberty has served as a symbol for universal freedom and whose Wall Street is the home for "unbridled exuberance." Since 9/11, it has been the icon of Western Civilization threatened by terrorism. It has the world’s best hospitals, some of its best universities and museums, and a collection of cultural centers, especially Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera. And, of course, it has Broadway. It is not the most beautiful city in the world—Paris, Rio, Hong Kong or San Francisco beat it esthetically--but it has never failed to be a city that attracts. Since “Delicious Little Devil,” staring Rudolf Valentino, was made in and about New York in 1919, hundreds of other films have been made using the city as their backdrop--133 in this decade by last count. At least 23 disaster movies have used New York's destruction as a symbolic end to life on the planet.

Mostly, however, New York is famous for gritty love stories told in movies and TV, set against the streets and parks of New York. Even such a light, recent Cinderella fantasy as “Enchanted“ could not resist using New York as a backdrop. New York is romantic. It is also inevitably the setting for playing out our American urban social dramas, from Seinfeld, Friends and Sex in the City, which we watch over and over again in all their reruns. And even then we have an appetite to see Sex in the City as a full length movie a decade later. We want to know how youngish singles—a stage of life that now goes on seemingly forever--manage their lives struggling to meet a mate, find and keep a job or even an affordable apartment. It is a Mecca that draws annually tens of thousands of other singles there to begin high velocity careers and to seek fame and fortune. It draws the young like moths to a flame. I recognize that this view of New York is pretty much drawn from fantasy, more common among those who don't actually live there, and the city itself can be many things to many people. But New York is and always will be special with its special appeal. I have a cousin who literally picked up after 9/11 and moved to Canada. Five years later, she is moving back to New York because her four daughters will all be there and she feels the need to be close to them. Even the thought that you are living in a big target with a bulls eye on it does not stop people from wanting to be in New York.

For this reason, there is an intrinsic general interest in trying to find out and understand what makes this huge city tick and what is happening there now. I have lived in New York four times in my life, as a kid born in the relentlessly unglamorous Bronx when it was still mostly Jewish, Irish and Italian (How many people know that the Bronx still has its own “Little Italy”); as a grad student at Columbia University during the student revolution of 1968; as a US diplomat working at the UN; and as the Director of one of the Roosevelt historic sites in Hyde Park, NY, two hours north of “the City” and halfway up the Hudson River, living in Poughkeepsie. I consider myself a New Yorker and still visit the city frequently, although it may one day be too expensive to even visit for a long weekend.

I was fascinated by the success of the film, “The Devil Wears Prada”, with its typical cute and perky innocent young college grad who comes up against the awesome power of a fashion magazine director, based on a true story about Vogue. As the Boomer father of two twenty-somethings, who, upon graduating from college, decided to begin their adult lives in New York, I saw my son struggling just like Ann Hathaway running after moguls who exploited the energy and quickness of youth, to get as much out of them as possible and to fuel the needs of large organizations. In fact, at that time, my son Andrew had just started working for an important NYC photographic agency, and was much in that same situation, in a no benefits position working the night shift processing photos of celebs at $10 an hour! But he was constantly in contact with New York society and held the hope that this job would “lead to something.” Like the evening his boss drove by the office to drop off a camera full of photos and happened to have in the limo with him Bright Lights, Big City scribe Jay Mc Inerney and Sex and the City author Candice Bushnell . What would Andrew's future be like with these images flashing before him? Would these owners of the New York zeitgeist pass on to him and his generation the flames of success and excitement that make up fame? (Big time photographer boss always suggested to Andrew to wear a suit and lose weight, but for Andrew wearing a big, baggy sweater bought in a thrift shop was his way of making a “statement” in the face of such celebrity. In the end, rebellion, not conformity, would be his way. And he is still resisting losing weight.)

I wish to tell here a story not known yet by all those who are waiting with bated breath for the next Seinfeld or Sex and the City story to appear. It is the story of today's twenty-somethings who are struggling to make it in the Big Apple and how they are different. It is also and why I have such huge hopes for their generation. They are truly a networked generation called the “Millennial generation.” I do not want to go into a lot of details here about the Millennials, but encourage others to read up on them, particularly Howe and Strauss’s book, Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation and the other books Howe and Strauss wrote leading up to it. This generation, whose members were born beginning in 1982 (Andrew’s birth year) and started turning 18 at the Millennium, were just entering college when Millennials Rising was written. Now, they have entered the work force. For those who have caught on to their existence, the Millennials represent a huge hope for the future of humanity, akin to that of the “Greatest Generation” of World War II. Generational analysis has an inherent appeal because we talk about different generations in our common language and believe they exist. I am not sure if truly scientific social scientists have totally embraced these concepts as they require us to wrap our arms around a lot of people and try to characterize them. However, certainly generational thinking has been important in the fields of history and of both advertising and human resources, where professionals take demographics very seriously. If we are not convinced that the Greatest Generation existed, we all know about the Baby Boomers, and for the total cynics think how much we have embraced the generation that made our own American Revolution, that of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and John Adams.

When we talk of generations, this is often associated with cultural or artistic groups or intellectuals as much as at entire generations as the Millennials formulation talks to. The whole idea of the “Beat Generation,” the “Lost Generation,” or even the “60s Generation,” were cultural groups marked be certain historical eras that generated groups of people whose alienation from society around them caused them to create countercultures to the existing social reality. They also required the creating of “Bohemia,” a physical and social space apart from conventional society. Russell Jacoby talks of this in The Last Intellectuals, decrying the loss of public intellectuals in the 1960s and beyond based on the impact of suburban, middle class life and the growth of large public, bureaucratic universities on independent thinkers and writers in America. . Bohemia requires low rent and a concentration of inexpensive meeting places like cheap cafes and restaurants and a collection of bookshops and art galleries. Such is in fact the setting for Puccini’s popular opera La Boheme set in 1830s Paris, the city which has most competed with New York over the years as a draw to artists and writers. (La Boheme also was the inspiration for the musical and movie Rent, which brought its themes to New York.) Greenwich Village was Bohemia par excellence in New York of the late 1940s and 1950s. Jacoby saw it petering out by the 60s as a complete countercultural generation replaced the few artists and writers who previously made up the Beats. The Kids from Cleveland about whom I write have no less of a need for cheap rents and inexpensive food and entertainment. Brooklyn has become their haven, with most of them settling into less expensive apartments with two or three other friends. So much is going on in Brooklyn now that it is not necessary to get to Manhattan for many activities or even for work. But everyone has a monthly pass on the MTA to handle transportation needs. And it is no big deal to bop in and out of Manhattan in the course of the day. I have been amazed that just about every time I am with my kids in Brooklyn, we inevitably run into some of their Cleveland friends by just walking in the streets.

My knowledge of the Millennials is based more on the experience of my own kids. I want to tell their story here, and will request forgiveness in advance if I seem compelled to tell it in some detail: I wanted to make sure that no element of this story, based on the roles of each member of their extended network, was lost. Andrew went to the Cleveland Institute of Art or CIA, where he wanted to be an industrial designer but got swept up in an effort by the school to create a "multi-media" major with the weird name of TIME, “Technology and Integrated Media Environments.” We were concerned that he was going from the precise to the fuzzy-minded and a very solidly defined career to something vague and without convincing income prospects. However, Andrew was for it and it was really his decision. For me the notion that ID was industrial, while TIME was post-industrial, clinched the argument. Our daughter Dana, thank goodness, however, wanted to be an architect, got admitted to Cooper Union in NYC, with its automatic full tuition scholarships, and we knew that at least one of our kids would have an easier time at defining her career.

Something happened to our son when he turned to this new media approach. He became an entrepreneur at heart and an "anti-corporate" believer (Andrew prefers to put it this way: *i am not anti corporate, i would like to have my own corporation at some point, i just don't want to work for anybody else*) . He wanted to do his own thing, albeit something very eclectic and “highly accessible*. Thank goodness, he also learned a lot of useful skills in the first two years of “foundation,” from basic art study of color and perspective, drawing and painting to digital design techniques, photography and videography (Andrew says *a lot of my professors didn't agree with anything i had to say in school until i proved them wrong*). He also became a skillful organizer and actually a leader, pulling together his classmates and friends and a lot of people within his environment and community into "projects." The gift of gab and art of B.S.ing were also thickly acquired. I don't always recognized the so-called projects as anything other than weird ideas, but have trouble second guessing someone who is so convinced he is right. Until proven otherwise, it seems best to let these ideas roll. Occasionally though I have called a spade a spade, like his idea that you could get thousands and thousands of people to pass colored balls to each coast (*your entire world has been constructed by successful results of experiments in behavior- the whole "passing balls thing" could be a new way that people interact.” Yea, right.) I saw what he was trying to do, but didn't see much value in it and doubted human nature's susceptibility to such an idea.

This organizational prowess came to the fore in Andrew's senior project at the CIA. Against the advice of his professors and advisors, Andrew decided to make as his project the organization of a massive show of illusionists, called The Grand Illusion. Modeled somewhat on American Idol (*taking advantage of the seductive social nature of REALITY TV as well as FANTASY FILM - borrowing from the strengths of both popular mediums- do not forget to include harry potter*)-(*also the project was very influenced by the trans sexual African American BALLROOM EVENTS- where an entire alternate society was created from gender flip flopping* - the big resource for this culture is the movie PARIS IS BURNING). There were a series of trial events to select volunteer performers, drawing not only from the CIA students, but also from those at neighboring Case Western University and the local Cleveland street community as well. Andrew worked with roommates Shawn, Jed and friend Johnny on The Grand Illusion. But he wound up drawing nearly his whole social network in Cleveland into The Grand Illusion," (http://www.grandillusion.tv/the_site/index.html ), not to be confused with the Jean Renoir movie of the same name. In the end, the show took place on Case Western’s Amasa Stone Chapel, with an audience of over 500 enthusiastic attendees. The Master of Ceremonies was one "Lady Divinity," a rather large transvestite with a personality and boobs to match her size. Lady Divinity was found at a local dry cleaning store near campus. Other street people, those without many other commitments were drawn into the event. One particular hilariously outrageous personality, a Black transsexual named Ivy, claimed to be a “runway coach,” and would have been the show's MC, but dropped out because he could never keep appointments. A local hair dresser named Antonio got involved as did his mother. Andrew's roommate from CIA, Jed, wound up doing an illusion in which he married himself: nobody in Cleveland knew Jed was an identical twin, and his brother flew in from Seattle for the show. The entire show was a big deal at CIA and won Andrew a position at graduation as class valedictorians, along with fellow CIA student, Ben Kinsley, with whom Andrew spent a semester abroad during their fourth year in Shwaebisch Hall, Germany, at Fachhochschule Shwaebisch Hall (FHSH). Ben did his own thesis project, it got the top award – and Andrew filmed the footage in collaboration with him. They did not give speeches. Rather they read a rather unconventional tirade.

What goes on during a person's time at college often shapes his future in unforeseen ways. Andrew's roommate his second year at CIA, Pete Tradowsky, is a Cleveland guy but who went to an exclusive private high school there named Hawken. Frank and Tyler, friends of Pete's from Hawken, went to Bard College north of Hyde Park, New York, and when Andrew would come home to Poughkeepsie, he would bring Pete and 3 or 4 other friends who crashed at our house and wound up hooking up with Pete’s friends at Bard and their friend, including a girl named Hannah, Alan Astor, Chris Glover, and Luke. Also, they hooked up with Andrew's friends from Poughkeepsie's Spackenkill High School, a public school that largely served the well-educated, international IBM community in that city. There was a period in Andrew's attendance at CIA when he looked for like-minded friends at Case Western, finding some of the CIA students too vague and artsy. There he made a host of connections, many of whom got drawn into the Grand Illusion and other similar projects.

One thing that helped build Andrew's Cleveland network was his living in a huge old apartment with 5 bedrooms and as many roommates on Ford Street, just a block from the main CIA building. The apartment had a large living area and a small balcony, with a spectacular view of Case Western’s Business School designed by Frank Ghery, which made it a natural for informal parties. Cleveland is a relatively inexpensive city (Andrew’s rent never was raised over four years) in which life was pretty easy for these students, few of whom had major resources. We gave Andrew our aging 1991 Ford Taurus station wagon, which served him and his crew well for shopping and trips for a few years until he ran it into the dust somewhere on the New York Thruway. This meant informal entertaining, cooking and a "moveable feast" atmosphere pervaded the Cleveland student scene. A group of friends began to accumulate. An important presence for the group were some interesting Asian girls, Fuki, a Japanese student at Case with a particular flare, style and gravitas that makes you pay attention to her. Just thinking of a traditionally repressed Japanese who manages to throw off the bonds of culture and becomes a totally free spirit--a la Yoko Ono--is itself exciting. Thu Tran, a Vietnamese girl with a gift for cooking as well as her art, glass blowing, also became a regular at Ford St, but actually lived with some art students at another apartment down the street.

It is important to acknowledge also the diversity of this group. First of all, Andrew’s friends from Poughkeepsie were like the United Nations: Korean, Indian, Caribbean. In Cleveland itself, his friends were both male and female, gay and straight. Gays make up an important element within this artsy group, ands his two principal roommates, with whom he is again living in NYC, were gay as are others like Antonio the hairdresser. Art schools tend to have a greater diversity in this regard and Dana also has a number of gay friends from the Art school at Cooper. The gay kids added something creative to the group. Jed, who was one of a very few “Enameling” majors at CIA, loves to cook and is a great organizer (Andrew is not at the micro level and relies on Jed's neatness and need for order to move his projects along). He is now working as a stylist for production of Emeril Legasse’s new show on the soon to be launched Green Network. Shawn, although a TIME major, switched to “Fibers and Materials” and wound up being a pretty good make-up artist and a designer of specialty jeans and other clothing. Both Jed and Shawn played important roles in the Grand Illusion show. Johnny, who bopped in and out of schools charmed the world with his good looks and compliments but satisfied himself waiting on tables at a high end New York bar and grill. The most interesting thing about this group and this generation is that they are totally at ease with diversity of all kinds as they have a common set of values rooted in 21st century American culture. But this tolerance and openness is possibly most easy to sustain in a big city artistic, entertainment and media milieu like NYC.

A number of Andrew's friends were interested in and moving towards the electronic music scene, which Andrew was also involved in from high school. They merged computer skills with eclectic music production. These included a group like Drop the Lime, and some of Andrew's friends began to succeed in their music. Gregg Gillis, who uses the professional name Girl Talk,, already a bio-enginneer earning a significant salary, began performing as a kind of DJ (but according to Andrew, *he's self admittedly NOT A DJ, he's a laptop musician - the campaign we did for him when he was getting big was this series of shirts that say I'M NOT A DJ - again - playing with perception and constructs*) at music events and became increasingly in demand. Andrew worked with Gregg, developing his website, CD covers and accompanying him on gigs including a six week countrywide and Canadian tour plus a show at the TIM Music Festival in Rio de Janeiro, while producing the big screen effects for his shows. Chris Glover was another singer for whom Andrew did a lot of design work. Joe Williams started out slowly but developed to the point where he was being booked for gigs at venues across the country and abroad as “White Williams.” (Joe is known as White Williams because his girlfriend is Black, among other “mysterious reasons”). Joe was one of a small group from Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Academy of Design (CCAD).

What I really wanted to convey here was what happened when this network of friends either graduated or just moved on. Most of them wound up in New York City, as did both Andrew and his sister Dana. In fact, Dana, who went to college at Cooper two years after her brother went to CIA, became something of a bridge for the Cleveland crowd. Dana had gone to Cleveland to visit her brother during his first year at CIA and got to know his roommate Jed at the dorm and all of his friends there. When these people came to NYC, they often crashed at Dana's already crowded apartment, which she shared with three other students a few blocks from Cooper Square in the East Village. She became an integral part of this group and very close to several of them. In fact, today she rooms with two CIA girls.

When the kids from Cleveland began to move to NYC, certain friends were helpful. The Bard kids were already established there and Hannah, who after working at a high society magazine got a job at a place called US Concepts in event planning, acted as kind of a mother figure for everyone, getting them hooked up in the big city. Andrew got a job at US Concepts through her and was running events across the country for some sports products. Another Bard student, Frank, was the one with whom Andrew moved in when he arrived in NYC. Antoinio moved to NYC to work as a hair dresser eventually with Bergdorf Goodman, although he eventually moved back to Cleveland which he thought was less hectic, but is reportedly working his way back to NY. As hairdresser to some important celebrity clients, including Lindsay Lohan’s Mom, he set up Andrew with a job at this photo agency when he first arrived. Lisa a CIA student who graduated the year before Andrew’s class and got to NYC ahead of a lot of her friends, started out working for a well known artist in NY and hoped it would lead to something for her. However, as is often the case, successful people in NY exploit young interns. Lisa quit and worked instead at her comic book art at home while waiting tables to earn money. She eventually became Dana's roommate when Dana liberated herself from her Cooper roommates, who never were part of this circle. She and Lisa moved in with Thu Tran in Brooklyn when they got kicked out of a NY loft apartment which got cited for code violations. When Andrew moved out of his apartment with Frank, he eventually moved back into a place with his former roomates from Ford Street, Jed and Shawn, with whom he gets along so well. The Cleveland kids also hooked up in NY with a group of girls from Atlanta who were involved in event promotion at US Concepts, which is how Hannah got her job there, and who were dating some the musicians in the groups. One of them, Kasey, became quite a good promoter and was responsible to some extent for the success of Gregg Gillis, whose career took off after she started getting him bookings. Gregg opened a show in Las Vegas for Kanye West and appeared at the Cochella Festival in California, where Paris Hilton attended his show and jumped up on the stage to dance. Andrew was there for all of it.

