Author Archives: Jon

BrainMurmurs' Mentat: Project Management Tool

BrainMurmurs, have released a project management tool called Mentat , which looks interesting. Has a free individual version, two inexpensive paid versions. Of course – our first thought is whether the team version lends itself to use by emergency response teams, SARs, or 3Steps

groups. No word on whether they’ve got  a different price structure for nonprofits.

Incipient guerrilla computing technology

The people behind Brain Murmurs – “Guerrilla computing in the mountains of Seattle”  –  have a bunch of impressive achievements behind them. Mentat may be worth a try.

U.S. Contractors kill 2 Iraqi women – NY Times

The following picture, taken by Joao Silva, accompanies Andrew E. Kramer and James Glanz’s report on a recent incident in Baghdad.

[singlepic=123,320,240,,]

This is, necessarily, the price of our course of action. I don’t know whether or not the United States should withdraw. But it seems to me self-evidence that we’re responsible

for creating the situation. Should we stay, we need – even at greater risk, at greater cost – to treat Iraqi lives as though they were as precious as American lives. American lives that we care about, mind you – not quite like Americans who live in New Orleans, if you take my meaning.

Link to Kramer/Glanz piece .

Mystery Image – can you identify it?

One bottle of Kehde’s barbecue sauce (if you’re from Kansas or Missouri, you don’t need an explanation) for the first person who can identify this cool image:

[singlepic=122,320,240,,]

We’re not saying in advance who’s ineligible – it might give the game away. They know who they are.

BoingBoing interviews Leonard Henriksen, maker of high-end shelters

In “How Much Bunker Could Tom Cruise Get for $10 Million?,” Joel Johnson of Boing Boing [singlepic=120,320,240,,left] Interviews, Leonard Henriksen, maker of high-end shelters:

While Tom Cruise may not be building a bunker under his Telluride estate—his spokespeople have denied it—it got me thinking: How much underground bunker could one get for $10 million?

Before he put his mind to designing underground survival shelters, Leonard Henrikson, a gentle Oregonian proud of his Swedish descent, built presses for radioactive waste for the government. But after 9/11, there was again a market for underground survival bunkers. “You couldn’t build them fast enough,” Henrikson told me.  Continue reading →

Hugh’s Katrina Timeline

Came across a well-detailed Katrina timeline   – the timeline speaks for itself. Here’s the introduction:

It is hoped that, by recording the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina’s destruction of New Orleans on August 29, 2005, some insight will be gained into the mechanism of disaster. We need to understand how Federal and local government, Republican and Democratic alike, could be so inadequate to a calamity that had been predicted for decades. What emerges from any attempt at doing so is no less than a damning account of corruption, indifference, racism, classism, oppression, ignorance, historical mistrust, and finally a near-total breakdown in all levels of American political and social institutions.

 From Ominous Valve. Which is mostly about cool technology, funny things, and good art.

Timothy Naftali’s “Blind Spot”

Reading Blind Spot: The Secret History of American Counterterrorism

by Timothy Naftali. Thus far, excellent history of U.S. responses to terrorist attacks – in each of the varieties in which they occurred from the Nazi “stay-behind” program to 9/11.

More and some excerpts shortly.

Orbiting

WMX has an appropriate response to what’s likely to be the latest edition of “security theatre” – this year’s TOPOFF exercise.

Our “premier terrorism preparedness exercise” is based on a dirty bomb threat?  And has been based on a dirty bomb threat for the last 8 years?

I’m only halfway kidding.  The United States has a lot of problems that, while they might not look as big as a “dirty bomb” going off, are a bit more pressing.  Case in point: 11 September was not a radiological, chemical or biological attack.

Future devastating attacks will be “black swans” (as John Robb calls them in Brave New War), attacks coming out of left field that are cheap and unexpected and targeted at infrastructure.  Why were the attacks of 11 September genius?  Hijackings had been around for decades by that point.  Dealing with them had become fairly old hat.

They were brilliant because they connected two things that people hadn’t connected before.  Who thinks of turning an airplane into a guided missile?  No one- until someone with great synthesis skills started turning over airplanes in their head.

The attacks on the Trade Center probably caused less casualties than a radiological attack would.  Why was that message chosen then?  Because it made people afraid to fly.  Because no one was thinking about defending against that kind of attack.  We’ve been preparing to respond to radiological emergencies for better than thirty years.

Wargaming programs like TOPOFF would be better off confronting “top officials” and first responders with something that they’ve never seen before.  Hit them with something like an attack on a power plant, or an oil refinery, or a bridge.  Attack the infrastructure.  This isn’t a new idea- it’s been around since John Warden’s The Air Campaign and we used it to toss Iraq in DESERT STORM.  Why do we assume that our enemies won’t be that smart?

WingmanX’s post here.

I’ll add that – as someone involved at the local level – in a city in which the Fire and Police departments didn’t do serious drills between the 1993 and 2001 WTC attacks – we need to spend money and energy on working-level

drills. 

Or

  • another example from Irwin Redlener – hospital evacuations – logistically complex – and under some circumstances, absolutely critical;
  • evacuations of other institutions. For instance – the world’s largest prison – Riker’s Island – isn’t too far above sea level. In a flood, are we going to let prisoners drown?
  • Attacks on pipelines – or other underground infrastructure

I think WingmanX may have stumbled across the bureaucratic tripwire of this rule: if we acknowledge a problem, we then must take responsibility for solving it.

