Death of the Gated Community

--Haves and Havenots,
Arend van Dam

Hickory Dickory Dock,
The mouse ran up the clock.
The clock struck ten,
The mouse came again
 --Hickory Dickory Dock, Nursery rhyme

Self-Defense is not murder 
--Sleeping with the Enemy (1991) 

In 1988, the crime rate in the United States rises four hundred percent.
The once great city of New York becomes the one maximum security prison
for the entire country. 
. . .

The United States Police Force, like an army,
is encamped around the island. There are no guards inside the prison,
only prisoners and the worlds they have made.
The rules are simple: once you go in, you don't come out.  
--Escape from New York (1981)
______________________

Its summertime, and that means the news cycle is hungry for more of the crazy in Florida; we do not disappoint.

This summer will see the latest recrudescence of the 26 February 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman as jury selection is underway for Zimmerman's 2nd degree murder trial. We will not discuss the excellence or degeneracy of either the shooter or the victim.

As we have written before, it a sad story oft-repeated, young black male with a brief history of flirting with the wrong side of the law, killed before be could manifest whatever it was he would mature into, usually killed by another of his own race. There is little to make this story any more noteworthy than the too-many other daily iterations of Martin's death, but the name and nationality of the shooter caught the eye of some crime reporter scouring the police blotter.

What a bombshell this might have been: Jewish man (=Zimmerman) shoots black teen (Are Jews armed? Don't they volunteer for the ACLU getting blacks their rights?) A sociological truism is that the underdog who is assisted will one day turn against his champions (=perceived betters), and people like Louis Farrakhan made sure no love was lost between the black and Jewish communities. But shooting? Surely Jewish people do not go shooting up blacks for racist reasons. This would have indeed been a coup for some gun-jumping journo, but it was not to be.

Turns out the shooter is Hispanic, and had volunteered time tutoring young black youths in his gated community of The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida, described as "a multi-ethnic" gated community. The Zimmermans had lived there since 2009, and Mr. Zimmerman was the community watch captain. So we do not have a rogue Jewish shooter, nor do we have a version of the Crips and the Bloods.

Now, since it is not a rare occurrence for a young black man to be shot by a police officer or a peer, why the outrage surrounding the death of Trayvon Martin? Perhaps the story has become one of place, rather than players. Perhaps this story actually marks the death of the gated community, once the last refuge of affluent whites seeking protection from the ravages that play out daily in the inner cities of our country.

This story has touched a nerve: does it signal the end of the line for "White Flight"? Where do the whites go now that the last bastion of "whitehood" has been breached? The gated community is no longer a white haven, and is patrolled by Hispanic volunteers who will confront the perceived interlopers.

The sanctity of the gated community has been corrupted and penetrated from within by a degraded economy which does not discriminate when taking its victims down. Gated communities are no longer guaranteed havens or retreats from the ills that plague this world, for the residents have all been jostled about by the vagaries of an unstable world.

The Retreat at Twin Lakes in Sanford, Florida -- the now multi-ethnic gated community -- is no longer a place of retreat. It is just another community of striving individuals who do not care to look out of their windows when they hear a scuffle or a gunshot. The losers are the people who used to believe that gates could protect them.

26 Feb 2012: R.I.P., Gated Communities. Your death was slow but inexorable; you, the victim of a tanked economy and an ever-multi-culturing society. Whether you will be missed, and/or replaced, remains to be seen.

Obama Messiah

 If telling the truth is bad manners,
then we will have bad manners 
--Sabotage (1936) 

I'm from the government
and I'm here to help 
--Ronald Reagan 

Thank you, sir,
may I have another?
--Animal House (1978)
___________________

President Obama says he will protect the American people, while concomitantly whittling our civil rights down to size. But who better to corral than Munchkins? Yet again, he is overreaching his job description. The President does not protect us physically; Job #1 of our Chief Executive is to protect and uphold the Constitution. 

Mr. Obama is co-opting the rhetoric of his erstwhile mentor Reverend Wright when he suggests he is our individual protector on this earthly plane.  Are we so cowed and puerile that we accept this power-grab, and then accept Attorney General Eric Holder as Obama's "Sin Eater", functioning as inmate John Coffey did in Stephen King's derivative story The Green Mile (appealing to the simple idea of one individual as repository and magnet for all sin?)

Do we hear the gospel lyrics, "His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me" when we think of our President? If so, we may as well be in the land of the opium eaters.

We have an entire apparatus of government to handle the function of personal protection, to include the States, state-controlled police assets and their governors (unless you live in Florida.) Have we become so conditioned to paternalism that we find this perversion of duty to be a comfort? 

Protecting lives is a paltry exercise of authority compared to the concept of protecting our core values. A life without rights of privacy or fear from capricious and arbitrary imprisonment, or one in which the President can order secret prisons, renditions, kidnappings, assassinations, torture and aggressive wars is not free.  The life of a man in such a society does not need a protector.

That man is already safely ensconced in his cage of unfreedom.