In New York, there was also a group of kids from Oberlin, whom the CIA kids met through Johnny. Johnny was always involving himself in projects and was working at the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art when he met Andrew and his friends. There were at least three other Oberlin kids who formed a band and were into some experimental substance use. There was also a group of kids from Delaware, who Andrew describes as “skeptical,” because they never were enthusiastic about anything.

Of Andrew’s Poughkeepsie high school friends, Anand, an Indian chap, went to NYU to study and become involved in film making. He also worked for a while at US Concepts. Joanne, was one of the brightest kids in the Spackenkill graduating class, is a Korean girl who spent a year back I Korea teaching English after graduating from U Penn., and first took a job in Princeton at a publishing house, but switched to a great job at Google in NYC. For a while, she and Dana talked about rooming together, but the timing never worked out. She remains a good friend of both Andrew and Dana’s. Dana has also remained close with Anu, an Indian girl who grew up in Chicago, and a fellow Cooper architecture student, but not one of the Cleveland circle.

Andrew moved away from working for others such as the photographic agency and US Concepts and decided he wanted only to work for himself as a consultant. Constantly meeting new people at events and also not shy about approaching people, Andrew’s work became more and more creating websites and designing overall themes for clients. Although he worked commercially for some women who were promoting either their image or their jewelry collection, in the former case, helping one ex-model to develop a book about her career, Andrew actually liked musicians as clients. He found them easy to work with and more appreciative of his product. Andrew really liked touring with Gegg Gillis and Joe . In addition to traveling with Gregg to Brazil, Joe invited Andrew to accompany him also to Brazil. Since Andrew is both American and Brazilian, speaks Portuguese and knows his way around, he is a real asset when his friends go down there. He also developed a couple of musician clients that he felt really excited about, Larry Tee and Andrew WK. Basically, he approached them on MySpace and it worked.

The kids from Cleveland communicate constantly with each other through email, preferably g-mail, and text messages. They are constantly communicating where the next party or event will take place. Most of their entertainment is low budget or free. A lot of house parties and cooked up food takes place. Jed lived for a while when he moved from his upstate NY home to a big loft apartment whose occupants charged for attendance at parties there where food was provided. There are also a lot of promotional events that people can go to and be part of the glitz and get free food.

Andrew believes that his group of friends has gone through phases of more or less enthusiasm and determination. He feels that a lot of people depend on him for ideas for projects and the energy to launch them and then bring them into these plans. But Andrew has become out of necessity more and more of a consultant and free lance artist in order to pay his bills and also to grow his business. He is particularly at ease working for musicians, who he feels are less high maintenance and tight fisted, while some of his more commercial clients tend to be tight wads and demand a lot of time and attention while not always being willing to foot the bill. I mention this, only to make it clear that these kids are not really anything like a social movement. Each one has to pay the rent, food, transportation, communication and entertainment expenses. If Andrew hopes to lead at least some of his friends into joint projects, these may take a second place to today's demands. But his moving in with Jed and Shawn again was definitely aimed at trying to sustain their ability to work well together as a team.

Many of the kids from Cleveland are not in NY, although they drift in and out of it. Gregg lives in Pittsburgh. Andrew's friend Kyle from Poughkeepsie, who followed him to Cleveland where he became a Ford St. roommate wound up going to school in Buffalo and moving to an upstate New York farm community. Kyle is a brilliant black kid of Caribbean origin, who is totally devoid of ambition. He passed up a full Merit scholarship when he graduated high school because he never applied to any schools. Kyle likes to have a girlfriend, and does well in this regard. As mentioned, Antonio is back in Cleveland, but coming back to NY. Hannah, the centerpiece of much of the NY scene, Who dated Joe Williams for a long time, moved with her new boyfriend to Wisconsin and wound up in Chicago, her home town, where she “owns an apartment.” The always electric Fuki, (whose father is a psychiatrist near Osaka), after graduating, travelled around the world followed a Norwegian-American boyfriend to Nepal, got married and are livng, following the ways of Buddha. However, Fuki and her boyfriend are now back visiting in New York for a few months to reconnect with her friends there. Another Ford Street roommate, a Case Western student named JP, decided to go to teach English in China after graduating and remained there a couple of years. He is now planning on returning to the States and settling in New York, reconnecting with his Cleveland friends there.

One of the aspects of the Cleveland kids' lifestyle that I have trouble accepting is its apolitical nature. These are kids who believe in freedom, diversity and tolerance, but who do nothing perceptible to promote any political beliefs, per se. This is so different from my own generation born in the throes of the Vietnam War and the revolutions of 1968, forty years ago. If they have been touched or moved by the so-called "Obama-effect," it is hard to perceive. They do believe in some things, but seem pretty much to be living for themselves, but in a not very materialistic way. They are normally unlikely to vote and less likely express a political belief to in any way. My own kids are aware of politics, being my children, and have some knowledge of things, but are not very interested and do not make much of an effort to keep themselves informed. They do not read newspapers, watch PBS news, listen to NPR or watch the Sunday political talk shows or read Time, Newsweek, the Economist or US News and World Report. The truth is this generation, raised on TV, has not watched TV since the went off to college, and could not afford cable if they wanted to. I keep wondering what this generation would be like during an ongoing war if there were a draft as we were subjected to during the Vietnam War.

But it is a little too easy to dismiss these kids as “apolitical,” when in fact they do have beliefs and goals, though these are more social than anything that could be called strictly political. There is Troy, for instance, a friend of Andrew’s who went from the CIA to New York to complete a degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) there. He has tried his hand at fashion (we attended an impressive fashion show he prepared at an impressive venue called Capitale, in New York’s Chinatown), but not feeling he was getting the kind of recognition he deserves, he moved into investing in real estate instead. Asking how he felt he was realizing his artistic interests in real estate, Troy said his ultimate goal, besides earning money, is to create back in his native Cleveland, in the more abandoned area of downtown, an area that would be home for an artistic community, something lacking in Cleveland. Andrew himself, among his projects, has kept alive something called “Save Brazil,” an idea of raising money for Brazilian environmental and social causes by throwing Brazilian music events in New York. Another friend, Alex, has taken his own interest in Cleveland bands and put on a couple of “Cleveland in New York,” music events, with the money raised going to an HIV/AIDS group.

A new book, Millennial Makeover: MySpace, YouTube and the Future of American Politics, by Moreley Winograd and Michael D. Hais , says that this generation is extremely political. I think it is going to have to remain an open question whether the Millennials really have time for politics. Certainly, they do not and won’t for politics as usual, which, first of all, bores them and second, they find irrelevant and a waste of time. It a new kind of politics engages them on their own terms, perhaps they will engage in a very positive way. Of all my kids’ friends, andrew’s roommate Jed is perhaps the most admittedly political. He says he attends meetings of the Socialist Party in New York. He likes Obama but has not actually done anything for Obama’s candidacy, which as a Democratic candidate, Jed finds still somewhat conventional. Coming from working class background, Jed finds a more openly class-based politics more rewarding. Winograd and Hais are correct in once sense: Obama’s followers did use the social networking techniques of the Millennials to successfully organize and especially fund raise among them in a way that totally took the Hillary Clinton campaign by surprise and from which it never quite recovered. Instead, Hillary went around telling her industrial age supporters to donate money by going to her webpage and then had to spell out for them that it was” HillaryClinton.com,” Duh!

One reason why I kept up with Andrew’s friends and associates is that he often brought them home from Cleveland. These kids were good about including their parents in things and we got to know several of the kids’ parents when we went to Cleveland for events, and of course graduation was a big deal for the parents. In many ways I felt that the bonds among the kids from Cleveland were much stronger than the kind of bonds you develop when you graduate from most colleges. The kids from Cleveland were totally irreverent towards their schools and professors. They are definitely not the next great candidates for the alumni annual fund drive. The felt they were creating their own reality. Where this was or is headed is hard to say because the kind of aesthetic they pursue is quite non-conventional. A lot of it seems aimed at creating some kind of shocking response from the audience, but not quite offensive nor pornographic.
Andrew’s latest project, alongside his work with clients is creation of a character named Bad Brilliance, which is a man with a large yellow balloon head and a red zoot suit (http://www.badbrilliance.com/). Andrew started appearing as Bad Brilliance at NYC events and got himself a photo in Time Out New York magazine emerging from a taxi. The magazine called Bad Brilliance a “highly entertaining art oddity.” He was invited to other events for a modest fee and most recently was invited to perform in three venues in Holland. Since Bad Brilliance is more a personality than a show, he had to quickly develop some kind of repertoire for a performance, turning to his electronic music. As weird as Bad Brilliance is, it is kind of fun and has potential. I told him to think about a children’s show, mixing a cartoonish figure with the irreverence of a Soupy Sales or Peewee Herman.

I have two questions about the kids from Cleveland to which I do not have the answer. One is whether their group is actually representative of a generation of kids who are showing up in big cities to launch careers. I would be surprised if this rather large network of kids is that common, but it seems that smaller groups would be inevitable, in part enabled by not only school ties, but also the effect of the cell phone, text messaging and social networking sites. The cell phone has virtually changed the way in which young people make decisions, enabling them to put them off until the last possible minute and then finding out all the necessary information at the last minute. The fact that this happens collectively makes it even more complicated. But I am going to assume that there really is a millennial generation out there and that the kids from Cleveland correspond to it.

However, I do want to make the argument to the uniqueness of this particular group as well. It is quite reasonable to ask: why Cleveland, why New York? Is there any special connection here between seemingly distant and different cities, one the megacity of the Northeast coast and the other one of a number of Midwestern cities that have suffered from post –industiral age decline. Personally, I am a great believer that history leaves marks, even grooves in which subsequent events and patterns run even if they may be somewhat unaware of these forces pulling on them. Having a son attending school in Cleveland forced me to learn more about its history. The Northeastern part of Ohio has a special relationship with the Northeastern United States because that area was once a part of Connecticut, the so-called Western Reserve of Connecticut. That is where the name of Case Western University comes from. Connecticut, as other US colonies and then states, were given not jus their coastal lands but a swath of land running indefinitely West to the Pacific, assuming the land itself belonged to England. In 1786, Connecticut gave up its rights to its western lands, as had Virginia before it, in exchange for the Federal government assuming all of its debts, but it reserved for itself a quadrant of land that today is NE Ohio. A decade later, it sold this land to a private development company which sent an expedition to settle it led by Moses Cleaveland, who gave his name, changed by mapmakers, to the city of Cleveland. During a long period, eastern Ohio was settled by Connecticut Yankees and its architecture and thinking was shaped by them. A connection remained. It is not an accident that the leading Ohio political dynasty, the Tafts, sends its sons to Yale for their educations. (I have to offer full disclosure that I was privileged in my introduction to Cleveland to have first stayed at the home of William Howard Taft’s grandson, Seth, whose wife, Franny, was a member of the Board of Directors at the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill when I worked there and also regularly taught a class at the CIA on Andean Art. When Andrew attended the CIA, I relied on her to “keep an eye on him for me.”) While Connecticut is not identical to New York, it is undoubtedly closely connected with New York geographically, economically, socially and as part of a larger urban complex in which commuters from Connecticut work in NYC each day.

Another important historical connection between Cleveland and New York is the Eire Canal. Conceived in the late 18th Century and built in the first quarter of the 19th Century, the canal, known as “Clinton’s Folly,” was long considered too difficult and expensive to achieve. Eventually, it linked New York City to the Mid-west by connecting the Hudson River near Albany to Lake Erie on which Cleveland sits, thus enabling the growth of major Upstate New York cities like Buffalo, Syracuse, Rochester, Rome and Utica. Indeed, it is said that the growth of New York itself as a major trading city was due to the Canal which gave it an advantage over other East Coast cities throughout the 19th Century until other canals, rail and road overtook the canal’s importance in commerce. The Canal opened up the interior of America to the growth of agricultural and later industrial exports. During the late 19h Century, Cleveland was considered one of the great cities of America. Its Euclid Avenue contained so many mansions, it was known as “Millionaires’ Row.” (One can visit today the home of former Secretary of State John Hay on Euclid to get a feeling of the opulence of the times.) We should also remember that it was in Cleveland that the Rockefellers first made their fortune, where John D. Rockefeller as a young man first set out in 1855 from home to find a job as an assistant bookkeeper in one of the city’s major businesses. Thirteen years later and already in the oil business, he bought one of the more modest homes on Euclid. In 1883, considered among the most wealthy Americans, he moved to New York. Today, the Rockefellers are considered the most identifiable of New York’s dynastic families.

The second question I have is where these kids, this generation, is headed. This is complicated since they themselves do not appear to know where they want to go with their lives and talents. Probably, they will eventually settle down and raise families and pay mortgages, but right now the lifestyle of living in NY does not point in that direction. People do hook up with each other, however and these relationships eventually lead to something. After a frustrating period in college where she dated little. Dana met a guy through one of her Cooper art major friends and dated him for nine months. One aspect of our own children is that they have some family and some friends of the family in NY that keep them tied into their Jewish roots. They have slightly older cousins with families and children in NY. But not everybody can become a permanent New Yorker and New York is definitely more for singles than for families if you are basically middle class. The economics of raising a family in “the City” is just not positive. But there are lots of options in the region around it, although the idea of moving to the suburbs probably does not excite these kids at this time. There are still careers to be conquered.
When Dana graduated from Cooper last year, we decided to do a lunch to celebrate at a local Brazilian restaurant and invited about 30 of her and Andrew’s friends and what family and close family friends we have in NYC. It was quite a nice informal affair and even included Andrew and Dana’s art teacher from Spackenkill who did so much to direct them toward their school majors in design and architecture. Not since the kids were Bar and Bat Mitzvahed a decade earlier had we had a chance to celebrate their achievements. Mostly it was a chance for us to include their best friends in this large network in New York in our proud celebration. I was very impressed by how well these young people got along and were able to communicate with the adults in the room. I have spent so much time with youngsters whose last wish would be to spend time with anyone ten years older than themselves. These kids, however, seemed genuinely interested in listening to and learning from their friends’ parents and relatives. It was one other small sign that this is a different generation of kids who love to meet parents and who can feel comfortable with older adults. I know in part that my own kids boast a lot about us and have so often brought their friends home with them, expecting to see wonderful things in our home from our travels abroad and eat exotic foods from Brazil.

What I can be assured of, however, is that things will not stay the same. A generation, made up of individuals, will move along as each member makes his or her own life. They may be influenced by professional or financial opportunities, luck in whom they meet and especially in love, by the future of world events from the economy and potential hard times to the prospect of a continuing festering war with intolerance and backwardness, punctuated by inconceivable instances of horror, or by a long term struggle with ecological decline or even Malthusian competition for ever more scarce global resources. Prospects are not totally rosy. Yet there remains hope as ever in human innovativeness and creativity, in the long term and still believable prospects of progress in human affairs and above all in the underlying goodness of human kind of which the Kids from Cleveland represent a good measure.

Auld Lang Syne

2009-12-27T05:21:00.000-08:00

Recently one of my high school buddies, Rabbi Stephen Einstein, with whom I maintain continued contact (though less frequent than either of us would like), wrote an email to me and a couple of other friends who attended the same synagogue in LA's San Fernando Valley as kids 50 years ago. Steve included a beautiful tribute he had written to Rabbi Sampson Levey who led our modest congregation. It was there also that my uncle Felix Groveman served as the cantor and most of the rest of my family, my Mom, her older sister Lil and Uncle Phil's wife Lee, sang in the choir. Steve, the Lucks twins, Jeff Berkowitz (who would later be my college roommate) and I all belonged to the Temple Beth Torah Youth Group, and also sang in the youth choir, led by my cousin Nickie, uncle Phil's daughter, which got to perform a couple of times a year as relief to the adult choir. Our parents all belonged to the temple sisterhood and men's club (and its bowling league) which also helped tie the Jewish community together in our area of the Valley, known alternatively as either Pacoima or Arleta (depending on whether you had problems with being identified with the former, which had such a bad reputation that it was used as a biker heaven in a Cheech and Chong movie.)

But my friends and I went to Pacoima Junior High School, most known for its best known alumnus, Richie Valens of "La Bamba" fame, and a plane crash that killed three students on the school grounds, one of whom was Jewish and for whom we named the new Temple Beth Torah social hall. Anyway, today TBT, as we called it, is a synagogue for the hearing impaired and no longer plays the role as a local community magnet. But, then again, I am sure that Pacoima and the Valley in general is no longer what it was in our youth, the land of milk and honey, at least for our parents, many of whom had moved to sunny, palm treed California from New York in the 1950s.

In response to Steve's email, Irv Lucks wrote to me saying he had called Steve and had said that 2010 is the year that we are all going to get together again, jokingly said that his twin brother Ed had added "...at least for an early bird dinner." I do not know whether Irv was serious or not, but for me, I would be happy to make the trip to California for a real reunion. It is impossible to imagine the kinds of common experiences and bonds that we had in our junior high and high school years. We practically created our own language and set of stories to express our view of the world around us, from our teachers, to the good looking girls at school and to our very own relationships (like when Steve went berserk when he was "attacked" by a bee at school during lunch or his endless avocado sandwiches; or when I talked all the boys into paying for my glasses when they were broken during an orange throwing fight at the Lucks'., asking plaintively, "Well, what do you expect me to do?, for which they will never forgive me. Then their was the time when I drove all of them to the beach in Santa Monica for the first time in our old '56 Murcury, only to get my first ticket, when, missing a vital turn on the way home, someone yelled "Turn, turn!," and I crossed over four lanes to make that turn right in front of a police car. (No, I did not manage to get the boys to pay for that one.)