Potential common ground on health care issue – a starting point?

The discussion of national health insurance during the current presidential campaign seems quite familiar. The public, in polls – for decades, in fact – support single-payer systems in one form or another – notwithstanding many disingenuous arguments that all single-payer systems are (1) ineffective (2) too expensive (3) immoral, as they are a form of “handout” which weakens family and individual resolve. The phrase “socialized medicine” – my initial research suggests that this term first gained currency as an epithet during the Johnson-Goldwater race of 1964 – has been re-introduced by former Mayor Giluiani. This phrase seems to be shorthand for points (1) – (3) above.

At least three of the leading Democratic candidates are for a system which will improve on the current system – and might be a bridge to single-payer, or a hybrid.

How we get from here to there is a political question beyond my sophistication. For one thing – it seems unlikely that private insurance companies – and their owners and shareholders – are going to be passive about such a transition.

We here propose a point of consensus: that the President be given the explicit power to declare public health emergencies – with the following terms of reference:

  • Irrespective of apparent cause (terrorism, accident, other cause); like an arson investigation, determining whether a disease outbreak has an intentional or negligent causal origin is a matter for careful and slow investigation. This power should be without limitation as to preconditions;
  • Having declared such an emergency, the President may, in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, use any and all resources and funds, including but not limited to the Veteran’s Administration, Medicaid, Medicare, and active and reserve elements of the Department of Defense, to combat the declared emergency;
  • the President may, in anticipation

of a public health emergency, or in planning for such a contingency, direct any and all elements of the government – notwithstanding the limitations of the posse comitatus and similar restrictions -to put in place infrastructure to prepare for emergencies. (In other words – have the infrastructure in place for a rapid expansion in an emergency; plan it, run the drills, be ready). Based on Paul Krugman’s columns on this subject – and recent reports about the excellence of the Veterans’ Administration’s infrastructure and its open-source patient management software – they’re a good candidate for this responsibility. But that’s a detail not necessary for this proposal.

The advocates of the “unitary executive” theory – that Presidential powers trump all restrictions, including the Geneva Conventions – must surely assume that the President already has these powers. Those opposed so socialized medicine are no less concerned about bioterrorism than its advocates.

So – I put it to the supporters and surrogates of each of the candidates – should or should not the President have the power to declare public health emergencies, and use federal resources to combat them?

[NB: This is not my idea – it’s Irwin Redlener’s rather elegant proposal; he had the good sense to come up with it, but apparently didn’t think much of it, because it’s nearly hidden in an appendix to his book Americans At Risk. There’s a lesson or two here: good books are worth re-reading (this one is); sometimes the best stuff is in the back of the book].

Thanks to Karina Ron for inspiring the conceptual frame.

DOD acquisition rules prevented purchase of superior MRAP

It appears that in 2004, U.S. military officials evaluated an African-designed and manufactured MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected)

vehicles. The Corps of [singlepic=94,320,240,,right] Engineers wanted it for its own personnel; David Axe of War Is Boring reports:

The urgency surrounding the multi-billion-dollar purchase of blast-resistant vehicles for the U.S. military is new, but the vehicles themselves are anything but. “They all hail back to southern African designs,” says Doug Coffey, spokesman for BAE., which builds the RG-33 armored truck. The roughly dozen “Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected” models, all with v-shaped hulls, have their roots in vehicles designed in the 1970s to counter road mines laid by black African guerillas during the Rhodesian “Bush War.”

Considering the provenance of today’s MRAPs, it’s perhaps surprising that one of the most successful African designs has been entirely absent from the U.S. program. The absence says more about politics and industrial considerations that it does about the virtues of particular designs. The Wolf, a 10-ton blast-resistant truck from Namibian state-owned manufacturer WMF, has served in the Danish, German and Namibian armies as well as with non-military agencies, the first of several hundred entering service in 1984. The latest model, the Wer’Wolf, debuted in 2000 and was quickly adopted by the Namibian army.

[singlepic=95,320,240,,] Clearly the Pentagon was aware of Wer’Wolf even before the belated launch of the MRAP program in late 2006. But when the Marine Corps began handing out production contracts for MRAP trucks in January 2007, small firms including Protected Vehicles and Force Protection, Inc, both based in South Carolina, were among the winners, but WMF was nowhere to be found. What happened?

Continue reading →

London to add to tube system; considering even more

The delays on New York’s Second Avenue line are nearing pension age. Our ability to use additional underground capacity – to move passengers, to move freight, and as emergency shelter – is not matched by planning or construction.

[singlepic=68,320,240,,left]

Yet – our former colonial masters – at whom Americans snicker – (yes, marmite doesn’t quite make sense; but this is beside the point) – continue to surpass us in mass transportation and energy efficiency. They’re building new underground train extensions The “long train(s) of abuses and usurpations,” will, reportedly, carry 1,500 passengers  each. The “patient sufferance of these Colonies” perhaps now means that ‘we’ll build mass transportation systems when we’re good and ready.’ [singlepic=72,320,240,,right]

Thingsmagazine

reports that the Brits have taken a decision to start construction on a long-planned extension to the London underground transit system – Crossrail. And plans for the “Thames2000” extension remain under discussion. They could dither for another few years  – and they’d still get it done before the Second Avenue Subway. The following images are of the Thames2000 system.

Images from the thingsmagazine piece, linked here .

[singlepic=69,320,240,,]

[singlepic=71,320,240,,]

[singlepic=70,320,240,,]