Sex and Violence

Why is it always, "sex and violins"?
--Ruth Buzzi, Laugh-In

The new pornography is left-wing;
and the new pornography is a vast graveyard
where the Left has gone to die.
The Left cannot have its whores and its politics too
--Letters from a War Zone, Adrea Dworkin

I seen ev'ry blue eyed floozy on the way, hey
But their beauty and their style
Went kind of smooth after a while.
Take me to them lardy ladies every time!
 --Fat Bottomed Girls, Queen

Let them eat war
That's how to ration the poor
Let them eat war
--Let Them Eat War, Bad Religion

___________________

Not war pornography -- war AND pornography. Now that we have your attention ...

War is the specialized, systematic application of State violence, and it is a perversion of civilized values, yet it is an activity that few societies have extirpated. It is also an activity designated as a career track primarily for the disadvantaged of our society. But war is an exploitation -- if it were not, our politicians would seek active combat service (which they avidly do not.)

We all know what pornography is when we see it, and aside from those 5th Avenue feminists who have the luxury of arguing that women in the porn industry are empowered by selling their anatomy, porn has traditionally been but one realm of the exploitation and objectification of women. Yet we have now opened a new realm of women's exploitation, and we call this a good: putting women in the combat arms.

To allow women to participate in the perpetuation of the violence will raise their glass ceiling we are told, thereby facilitating their career opportunities. This is the bottom line for arguing for women on the front lines. But this "privilege" will only be seen as such by a certain segment of society.

--Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, 
Reich's Women's Führer

Why are women in porn seen as exploited, while sending them off to fight in war is well and good? Neither war nor pornography are held as social goods, yet our internet lives bathed in porn sites, and the acceptability and necessity of war are peddled as unquestionable. Hypocrisy, thy name is U.S.A.

Is this argument for sending women into combat a backlash to the feminist movement? While women have still not gained economic parity with men in the workplace, we are now fast-forwarding them to star in their own personal snuff films, while screwing them all the way there (20% of women in the military have been sexually harassed by their male counterparts, according to recent studies.)

Further, these women will be fighting and dying for the rights of women in foreign lands to be exploited at the hands of males, as they always have been. It is a historical Mobius strip, for the women who they die for may one day gain their rights to fight and die for some other women to be exploited, ad nauseam. This is presuming that these imagined future women will have the crusading American impulse to help the scapegoat. But few look beyond the present moment, to see the implications of their bravery or foolishness.

The same people who would criticize porn (overtly) are the same who would argue for (someone else's) women to kill, fight and die in the depravity and degradation of war. How is having sex with strangers and pretending to enjoy the encounter less socially acceptable than fighting?

Exploitation by any other name ...

--Jim and Lisa

Warriors Without Borders

 

The sacrifice of brave men
does not justify the pursuit of an unjust cause 
--Our Kind of Traitor, John LeCarre 

You must go on. 
I can't go on.
I'll go on 
--The Unnameable, Samuel Beckett 

You say "Yes", I say "No". 
(I say "Yes", but I may mean "No").
You say "Stop", I say "Go, go, go".
(I can stay still it's time to go) 
--Hello Goodbye, The Beatles
_________________

The trait characterized by all terrorism is that the violence -- though symbolic -- is ultimately nihilistic, and nihilism does not build great civilizations or institutions. Terrorism does not assist the progress of man.

Fights like Wanat, Waygul and Kamden are symbolic of so many others, but for our purposes let us assume they are representative of the entire war, a microcosm of the gestalt. This is not a heartening thought.

If the U.S. Army in 2009 with the compliance of NATO allies and the Afghan Army are needed to (barely) hold isolated Command Outposts, why should we assume the Afghan government will continue to do so after the U.S. leaves the country? They are as unable to do this as they were at the war's outset. Instructive is the example of Vietnam, the United States first counterinsurgency (COIN) war, the war which informed the late great General David Petraus to compose Field Manual 3-24, everyman's guide to fighting the COIN way.

The drawdown of U.S. assets led to the 1972 North Vietnamese offensive, and ultimately the April '75 fall of Saigon. The NVA achieved this military objective despite having been strategically bombed for at least seven years. Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan were as nihilistic from the U.S. side as are the acts of today's terrorists.

The NVN had a realistic and understandable military goal; in contrast, the U.S. goal was simply to kill the NVA and Vietcong into submission, a goal not achieved. As in Vietnam, fighting remains our raison d'etre, yet we marvel at the senseless nature of terrorism. We refuse to see that our response to terrorism is as senseless as the precipitating event.

Bombing Hanoi did not defeat the NVN venture, and drones will not thwart the will to fight of our current adversaries. Drone strikes will not defend America. In fact, they are an extralegal approach to a criminal problem (terrorism).

It is surreal to realize that we have fought and do fight wars without military objectives, we have tried to build nations that do not want to be re-built and we do all of this with money that we do not have to squander. Even the direness of the sequester is inadequate to shake our resolve to press the fight in which we have nothing to gain. It is Hamburger Hill, in perpetuity.

A simple question: If Chinese and Vietnamese Communism were bad and worth fighting the Korean and Vietnam Wars, why are both nations now major trade partners of the U.S.?

