A Degree of Honor
The Blood Moon could have been a great symbol for something or other. Regrettably, the vestiges of the Polar Vortex weather pattern that kicked our ass so thoroughly through the course of the last unlamented winter are back. I peered out the window at 0215 last night- having cleverly set my alarm to document the phenomenon- but there was nothing in the dark sky except water vapor.
I padded back to bed, disappointed that the portents of the unknown are going to remain exactly that.
There is so much that is unknown this morning. What’s up with eastern Ukraine? Mr. Putin, having had no resistance to his annexation of the Crimea peninsula, now appears to be sending his troops into another portion of what was a sovereign nation. I can’t imagine what unilateral action could be taken- though apparently both Vice President Biden and CIA director John Brennan have stopped by Kiev lately.
That makes me queasy, like the Deputies Committee meeting this week that is supposed to sort out the differences between the Pentagon and the State Department about a Russian overflight of United States military facilities with a specially configured reconnaissance jet. Such flights are permitted under the 1994 Open Skies treaty, but there is some new gear the Russians want to fly. The Pentagon is reportedly on record as saying “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” while the cookie-pushers at Foggy Bottom are apparently in favor of it for reasons best known to themselves.
I have no idea what to think, but you really wouldn’t need a brain to figure out that permitting Mr. Putin to slide another one by, at this particular moment in the resurgent Russian Empire, is sort of…well, you know.
Of all the things one could think of to disagree about- militias and militarized land management officials, and deranged murderous anachronistic KKK whack jobs, I would think we could agree that the mutilation of little girls is a bad thing. Stop me if I have said anything controversial there.
After 9/11, I became aware of the resurgent trend of female genital mutilation across a broad swath of the Islamic world. I made a contribution to one of the groups committed to fighting the practice, and wore a t-shirt for years that announced I was an Afghan feminist. As I told someone the other day, you cannot have a mother like mine and not be one.
So it was with dismay that I got used to the idea that this barbaric practice was not the subject of mass outrage by the West. I honestly don’t understand it. There is a strand of
“relativism” abroad in the land that holds the West to a higher standard than other places.
There is nothing relative about cutting up women’s genitals. Sorry. That is just so wrong on so many levels that it is unconscionable. Uncivilized. Barbaric.
Oh, forced marriage, honor killings and rape are sort of wrong, too. I am mystified that the very people who would be the first to have their heads cut off by the practitioners of these things are their apologists. It is frankly mind-boggling.
But of course outrage is selective, since there is one of the Great Faiths involved in all this, and we are supposed to believe that everything is just fine, Religion of Peace and all that stuff. I mean, I believe in live-and-let-live, but that is one of the three impossible things we are supposed to believe before breakfast.
I am sure you have seen the latest. It is so bizarre that I have a hard time accepting that it is happening. Here is the deal: Somalia-born Ayann Hirsi Ali was to receive an honorary doctorate from Bandeis University. You know, the renowned institution of higher learning founded by Justice Louis Brandeis.
Personally, I think she is a pretty courageous woman. She was mutilated as a girl, forced to marry some creepy old guy, and took charge of her life and fled Africa to the Netherlands. She spoke the truth about what happened to her, and to the other girls in the Horn of Africa. She published her story in the book “Infidel.”
She was persuasive enough that she was elected to Parliament, and film-maker Theo van Gogh, a descendent of the great painter, took up her story and made a film called “Submission” about the plight of women. It was a controversial event in the newly multi-cultural Low Country, which had happily accepted thousands of immigrants in search of a better life, which they promptly rejected. Ronald Rovers of Salon tells the story of what happened this way:
(Theo van Gogh. Photo from Salon).
“On the morning of Nov. 2 in a busy street in east Amsterdam, a 26-year-old Dutch Moroccan named Mohammed Bouyeri pulled out a gun and shot controversial filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was riding a bike to his office. Van Gogh hit the ground and stumbled across the street to a nearby building. He didn’t make it…. the Moroccan didn’t stop. He shot him again, slit van Gogh’s throat and stuck a letter to his chest with a knife. He was slaughtered like an animal, witnesses said.”
“The letter pinned to van Gogh’s chest contained accusations aimed not at him but at Ayaan Hirsi Ali.”
“Written in Dutch, the bloody letter called Hirsi Ali an “infidel fundamentalist” who “terrorizes Islam” and “marches with the soldiers of evil.” With her “hostilities,” she “unleashed a boomerang and it’s just a matter of time before this boomerang will seal your destiny.” In capital letters it said: “AYAAN HIRSI ALI, YOU WILL SMASH YOURSELF ON ISLAM!” The letter ended with a kind of chant: “I know for sure that you, O America, are going to meet with disaster. I know for sure that you, O Europe, are going to meet with disaster. I know for sure that you, O Holland, are going to meet with disaster.”
Hirsi Ali had to leave the country, in fear for her life, and she wound up in the United States, where she has continued to write and speak about the issues confronting women across the Islamic world.
When word of the prospective honorary degree emerged last month, the predicable happened. CAIR, a Hamas front group widely regarded as a “civil rights” organization, managed to get 7,000 names on a petition protesting the award to Ms Hirsi Ali. Brandeis hemmed and hawed for a while and then caved, announcing that they were retracting their offer of the degree, since what the brave lady was going to say- and they didn’t know what she was going to say, BTW- was “incompatible with the core values of their institution.”
Brandeis, of all places. Just when you think the madness and stupidity can’t get any worse, they circus of our society manages to make things loonier and imbecilic.
You want a war on women? Guess what. There is a real one. And I think we are losing.
Disclaimer: All the Great Faiths are fine. Freedom of religion- and particularly of the freedom from it- are enshrined as the basic tenets of our Republic. Ditto with Freedom of Speech. Without it, how could you run a Broadway Musical mocking the Church of Latter Day Saints? Well, better said, you can make fun of two out of three of them. One of them not so much.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocota.com
Twitter: @jayare303
Blood Moon
“They are coming out of the woodwork, aren’t they?” is what Mattski said when he came over to borrow the Turf Tiger to assault the first cutting of the year on the pastures. You have to stay on top of these things in the country. It has been wet, and the end of the cooler temperatures and the first 80-degree day of the new season, literally everything has exploded in new growth.
“Rancher Bundy out in Nevada had some fatigue-clad fellows standing in a line in front of him at the press conference,” I said, “along with the Clark County Sheriff, who has apparently been under his desk for the whole crisis.”
“I heard some independence-minded cowboys drove the Rancher’s cattle back onto Gold Butte, which the Bureau of Land Management has other plans for,” Mattski said, taking off his broad-brimmed canvas hat and wiping some perspiration off his forehead. I nodded, and shook his hand- in exchange for using the tractor he was going to trim my fields as well. We figure a loose communal arrangement is the best way to maintain the properties.
While he was cutting the pastures next door, I did some Spring Cleaning, running the vacuum around the farmhouse and cleaning out the winter’s magazines and assorted trash. Down in the garage, I found more boxes of 35mm slides, and sighed. It is hard enough to live one life, much less try to archive a whole family’s worth.
