Saturday, January 10, 2009
Maybe Obama Can Blame Dennis Ross on Hillary
If he can't, President-Elect Obama has just lost an overseas absentee voter. The news that Dennis Ross will be the Obama administration's special envoy to the Middle East has brought on a case of buyer's remorse with this Palestinian-American commentator.
The prospect of Ross continuing in his long-accustomed role as Ambassador-at-Large to the Middle East does not fill Daoud Kuttab with hope, to put it mildly, and Ross certainly does not offer change.
The prospect of Ross continuing in his long-accustomed role as Ambassador-at-Large to the Middle East does not fill Daoud Kuttab with hope, to put it mildly, and Ross certainly does not offer change.
Friday, January 9, 2009
New Link: Website of the Saudi Arabian Religious Police
I've added a new link to my sidebar, one that connects to a Google language tools translation into English of the official website of the Saudi Arabian General Presidency for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, commonly known as the "Mutaween" or Religious Police.
I've been looking at that Arabic-only site for years, trying to puzzle out the meaning of its articles. Finally, it struck me that you can translate websites via Google's language tools and - voila! - now I can read it at last.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Surprise All Around at the Panetta Announcement
I wasn't the only one surprised by the Leon Panetta announcement.
CNN interviewed this lady who was just as puzzled, and she doesn't seem at all pleased:
CNN interviewed this lady who was just as puzzled, and she doesn't seem at all pleased:
“I was not informed about the selection of Leon Panetta to be the CIA Director. I know nothing about this, other than what I’ve read,” Feinstein said in a statement. “My position has consistently been that I believe the Agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time.”
"We Used to Pass Out Ammunition, Now We Trade Medications"
Diplopundit noted a wonderfully snarky remark made by a junior Diplomatic Security Special Agent (see Insider Quote), which he provided for a thesis on the topic of the State Department's use of private security contractors in Iraq.
According to "DS Special Agent #4":
I share his concern. I feel his pain. But mostly I'm laughing so hard at this example of the DS generation gap that I might lose my dentures or spill my Metamucil. Touche, #4.
As a non-agent, but nonetheless a close observer of the Diplomatic Security Service since the 'Inman 80s,' my personal take on the situation is that DSS divides into what I think of as the "Speed Loader Generation" and the "Cargo Pants Generation." I think of them that way because I've rarely, if ever, seen cargo pants worn by an agent old enough to have once used a speed loader, or a speed loader used by a young agent.
[For the information of whippersnappers like #4, a "speed loader" was a primitive device used to quickly reload revolvers; and "revolvers" are those funny-looking round guns that you see today mostly in old black and white detective movies. Amazing as it now seems, speed loaders were actually restricted sale items in the Carter/Reagan era, and they were about as fancy as police equipment got back then.]
The generation gap in DSS is due to a history of uneven new agent intakes. There was a huge burst of hiring during the Inman program of the mid- to late-1980s, followed by a dearth of new hires during the 1990s, followed in turn by another flurry of hiring after 1998. This produced a distortion in the workforce, two demographic bulges roughly 20 years apart. The situation has been exacerbated by the need to assign lots of the younger agents to run around after private security contractors at the high threat posts, experience which does not prepare them well for normal DS agent duty as Regional Security Officers.
The generation gap works both ways, of course. I've heard senior agents, men in my greying peer group, refer to their juniors as immature and "gear-queer." I can sympathize a little with both sides of the divide, having once been a trigger-happy young punk myself in my Army days, and then, a few years later, having led young(er) punk troops when my 28 year-old self provided the adult supervision for an antiterrorism/force protection unit.
The gap presents a serious problem for both cohorts of agents. The young guys need better-rounded 'normal' work experiences, and the old geezers certainly don't want to have to keep up with the Blackwater types in Iraq. So, I say in the spirit of Rodney King, "can't we all just get along?" Adopt the many good recommendations for more rational management of private protection contractors that were made in that thesis linked above, and reward those young punks like #4 who have paid their dues in Iraq and deserve to get developmental tours at normal posts.
There. I hope that problem is now solved, because Matlock is on TV and I need to go find by bifocals.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By the way, the title of this post ["We used to pass out ammunition, now we trade medications"] is a remark made by a DS agent friend of mine as he looked around at the balding heads gathered at his retirement luncheon.