Perhaps to look into the gaping maw of that zed is too much to bear, so we press on, like Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon in Waiting for Godot. They do not realize their project is D.O.A., for Godot is not coming (Gott es Tod), or perhaps they do, and substitute an eternal march and cogitation in place of actually achieving something, like meeting their goal.

Much like the characters in Waiting for Godot, we are not even sure what we are waiting for, or what that might look like. Like them, our project has a foregone nullity for a conclusion.

The day that Saigon fells did not impact one iota upon the freedoms and liberties of U.S. citizens. If the Vietnamese, Afghans and Iraqis cannot achieve a national consensus without nasty civil wars, so be it. Ditto Libya, Syria and the whole shooting match. Let them fight it out, without us, as we alone did in the creation of our nation -- through the time-honored bloody slog that is how men decide who's top dog.

--Jim and Lisa

Bradley Manning Trial

--Rainer Hachfeld, Neues Deutschland

Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh, what's going on 
 --What's Going On, Marvin Gaye 

I'm as mad as hell
and I'm not going to take this anymore! 
--Network (1976)
____________________

The National Security Agency moved swiftly and forcefully today to remind its employees of its longstanding zero-tolerance policy on conscience, warning that any violation of that policy would result in immediate termination. 

“When you sign on to work at the N.S.A. you swear to uphold the standards of amorality and soullessness that this agency was founded upon,” said N.S.A. director General Keith B. Alexander. “Any evidence of ethics, decency, or a sense of right and wrong will not be tolerated. These things have no place in the intelligence community.” 

To enforce the policy, General Alexander said that once a month all N.S.A. employees will be wired to a computer to take full inventory of what is going on in their minds: “We want to be sure they are spending their free time playing Call of Duty, not reading the Federalist Papers.” 

-- fr. N.S.A. Enforces Zero-Tolerance Policy on Conscience, Andy Borowitz

_________________

The Bradley Manning trial which began this week is not getting much press; some 75% of mainstream news outlets will not be covering the trial, and the press gallery remains mostly empty.

Meanwhile, the United States government continues perfecting its adversarial electronic surveillance posture against both the press and the rest of us. It is apparent that secrecy and the diminution of our privacy rights are a daily event in our brave new world, and we the marching morons continue in lockstep throwing our rights away by the fistfuls.

As Juan Cole wrote, "The US Government has been gleefully getting access to your private correspondence and that gave the Government Class an inherent superiority over ordinary Americans. Manning announced that turnabout is fair play, and we should be able to see their correspondence, too, especially given the war crimes in Iraq. That's why they're trying to execute him."

But as U.S. intelligence agencies perfect their methods of spying on us -- with our complicity -- there will always be the few like Edward Snowden and Manning who refuse to forbear their part in the voyeurism. Adrian Lamo who turned Manning in, under oath described Manning as having a sort of oceanic moment of awareness in which he realized the brutality we do to others, we do to ourselves. At this thought Manning felt suicidal, but instead of acting on that he revealed to us the source of the impulse to self-immolation.

We did not do much with the data other than to shuffle it off with a time-worn, "Things happen in war."

Once in a while there's a Howard Beale who dares to yell out the open window, but we don't mollycoddle our whistle blowers. Most of us go along to get along, just so happy for the Costco membership, the (hopefully one) mortgage and the 10-day family vacation. But there is another Bradley Manning out there now releasing secret court orders and PowerPoint presentations showing government tendencies to overreach its constitutionally-mandated boundaries.

To that person, whomever he may be -- we will say, "thank you for your service."

Big Brother

--Schot, De Volksrant

"Nobody is listening to your telephone calls."

 --PRESIDENT OBAMA, 

defending government surveillance programs.

Well your nobody called today
She hung up when I asked her name
Well, I wonder
Does she think she's being clever

--Your Nobody Called Today, Sylvia

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, 

houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,

shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue,

but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation,

and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized

--Fourth Amendment

_______________________

 
If your consumer life extends beyond cash purchases at Sears and Safeway, someone's got tabs on you. They sold the Internet to you as a World of Warcraft and other fun games, but now we know that the price of our amusement comes at the cost of the State's declared need for security in the form of data mining. But is the effort worth the cost?

President Obama tells us to get over ourselves; nobody's listening.  But he sounds schizophrenic when he says the government both is and is not surveilling our phone conversations. Everyone is hedging, with tech companies conceding to surveillance programs -- but "just a bit". Sorry -- you cooperate or you do not; the act cannot be mitigated.  And the trawling is done so quickly now as to obviate the need for justification of targets. David Bromwich gives a good critique of the "Total Protection Government" HERE.

Even if you accede to your government's claims that snooping over your shoulder saves lives -- "What need I worry if I'm doing nothing wrong?" -- there are problems with electronic intelligence (ELINT) and intelligence in general. Usually, such a wide net collects too much data, and proof is never provided to justify the violation of our privacy. If the intrusion into our privacy is so crucial to fighting to terrorism, show us the data. The shelf life of these data intercepts is brief, and are designed only to develop link analysis and association matrices -- "mail trees" in pre-computer days. 