I am going to get ‘er done, though. I was feeding some slides through the digitizing machine when WTOP told me how Bubba was doing at the Masters, and then that some KKK loon had gone on a rampage and shot and killed a Doctor and his Eagle Scout grandson in the parking lot of a Kansas City Jewish Community Center. For what it is worth, the two were Methodists. Then he apparently drove to the Village Shalom retirement community where he sprayed gunfire around and killed an unidentified woman.
Like you, I am starting to think this is all sort of nuts. The thing out in Nevada was just weird, and a pal who knows about these things sent me the full-color BLM brochure that might have set the whole thing in motion. There is actually a fascinating land-use study in the episode, which could have been a flash point for something really ugly.
From the document, it looks possible that the rancher’s cattle became the focus of a strange plan to lease a chunk of Nevada desert to the Chinese for a solar project- you can see the priorities of the Bureau of Land Management in their pamphlet issued last month. I will save you from the mind numbing bureaucratic jargon if you want to go to the words on page 30 and the table on page 34. The number one priority on the project was law enforcement:
There is a much larger context to land use in the west, which is left over from the Manifest Destiny expansion into the vast expanse of land that connects Disneyland to the rest of America. A short appreciation is contained in this article. I don’t endorse it, but it does give some context for why Washington DC should be so interested in what seems to be a barren patch of not much, and why the people out there get so emotional about it:
http://mises.org/daily/6723/Ranchers-and-Empire-in-the-American-West
There is plenty to chew on in that article- and I have a little experience in the area, at the Nevada Test Site and Nellis AFB, which is near where the mysterious goings on at the Groom Lake site of Area 51 is just part. But I am not going to blame it on Aliens, though it may be connected to something in outer space.
The other folks- like the deadly KKK shooter- are coming out of the woodwork because of events in the heavens. Prophecy loves signs from the stars, and if you haven’t heard, there is a Blood Moon in the sky tomorrow.
It is the first of a series of rare alignments of the Moon in the Earth’s shadow. At around 0200 Wednesday morning, the normally bright silver hue of Luna will turn a sort of burnt umber color. It is Tax Day, after all.
Three more episodes of the phenomenon will occur over the course of the next year. Some prophets are predicting all sorts of extraordinary events based on the portents, and for them, the hue of a desert sunset are really the color of blood.
You may want to mark your calendar for the installments of the apocalypse: April 15, 2014; October 8, 2014; April 4, 2015, and September 28, 2015.
Lunar eclipses occur in random order, according to the people who follow these things. That includes astronomers as well as lunatics. According to NASA, these linked events are called “tetrads.” Based on the orbital mechanics, this may not happen for centuries at a time.
Propitious? I don’t know, but the eclipse is going to be visible primarily in North and South America. The loons are drawing their own conclusions about that.
Tuesday’s blood moon also comes right on time for Passover, which commemorates the ancient Israelites’ exodus from slavery in Egypt. According to the Bible, God cast 10 plagues upon the Egyptians, the final plague being the death of the firstborn. The Israelites painted lamb’s blood on their doorways so that this plague would pass over their homes.
My plan is to watch from the country, so that if anything spooky happens there is plenty of room for it. I would say that it would be even safer to be out in the desert where there are no trees or buildings to fall over, but I think considering land use policy, I am better off right where I am at Refuge Farm.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303
Opposable Thumbs
There is some crazy stuff going on out in the wide world. Mr. Putin’s troops appear to be maneuvering to take the eastern Ukraine, just as they did the Crimea. Chemical weapons have been used again in Syria, according to the regime in Damascus, by the good-guy-bad-guy rebels.
The big stand-off at the barren Bundy Ranch out in Nevada appears to have come to some sort of resolution for the moment, after the situation nearly came to something really ugly between hundreds of protesters and the Bureau of Land Management.
It is sort of an inverse version of the cities rebelling against the Government back in the 1960s. Weird. I have no idea what it means. Better said, I think I do know and wish I didn’t.
Thank God for the farm. No anxiety attacks down here. Just peace, tranquility and the new green grass coming up for the first cutting and some serious chores. It is a welcome change after the long winter, but I had a technical challenge to deal with first.
I sent my last Blackberry message with the opposable thumbs that Evolution gave us to master the globe and the spaces around it.
It was a sentimental chore. I recall so many of the old technical tectonic shifts that they blur together. I had an eight-track tape player, owned a Beta format video recorder, lived with rotary dialed phones, phonograph records, reel-to-reel and then cassette tape and the like.
Layers of cell phones, large-and-bulky to compact-and-flip to mini-tablet smart phones have come and gone without fanfare.
But 12 April, 2014 was something special for me in the avalanche of technology.
The company that uses me part time has taken away all the benefits. It doles out work by the hour now- sort of like cutting the company lawn when it is necessary. That is a dramatic change from being a salaryman, but is sufficient to my needs. One of the last perks is a company communications device, so they can summon me when needed, a slowly diminishing need. In my case, it was a Research in Motion (RIM) Blackberry.
Blackberry is a case study in species extinction. Founded in Canada in 1984 by an Ontario college kid named Mike Lazardis, RIM became a colossus in telecommunications technology. In 2010 the company had a 43% market share in US commercial and government hand-held devices. Last year? 3.8%.
That is about the equivalent of getting hit by a meteor. In the days after 9/11 I wound up working Public Health Emergency Preparedness through a surreal series of interactions with a man who preceded Kathleen Sebelius at HHS a few Secretaries back.
Our mission was to understand threat vectors: chem, bio and nuke. We had to ensure that the right prophylactics were acquired for the National Strategic Pharmaceutical Stockpile. There are actually regional stockpiles, administered by the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, and the charter is to have drugs on site where needed within eight hours of alert of need.
We had to communicate across a number of networks- and at one point I had a bandoleer of devices: a radio, pager, cell phone, guaranteed post-attack access phone, and the blackberry. It was too confusing to be manageable, of course, and the stuff that would still work when the cell networks went down from panicked overuse gradually fell by the wayside.
What was left when the dust settled (NOT the mysterious white powder in the envelopes that came in the snail-mail we were so worried about) were the personal cell and the Blackberry.
Getting down to two devices to lug around was a triumph. It was iconic at the time, part of the great change in American life. As early-adopters of the digital age, you might say we go back to the Wang Word Processors of the early ’80s. I always thought the devices were like the culinary machines that made purees and chopped vegetables, only in words. So my Navy colleagues and I have been digital denizens longer than most- almost 33 years.
But the phone thing. Lord, I remember the serious envy i had for my neighbor Marty who had one of the new mobile phones. He was quite proud of it, but bandwidth was a precious thing in- what was it? Late 80s or early 90s, and he was a little stiff about letting me borrow it to call home as we were mired in the Mixing Bowl of the Capital Beltway north of Springfield. It was a buck or something for a short call.
By the time the Islamists decided to up their game and start killing thousands of us, rather than just hundreds, we were in a wild west of devices and capabilities. The Blackberry was one of the answers. Email and text right to your device! Never unconnected! Work anywhere!
QWERTY keyboards, tiny things, with buttons to type- that is where the Blackberry name came from, the tiny keys looking like the rich dark nodes on a bit of fruit.