I hate to get mushy, but listening to a ton of Holiday music, the one that has stuck in my mind has been Auld Lang Syne, which some consider to be the most famous song in the world, as it is sung all around the world (and its score was even once used for the Korean National Anthem!). So just for the good old times, here is the text of the original Robert Burns poem containing the lyrics:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,and never brought to mind ?

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,and auld lang syne ?
CHORUS:
For auld lang syne, my jo, for auld lang syne, we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,for auld lang syne.
And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp !and surely I’ll be mine !

And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,for auld lang syne.
CHORUS
We twa hae run about the braes,and pu’d the gowans fine ;

But we’ve wander’d mony a weary foot,sin auld lang syne.
CHORUS
We twa hae paidl’d i' the burn,frae morning sun till dine ;

But seas between us braid hae roar’dsin auld lang syne.
CHORUS
And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere !and gie's a hand o’ thine !

And we’ll tak a right gude-willy waught,for auld lang syne.
CHORUS

Sorry and Happy Holidays

2009-12-25T10:34:00.000-08:00

Nothing like a Christmas Day--even if you are Jewish--to reflect a little on life. Mostly, I have to apologize, if anyone is still reading this blog, for having slowed down and finally stopped my postings. I started out on another significant day of the year, January 1, to blog away about a number of topics, issues and self examinations. It sustained me through a period when I was not getting much satisfaction out of other things, particularly my desire to secure a position within the Obama administration, and gave me an outlet for expression. It also revived in me a natural love of writing.

I have always had big ideas and perhaps an overgrown sense of my own ability to realize them. Despite the fact that I have a steady job, I have sought satisfaction more from seeking to promote certain ideas and projects. A couple I have written about in earlier postings: my desire to hold a major conference on global governance and to advance this concept as a central organizing principal of US foreign policy; more recently my hope to form an organization dedicated to insuring the security of the 2016 Rio Olympics. However, neither of these ideas has gone beyond the proposal stage. They have failed to elicit the kind of support needed to carry them forward. I think they are still good ideas, but nobody was really willing to embrace them to the point of taking some small steps forward. I believe I deluded myself into thinking that good ideas will always find their outlet. This is probably due to the fact that in my life I have in fact brought about some important projects and ideas that have given me a lot of personal satisfaction. They are scattered throughout my career and perhaps I have overblown their importance. In my work as a diplomat and as a nonprofit manager, I accomplished the following things:

Played a major role carrying out a contingency plan written by me that reversed a military coup in the Dominican Republic in 1978
Negotiated the 1980 UNGA resolution that gave birth to the country of Belize
Worked closely with the US Ambassador to Bolivia to move that country, between 1981-82, from a military "narco-dictatorship" to a civilian democracy
Planned and worked the diplomatic side in Bolivia of the 1982 capture and repatriation to Italy of a major neo-fascist terrorist, drug dealer and torturer
The latter directly resulted in the capture in Bolivia and repatriation to France of Klaus Barbie, the Nazi "Butcher of Lyon." I subsequently assisted the Department of Justice in figuring out how Barbie had arrived in Bolivia, including securing is travel documents
Inspired and saw carried to completion a public plaza in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for my greatest hero, Raoul Wallenberg
Wrote the plan that led to the dismantling of the Cali Cartel in Colombia
Assured that the First Summit of the Americas contained a section on narcotics control
Contributed to the success of the 1995 Guatemalan Presidential elections through a program of voter education that laid the groundwork for a peace accord between the government and rebel factions
Established significant democracy promotion programs in Haiti in 1994-96 following the US intervention in that country
After retiring from the Foreign Service, I took over control of the nonprofit organization operating at the home of Eleanor Roosevelt in 1996, following a period of its decline. However, taking advantage of the popularity of Doris Kearns Goodwin's No Ordinary Time and the impetus given to women from the 1995 Beijing Summit, I expanded its activities many fold, carrying out a number of national programs in the areas of women's empowerment, human rights and the United Nations. I am also responsible for the organization acquiring a new building for its operations on the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site.

These accomplishments have led me to believe that with correct insight, a strong will and with the wind blowing in the right direction, almost anything is possible. What I probably have not been willing to admit is that the wind is not always blowing in your sails when you want it. As a result, my recent attempts to "start something" have not moved ahead, or if you will, have failed. So just as I was getting frustrated with failure, I decided that I may have had another fate-yes I believe in fate--to go to Afghanistan as a member of the civilian "surge" in President Barack Obama's new Afghan policy. I am now still working on that although given my age and some health issues, this may not be possible.

So, although I still have a decently paying job, a wonderful wife and two grown children of whom I am proud and love and a dear Mother whom I moved this year to live close to us in Virgina, I am now still looking for some good ideas and projects to keep my spirits up in the New Year. May it be a happy one!

Rio Olympics at Risk?

2009-10-18T23:53:00.000-07:00

As I was posting my last item, the following drama was taking place:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8313631.stm

See the videos in the link above

BBC at 22:08 GMT, Sunday, 18 October 2009 23:08 UK

Extra police after Rio violence

Several thousand extra police officers are on the streets of Rio de Janeiro
Brazilian officials have deployed thousands of extra troops on the streets of Rio de Janeiro a day after violent clashes with gang members.

At least 12 died during the clashes in the city's Morro dos Macacos - or Monkey Hill - slum.
Police said on Sunday that two suspected drug traffickers had also been killed overnight.
Officials also sought to calm fears about security in a city due to host the 2016 Olympic Games.
"Rio de Janeiro has a safety problem. We are fully aware of this problem, it is one of the city's most historic problems," said state public safety director Jose Mariano Beltrame.

"We proved to the Olympic Committee that we have plans and proposals for Rio de Janeiro."
Police killed in Rio helicopter crash

He added that the city's policy is not only about "going into battle, it also consists of keeping the peace".

On Saturday, two Brazilian policemen were killed after their helicopter was shot down above the city.

The helicopter came down and burst into flames after the pilot was hit in the leg by a bullet.
Several buses were also set on fire during the worst outbreak of violence since the city was awarded the Games two weeks ago.

The attack on the helicopter followed an outbreak of fighting between rival drug gangs in a shanty town in the north of the city.

One resident said it was the one of the most intense gun battles he had witnessed in the area in recent years.

Securing the 2016 Rio Olympics

2009-10-18T19:03:00.000-07:00

I was excited by the announcement, October 2, that Rio will host the 2016 Olympics and by the sense that this event could be transformational for both Rio and Brazil, and I want to be part of that process. Brazil, known often humorously as "the country of the future" since the phrase was introduced by Stefan Zweig, is fast moving from being an "emerging power," and a Goldman Sachs "BRIC," to becoming a key member of the G-20 and a major power on the world scene, and as such a likely strong ally to the United States and the West. Though a sports event might seem somewhat trivial in that pursuit, sports has been one of the most positive expressions of Brazil's potential greatness and will continue to inspire this still young country. The economic and social potential for these games is huge.

Security at all levels is the key to a successful Olympics. But the games must help rebuild Rio not militarize it. We should not come up with schemes to surround the games with thousands of soldiers as was done at the Pan American Games in Rio, but to civilianize and socialize the effort so that a military solution will be unnecessary, except as a backstop measure.

I served for a total of six years in Rio as US vice-consul, consul and acting Consul General (in addition to the two years as Principal Officer of the US Consulate in Salvador da Bahia) over two decades. I was put in charge of Rio's crime issue at the Conulate General as the Ambassador considered it a political as opposed simply a consular matter. After departing Brazil, I worked closely with Law Enforcement agencies both US and Latin American, as the South American Division Chief, of the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). I was responsible for approval of US credits for the Amazon Surveillance System (SIVAM), a $1.4 billion project won by Raytheon.

I am considering ways in which I can contribute to the success of the Olympics by playing a role in its security, look forward to future opportunities to collaborate and am reaching out to many friends to this end. This will hopfully result in the formation of a security consultancy that will bring to bear many capabilities to assist Rio to have successful and secure games.

It is Rio! Start preparing…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrcYBHIt-Vs&hl=pt-br&fs=1&

2009-10-06T14:26:00.000-07:00

(August 25, 2009 - Suffolk, Va) Dan Strasser briefs the deploying members of the U.S. Joint Forces Command's (USJFCOM) Ready JEC team on the history and political sensitivities of the Afghan region prior to their deployment to the area of operation. USJFCOM's Joint Enabling Capabilities Command (JECC) maintains small joint service teams that can deploy with little notice to existing or emerging theaters of operations and instantly establish command and control in the most austere environments. (DoD photo by: Staff Sgt. Joe Laws, USAF)
(Released by USJFCOM Public
Affairs Office)

A War of the World

2009-09-07T16:27:00.000-07:00

We are currently involved in World War IV, but we are unwilling to admit it. The Cold War was World War III, of course. Sometime in the 1990s, a political/military movement of radical Islam, born in the cauldron of the response of global Islam to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, emerged drunk with its own success, frustrated by its inability to play a role in their own native countries--ruled by authoritarian monarchies or personal dynasties and committed to subservient military and economic ties with the infidel United States and the West--launched a global insurgency to wrest power in the Muslim world. The United States did not see this coherently, but merely as a scattered group of marginal crazies and bomb throwers intent on gaining attention.

Then came 9/11. It was a wake up call of major proportions, but the West did not learn the lessons of that experience. It looked at it and subsequent major terrorist acts in London, Madrid, Bali and others as brush fires to be put out by pouring special operations forces on them to put them out. In a move that totally ignored the causes of this non-state movement, the US attacked and occupied Iraq in 2003, only throwing oil on the fires of Muslim resentment and anti-Westernism. Saddam was a madman and a threat to the Middle East, but he never made war against the West. It was good that Saddam was removed, but he could have been contained without the ruinous cost associated with his removal. Although little attention has been given to the impact of the US engagement in Iraq on the 2008 recession, it is hard to imagine that such a monumental financial expenditure of making war in the 21st century--i.e. expensive--would not have contributed to the financial debacle along with the sudden dramatic strike in oil prices of that year. The housing crisis of course was the straw that broke the camel's back, but Iraq was clearly a pillar of the US policy of spending beyond its means, in this case to carry out ill thought out policies with little understanding of the Muslim world, or the world at large for that matter.

As wrong as the Iraq was, it was a genie that could not be put back in the bottle. Although the US and its allies managed to quell Al Queda in Iraq, due largely to the global movement's own brutality and insensitivity to tribal structures and affinities, which caused a massive movement of the tribes to ally themselves with the US, especially in Al Anbar province, Iraq, including the indignities of Abu Gharaib and the images from Guantanamo, could be interpreted by global jihadists as proof of the war of the West against Islam itself. This spurred a huge growth in the Muslim world, in the hands of radical, resentful mullahs, of youths willing to fight and die for in a cause they little understood but for which they were willing to commit suicide. Iraq may have been saved, although its future remains clouded by ethnic and religious cleavages, but the global jihad continues.

The battleground has returned to Afghanistan, where it started and should have remained, but was abandoned by the West. The process is well documented in Ahmed Rachid's book, Decent into Chaos: the US and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, so I will not dwell on it. What has emerged, however, from the lessons of Iraq and a shift in leadership both military and civilian in the conduct of the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, is a new/old strategy of counterinsurgency or COIN in the military jargon.

As a former pacification advisor in rural Vietnam in the early 1970s, everything that has emerged in General David Petraeus's new concept of COIN, promoted by his Australian advisor David Kilcullen (who has written his own book, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One), is totally familiar. It is what came to be called disparagingly "Winning Hearts and Minds." But the concept was never a bad one, just poorly implemented in Vietnam because the grass roots level efforts to win over the Vietnamese peasantry was never matched at the national level by democratic leadership and governance. Instead, corruption and a tenacious will t retain power were the dominant leitmotifs of the Vietnam conflict.

There is no question that we are in a war of the world with radical, militant, intolerant Islam. The cause of the Muslim people, and all the resentments of a people whose place in history was diminished in 1492 with the expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian peninsula and the late colonization of the Muslim world by the European powers in the early 20th century has been assumed by this movement. We used to be able to ignore other parts of the world, especially those whose customs and mores were quite different from our own. We did not consider human rights to be possible to apply all over the world at a pace that was not consistent with local cultural norms and doubted whether underdeveloped countries could possibly become democracies except as a long-term process of development. However, the attack upon the West does not allow us to ignore the roots of the issues that caused young men to commit suicide in pursuit of a new militant and aggressive ideology to reestablish a Muslim Caliphate.

One of our biggest problems, however, is that the American public does not yet understand that we are in a war of the world, not the one mentioned by Niall Fergusson to describe the 20th century's linked world wars, but the new one that pits the liberal, progressive and "modern" parts of the world, including not only the West, but also the more educated and globalized elites and middle classes of the rest of the world, against a medieval yet newly empowered movement of young, resentful, self-righteous and restless Islamist crusaders. What makes this war so critical is the ability of even a small number of militants willing to kill thousands of innocents and commit suicide in so doing and the advent of weapons of mass destruction that makes such a toxic mixture of human motivation momentously threatening. It is not inconceivable that members of this movement could detonate a small atomic device or a "dirty bomb," or unleash deadly chemicals or biological agents in the middle of a major Western city, at the very heart of our civilization, threatening tens or hundreds of thousands of people and triggering monumental economic, social and, ultimately, political consequences.

For the above reasons, it is imperative that we "get it right" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This also means that a new generation of American and European youth recognize the nature of the challenge and understand the need for a new sense of patriotism and sacrifice. Despite the positive nature of the Millennial Generation, it is not evident that it has awakened to either the threat or the responsibility for preserving not just Western Civilization but Civilization itself. Nor have our leaders yet awakened in them this urgent necessity. A true revolution in consciousness is necessary to raise the new generation to the challenges of the 21st century. The very freedom and relative high-tech comfort in which they find themselves may depend on their willingness to defend them and the pillars which sustain them. And an understanding on their part that the globalization has reached a point where it is impossible for one part of the world to ignore what is happening in other, even remote parts of the world is imperative. One of the hardest things to preach, without sounding like a doomsday soothsayer, is that our current way of life can be instantly transformed by unexpected world events. We seldom feel the ground shifting under our feet until the earthquake is upon us. These techtonic shifts are what we need to begin to steel and prepare ourselves for. One hopes that a liberal democracy can--as in WWII--call a great generation to the challenge.

Lou Dobbs is Dangerous

2009-08-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

An email received from Democracy for America from Jim Dean:

Supporter -It's time to get Lou Dobbs and his hate speech off the air.Yesterday, our friends at Media Matters for America, who are dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media, caught Lou Dobbs promoting hate and inciting violence towards Governor Howard Dean.With violence from right-wing extremist groups on the rise and Republican backed mobs hanging cardboard versions of members of congress in effigy, Lou Dobbs' statement is dangerous. Enough is enough.It's time for CNN and the United Stations Radio Network to fire Lou Dobbs.

WATCH THE CLIP AND GET THE NUMBERS TO CALL NOW This isn't the first time Lou Dobbs has used the air waves to promote hate and embarrass CNN.His relentless promotion of debunked, racially charged conspiracy theories about President Obama's birth certificate have already seriously damaged CNN's credibility. Yet, Lou Dobbs remains on the air.Now, he's gone too far. He's not just making CNN look bad, he's inciting violence to stop Governor Dean from fighting for President Obama's health insurance option. That's not just un-American, it's irresponsible and dangerous.It's up to us to make sure CNN and the United Stations Radio Network know we've had enough.CALL NOW AND DEMAND LOU DOBBS BE TAKEN OFF THE AIRThis isn't just about my brother Howard; this is about the America we all want to live in.Thank you for everything you do,-Jim

Jim Dean, ChairDemocracy for America

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Some Great Restaurants...in Brazil

2009-07-11T13:45:00.000-07:00

When a high school friend of mine, Sheryl Appleton, read my posting about my trip to Brazil (below) and said something nice about it, I jokingly responded that I could have included some great dining experiences, but wanted to keep the blog "serious," to which she answered, "Why don't you write about those restaurants too?" However, it was only after reading a great article in the New York Times (Sunday, May 17) about "Brazilian cuisine" in Sao Paulo, by Seth Kugel (clipped and sent to us by a friend Margie Krems from Poughkeepsie), that I decided to go ahead.

I could not consider the restaurants I discovered in places like Morrettes, Parana state; Florianopolis, Santa Catarina; and Rio de Janeiro, to be of the gormet status that Kugel describes. Moreover during the trip to Parana and Santa Catarina with my college group, we ate at dozens of places, some better than others, but just about all following the "all you can eat" buffet style that has taken over Brazil, from barbecue to pizza joints. The two that were memorable was one called Medalozo in Morretes, Parana state (http://www.madalozo.com.br/), which specializes in the Paranaense traditional dish, barreado, an interesting boiled beef which taste better than you would think and is well served on a terrace overlooking the Nhundiaquara river that goes through the center of town; the other was a Japanese sushi restaurant (proliferating all over Brazil) named Taisho (http://www.taisho.com.br/) , where the sushi was not only unlimited by of excellent quality, and the restaurant itself very impressively and grandiosely decorated.

However, some of the really good dinners I had were when I was on my own and able to explore a bit. Two excellent seafood restaurants were discovered over a weekend in Florianopolis, capital of Santa Catarina and something of a Brazilian Hawaii. Santa Catarina is totally located on an island and hosts annual surfing championships. There is a laid back, relaxed attitude on this green paradise, and I felt absolutely no risk at riding on the well organized, inexpensive public buses to get around the island. In the center of town, however, I discovered an excellent seafood restaurant called Toca da Garoupa, Rua Alves de Brito N 178. There I had an excellent Bahian style shrimp bobo (bobo de camarao) that was enough for two.