However, the efficacy of these programs was based upon stable, non-mobile targets. Terrorism is based upon dynamic membership with rapid movement, implying the need for international cooperation between police agencies versus a unilateral isolated National Security Agency (NSA) effort. History shows manifold failures of such isolated intelligence: President George W. Bush did not synthesize the terror warnings he was provided in early August of 2001; the U.S. Navy fleet was in berth at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. 

Intel is useless if it is so highly compartmentalized and classified that it is not disseminated down to the action level. If these data collections were so effective, why doesn't law enforcement use them to eliminate the spree shootings we find so horrifying, for example? No criminal or terrorist venture reaches the execution phase without giving off intel indicators that the event will take place.

We are not children, though we may be useful idiots if we believe there is congressional oversight for these intrusions into our technological lives. We must define for ourselves what is intel and what is its shelf life.

Moreover, what do we do with it, --both when it is viable, and when it becomes rancid?

Look Alikes

Left, Anzor Tsarnaev; Right, RangerAgainstWar

____________________

Ranger bears a striking resemblance to the hapless father of the Boston Marathon bombers, Anzor Tsarnaev, and shares his affinity for wearing aviator glasses. 

As though his winning military views were not enough to earn him some ire, he should expect some hard-timing from our ever-vigilant TSA employees should he take to the friendly skies anytime soon.

There is No Finish Line

--There is no finish line
--could be the tagline for the Phony War on Terror 

That's what these soldiers were asked to do:
Defend the indefensible
--President Obama at SSG Romesha's Medal of Honor ceremony

Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime 
--Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime, Beck

I had a brother at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there, he's all gone 
--Born in the U.S.A., Bruce Springsteen
_______________________

[This is Pt. II of Defending the Indefensible -- Romesha Medal of Honor]

Fighting and dying for indefensible terrain is the perfect metaphor for the war on terror. The President's utterance reveals the military's policy to be corrupt as a Bernie Madoff scam.

Ranger is discomfited because he remembers when soldiers trained to fight wars in order to win them, a goal not achieved in his lifetime. The spirit of the Army is the offense.  On Day One we learn that we have one function in life -- to take the battle to the enemy. This is far different thing than sending them across the world and slapping them into defensive positions. Wars are not won by defensive action.

As mentioned in "Defending the Indefensible" pt. I, the Army defends to buy time for reorganization and reconstitution, and to prepare to go on the offensive.  Until Counterinsurgency theory, everything was based on the attack to destroy the enemy or his will to fight. Now we call defending terrain indefinitely a "win", and occupy command outposts designed for no military purpose other than to have an option available for troop postings

While the defense of COP Keating in Kamdesh, Nuristan Province, was planned, it was not properly coordinated. In classic theatre-level ground combat there are a few rules for the defense: defense is planned or hasty; co-oordinated; mutually-supported; in -depth and strong enough to hold or attrit an enemy. At Keating, there were 52 soldiers but no reserve forces present that could have been utilized to influence the fight.

The defense was not in-depth as the soldiers had no secondary line of defense, nor could they fall back when pressed to nearby friendly units or alternate preplanned fighting positions. COP Keating was just like Wanat and Waygul: the only options were to fight to the death, or to surrender. These soldiers were decisively engaged before the first round went downrange.

Historically Infantry and Cavalry defenses are synergistic, interlocked and support one another by fire, whether direct or indirect, a fact which seems to elude United States Army planners in the PWOT© . Simply put, no commander should put a defensive position anywhere unless there is mutual support, secondary positions with adequate escape routes.  Also, there should be friendlies to act as reserve forces in a timely manner. The Quick Reaction Forces (QRFs) which arrived thirteen hours after the fight began does not qualify.

Why does the U.S. see fit to place soldiers in indefensible outposts?  Did these fights lead to a transition to offensive operations? Why does an Army defend a piece of terrain for no purpose? Why does the U.S. Army continue to do a job the Afghan Army should be doing? The U.S. military did the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan as it did in the Republic of Vietnam (the 1st spectacular failure for the U.S. of COIN policy) -- we fought for terrain that did not affect the outcome of the war.

It is clear we can  attack and destroy the infrastructure and governments of places like Afghanistan and Iraq with less than a theatre-sized Army, but it is further clear that winning the invasion and regime change do not equal victory. Destroying a regime does not equate with creating a meaningful peace.


The failure of mighty U.S. Army in a site like Kamdesh gives lie to the idea that the U.S. is the sole Superpower in the world. Power comes in many guises.

An aside: It is interesting to note that three of the four living Medal of Honor recipients from Afghanistan chose to leave active duty. This is odd considering the status that an MOH winner has in the armed forces, which is basically holding a sort of godhood. Could this be a comment on the perception of the war on terror by those who have fought it?

Stifle Yourself

 

 --Jean Stapleton 

--Do you know that sixty percent of all deaths

in America are caused by guns? 

