Category: All Fragilecologies

Fragilecologies Blog
24 August 2004

There’s something fishy about the Swift boat political ads and it’s a red herring

In the early 1960s I was in the Rhode Island National Guard and in the late 1960s worked as a civilian on transpacific cargo shipments to Southeast Asia for the Military Airlift Command headquarters in Belleville, Illinois. I was not called up to go to Vietnam because in 1963 there was no major involvement of US troops in Vietnam. However, my stint in the Guard did provide me with some experience (albeit limited) of serving in the military and going through basic training. I joined the Guard so that I could later work overseas in a US Agency for International Development training program. I did the weekend warrior thing, at least for a while.

Listening to the controversy surrounding the anti-Kerry Swift boat TV ads, and hearing that they were turning vets against Kerry, I realized that I too am an honorably discharged veteran sans combat experience (though I did spend time observing two of Portugal’s colonial wars — in Angola and in Portuguese Guine). All this is just some insight into the paragraphs that follow.

At the outset I want to say that the Swift boat anti-Kerry controversy in a manufactured one. That is, it is a story concocted by people who for whatever reason want Bush to win a second term in office. These attack ads present a political “red herring” issue which is designed to trash the record of a guy, like thousands of other Americans, who volunteered (for whatever reason) to participate in a war effort. The negative attack ads also are meant to put Kerry on the defensive (he has to take time out away from presenting his views on key issues of concern to many people — the urban guerilla war in Iraq, tax breaks for the rich, the sullying of the American environment, etc.) (photo by Ed Mundy).

Now that the second surviving Swift boat commander (aside from Kerry) Rood has supported Kerry actions in Vietnam, the Swift boat stories can be proven wrong as nothing more that disinformation, i.e., propaganda, verging on slander.

I am writing now because the media has reported that the Kerry-Edwards team is losing support drastically among veterans, because of these ads. Now, I do not care how people vote. That is their choice and that is the reason we have so many veterans of foreign wars who fought to protect that personal right. But what such attack ads suggest is that veterans from all services, of all ages and who fought in various wars, police actions and other conflicts are gullible, easily hoodwinked and incapable of separating fact from fiction, even at the expense of their own personal financial well-being. This cannot be the case.

I have much more faith that veterans will see the truth on this particular issue. And that truth is that there are two candidates, one having served in an unpopular war, been wounded, and received medals including three honored Purple Hearts. The other served in the Alabama National Guard, whose Guard record is unclear {few remember him}, who stayed at home enjoying the freedoms afforded by living in America.

Veterans are not stupid nor are they fools. Obviously, they have political views that span the political spectrum. That political right was why their forefathers participated in various wars on behalf of the American people of all political persuasions, colors, creeds and national origins. But they must not let incorrect misleading attack ads be THE main reason that they vote for one candidate or against another.

I think that the brain trust behind the launching of the Swift boat TV ads attacking Kerry’s war record has blundered in a strategic way {Remember that the Bush presidential campaign in 2000 did the same to the war record of Senator McCain, his fellow Republican}. Their attack ads were aired too far in advance of the election in November. Such a long intervening time period before the election allows veterans to get to the facts (such as the support of the other surviving Swift boat captain, Rood), which have apparently been intentionally distorted. Had these ads been released closer to the election there would not have been time to sort out who was telling the truth about Kerry’s military service.

What worries me though is the following quotation penned by Shakespeare in Julius Caesar: “Cassius suggests that the people get the government they deserve”. This can be a good thing, if (and it’s a big “if”) the people do their homework and vote based on facts, not on rumor or innuendo. However, it is a bad thing, if people vote only based on emotional responses, especially emotion whipped up by media ads that spread misinformation and untruths.

Keep in mind the following scary thought: I had more military experience that the VP Vice President Cheney who apparently had “other priorities” [his words] during the Vietnam War era and, as a result, he had no basic experience in the military.

P.S. I think it is interesting to note that if Cheney had said during the Vietnam War era what he is saying today, the veterans that he is “kissing up to” today would have attacked him as being unpatriotic.

Fragilecologies Archives
18 August 2004

There’s a lot of talk these days about the “digital divide.” Digital divide refers to the difference in access to computers between the developing countries and the industrialized ones as well as between “computer haves and have-nots” within the same country . This is the way things are today, with regard to the current situation of access to the wealth of information on the World Wide Web and the Internet.

While there is a limited, though slowly growing, access to computers in developing countries, the places for access are few and far between depending on the particular country. Therefore, access to that wealth of information by way of the computer is not available to most people. On the other hand, computer technology and access to it by people in industrialized countries (and the well-to-do within rich and poor countries) are advancing rapidly. Most people in developing countries are lagging far behind their counterparts in the industrialized North, and that disparity is growing.

In an attempt to bridge the gap between rich and poor as well as between industrialized and agrarian societies, programs have been developed to bring computer connectivity to villages and poor neighborhoods, even to the poorest of poor neighborhoods, in Latin America, Africa and Asia. There are numerous non-governmental organizations whose goal is to bridge that divide. It is admittedly not an easy task.

