Author Archives: Jon
San Francisco, Oakland announce radio interoperability
None
technical difficulties
Apparently having some trouble with some code somewhere. Please bear with us as we fiddle with format.
Tancredo characterizes Katrina relief as “gravy train” – eloquent rebuttal by Paul Greenberg
Paul Greenberg writes at Beyond Katrina:
This past weekend, the post-Katrina malaise that has swept the nation took an ugly turn towards full-on insensitivity. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-CO) had this to say about New Orleans: “It is time the taxpayer gravy train left the New Orleans station.”
Specifically, he urged an end to the federal aid to a city largely still in ruins. “The amount of money that has been wasted on these so-called ‘recovery’ efforts has been mind-boggling,” said the Congressman who is running a long-shot presidential campaign. “Enough is enough.”
And just to be absolutely certain that you and I understood what he was trying to say, he added this: “At some point, state and local officials and individuals have got to step up to the plate and take some initiative. The mentality that people can wait around indefinitely for the federal taxpayer to solve all their worldly problems has got to come to an end.”
Tancredo (just as gentle reminder) is the legislator who voted against the renewal of the historic Voting Rights Act in 2006.
Christine Levinson applies for visa to travel to Iran to search for husband, reports Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
RFERL reports that Christine Levinson is awaiting a response to her application for a visa to travel to Iran to search for her husband, Bobby Levinson, who has been missing since March 8, last seen on the Iranian island Kish.
The wife of a former FBI agent who disappeared in March while on a business trip to Iran told Radio Farda today that she has traveled to New York to try to meet with Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, who is expected to speak at the UN General Assembly. Christine Levinson told Radio Farda that she has not been able yet to get an appointment with the Iranian president.
[photo of Robert Levinson via RadioFarda.com
, credited “public domain’]
“I keep trying to get an appointment, I know he’s a very busy man but I hope he will be able to find even 10 minutes to see me,” she said. “I want to ask him for his help in finding my husband, I know that he has the ability to find him.”Robert Levinson was last seen on March 8 on Kish Island off the southern coast of Iran, where according to his family he had gone to seek information on cigarette smuggling.
His wife told Radio Farda that she has applied for an Iranian visa to travel to Iran and seek information on her missing husband. She said Iranian authorities are reviewing her visa request.
Cholera outbreak(s) in Iraq – from Effect Measure
Effect Measure reports and comments on cholera in Iraq. One of the main weapons against cholera is chlorine; chlorine is also usable as, and has in Iraq been used as, a weapon.
Cholera is expected to make its way to the capital by late September or early October. There is a shortage of chlorine because insurgents have used it as a weapon. Chlorine is extremely toxic and was used in World War I. as a poison gas. Since even rudimentary protection of water supplies doesn’t seem possible, the solution was to curtail chlorine imports. Instead we have cholera.
Cholera is primarily a waterborne disease that kills by sudden dehydration of its victims from a profuse, watery diarrhea. It can be prevented by simple disinfection of the water supply with chlorine and treated with oral rehydration. That neither of these can be readily accomplished in US occupied Iraq, where the occupiers expend $300 million a day to kill people, speaks volumes.
"[T]here will surely be a counter to our countermeasure"
Noah Schactman on the cycles of innovation and counter-innovation between insurgent-placed IEDs and coalition forces, in Danger Room:
Radio-controlled bombs used to be the biggest killer of American troops in Iraq. Now, they’ve been rendered all-but-useless. Good news, right? Like so much else in Iraq, it’s not quite that simple.
Since the Iraq insurgency began, mobile phones, garage-door openers, and remotely-driven kids’ toys have all been used to trigger improvised explosive devices from afar. In response, the U.S. military has cobbled together an arsenal of radio-frequency jammers, to interrupt the deadly signals before they can set off the bombs. At first, the jammers had all kinds of troubles. Each type of jammer would only cover a relatively small slice of the spectrum. And they’d drive friendly radio and robots haywire.
But those problems have largely been fixed, troops across Iraq report. The newer jammers have effectively killed off radio-controlled IEDs in major chunks of the country.
The explosive cat-and-mouse game continues, though. The American have built up high-tech bomb-stoppers. So the insurgents have gone ever lower-tech than before. They’ve largely turned towards so-called “command wire” IEDs to attack U.S. targets.