The next day, Sunday, I took a bus from the downtown bus station in Florianopolis, which was walking distance from our hotel, out to the bridge that connects the two closest points of the Lagoa da Conceicao, a large lagoon that occupies almost a third of the island, to have lunch at Chef Fedoca (http://www.cheffedoca.com.br/) , also a fantastic seafood restaurant located at the Ponta da Areia marina. A small upstairs dining room overlooked the marina, boats and water. I could not resist having a couple of coconut milk batidas (the batida,made with Brazilian cachaca (cane alcohol) was once thought of as Brazil's national drink, but has been almost totally replaced by the ubiquitous caipirniha or more commonly the caipirovska (made with vodka). The difference is like that between an Alexander and a Margarita. I had them with some of the best cod fish croquettes (bolinhos de bacalhau), a Portuguese specialty, I have ever eaten. I decided to go all the way, and ordered a lobster moqueca, unbelievably delicious!! Bobo and muqueca are both Bahian dishes, and both use dende (palm) oil and coconut milk, but differ in that moqueca is a stew, whereas bobo is based on manioc flower and dried shrimp. While one might ask why eat Bahian style seafood in Brazil's extreme south rather than in Bahia itself, I can only say that to a tremendous degree, Brazil's regional foods have become nationalized. My best Bahian restaurant when we lived there in the late 80s, for example, was always Bargaco. Though I have not been back to Salvador for a decade, only a year or so ago, I was visiting Brasilia and went out to a new dining area along the lake to find a branch of Bargaco there, which was identical to what I had known before . Similarly, such a traditional Southern Brazilian food as gaucho-style barbecue (churrasco) can be found in any corner of the country and indeed abroad.

In Rio as in Sao Paulo, we mostly were received by friends and family in their homes for dinners, but in Rio had the pleasure of dining with my brother-in -law Max and his wife Frances at one of their favorite restaurants, Bar Urca (http://www.barurca.com.br/) in the bohemian district of Urca the pathway to Rio's famous Sugarloaf. Bar Urca, is both a bar and a restaurant (upstairs) and the street in front of it along the water of Guanabara Bay facing urban Rio is lined by couples enjoying the night air and darkness. Bar Urca mostly serves very traditional Brazilian dishes such as fried shrimp with "Greek rice," and filet of sole belle munier. The most fun about the restaurant was the men's bathroom that listed seven rules for taking a leak. Another great restaurant which we have gone to for many years, and this time went with our friends Janette and Sergio, located in the posh Leblon neighborhood is Alvaro's. A tiny little corner on Leblon's main commercial street, two blocks in from the beach, it is also a famous bohemian style place, which is well know for its meat, cheese or sh imp turnovers (pasteis), which is great with the ice cold draft beer served. Their meats are superb. We all had either the the filet minon or the chataubriand a la francesa (made with shoestring potatoes, fried up with onions and ham), served to perfection. I cannot fail to mention one of the most delightful and inexpensive meals we had with our adorable friends Marion and Luis, just before going to Rio's Hippy Fair tourist market on a typical Sunday. This was a total revelation to our friends, but a place I had been going to informally for several years in Ipanema. Called Galitos, it serves the particularly delicious and simple small roasted chickens (galetos) accompanied by fries or a variety of rice or salads and well eaten with a cold beer. Our friends were delighted even though we had to wait half an hour for a table on the crowded sidewalk.

Well so much for eating as a subject. I could be embarrassed to focus on it, but also recognize that food is a huge part of traveling abroad and in many ways sets the, um, flavor of a visit to a foreign country. Brazil is no exception and offers a variety of regional and national dishes to please the pallet of any visitor.

Conversations with Total Strangers

2009-06-20T15:42:00.000-07:00

I wrote recently about my trip to Brazil. I have the habit when I travel of talking to people. If I am sitting at a restaurant or on a line for theatre tickets, I will engage in a conversation with the person next to me because I am sure that they have something interesting to learn about. I started talking freely to people while on a trip two years ago to Italy. It turned out that we learned a lot from people about good restaurants and hotels. It even resulted in a couple of kilted Scotsmen in Rome buying us a bottle of wine as they departed the restaurant and in finding the best place in Florence to try a steak Florentine.

In Brazil as I moved around with my college group, I also tried to talk to people. During a boat cruise of the bay of Bobatinga, our group was practically the only passengers except for a Brazilian family made up a father, mother and their teenage son. These people were very simple folks, not at all the international travelers we were. It was Mother's Day, and they had decided to make a day trip from their home in a small town in the interior of Santa Catarina to the coast, make this boat tour of the bay and have a nice seafood lunch. The mother was the most conversational but the husband warmed up as we casually exchanged information about ourselves. He was a small man with the mannerisms of a worker. He had his own body shop and his teenage son was working with him there when he wasn't studying at high school. I said, "so you are the inheritor (a term of endearment in Brazil for the son who will step into his father's shoes), and he just smiled back. I asked them what they thought about how Brazil is doing, and they said it was doing well. The "crisis" they call the recession, was only having a limited impact on their lives. We said goodbye and I suggested they try the same restaurant that we were going to. Nothing of real importance transpired, but I felt that a certain bond had been established.

The morning after we arrived in the beach town of Balneario Camboriu, I got up pretty early since I had gone to bed early and did not go out after dinner with the others. I was the first person to enter the hotel's breakfast room at 7 a.m. (Brazilian hotels always include a rather substantial buffet breakfast with their rooms), but another gentleman entered shortly after me. We sat at separate tables, but I started a conversation with him and asked if I could join him. He turned out to be an Uruguayan engineer who had built soccer stadiums all over Latin America. He was in Brazil to line up contracts to build stadiums in Brazil for the 2014 World Cup Championships which would be taking place in a number of cities around the country. This fellow was 82 years old and still very vigorous and obviously still still ambitious. Unfortunately, he was also very bigoted, thoroughly disliking anyone in Latin America of indigenous, black or mixed race and made his feelings known rather easily. I hesitated to mention to him that I am a Jew. Later in the day I saw him at the hotel in meetings with what seemed to be some important people. I never spoke to him again or got his name or business card.

Our tour bus stopped at a very good restaurant and general store on the outside of Joinville. Basically it was a truck stop, but in Brazil, these roadside restaurants are literally eating palaces. This place called Rudnick (pronounced Hoodiniki in Portuguese) was quite a place, and its specialty was roast duck on its buffet. It turned out that we had walked into the restaurant when a rather large graduation party was taking place. I got to the buffet line just as they were getting on line behind one of my travelling companions. I had to decide whether to cut in front of about 20 people in the graduation party in back of my friend, or go to the end of the line. Since this is Brazil, I chose to cut in line, but asked the woman behind me if she minded my joining "my friend." She said no, and this started a conversation about who was who. The woman said her daughter was a model in New York. I offered email addresses of my own NY based kids which she took. I later looked up her daughter in Google and realized she was probably one of the top ten Brazilian models int he US today. My kids never heard from her daughter, but I did get emails from her son who was looking for advice about how to get a visa for his girl friend. (I don't know if my advice did him any good.) Maybe if I ever go back to Joinville I will look this family up.

Yeda and I were at Guarulhos Airport in Sao Paulo waiting for our plane to Rio's Galeao. Seated across from me in the waiting room was a young, thin and well dressed woman wearing some very elegant reading glasses and reading her book. Next to her was a gentleman in an airline uniform, and I ventured to ask him if he would be our pilot. He said yes, and I jokingly said I therefore felt in very good hands for a safe trip. The woman reading by herself chimed into the conversation. I can't remember exactly what subjects kicked off our discussions, but soon enough she, Yeda and I became very much engaged in conversation about just about everything. Her name is Ana, and though originally from Rio, she thoroughly disliked her birth city and preferred living in Sao Paulo with her husband who was also originally a carioca, and their two children. She particularly disliked Rio's high crime rate (though it is questionable if it is any worse than that of Sao Paulo). She was a very accomplished woman in her late 30s, one of the few women in Brazil to become an engineer at a good university in Rio, and had a fabulous job with a major company. She was only coming to Rio to visit her mother who was ill. However, it seems that her family lives in what in Rio is called the "North Zone," well inland from the posh beach boroughs of Rio and where working and lower middle class cariocas reside. We thoroughly enjoyed her company throughout the flight, and in the end, instead of giving us her card, she gave Yeda her picture, which we considered very endearing, yet odd. I would love to meet Ana again but doubt we ever will.

Is Sonia Sotomayor a Racist?

2009-06-14T16:07:00.000-07:00

I often get very upset watching the political debates that go on in our country because it appears that Americans do not know how to speak English, and therefore, they have blood curdling arguments over nothing at all because they do not know what they are talking about. The current debate over whether Sonia Sotomayor, nominated by President Obama to be the next Justice of the Supreme Court, is a "racist" is typical of such situations. For her to be a racisit, she would have to be speaking for a race or against a race in some offensive way. But Hispanics do not constitute a race at all. Hispanics can be white, brown or black or any shading in between. They are merely designated this by their cultural and national origins, not by their race. I would not expect Rush Libaugh to know the difference, but am shocked that such a meticulous intellectual as former House Speaker Newt Gingritch would make this mistake. The US census recognizes Hispanics as its own category, not as a race. Why should anyone analyzing American politics misuse these terms? It can only be for political advantage and to fool the American public, not particualarly well studied itself, into beleiving that a candidate for Supreme Court nominated by the Democratic President must have some deep flaw. It is totally cynical. The racists have normally been those on the right who cater to extremists with ideas of racial superiority. Trying to reverse the use of the term racist against those groups in the US who have suffered from abuses ranging from slavery to discrimination is a mean spiritied tactic. If not then it reflects to supreme ignorance of the Republican Party about matters that normally come within the purvue of public officals or poltiical leaders. Shame on them!!

Globalized Brazil

2009-05-24T17:33:00.000-07:00

I am wrapping up a three week visit to Brazil that has included the two southern states of Parana and Santa Catarina and the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. I lived in Rio for six years (and in Salvador da Bahia for 2) over a span of nearly 20 years and know Sao Paulo from numerous family visits, but had only been once to the southern states almost 20 years ago. The visit to Parana and Santa Catarina was part of a six month Globalization Seminar at Tidewater Community College, and I had the pleasure of being one of six faculty and six students who flew and bussed all around those states. As the city of Chesapeake, one of the seven cities of the Tidewater region in SE Virginia, is a sister city with Joinville, the most populous city in Santa Catarina, TCC decided to use that connection to hook up with the largest university in Joinville, called Univille, a semi-private school of about 8,000 students. We lectured along with Univille professors for groups of students up to about 200 each evening.

Before and after a program of about 4 days in Joinville, we also visited the cities of Curitiba (state capital of Parana) , Morretes and the port of Paranagua in Parana state, descending from Cutitiba to the coast aboard a a scenic train that runs through the Atlantic rain forest to the coast. As the TCC trip is under the international business program of the school, the visit included tours of the Port of Paranagua, Perini Business Park, a major industrial park in Joinville, the production complex of WEG, Brazil´s leading manufacturer of electric motors and transfomers, the Blumenau textile fair, a boat ride around the Bay of Babotinga and the port of Sao Francisco do Sul, and visits to the tourist city of Comboriu and Santa Catarina´s capital, Forianopolis.

As mentioned in my last posting, we met with the former mayor of Curitiba and governor of Parana state, Jaime Lerner, after visiting the city and seeing all the things he had done to improve it, laying the foundation for Curitiba to be considered the environmental capital of Brazil. (Jaime Lerner agreed to see us although his wife, Fani, was gravely ill. I found out only a few days later that she had passed away and sent condolences.)

A primary conclusion of this trip is that Brazil has been globalized. (Actually, I took the name of this posting from a book here Brasil Globalizado, published last year with contributions from leading Brazilian thinkers and economists, which takes the position that Brazil has been on the path to globalization since 1990, but still has a long way to go in necessary reforms.) It is deeply involved in world trade and through a galloping information revolution, in world culture. I don´t want to cite the many statistics showing Brazil´s place in the world economy, because they are readily available. However, observing the immediate effects of globalization on a country that at one time, during most of the period I lived here, largely had its trade protected and suffered a gap between it and the world. Today, anything is available here, at a price of course often quite a bit higher than in the US. (The little figure of a stick man with the head of a globe, above, has been used on the wrappings of a kind of cracker, Biscoitos Globo, in both sweet and salty versions, sold only on Rio´s beaches for the past 70 years to the delight of little children and their parents, and older siblings.)

Brazil is much more wired than I have ever seen in the past, including on a visit only a year ago. This has given Brazilians a closer touch with the world. Everything now is accessible online (I was told a phone book is no longer printed because the info is online). Advertising and all kinds of services are being promoted online. Most hotels and public areas have wireless. Brazilians use cellphones and PDAs even more vigorously than Americans do.

There is something very global about Brazil´s culture today. The main TV soap opera playing now is called Road to the Indies (Caminho das Indias), a rather colorful portrayal of life and love that somehow crosses from Brazil to India (where everybody suddenly speaks Portuguese--which would be OK if it took place in Goa but it doesn´t). People here are fascinated with the rich texture of Indian upper class life, with flashbacks to Brazil. Another bit of evidence is the film Budapeste, based on the novel by Brazilian cultural figure (popular musician and now novelist) Chico Buraque de Hollanda. In this film, a Brazilian ghost writer finds himself in Budapest and decides to learn the most difficult language in the world (my paternal grandparents were Jews from Budapest) and is embroiled in efforts to ghost write in Hungarian, in addition to dealing with lovers in both Rio and Budapest. What all this means to me, is that Brazil is culturally engaged in the world. In the case of India, it reflects a Brazilian desire to be as dynamic as the Indians have been in moving their economy to be globally competitive (which most Brazilian products still are not), and perhaps to compare the talents of a Brazilian intellectual to the often crude ways of a former Communist Eastern European country. The ease with which the views of Budapest and Rio are flashed across the screen gives a sense of the closeness in time and space that marks postmodern globalization.

I should also mention that Green is really catching on here, a legacy of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio but also with a lot of new energy coming from world culture and Brazil´s easy connection to nature. People talk Green better than they act Green, but it is a good beginning. (Watching a well heeled woman open up her car door while stopped in traffic and tossing out a pile of paper trash caused me teeth to gnash.)

Brazil is always Brazil, thank goodness. Today I was delighted by a scene as I walked and sat along the Calcadao, when they close off one lane of traffic along the Ipanema and Leblon beachfront on Sundays so people can walk, bicycle and skate freely along it. For some reason, everyone now has a dog, preferably a little dog. But one fellows large black lab decided to go directly to a coconut sitting on the curb next to a family whose very young daughter had only drunk about half of its milk, and started licking the hole at the top and draining off the delicious liquid. Everyone laughed. Then the dog picked up the coconut in its mouth, lower jaw in the hole, and walked off with it. 15 minutes later, the same dog walked by the other way, still clenching the coconut in his teeth. I would like to see that scene happen in the States!

A trip to Brazil would not be complete for me without going to at least one show of Brazilian Popular Music (MPB). In Sao Paulo, Yeda and I went with some cousins to see the Caymmi family, Danilo, Dori and Alice, sing songs of their father and grandfather the great Dorival Caymmi, who passed away last year. This concert was dedicated to Caymmi and his frind, Brazil´s greatest novelist, Jorge Amado, both from Bahia and both of whom I knew when I served in Salvador da Bahia as US consul. I have to admit that I had trouble holding back tears listening to some of the Caymmi songs that represent Bahia not just to me but to most Brazilians as well. It was a great concert and I hung around afterwards to meet the Caymmi family and congratulate them. As it turns out, Dori lives in Los Angeles, so even Bahian music has gone global.

Meeting A World Class Urban Planner

2009-05-10T16:05:00.000-07:00

I am now visiting Brazil with a 12 person faculty and student seminar group from Tidewater Community College (TCC) the final field experience of six months of meetings on the subject of Globalization. Brazil was chosen both as an emerging global power and because Chesapeake, one of the cities in Hampton Roads Virginia where TCC has four campuses, including Cehesapeake, has a Sister City in Brazil called Joinville in the Southern state of Santa Catarina. We are here to work with Univille, the prinicipal higher education insitution in this city of 600,000, the most populous in the state.

Before arriving here, however, we spent a couple days in Parana state, just north of Santa Catarina, visiting its capital, Curitiba, known as one of the most green cities in the world in the world due to the vision of its former mayor and also the governor of the state, Jaime Lerner. After visiting the beautiful Botanical Gardens that he built and observing improvements made in public transport and trash collection, we had the special priviledge of spending a hour with Jaime Lerner, an old friend and contact from my days as US Consul in Rio de Janeiro and with whom I have some family ties.

Here are some highlights of our discussion of an hour with Jaime Lerner:

Leaders of cities get bogged down in trying to decide exactly how to do things. It is much better to engage in the subject and work your way though the problem.

He often asks city mayors around the world "What is your dream?" That is different from asking "what is your problem." Leaders need a vision of what kind of city they hope to create for their citizens. You can then work on the problems too.

For success you need a) political will; b) solidarity of the population; c) a strategy; and d) a proper "equation of co-responsibility" among the different sectors of the city. Many politicians lack a strategic vision.

If you want to deal with global warming, you need to recognize that 75% of carbon emissions come from cities. You have to lick the problem in the cities.

He believes on the environment that you have to "teach children to teach their parents." In Curitiba it was only by mobilizing students to separate trash that the adults became conscious of the importance of this. In Curitiba the rate of separation is 70%.

