Avuncular American

South of Europe's Volcanic Cloud

Al hamdulillah.  Thank God.  Thanks also to Royal Air Maroc, which got us back to Brussels yesterday from Tangier, just as Belgian air space was opening to allow a few flights to land.  Our flight from Morocco was on schedule, and the scene at Tangier's shiny new airport was a picture of calm.  We didn't realize how lucky we were - TV cameras were on hand at Brussels to record horror stories from travelers who had been stranded for days.  Whereas we were just returning on our planned day and flight.  Lucky us.

House guests in the medina of Tangier (of which more in a coming post), looking out onto the Strait of Gibraltar and across to Spain, we knew that we at least had options - ferry, train, bus - that the poor travelers stuck in airports did not.  But the feeling that the entire continent to the north, and the incessant flow of planes across the Atlantic, had come to an almost complete halt was eerie, a bit like the oppressive atmosphere of On The Beach, Nevil Shute's post apocalyptic novel turned into a classic film in 1959.

In On The Beach, the cloud of course is invisible nuclear fallout, and the refuge - only temporary, which gives book and especially film a sense of "après nous, le Déluge" - is Australia.  The rest of the Southern hemisphere has already succumbed to the radiation.

The eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull volcano may be a natural phenomenon, but its effect on the airline industry and the rest of the world economy that is linked to this vital means of moving people and things has brought images of apocalypse to TV screens worldwide.  Whether it's your airmail letter delayed or misrouted, your rose farm in Kenya wilting in the sun, or your vacation plans ruined, the effect of this spewing spoiler is universal.  The AP has a good economic roundup.

Questions are already being raised - in a way that no amount of lecturing on air travel's effect on climate has done - over the viability of an economic model that can be grounded by almost invisible dust.  Great Britain's launching of Royal Navy ships to help repatriate its citizens has heroic echoes of Dunkirk, but the real long term solution to this vulnerability will be less photogenic.  More telecommuting, better rail/air regional hubs, and better coordination than a five day delay by European transport ministers in dialing up a conference call.

We're not yet "On the Beach," helplessly waiting for the cloud to descend upon us.  It is not, as the French title of the film goes, "Le Dernier Rivage."

South Africa Before It Was Free

Hearing the news from South Africa twenty years ago today, we knew that Nelson Mandela's release from prison was historic.  If it was the turning of the tide against apartheid, it was a process that had already started in a number of ways.

You could tell that change was happening and that important things were imminent when we visited South Africa in the winter of 1989/1990, just weeks before Mandela's release (image: 1990 South African stamps, via Namib Stamps, "Africa's premier stamp site").

Our son and daughter, just kids when we traveled across the Indian Ocean from multiracial Mauritius on a visit to South Africa, now incredulously remind us that we actually went there while apartheid was still in effect.  Shocking, for liberals like ourselves, who listened regularly to Johnny Clegg's songs of protest, including his ode to the imprisoned Mandela, Asimbonanga.  I had even organized an alternate medevac site on French Réunion for US diplomats, so that black officials would not have to undergo the humiliation of being labeled "honorary whites" if flown to South Africa.

And yet, we went to what was then the RSA - the Republic of South Africa, as it was then called - under white rule.  There's no way around that.

But the South Africa we experienced was already in pre-liberation mode.  Staying at a timeshare near Kruger National Park, we chatted with black African guests, who seemed to take it as a matter of course that they were able to stay at what had previously been a whites-only resort.  Later, when we took the famous Blue Train from Pretoria to Cape Town, its "international" status meant that African passengers could also climb aboard - for the price of a pretty hefty ticket.

In Cape Town, I had lunch at the Rotary Club, which - in a city with 75% non-white population - had all of one "coloured" member.  But it was a start.

For anyone who takes for granted the incredible feat that was the Mandela-led peaceful transition after his release from Robben Island - his one-man rebranding of a country -  listen to his fellow former prisoner Ahmed Kathrada on the BBC's "Witness" program (10 minute podcast).  In other, less steady hands, South Africa may have had quite a different break from the past.

