Author Archives: jsh54

Big discounts at the Organ Loft!

Posted on by
Reply

Popular culture side-swipes reality when it comes to organ-theft. Organ theft is a “trope” (a recurring motif, AKA cliché) in many Japanese anime and manga, and in American comic books, video games, and television (C.S.I.; Law and Order; Justified, Futurama). Examples:

Robin Cook, Coma (1977). The recent development of successful transplantation techniques suddenly creates an imbalance between the supply of and demand for organs, so a black-market arises. A deranged doctor in a Boston hospital induces comas in healthy patients undergoing minor procedures, then harvests the organs.

“Coma” (1979). The movie version of the book, directed by Michael Crichton.

1989: a Turk came to Britain, sold a kidney, got stiffed on the payment, and lied to the police that he had been robbed of a kidney. This is the origin of the urban legend about “I woke up in a bath tub full of ice…”

“Death Warrant” (1990). No one cares what happens to the inmates in maximum security prisons. An evil warden, corrupt guards, and a greedy doctor, kill inmates to harvest organs for sale on the black market. The very institutions that guard us are actually criminal.

“The Harvest” (1993). Writer goes to Mexico, gets robbed of a kidney, tries to find the people responsible, partially succeeds, and then finds out that his boss has just had a transplant.

Christopher Moore, Island of the Sequined Love Nun (1997). Predatory missionaries.

“Dirty Pretty Things” (2002). Hard-pressed illegal immigrants in Britain sell organs.

“Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance” (2002). Hard-pressed South Korean factory worker sells a kidney to save his sister’s life, gets cheated, she dies, and he wreaks a bloody vengeance.

“Shichinin no Tomurai (The Innocent Seven)” (2005). Seven groups of abusive parents get an offer from a mysterious figure. They’re likely to either kill their kids or lose them to the child welfare people. Why not make a different kind of “killing” by selling the children so that their organs can be harvested? A week at a mountain vacation camp will close the deal. This may reflect Japanese discomfort with transplants, plus the Aum Shinrikyo terrorist cult.

Kazuo Ishiguru, Never Let Me Go (2005). Test tube babies + cloning = human spare tires for when you come down with some life-threatening disease. Your liver goes? Just pop one out of the “donor” you paid to have created many years ago. Now everyone can live to be 100! In the meantime, the future donors are raised in ignorance of their intended function.

“Turistas” (2006). The developed world has exploited the developing world for centuries. (See: Andre Gunder Frank.) Now it is time for reparations. A deranged doctor abducts gringo tourists who visit a remote beach resort. He harvests their organs, which are donated to the poor in a Brazilian hospital.

“Repo! The Genetic Opera” (2008). In the sinister future a big corporation supplies organs for transplant on credit. Transplant technology has progressed so far that you can get replacement intestines and spines. If you fall behind on your payments, however, the company sends around some guys to re-possess your implanted organ, just like your car or washing machine. The consequences aren’t the same as having your car or washing machine repoed, however. You die. The movie is a musical.

Eric Garcia, Repossession Mambo (2009). Uses the same sinister future/big corporation/buy on credit/get repoed premise as above. Adds bio-mechanical organs/people hiding from their creditors and being hunted by repo men twists for product differentiation.

“Repo Men” (2010). The chop-socky movie version of Garcia’s novel.

“Never Let Me Go” (2010). The excellent movie version of Ishiguro’s novel.

Give my knees to the needy.

Posted on by
Reply

Organ transplantation.

In the 7th Century BC,[1] a Chinese physician named Bian Que tried transplanting the heart of a strong-willed commoner into the body of a weak-willed emperor.

During the late 19th Century surgeons finally developed the technical ability to conduct operations (knowledge of how the body functioned, anesthesia, antiseptics) and this made transplants possible. However, it took much longer to develop the ability to prevent rejection of the implanted organ by the body’s immune system. Thus, the transplanted “Hands of Dr. Orloc” (1924) weren’t. Lung (1963), liver (1967), and heart (1967-1968) transplants were “successful” in the sense that the patients lived for weeks to months after the operation. In 1970 the development of the immuno-suppressive drug cyclosporine finally permitted successful transplantation to begin. Since 1970 transplants have become common: hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers, pancreases, hands, facial tissue, and bones have all been transplanted. No brains, yet.

The mismatch between donors and recipients.