Important rules for making cities green is to get people to drive less, live as close to their work as possible

Rising crime in cities comes from a lack of a stable economic relationship between the classes. People moved to to cities in Brazil to help build the cities and when building slowed down they no longer had jobs. It is important for different classes to be integrated and to support one another. They should live in the same neighborhoods.

When he first started working with his group, they found that it was best to find simple solutions for problems and spread out. Today, his group works more a process like "urban acupuncture," visiting a city for a couple of weeks, offering some suggestions and then withdrawing, leaving it up to the locals to follow up on suggestions.

What is Global Governance?

2009-05-02T17:50:00.000-07:00

•The idea of “Global Governance” has been around for over 20 years.
•It recognizes that in a world of accelerated globalization, some global solutions are necessary.
•The essence of global governance is a coordination of efforts by governments, international organizations, civil society and other groups of efforts to reduce or manage the threats of globalization and to promote the benefits of globalization.
•An important UN report, Our Global Neighborhood, by The Commission on Global Governance, a distinguished panel of international public servants was issued in 1995, but was not universally well received.
•Global governance is opposed by those who defend the sovereignty of states and mistrust large multinational bureacracies.
•Global Governance is not World Government. In fact, global governance would not be necessary, were there a world government.
•Global governance refers to the political interaction that is required to solve problems that affect more than one state or region when there is no power of enforcing compliance. Problems arise; networks of actors are constructed to deal with them in the absence of an international analogue to a domestic government. This system has been termed “disaggregated sovereignty.”
•Some, however, question the inefficacy of such informal regimes and recommend a more structured set of regimes coordinated through international organizations, such as the United Nations and regional organizations.

Clinton: Who cares about Lou Dobbs?

2009-05-02T17:33:00.000-07:00

May 1, 2009
Clinton: Who cares about Lou Dobbs?
@ 1:06 pm by Michael O'Brien
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said CNN pundit Lou Dobbs can buzz off during a townhall meeting with career foreign affairs officers on Friday.
One questioner, Jan Strasser, an employee at the United States Joint Forces Command, asked what Clinton thought about a system of global governance, referencing the work on the subject by Anne-Marie Slaughter, Clinton's nomination to be the State Dept.'s Director of Policy Planning.
"Well, I can just imagine what Lou Dobbs will say about that," Clinton said to laughter, referencing the CNN host who has emphasized economic nationalism and decreased deference to larger world governing bodies.
"You know what? Who cares about Lou Dobbs?" Strasser responded.
"I agree with that," Clinton shot back to more laughter, before refusing to specifically answer the question, saying that Slaughter is working on the subject.

My Exchange With Secretary of State Hillary Clinton

2009-05-02T02:52:00.000-07:00

I must apologize for not posting to this blog for an unwarranted amount of time. Some other things, family, work and teaching concerns took over my life, a trip to California and now an upcoming trip to Brazil, but I thought I could make up for it by posting the following exchange I had yesterday with Hillary Clinton at the State Department. The setting was a town hall meeting she held with foreign service retirees, an annual meeting, but her first as Secretary.

For a full transcript and full video of her remarks and other Qs and As, go to:

http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2009a/05/122534.htm

QUESTION: Good morning, Mrs. Clinton. I’m Dan Strasser and had the pleasure of meeting you over a decade ago when I was the executive director at Val-Kill and you were the First Lady. And I want to thank you for all the work you did to promote Mrs. Roosevelt’s legacy in our work then, and I’m sure she’s smiling down on you right now wishing you all the best and very proud of what you’ve accomplished even in the short time you’re here.

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My question – I should mention right now I work for General Mattis at Joint Forces Command and still actively engaged in the issues that this Department is involved in as well. My question actually is this, or proposal – many years ago when the last Clinton Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, first came to the Department, he had a big town hall meeting like this for the staff, which was very good. And I asked a question then. I said, “Mr. Christopher, we just finished the Cold War and we know that a great diplomat came up with a concept to how to deal with the Cold War, and that was containment.”

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And I asked him, “Do you have a concept to deal with the post-Cold War period that we’ve now entered?” And being the lawyer that he is, he basically said, “Well, no, we’ve got to deal with each problem one at a time.” I was never really satisfied with that answer. And listening to the various things that you are doing and also Deputy Secretary Burns – Under Secretary Burns’ list of things, I wonder if you feel that you have an umbrella over – an umbrella concept, an overarching concept in which to contain what it is that this Administration and you are trying to do to deal with what I call the problems of galloping globalization in the world. And I do hope that you might have one.

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SECRETARY CLINTON: (Laughter.)

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QUESTION: May I – I know you’ve talked about the three --

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SECRETARY CLINTON: Do you have any ideas?

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QUESTION: Yes.

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SECRETARY CLINTON: Good. (Laughter.)

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QUESTION: I nominate the concept of global governance, which I know that Anne-Marie Slaughter knows a lot about, and which was proposed back in the late ‘90s when you were in the White House by the UN Commissioner on Global Governance. I believe it still has a lot of very good proposals that probably need to be updated, but recommend to you, considering global governance, as that concept for this Administration. Thank you.

.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I can just imagine what Lou Dobbs will say about that. (Laughter.)

.
QUESTION: You know what? Who cares about Lou Dobbs? (Laughter.)

.
SECRETARY CLINTON: I agree with that. (Laughter.) We – you mentioned Anne-Marie Slaughter, who some of you may not know is our policy and planning director, first woman to have that job, former dean of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton. And we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this. I mean, we don’t want to get hung up on coming up with a word. But we do have a pretty clear idea of the kind of approach that we’re taking. But I think she would be very disappointed if I were to preview any of it right now, so give me a little – give me a few weeks, okay?

.
QUESTION: Okay. Well, I’m going to try to talk to her --

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SECRETARY CLINTON: Talk to her, (inaudible).

.
QUESTION: -- as well.

.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Good.

.
QUESTION: Thank you very much.

.
SECRETARY CLINTON: Go lobby her,
..
QUESTION: Yeah. (Laughter.)

SECRETARY CLINTON: Yes.

Globalization 101 - The Threats, Parts I and II

2009-03-25T17:44:00.000-07:00

Fragile, Failing, Failed States and Ungoverned Territories

–Weak state is either a result of or allows for internal ethnic or religious conflicts
–Anarchy results in human suffering, violence, criminal activities and trafficking
–Lack of governance results in non-existent or poor public services, corruption
–Allow safe havens for terrorist, extremist and criminal organizations
–Globalization makes negative impact on Rest of World (ROW), e.g. terrorism and piracy

Global Terrorism

•Harvard Political Scientist Samuel Huntington predicted a “Clash of Civilizations” between the West and the East
•Main threat is from Radical Islamic Extremism, e.g. Al Qaida and Associated Movements.
•Driven by a jihadist (religious war) ideology to create a modern Caliphate under sharia (Koranic) law.
•Al Qaida is “blowback” from war by US-backed Mujaheddin against Soviet aggression in Afghanistan in 1979.
•Resentment from “Arab Afghans” against resistance by own governments (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, etc.) to give them a political/security role; resentment against US dominance of Middle East; presence of US troops on Holy ground and control of Middle East petroleum.
•Promoted series of bombings—First World Trade Center bombing, USS Cole, US Embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and finally 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center.
•US invasion of Afghanistan – Al Qaida leadership flee to Pakistan tribal areas
•Joined resistance to US invasion/occupation of Iraq.
•Continue to support Afghan Taliban and fight in Afghanistan
•Continue to plan and plot further terrorist attacks against Western targets
•Problem of terrorist presence on the WWW and of “home grown” terrorists in Europe and the US.
•First major national security reorganization in US forming the Department of Homeland Security.
•Other terrorist groups, Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine Gaza Strip, represent state-sponsored groups supported by Iran and Syria, against Israeli and Jewish targets only.

2009-03-24T08:57:00.000-07:00

101

Types of Globalization

•Technological: IT, Biomedical, Green, Robotics
•Population: Growth, Aging, Youth Bulge, Women, Labor, Migration
•Economic: Commercial, Industrial, Communications, Services
•Financial: Investments, Banking, Exchange Rates, Black Markets, Money Laundering
•Cultural: Ideational, Ideological, Educational, Civilization, Pop Culture
•Political, Democratic, Multinational Organizations, International Law and Regimes, Rule of Law, Civil Society
•Military/Security: U.S. as a Super-Power, Nuclear Proliferation, WMD, Alliances, Rising Powers
•Environmental: Global Warming, Bio-Diversity, Deforestation
•Health: Pandemics, Potable Water, AIDS/HIV, Malaria
•Resources: Water, Food and Agriculture, Energy and Fuels, Minerals
•Terrorism: Islamic, Ethnic, Religious, National,
•Crime: Organized Crime, Drug Trafficking, Piracy, Trafficking in Persons, Conflict Diamonds

Though there are specifically political forms of globalization, all globalization has political dimensions.

•The Threats:
–Sub-national Conflicts and Failed States
–Radical Islamic Terrorism – “Clash of Civilizations”
–Authoritarianism – From Self-Destructing Zimbabwe to Rising China
–International Organized Crime – Drug Trafficking
–Widespread Corruption
–Global Economic/Social Inequality - Displacement of Jobs
–Population Pressures
–Ecological Threats – Global Warming, Melting Ice Caps, Rising sea levels, Hurricanes
–Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
–Resource Wars – Fuel, Water, Food, Raw Materials
–Human Rights Violations, War Crimes and Genocides

•The Benefits
–David Ricardo and comparative advantage
–Expansion of trade, industrialization, finance and GDP
–Expansion of International Law and Organizations
–Expansion of Freedom, Democracy, Civil Society
–Expansion of Development and Foreign Assistance
–Expansion of Western Culture and Values
–US a principal beneficiary of Globalization
–Empowerment of individuals, women, groups, minorities

Globalization 101 - It's A Small World After All

2009-03-23T11:02:00.000-07:00

http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/smworld.htm

It's a world of laughter

A world of tears

It's a world of hopes

And a world of fears

There's so much that we share

That it's time we're aware

It's a small world after all

Why Globalization?

•Globalization – A “smaller world”
•People are closer together
•A world closer in time and space
•A world without borders
•Goods, services and ideas move faster or instantly.
•Driven by technology
–Transportation – Shipping, Containerization Accessible Air travel
–Communication – Television, the Internet, Cell Phones, PDAs

Globalizations I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII

•Often speak of Globalization I (Pre-WWI) and II (Post Cold War), with a hiatus in the middle, but one can identify 7 phases of Globalization:
•I. Early Man: Globalization is inherent in the human condition; man originated in Ethiopia 200,000 + years ago and occupied the entire world 20,000 years ago.
•II. Ancient Empires: China, Rome, Italian explorers, Arab traders
•III. Colonial empires of Spain, Portugal, England, France, Holland – Mercantilism
•IV. British Empire - Naval Supremacy 18th /mid-19th Century to WWI
•V. Cold War – Post WWII - US vs. USSR, the UN, Decolonization, Independence movements, accelerated technological development, space exploration, micro processing, the internet
•VI. American Hegemony – Post Cold War, Rise of Islamic Radicalism, Transnationalism, NGOs, Uni-polarity
•VII. Post-Modern: 9/11, 2008/9 Recession, Multi-polarity, Uncertainty

Globalization 101

2009-03-22T19:54:00.000-07:00

I have said from beginning this blog that its principal concern is the issue of globalization and its implications for the people of the world and impact on the planet itself. Mostly, I am concerned with the political dimensions of globalization and will leave the economic debate over globalization to economists like Stiglitz and Bagwati. I have been preparing a slide presentation on the Political Dimensions of Globalization for a Globalization Seminar at Tidewater Community College, where I teach political science, and decided to share the content of these slides on this blog. This slideshow is still a work in progress, but I hope by presenting the content of one or more slides at a time, I can help others to understand what is meant by Globalization and how it is challenging the planet. Even more important, it will lead to my proposing more Out of the Box Solutions to these global problems.
. Defining Globalization
•No universal definition of globalization.
•Economic definition: trade, finance and communications
•Broader definition: Tom Friedman – an International System that replaced the Cold War
•A good definition I have found (Levin Institute, SUNY):
•“Globalization is a process of interaction and integration among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technology. This process has effects on the environment, on culture, on political systems, on economic development and prosperity, and on human physical well-being in societies around the world.” (www.globalization101.org)

Hopeful Choice for New Drug Czar

2009-03-12T08:31:00.000-07:00

This news computes perfectly with the new "Drug War" philosophy I urged here two days ago.

Choice of Drug Czar Indicates Focus on Treatment, Not Jail
By Carrie Johnson and Amy Goldstein - Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 12, 2009; A04

The White House said yesterday that it will push for treatment, rather than incarceration, of people arrested for drug-related crimes as it announced the nomination of Seattle Police Chief R. Gil Kerlikowske to oversee the nation's effort to control illegal drugs.

The choice of drug czar and the emphasis on alternative drug courts, announced by Vice President Biden, signal a sharp departure from Bush administration policies, gravitating away from cutting the supply of illicit drugs from foreign countries and toward curbing drug use in communities across the United States.

Biden, who helped shape the Office of National Drug Control Policy as a U.S. senator in the 1980s, said the Obama administration would continue to focus on the southwest border, where Mexican authorities are facing thousands of drug-related slayings and unchecked violence from drug cartels moving cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine into American markets. But it remained unclear how the new administration would engineer its budget to tackle the problem.

Since President Richard Nixon first declared a war on drugs nearly four decades ago, the government has spent billions of dollars with mixed results, according to independent studies and drug policy scholars. In recent years, the number of high-school-age children abusing illegal substances has dipped, but marijuana use has inched upward, and drug offenders continue to flood the nation's courts.

"The success of our efforts to reduce the flow of drugs is largely dependent on our ability to reduce demand for them," Kerlikowske said yesterday at a ceremony attended by his former law enforcement colleagues. "Our nation's drug problem is one of human suffering, and as a police officer but also in my own family, I have experienced the effects that drugs can have."

Kerlikowske's adult stepson, Jeffrey, has been arrested in the past on drug charges, an issue that the police chief referenced in his remarks yesterday.
Kerlikowske's top deputy is expected to be A. Thomas McLellan, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania medical college and the chief executive of the Treatment Research Institute in Philadelphia, according to two sources in the drug control community, who said the selection underscored the administration's philosophy of rehabilitation and outreach.

On the campaign trail, Obama and Biden promised to offer first-time, nonviolent offenders a chance to serve their sentences in a drug rehabilitation center rather than in federal prison. In promoting wider use of drug courts, the administration is embracing an idea that has broad support in theory but has never been a main path for people with drug addictions who are charged with crimes.

The nation's first drug court originated in Miami in the late 1980s at the urging of Janet Reno, who went on to become President Bill Clinton's attorney general. By the mid-1990s, the federal government was providing money for communities to plan and set up such courts -- although not to help operate them in the long term.

John Roman, an Urban Institute researcher who has studied drug courts, said they now exist in most of the nation's medium and large counties, but they are used for only about 55,000 of the 1.5 million Americans with drug addictions who are arrested each year on criminal charges. The Obama administration has not said how much money it wants to devote to the courts' expansion.

In contrast to previous administrations, the Obama White House is not giving the position of drug control director a Cabinet rank. The move was intended to give a larger role on the issue to Biden, according to an administration source.

William J. Bennett, who became the nation's first drug czar during the George H.W. Bush administration, said he spent three weeks in a room with Biden, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, hashing out the scope of the new job.

Yesterday, Bennett called on Kerlikowske to "get the public's attention, get the president's attention, get the attorney general's attention and put this issue back on the front burner."

Scholars said that emphasis on the drug problem waned after terrorist strikes on U.S. soil in 2001, and never regained the spotlight or its slice of the federal budget as attention and resources flowed to national security.

John Carnevale, an economist who worked at the Office of Drug Control Policy under three presidents, predicted that the Obama administration would concentrate on reducing demand for drugs through high-impact law enforcement and prevention efforts targeted at communities at risk.

Under Bush, money to international programs doubled, while funding for prevention and treatment fell by one-quarter, he said. The Bush White House devoted much of its attention to developing the 2008 Merida Initiative with Mexico and Central American countries to support law enforcement training and equipment there. In recent weeks, Mexico's attorney general traveled to the U.S. to discuss ongoing cooperation with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

"There was a complete mismatch between the rhetoric of the strategy, which emphasized treatment, and the budget," Carnevale added, referring to the Bush administration. "The long-run answer is for the U.S. to curb its demand or appetite for illicit drugs. . . . The national drug problem is a series of local ones, and they're not all identical."

The office has drawn controversy recently. The outgoing director, John P. Walters, was the subject of a congressional investigation for his role in announcing federal grants in states where Republican lawmakers confronted tight reelection efforts in 2006. Trade groups for narcotics police officers complained about Walters's reluctance to meet them to discuss policy and budget issues. Walters had written widely for the Weekly Standard and other publications advocating for stiff prison sentences and "coerced treatment."

Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who served as drug czar under Clinton, said Kerlikowske's background as a street cop would give him special insight.
"I tell people, 'If you want to understand the drug issue, talk to any cop at random with more than 10 years on the force,' " he said.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Vision and Global Governance

2009-03-11T12:43:00.000-07:00

In 1995, the UN Commission on Global Governance issued a seminal report. It was met with much skepticism and resistance by "pro-sovereignty" and conservative groups on the right and world federalists on the left. It is a report that deserves being resurrected, as it speaks clearly and eloquently of the issues that need to be addressed in the 21st Century age of Globalization. Following 9/11, the global financial meltdown and the looming threat of global warming and resource shortages, perhaps the world is ready for the report's recommendations.