--Would it make you feel any better, little girl,

if they was pushed out of windows 

 --Archie 

No person is your friend who demands your silence,

or denies your right to grow 

--Alice Walker

 ____________________

We'd like to take a moment to recognize the passing of a fine actress, Jean Stapleton. Her character Edith Bunker on the 1970's series All in the Family was emblematic of the slow progress of women against an oppressive male hierarchy, but in a way which did not bludgeon that apparent oppressor, for her husband Archie was just a notch up and always in danger of being trampled. It was a compassionate portrayal on the part of all the principles.

All in the Family captured the zeitgeist of the time, and was one of the first t.v. programs to deal with the Vietnam War in the person of Archie's son-in-law, Michael Stivic (The Meathead). The series showed the passing of generations, from a time when all men did military service to a generation which "had other priorities" (to quote Dick Cheney), many of those being self-serving ones. The program covered the lives of simple blue collar workers as they clashed with the various empowerments which modernity ushered in. Archie was a relic being left behind while his black neighbor, George Jefferson, "moved on up".

Current t.v. is so vapid that many programs conclude with a token voice-over in which a spoken bit of pablum is regurgitated for the viewer so he is not aware that his past hour was wasted. While not every episode was a gem, All in the Family played more like a half-hour of theater than glitz, and had more verisimilitude than most programming today.

Edith's most poignant moments came when she dared to challenge Archie's dictate to "stifle". Perhaps her most moving performance came when she defended the worthiness of her volunteer work at the Sunshine Home for the aged; if the "cling peaches" episode was the nadir of Edith's subjugation, Sunshine Home was the zenith of her triumph. She was not only protecting the dignity of the infirmed, but that of her own person.

 Archie: Let me ask you something there "Florence Nightinggown"! How much are they payin' you for all this "Sunshine"?
Edith: Nothin'.
Archie: Oh, nothin'! And that's exactly what's it worth, nothin'. Because if it was worth somethin', they'd pay you somethin'. Now case closed, Edith!

She instinctively understands Archie's fragility evidenced in his need to degrade others, but she also recognizes when it gets to the nitty gritty, and she must define herself lest she be obliterated. At those times, Archie's ego must take a hit in the service of maintaining the structure of his life. It is risky, and among the most poignant pieces of television acting I have seen.

In a notable devolution in t.v. today, the man of the family is degraded and delegated the minimized role of the buffoon or worse (Family Guy, Rules of Engagement, etc.) Although Archie (like his spouse, Edith) is limited in many ways, he is the product of his time and environment.

Though the viewer may laugh at him, in his milieu, he is respected. Michael Stivic represents the new guard challenging his racist thinking, but still Archie remains man of the house (carrying on the tradition of Ralph Kramden's "King of his castle" concept.) His humanity is inviolable and is a necessary component of viewing Archie as a character capable of some growth.  Today's programs aim  low, at character assassination, and this simple-mindedness betrays the actuality of how evolution might occur.

** I had posted You Tubes of two classics -- Edith's compassion towards her gay deceased relative, and her reaction to Archie's affair; sadly they have been removed due to copyright infringement.  Hopefully, someone will re-post them in the future.

As she says when reconciling with her husband, "I used to think you was the only thing I could count on, but that ain't true -- there's something else I can count on. Me."

Rest in Peace, Jean Stapleton.

On Sugar Mountain

Oh, to live on Sugar Mountain

With the barkers and the colored balloons,

You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain

Though you're thinking that

You're leaving there too soon 

--Sugar Mountain, Neil Young

____________________

Below is a mathematical model by researchers Joshua Epstein and Robert Axtell which suggests that a trend toward increasing economic inequality in any economic system is likely, and maybe even an emergent property of economic systems (fr. Eric Beinhocker's The Origin of Wealth (Harvard Business Review Press, 2007).

A recent National Geographic special on lions brought the message home (more comments to follow.) Want to share any thoughts on the idea?

"Where do economies come from? ... How do the behaviors, relationships, institutions, and ideas that underpin an economy form, and how do they evolve over time? ... Joshua Epstein and Robert Axtell are researchers at the Brookings Institution, one of the leading public-policy think tanks in Washington, D.C. In 1995, they decided to conduct an experiment to see if they could grow an economy from scratch ... in the simulated world of a computer. ...

"They wanted to go back to the very beginning, to a state of nature, and have a model that included nothing more than people with a few basic abilities, and an environment with some natural resources. They wanted to find out the minimum conditions required to set off a chain reaction of economic activity. What would it take to get the system to start climbing the ladder of increasing economic order?

"To picture Epstein and Axtell's model, imagine a group of people shipwrecked on a desert island, except that both the island and the castaways are simulations inside a computer. The computer island is a perfect square with a fifty-by-fifty grid overlaid on top of it, like a giant chessboard. The virtual island has only one resource -- sugar -- and each square in the grid has different amounts of sugar piled on it. The heights of the sugar piles range from four sugar units high (the maximum) to zero (no sugar). The sugar piles are arranged such that there are two sugar mountains, one mountain at the northeast corner and one at the southwest corner, each with sugar piled three and four units high. Between the two mountains is a 'badlands' area with little or no sugar. Epstein and Axtell called their imaginary sugar island Sugarscape. ...