It was a heady time, and marked the rise of the ubiquitous mobile user, answering email while hurtling places in your automobile, making a cogent comment while walking blindly into traffic. The stuff that made the decade of the Oughts such an exciting experience.
Anyway, I was reading my company email on my Blackberry when I saw a terse announcement from the IT boffins. The told me they had noticed that I still had the original device they had issued me when I hired on almost seven years ago- a softly rounded little black phone with buttons I could bend to my will.
Like Microsoft, who just announced that they would no longer be supporting the XP operating system (still in use by 20% of Windows boxes, sorry, Chumps!), the company has decided that RIM will no longer be the standard for company communications.
Henceforth, we will migrate to the Apple OS, and accordingly, I was instructed to await a package from FedEx that would provide me a sleek Apple 5c phone to supplant the Blackberry connectivity.
The package arrived Friday, and I opened it with interest. Like all things Apple, the packaging was bright white plastic, modernistic and shrieking Steve Jobs-style elegant high-tech. The phone itself is a little slip of a thing with a brilliant display and no buttons. Touch screen, only. I looked blankly at my thumbs. What the hell am I supposed to do with them now, I wondered?
I glanced at the set-up instructions, and saw that step one was to shut down the Blackberry and render the phone inoperable. That was a big deal, cutting loose something that worked for something that didn’t, at least not yet.
I contemplated what needed to be done and picked up the RIM device and entered my password. The familiar icons appeared, and I navigated to the company email icon and pressed the center button to access it.
There was a note from some colleagues about something I had written last week, requesting clarification. My thumbs flew, and then I realized that once I sent the response, the next step would be to shut it down and pull the battery.
Fair enough. I thumbed in a note that this would be my last communication via Crackberry, and signed it. Then mashed the “send” command from the drop-down menu. After ensuring the message was actually in my out basket, I pressed the red phone button on the right side of the master menu, and watched the phone glow brightly. The poor thing told me I could press any key to abandon the shut down process.
It was a last plaintive plea for life.
Heartless, I let it die. Not my fault, I said to no one. Time marches on. Then I pulled out the Blackberry’s heart, reattached the battery cover and looked at the mute thing on the dining room table. Last Blackberry message, 11:23 AM, 12 April, 2014.
I looked at the white Apple 5c. I hate touchscreens. My thumbs are too big. Where is evolution, when you really need it?
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303
Paint it Black
The primal scream from comic or deranged man Sam Kinnison back before he was famous might be the way one would describe Lewis Black, who is in town with his 2014 “The Rant is Due” tour.
I say might because I didn’t see it. I had the fifteen seat, in the middle, in the Warner Theater’s orchestra- nice ticket- but I found the anxiety rising and was heading for a full scale panic attack.
I tried to calibrate myself at Willow- a couple glasses of wine would loosen me up, I could take a cab down, it would be all right. It was a glorious Spring Day, and I was productive and focused right up to the cocktail hour and the short drive over to the bar in the Bluesmobile. I can do these things, in fact, I used to do them quite well. Not so much any more.
I looked over at Old Jim, who was silhouetted by the lowering sun flooding through the side window that illuminates the Amen Corner as the days grow longer.
“They don’t grow longer,” says Jim. “There is just more goddamn daylight.”
It was a bit queer, really, since the televisions that are normally shuttered behind mahogany panels were uncovered above the bar and the Maters Golf Tournament was on- the sports door into Spring. I wanted to walk into it. I said that I appreciated the difference, but I just didn’t want to go downtown. Jim looked back at me and said: “Don’t go.”
I shook my head. “I said I would, I got invited months ago, I like the people who were going, and it was far enough away at the time that it didn’t seem to matter. I feel obligated.”
“If you don’t want to go, why not just do what you feel like.”
“I just want to have another glass of wine and go home.”
Jim shrugged and took a bite of one of the delightful cod sliders he slathered with hot sauce. I looked at the time display on the smart phone and asked Chanteuse Mary how long she thought it was going to take to get downtown at the tail end of the rush hour. She works at the Chamber, and does the commute every day. She pursed her brow and said” You should allow forty-five minutes, anyway.”
I looked at the phone to see when I needed to start walking down to the taxi stand across from the Metro. “But of course with the Cherry Blossom crowd you might want to make that an hour.”
I nodded. Cherry Blossoms and the freaking tourists, Jesus. I finished my glass of wine, paid the tab to Baby Jessica and bade my ersatz family adieu, asking them to wish me luck. It was still bright outside, and there was actually a cab at the stand, and it was actually available.
The driver was a fellow named Abdul. He was from the Tribal Areas of Pakistan and had been here for a quarter century. “Because of the many crowds at the Tidal Basin, I propose to take you a more circuitous route. It will cost a few dollars more, but will be much more efficient.” He had a dim view of the chaos caused by the tourists and considered Kashmir to be indisputably part of the Islamic Republic.
We weaved around from the Roosevelt Bridge, coming at the downtown away from the lovely trees and the wandering sightseers and dropping me by the National Press Club. I paid him a nice tip for the memory lane transit, and began to walk down to the Warner where Joe and his son Bryan were waiting under the marquee.
I don’t like crowds any more, and I looked warily at the specific crowd at the Warner Theater. It was overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly Boomer. You know the type. Mostly jeans and t-shirts, though you know damn well that they really were apparatchiks during the day in suit and tie. A sprinkling of millennial anarchists with sleeve-ink and pierced earlobes.
I got a rum-and-coke to take to my seat and realized, there in the middle of the row, that I was going to be stuck for a while. Should have hit the head, and I kicked myself mentally. I took a couple pictures of the interior of the theater. It was gilded and grand, and I flashed on the interior of the famed Bolshoi in Moscow, where I labored to get through the first act of a Russian opera before I fled at intermission to the coolness of Red Square.
Maybe it is ADD. I don’t know.
The lights didn’t come down for Mr. Bowman for about a half hour. John was amusing enough, though the f-bomb that sprinkled his monologue was a little irritating, and his schtick relied on a sort of pleasant truculence that I found uncomfortably familiar. Sort of like myself.
His act was another twenty or thirty minutes to get the crowd calibrated, and when he was done, he announced a fifteen minute intermission before Mr. Black would come on and do his rant. I filed out with the crowd and got into an interminable line at the head- one small blessing about being male is that at least our line went pretty quickly, but emerging to run into another long line at the bar at the bottom of the staircase, I felt suddenly claustrophobic.
Anxiety attack is the only way to put it. I could not bring myself to go back to my seat in the theater. I found the guys who had invited me- thank God, I couldn’t leave without saying that I was going- and made my apologies.
“I am angry enough as it is, Joe. I can’t take it this evening. I should never have accepted. I am so sorry.” Joe is a nice guy, and I felt bad. “My fault completely.”
Then I fled into the night. It was so weird going down to the Warner- I used to do the commute to New York Avenue every day to work for the Phone Company. I recognized everything in a human scale way, since I often traveled locally from Metro Center, which was a block away from the office. China Town just up the block. The old and the new all in a jumble, the long boom times in a capital bulked up with cash and change.