Johnny Clegg saw that, when he wrote the lines to "Asimbonanga" in the late Eighties:

Oh the sea is cold and the sky is grey
Look across the island into the bay
We are all islands till comes the day
We cross the burning water

Chorus

A seagull wings across the sea
Broken silence is what I dream
Who has the words to close the distance
Between you and me

No one other than Mandela could have closed that distance.

Travels Through the Green Heart of Florida

Back roads in central Florida are a nice alternative to risking life and limb on the Interstate.  You can drive almost as fast, but the two opposing lanes impose a certain discipline, and there's no comparison in traffic congestion.  After a family reunion on the margins of Disney World, I headed back to the Gulf coast through the orange groves of "Frostfree" and other colorfully-named places.  Passing over Troublesome Creek, I wasn't far from Soggy Bottom.  Had the Coen brothers (of O Brother, Where Art Thou? fame) been inspired or was this an echo of the 2000 hit comedy?  In any case, a road works sign informed me that "State Prisoners at Work" were up ahead, but I detected no chain gangs.

My genial host in Sarasota marveled at my wanting to drive through what he called "cracker country," but it's all part of my "cultural learnings," as Borat would say.  At least this rather pretty swath of the state has a real economy - though apparently based on a citrus monoculture - compared to the Florida coastline, where the part of the population not earning its living from tourism sells life's necessities (and a lot of dross too) to the other part that is dependent on the "snowbirds," that quaint expression describing the Northerners (American and Canadian) who migrate south for the winter.  There were even rolling hills and lakes that didn't appear to be glorified swamps.

As with other parts of rural - especially Southern - states, there are lots of churches, some part of larger denominations like the First Baptists, others of various pentecostal evangelical fundamental persuasions.  The percentage of "manufactured homes" (mobile homes to you and me) is very high, and the contrast with the faux-Spanish stuccoed condominiums and villas of urban Florida couldn't be more striking.

Borrowed CDs and NPR (for non-US readers, National Public Radio, the news, music, and culture network) provided aural diversion from the monotony of the orange groves, and no Deliverance moments were had, though I did see a few ramshackle dwellings with anti-social warnings about dogs.  Urban or rural, Florida abounds in gun shops, and American flags.  To the foreign visitor: the largest American flags fluttering in the breeze are not indicative of a government installation, but show you the way to a car dealership.  You can still buy a little plastic gizmo to attach a flag to your rear passenger window, though there are far fewer of these than after the post-9/11 patriotic fervor.

My rambles have gone on long enough.  Next: political learnings on things like the health care situation.

Journée Sans Voitures - No Car Day In Brussels

This is an experiment, attempting to do a post by email. I am cheating, because to insert this nice "No Car" sticker from the Boston bloggers "Choosing No Car," I had to log on to my Typepad account.

Okay, enough geeky detail. The important thing is this: for the nth time in recent years, Brussels, seat of the European Union, is turning itself into a carless capital. "La Journée Sans Voitures" is a joy for anyone who values fresher air, walking IN the streets, and peace and quiet.

Not that our leafy neighborhood is noisy, but this morning, going out for fresh bread, it was like the final scene (minus the scary post apocalyptic music) of the end of the world in "On The Beach." No sound, empty streets. That will have changed when we take the tram a little later; last year our tram could barely move for all the cyclists and pedestrians clogging the city's many cultural and historic venues.

Brussels, a city of only about a million people, can go carless thanks to its wonderful integrated public transport system, where one simple ticket gets you on to trams, buses, metros, and trains. We almost never go into city center by car. So, looking for inspiration for a post-Detroit future? Come to Brussels next September and savor what it's like to spend a day without The Car.

Paris (and Chateaulin) Liberated - August 1944

Since the big D-Day bash in June, when President Barack Obama honored the 65th anniversary of the Normandy landings, the commemorations have been either very local or just forgotten.  This week we were reminded that D-Day didn’t mean the end of the fighting in France in 1944; Paris was liberated by its own Resistance fighters, with big help over the horizon by the US Army, of course.

In Brittany, where we stayed for most of August, the fighting was still going on 65 years ago.  The Brest “Pocket” would not be reduced until mid-September, and other German redoubts – especially the submarine bases of Lorient and St. Nazaire – would hold out until the surrender of Germany in May 1945.