Generally, there are more sick people in need of an organ than there are dead people with healthy organs for “harvesting.” While the growth of organ transplantation has extended many lives, people often die waiting for an available organ. National medical systems have developed ways of determining who gets priority.

However, there are two issues to bear in mind. First, national boundaries create barriers between donors and recipients. Second, as we have seen in so many other areas, great differences of wealth and income between different parts of the world lets buyers in rich countries get what they want in poor countries. People with money who want to jump the line can seek organ transplants abroad. One outcome of globalization has been to create a market in organs for transplant.

The global trade in organs.

Some Asian countries used to have a legal market in organs: India (until 1994), the Philippines (until 2008), and China (to this day) all allowed the legal sale of organs. Sometimes governments participate in this trade. An estimated 90 percent of the organs from China are taken from criminals executed in prisons. (They used to shoot them in train stations.)

There is also a thriving black-market in organs. The average price paid to a donor for a kidney is $5,000, while the average cost to the recipient is $150,000. When the Indian Ocean tsunami wrecked many fishing villages, about 100 villagers—almost all of them women—sold kidneys. According to one report, 40-50 percent of the people in some Pakistani villages have only one kidney. “It’s a poverty thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

Both the desire to circumvent the laws at home and the need to be close-by when an organ becomes “available” have stimulated “medical tourism.”

Finally, there is the alleged problem of “organ theft.” Given a shortage of voluntary donors, it has been suggested that some middle-men may turn to theft or murder. This is a common theme in horror movies and urban legend. It doesn’t have much truth behind it. Which isn’t the same as saying it doesn’t happen at all. “Hey buddy, can you give me a hand?”

[1] I can just see the Three Wise Men—one of them played by Buscemi—impatiently flipping through the calendar in 1 BC, marking off the days until Jesus would be born, trying to get a cheap flight, then getting told that Bethlehem’s inns are all booked solid: “Zoro-H-Aster! What are we supposed to do, stay in a manger?”

Climate of Fear X November 2014.

Posted on by
Reply

For twenty years China has been driving hard for industrialization. About 70 percent of all Chinese energy comes from coal. Chinese industry burns coal for fuel and Chinese apartment buildings are heated by coal-burning generators. China burns about as much coal as every other country in the world combined. The newly-affluent Chine middle-class buys cars. There are already 120 million cars and as many other motor vehicles spewing out exhaust.

Of the twenty most-polluted cities in the world, sixteen are in China. All sorts of ludicrous examples of the “How bad is…?” variety can be cited. During one recent bout of smog in Beijing, for example, a factory caught on fire and burned for three hours before anyone noticed the flames. This is at least as bad as that time the river that runs through Cleveland caught fire.

The health effects are awful. Over the last thirty years, Chinese lung cancer rates have risen by 465 percent. Thousands of people stream into hospitals complaining of breathing problems whenever air pollution becomes particularly bad.

The Chinese government turned a blind eye to this problem for a long time. Recently, they have found it much harder to pretend that killer smogs are just “heavy fog.” For one thing, foreigners don’t want to visit China if it just means that they’re going to feel like they’ve been working through two packs of Camels a day for twenty years. Tourism has fallen off and foreign businessmen don’t want to base themselves in China. For another thing, ordinary Chinese people are starting to complain. Since Tiananmen Square back in 1989 most Chinese have been cautious about demonstrating for democratic government. However, the environmental problems are pushing people into the streets for reasons other than a stroll in the park. One count estimates that there are 30,000 to 50,000 protests a year over clean air, clean water, and clean food.

The pollution problems have become so severe, and have generated a measure of public unrest, that the government began preparing for a shift to nuclear power and renewable energy sources. Looking down-range fifteen to twenty years, they seem to have concluded that they would have to continue expanding the generation of electricity through carbon-burning while preparing for a transition to other forms of energy. Hence Chinas commitment in November 2014 to reach peak carbon burning and to draw 20 percent of their energy from non-carbon sources by 2030, formalized its existing policy.

Still, this commitment leaves a bunch of stuff—aside from ash particles—up in the air.     How much energy will China require in 2030? Are they close to meeting their projected needs already? If so, then reaching peak could be a simple matter. What if they’re only at their half-way mark? Is there any quantitative value assigned as the Chinese peak? Or do the Chinese just get to expand carbon burning as fast as they can until 2030, while also expanding non-carbon energy sources to 20 percent of whatever is the total peak? Will China be building nuclear power plants and solar collectors at a rapid pace for decades to come? If the Chinese government is responding now to public unhappiness with pollution, how will it respond in the future to public unhappiness with either slowing economic growth or trying to transition away from a major industry?