"Each agent [or 'person'] on Sugarscape can only do three things: look for sugar, move, and eat sugar. That's it. In order to find food, each agent has vision that enables it to look around for sugar, and then has the ability to move toward this source of energy. Each agent also has a metabolism for digesting sugar.

"Epstein and Axtell wanted to see if simple agents in a simple landscape could create something like an economy. Thus, each agent had a basic set of rules that it followed during each turn of the game. The agent looks ahead as far as its vision will allow in each of four directions on the grid: north, south, east, and west. The agent determines which unoccupied square within its field of vision has the most sugar. The agent moves to that square and eats the sugar. The agent is credited by the amount of sugar eaten and debited by the amount of sugar burned by its metabolism. If the agent eats more sugar than it burns, it will accumulate sugar in its sugar savings account (you can think of this savings as body fat) and carry this savings through to the next turn. If it eats less, it will use up its savings (depleting fat). If the amount of sugar stored in an agent's savings account drops below zero, then the agent is said to have starved to death and is removed from the game. Otherwise, the agent lives until it reaches a predetermined maximum age.

"In order to carry out these tasks, each agent has a 'genetic endowment' for its vision and metabolism. In other words, associated with each agent is a bit of computer code, a computer DNA, that describes how many squares ahead that agent can see and how much sugar it burns each round. An agent with very good vision can see sugar six squares ahead, while an agent with very poor vision can only see one square ahead. Likewise, an agent with a slow (good) metabolism needs only one unit of sugar per turn of the game to survive, versus an agent with a fast (bad) metabolism, which requires four. Vision and metabolism endowments are randomly distributed in the population; thus, the population of agents is heterogeneous (meaning that not all agents are alike). ... Each agent also has a randomly assigned maximum lifetime, after which a computer Grim Reaper comes and removes it from the game. Finally, as sugar is eaten, it grows back on the landscape like a crop, at the rate of one unit per time period. So if a sugar pile of height four is eaten, it will take four periods to grow back to its original level.

"The game begins with 250 agents randomly dropped on the Sugarscape. Some agents happen to land on the rich sugar mountains and thus are born into sugar wealth, while others have bad luck and are born in the poor areas of the badlands. ...

"At the beginning of the simulation, Sugarscape is a fairly egalitarian society and the distribution of wealth is a smooth, bell-shaped curve with only a few very rich agents, a few very poor, and a broad middle class. In addition, the distance between the richest and the poorest agents is relatively small. As time passes, however, this distribution changes dramatically. Average wealth rose as the agents convened on the two sugar mountains but the distribution of wealth became very skewed, with a few emerging superrich agents, a long tail of upper-class yuppie agents, a shrinking middle class, and then a big, growing underclass of poor agents. ...

"An agent's place of birth, like its genetic endowment, is perfectly random, so if that were the cause of an agent's ultimate economic class, the distribution would also be evenly distributed. How, then, from these random initial conditions do we get a skewed wealth distribution?

"The answer is, in essence, 'everything.' The skewed distribution is an emergent property of the system. It is a macro behavior that emerges out of the collective micro behavior of the population of agents. The combination of the shape of the physical landscape, the genetic endowments of the agents, where they were born, the rules that they follow, the dynamics of their interactions with each other and with their environment, and, above all, luck all conspire to give the emergent result of a skewed wealth distribution."

Defending the Indefensible -- Romesha Medal of Honor

--This won't be coming to a roadside in Afghanistan anytime soon 

The trouble with organizing a thing
is that pretty soon folks get to paying more attention
to the organization than to what they're organized for 
--Little Home on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder

You pop caught you smoking - and he said, "No way!"
That hypocrite - smokes two packs a day
Man, living at home is such a drag
Now your mom threw away your best porno mag (Bust it!) 
--Fight for Your Right to Party,
 The Beastie Boys 

Wherever there is injustice, you will find us.
Wherever there is suffering, we'll be there.
Wherever liberty is threatened, you will find...
The Three Amigos!
--The Three Amigos (1986)

_____________________

In warfare, defending the indefensible is sometimes required, and these actions serve a military function.

Such were the losing World War II Battles of Corregidor, Wake Island, fought in order to buy time for taxed U.S. forces to evacuate, consolidate and fall back to defensible terrain; concomitantly, they served to attrit the Japanese forces.

However, the fights at Wanat, Waygul and now Kamdesh in the phony war on terror did not gain the military (or the nation) anything. After the fight at Kamdesh, Combat Outpost Keating was so rapidly evacuated that U.S. troops abandoned their ammunition (which the Afghan opposition forces later plundered.)

Intelligence failed at Battalion, Brigade, Division and echelons above corps. None appeared to have done predictive analysis of an impending attack, nor did they identify the threat or threat level. The unit can sometimes overcome this failure by vigorous patrolling, which is what you would expect from Cavalry troops, which are supposed to be offensive types geared to mobile rapid developing operations. The failure at COP Keating may be due in part to the fact that they were being used as static defense -- not their preferred mode of employment.