Early bridges were made from local materials such as wood, stone and fibers. Today, most bridges have a concrete, steel, or wood framework with an asphalt or concrete roadway. Based on the length of the barrier to be crossed, the amount and type of traffic as well as forces of nature (wind, tide, flood) different materials and shapes of bridges are used. There are many types of bridges such as arch bridges, girder bridges, truss bridges, cantilever bridges, cable-stayed bridges, suspension bridges and moveable bridges. Many bridges are actually combinations of different types of bridges — and no two bridges are identical! Most bridges are held up by at least two supports set in the ground called abutments. Some bridges have additional supports along the middle of the bridge called piers. [Source: www.swe.org/iac/LP/bridge_03b.html]

On the west side of the North Atlantic, for example, outdated models of usable computers are sent to landfills or taken apart for their parts, as people trade up to the newer increasingly more powerful models. This process is happening at the same time that there is a dire need for computers (and for connectivity) to the World Wide Web on the eastern side of the Atlantic, specifically in Africa. Yet, access to the Internet is crucial for Africans over the next couple of decades for reasons of education, capacity building, awareness, and disaster preparedness if not avoidance, and even for nation-building purposes.

The US National Science Foundation (NSF), like the national science organizations in other countries, is concerned for many reasons about the digital divide and is exploring ways to bridge the divide, some for national interest and some for humanitarian reasons. The UN Secretary General, too, is concerned about improving the connectivity of developing countries to the globe’s information highway via the Internet. If connectivity were to happen universally, then a virtual worldwide university would be created. Already, there are many free courses on the Internet and they are available to anyone just for the cost of being able to connect to it, e.g., access.

A major problem facing those Africa governments that want to bridge the digital divide is one of resources. They are facing many crises at the same time — food, water, health, land degradation, a variable and changing climate. They must prioritize their strategic objectives. In doing so they will surely ask the following: In what way will bridging the digital divide help them to solve their food production problems, or improve their economies, or bring peace and stability to their countries? It is not an easy question to answer with confidence. In theory one can present arguments to make this point, but the reality is that the burning issues of the moment tend to overshadow concern about educating the general populace or even kids in school. Aside from the necessary condition that a government has the will to close the digital divide, it will have to be accomplished with resources from outside its borders. Humanitarian organizations, private, nongovernmental, UN and governmental will have to take on the major share of the task to bridge the divide.

Some governments are concerned about the open access to information that they don’t want their citizens to know. News travels very fast on the Internet and few secrets can be localized if not kept. The same is true for rumors; they can be spread. The Internet is not only a source of information; it is also a source of disinformation as well as conflicting information.

There has always been a gap over access to information or to new technologies within countries as well as between them. “Access is power, because information empowers those who have it”. That will continue to be the case in the future. There will continue to be digital haves and have-nots. The best we can hope for right now is to keep the gap between them as small as possible.

The good news is that the digital technology does exist. What is lacking is the access to that technology by most people in the world. But there is at least one way to bridge that digital divide in the short term — the RADIO. By taking the information on the Internet to the radio waves, those with computer access now can relay important Internet information to the general public in far away places where Internet access may be very limited or even non-existent. In other words they can serve as information piers in the same way that concrete and steel piers are used to provide physical support for the middle parts of real bridges. For example, using digital broadcasting by way of satellite transmissions, people everywhere can listen to educational and other awareness-raising programs being read to them in a timely and targeted way. The possibilities are endless.

When people talk about bridge building, what might first come to mind are the major bridges they have seen or heard about: London Bridge in England, the San Francisco Bridge in California, and the like: sturdy bridges with many spans crossing major rivers

San Francisco Bridge, Calif.

London Bridge, England

Using the radio as a bridge today would be like constructing a temporary virtual brid, like a pontoon bridge that is often constructed when a flood has destroyed major bridges.

I think many people in the Northern countries view the radio as a source of entertainment and do not consider it as a major way to educate. In their part of the globe, for example, TV and other electronic media have upstaged the radio waves. That view must be changed, because radio can serve as an important temporary bridge across the digital divide. This would provide the major powers with enough time to develop sturdier, more permanent, bridges. This could help to ensure that people in developing areas, no matter how remote, would have easy access to the information highway that people elsewhere are presently enjoying.

Fragilecologies Archives
3 August 2004

Many people today do not know about (or can recall) the details of how Ralph Nader was catapulted into the limelight back in the 1960s. At that time, he was a lawyer concerned about protecting the American consumer. In 1965, he wrote “Unsafe At Any Speed.”

This was an exposure of the lack of safety features in American automobiles, epecially those of General Motors in general and the Corvair in particular. He noted that many autos were “structurally flawed, ” i.e., the Corvair could roll over. He took his crusade to the US Congress and the American people — and won. For example, in 1966 the US Congress passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act. Part of Nader’s victory was sparked by a General Motors management decision to spy on him, looking for any indiscretion on Nader’s part in order to discredit him and his exposure of the auto industry. In essence, Nader (the equivalent of the biblical David) took on GM (Goliath) and the auto industry. Nader (Mr. Clean) sued General Motors and won. Nader used funds from his court settlement to develop consumer-oriented public interest groups.

Vehicles (agents of injury) were built with new safety features, including head rests, energy-absorbing steering wheels, shatter-resistant windshields, and safety belts, among other auto safety features. Today there are various organizations and agencies that watch the auto industry to make sure it keeps driver-passenger-pedestrian safety in mind.