 

“The face-mask nation,” The Week, 15 November 2013, p. 9.

Henry Fountain and John Schwartz, “Climate Pact by U.S. and China Relies on Policies Now Largely in Place,” NYT, 13 November 2014.

Climate of Fear IX November 2014.

Posted on by
Reply

India is bound to be a big loser from global climate change. The air pollution in Delhi is worse than that in Beijing; sea-level rise could forcibly displace 37 million Indians by 2050, and water for farmers could be affected by accelerated melting of glaciers in the Himalayas or disruption of the monsoons. So, India has a deep interest in limiting climate change. However, India is also one of the principle forces causing climate change.[1]

Burning coal for generating electricity is central to India’s strategy for economic development. The country has huge coal deposits (the fifth largest in the world), but little oil or natural gas. Consequently, India launched a ten year plan for building coal-burning generating plants back in 2009. Generating capacity has already expanded by 73 percent. In 2013 India burned 565 million tons of coal. Most Indian coal has a high ash-content, so it pollutes more than do some other commonly used types of coal. This makes India the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. By 2019 the government plans to burn more than a billion tons a year. “India’s development imperatives cannot be sacrificed at the altar of potential climate changes many years in the future,” the government’s Minister of Power has asserted.

It will be difficult to argue that India should adjourn its plans for development. Three hundred million Indians have no electricity at all, and many more have it only in fits and starts. On a per-capita basis, Indians consume only one-fourteenth as much electricity as do Americans. In a country with hundreds of millions of people living in grotesque poverty, making do with less isn’t much of an option. Electricity powers industry and industry raises incomes.

India’s coal-fired industrialization effort alarms environmentalists elsewhere. “If India goes deeper and deeper into coal, we’re all doomed.” said one climate scientist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography. There isn’t much ground for expecting push-back by Indian environmentalists. For the most part, Indians seem to accept both air pollution and the physical displacement of populations in the countryside to make space for more coal mines. The environmental movement in China seems to have more support behind it and, therefore, more influence with the government than is the case in India.

Nuclear power and solar generation offer alternative energy sources. A lot of Western India is cloudless for much of the year, so a lot of solar energy the ground. The government of Narendra Modi has said that it will launch a program of constructing solar-energy plants. Whether this can be carried forward fast enough and on a large enough scale to replace India’s reliance on coal is hard to tell.

So, that’s a problem. Still, China currently burns as much coal as every other country in the world combined. Can India’s coal-burning really pose more of a problem than does that of China?[2] The recent agreement between the United States and China called for China to cap its greenhouse gas emissions before 2030. The Chinese may continue to shovel on the coal until then, but they also might begin to shift from a reliance on coal to other energy sources. If that comes true, it will be a lot more significant for the climate than is India’s continuing development of coal. If the rest of the world moves in one direction, then India might find a way to follow. There’s a couple of big “Ifs” there. Still, the prospects look better than they did a little while ago.

[1] Gardiner Harris, “Coal Rush in India Could Tip Balance of Climate Change,” NYT, 18 November 2014.

 

[2] China produces 46 percent of the world’s coal and imports more; India produces 7.7 percent of the world’s coal, but has been developing its own reserves because of the cost of imports. See: “Climate of Fear IX.”

The economic mess and policy.

Posted on by
Reply

Median income, adjusted for inflation, is about $3,600 less than when President George W. Bush entered the White House and about $2,100 less than when President Obama entered the White House. America has not recovered from the “Great Recession.” We are rolling up on fifteen years of falling incomes after a long period of rising incomes. In contrast, upper income groups are seeing their wealth and incomes rise. Something is wrong.

What do economists suggest about reviving economic growth? They suggest improving education because America has lost its one-time enormous lead over other nations in terms of human capital. They suggest improving our crumbling infrastructure because roads, bridges, airports, and telecommunications are all falling behind needs. They suggest sorting out the messy tax code to reduce distortions in economic activity. They suggest cutting the cost of health care, which drags on the economy and cuts down money wages.[1]

The problem with these sorts of policies is that they will take a long time to play out, have an uncertain effect, and are complicated to understand. Hence, both side look for nostrums that look good on a bumper sticker. For Republicans, the solution tends to be cuts in taxes on high income-earners and corporations. These are the “job creators.”