The day after the fight, NATO and U.S. command could not even identify the attackers of COP Keating, and the strength of enemy forces was variously reported as 300-500 men. The attackers were not a ghost army, yet details on this award-earning scenario are scant. Some reports suggest 100 enemy fighters were killed, but this strains credulity, even at the higher estimates of engaged forces. According to military experience, 100 KIA suggests 300-400 wounded enemy fighters, and there is no proof of this.

Reports suggest the HIG were the most likely attackers; the HIG were U.S. CIA-funded in the Russian War, suggesting the possibility that weapons bought with U.S. tax dollars in 1979 were used 30 some years later to kill U.S. Troopers. The HIG were largley Pashtun and hated the Tajiks and Hazara tribes which make up most of today's Afghan National Army (ANA).

The portions of the outpost perimeter that were quickly probed and penetrated were defended by the ANA. After six years of U.S. training they were unable to share the burden of defending Afghan terrain for an Afghan government and force structure, and for this failure U.S. soldiers died.

It sounds noble when SSG Romesha is quoted as saying, "It was our home, and they couldn't have it," but ultimately, we left and they did have it. FM-24 does not state this, but none of our Counterinsurgency wars (COIN) are "our country" -- that is not what COIN policy is about. We are fighting for their rights to party; that may not be the way we party, though, but that is the gig.

COIN is not about defending liberty, democracy or any other high-falutin' concept. The United States soldier kills and is killed for no apparent logical purpose, other than the right of the host nations to carry on in their accustomed manner, a manner not necessarily U.S.-friendly.

The people of Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam are the determining agents of change (or not) in their countries -- this is "self-determination". When 300-500 armed hostiles can badly handle 52 American Soldiers, it is evident that the situation in Nuristan Province, October '09, was beyond the control of U.S. forces.

Simply: What were U.S. troops expected to accomplish by sitting in an indefensible COP? Does anyone in Nuristan Province care that U.S. troops died for a faulty concept in a tactically faulty position? Does anyone in the U.S. care?

American Tribes

There's still time to turn this around
You could be building this up instead of tearing it down
But I keep thinking
Maybe it's too late 
--Not Meant to Be, Theory of a Deadman

 It's a high school prom
It's a Springsteen song
It's a ride in a Chevrolet
It's a man on the moon 
--It's America, Rodney Atkins 

As long as our officers and troops perform tours of duty limited to one
year, they will remain dilettantes in war, and tourists in Vietnam. As
long as cold beer, hot food, rock 'n' roll, and all the other amenities
remain expected norm, our conduct of the war will only
gain impotence 
--Apocalypse Now (1979) 
 ____________________

[I'm on the road again to have my arm checked and hopefully be told that surgery is not necessary, and to get my fiberglass cast. In my kit bag were some crumpled notes from last trip. They remain valid, and set me on my path to considering my relationship with the "news". I'll be writing them out over the next week, interspersed with Ranger's more military sway.]

In the motel, Ranger struck up a convo with a women who's son was deployed in Afghanistan on his second tour. She was glowing over how nice the Afghans were, according to her son. It reminded Lisa of why she was tossed out of her neighborhood book club for questioning the veracity of favorites like Three Cups of Tea (later discredited) and The Kite Runner (a novel).

A pious member of the club who thought well of the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq grumbled about the CDC-mandated vaccinations required before her upcoming 10-day church mission in South America; disgusted by the filth, she still enjoyed the cheap tchotchkes and photos of the gathered urchins whom she would soon leave behind as these things validated the worthiness of her travels and her faith. (The missionaries-for-life get the better postings, like Israel and New Zealand.)

It was at the time of the Haitian earthquake, and discussion centered around those poor folks and what would the United States be doing about it. When Lisa suggested there were generationally-needy dark-skinned people in her own city, the clouds gathered, and invites to future meetings were not forthcoming. The only antidote to belief is truth, and that is not to everyone's liking. The prospect of reading The Help was a bridge too far, in any event. C'est la vie.

This reverie dovetailed with the news du jour of Charles Ramsey, the Cleveland man who was operative in the freeing of the Cleveland Three. People Lisa knows -- good and pious people -- laughed sheepishly at the enthusiasm of the man who performed this good deed after eating at McDonald's. What was there to laugh at, and yet the You Tube of the "Happy Negro" got hundreds of thousands of views -- why?

Who among the amused crowd had saved a person? It was a thinly-veiled superiority that said, "Our hair doesn't look like Don King and we don't eat at McDonald's. This man represents the inner city, a place where I do not live." That is our arrogance and tribalness -- we feel redeemed by something new for us to snicker at on our tech toys providing us streaming feeds of non-nutritive tripe.

The tripe that amuses us defines our tribe.

Tactical BBQ Apron

_______________________

Wondering if any RAW reader happened to strap on one of these Tactical Aprons during the Memorial Day food festivities (knowing how fond we all are of paramilitary chic)?

The Tactical BBQ Apron straps across your torso like a military gear pack and'll keep you prepped for a (crazy delicious!) war with your Weber. It's stocked with a slew of pockets, pouches, and slits sized specifically for spatulas, tongs, brushes, a thermometer, spices, condiments, and even your phone.