At the time, Nader was attacked not only by the auto industry, but by others as well for having done the right thing: exposing unsafe auto design. Here, for example, is the opening line of a speech given in 1975 by a senior project engineer for Corvair: “Good evening, fellow Nader haters! Do you love your Corvair? [applause] Now I know I’m in the right place!” (from www.vv.corvair.org/Library/benzinger.htm)

Perhaps one of the most immediate and visible spin-offs of Nader’s victory was the emergence of young activists, mostly dedicated volunteers and committed, relatively low-paid staff. They became known as Nader’s Raiders. Among other consumer-related activities, they kept a close eye on the auto industry and were ready to blow the whistle on its shortcomings. (photo credit: John Zimmerman, Life Magazine)

Decades later, Nader is back in the news. In the 2000 election, his participation inadvertently enabled George W. Bush, someone to whom he appears to be diametrically opposed, to eke out a victory in the US presidential election. In that election, he was a third-party alternative (the Green Party). Who knew the election would be so close or that Gore’s defeat could be laid at the feet of Nader’s Green Party candidacy?

Interestingly, an Associated Press story (“Former Nader’s Raiders Urge Him Not to Hurt Gore” by Eun-Kyung Kim on 21 October 2000) just a few weeks before the election reported that

A dozen old Nader’s Raiders are urging the Green Party candidate to reassess his presidential campaign, saying he could cost Democrat Al Gore the election. “It is now clear that you might well give the White House to Bush. As a result, you would set back significantly the social progress to which you have devoted your entire astonishing career,” the group wrote Friday in its open letter to the consumer advocate.

The article continued: the group’s letter also told Nader “it would be a cruel irony indeed if your major legacy were to erase the victory from the candidate who most embodies your philosophy, Al Gore.”

It is now four years later, and time once again for a presidential election. Nader is back in the picture, but this time without the backing of the Green Party. This time his potential impact on the election is something that can be estimated in a better way at least. This time his candidacy most likely could make him a spoiler, as far as the Kerry-Edwards Democratic ticket is concerned. Nader and his diehard supporters surely know this. Calls to Nader from organizations and supporters of the Kerry-Edwards ticket (I even sent an email to him) urging him to drop out of this election have fallen on deaf ears, literally and figuratively.

Today his run for the presidency presents former supporters of Nader’s Raiders with a dilemma: how to look at him as a person, as a hero of days gone by, and how to look at him as a candidate for the highest office of the land. Clearly he has no chance to win this particular election, while he does have a foreseeable chance to give the White House back to the Bush-Cheny-Rice-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Ashcroft team. About why he would do such a thing, one can only speculate. Some say he has lost his marbles. Others say his ego drives him on. His supporters contend that, in the long run, such bold movemenets do matter by eventually helping to make the basic changes to the American political processes that they seek. Neither I, nor anyone else for that matter, can get into the mind of Ralph Nader; maybe even Nader cannot do so. It is clear that he is now marching to a different drummer than he did in the 1960s. As the saying goes, “politics makes for strange bedfellows.”

In the context of the 2004 Bush-Kerry election, the reality is that the Republican Party loves Ralph Nader. Check out some of the headlines on the Internet by doing a search for “Nader and Republicans”:

Nader Getting Help from Republicans
Bush Backers Buy Ads for Nader in Swing States
Nader’s People Welcome the Help from These Republicans
Republicans Get Nader on Michigan Ballot
Republicans Want Nader on Ballot
Republicans for Nader — Again
GOP Donors Double Dipping with Nader

Is it déjà vu all over again, as suggested in the political cartoon at the left from the run-up to the 2000 presidental election? (from cagle.slate.msn.com)

It appears to me that Nader has put together a new set of Nader’s Raiders: only this time those raiders are for the most part raiding the Democratic Party of sorely needed votes in the November 2004 election. Nader has taken on the label of a spoiler as opposed to a protector.

To an old Nader supporter like me, the names of Nader and of Nader’s Neo-Raiders are generating a negative feeling toward them and their so-called political movement. (On a personal note, as someone who is in his mid-sixties and nearing retirement, Nader’s antics reinforce my belief that there is a good time to stop doing what you have done all of your work life, to leave your career on a good note, rather than stay on longer than need be. While it may be good for one’s ego to stay on doing what one wants to do and not let go, it can be very bad for one’s lasting reputation as determined by friend and foe alike.)

One could argue that Nader has finally achieved what he was after four decades ago: the acceptance as well as backing of Big Business. However, it has not been in support of environmental issues as he might have wanted. Instead, it has been at the expense of many of his original supporters and, to my mind, his positive image in American history.

Maybe Nader will soon see a “bigger” picture than the picture of Ralph Nader running for president for the third time in a decade. He should seriously consider a variation of the words that comedian George Burns used to say to his wife Gracie Allen as a closing statement at the end of their act, “Say good night, Ralphie.”

Fragilecologies Archives
21 July 2004

President Bush has been making statements right out of the old western frontier days, when dealing with American foreign policy in the Middle East. This has not gone unnoticed by the print media. For example, an article in the Christian Science Monitor was entitled “More John Wayne Rhetoric Infuses Politics.” The article referred to the fact that Bush has used such challenging phrases as “bring ’em on,” “smoke ’em out,” and “dead or alive,” all in reference to terrorists in general and Islamic fundamentalists specifically. His go-it-alone, bullying (some say macho) attitude is reminiscent of the Old West and of the myth of the American cowboy mentality. This conjures up images of the rough-and-tumble cowboy movies for which Hollywood became well known in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.