What do the Democrats want to do to raise stagnant incomes among middle-class “workers”?[2] Well, they haven’t done much for quite a stretch so far as voters can tell. It should surprise no one if lots of them sit out an election. To counteract this trend, Democrats have adopted the cause of a higher minimum wage. In the near future they may turn to a “middle-class tax cut.” It seems most likely that this “cut” would actually take the form of “tax-credits.” These could be presented as tax incentives to save for retirement or for college education. Democrats favor paying for these cuts through higher taxes on upper-incomes. This would be popular with most Americans, who want more money for themselves and resent wealthy people.

How likely is this to happen? On one sense, very likely. The anti-tax frenzy that has gripped America for several decades has led to all Americans paying lower taxes than the historical trend since the Second World War. President Obama was happy to make most of the Bush-era tax cuts permanent.

In another sense, very unlikely. Such policies would have to pass through the House of Representatives. According to one analysis, the House is almost certain to remain in the hands of Republicans for the next decade. Only 28 of the Republicans’ 244 House seats are in districts that voted for President Obama in 2012. The Democrats now hold 188 seats. If all of those seats were moved from Republican to Democrat candidates, then the two parties would tie in the House. Such a shift is very unlikely, given the advantages of incumbents and the unreliable turn-out among Democratic voters. For the last decade American politics has see-sawed between Republicans and Democrats, but what Americans seem to like is a divided government that can’t accomplish anything.

David Leonhardt, “The Great Wage Slowdown, Looming Over Politics,” NYT, 11 November 20014.

Nate Cohn, “The Enduring Republican Grip on the House,” NYT, 11 November 2014.

[1] In fact, health care costs have stopped rising and in some cases have fallen. The reasons for this are subject to debate. It seems unlikely that the Affordable Care Act has anything to do with this—yet.

[2] OK, I’ll leave aside the whole issue of how “workers” used to mean “blue-collar.” Don’t want to suggest that America is really confused about the whole issue of social class.

 

Islamism as a story.

Posted on by
Reply

The current theater of operations for ISIS lies in the midst of ancient and modern historical places. On the one hand, Tel Megiddo, in northern Israel, is the place identified with Armageddon in the Bible’s Book of Revelations. Farther north, in Syria, Dabiq appears in the Hadith as the name of a village where a final confrontation between the armies of Islam and Christendom will fight to a decision. Dabiq is near the Syrian-Turkish border. In Summer 2014 it fell to the ISIS forces. In July 2014, during its own “surge” in Iraq, ISIS began publishing an on-line magazine called “Dabiq.”

On the other hand, it is commonplace for people in the Arab states to explain the decline from earlier Muslim power and prosperity by blaming Western intervention and exploitation.[1] Islamists extend this narrative. Islamists celebrate the breaking of the grip of the Byzantine Empire on Syria and Palestine, and the conquest of “al-Andalus” in the in the 7th and 8th Centuries. The Abbasid and Umayyad caliphates are held up as the ideal for what the Islamists hope to create. Similarly, the Medieval Crusaders are analogized to contemporary Western states.

The American invasions of Afghanistan in 2011 and of Iraq in 2003 certainly gave the proponents of this view a lot of material with which to work. Young Islamists have mastered modern social media just as well as have young non-Islamists, along with young everyone else. Al Qaeda led the way by launching a media campaign: audio cassettes, DVDs, and Internet forums preached the Islamist interpretation.

Recognizing that people like Anwar al-Awlaki[2] had played a role in fomenting and recruiting for terrorism, in 2011 the United States Department of State created a Center for Strategic Counter-Terrorism Communications (CSCC). One chief function of the CSCC is to engage in on-line debate with Islamists. The goal here is to dissuade young people from supporting or joining Islamist groups.[3] The CSCC has a Digital Outreach Team with members working in Arabic, Urdu, Punjabi, Somali, and English.

The means to the goal is to propose a different narrative of history than the one upheld by many Muslims. The CSCC’s counter-narrative focuses on recent history, rather than on a more remote past. It emphasizes the tolerance of pre-Islamist Muslim society. This view clashes with both the restriction imposed under the Islamists’ version of sharia and the brutality with which it is enforced.

The question–not much addressed by Western scholars or journalists or counter-propagandists–is why the messages of either an “End of Days” or a revival of the Caliphate appeals so strongly to thousands of young Muslims. What are they missing about motivation?

