Old Lesson for Current Times

Nearly 50 years on I am finding new value in my Army experience.  Booby trap training has prepared me well for dealing with coronovirus.  Well, at least insofar as not touching potentially infected surfaces limits exposure.  Not touching things unnecessarily is a basic principle of not getting killed by a booby trap, a principle that has stayed with me ever since my military servitude.  I often refrain from touching or disturbing some object thinking "I don't need need to do that.  Let it be."   Never once did I believe that the object might be dangerous but why take any chance for no good reason?

That caution is a hard-earned lesson.  One evening in Vietnam I was stetting up my Claymore anti-personnel mine on my sector of the company's night defensive perimeter when I spotted an unexploded American grenade on the ground.  The pin was missing but the thrower had forgotten to flip the safety clip off the spoon so the grenade did not detonate.  For some reason I thought I could not just leave it sitting there.  I also remembered that it might be a booby trap.  I was on a slope where I could get below the grenade and figured I'd be below any shrapnel if it was a booby trap and prodded it with a stick.  It did not explode.  I thought I had very cleverly rectified a potential hazard but when I told my platoon sergeant what I had done, he informed me in no uncertain terms that I was stupid fuck who could have gotten himself killed.  I don't think he actually yelled at me since we were supposed to maintain noise discipline but it sure felt like it.

Now every surface is dangerous and I look for ways to avoid touching them wherever I can but I am always remembering that grenade.

Ground Zero

...of the Great Recession.

Border Wars

Frontiers are difficult places. They are the dividing line between Them and Us. Frontiers often test the limits of any authority attempting to control what passes across that line. The US-Mexico border is a frontier where US authority faces its severest tests.

Culturally, the southwest never fully surrendered its Mexican history and heritage which has re-asserted itself in many parts of the US that were carved out of northern Mexico in 1848. Latino demographics indicate that Hispanic culture and ideas will shape the American southwest in decades to come. Nothing the anti-immigrant, US nativists can do will change that. The numbers are there.

A cultural resurgence will be a hollow achievement,though, if the US and Mexico cannot control the violence along their shared border. Weak public institutions and endemic corruption in Mexico combined with a strong US demand for intoxicating drugs and US prohibition of same has spawned waves of violence along the border. Cuidad Jaurez has long been known for its high murder rate; more recently the city has endured a wave of violence associated with the drug trade. El Paso, Texas gets the collateral damage, as do the occasional others.

If he United States is truly concerned about weak, corrupt governments that allow organizations to flourish who are likely to perpetrate violence against American citizens, then a good place to begin would be Mexico rather than Afghanistan and Iraq. Not military occupation, to be sure, but rather working with Mexican government and NGO’s to identify indigenous solutions that strengthen public institutions and provide alternatives to violence.

Of course, the job is not limited to the other side of the border. The US drug war is yet another war that merely exacerbates the problem it is supposed to eliminate. Drug prohibition, like its 1920’s antecedent, simply forces the trade outside of the law, where corruption and violence flourish. Ending drug prohibition would remove one major source of income and power from criminal gangs that know how to seize the advantage in that environment.

Pigs will fly before this nation rethinks the drug war. Depending on how you count, the Drug War is in its 26th or 39th year. The former dates back to Nancy Reagan in 1984, the latter to Richard Nixon in 1971. The Drug War’s history reaches back to the 1930’s. At 26 year, the Drug War is still America's longest, a failure that lumbers on.

Not Your Average Cruise

A story about the notoriously corrupt Haitian police force actually performing its duties in the earthquake's aftermath also points out that the disaster will have long term consequences for public safety:

What scares the Haitian police the most is not visible to most outsiders. Jails and prisons fell down in the quake, and 4,000 Haitian inmates escaped. Many were the leaders of Cite Soleil gangs, which act as armies of intimidation; they work for the business elite and politicians, carrying out kidnappings, assassinations, extortion and political intimidation -- often for hire. They were deeply involved in drug trafficking.

Andresol vowed, "I will find these guys and put them back in prison."

But U.N. officials say the United States denied a request to send down a prison ship. There is no place to house inmates in the city.

The prison ship denial surprised me. First, because the concept of a prison ship is not a familiar one to me. It's not something I'd thought about but I guess having a floating, mobile incarceration facility is useful in some instances.

Second, I figured that the US (aka Incarceration Nation)would certainly have a prison ship or two. This country seems spare no expense in building its domestic security infrastructure--like war, it's something America still does well--so I have no doubt that my government owns a number of prison ships.

They are probably all full.