The Commission had the following to say about the role of Vision"

"The Need for Vision

"The last fifty years have radically and rapidly transformed the world and the agenda of world concern. But this is not the first generation to live on the cusp of a great transformation. The turbulence of the last decade is not unlike those that accompanied the rise of Islam in the century following the death of the Prophet, the European colonization of the Americas after 1492, the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century, and the creation of the contemporary international system in this century. Yet there is a distinction between the contemporary experience of change and that of earlier generations: never before has change come so rapidly--in some ways, all at once--on such a global scale, and with such global visibility.

"A time of change when future patterns cannot be clearly discerned is inevitably a time of uncertainty. There is need for balance and caution--and also for vision. Our common future will depend on the extent to which people and leaders around the world develop the vision of a better world and the strategies, the institutions, and the will to achieve it. Our task as a Commission is to enlarge the probability of their doing so by suggesting approaches to the governance of the global, increasingly interdependent human society."

I recommend that all read the full report. I will be coming back to it shortly on this blog.

http://www.sovereignty.net/p/gov/ogn-front.html

Demand - A New "Drug War"

2009-03-10T17:29:00.000-07:00

I spent three years in the 90's in charge of counternarcotics policy and programs at the State Department for South America, overseeing the principal source countries for cocaine. This assignment followed two overseas assignments that prepared me well for the job: three years in Bolivia, where a good deal of the raw coca leaf is cultivated, along with Peru and Colombia; and eight years in Brazil, a leading cocaine transit and consumption country, where cocaine had created a enormous market and fed a growing organized crime and gang culture in the poor shantytowns (favelas), many of which overhang the wealthiest beachfront boroughs along Rio's beaches.

During my time in Bolivia and at State's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL), we made some progress in beating back illicit coca production through eradication, interdicting semi-processed cocaine base and finished cocaine and working with democratic governments. Today, however, it appears as if the source countries, especially Bolivia where an anti-American President Evo Morales, has not only kicked out the US ambassador but also the DEA, are out of control and Brazil is becoming further overwhelmed by crime groups, engaged in activities from drug trafficking to kidnapping. Brazil's mayors have frequently called upon the military to assault drug gangs in the favelas. I just saw the popular Brazilian movie, Elite Squad (Tropa de Elite), which characterizes well the problems of heavily armed socially deviant traffickers, corrupt police and the incorruptible, idealistic special police unit, the Elite Squad, which, however, uses the worst methods of torture and summary justice to confront the traffickers. It is a lose, lose situation. I also know from friends and family in Brazil that things seem to be getting worse in confronting the crime problem there.

At the same time, the situation in neighboring Mexico is also becoming critical. Narcotics trafficking is one of the most devastating phenomena of modern day globalization. It has always been a national security concern, but today's situation is destabilizing two large blocs of countries in the Western Hemisphere the US-Mexico and Brazil-the Andeans-Paraguay.

Driving this national security threat has always been the fact that cocaine is consumed by Americans, Brazilians and Europeans. The late ultra-conservative Chicago School economist Milton Friedman shocked many of his admirers by coming out in favor of drug legalization. Friedman understood that the cocaine and other drug problems where a simple matter of supply and demand. Indeed, US official policy has always recognized that both supply and demand reduction of drugs is required, but it must be argued that not enough has been done to reduce demand in this country through public educational and health programs for youth as well as through legal and justice reform.

When asked last month about demand reduction, INL Assistant Secretary Johnson said that the US spent $1.4 billion on demand reduction and treatment. First of all, this is a drop in the bucket compared to the problem and to lump both educational programs and treatment programs together is not helpful. Certainly, successful treatment reduces demand, but we need to stop youth from ever engaging in high risk, anti-social behavior of using hard drugs. We also need to look carefully at legal reforms. It is ridiculous to outlaw marijuana and hashish. These are not addictive drugs, any more that alcohol or cigarette smoking, and have medicinal purposes. Going after such drugs simply displaces resources from cocaine and heroin, which cannot and should not be legalized. However, spending a lot of resources to chase traffickers, particularly street peddlers, and to incarcerate them for long periods of time is simply a failure. What we should be doing with police resources is to protect communities that voluntarily organize to resist drug trafficking organizations in their own communities. Plus, we should be encouraging communities to do so through vigorous civil society programs.

Until we can reduce demand, take economic incentives away from drug gangs and trafficking networks, the hills of Rio and the Mexican border are likely to continue to teem with traffickers and be alive with the sound not of music but of automatic weapons. A major international conference should be called to deal with the growing threat with a focus on its origins in consumption among the wealthy. The upcoming Summit of The Americas in Trinidad and Tobago in April would be a good oportunity for US, Brazilian, Mexican and other chiefs of state from this hemisphere to seek a new, more effective approach to drugs. This should be a topic of conversation when President Obama is visited by Brazilian President Lula next week.

Restoring Trust

2009-02-28T16:01:00.000-08:00

For three years during the Carter Administration, I served at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York as the US Alternate Representative to the Trusteeship Council (while also being responsible for all issues related to Latin America). The TC was a legacy from the post-WW II situation in which many colonies of former imperial powers that had changed hands between the Western powers and the Axis powers, including those that had carried over from the League of Nations Mandate system, were placed under the oversight of the United Nations, with individual countries, mostly previous colonial powers, becoming "administering authorities." As such, it was considered one of the "principal organs" of the UN system, including the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council and the International Court of Justice (World Court). It occupied one of the principal chambers of the United Nations (pictured above), a room totally decorated and donated by the government of Denmark. Given the commitment toward self-determination of peoples that was written into the UN Charter, the role of the TC was very important and accompanied the entire process of decolonialization, including both Trust Territories and ordinary colonies, that took place from the early 1960s to the early 1990s.

By 1978, however, the only remaining Trust Territory was Micronesia, formally called the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI), some 2,000 small islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean most of which had been fought for island by island by the United States in defeating Japan. A special representative with the rank of ambassador negotiated with the Micronesians over a new status arrangement that would end the Trusteeship, and we at the UNTC worked to prepare the way for the end of the Trusteeship, but carrying out annual meetings and promoting adoption of the Micronesian's own constitutions which would give them self-governing status and allow them to become independent or "associated states" while maintaining US military basing rights on the islands.

Although at the time, we were concerned the Soviet Union, with its veto power in the Security Council would try to prevent the end of the UN Trusteeship in Micronesia, we laid the foundation for the ultimate independence of the three Micronesian nations to emerge and by 1991 (the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau) themselves become members of the United Nations. By that time the USSR had ended and Russia did not object to the arrangements. The role of the TC had been totally fulfilled. Instead of eliminating the Trusteeship Council, its functions were suspended and every two years a President and Vice President is elected by its current members.

In the early 1990s some of the policy advisers to President Bill Clinton suggested that the TC be transformed into an organ responsible for overseeing "Failed States." That stirred some debate, but was never carried forward. Since then this idea has occasionally been revisited. Meanwhile, without specifically designating a particular UN organ to carry out the administration of failed states, a de facto system of trusteeship began to emerge in the UN system. The new name for this system under international law has been labeled "international territorial administration." From Kosovo to East Timor, the UN has taken responsibility for parts of other states that have broken away from their "mother countries" or required international administration under conditions of conflict and needed to be assisted by the UN. (a couple of excellent recent books by international legal scholars have been written: See Carsten Stahn, The Law and Practice of International Territorial Administration: Versailles to Iraq and Beyond, Cambridge University Press, 2008; Ralph Wilde, International Territorial Administration: How Trusteeship and the Civilizing Mission Never Went Away, Oxford University Press, 2008).

The United States can no longer unilaterally occupy other countries or territories as it did in Iraq, and only later establish some kind of "coalition of the willing" to try to legitimize its action. Only actions that are sanctioned by the United Nations or an appropriate regional organization will be considered as legitimate, and the UN Trusteeship system in particular offers the kinds of oversight by the UN and an ability of peoples under trusteeship to come to the UN to voice their concerns or grievances against an "administering power." It is possible for the UN itself to act as an administering power under the system. This is likely to be the way in which future trusteeships will be managed. Although it can be said that a de facto trusteeship system exists now, it would be much better if these situation be brought under a formal system with guarantees that the international community is responsible for the restoration of free and independent countries. It would serve as a kind of ER for sick states. We sorely need that in the world today as part of a broader system of Global Governance. And it would not be a bad situation for the deliberations over these failed, failing or fragile states to take place within the dignity and grace of the Trusteeship Council Chamber.

Zimbabwe: Only Regime Change Will Free its People

2009-02-25T19:10:00.000-08:00

Zimbabwe is an African country that had all of the advantages of becoming a self-sustaining and even wealthy nation. It was a victory for the people of Africa that a white racist regime was overthrown in Rhodesia with a lot of support from the international community. Many whites remained and continued to maintain their productive farms. Unfortunately, the new Zimbabwe came under the control of a single party ZANU-PF dictatorship led by its erstwhile liberation leader Robert Mugabe. Mugabe used reverse racism, seeking to take over the prosperous and productive farms of Zimbabwe's white minority through forced land invasions as a way of enriching his supporters, ridding the country of whites and maintaining his grip on power. In the 1980s, Mugabe unleashed his notorious North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade, dominated by his own majority Shona tribe, on Matebeleland, where 30,000 people were killed and thousands more raped and maimed.

Mugabe has persecuted not only the whites but all opposition groups using his his thugs of both the party, the military and police to arrest, beat, imprison and murder them and so called veterans to harass them. When the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, led by Morgan Tsvangirai appeared to have won the plurality in three way national elections in March of last year, Mugabe cracked down on the opposition so that a fair run-off would be impossible and was boycotted by the MDC. Mugabe ran alone, declaring his victory as President.

The situation in Zimbabwe under Mugabe's rule has gone from bad to worse. The economy continued to deteriorate as productive sectors were marginalized. The Zimbabwe currency became worthless, with continuous inflation and printing of new denominations in the billions and trillions of Zimbabwe dollars that could buy almost nothing. As things deteriorated, a cholera epidemic took hold that has now killed over 3,800 people and sickened over 80,000 and continues to grow, creating a major health threat for Zimbabwe's neighbors already flooded by refugees.

Under extreme pressure from the African leadership, with South Africa taking the lead, Mugabe was forced to accept a coalition government with the MDC, under a "power sharing" arrangement, with Mugabe remaining president and Morgan Tsvangirai becoming the Prime Minister of that government. However, control of the military remains in Mugabe's hands and even control of the police is spilt. The MDC has largely been handed the hot potato of the failed economy. The new MDC leadership is counting on international assistance to rebuild the country, requesting billions of dollars. Even as the new Prime Minister was taking office, his followers continued to be arrested without explanation. Suddenly, there has been an increase in the number of farm invasions by Mugabe supporters. Tsvangirai continues to speak optimistically in favor of the coalition arrangement. It is questionable, however, whether Mugabe and his followers really intend to make the arrangement work or are simply trying to buy time by appearing to go along with international pressures, while perhaps organizing for further repression.

In a recent book Dinner with Mugabe: The Untold Story of a Freedom Fighter who Became a Tyrant, by Heidi Holland, the South African journalist describes her relationship with Mugabe over a number of years. She basically assesses him as a person with a stunted personality who does not have the capacity to empathize with those around him. She describes him as "in denial." (For her interview on NPR last June see: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92036177) In truth, Mugabe constantly describes a world in which the West is out to get him. This has become a self-fulfilling prophesy as countries have leveled sanctions against his government.

Mugabe is frequently compared with Adolf Hitler, or called the Hitler of Africa. I do not think that this is an unfair characterization. Like Hitler, Mugabe has used racism as a means of promoting his own hold on power, has fostered a one-party militarized state, has ruled for the benefit of his clique of supporters at the expense of his own people and has been indifferent to the suffering of his own people. Something bordering on a slow motion genocide of his own people has been taking place.

Mugabe has already admitted that he is willing to be considered "a Hitler ten fold."

That statement and the brutality of his regime is apparent in the following video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTxYa-QjX20

Zimbabwe is still a back burner problem, but under the current regime, things will only continue to deteriorate there leading to more deaths and abuses of human rights verging on genocide. The international community will have to consider regime change in Zimbabwe. We wish Mr. Tsvangirai well, but have little faith in his optimism. A tyrant is always a tyrant, and there is only one way to deal with such a leader. This is a Valkyrie moment. Sic semper tyrannis.

Carnival 2009

2009-02-22T18:25:00.000-08:00

We welcome the beginning of this year's Carnival in Brazil and other parts of Latin America and Mardi Gras in New Oreleans. Certainly, carnival in a year of economic and social turmoil should tell some interesting stories. But it is also an opportunity to acknowledge the freedom of the human spirit and the capacity for humans to create and express beauty.

Of course Brazil, and especially Rio de Janeiro, is the superpower of Carnival (Carnaval in Portuguese). It demonstrates the Brazilian capacity for massive organization and almost unlimited possibilities.

2009-02-22T17:38:00.000-08:00

Bad Brilliance Goes to Wall Street

2009-02-22T05:53:00.000-08:00

See the video of Bad Brilliance on Wall Street:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgXvj37-xZU

Bad Brilliance visited Wall Street last week to show his support for fixing the financial system through adopting some form of "Bad Bank." He also publicized The Visionist blogsite and its proposal that the "toxic assets" be put under trust or receivership for a period of time during which their true asset value can be determined. The financial package announced by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was poorly received due to a lack of details. That is clearly because nobody at this time knows really what to do, so he laid out only broad ideas. The stock market reacted badly.

Debate continues with the possibility of nationalizing some or all banks in the banking system. However, very few people in this country are comfortable with nationalizing any part of the US economy, and the administration has not encouraged this line of thinking. However, all other options involve trying to evaluate the bad assets and that means creating winners and losers. The ONLY solution I believe is neither nationalization NOR purchasing the assets. Instead, what should be done is for the bad assets to be held in receivership or trust by a government "Bad Bank" with massive low interest credit made available to the banks (only "stress tested" banks). In this way, nobody loses at this time and only in 5 or 10 years will the banks have to take whatever losses or accept whatever gains will result in a restored economy.

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs! -- Words, Words, Words!

2009-02-19T06:12:00.001-08:00

There is a strange argument going on about why the Republicans and even a couple of Democrats in Congress did not support the Stimulus Package: it is that the package did not focus on job creation and instead, in a better version, contained programs that should have been considered separately on their own merits, or in the most disgraceful version, claimed it to be "full of pork." Even one of the few Democratic Congressmen who voted against it claimed that the cost per job of the package was $250,000!

There seems to have been let loose in the land the notion that the only thing the package addressed was the creation of new jobs and in addition that it was not supposed to address other spending needs that would create missing demand in the economy. It was easy for the Republicans to criticise the plan on the jobs issue because in a sense the President set himself up on this one. This is unfortunately the sphere where politics and policy do not often mix well. Seeing unemployment as an indicator on which average Americans can easily be appealed to, it quickly was picked up on as the only criterion for the stimulus package. In any downturn, two indicators are usually looked at: unemployment and the reduction in GDP.

A recession is defined by the latter, not the former, but the former is usually more socially painful and therefore more politically sensitive. We do not know exactly how many jobs the $789 billion stimulus package will generate--between 2-4 million seems the range of speculation. However, what is forgotten in looking merely at job creation is the need to prevent further job loss. If we are losing over half a million jobs a month under current circumstances, the above figures would soon be overwhelmed if the lack of stimulus in the economy did not sustain the current levels of employment before any new jobs are created. I do not hear any one talking about this, but is seems so evident.

What the opponents of the stimulus package need to have understood, is that in addition to the jobs created and saved, the economy is in a downward spiral and needs a jump start to begin moving in the opposite direction. Only massive spending can do that, almost any kind of spending so long as the funds flowing from the government get spent by someone. So why not put these funds into useful programs that most reasonable folks can agree are needed as a way of creating this increase in demand? Yes, look out for pure pork--although believe it or not and Heaven Forbid, many so-called pork programs are really local projects that are very much needed in communties--and waste and inefficiency, but using a purely "job creation" criterion demonstrates that most of our legislators in this country could well use a course in Economics 101. Too bad John Kenneth Galbraith is no longer around to give some lessons.

Things Fall Apart

2009-02-18T09:55:00.000-08:00

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

William Butler Yeats, 1919

We need to give serious consideration to the consequences of doing nothing or too little to confront the current economic and financial crisis. The Senate Foreign Affairs Committee just held hearings on the consequences of the Economic Crisis on international stability. The new Director of National Intelligence, shocked the Congress when he reported that the number one issue threatening our national security is the economy, making the current crisis the highest priority for intelligence collection. Daily, we hear of increasing signs of unravelling. Galloping unemployment and economic slowdown. Rioting in small island paradises like Madagascar and Guadeloupe. We seem to be at a tipping point between recession and some form of depression. Could economic slowdown lead to social and political chaos? What will happen in more "fragile states" than the United States, Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia? It is common knowledge that the Great Depression led to the rise of Fascism, Nazism and Japanese militarism and World War II. How do human beings react to shortages of food, fuel and energy.... and of hope? What are the lessons of the conditions that lead to extremism and terrorism? It is easy to believe that today's comfort and stability will continue on in some linear fashion. Had we not built the perfect economic and financial system, the wonder of the world? Yet, can you not already feel that something is slipping? World events do sometimes go off a cliff.

That is why it is totally irresponsible for politicians to play partisan political games with a solution to the economic and financial crisis. I do not think the American people will tolerate that for very long.