 

Shatha Almutawa, “Historical Narrative in American Counterterrorism Operations,” American Historical Association, Perspectives, September 2014, pp. 12-13.

Noor Malas, “Ancient Prophecies Motivate Islamic State,” WSJ, 19 November 2014.

[1] This explanation ignores the pervasive weaknesses of Medieval Arab society that exposed the region to conquest by successive waves of Muslim Turkish tribesmen, followed by the long decline caused by the decay of the Ottoman Empire. Western imperialism had a much briefer period of influence. Not all of those influences were negative. However, the performance of the post-independence Arab states contrasts badly with those of other “developing” societies.

[2] See: “Just like imam used to make.”

[3] One might be forgiven for believing that another purpose is to draw them out so that their other communications can be tracked by the NSA. I’m all for it, but it could lead to “getting flamed” for some hasty remark—by a drone.

Spiderman on Net Neutrality.

Posted on by
Reply

There are three parties to the “net neutrality” debate. There are Internet Content Consumers (ICCs, individuals and businesses); Internet Content Providers (IPCs); and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Since the ISPs connect the ICCs with the ICPs, they’re the subject of proposed regulations.

Unlike the public highways, the Internet is private property. To what degree is it legitimate for government to regulate private property? Should the Internet be treated like a utility or like normal company selling goods or services? A utility bills a customer for how much of the service or good that s/he consumes. It does not distinguish between customers, nor is it involved in competition with other providers, nor does it inquire into what purpose s/he uses the service or good.[1] A normal company competes with other companies for customers by offering new and attractive products at as low a price as possible. Which of these business forms does the Internet most closely resemble?

The Obama Administration argues that the Internet is like electricity, a utility. The President professes to fear (or serves as the mouthpiece for ICPs who fear) that ISPs will be able to “restrict the best access or pick winners and losers in the online marketplace.”

Internet Content Providers are not all equal in that some of them (Netflix, Hulu) require a lot more bandwidth than do many others. Internet Service Providers want to be able to charge these customers a different price than they charge other users. They analogize on-line content to cable television content. Being able to charge differential rates has led to an explosion of widely desired content in cable television (HBO for example). The same will happen with on-line content.

Internet Content Consumers and Internet Content Providers both hate this idea. Customers see the ISPs as positioning themselves to gouge money out of consumers by forcing them to pay for “packages” that include content that they don’t want or to pay premium prices for content that they do want. ICPs see the ISPs forging alliances with whoever has the deepest pockets, while squeezing anyone who doesn’t have great wealth yet out of the “fast lane” and into a “slow lane.”

On the other hand, differential pricing and “congestion” pricing are both well-established practices in business, government, and education. The toll on the bridge over the Delaware-Chesapeake Canal goes up on the week-end; colleges discount their price to students by providing different amounts of financial aid to different students; stores have sales.

The Internet is one of the engines of the future growth of the American economy. The Internet is not a “mature” industry or technology. Therefore the single most important issue is to decide what policy best encourages productive investment in and maximum expansion of the Internet. ISPs picking and choosing between customers sounds like a prescription for favoring established interests over new interests in a segment of the economy that is undergoing rapid development, innovation, and change. Ponderous—and perhaps politicized or paralyzed—government regulation sounds like a prescription for driving away badly-needed investment.

“One gives you cancer and the other stunts your growth.” You choose.

Neil Irwin, “A Super-Simple Way to Understand Net Neutrality,” NYT, 11 November 2014.

Eduardo Porter, “The Pitfalls of Net Neutrality,” NYT, 12 November 2014.

[1] I wonder if this is actually true in some place like Humboldt Country, CA, where there are a ton of grow houses?

 

What We Learned From the Report of the 911 Commission X

Posted on by
Reply

In the mid- to late-Eighties, Khadr Abu Hoshar, a Palestinian terrorist resident in Jordan, was recruiting young men who had been through the Afghan training camps. In 1996 Abu Hoshar was imprisoned for a time by the Jordanians. By 1998 he had been released and was back to his old tricks. During 1998 he and a group of 15 fellow terrorists worked up an ambitious plan for attacks. During 1999 he got in contact with some Islamic terrorist jihadis in Afghanistan who had some sort of ties to OBL. They were providing technical advice and training to Abu Hoshar’s group. (pp. 252-253.)