Now there are new Jersey Barriers blocking Lafayette Park, and the White House looms behind its black iron fences. Rain began to fall as I was trying to hail a cab. The reality of being in the middle of the Capital of the World- or what had been, anyway- was quite overwhelming. The cab ride home was uneventful, and I felt the stress leaking out of my system. I had left the Bluesmobile out in front of Willow, and after paying off Cabass, the Somali cabdriver, I decided to stop and get a glass of wine and stop hyperventilating.
None of the regulars were present, of course, since they were all long home by now. It was interesting to see our usual places filled with fresh faces, as though we had never been.
I stood at the bar about half way down and talked to Boomer and Dante, trying to decompress from the experience. There was a young man sitting next to me, Sebastian by name. He heard what I was saying and volunteered that he had seen Mr. Black perform. “I think the modern comedians are all deeply disturbed people. They do not seem to like the America that I do. It isn’t just the crudity.”
“I know, I know. I have quite the mouth when I get rolling, too,”
He nodded, and pulled a credit card out of his wallet to close his check. “But it is the weird deal between the audience and the comedian, the ridicule of the decent man for being decent and hard working. The mockery of the people who live in the double-wides. Of decency, of honor, of morals or virtue.”
“That is sort of profound,” I said.
He shrugged. “Just an observation,” he said, and got up to leave. I turned back to my glass of wine and wasn’t far behind him. I slid behind the wheel of the Bluesmobile profoundly blue myself.
I did not shout out anything profane on the way home. I didn’t have the energy for it.
When I rose in the morning I still felt bad. My mood brightened though with each cup of coffee, and the prospect of heading south for a sunny day and the afternoon spent clomping around on the farm.
As I tried to understand what happened, I listened to a Lewis Black concert on YouTube. This one was “In God We Rust.” It’s a little dated, a show from the State Theater In Minneapolis in 2010 or something, but Mr. Black is a talented fellow, by turns soothing and then punctuating his patter with shouted bursts of profanity.
His character- which is all that it is- is both angry and crazy, is true enough in the tradition of Rodney Dangerfield, in whose neckware Mr. Black shares a legacy. It was worth listening to, and I am glad I did to see what I missed. In one of the comments below the embedded video, Mr. Black was described as a national treasure.
He might well be, I suppose, but it seems to me that we are quite angry enough as it is.
Copyriight 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303
Baked Beans and O’Sullivans
(This is what O’Sullivan’s looked like when I worked across the street. I have no idea what Sam was selling out of his place on the corner, but I never saw a soul there. Ever. I wonder if he was surveilling the building where we worked? We were the Government, after all.)
I don’t eat a lot of beans these days- carb issues, you know- but I make a pretty good skillet of molasses and brown sugar and onion and bacon-topped legumes. I was thinking about that because the Cherry Blossoms have erupted into their full pink-and-white glory – I saw them ringing the Tidal Basin as I whizzed by on the 14th Street Bridge yesterday morning. It is finally Spring, for real, and I started to think about the outdoor grilling season, and some side dishes. I wanted to get shredded cabbage for some down-home slaw and maybe the fixings for some baked beans.
Old Jim caught me as I was back on the correct side of the Potomac, and invited me to broaden my horizons since Willow was booked for a private party that started about the usual time we do. “Meet me at O’Sullivans,” he said. “It will make you a better person.”
“I have to do the Class Six, get gas, and hit the Commissary. See you in an hour or so,” I said as I drove, and that is where the afternoon began to unravel.
Under the tender care of Lindsey, the bartender from Ashville, North Carolina, we managed to destruct a perfectly fine afternoon, though we committed no felonies that I was aware of in the process.
(O’Sullivan’s now. They serve a decent Guiness Burger and Guiness Stew, and has an easy air about the place. Unless the Arlington Health inspector is making a surprise visit to see if there is any gunk under the cover to the bar soda gun. It’s not the IRA, but you never can tell. Photo O’Sullivans).
I was going to continue the saga of people who get crosswise with the Government this morning. The saga of Rancher Bundy versus the assembled might of a Joint Inter-agency Task Force spearheaded by the Bureau of Land Management is worth noting, and I was going to put some context to the dispute with a recounting of the saga of the Sackett family versus the EPA up in Idaho, but you know what?
If you are not aware that the Feds are capable of the most extraordinary behavior (under administrations of both parties), you have not been reading the news. The EPA can spin it however they want, but fining the Sacketts $75,000 a day for daring to dump some fill on a lot they owned seems a little excessive. By the time they got to the Supreme Court, they owed the EPA $135 million bucks, which is a little pricey for the subdivision where the lot was located.
SCOTUS ruled in the Sackett’s favor, 9-0. Not that they will get to build their house. The rest of the business is back to square one and the Corps of Engineers.
We talked briefly about the BLM-led task force has surrounded the Bundy ranch in Nevada with two hundred agents, eight helicopters and a fleet of tactical vehicles because they are concerned about the Desert Tortoise, which used to be endangered and is now just threatened, and have been coexisting with the cattle on Gold Butte for more than a century.
There is a parallel story that the Feds themselves are going to kill a few thousand of the turtles for funding reasons. which went well with the Bud and the Sauvignon Blanc. The cost of funding the program to save the turtles is considerably less than what the Task Force is spending, but its all about the color of money, you know? The interagency seems to be able to find it for really important things like rounding up some crusty old cowboy’s cattle.
In fairness to the sharpshooters in the helmets and Kevlar vests, the 70-year-old Rancher, last one left n his county, has stopped paying grazing fees, and his animals are grazing on land that the BLM manages by act of Congress, He is pretty clearly crosswise with an agency that did not exist when his great grandfather first started running his cattle on public land.
It is a surreal mess, and I don’t know what is going to happen, and I certainly hope it is settled without violence. I said as much to Jim as he sipped his Bud and I tried the sauvignon blanc. We eventually got around to the lateness of the season, and the welcome respite from the Polar Vortex, and then about the new publicity on the Summary for Policymakers report that came out of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Which brings me around to the whole bean thing. It is going to be outdoor grilling season in short order, and I had a powerful yen to make a big iron skillet batch of southern-style ranch beans. I stocked up on the ingredients at the Commissary, just in case.
I call my version Award Winning, since I beat Joey in the Big Pink cook-off with the last batch I made back in the summer of the Revolt of the Grandmas. I made enough for everybody, so this will please a pretty large gathering for sides to what you are doing on the grill.
Ingredients:
Pound of pepper bacon from Eastern Market
One Vidalia onion, diced
One medium green pepper, diced
3 large cans (28 ounces each) pork and beans- any brand works but I like Heinz- I will give you the scratch recipe dome other time- but that is more of an indoor, fall activity.
3/4 cup barbecue sauce- I like Sweet Baby Rays, and like the beans part, you can make your own, but that takes more effort than I feel like this morning.