The Deacon's Masterpiece or The Wonderful "One-Hoss Shay": A Logical Story

Have you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay,
That was built in such a logical way
It ran a hundred years to a day,
And then of a sudden it -- ah, but stay,
I'll tell you what happened without delay,
Scaring the parson into fits,Frightening people out of their wits,
--Have you ever heard of that, I say?
Seventeen hundred and fifty-five.
Georgius Secundus was then alive,
--Snuffy old drone from the German hive.
That was the year when Lisbon-town
Saw the earth open and gulp her down,
And Braddock's army was done so brown
,Left without a scalp to its crown.
It was on that terrible Earthquake-day
That the Deacon finished the one-hoss shay.
Now in building of shaises, I tell you what,
There is always a weakest spot,
--In hub, tire, felloe, in spring or thill,
In pannel or crossbar, or floor, or sill,
In screw, bolt, throughbrace, -- lurking still,
Find it somewhere you must and will,
--Above or below, or within or without,
--And that's the reason, beyond a doubt,
That a chaise breaks down, but doesn't wear out.
But the Deacon swore (as deacons do,
With an "I dew vum," or an "I tell yeou")
He would build one shay to beat the taown'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun';
It should be so built that it couldn' break daown:
"Fer," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain
Thut the weakes' place mus' stan' the strain;'n' the way t' fix it, uz
I maintain, is only jest'T' make that place uz strong uz the rest."
So the Deacon inquired of the village folk
Where he could find the strongest oak,
That couldn't be split nor bent nor broke,
--That was for spokes and floor and sills;
He sent for lancewood to make the thills;
The crossbars were ash, from the the straightest trees
The pannels of whitewood, that cuts like cheese,
But lasts like iron for things like these;
The hubs of logs from the "Settler's ellum,"
--Last of its timber, -- they couldn't sell 'em,
Never no axe had seen their chips,
And the wedges flew from between their lips,
Their blunt ends frizzled like celery-tips;
Step and prop-iron, bolt and screw,
Spring, tire, axle, and linchpin too,
Steel of the finest, bright and blue;
Throughbrace bison-skin, thick and wide;
Boot, top, dasher, from tough old hide
Found in the pit when the tanner died.
That was the way he "put her through,
""There!" said the Deacon, "naow she'll dew!"
Do! I tell you, I rather guess
She was a wonder, and nothing less!
Colts grew horses, beards turned gray,
Deacon and deaconess dropped away,
Children and grandchildren -- where were they?
But there stood the stout old one-hoss shay
As fresh as on Lisbon-earthquake-day!
EIGHTEEN HUNDRED; -- it came and found
The Deacon's masterpiece strong and sound.
Eighteen hindred increased by ten;
--"Hahnsum kerridge" they called it then.
Eighteen hundred and twenty came;
--Running as usual; much the same.
Thirty and forty at last arive,
And then come fifty and FIFTY-FIVE.
Little of of all we value here
Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year
Without both feeling and looking queer.I
n fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth,
So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
(This is a moral that runs at large;
Take it. -- You're welcome. -- No extra charge.)
FIRST OF NOVEMBER, -- the Earthquake-day,
--There are traces of age in the one-hoss shay,
A general flavor of mild decay
,But nothing local, as one may say.
There couldn't be, -- for the Deacon's ar
tHad made it so like in every part
That there wasn't a chance for one to start.
For the wheels were just as strong as the thillsA
nd the floor was just as strong as the sills,
And the panels just as strong as the floor,
And the whippletree neither less or more,
And the back-crossbar as strong as the fore,
And the spring and axle and hub encore.
And yet, as a whole, it is past a doubt
In another hour it will be worn out!
First of November, fifty-five!
This morning the parson takes a drive.
Now, small boys get out of the way!
Here comes the wonderful one-hoss shay,
Drawn by a rat-tailed, ewe-necked bay.
"Huddup!" said the parson. -- Off went they.
The parson was working his Sunday's text,
--Had got to fifthly, and stopped perplexed
At what the -- Moses -- was coming next.
All at once the horse stood still,
Close by the meet'n'-house on the hill.
First a shiver, and then a thrill,
Then something decidedly like a spill,
--And the parson was sitting upon a rock,
At half past nine by the meet'n'-house clock,
--Just the hour of the earthquake shock!
What do you think the parson found,
When he got up and stared around?
The poor old chaise in a heap or mound,
As if it had been to the mill and ground!
You see, of course, if you're not a dunce,
How it went to pieces all at once,
--All at once, and nothing first,
--Just as bubbles do when they burst.
End of the wonderful one-hoss shay.
Logic is logic. That's all I say.

Oliver Wendall Holmes (1809-1894)

What is a Visionist?

2009-02-18T07:38:00.000-08:00

I recently came accross this definition of a visionist, which I thought captures the spirit of this blog:

A visionist is an artist, a creator or an individual that sees beyond what is visible to the eyes and brains of human beings. Visionists are thinkers, they are the recognizable brains of society, but most times they are seen as absurd, "nerds" or misfits-- they just don't fit into the societies. They are people with great dreams and minds.

http://fixedreference.org/en/20040424/wikipedia/Visionist

Globalization and Geopolitics

2009-02-12T11:11:00.000-08:00

Photo: The Great White Fleet, Standing Out of Hampton Roads, Begins its Around the World Cruise under orders of President Theodore Roosevelt, December 1907.

I first studied geopolitics during my second year in college as part of my first International Relations (IR) course. The textbook we used, Foundations of International Politics, was written by two geographers, Harold and Margaret Stout, commonly known as “Stout and Stout.” As an IR major at UCLA (a major mysteriously eliminated a decade ago), this course was the centerpiece of my understanding of my discipline. The Stout and Stout book, which I still have and use 45 years later, is very much based on a geopolitical framework. In other words, it focuses on such factors as geography, climate, population, natural resources, science and technology and economics, with a limited treatment of things like the political system, public opinion and cultural factors. It really grew out of an earlier Sprout and Sprout book, Foundations of National Power, so its emphasis was on those factors in national power that impact on a nation’s relative strength in the in the international community. Foundations of International Politics borrowed heavily from 19th Century geopolitical thinkers, including R. Adm. Alfred Thayer Mahan, with his focus on sea power contained in his classic work The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 (www.gutenberg.org/etext/13529) and other works and Sir Halford Mackinder, with a focus on land power. However, the Stout book did acknowledge that by the 1960s there was a revolution taking place in world politics and an acceleration of many factors, and in all fairness were critical of the anachronistic elements in both geopoliticians' works.

I came to consider the Stout book a somewhat old-fashioned approach to international relations. Newer texts focused more on the inter-relationships among nations and looking at the International System, not just made up of nation-states with differential power but having its own dynamic around which the prospects of war and peace were determined. Also, geopolitics had clearly been identified during WWII as an underlying element to both German (under the influence of Haushoffer and his concept of Lebesnraum) and Japanese international doctrines of supremacy. I later encountered “geopolitical thinking” as having inhabited some of the War Colleges of the Latin American militaries during the Cold War and serving their anti-democratic, authoritarian repressive policies. Unfortunately, this was encouraged by our own country’s relationship with many dictatorial regimes in the region.

In an age of globalization, however, we must return to some of the geopolitical interpretations of our past. As the movement of people, communications and trade has become exponentially faster than 50 years ago, we need to look at the implications of space and time factors on international relations. That term itself can be considered an anachronism. Globalization no means that world affairs no longer can focus only, or even primarily on the relationships among nation-states. Relations between both state and non-state actors as well as intergovernmental, non-governmental and other private groups, movements, corporations and organizations as well as individuals, all make up the soup in which we all are stewing.

Mahan and Teddy Roosevelt, who had been his student at the Naval War College, became friends, with the latter heavily influenced by Mahan's doctrines of naval supremacy and colonialism. Well, today, in an era of Globalization, Mahan is again alive and well. In a world whose politics is no longer dominated by state conflict but rather the threats coming from failed or failing states, many of them former colonies whose transition to nation-statehood has been stunted, it becomes increasingly necessary for the United States and other responsible national and multinational actors to be able to deliver both military and civil power and resources to failed states in need. The recent outbreak of piracy off the coast of Somalia is only one manifestation of the need for sea power in today's rough and tumble world. We rely quite a bit on air power, but air power is not an effective way of moving troops, machinery and supplies, particularly when massive buildups are required and naval firepower when control of the sea lines of communication (SLOCs) is required. Here, Mahan's concept of global "choke points" remains valid. As the Obama Administration looks ahead at military budgets, it will be interested in cutting the defense budget where big savings can be gotten, namely looking at air and sea power. In doing so, however, it should not deprive us of the ability to deploy military force anywhere in the world regardless of whether or not we have land bases nearby. The navy will continue to be a vital element in our defense and Sea Power will continue to have an influence on global affairs. If you wish to learn a lot more about the role of sea power in a Post-9/11 world, I refer you to a major study done by the National Defense University, Globalization and Maritime Power: (http://www.ndu.edu/inss/Books/Books_2002/Globalization_and_Maritime_Power_Dec_02/01_toc.htm

Nothing I have said here means in any way that Mahan has won over Mackinder. Quite the contrary. The importance of dominance over land masses in the 21st Century is as great as it ever was. Sea power is important in keeping SLOCs secure and as a means of providing "sea basing." (See Peter Pham on development of the Navy's "Global Fleet Station" initiative (http://worlddefensereview.com/pham091608.shtml)

However, the potential threats to national security in an era of Globalization come from land-based groups intent on using ungoverned areas as a base against the United States and its allies. While holding the seas, the United States must, working with an international coalition that ideally includes the United Nations must assure that the lands of the earth are under the control of some accountable government or international administration. Only a synthesis of Mahan's and Mackinder's theories can lead to an adequate solution to the conundrum of global security.

But the question is no longer sea power vs. land power or even air power. Today, international relations can only be conducted by the world's only Superpower using "all the elements of national power," what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called "Smart Power" and diplomat Dennis Ross has neatly labeled "statecraft." This means beefing up considerably the other civilian elements of national and multi-national power through a process called "national security reform." More on this soon.

The Blago Effect

2009-02-11T18:57:00.000-08:00

It is inconceivable that when Barack Obama ran for the Presidency he could imagine that his very act of giving up his Senate seat to accept that honor would serve to undermine his Presidency. At first, the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich for attempting to sell Obama's Senate seat among other corrupt acts, seemed like a bit of comic relief after a long, hard election year. But the Blago effect is now poisoning the Obama Presidency, like some "toxic" substance. How else can one understand the succession of faltering Presidential nominations and the resistance by Republicans of the President's stimulus package and seeming willingness to go partisan at the very beginning of what should have been a honeymoon period during the new Administration's first 100 days and a more cooperative spirit which was the currency of both campaigns during the Presidential race.

Gov. Blagojevich stoked the fires of public disgust with high level corruption in politics and the abuse of political privilege. That is why ethical and tax problems for several nominees cost them their nominations. The first was Commerce Secretary nominee, Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM). Then Treasury Secretary nominee Tim Geithner ran into a lot of heat for failure to pay some taxes while he worked for the IMF. The Senators held their noses and begrudgingly approved him because the President backed him up. But when another leading Obama supporter, former Senator Tom Dashle had his own tax lapses and ties to lobbyists were exposed, he ran into a buzz saw response, even from his former Senators and despite his reputation as a really nice guy. Another nominee for a less than cabinet position then dropped out due to a tax lapse of less that $1,000 on a housekeeper's social security taxes. What seemed to be happening is like the opposite political psychology of what governed the handling of the banks and insurance companies. The devastating effect on the market of the failure of the Treasury of Federal Reserve to save Lehmann Brothers, then led to a situation where the banks could not be denied a bailout. In this case, pushing the Geithner nomination through the Senate, led to a psychology where no other tax transgressor could be allowed through the door.

But public concern with abuse of public power was even more fueled by skepticism over the seeming failure of the TARP. Some $350 million in TARP funds to the banks did not serve to stimulate bank loans to the public. Instead, the banks decided to take the funds and hand out huge bonuses to executives. Then the Bernard Madoff scandal erupted, at $50 billion, the most enormous financial scandal in human history wiping out the investments and pension funds of thousands and thousands of investors both small and large.

So why did the Republicans decide to dig in in opposing the Stimulus Package and not offering one vote in favor in the House? Because they could. Public opinion, while desperately wanting a rescue package, were by now skeptical of the content and the honesty of the content. Was it just pork? Was it spending? Did it stimulate jobs in an economy that is hemorrhaging jobs? Republicans sensed that they might be on the side of public opinion. Now, with the announcement of the Obama Administration's new Financial Program, by the very Treasury Secretary whose tax problems were overlooked because he was the best person to handle the financial crisis, the reaction from Wall Street was immediately to sell stock. The plan, it turns out was too vague, too incomplete and too inconclusive, leaving major elements in doubt. In particular, a proposal for a Bad Bank to soak up the toxic assets was given a euphemistic name and it's mechanism of a public/private nature was left open ended. The essential issue of how the toxic assets could be valued was not resolved clearly by the plan. But it is a lack of trust, that goes back to the Blagojevich scandal and the growing lack of public confidence in public officials and government-business collusion to cheat the public that fed the easy criticism. It is also the daily bad economic news that opens the door to populist politics based on an assumption of irrational public opinion. One must be aware that it was exactly this cocktail of economic distress and populist politics that led to the growth of unsavory political ideologies, movements and regimes in Europe of the 1930s and which the US escaped only due to the statesmanship of FDR.

The President himself is still hugely popular. He is America's Golden Boy. But his administration is not doing as well. We hope that the difficulties and slip-ups of the administration's early days will not presage its future success.

Post-script: After the above was written, we have more fallout from the Blago effect: the announcement of Republican Judd Gregg (or is it Gregg Judd, I can't remember?) quizzically deciding to drop out of his nomination as Obama's Secretary of Commerce. Could it be that he wet his finger, put it in the wind and decided it was blowing in a different direction in terms of bipartisan government in America?

"Bad Bank" Celebration on Wall Street

2009-02-10T16:43:00.001-08:00

Well, we decided to have some fun with Bad Brilliance and the Bad Banks and have Bad Brilliance do an event on Wall Street tomorrow, following Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's presentation of the financial package today.

Here is the press release that went out today to encourage the media to cover the event:

A 'Bad Bank' is a Brilliant Idea
NORFOLK, Va., Feb. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- The following release is issued by Daniel A. Strasser, retired US diplomat and nonprofit manager.
"Bad Brilliance," is a lovable, quirky art character, with his yellow balloon head and red zoot suit. Bad Brilliance is going to make his debut on Wall Street tomorrow, to demonstrate in favor of the Obama Administration's new banking proposals announced today by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. Bad Brilliance will praise the inclusion in the program of a "Bad Bank." In fact, his sign says BAD BANK, BRILLIANT. Bad Brilliance knows that often Bad is Good, and he is proof of this. He is Bad and that's Good. The Bad Bank is a Good Bank.
Bad Brilliance will begin his Wall Street walk at the Statue of George Washington in front of Federal Hall, Wall Street, Manhattan, Wednesday, February 11 at 11:00 am.
Bad Brilliance's appearance is sponsored by the blog "The Visionist: Out of the Box Global Solutions:" http://www.the-visionist.blogspot.com/. The Visionist looks at current and emerging issues resulting from Globalization and offers simple solutions to problems like the financial crisis, Gaza, Afghanistan, Somalia, etc., explores approaches to global knowledge and promotes those essential "silver bullets" that can yield big results for humanity like empowering girls and promoting potable water for all human beings. It encourages a new US foreign policy based on promoting Global Good Governance.
The Visionist is Daniel A. Strasser, a retired US diplomat and nonprofit manager who currently serves as a political analyst for the US military. His diplomatic service ranged from being a civilian advisor in Vietnam, to the United Nations in New York and extensive overseas assignments in Latin America and the Caribbean. He was the Executive Director of the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill, in Hyde Park, New York (1996-2003). Bad Brilliance is Andrew Strasser, Mr. Strasser's creative son.
SOURCE The Visionist There have been many versions of this announcement picked up in the media. here are some that we discovered: http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/02-10-2009/0004969808&EDATE= ; http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/bad-bank-brilliant-idea/story.aspx?guid=%7B7779EE3E-261F-4A11-BDA7-FBB9DE9CDF2C%7D&dist=msr_9http://newsblaze.com/story/2009021010130300002.pnw/topstory.html ; http://newsblaze.com/story/2009021010130300002.pnw/topstory.html ; http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/a-bad-bank-is-a-brilliant-idea,711601.shtml ; http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/090210/ne69007.html?.v=1

Globalization on the Brain

2009-02-07T20:36:00.000-08:00

Yeda and I just saw Slumdog Millionaire, and I was blown away by its portrayal of the difficult, brutal, Dickensian life of the poor in India, as well as the sustainment of pure values such as the triumph of love over its opposites and of good over evil. Its strong assertion of the idea of human destiny is a concept that I find extremely appealing, a subject I really want to get back to here. However, even more, to me it is a film that is a triumph of globalization in the best sense. Here is a British film about India with Indian actors and rich scenes, from Mombai to the Taj Mahal and the human mosaic of India. The impact on India of a US formatted version of So You Want to Be a Millionaire, with its own, Regis-style Indian host, also reminds us of a universal culture that is sweeping the globe. But the most important line in the film for me is when, Salim, the older, less well meaning brother surveys Mumbai's modern construction boom from atop a half completed skyscraper and declares: "India is at the center of the world, and I am at the center of the center."

What statement could better express the idea of the empowered individual which lies at the center of post-modern globalization.