Abu Hoshar’s security practices had not improved during his stretch in a Jordanian prison, however, because the Jordanian intelligence service spiked his phone and kept his whole group under observation. On 30 November 1999 the Jordanians intercepted a conversation between Abu Hoshar and Abu Zubaydah, the Afghan with connections to OBL, which seemed to herald an imminent attack. They rolled up all but one of the group, turned the screws on the prisoners until they got a bunch of intelligence in short order, and told the Americans what was up. (pp. 252-253.)

The CIA situated this report in a larger context during the first few days of December 1999 by reporting the possibility of a planned series of attacks by OBL at the “millennium,” some of which might involve weapons of mass destruction. (pp. 253-254.) Various efforts were made to hinder any such attacks by various means: by diplomacy (the Taliban were threatened, the Paks were cozened); by disruption in cooperation with friendly intelligence services; by loosening the leash on CIA operations. (pp. 254-255.) In December 1999 the leader of the Northern Alliance offered to plaster al Qaeda’s training camp at Derunta with rockets. Again, the CIA thought that this would violate a ban on assassinations, so they waved him off. (p. 270-271.)

Canada was awash in terrorists and aspiring terrorists in the late Nineties. Ahmed Ressam, a Moroccan petty criminal who had managed to find refuge in Canada in 1994, was recruited in 1998 by another jihadi then resident in Canada. Ressam spent part of 1998 training an Afghanistan terrorist camp. Here he joined a group of other Algerian jihadis who had been recruited for anti-American terrorist action. Back in Canada in the first half of 1999, Ressam received assistance from three other Algerians who were hiding out in Canada from French authorities, who wanted to talk to them about some stuff that had happened in France. By December 1999 he was in Vancouver, BC, preparing to enter the United States to attack LAX. (p. 255.)

On 14 December 1999 Ressam behaved oddly when attempting to enter the United States at Port Angeles, Washington, and was arrested. (p. 257.) The Ressam arrest coming on top of the report of the Jordanian plot caused great alarm in Washington. The FBI started tapping numerous telephones under FISA warrants. Richard Clarke’s office warned that “Foreign terrorist sleeper cells are present in the US and attacks in the US are likely.” Clarke also asked Berger rhetorically “Is there a threat to civilian aircraft?” (pp. 258-259.) In late December 1999 the US received a report from a foreign intelligence service that OBL planned to bomb several transatlantic flights. (p. 259.)

What We Learned From the Report of the 911 Commission IX.

Posted on by
Reply

In February 1999, there seems to have been no confusion among the NSC and CIA people about what they wanted to accomplish: they prepared to use intelligence about Bin Laden visiting a desert hunting camp favored by some important people from the United Arab Emirates to launch another cruise missile strike (and tough luck for any Emiratis who happened to be present). The report seems to me to suggest that Clarke first blocked this strike because he saw the UAE as America’s ally in the fight against terrorism, then in March 1999 basically exposed to the Emiratis the CIA’s knowledge that the campers welcomed Bin Laden. The camp immediately folded up and Bin Laden never passed through there again. (p. 202.)

In February 1999 Tenet persuaded President Clinton to allow the CIA to try to recruit the Northern Alliance to capture or kill Bin Laden. The Northern Alliance leader showed little enthusiasm for capturing an enemy and, besides, the Northern Alliance had no ready access to the areas where Bin Laden was located. (pp. 203-204.)

In May 1999 the CIA thought it had a 50-50 chance of nailing Bin Laden in Kandahar, but they had just botched the targeting of a “smart bomb” in Belgrade and had hit the Chinese embassy. Naturally a little touchy about accuracy, Tenet seems to have backed away when it looked like everyone was getting ready to John-the-Baptist him if the attack did not succeed. (pp. 205-206.)

The rest of 1999 got frittered away trying to come up with a plan to get Bin Laden in Afghanistan. Nothing emerged. However, in 1999, and again in 2000, a group of Americans from different agencies traveled to Saudi Arabia in an effort to sort out the source of al Qaeda’s money. To their surprise they discovered that Bin Laden was not financing operations out of a vast private fortune—as had long been the assumption. Belatedly, they discovered that Bin Laden had rebuilt the “Golden Chain” of donations. How to penetrate, let alone destroy, that network remained a mystery to the CIA. (p. 268.)