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup cider vinegar
2 teaspoons Coleman’s dry mustard
Directions:
Render the bacon in a large cast iron skillet. Mine is a Lodge, but any well-seasoned pan will do. Don’t cook it crisp- you want it flexible. Remove, drain on paper towel and reserve. Save most of the drippings in that container you keep in the back of the fridge; they might be useful for something else. Sauté the chopped onions and pepper until the onions are translucent and the pepper soft to the touch of your spatula. Add beans and remaining ingredients and bring to a simmer on the stove. Top with bacon, cracked black pepper and some sea salt to taste. I lace it with some Texas Pete Louisiana Hot Sauce- the vinegar base, not Tabasco, to offset the brown sugar. Then bake in the oven until the ingredients get to know one another and it begins to bubble- not too hot, there is enough sugar in there to scorch. Try maybe 275 for a couple hours. The smell will tell you when things are done. Pull and let it thicken before you drink any more of that sauvignon blanc. Don’t burn yourself. I speak from experience.
Anyway, I looked over at Jim and said the IPCC report was sort of alarming. In fact, it was sort of more alarming than the actual scientific report that goes with the summary. Some folks say that the temperatures haven’t gone up since the Clinton Administration, and other people look at those who say that like they are addled children, and that of course a warming world makes things colder and drier and wetter.
It seems like a miracle to me, particularly when the people who are most alarmed seem to be hoping for an el Nino event in the Pacific will make things get warmer.
“I don’t get it,” I told Jim, looking owlishly at my glass. “But that darn CO2 is a really talented trace gas.”
“Try methane,” growled Jim. “That is the new threat.”
“I read about that. They are going to have to do something about cows, aren’t they?”
“Perfectly understandable new rule from the Department of Agriculture,” he said. “Just imagine implementing it.”
“It could be worse than we think,” I said.
“I read the Brit press on my computer. I saw in the Mirror that here was a question in the UK Parliament- maybe tongue in cheek, though I am not sure what cheek. Some Viscount who has been in the House of Lords for a couple decades said the BBC reported that the UK has the largest consumption of baked beans in the world.”
“A traditional Big English Breakfast always includes beans,” I said, “And I love those tomatoes.”
“Yeah. The Minister of Energy said that his Lordship raised a very important point, which is that we need to moderate our behavior at the table.”
“No kidding,” I said. “You never know when we might get a nudge on that from the Feds. “
We may have solved another couple important issues while we lingered at the bar, but I am a little hazy on that. I can say this: I highly recommend O’Sullivans as a go-to venue for major problem solving, and the afternoons are quite pleasant there.
But I suggest if you are going to try the baked bean recipe, you might want to do it sooner rather than later.
You can freeze what is left over after the barbeque, though you might want to use an opaique container in case the FDA or the EPA decide later to go through the freezer for compliance purposes.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303
Three Felonies a Day
The Republican running as an independent here in Blue Arlington won handily in the special election, 57% to 41%. The remaining votes were me and the Wiccans.
We tried, but could not prevail. Some folks are apparently pretty upset with what is going on in the County: the last openly Republican candidate elected to the Council was in a special election back in 1999.
Democrats took note of the defeat and resolved to swamp the guy who won the right to serve out the last few months of the seat on the County Council that was vacated by someone who probably realized they were about to be indicted for something.
He might not have known what he did was illegal. I mean, the concept of being guilty of something is getting to be a familiar thing these days. I was vaguely aware of the concept, but Jon-without mentioned it as a fun fact at Willow last night.
It had been a good day- a little chilly, but the buds are coming out, flowers coming up, and it was a lovely day with more to come.
“Spring is going to last about three days this year,” growled Old Jim. Jon-without and TLB were sitting on the far side of Old Jim. He and I were out of sorts about taxes.
Jim does his by hand, Old School, and I do mine via Turbo Tax, though I think I may have to request an extension and see if there is any way I can legally reduce the eye-watering tax bill. The increase in tax rates, the severance package from losing my job, and the unexpected (and undesired) pay-out of a secondary retirement account, coupled with the loss of the mortgage deduction on the condo I sold last year to cut expenses resulted in….well, you can imagine.
Jon-without said: “I read that the average American commits three felonies a day.”
“What?” I said. “I have never intentionally broken a law in my life. All my felonies would be purely inadvertent.”
“Doesn’t matter. Do you have a gun in your Go Bag?”
“Well, yeah, that is what a go-bag is for. I have a permit. It’s legal.”
“Ever drive to the District or Maryland?”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. I almost always remember to take it out before I go where it is not legal.”
“Well, there you go. Case closed. I was reading a great book by a lawyer named Harvey Silvergrate about that. It is pretty amazing.”
“Three felonies? Jeeze. That is all I need.”
“Silvergrate is an ACLU guy,” growled Jim, taking a sip of Bud. “Harvard Law. Worked with Alan Dershowitz. I would rely on his legal opinion.”
“Crap.”
Jon-without adjusted his bow tie and took a pull on his raspberry vodka and soda. “Citizens from all walks of life—doctors, accountants, businessmen, political activists, and others—have found themselves the targets of federal prosecutions, despite sensibly believing that they did nothing wrong, broke no laws, and harmed not a single person.”
“Well, I went to the Commissary today and did my taxes. If I had not taken the go-bag out of the trunk and inadvertently entered a wrong number in Turbo Tax, I could have been charged with weapons violations on a Federal enclave and tax fraud.”
“Doesn’t that seem sort of strange for a generally law abiding citizen?”
“They can’t get all of us,” I said. “There are too many people trying to live their lives.”
“That is Silvergrate’s main point. We are violating laws and regulations we don’t even know about. There is a woman he wrote about who got two years for selling lobsters in plastic wrap.”
“You gotta be shitting me.”
“True fact. The lady’s name is Diane Huang, and she got named on a Lacey Act violation.”
“What the hell is that?”
“It is a law that makes it illegal to violate “any foreign law,” whether you knew about it or not.”
“Ignorance is no excuse,” growled Jim. “Not a good defense, as I know altogether too well.”
“There are a raft of those things,” said Jon-without. “Wire Fraud, Computer fraud, Obstruction of Justice, even cyber bullying.”
“I don’t do anything like that,” I said indignantly.
“Doesn’t matter. The laws are written so poorly that they are completely subjective in application. For example, you blog, right?”
“Well, that’s what people call it. I think it is just a letter to my pals.”
“Sorry. If someone takes offense- say the Wiccan-American community, they could accuse you of cyber-bullying.”
“No one even knows exactly what that is,” I said defensively. “But you are right. They keep talking about new speech crimes that are caused by “triggers,” and “being offended.” The latest was some professor at Rochester Institute of Technology who wants to have people skeptical of catastrophic anthropomorphic global warming locked up as criminals.”
“There you go,” said Jon-without. “At least three felonies a day.”
“OK,” I said, “I take your point. But Jim, you ran for Governor of Nevada one time, didn’t you?”
“Yep. Good experience.”
“OK, put on your Governor’s hat. What do you do about Rancher Bundy and his stand off with the Feds over his cattle, Federal lands and the Desert Tortoise?”
Jim made a church steeple out of his hands, very thoughtful, or was offering up his thanks to the long-neck brown bottle in front of him. “I will have to talk about that tomorrow,” he said. Willow is closed for a private affair, so it will have to be on the newly-opened patio, or at Julio’s next door.