I was not alone with my initial knee-jerk feeling that Bush was sounding a bit like John Wayne. Each cowboy produced by Hollywood seemed to have his own trademark: Lash LaRue had his whip; Tom Mix had his 10-gallon white hat; the Lone Ranger had his mask, and so forth. John Wayne was the tough-talking, swaggering cowboy who fought for justice and did not back down in the face of lawlessness. He was as clever with words as he was with his guns.

Similar sentiments about John Wayne can be found in the media worldwide. By chance I came across comparisons of Bush’s comments and those of John Wayne in German, Spanish, and Italian. Here is an example of one comparison taken from the Internet (www.crisispapers.org/essays/henry-george.htm):

George Bush appears to be stuck in the fifties and sixties, with the John Wayne and “the Sands of Iwo Jima” – “Good vs. Evil,” “you are either for us or against us.” War to George Bush is a glorious spectacle as one watches brave men fight the evil-doers and die for glory – as one watches all this from the safety and comfort of the theater seat, or of the Oval Office.

Several political observers and humorists have comments on the apparent cowboy-like mentality of Bush, especially when they write about his foreign policy, sort of a bullying attitude, and a “take our policy or leave it.” Bush has personified the “America first” attitude and the belief that America has the right to do as it wishes in the world. Bush had already turned his back on the global warming problem when he lost no time after taking office in 2001 to reject the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement designed to work toward slowing down the buildup of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere. Such a buildup is known to lead to an increase in global atmospheric temperature. This outright rejection of the Kyoto process angered America’s European allies, whose governments and publics are considerably more concerned about the prospects of global warming and their potentially devastating impacts than is the Bush administration. America generates the world’s largest share of greenhouse gases, and many of Bush policies have been anti-environmental at the global as well as the local level. The administration has been pro-auto industry, pro-energy corporations, anti-energy alternatives, and has sought openly, as well as surreptitiously, to weaken environmental legislation that has been on the books for decades.

Aside from the partisan political aspects of specific policies, the tone of the Bush team has been one of arrogance. For example, it is a matter of record that the Bush foreign policy team went into Iraq with force and in essence thumbed America’s nose not only at the UN system, but also at several of America’s NATO allies. We put together what has been referred to as “a coalition of the willing.” The fallout of all this open disregard for diplomacy in international politics has been America’s isolation from the international community, scorn for our Wild West approach to coalition building at a minimal level, and a major loss of leadership and respect for America worldwide.

If all this is true, then why apologize to John Wayne? As noted earlier, I too have been guilty of having referred to Bush’s approach to international politics as the John Wayne approach. I felt that Bush was purposely imitating what he considered to be John Wayne’s style. In Wayne’s movies, being hard-nosed and persistent in the name of justice got him his victory.

Now that the dust has settled, and now that we are chest-deep in an Iraqi quagmire despite the handover of governance to Iraqis, I started to reconsider what actually happened in the old John Wayne movies: the tough talk, the seemingly know-it-all attitude regardless of situation, country, or time period in the movies. I recalled many of the bar fights, the range wars, and problems with cattle rustlers in which Wayne had been involved in these movies. Originally, I compared Bush to the John Wayne character when Wayne had become part of a barroom brawl: chairs flinging, bottles crashing, fists flying and, of course, the obligatory smashing of the mirror on the barroom wall. But was that really John Wayne?

For the most part, John Wayne did not start the bar fight or the range war. In fact, it was usually a sidekick who would get into a fight because of having been teased by a sharp-shooting gunslinger. The sidekick was usually either clueless or arrogant. Invariably, the sidekick would start the fight, and then it became Wayne’s responsibility to protect his friend, along with truth and justice, from harm. John Wayne was, for the most part, on the side of law, order, and justice. Bush appears to have been acting more like the sidekick than like John Wayne.

Having come to this realization, I now believe that what the “coalition of the willing” needs is a John Wayne.

Fragilecologies Archives
7 May 2004

There is a growing body of research focused on the impacts of climate on society and the environment. Climate impacts research started with a small number of researchers studying weather and its impacts on agriculture, water, and fisheries, among other topics. The numbers of researchers studying impacts have sharply increased, slowly at first in the 1980s, and more rapidly in the 1990s.

Since the end of the Cold War and a shift in focus to concerns about how human activities may be altering the atmosphere, thereby changing global climate (e.g., global warming), funding for research on the societal aspects of the climate system has also sharply increased around the globe, albeit from a relatively modest base. This has helped a lot to improve the understanding of climate-society interactions. Despite the hollow cries of the climate skeptics, certain well-publicized climate processes have helped to bring attention to the societal impacts that have influenced them (e.g., thinning of the ozone layer that protects human life from harmful UV radiation, or the likely impacts on global climate of increasing amounts of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere).

As of today, though, there appears to be a lack of realization by the physical science community of the contributions to their research by the climate and climate-related impacts communities. This is obvious when one reviews physical science papers on climate issues; references to literature related to societal impacts research are usually missing.

This is not to say that we haven’t come a long way since the mid-1970s in terms of some recognition, but there is a long way to go. It requires following a difficult path, one that is largely psychological; i.e., how to get physical scientists to take more seriously social science and humanities contributions to climate-related research and the application of that research to meet societal needs. Part of the reason for this neglect is the “NIH” syndrome: “not invented here.” The social sciences have contributed greatly to the use of otherwise unused scientific research findings. It seems that when the scientific community is ready to deal with issues of societal concern (many of which were identified a decade or more ago), they embrace them, especially when espoused by “one of their own.” This is not an attack on science, but rather a personal perception of the way the system works.