I also happen to have attended a number of events this week which focus on the impact of globalization, including a special seminar in which I participate at Tidewater Community College. The seminar on Friday included a speaker from the State Department on Economic and Political aspects of Globalization, Ukrainian and a Sri Lankan Fulbright scholars cleverly brought in from around the country by the program managers to speak respectively on the impact and origins of the financial crisis and the economic impact of terrorism,, a presentation on the Port of Virginia, based here in Hampton Roads, the third most important port on the US East Coast and growing and a presentation by an expert on global water issues. My head was spinning after more than eight hours of information. All of these subjects are open to discussion, debate and controversy.

I also attended this morning a presentation at the World Affairs Council of Greater Hampton Roads on Egypt, part of the nation-wide Great Decisions program promoted by the Foreign Policy Association for World Affairs Councils. The impact on a key Middle Eastern country like Egypt of globalization is mind boggling. There is a mix of external and internal factors working on such a key country, which is weighed down by history and constraints, but which is on the edge of becoming an emerging country if things would only break in its favor.

I wish I could draw some universal conclusion from these intellectual experiences. It is difficult, but listening to the speech given today in Munich by Vice President Joe Biden, laying out a new framework for US foreign policy, it is clear to me that the Obama Administration "gets it" when it comes to the "new, new world order," of globalization, including rejecting the "Clash of Civilizations" as the basis for US foreign policy. opening up the way to a perhaps more hopeful future. What are the implications, of this, however, for the future? Is it the acceptance of co-existence of separate Western and Eastern Civilizations, or the promotion of a new world Civilization based on common values, like those contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law, or some hybrid of both? Or is what is really important not what we call things but how we as Americans approach others around the world?

A "Bad Bank" is Brilliant - With an OOTB Proposal

2009-02-01T08:27:00.000-08:00

While the country's politicians and economists are debating the fiscal stimulus package, the idea of fixing the financial system has stayed on the back burner, but many people are scratching their heads and wondering whether or not we need to create a "bad bank" as a way of removing "toxic assets" from our banking system. There is something about that term that captures the imagination of people, a seeming oxymoron. How can a bad bank be any good? There is also something a little wicked in the term. like, "Oooh, that's bad!" In fact in current young generation usage, bad actually has come to mean good. My 26 year old son Andrew, even created a fictional personality in New York City by the name of "Bad Brilliance," a funny, zoot-suited, balloon headed creature, described in Time Out New York magazine as a "highly entertaining conceptual art oddity" whose motto is "One bad idea after another" (http://www.badbrilliance.com/).

So the idea of this posting is to advocate in favor of a Bad Bank. A Bad Bank is a Good Bank, and here is the reason. The real crux of the current economic crisis is largely financial. Banks are not lending money to those who need it and credit is the grease on the skids of the economy, the plumbing that makes the system function, whatever metaphor you choose. For the banks to start lending again they need to dump their toxic assets, that will free them to loan again. All economists agree. What they do not agree upon is how such a bad bank would work and they have problems with applying the idea. Mostly--and this includes Nobel-prize-winning economists like Paul Krugman--they do not see how a Bad Bank would be able to properly or equitably price bad assets. If the Bad Bank pays the face value or too high a price on these bad assets, then the American public will pay a big price. If they pay current market value, then the banks will take a big hit, because it is generally agreed that these assets are currently undervalued by the market.

OK so here is the OOTB solution to this dilemma. Remember the term "trusteeship"? Well we need to create a Bad Bank that does not buy the toxic assets but which agrees to hold them in trust. Sound familiar? The banks would be able also to loan enough money from the Fed at reasonable interest rates to recapitalize, so the public would be paid back. The Bad Bank would hold the bad assets for a total of 5 years (or more if necessary) doing everything possible to manage them into health. At the end of the 5 years, they would be sold and any profit from them would be split with the banks 50/50. Any losses would be absorbed by the banks, which would be at a considerably reduced loss than if they had to give them up now. The public would not take any losses. This overcomes all objections to such a proposal. Even if done by outright purchase, the possible cost to the public has been estimated to be about $500 billion, considerably less than the stimulus package being debated. But a $0 loss potential would go down even better with the American public, whose patience has been worn thin by the failure of the TARP program to deliver on its promises of unfreezing credit. The TARP, remember, is a Bush Administration failure. The BB can be an Obama Administration success.

P.S. I am not an economist. If anybody has a better idea, please let me know.

"The Dream Team"

2009-01-31T21:15:00.001-08:00

Sometime during the campaign late last year, in the debate between Hillary and Barack for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer suggested that if either of them won and named the other as their VP candidate, that would be a real "Dream Team." Not everyone knows the origin of that term in basketball, but it is a term that resonates in the US.

In fact, the term team is a big deal in the US. Team, of course, is a sports term, but it soon came to be the core of an American belief in how you get things done in this culture. Teamwork is vital to any enterprise. It is also the heart of American management theory. I first heard the term used in that sense 20 years ago when a new Consul General and long-time friend Louis Schwartz, arrived in Rio de Janeiro and announced that we of the Con Gen staff would work as a team. That revolutionized my idea of organizations, because I had never known in my previous 20 years in the State Department anything other than a hierarchical concept of management. Teamwork has proven to be the effective way for organizations to operate in the information age.

I was actually disappointed that Hillary was not brought on as the Vice Presidential nominee. Although I like Joe Biden, Hillary it seemed deserved a place on the ticket given her very strong showing in the primaries. When she did not get that, I still hoped that perhaps her talents could be used beyond the Senate, and I queried a number of friends on the idea of Hillary becoming the US Ambassador to the United Nations. Frankly, given some of the rancor between the Obama and Clinton camps, I could not imagine that Barack Obama would give her a Cabinet department, so I satisfied myself with what I consider to be the next best thing to being Secretary of State, the UN Ambassadorship.

I could not imagine that Barack Obama had been reading A Team of Rivals, the book by Doris Kearns Goodwin, a good friend and former board member of the Eleanor Roosevelt Center when I was there. So because of the Team of Rivals, we have in fact gotten "The Dream Team." Seeing the President, Joe Biden and Hillary together at the State Department a day after the Inauguration certainly made that palpable. And also, as I approached the massive State Department building last Thursday and thought of the hundreds of embassies and consulates that report back to it daily, I could not help thinking to myself, "Damn, Hillary, this is a great empire you've been handed." In short, I think Hillary actually got the second best job in our government and think that there is no reason for Hillary supporters as I was during the primaries to bemoan the way the electoral process worked out. We got "The Dream Team" after all.

A Small OOTB Idea: Why "Of" and not "For"?

2009-01-29T17:02:00.000-08:00

I visited the State Department today to attend a seminar on a foreign policy matter (and was happy to meet Dennis Ross and at least three present and retired ambassadors and other US government analysts), but, not having visited the Department for at least nine months, was struck by the progress being made across the street on 23rd Street at the construction site for the new $100 million dollar building for the United States Institute of Peace. I love the work that USIP has been doing. It's mission:

"The United States Instute of Peace is an independent, nonpartisan, national institution established and funded by Congress. Its goals are to help:
- Prevent and resolve violent international conflicts
- Promote post-conflict stability and development
- Increase conflict management capacity, tools, and intellectual capital
worldwide
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The Institute does this by empowering others with knowledge, skills, and resources, as well as by directly engaging in peacebuilding efforts around the globe."

My only problem with the Institute is that its name bothers me. Why Institute "of Peace," rather than "for Peace?" It seems like such a trivial matter, but there is a very big difference. Of is a preposition that has about twenty meanings, but in this case it means simply "in reference (or pertaining) to." Use of this preposition makes it sound like the Institute is somewhat neutral about peace. It merely studies it. But its mission clearly goes much further than that. So why not change its name to the US Institute for Peace? I know the name is already rooted in legislation, but given the Obama administration's clear preference for diplomacy over military means, for peace over war, why not be very clear about the purpose of the organization which will soon have a gleaming new white building of considerable beauty and inspiration right next to the State Department. I recommend that this name change be made when the new building is inaugurated to make sure that its new name is used on the building and to call attention to the new emphasis on diplomacy and peacemaking.

The Visionist as Synthesist

2009-01-28T13:59:00.001-08:00

As one can read from my profile, I am a professional political analyst , previously with the State Department and now with the US military. I have studied and loved politics my entire life, and as a diplomat was actively engaged in political activity on behalf of the United States of America. But that is only half of it. For most of my life I have really thought of myself as a synthesist. Sure I can analyze political systems, by "slicing and dicing" them or "drilling down" to deeper and deeper levels, but to me a much more important facility is the ability to put together diverse, at times seemingly random, phenomena to construct something totally new. Not that analysis is a simple intellectual skill or that when really well done does not require a capacity to think holistically. But synthesis really does require thought that is out of the box (OOTB- for those who prefer the expression outside the box, that is OK too, but in honor of a popular local Norfolk radio music show by the name I prefer the former version.)

Now getting back to the Zeitgeist, a term given to us by Georg Hegel, Hegel also was the person who came up with the term dialectic, in which the result of bringing together two different forces, the thesis and the antithesis, resulted in synthesis. I like Hegel's formulation, and though it was hijacked by Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels, to come up with the term dialectical materialism, just as his concepts of Volkgeist and Zeitgeist were hijacked by Adolf Hitler to create Nazism, it seems to me quite clear that the process of history cannot be explained by a linear progression of events. If it did, trends would always allow us to predict the future. Dialectics, encourages us to view history as a tendency for clashing forces--political, social, cultural, military--to result in something totally new under the stars. In our own era of Globalization, we find that a Clash of Civilizations is driving us toward some new, as yet unforeseen global system. I am willing to suggest what this system is, but will save that for a later blog, but let's call it Global Governance. Synthesis has an association with the concept of synergy, in which two elements are brought together and what comes out of their fusion is a value greater than the sum of its parts. Synergy is the hope of synthesis.

But let's return to synthesis. My thoughts on this have really been driven lately more by my work as a part-time educator. In teaching college level students, particularly in my field of Political Science, I believe that it is my obligation to introduce some theoretical and conceptional underpinning. Moreover, there is a very large field of political theory. While this is largely for the more advanced students, nobody can study anything in my view without getting some kind of conceptual foundation for what is being observed. In politics, in particular, models and system types are widely referred to, even in the vernacular.

However, it is currently in vogue in education to educate more based on demonstrating the practical value of information. I have no problem with this and was taught these methodologies at CCNY's School of Education when I worked briefly as a New York City school teacher under Mayor Bloomberg's educational revolution. I actually had a short debate with my fellow instructors at TCC a couple of weeks ago over this, with some teachers thinking students could not handle too much conceptualizing. This led me to a debate at home with my visiting son Andrew, who has opinions about everything, over what is the highest level of learning in education, practical manipulation of information and experiences or what is usually called "critical thinking" by educators. Andrew, naturally, thought critical thinking is the lowest form of learning. I beg to disagree but recognize that critical thinking and conceptual thinking are not necessarily the same thing, but they probably come close. In fact, what is in vogue now in teaching, the Standards-Based methodologies, teach to national and state testable standards that are based on a hierarchy in which "critical thinking" is the highest level of learning.

At the top of the page you see Benjamin Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning, what is sometimes called "Bloom's Rose." (Click on the rose to read it.) In 1956, Bloom and other educators wrote of a hierarchy of learning and created this circular representation of what he calls the cognitive domain. At the center labeled from 1 to 6 in reverse priority order are six learning objectives: knowledge, comprehension, application and analysis, synthesis and evaluation, with the last three considered of the highest order. Bloom's Taxonomy has been challenged and efforts to revise it have been made, but it has withstood over half a century of influence over educational psychology.

If synthesis comes in only second highest among the top three categories which represent critical thinking skills, that does not concern me. It does beat out analysis, and frankly as difficult as evaluation is--and I assume the members of the Supreme Court need to have this skill--frankly, I never aspired to be a judge. Synthesis represents creativity, and I would prefer to create than to evaluate.

Finding the Zeitgeist

2009-01-25T19:45:00.000-08:00

Zeitgeist. I am not sure I would have used another "high-brow" term to discuss what I am trying to achieve here, but after hearing Will-i-am of the Black Eyed Peas use it, I thought -- What the hell. It's a great term, and in truth, a visionist must be able to capture the "spirit of the times." You have to know where you are, to be thinking about where things are going and more importantly, where you want them to go. At some level, we are all trying to figure this out, to discover where in the world are we. We want to be in touch with reality, on top of things, going with the flow and want to be not only "in with the in crowd," but also moving ahead of the crowd because we already know where things are headed. This process begins already in high school, where kids wish to be cool, and ahead of others in matters of dress, music and style, so much that if strongly defines their identities, aspirations and relationships. You don't want to argue with a high school kid about his/her identity. This gets very tough when it comes to things like tattoos and body piercings.
.
I have always admired writers who seem to be good at this. Such futurologists as Alviin Toffler, who's Future Shock and subsequent books, made a big impact on me, or writers like Tom Wolfe, whose hip writing style and even hipper sartorial tastes for me defined the 1960s. Such an aspiration assumes that there is such a thing as "the times" or eras, or generations and if so that they can be defined as having a spirit. Such an assumption, I believe is no less an act of faith as is religious belief. But it seems almost inescapable.

In any event, it is my hope that in this blog I can help to both find and define the zeitgeist of this age we live in. Globalization I believe largely sums it up. We often use the term "Information Age" to describe our historic era. I was fond of post-modernism for a long time, and it was very popular in intellectual circles in Brazil when I lived there in the '80s, though some of my academic friends who took postmodernism for a ride, now say that it is somewhat out of style. I just want to know something: what ever happened to the Age of Aquarius anyway? And, oh yes, this posting is not in any way, shape or form an endorsement for the online film Zeitgeist, which I think is a bunch of bunkum.

The Look of Love - Sergio Mendes in West Virginia!

2009-01-24T04:09:00.000-08:00

Bossa Nova lovers, check this out and get to Huntington, WV, if you can.

http://www.marshall.edu/muartser//shows/sergio_mendes/

An Excellent Choice for the NY Senate Seat

2009-01-23T18:36:00.000-08:00

Governor Patterson of New York has made a very good selection for the US Senate seat from New York vacated by Hillary Clinton. I lived in the Hudson Valley for almost seven years and being Executive Director at one of the Roosevelt Historic Sites, local politics was always part of life there. Besides being concerned with the United Nations and national political life, we were always interested in city, county and state politics and local congressional races. We usually knew our local political leaders. I did not know Kristen Gillibrand, because she was not a US Congresswoman when I was there, but I know about her predecessor, Rep. John Sweeney, who had the reputation of an ultra-conservative in that region. Sweeney earned the moniker, "Congressman Kick-Ass" from none other than President George W. Bush for his role in the 2000 elections in Florida. He also had a reputation for drunk driving and domestic violence that probably had something to do with his defeat in 2006 by Ms. Gillibrand.

Following is the text of an email I sent to her yesterday when I learned of her impending appointment to fill Hillary Clinton's US Senate seat.

Dear Representative Gillibrand,

I wish to congratulate you on the news that Governor Patterson will soon name you Senator from New York, replacing former First Lady and Senator Hillary Clinton. Though I no longer live in New York, I was the Executive Director of the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill (ERVK) in Hyde Park, New York (1996-2003) and continue to be involved with the organization. Senator Clinton was a good friend of ERVK's, came to Val-Kill often, and was instrumental in getting funds for the National Park Service to improve infrastructure at the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site. As a former First Lady who admires Mrs. Roosevelt, her interest might appear obvious. However, her interest also stemmed, I believe, from the important work the organization is doing for women and girls, human rights, race relations and diversity and for honoring the " Greatest Generation" through its Elderhostel programs. I hope you have an opportunity to visit Val-Kill and ERVK soon.

I am also so pleased that you are to be appointed because you "took out" John Sweeney. Mr. Sweeney was responsible, in part, for the disruption of the vote count in the 2000 elections, using tactics reminiscent of a storm trooper. I am so pleased that you stepped up to the plate and replaced him. For that alone, you deserve this new honor.

Sincerely,

Dan Strassser

See my blog: http://www.the-visionist.blogspot.com/

Our New Second Lady

2009-01-22T12:53:00.000-08:00

Last night I sent a message of congratulations through the White House website (http://www.whitehouse.com/) to Dr. Jill Biden on her decision to teach at a community college in the D.C. area as opposed to taking a position at a more prestigious institution there. I think this is great. Jill has been an educator for the past 25 years, 15 of which have been teaching English at a community college in Delaware. (A bio of Jill is at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/jill_biden/)

I am so pleased that she sees as I do the importance for our society of community college educating. I have only been teaching as an adjunct instructor for one semester at Tidewater Community College, but have become totally committed to it. TCC is a great institution, educating almost 40,000 students, or 46% of all college students in the Tidewater/Hampton Roads area. The students, many of whom are also holding down full or part-time jobs, are in the classroom because the want an education.

I also love that in recent TV adds, TCC has college presidents from the four year public schools, from William and Mary in nearby Williamsburg, to Virginia Tech and University of Virginia, saying how glad they are to receive TCC graduates. Education is the key to both workforce development, personal fulfillment and an educated, prepared citizenry.

My experience at the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill, where I met such former First Ladies as Hillary Clinton, Leah Rabin, Queen Noor of Jordan and the First Lady of Brazil, Dr. Cardoso, have heightened my appreciation of the work that First Ladies do in the leadership of the country. It looks like we are going to have not only a great First Lady in Michelle Obama, but also a great "Second Lady" in Jill Biden. And it does not bother me that she let the cat out of the bag on Oprah. Hey, we are all human, and it makes us more charming to be so.