According to "DS Special Agent #4":
"These senior agents [TSB note: referring to DS managers who are insufficiently appreciative of #4] need to understand that if they have to refer to an incident that occurred during the Reagan or Carter administration as an example of their work in a high threat environment, then they need to do a tour in Iraq.”
I share his concern. I feel his pain. But mostly I'm laughing so hard at this example of the DS generation gap that I might lose my dentures or spill my Metamucil. Touche, #4.
As a non-agent, but nonetheless a close observer of the Diplomatic Security Service since the 'Inman 80s,' my personal take on the situation is that DSS divides into what I think of as the "Speed Loader Generation" and the "Cargo Pants Generation." I think of them that way because I've rarely, if ever, seen cargo pants worn by an agent old enough to have once used a speed loader, or a speed loader used by a young agent.
[For the information of whippersnappers like #4, a "speed loader" was a primitive device used to quickly reload revolvers; and "revolvers" are those funny-looking round guns that you see today mostly in old black and white detective movies. Amazing as it now seems, speed loaders were actually restricted sale items in the Carter/Reagan era, and they were about as fancy as police equipment got back then.]
The generation gap in DSS is due to a history of uneven new agent intakes. There was a huge burst of hiring during the Inman program of the mid- to late-1980s, followed by a dearth of new hires during the 1990s, followed in turn by another flurry of hiring after 1998. This produced a distortion in the workforce, two demographic bulges roughly 20 years apart. The situation has been exacerbated by the need to assign lots of the younger agents to run around after private security contractors at the high threat posts, experience which does not prepare them well for normal DS agent duty as Regional Security Officers.
The generation gap works both ways, of course. I've heard senior agents, men in my greying peer group, refer to their juniors as immature and "gear-queer." I can sympathize a little with both sides of the divide, having once been a trigger-happy young punk myself in my Army days, and then, a few years later, having led young(er) punk troops when my 28 year-old self provided the adult supervision for an antiterrorism/force protection unit.
The gap presents a serious problem for both cohorts of agents. The young guys need better-rounded 'normal' work experiences, and the old geezers certainly don't want to have to keep up with the Blackwater types in Iraq. So, I say in the spirit of Rodney King, "can't we all just get along?" Adopt the many good recommendations for more rational management of private protection contractors that were made in that thesis linked above, and reward those young punks like #4 who have paid their dues in Iraq and deserve to get developmental tours at normal posts.
There. I hope that problem is now solved, because Matlock is on TV and I need to go find by bifocals.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By the way, the title of this post ["We used to pass out ammunition, now we trade medications"] is a remark made by a DS agent friend of mine as he looked around at the balding heads gathered at his retirement luncheon.
Leon Panetta? Really?
This news leaves me puzzled. Leon Panetta is a former California Congressman, former OMB Director, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff and former lawyer. He's currently the head of a public policy institute. He gives every indication of being an all-around nice guy. I once worked on an inter agency task force that reported to him when he was Chief of Staff, and I got no bad vibes from him. But I'm at a loss to see what background or experience he has that's pertinent to the job of CIA Director.
According to his Wikipedia entry, Panetta "was chief of operations and planning of the intelligence section" at Fort Ord, California, during his Army service (1964-1966). Also, he's wearing a trench coat in the photo that accompanied the New York Times story, and, when photographed from certain angles, he looks kind of sneaky. Beyond that, what recommends him to be CIA Director?
Saturday, January 3, 2009
I'm (Virtually) Speechless
According to the Washington Post (O Brave New World That Has Such Avatars in It! Arlington Among Entities Making a Virtual Presence, Arlington County, Virginia, has geeks hard at work creating a virtual world of government bureaucracy. As if government isn't already surrealistic enough.
Some quotes from the story:
So, I could enter Arlington County's Second Life virtual world and ... do what? Go to a job fair, attend a meeting with a government official, research toxic chemicals and so forth? That's the kind of thing I do all day in Real Life. Why should I do it in Second Life, as well? I prefer to spend my virtual time doing more entertaining things, such as crashing cars in Grand Theft Auto or going a few rounds with my kids in Wii Boxing (where the Old Man can still deliver quite a cyber beat down).