Here’s where Ginger Rogers comes into the picture. Ginger Rogers was the dance partner of Fred Astaire who was a famous dancer and film star of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. They were a fantastic dance team. “Team” is the operative word here: admittedly, I do not have the facts in hand, but I would bet that he made a lot more money as part of the team than she did. It seems that he got the lion’s share of attention and praise for his prowess on the dance floor. She was his partner but was not the center attraction.

A friend of Ginger Rogers once discussed the dance team in an interview and was asked about Astaire and the dance team. She put the relationship in the proper perspective when she said that, “Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did, but she had to do it in high heels and backwards.” On reflection, it becomes clear that her task was much more difficult than his (not to belittle his role in the partnership). As far as I am concerned, she was the unsung heroine in this story.

Now back to climate impacts. It is my feeling, after spending over 30 years interacting with the physical sciences, that the societal aspects of climate system research have been the Ginger Rogers of climate research. We have raised issues for scientists to focus on. We have helped to make research findings usable by various elements of society. We have supported their efforts to receive adequate funding for their experiments in the field, in the laboratory, and in space. We have helped to generate interest in society at large about their work. We have done all this as members of the climate research TEAM. We have done so with paltry resources, as well as under difficult conditions in distant and often remote areas. We have done so because we really do believe that societies and the leaders that govern it can benefit from an improved understanding of climate-society interactions and from the application of climate and climate-related research to address societal issues. We do not seek fame or fortune. Many work for “bed and breakfast” in hostile environments.

What the climate-related social science research community does deserve is acceptance by and awareness of the physical science community of their contributions to climate science. Ginger Rogers deserved much more credit than she got, all the while making Fred Astaire look good.

Physical scientists and policy makers need to recognize and support the activities of the social sciences and humanities in addressing climate-related issues. Without application, much scientific research could end up like the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no one around to hear it make a sound.

Fragilecologies Archives
7 April 2004

Guest Editorial: By Dr. Ilan Kelman
ilan_kelman@hotmail.com

March 2004, as with most other months, included plenty news related to buildings and risk. A Kansas office building designed to reduce employees’ obesity was reported along with nine deaths from building collapses in an earthquake in Turkey. Meanwhile, many countries were evaluating the vulnerability of key buildings to terrorism and then the U.K.’s Chief Scientific Advisor suggested that climate change poses a bigger threat than terrorism.

When planning, designing, constructing, operating, maintaining, renovating and decommissioning a building, is it possible to reconcile all these risk issues? Particularly when many risks from buildings are caused by our decisions, such as materials used, design decisions such as ventilation, activities performed in and near buildings, and the environmental processes and human attitudes which buildings influence. Plus the choices made for design loads to withstand extreme environmental events, such as wind, snow, ground shaking, extreme temperatures, and hail.

In designing buildings, all possibilities for building damage and, more importantly, harm to the individuals and societies using them, should be considered. Creeping environmental changes, such as the drying up of the Aral Sea and desertification in China, must be considered alongside the sudden, extreme events. The effect on buildings from thousands of small tremors over a decade should continue to be investigated alongside the impact of a single, big earthquake.

Could and should a building (or certain buildings) be designed to withstand a nearby explosive supervolcano eruption, a large meteor strike, an ice age, a collision with an aircraft carrier, or an impact from a rampaging kangaroo? Could and should a building be designed to reduce the probability of transmission of microbial pathogens such as the influenza virus or HIV or to discourage the survival of vectors such as mosquitoes and ticks?

No building can be designed to withstand all external risks or to eliminate all internal risks. We must make choices. Those choices often create buildings which are risky to some degree or which build some risk into a building. Defining the boundaries where we decide and accept that our social, political, legal, economic, scientific, and technological processes can no longer produce safe buildings or safe communities is perhaps more challenging than creating and maintaining a community which is safe within the boundaries which we select.

Further questions could be posed about designing buildings. Could and should buildings be designed to reduce risks to health, using the World Health Organization’s definition: “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. Could and should buildings be designed to make individual and collective behaviour more environmentally friendly and less selfish?

How far should communications and information technology be incorporated into buildings so that the building monitors us and responds according to data received? How much control should be given to automatic systems compared to the individual? To what extent can buildings and communities be incorporated into the natural environment? How much must the natural environment be changed to produce a building or community that satisfies our needs? Or could buildings be designed to change our needs so that they–and we–are more sustainable? Is it feasible to design a building which meets or which adapts itself to the perceived needs or wants of every possible user?

The issues of risky buildings, building risk, and sustainable communities thereby merge while expanding into philosophy and ethics. Buildings are rarely built for the sake of building. Instead, they are meant to serve humanity and should facilitate creating and maintaining a sustainable society. Rather than being a partition between the environment and society, buildings should be part of their integration, through appropriate risk management amongst other tasks needed to progress towards sustainability.

Fragilecologies Archives
4 February 2004

Guest Editorial: By Dr. Ilan Kelman
ilan_kelman@hotmail.com

Islands are isolated but inspiring, small yet fascinating. Is one lifetime ever enough to explore an island? How could the collective knowledge of islands, islanders, and island topics be made available to everyone with an interest? The answer requires borrowing a concept proposed and implemented by Michael Glantz: “affairs.”

The Glantzian notion of “affairs” refers to “commercial, professional, or public business” or a “matter, concern.” Rather than pigeonhole
and separate fields that must interact and cross over to solve problems, he creates a think-and-do space where anyone interested in a specific topic can contribute.