Pairs of insulated copper threads, some not much thicker than a hair, are buried under the Iraqi dust, and strung out for as long as a kilometer. At the end, an insurgent triggerman waits – sometimes in a buried bunker. It’s a more crude approach to killing, of course. But, barring a lucky find of wires, “there’s no way for us to defeat it,” says one bomb technician. And those wires are getting attached to bigger and bigger bombs.
[picture above, of a cement-mixer-turned-shaped-charge. From Danger Room]
– snip –
Do away with one problem, and you now have to cope with the blowback from your success.
– snip –Anyway, command-wire bombs aren’t the only IED threat over here. “Pressure plate” weapons, triggered by the smallest stress, are also in vogue here. Some are even shoved into brown ration packets, and left by the side of the road. Insurgents continue to use passive infrared sensors — like those used in burglar alarms – to sense changes in heat, and trigger a bomb accordingly. Many Humvees here are equipped with a flash-type device that can prematurely set the trigger off. But there will surely be a counter to our countermeasure.
Schachtman is on the money. The relative positions of the two forces don’t appear to make it likely that either side will have a distinct advantage with any longevity.
There is one way to deal with a problem of this sort: it’s to make a majority of the local population identify with soldiers, make them believe that the soldiers are acting out of a desire to protect them. That delicate opportunity slipped out of our hand in 2003, and it’s been moving away from us since.
Waxman accuses Department of State IG of obstructing investigations
According to an article on the website of The New York Times, Congressman Henry Waxman has Howard J. Krongard in his sights. David Stout and Brian Knowlton (for whom the Times doesn’t have an index page) report that Waxman
sent the inspector general, Howard J. Krongard, a 14-page letter spelling out accusations that he said came from several current and former employees of that office, who documented their charges with e-mails.
– snip –
Some of the accusers have sought “whistleblower” status, which protects government employees who report malfeasance from being punished for doing so, Mr. Waxman said. The accusations are serious and far-reaching, and included assertions that Mr. Krongard has effectively become a political defender of the administration rather than, as his job is meant to be, a studiedly neutral overseer of its spending and practices.
– snip –
Mr. Waxman invited Mr. Krongard to respond to the accusations at a committee hearing on Oct. 16.– snip –
Since Democrats gained control of the House in the 2006 elections, Mr. Waxman has made no secret of his relish in probing activities of the Bush administration. One of the more serious accusations against Mr. Krongard is that he interfered with an investigation into the conduct of Kenneth Tomlinson, the head of Voice of America and a close associate of Karl Rove, President Bush’s former political adviser, by passing information about the inquiry to Mr. Tomlinson.
Mr. Waxman wrote that Mr. Krongard’s detractors have described “a dysfunctional office environment” in which he routinely bullies and berates employees and shows contempt for the work of career professionals. As a result, turnover has been so high that the inspector general’s office has been severely compromised, Mr. Waxman wrote.
Navy proposes consolidation of helicopter fleet
David Axe reports that the navy is considering reducing the number of helicopter models in service from at least seven to two. (Our minimum number was derived by carefully reading Axe’s piece). This, of course, is very sensible in terms of procurement policy – and, things being what they are – sometimes not politically possible.
Axe makes the case that the two proposed pieces might not suffice, but would if a third, higher-capacity and longer-range model were added.
For those not familiar with his work – I read Axe’s work in Danger Room
and his personal blog, War is Boring – Axe is routinely insightful and original on matters military; and making connections that I find quite helpful and illuminating. (And an excellent cartoonist and artist).
Like crossing S.L.A. Marshall
(I’m thinking here of The Soldier’s Load, rather than his more controversial work) with Malcolm Gladwell and Scott McCloud .
Hantavirus (Ebola, Marburg) Outbreaks in Africa; WHO response; vaccine development
David Axe has an excellent piece on the Wired blog Danger Room, summarizing reporting on recent Ebola and Marburg outbreaks in Congo and Uganda, respectively. The Ebola is not only affecting humans – it’s hitting the gorilla population, already endangered. At the risk of starting an animal-rights discussion, or worse, one about evolution – one imagines that gorillas are sufficiently sentient to experience pain qua pain – and grief qua
grief.