The whole idea of virtual government seems like something out of the 22nd episode of The Simpsons ("They Saved Lisa's Brain"), in which a Mensa group took over the city of Springfield. The Comic Book Guy - who is exactly the type I would expect to find populating Second Life - rewrote jury duty notices to read something like:
Virtual government would make perfect sense to the Comic Book Guy and his cohort of online role-playing obsessives - oh, by the way, enjoy that virtual inaugural ball, guys - but I suspect it would leave everyone else flummoxed.
Assuming Arlington County doesn't just give the whole thing up as a bad idea, I have a suggestion for its virtual world. They ought to allow people to fight parking tickets in a virtual traffic court, complete with Second Life lawyers, cops, and judges. If I know my Comic Book Guys, that could easily be as entertaining as any computer game.
Some quotes from the story:
The virtual world Second Life, a landscape of primping avatars, ballroom dancing bears, space stations and vampire castles, has a new -- and maybe even more surreal -- inhabitant: the Arlington County government.
The county's cyber-office, on the first floor of a virtual glass-and-steel tower, sits behind tinted sliding doors, across from a vending machine that sells digital Cheez-Its and Pop-Tarts. Visitors can take a seat in swiveling office chairs and scan understated orange and gray promotional posters ("brainpower: arlington's alternative energy") as they wait to meet with an economic development official.
- snip -
While the setting is cyber, the economic development official behind the site is real. John Feather, 53, has been volunteering his time to create Arlington's online presence, which he hopes will give the county another way to sell itself to tech-savvy businesses.
"People can come and get a real sense of not only what Arlington is now, but of what Arlington will be," Feather said. "If we are at least here struggling with everyone else, that kind of says something about us."
-snip -
[T]he Washington area has become home to creative efforts to move government toward such realms.
The Bethesda-based National Library of Medicine, for instance, has created in Second Life a potentially noxious world of everyday health hazards called Tox Town, where clicking on a tower in a dusty construction site produces a list of the chemical properties of neighborhood runoff.
At the University of the District of Columbia, criminal justice students practice investigations and patrols and deal with such imaginary perp behavior as the attempted theft of Professor Angelyn Flowers's pink convertible. Other designers have created in Second Life a virtual Capitol Hill, where plans are afoot for a white-tie inaugural ball Jan. 20. Instructions are forthcoming on how to find a good tux.
"There will be music. There will be dancing. There will be socializing. There will be virtual punch," said Steve Nelson, executive partner of Clear Ink, a Berkeley, Calif.-based Internet firm that built the cyber Capitol Hill. "The idea is after they leave [the ball], they actually feel like they participated somehow."
- snip -
What could the county do with its space? One idea is hosting a job fair in the virtual world for defense workers who don't want to move from Arlington as part of a massive realignment of Defense Department jobs. The anonymity of avatars could be very useful for those who wish to job hunt discreetly.
So, I could enter Arlington County's Second Life virtual world and ... do what? Go to a job fair, attend a meeting with a government official, research toxic chemicals and so forth? That's the kind of thing I do all day in Real Life. Why should I do it in Second Life, as well? I prefer to spend my virtual time doing more entertaining things, such as crashing cars in Grand Theft Auto or going a few rounds with my kids in Wii Boxing (where the Old Man can still deliver quite a cyber beat down).
The whole idea of virtual government seems like something out of the 22nd episode of The Simpsons ("They Saved Lisa's Brain"), in which a Mensa group took over the city of Springfield. The Comic Book Guy - who is exactly the type I would expect to find populating Second Life - rewrote jury duty notices to read something like:
"You have been selected to join the Springfield Justice League. Rendezvous with us at 8 AM Monday in the Municipal Fortress of Vengeance (formerly known as the Courthouse)."
Virtual government would make perfect sense to the Comic Book Guy and his cohort of online role-playing obsessives - oh, by the way, enjoy that virtual inaugural ball, guys - but I suspect it would leave everyone else flummoxed.
Assuming Arlington County doesn't just give the whole thing up as a bad idea, I have a suggestion for its virtual world. They ought to allow people to fight parking tickets in a virtual traffic court, complete with Second Life lawyers, cops, and judges. If I know my Comic Book Guys, that could easily be as entertaining as any computer game.
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