Thus, Climate Affairs is a book, workshops, educational programs, and Desert Affairs is an environmental education program, an international research, education and application center. The six subdivisions in each Affairs area are Science, Impacts, Policy and Law, Politics, Economics, and Ethics and Equity. But the goal is to join them rather than separate them. Anyone with interests in climate or deserts, irrespective of their training, professional background, or job finds a forum to interact with others.

Rather than staid labels such as “issues” or “topics,” “affairs” galvanizes attention and forces inquiries. Once drawn in through “Climate Affairs,” meteorologists can talk to water lawyers. Once drawn in through “Desert Affairs,” farmers in arid regions can talk to international development philosophers. “Affairs” ventures beyond a collection of ideas or subjections and requires all aspects to be dealt with simultaneously and equitably.

The expected expansion is more “affairs” collectives. Not only for environmental phenomena beyond climate: Volcano Affairs, Evolution Affairs, and Pollution Affairs – but also for environmental types beyond deserts: Ocean Affairs, Mountain Affairs, Forest Affairs, and Space Affairs. Island Affairs emerges naturally.

Despite the difficulties of defining “islands” or “small islands,” they can be intuitively understood as a relatively small land mass surrounded by water. Dozens of countries and territories are islands, while thousands more islands dot the globe. Due to their isolation and smallness, islands tends to have unique environments, people, cultures, and challenges. The power of islands to inform non-islands often remains unrealized.

The phrase “Island Affairs” is not new. Witness the International Journal of Island Affairs and New Zealand’s Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs. Understanding islands in a comprehensive context occurs in James Lewis’s Island Anthology and the International Centre for Island Studies.

But the six subdivisions of Climate Affairs and Desert Affairs form the core around which workshops, programs, a center, or a book could be developed, thereby giving Island Affairs the prominence and comprehensiveness deserved. Meanwhile, the opportunity would be provided for expanding into other fields, including History, Culture, Environments, and Sociology. We must not only be inspired by islands, but we must inspire others about islands.

Fragilecologies Archives
12 January 2004

Guest Editorial: By Dr. Ilan Kelman
ilan_kelmal@hotmail.com

A flood is imminent or in progress. With the usual wisdom, a retirement home has been built in the floodplain. Single storey, of course, so that stairs do not worry the tenants. An emergency evacuation is implemented and a resident dies from a heart attack during the evacuation. Is that an indirect disaster death?

Flood hazard parameters including depth, velocity, temperature, contamination, and lack of oxygen did not contact the person. Therefore, a common suggestion is that the fatality did not occur directly due to the flood disaster. Furthermore, a non-flood-related condition — age, possibly with a heart condition-was a significant factor in the death. The conclusion is that the person died indirectly as a result of the flood disaster.

The flood disaster was not even a necessary condition for the death to occur. Instead, it was the trigger that caused an underlying, long-term vulnerability to manifest. The heart attack could easily have occurred the next day, the next week, or the next year.

Unfortunately, this approach to classifying the death relies too much on the quantitative flood hazard parameters without fully considering vulnerability. The “underlying, long-term vulnerability” mentioned does not stop at the victim’s age or heart condition. Instead, vulnerability encompasses the range of systems, processes, and conditions which led an elderly person with a weak heart to be forced into a rapid evacuation because some water approached their abode.

These vulnerabilities include:

• The placement and design of the retirement home.
• The choice of residents for the retirement home.
• Inadequate warning systems, emergency decision-making processes, and evacuation plans.
• Community design and land use which led to flood waters threatening the retirement home.

These issues were more guilty of causing the death than rainfall or a medical condition.

Such issues also cause flood-related drownings. Drownings are generally accepted as being direct flood disaster deaths. If a house gets wet and the occupant drowns, we ask why they were living there and why few precautions were taken to prevent them dying. Examples of possible solutions are proper planning and land use; enacting pre-event, careful, slow evacuation; or living elsewhere.

Similarly, if a retirement home is flooded and a resident dies from a heart attack while being evacuated, we ask why they were living there and why few precautions were taken to prevent them dying. Examples of possible solutions are proper planning and land use; enacting pre-event, careful, slow evacuation; or living elsewhere.

In both cases, the deaths had much more to do with society’s attitudes, behaviour, decisions, and actions over the long-term than with the water, the specific flood event, or the hazard parameters. The same questions are asked and similar solutions are proposed, irrespective of cause of death or the specific physical vulnerabilities of the victim. Instead, social, societal, and community vulnerabilities must be considered to have caused the specific deaths.

The principle to emerge is that any death which would not have occurred without the disaster event counts as a direct death from that event. A flood disaster is a disaster event and deaths from it are from that disaster. Challenges and inconsistencies emerge, but it is a reasonable starting point. Further analogies reinforce this view.

If someone dies from a heart attack or kidney failure while awaiting rescue after being trapped in an earthquake, or during the rescue process, those deaths are usually considered to be direct. If someone dies from a heart attack or kidney failure while awaiting rescue from floodwaters, or during the rescue process, the deaths are similarly direct.

In the flood case, perhaps water deaths are being confused with flood deaths. A heart attack during evacuation from a flood is not caused by water; however, it is directly related to the flood disaster. A flood disaster is much more than water. A flood disaster needs water, but it is a primarily a disaster event rather than a water event, with all the vulnerability characteristics that a disaster event implies.