These developments really left the US with no option but to try to disrupt any offensive operations outside of Afghanistan. What were they doing on this front during 1998-2001? For one thing, the National Security Agency kept watch on the communications of known terrorists.

Real trouble was at hand. In 1994 a group of Algerian terrorists had hijacked a jet, possibly with the intention of crashing it into the Eiffel Tower. Later in 1994, Ramzi Yousef, then based in the Philippines, plotted to bomb twelve US airliners flying over the Pacific. (p. 90.) This plot was broken up. In early 1995, Ramzi Yousef’s accomplice in the Manila airlines plot told interrogators that the two men had discussed crashing a plane into CIA HQ. Khalid Sheik Mohammed had adopted this plan.

In mid-1996 KSM had pitched OBL on a plan to crash airliners into American buildings. (pp. 214-215.) OBL did not commit and KSM seems to have doubted that OBL was serious about attacking the Americans.

Then the embassy bombings persuaded KSM that OBL was serious about attacking the United States. He renewed his proposal for al Qaeda support for the “planes operation.” In March or April 1999, OBL agreed to support the plan. (pp. 216, 223.)

Thus, during 1999 both the Americans and al Qaeda were searching for ways to get at one another to deadly effect. Of the two, al Qaeda operated with fewer restraints and more imagination.

Week End Update I.

Posted on by
Reply

In Western Civilization there is a deeply ingrained dread of human inventiveness. Witness the stories of Prometheus (fire) and Icarus (flight). Former reporter and novelist Dan Fesperman applies this lesson to contemporary drone warfare in a novel grounded in facts. The plot centers on a drone attack gone-awry in Afghanistan. A dozen civilians are killed and others are gravely wounded. Darwin Cole, the controller who fired the “Hellfire” missile on orders from some mysterious above, comes apart at the seams after the attack. Booted from the Air Force, abandoned by his wife and children, and seeking solace in the proverbial bottle, Cole is approached by a team of journalists. They’re snuffling after a war-crimes story wrapped in a war-profiteering story hidden inside a corporations-own-America story. Having escaped the proverbial bottle, Darwin Cole soon encounters the proverbial scientist-tortured-by-guilt. This scientist, Nelson Sharpe, provides the means to voice Fesperson’s research into drone technology: it isn’t that complicated, it’s readily available to whoever wants to use it, and governments can’t control it any better than they control firearms or drugs. Islamist fanatics, Mexican drug lords, Montana militias, and private military companies all can—and will–seize this terrible technology. Then they’ll hire a bunch of pimply gamers to fly the things—probably from Arkansas trailer parks converted from meth labs, instead of from “secret” command posts in Nevada.[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myhnAZFR1po

Well, probably. However, the next story to consider is that of likely counter-measures. On the one hand, one can envision hordes of little fighter-drones circling in constant Combat Air Patrol over sensitive sites, unnoticed by the people below until there is a sudden flash of light in the sky as some approaching danger—or flock of seagulls—is eliminated. On the other hand, one can envision a further expansion of the “requirements” lists submitted to the NSA. Anyone who expresses an interest in unmanned aerial vehicles on-line should expect to have his or her name added to a watch list. So, you might look at Dan Fesperman, Unmanned (Knopf, 2014).

 

For good and ill, the United States military isn’t what it once was. The end of the Cold War led to big cuts in forces. Contractors took over many support functions, then spread into providing security services. For budget reasons, they’re here to stay. However, their mis-steps attract a lot of bad press. So the question becomes how to harness the contractors for the benefits they provide while limiting the damage they can do. One approach has been to try to create international norms for the use and behavior of private military contractors. In September 2008 the United States and sixteen other countries signed a pledge to require companies to “comply with international humanitarian or human rights law.” A 2010 document asked private military contractors to follow well-defined standards of behavior, to maintain transparency, and to be held accountable for their actions. The number of companies that have “taken the pledge”—as my Welsh grandmother used to say of temperance oaths—is a good measure of the spread of private military contractors as a form of business. Seven hundred as of 2013. Most are small companies that sub-contract work from the big boys: Xe (the re-labeled Blackwater), DynCorp, and Aegis.

If private military contractors are a business, will “regulation” prove successful? In any event, Ann Hagedorn, The Invisible Soldiers (Simon and Schuster, 2014), provides a lot of interesting information on the private contractors.

[1] This is probably bad news for any out-of-work airlines pilots who sign on the fly drug shipments into the United States. One more career avenue closed off.