Club Med

--We Will Not Fail, Samira Yamin

~What's this?

~Oh, this is our prototype. RX, uh, Intercontinental, radar-sneaky, multi-warheaded nuclear missile.

~Ah! What does it do?

~Do? Kills the enemy.

~All the enemy?

~Aye, all of them. All their wives, and all their children, and all their sheep, and all their cattle, and all their cats and dogs. All of them. All of them gone for good.

~That's horrible.

 ~Ahh. Well, you see, the advantage is you don't have to see one single one of them die. You just sit comfortably thousands of miles away from the battlefield and simply press the button.

~Well, where's the fun in that? 

--The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)

Resistance fighters resist,
not insurgents
who just want to live
where they live 
--"Occupation", fr. Terese Svoboda’s, Weapons Grade

 Cuba, Cuba here I come
There's a place in the Caribbean sun
Land of future
Land of dreams 
--Cuba Cuba, Ace of Base
___________________

Sad when Monthy Python member Terry Gilliam predicts your future 25 years hence.

We can tell you where Ranger is not this Memorial Day weekend -- Club Med. But for the $900,000/year price tag we pay to house each prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, they might as well be. We will call it, the Club Med Gulag on Gitmo.

If the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Amendments do not disallow the Federal government from keeping these prisoners without due process, then the money pit aspect of the project should. If we will not outsource their upkeep to the Med resorts, then why not the Playboy Mansion in Wisconsin, for surely that would provide a conundrum: a punishment in the form of a living hell, in the form of the gifts of the martyr's afterlife. But surely it would not exceed the 900K per head we currently pay, for 168 prisoners, for 11 years.

It is not bubkas. Especially not for a country under sequester, with crumbling infrastructure like this latest bridge collapse which the NTSB says should be a wake-up call, and an economy to match. Just ask the tens of thousands out of work for years now -- maybe your neighbors, maybe you.

Gitmo is frivolous, making it not just a national stain on our rule of law, but a crying shame.

Memorial Day, 2013

                                           © RangerAgainstWar         

Memorial Day, 2013-style.

A Day Late

--Clinton L. Romesha

I’d rather have the Medal of Honor
than be president of the United States
--Harry S. Truman
______________________

[Note: RAW will run further comments on this action.]

Were it not for a story reprinted from MilitaryTimes.com in his Purple Heart Magazine (May/June 2013) reprinted from MilitaryTimes.com, Ranger would not have known of the fourth living Medal of Honor recipient who served in Afghanistan, Clinton L. Romesha. Romesha was presented with his medal at the White House 11 Feb 2013.

Press on Romesha's MOH was scant, typified by this brief NYT piece, possibly because Romesha declined Michelle Obama's invitation to attend her husband's State of the Union speech while in town for the award, denying the President an important photo op. Romesha's action deserves some Ranger commentary.

Staff Sergeant Romesha was the section leader of the 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. During the action of 3 October 2009 in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan, this small unit fought for its life in a nasty little defensive fight reminiscent of those at Wanat and Waygul.

In all, U.S. troops were arrayed for combat in a defense position which was indefensible, to no apparent military purpose; the posts were abandoned soon after each fight.

Commander in Chief Obama said at SSG Romesha's MOH presentation that "A later investigation found that Command Outpost Keating was tactically indefensible". That's what these soldiers were asked to do: Defend the indefensible." If this assessment is correct, why was this not ascertained before eight U.S. soldiers were killed and 22 wounded, and why were the soldiers not extracted? The point of combat operations is that something be achieved as a result of the killing and violence; none of these fights met that bar.

Ranger is not questioning the indubitable valor of this engaged unit -- we are asking why COP Keating was hung out in the breeze, a tasty morsel for the Afghan opposition's picking? Hanging pretty medals from a brave soldier's neck does not erase the question.

In terms of U.S. response, the press rolls endless instant replays of the Benghazi Embassy murders and the Boston Marathon bombings, events in which eight U.S. citizens were killed. We are transfixed and mesmerized by these events, and yet hardly a whisper of the eight Americans killed in this 4th Infantry Division fight. No press and no indignation from the C in C down to the section leaders. Where are the congressional committee meetings searching to assign culpability for the failure?

Oddly, the Army reports four officers (0-3 through 06) received reprimands for the action, but the names or the nature of the reprimands are not stated; as the names are not given there is no way to verify the allegation. If there is culpability, the taxpayers have the right to know the names of the accused as we pay their salaries; this is democracy.

Or does democracy die incrementally in small little fights in insignificant valleys of inconsequential countries?

Why do we blithely accept the meaningless and sacrificial deaths of eight soldiers on some far-flung scrap of land which holds no value and gains us nothing? These soldiers did not die defending our country and Constitution. Their actions in Nuristan Province, Afghanistan, were not connected to the safety and security of our Homeland. The U.S. could kill every Taliban fighter in Afghanistan and that country will still never be a democratic member of the fraternity of nations.

So whither the effort, death and destruction?