Disasters are sociological, not physical, phenomena. Disasters are caused by us, not by nature. Hence, flood disasters are caused by us, not by water. Any deaths resulting from the disaster are directly attributable to that disaster.

Labelling some disaster-related deaths as indirect, secondary, or side effects diminishes the connection with the event and suggests that less could have been done for prevention. Neither is true. We hear “an act of god”, “inconceivable”, “unpreventable”, “they would have died anyway”, and “impossible to imagine”. Poor excuses. It is our fault and we must admit that to solve the problem.

Any disaster-related deaths are unacceptable.

Fragilecologies Archives
9 January 2004

By Dr. Michael H. Glantz and Dr. Igor Zonn

I would think that President Bush would like to take back some the words he spoke in May 2003, that the war in Iraq had successfully ended. From the perspective of December 2003 a more correct statement by the president would seem to have been that the coalition forces had successfully removed Saddam and his government from power. But, it is not possible to roll back the clock in order to take back words spoken, and then to replace them with more carefully chosen comments.

What has been happening in Iraq since the Bush announcement of a military victory (which it clearly was) is the emergence of a political quagmire and urban guerrilla warfare. It is still not clear if the guerrilla actions against the coalition forces are being orchestrated from a central location. They may not be. They do not have to be. From the view of the coalition, it would be better if they were centrally coordinated, because a central command post would be relatively more vulnerable. It appears though to be a mix of actions against the coalition with some activities being carried out under someone’s directives and other actions being unstructured, anomic acts of violence. One sign of orchestration, though, is the fact that there seems to be a guerrilla goal of taking the lives of at least two American troops each day. This has been an apparent modus operandi for the past few months.

Every once in a while we hear someone say that the American operation in Iraq is much like the situation that America faced during the war in Vietnam. For example, the US has backed into a situation without proper forethought and planning for the future, that is, without thinking about the long-term consequences of its military actions. Words like bogged down, protracted and quagmire seem to crop up every once in a while, based on the American experience in Vietnam. That war cost more that 50,000 American lives and perhaps ten times that wounded. I guess one could argue that the Tet Offensive carried out by the Viet Cong in Saigon in the late 1960s could be seen as somewhat analogous to what is now happening in and around Baghdad and around the Sunni triangle. But the Tet Offensive was one quick military action against the American forces as much to demoralize the troops and the will of the American government against carrying on with a protracted costly (in lives and money) war. On Tet Offensive, see www.vwam.com/vets/tet/tet.html

It is a horrible picture to portray for the future of American and other coalition troops in Iraq. The problem with this comparison is that only a few aspects of the situation in Iraq may be like that in Vietnam. For many other aspects, however, that comparison falls short. This is true of most if not all historical comparisons. Obviously, no analogy is one hundred percent accurate.

There is, however, a contemporary conflict situation that has more similarities to the current situation in Iraq. We believe that there are more aspects of the current situation of the coalition forces in Iraq that can be compared to those in the current Russian situation in Chechnya, a situation about which most Americans are unfamiliar.

Chechnya is a Russian republic in the Caucasus region. It is relatively speaking oil rich, landlocked, and made up of mountains, hills and plains. They are fiercely independent people, although they have been deprived of that independence throughout their history. Stalin had the Chechens physically removed and dispersed from their homeland in 1944, because he considered them to be unreliable as Russian allies in World War II. They were sympathetic to invading Nazi forces that might free them by removing Soviet rule from their land. It was in the mid-1950s that Khrushchev allowed them to return to their homeland.

With the breakup of the Soviet Union in December 1991 the Chechen Republic sought independence from the Russian Federation, after several other republics had successfully gained their political independence. The Russian Federation and especially the Caucasus region are made up of many ethnic groups in addition to Russians.

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The Russian government, however, saw the Chechen Republic in a different light than it viewed other Soviet republics. The Russian fear was that a Chechen demand for and gaining of independence would start a cascade of demands by other ethnic groups in the Russian Federation for separation as well.

As a result of these diametrically opposed views on the political future of the Chechen Republic, a bloody war broke out in the mid-1990s, which was followed by a truce for a few years, and then a restart of a bloody protracted conflict that continues today. Putin was elected president of Russia in part for his pledges to somehow resolve the Russian-Chechen situation. Some years have since passed and there is no resolution to the war is in sight. The guerrilla war in Chechnya continues.

Much of Chechnya’s infrastructure has been destroyed. It has turned into an urban guerrilla war. Chechnya’s capital city of Grozny has been trashed. Russian soldiers are killed or wounded just about every day. Russian patrols are under constant threat of attack; helicopters are shot down from the ground; and landmines are used in ambushes to derail convoys. In fact mines are everywhere. The Russian army, with all its might has become bogged down in a military and political quagmire from which it cannot easily extract itself, even though the original leader of the war for separation, Dudayev, was killed several years ago by Russian troops.

The Chechen guerrillas have taken the conflict to Moscow and to other cities. They have taken as hostages hundreds of people in hospitals and theaters. They have used car bombs, suicide bombers (most recently on a train), and have blown up apartment buildings in the heart of the city inflicting death and destruction with little regard for the people who happened to be living in them.

The following comments from various articles in the Christian Science Monitor, taken from news reports and interviews, might give an idea of what the Russians have been and still are up against in the situation in Chechnya.