“I can’t wait,” I said, taking a deep pull of happy hour white, and thought about the number of felonies that might wait on the way home.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303
City Mouse, Country Mouse
Tough transition day yesterday and I missed the production schedule completely.
It is hard to veer between the Country Mouse stuff- bees, country culture, heritage tomatoes, good neighbor stuff- and city mouse madness of legal nonsense and urban chaos.
I had to do some city things yesterday- I had not glanced at the city “to do” list and was startled at what had piled up while I was thinking of other things- like the alert pal in the Shenandoah who had a remarkable suggestion for the tomato beds, and natural marigold defenses against the inquisitive (and hungry) deer population.
The “to does” started with the special election to fill the County Board position. I like to be the first in line when the polls open at 0600, but this not being one of those general elections, I sort of spaced it out. I was between dry-cleaners, haircut and Commissary, one of them having a time of arrival specified, and decided to duck in and perform my civic duty.
Voting is the best revenge, right? Keep ‘em honest, anyway. The issues here in Blue Arlington include million-dollar bus shelters, an expensive trolley system to accommodate the diverse Columbia Pike corridor that those of us north of Route 50 will never use, and tons more money for the schools. And the brand new aquatic center, almost forgot. Not that any of those were actually on the ballot; the election was caused because one of the sitting Board members decided to leave his office early and join an advocacy group. In my experience that normally happens one step ahead of some official inquiry, but I didn’t ask and the departing member didn’t tell.
We denizens of Big Pink vote in the recreation room of the Culpeper Gardens Assisted Living Facility- the other moderate high-rise building in the mostly single family end of the Buckingham neighborhood. The County would never permit either of the buildings to be constructed now- we are not in the Master Plan.
I snuck around the back way and through the decorative gardens that are just starting to product bright yellow flowers. And mud. I stopped to wipe off the
I held the door for a professionally dressed young woman, and walked into the rec room with the shuffle-board patterns on the floor. I was pleased that I was asked to provide valid government-issued photo ID. I have to provide the same thing to buy alcohol, guns and tobacco, so why not here?
After reviewing my bona fides, the volunteer registrar handed me a card entitling to stand at the electronic voting machine, though a sudden spate of elderly voters had appeared from the tower above, and things were briefly hectic. It was not at all the formidable organization that greets the Generals. Two registrars at a card table, one voting assistance officer, and two electronic machines completed the lay-out, which was about a quarter the size of the staff and equipment for the General.
The assistance officer was an earnest but friendly woman in a cardigan sweater and jeans about my age, hair gathered back in a pony-tail. She had a courteous manner, and clearly cared about the ritual in which we were both participating. I had been here during one of the general elections, working, and it is a long and pretty thankless day. I thanked her for her service and she smiled.
A man in baggy jeans completed his duty, and shuffled off. I was permitted to cross the green line and I handed the woman the card signifying that there was only one of me, and she showed me to the machine, inserted her magnetic card to activate the ballot and wished me well.
This being a special election, there was only one question on the ballot: which of the four candidates to fill the vacancy for which to vote.
I pride myself on being a pretty organized guy, and do my homework before voting. I normally know which tax and millage increases I am going to vote “no” on, and which candidates I find the most appalling in their hubris to vote against.
I stood looking at the four names like a stunned mullet. Three guys, one lady. No party affiliation to identify them. Crap!
I wanted to back up and go ask the question, but it was too late. No do-overs, and I had no idea who to vote against. No GOP candidate had been elected to the Council since 1999, another special election in which people were angry about something or other, I forget what. The Greenies run someone regularly, a sort of Progressive answer to the mainstream Democrats who have run Arlington for a half-century.
There were two independents, which is what I style myself these days, but they were really Republicans in disguise. I looked down the list and tried to remember the name of the guy- I think it was a guy- who reminded me to vote in the election.
The Lady was either a Wiccan or a Greenie. There was one mainstream Democrat, though the ballot didn’t say which. Damn. The line was forming, some leaning heavily on their canes. I could have gone with the Wiccan, that would have been a certain thing, since there was only a one-in-three chance of voting against the person I wanted to.
I did a mathematical analysis, eenie minie moe, and made my pick. I made a resolution to check on the Internet when I got home and see who random choice had made me a supporter. I mashed the box on the touch screen and fulfilled my duty. The nice lady gave me a little sticker that could be peeled off and placed on the forehead to shame other citizens in the course of the rest of my day.
It was a busy day, and Willow had booked the Fish and Wildlife cocktail nook and the Amen Corner for a private event, and I did not have a chance to compare notes with other prospective voters. I sat out on the patio for the first out-of-doors cocktail hour of the year, looking at the green tarp that covers the old-school pool. Forty-something days to go before the swimming season begins.
I did check this morning to see what happened in the election. It was not at all what I expected, though it was only a 20% turn-out. Honestly, these city mice can really surprise you sometimes.
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303
Bee Culture
I don’t know if I will get to a story today- the relentless rain and the one o’clock meeting up north have me a little edgy and I need to get out the door.
If I did have something to tell you , it would be about yesterday, out in the front yard in the undergrowth next to the fence under deep blue skies and brilliant sunshine and a circling raptor or two. Mattski was looking at the eight-foot spacing on the poles on which the fence is hung, planning on replacing one with a metal gate of the proper width so we can walk between the properties, and navigate the the Turf Tiger tractor between the pastures for ease of cutting (and avoid the speeding motorists on Cedar Grove Road).
Natasha was leaning over the top rail, looking at my feral raised garden with a speculative eye, thinking perhaps she might put some of her tomatoes in there, which means we will have to put up an electric deer fence to protect them. She was having a tulip glass of Old House cinder’s Chardonnay, and saying:
“So, we went to pick up bee packages from the mysterious place in Rappahannock County named Castleton. We’ve spotted something interesting on the way. It is amazing what one can find in our neighborhood.”
Mattski chimed in: “Castleton was the brainchild of Lorin and Dietlinde Maazel. He is the Maestro- and they launched it in 2009. They thought they could emulate the winning business model of the historic Glyndebourne, Santa Fe and Caramoor opera festivals. Pretty cool. They have had over 3,000 young people go through open dress rehearsals, master classes and through a program for advanced vocal students which runs parallel to the Festival. It might be one of those shovel-ready projects, I don’t know.”
Natasha bubbled with enthusiasm, since the Bolshoi is part of her cultural upbringing after she moved from Crimea to Moscow in the old USSR. “Maestro Maazel has a 600 acre farm and the Festival is the largest non-government employer in Rappahannock County. They have a 648 seat air-conditioned proscenium theatre with an orchestra pit accommodating 90 musicians, and then the intimate Theatre House. It is a 138 seat proscenium theatre including seating on two levels and an orchestra pit for twenty musicians. We will attend the Bach cantatas this summer.”
Mattski grimaced. “I just wanted to find Bee keeper Bob. I am committed to going to five hives this year, and he is selling packages of bees at a reasonable price. This is going to be a money-maker.”
Natsha said when they found Bob’s farm about ten minutes from the festival grounds, it turned out he looked just like Mattski, only smaller. “Bob’s dwelling is up on the mountain in the deep woods. Tiny dirt road, old green barn, no neighbors, lots of used red and blue shotgun shells.”