Link here. I’m certain that I’ll do damage to this piece in summarizing it; what’s more, like all of Axe’s work, it’s well-written and concise.
Testing Simon Elvery’s WP-Footnotes plugin, 2.2
Under the category, “Note to Self: RTFM,” I hadn’t been able to make this work. The clever footnotes plugin ((By the exceptionally clever Simon Elvery
; instructions and links to download available here
.)) wasn’t working properly for me. I think it was because I hadn’t properly read the instructions – a space # where # represents a blank
space – before
the opening parentheses ((
Although this blog isn’t about WordPress – I’m fully unqualified to talk about that -I may leave this up – somewhere – for future reference. Probably mine.
Stephenson spots glaring omission in GAO report
, who has done outstanding work on the issues which concern Popular Logistics,
has noticed that in a report using 23 criterai to evaluate the Department of Homeland Security, GAO entirely omits the promotion and recruitment of citizen responders.
Here’s Stephenson’s post . I’m now not sure if reading this particular GAO report is worth the candle.
I regret not earlier posting about Stephenson’s important piece, written with Eric Bonabeau, Expecting the Unexpected: : The Need for a Networked Terrorism and Disaster Response Strategy, published in the Homeland Security Affairs Journal.
Our position on citizen response is this – any plan that doesn’t regard citizen response as central might contain useful tactics – but we submit that no such plan conceivably constitutes a useful strategy.
STANDARRD – with an extra “R”
S ustainable
T echnologies
A cceleration
N
etwork for
D evelopment
A ssistance and
R apid
R elief
D eployment
STANDARRD Blog here. This is, I gather, the product of Vinay Gupta, who invented the Hexayurt (Appropropedia entry here)
The Hexayurt, I understand, did good service in Hancock, Mississippi during Katrina. (Citation to be supplied).
Japan’s new bullet train: tiny bit faster – 19% less energy
From “Speeding Bullet World’s Fastest Train You Can Ride Dumps Energy Like a Prius ,” by Alex Hutchinson in Popular Mechanics:
When the latest model of Shinkansen, the Japanese bullet train, was launched on July 1, more than 1300 people showed up at 6 am on a Sunday to pack the seats for the maiden voyage, from Tokyo to Fukuoka. The Series N700 is billed by Japan Railways as the world’s fastest bullet train in service (France’s faster TGV train has been used only to break speed records), with a top speed of 186 mph.
It’s the first bullet train to be equipped with an air spring-powered active tilting system, allowing it to whip around corners without slowing down. Special fabric hoods cover the gaps between cars, turning the train into one long, seamless, aerodynamic unit.
Despite all these improvements, the 5-hour trip to Fukuoka will be shortened by a mere 10 minutes. More important, though, the journey will be quieter and more comfortable, and it will use 19 percent less energy than current bullet trains.
(emphasis added)
Please bear this in mind the next time someone refers to the United States as the most technologically advanced country in the world.
"Iran Denies Request on Missing American" – AP Report
Nasser Karimi of the Associated Press reports that Iran
had refused a request by the Swiss Embassy to travel to the site where an American is believed to have disappeared earlier this year.
Robert Levinson was last seen March 8 on Kish Island, a resort off the southern coast of Iran, and Tehran has repeatedly said it has no information on his whereabouts.
Levinson is a former FBI agent who retired in 1998, and the FBI has said it has not had contact with him since then. He had reportedly gone to Kish Island to seek information on cigarette smuggling for a client of his security firm.
The Swiss Embassy in Iran represents U.S. interests in the country because Washington has no diplomatic ties with Tehran, but it was unclear whether the travel request was made on behalf of the U.S.
“They had asked to travel to Kish Island, but Iranian authorities demanded they explain the reasons and necessities for such a visit,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said Sunday during his weekly media briefing. “Iranian forces are still looking for a trace of him,” he added.
The State Department has made repeated requests for information on the missing American through Swiss intermediaries, and considers it likely that he is in Iranian custody.
The Swiss Embassy in Iran could not immediately be reached for comment Sunday and the Swiss Foreign Ministry refused to comment.
Christine Levinson, the missing man’s wife, said last month that she planned to travel to Iran to investigate his disappearance. Iran said at the time that it would consider allowing her to come even though the State Department advised against it because of the risk.
Link to AP report. Via Noisy Room
.