“But few political analysts in Moscow believe that planting the Russian flag over Grozny’s ruins [Grozny is Chechnya’s capital city] will bring an end to the war.”

“The taking of Grozny has been expected for some time, and it is the signal for the beginning of a full-scale guerrilla war.”

“In that conflict Russian forces took Grozny after a long and bloody assault. But they never managed to fully control the city…”

“Russian forces officially endure 150 deaths a month to rebel mines and ambushes.”

Russian troops and police regularly carry out sweeps…ostensibly to check identity documents and weed rebels out of the population”.

Back to Iraq.

The American political leaders misperceived the reception that the coalition forces would get from the Iraqis who had been liberated from the rule of Saddam. The American forces are no longer seen by many Iraqis not as their saviors from an oppressive sadistic dictatorship (Saddam and his sons) but as occupiers of Iraq. Only recently and at the urgings of European nations has the US administration begun to set down a timetable for turning the governing of the country back to Iraqis. The timetable for a military presence of the coalition forces remains as yet open-ended.

Like Chechnya, Iraq has ethnic groups or political factions that are in conflict. Like Iraq, Chechens have increasingly been turned away from the seemingly good intentions of the occupiers because of their mistakes, their collateral damage (e.g., friendly fire accidents), and hostility of many Iraqi men to their troops. Oh yes, they both have an involvement in the world’s oil supply. Iraq is a major source of oil. Chechnya has oil but it can also disrupt oil pipelines that are used to transport Caspian oil to the world marketplace.

We do not want to take this analogy too far, lest we tend to draw simple potentially misleading conclusions that might come from a comparison of the current military situation in Iraq with the war in Vietnam a few decades earlier. Nevertheless, we do want to show that there may be more similarities between the current situation in Iraq and that in Chechnya. Such comparisons may help the US when it reviews what it intends to do in the near to mid-term in the Iraqi situation.

It appears today that the US government is not really listening to outsiders (the Russian government also does not accept outside advice about the Chechnya situation). Perhaps it is time for the coalition (and Russian) leaders to start the New Year — 2004 — by stepping out of the proverbial box they find themselves in to gain a glimpse of the real world. Perhaps the time is right to think more objectively and diplomatically about how to extract themselves from the difficult situations they got themselves into, even if the initial reasons for taking their actions were politically above board and honorable.

A useful proverb to consider is as follows: “when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging”. We would also add to it “and look for a ladder”.

For photos of the situation in Chechnya, please see chechen.8m.com/photos

Fragilecologies Archives
19 December 2003

Guest Editorial: By Dr. Ilan Kelman
ilan_kelman@hotmail.com

Ants, lemmings, ostriches, or sheep. Which most suits your palate? For imitating, not for eating. When it comes to disasters, we often emulate some of the worst animalistic characteristics.

Ants. Are we industrious, being productive continually and sacrificing ourselves for the common good? Few would claim that to be entirely true. The optimist suggests that parts of the model are sometimes seen through altruism and devotion towards building a better society for everyone. The pessimist, even the realist, claims that the parts seen are the rich making the poor work. The rich are protected from disaster, but the poor could be wiped out at any moment and are expected to sacrifice themselves in order to protect the rich.

Lemmings. Or the myth thereof. Are disasters part of a collective consciousness towards species survival, an unconscious and unintended drive towards a population cull? Suicide is not implied, because few, if anyone, would seek out disasters in which to die. Lemming theorists do include suicide as one reason for the apparent mass lemming deaths, but they have other suggestions.

Stupidity is a possibility. The lemmings do not intend to drown or to fall off cliffs, but they do not see the danger. The specter of murder, lemmingicide, is raised through plants releasing a toxin to protect themselves from being munched by the lemming overpopulation. Disasters could be the human form of lemming stupidity — the danger is obvious but we do not realize or bother — or murder when certain sectors of society deliberately protect or help themselves at the expense of others.

Ostriches. Let’s bury our heads in the sand, because disasters are not a problem. Oops, a flood is washing away the sand. Let’s move and bury our heads in some other sand. Oops, a wind storm is blowing the sand away. Let’s move and bury our heads in the ash. Erm, the volcanic ash. Which is shifting with the earthquake. We must search until we find sand without any hazards.

Sheep. Follow the leader, even if their choice of path or reason for choosing that path does not make sense. Follow the leader, even if only out of a morbid sense of curiosity. Thinking for ourselves is too difficult and is not really possible anyway. Just do what the flock does. Life becomes so simple.

Traits of all these animals, and others, are evident in our actions regarding disasters. For example, an excuse often cited is that mitigation measures cost too much, even though reams of studies show that mitigation saves money, resources, and lives. The lemming is indifferent to large losses of life in foreseeable and preventable incidents. The ostrich closes its eyes. The sheep follows what has gone before, even when that has been proven to be unworkable.

The ant, however, is hard at work. Hard at work building walls around the facts and avoiding solutions that do better. Industriousness, creativity, energy, and skill are devoted to constructing and maintaining a society with tremendous disaster losses. The way we operate yields immense disaster losses for even the rich, with an array of short-term and long-term vulnerabilities which we are not yet willing to address.

Perhaps we should avoid the distracting and problematic animal analogies. Instead, we should simply ask why we are not willing to do enough to stop disasters and to reduce vulnerability. And how we could change.

With thanks to David Etkin, Tina Plapp, and the Universität Karlsruhe (TH) Postgraduate College “Natural Disasters”.