“Sounds like a good road trip. I would like to do it,” I said.
Natasha laughed. “I enjoyed the ride, though a little bumpy.”
“Wow- culture lurking almost in our own woods! Amazing! I am excited to see the season unfold- bees and culture!”
“Bee Culture,” said Natasha. “Cultural Bees. I’ve heard them singing areas from Madam Buzzerfly all the way home…”
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303
Errata
(Still life of an improvised Spring country salad , featuring the first thing to emerge from the garden. Photo Socotra).
It is often far easier in this business to simply leave the dead on the field and move on, day-by-day. Still, a shred of obligation to truth remains with the vestiges of honor, and periodically it comes time to own up to mistakes and bury the departed with honor.
I was up late at the farm, glorying in the brilliant sunshine and the temperate temperatures, so welcome after the endless winter.
Natasha and Mattski were over last night with the first asparagus of Spring to demonstrate that contention. It is the small green object, erect in the middle of the improvised salad I threw together to go with the wine. If you eat something, it is a meal, not an extended happy hour.
We watched UCONN come back against top-rated Florida, and then they departed to complete their day at their farm. I tried to watch the second installment of the Men’s Final Four last night and almost succeeded before collapsing under the weight of the day.
I eschew the alarm clock and allow the rhythms of the season to summon me to consciousness. The gray light was filtering in the windows and highlighting the fields below. The daffodils were coming out in bright yellow clumps on the State Road coming south yesterday, and the panel of experts is of the opinion that the last hard frost is in the rearview. Thank Goddess the season has- finally- changed.
Oh, yeah, the errata business.
Re: Spring Zephyr:
Vic, Just to keep you honest, I said “Walter Washington” was a competent District mayor, who was appointed by President Johnson, and not Harold Washington who was a supreme dummkopf mayor of Chicago in a different era.
-Old Jim
Re: World War One as a Bar Fight:
Yep! I can see you are out of sorts this morning Vic. Bobby Ray Inman’s wife is Nancy – not Carolyn.
Sid
RE: Article 5 and Suleyman’s Tomb
Hi, Vic. Just reviewed the video and it’s a Flogger…pilot ejected too…lucky for him…picture is of something else. Small point but look at the wings…that’s no swing-wing MiG-23 Flogger in the picture.
http://www.airforce-technology.com/projects/mig27/mig277.html
-Fred
Re: The Global Warming Hoax:
Hey, Vic, the global temperatures may not have gone up in 17 years, but there are indications that there will be a strong el Nino event in the Pacific this summer that could cause them to rise again. Just because it has nothing to do with CO2, man-made or otherwise, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t dismantle western society. Its for the kids.
-Dr. Michael Mann
It is important to keep things straight, and I appreciate the efforts of alert readers to keep The Daily on an even keel. Time to ditch the computer and live some life. I am thinking I might do some spring cleaning, run the vacuum around and suck up some of the fallow season’s crop of dead stink bugs and dust bunnies. There is the chance of a work out, and I have a new barn to investigate here in the county and would like to help Mattski with the bees today.
Were you aware that you can sell bees for more than you can sell their honey?
Is this an amazing world, or what?
Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303
Guest Post: Putin Proves ONI Right
Gentle Readers,
Sometimes something comes over the transom that is worth passing along. For example, my Cajun pal Boats often chimes in with some interesting commentary from Louisiana, a component of what he calls “Greater Texas,” a mysterious world in which the follies of Washington seem completely dispensable.
In the case of the below article this morning, a distinguished former comrade from the Office of Naval Intelligence has taken a look at a long-ago time, when the Berlin Wall was still being sledge-hammered into stones. The Department of Defense was attempting to understand the future in the context of the consignment of the Soviet Empire to the ash-heap of history.
There were a variety of agendas being played out in those days, following the inconclusive conclusion of Operation DESERT STORM. One was a reduction in civilian personnel in the intelligence community that contributed in no small regard to the surprise of 9/11. I am not sure it would have been any different had things played out with other priorities, but this account of a contrarian view of the future is one that resonates powerfully with the annexation of Crimea by Mr. Putin, and the current threat to what remains of Ukraine.
Bill Manthorpe is a retired Navy Captain, intelligence, and later a Senior Executive Service officer and Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence. His contributions to the nation are indisputable, and his insight is profound. We thought you might find it of interest.
There will be a special bonus errata edition of The Daily coming along as well, so, in the words of the immortal Paul Harvey, “Stand by for News!”
Vic
Putin Proves ONI Right
William H. J. Manthorpe, Jr.
Introduction
The recent Russian invasion and takeover of the Crimea, a part of the neighboring sovereign state of Ukraine, has surprised U.S. and NATO strategic decision-makers. There are some people, however, who should not be surprised. Unfortunately, most of them are retired and no longer engaged in national security matters. In addition to “old Russia hands,” they should include now-retired Navy four-star and three-star admirals, many other retired naval officers, congressional staffers and members of national security “think tanks.” Those are the people who, in 1992, heard an ONI briefing that provided a “spot-on” forecast of the timing of Putin’s action, if not the specific location.
Background
In 1989 and 1990 the Berlin Wall was destroyed and the Germanys were united, marking the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire. The Soviet Union was dissolved on 26 December 1991, leading to the independence of the 12 former Soviet republics and the end of the Soviet Union as the dominant power on the Eurasian continent.
As these events unfolded, and with the Gulf War underway, President George H.W. Bush spoke of the emergence of “A New World Order” and its implications for the U.S.[1] <#_edn1> That concept was soon being hotly debated in the U.S. foreign affairs community.[2] <#_edn2> In April 1991, after the Gulf War was concluded, the Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV), the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) and the Commandant of the Marine Corps (CMC) published The Way Ahead as a vision to guide the Navy into the future.[3] <#_edn3> To guide the development of a Navy-Marine Corps team to implement that vision, the CNO and CMC commissioned a Naval Force Capabilities Planning Effort (NFCPE) consisting of five flag officers, captains and colonels, supported by staff members from the Center for Naval Analysis (CNA). In the fall of 1991, as they began their effort, the leaders of the NFCPE requested that the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) provide a threat brief.
ONI had already been thinking about the future threat in wake of the changed world situation. In July of 1991, the Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI) had been provided with the draft of an unclassified staff analysis entitled “Anticipating the Future Threat”. Upon the DNI’s approval, the draft formed the basis for a briefing given to the NFCPE in October.
The Briefing
That briefing used a single “generic” graphic titled “Assumptions” “…to illustrate the changing level of the intentions and capabilities of both ROW [rest of the world] nations and global powers to pose challenges amounting to a total threat to the U.S. over time.” Those “assumptions” about the threat were based “not on any intelligence” but “…on a familiarity with the events occurring in the world today and a sense of history which permits an extrapolation into the future.” The graphic illustrated and the briefing concluded that, with the Soviet threat and Gulf War in the past,:
Whereas, once we could do all your planning against a single ever-increasing threat, now we must do;
-operational planning against a residual Soviet threat and remaining ROW threat.
-near term program planning against a greatly diminished overall threat but a steadily growing ROW threat which is leading toward an inevitable confrontation.
-mid-term program planning to meet a real ROW threat and to hedge against a revived global threat.
-long-term R&D planning against an overall threat that some 20 years from now, will be as great as the threats we have faced in the past.
When describing the graphic, the briefer said;
History shows that we will have to respond to regional crises or contingencies every so often….
Further, it appears that at about every 15 years one of those ROW crises or contingencies becomes a major conflict for the U.S….
In about that same period, furthermore, the global threat will be starting to revive….
While it is hard to say how long the remnants of the Soviet Union will stay divided, in turmoil and incapable of exercising any military power after the collapse is complete, the collapse and revival of great powers seems to occur over a 20 year period….
If it is not the Soviet Union that returns 20 years hence…it will be some Eurasian power or coalition of powers including parts of what was once the Soviet Union….[4] <#_edn4>
The Response to the Briefing
Others did not agree with this depiction of the future. One staff member at CNA, then assisting the NFCPE, later wrote that the graphic “…was quite simple in form—almost iconic…” in that it “…captured the essence of the emerging debate within the U.S. military and the future security environment and the choices we faced as a nation.” Clearly ONI “…had a particular vision in mind.” “I disagreed with that vision, yet I couldn’t take my eyes off the slide…. As far as ONI was concerned “The Russians might have exited stage right for now…but if history was a guide….then the Russians would probably become resurgent within a twenty-year time frame….”[5] <#_edn5> The surprising simplicity of the “Global Threat” and “ROW challenges” curves on that slide also captured the attention of the members of the NFCPE and made it “…the Rorschach test against which all visions could be tested” and the group “debated it endlessly….”.[6] <#_edn6>
ONI Sticks to Its Guns
Because of that debate, in March 1992 the DNI wrote a memo to the CNO stating;
Enclosure (1) provides some unclassified words and a graphic upon which to base a discussion of the future threat.
We originally developed these assumptions for our backup discussions with the Naval Force Capabilities Planning Effort (NFCPE). Subsequently, we used them in several other seminars and in my posture statement and follow-on discussions. We have used them as the basis for discussions with OSD, JCS and Hill Staffers…..
….they are forwarded for your information, your use as desired, and in case you hear it from someone else.[7] <#_edn7>
Upon receiving the memo, the CNO asked for more details on the rise and fall of threats.[8] <#_edn8> In April, after a review and validation process, the DNI forwarded a memo with several enclosures providing an historical review that supported the briefing and graphic. That memo stated that, with respect to the ROW threat;
…there has always been a low level of turmoil in the rest of the world…every so often, one of those events turned into a crisis….
The “every so often,” however cannot be shown to be every 15 years. That timing appears to be more an artifact of the conduct of modern U.S. politics and foreign policy and the result of our own initiatives….
With respect to the “global threat” the memo pointed out that “In brief, we found that;
The European political/military structure clearly abhors a vacuum.
The periods during which dominant powers remain dominant can vary greatly….But based on 500 years of historical analysis [illustrated in enclosures to the memo] the period between the fall of one dominant power and the rise of another do appear to be fairly regular….it is possible to identify an approximate ten year period from the event marking the end of the first power’s dominance and an event marking the turning point where it or another power dominant power began to ascend. Likewise, from that turning point it is possible to identify another approximate ten year period before an event occurs marking the claim of the second power to dominance.
The DNI concluded that;
This historical review has confirmed our assumption that there will be a continuing level of turmoil in the rest of the world….but more importantly, it has confirmed our assumption that, with the end of Soviet dominance in Europe, the level of threat should not be expected to drop for long or stay low forever. If the historical pattern of succession of dominant powers is repeated, there will be a turning point in about 10 years and approximately ten years after that another power will reach its dominance. [9] <#_edn9>
Having set forth the ONI position and validated it for the CNO, the DNI cautioned;, “This is not intended to be a ‘prediction’…. Rather, it should be treated as a long range ‘forecast’ or ‘assumption’ based on historical patterns.
The ONI “Assumptions” in 20-20 Hindsight
To assess the general accuracy of the ONI forecast one need only to look at the graphic and consider the events of the past 20 years. The Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991, the turning point occurred about 10 years later after Vladimir Putin was first elected in 1999. As he began his efforts to revive Russian influence, the U.S. attention was diverted to the ROW in the Iraq and Afghan Wars. During that period, by actions in Chechnya and Georgia, Putin demonstrated the rise of Russian regional power and, now by his actions in the Crimea, Russia has begun its rise to toward becoming the dominant power on the Eurasian continent and posing a threat to its eastern neighbors and NATO.
Conclusions
ONI was right! But few remember.[10] <#_edn10> That situation brings into question the utility of long-range threat forecasts. If those forecasts do not become part of the intelligence organization’s “institutional memory” to be reviewed, updated or revised every few years, then the effort of the analysts has been wasted. More importantly, the organization will be surprised like everyone else when the inevitable occurs, having missed the opportunity to provide timely and relevant intelligence.

[1] <#_ednref1> George H. W. Bush, Toward a New World Order, Speech to Joint Session of Congress, September 11, 1990.
[2] <#_ednref2> See Foreign Affairs, Spring 1991, December 1991, January 1992.
[3] <#_ednref3> Peter M. Swartz, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts (1970-2007 (Arlington, VA; Center for Naval Analysis, 2007).
[4] <#_ednref4> Text of ONI Brief “Threat Assumptions” and graphic “Assumptions” dated October 1991. Enclosure 1 to Memorandum for the Chief of Naval Operations, Subject “Future Threats.” Serial 092B/2U546167 dated 11 March 1992.
[5] <#_ednref5> Thomas P. M. Barnett, The Pentagon’s New Map (New York: G.P. Putnam &Sons,2004), 65, 67, 68. “Personal Reflections” on this book by the author were published in the Naval Intelligence Professionals Quarterly, Fall 2005 and Winter 2006.
[6] <#_ednref6> Ibid, 69. That debate was described on the slides for a CNA presentation by Henry H. Gaffney and Thomas P. M. Barnett “The Insiders’ Debate on U.S. National Security Policy: Three ‘Visions,” dated 27 August 1992 .
[7] <#_ednref7> Memorandum for the Chief of Naval Operations, Subject “Future Threats.” Serial 092B/2U546167 dated 11 March 1992.
[8] <#_ednref8> CNO Action Item, Subject: Future Threats, 00Control # 2UD80723 of 25 March 1992.
[9] <#_ednref9> Memorandum for the Chief of Naval Operations, Subject “Historical Review.” Serial 092B/2U546361 of 20 April 1992.
[10] <#_ednref10> One who did remember was Vice Admiral Arthur K. Cebrowski. He heard the presentation when serving as a member of the CNO’s Strategic Study Group. In 1999 when serving as President of the Naval War College, in February 1999 the gave a presentation “The Road Ahead…21st Century Navy” to an All Flag Officers Conference convened by the CNO. In his address he reminded the Navy that “…the period between the devolution of one hegemonic power in Eurasia and the appearance of the next has never been more than twenty years.” See “President’s Notes” in Naval War College Review LII, no. 3 (September 1999), 8.