Our little market town of Chateaulin, on the Nantes-Brest Canal, was liberated by French partisans when the German garrison left in early August.  That American armored vehicle in the photo above left (courtesy Le Doaré Archives) tooling along the Canal looks like it’s being piloted by Free French forces.

Other partisans in the “maquis” didn’t have it so easy.  Upriver (this section of the Canal is formed by the river Aulne), you can visit a recent memorial to fighters (mostly Breton, but also Belgian and Soviet) killed in an ambush in spring 1944 when their position was divulged to the Germans.  It’s hard to imagine today, as you soak up the sun on an idyllic island in the river, that the place saw bloody reprisals in your parents’ or grandparents’ time.

On the way back to Brussels, overnight in Falaise, of WW II "Pocket" or "Gap" fame, "the decisive engagement in the Battle of Normandy,"  according to Wikipedia.  Another August 1944 anniversary.

Streetcars On the Silk Road: Post From Tashkent

Uzbekistan's capital is the metropolis of Central Asia.  With a population of over 2 million (I heard one guesstimate of 4 million), Tashkent was the Soviet Union's fourth city, just after Kiev.  Its cosmopolitan nature shows, and its people are a kaleidoscope of humanity.

It's a city of wide sidewalks and even wider boulevards, though central planning also endowed it with an impressive public transport system, replete with metro, trams, and buses.  Though the city is marking its 23rd century, you have to look hard to find buildings that predate the devastating 1966 earthquake.

Thanks to a conference colleague from an NGO, a longtime Uzbekistan hand, I was able to see a few of those vestiges, including a madrassa that has been converted into a sort of artisans' colony (lower right).  A taste of what the country has to offer.

I wish I were here longer, maybe fitting in a visit to Samarkand or Bukhara, well-preserved gems on the ancient Silk Road.  Next time, perhaps.  For now, it's conference time - more on that later, when I return to Brussels.

Mountaintop Maginot Line - Where It Worked

The past week or so we've been doing some serious hiking in the French Alps, just west of the Italian border and about three hours' driving on twisty roads from Grenoble.  We are in the mountain valley of the Ubaye River - strategic for centuries before the European Union and NATO made war between allies like France, Italy, and Germany unthinkable.

In a museum in our little village, there's a piece of elephant tusk - a reminder that Hannibal's army approached Rome from the unexpected Alpine side.  On the mountaintops overlooking this valley and many others like it, French military engineers working for 17th/18th century Vauban and 20th century Maginot built fortresses that defy the imagination.  "La Route Napoleon" winds through passes and valleys on its way to Italy.

The Maginot Line got its bad reputation because of its northern portion, which guarded the frontier with Germany.  Anyone with a passing knowledge of World War II history knows that the piece that was missing - the Ardennes forest between Belgium, Luxembourg, and France - was the very place that the German blitzkrieg was successful.  The Maginot fortresses with their hardened artillery emplacements and underground railroads were magnificently useless, bypassed by German tanks roaring through the "impenetrable" forest.

Except for here in the French Alps, where the Maginot Line did its job.  In June 1940, Mussolini's troops hopped on Hitler's bandwagon and attacked an overstretched France.  Though outnumbered, the French forts held their ground, but the war was already a lost cause in the north.  After four long years of occupation by Germans and Italians, French and American troops retook the historic fortifications in the cold winter of 1944-45.  Some of the German-held forts only capitulated in the last weeks of the war.

So, back to our June 2009 military tourism.  Imagine our surprise when hiking on a mountain trail (photo top left; altitude approximately 6,000 feet) and seeing a machine gun nest inside a six inch thick steel carapace poking out of its reinforced concrete bunker.  The woods around the lookout are ringed with barbed wire, with trees bulging around their steel embrace for upwards of 75 years (Maginot built his line in the 1930s).  As isolated as this outpost was, it was equipped with an infrared sensor that detected Italian troop movements.

Further back in time, but updated as military technology became ever more sophisticated and lethal, Fort Tournoux (photo, above right) is a remarkable example of "génie militaire," built layer-cake on 2,000 vertical feet of strategic hillside.  Thanks to the collective of local municipalities and an association dedicated to preserving this amazing collection of fortresses, guides take visitors up a hair-raising mule trail to visit "Fort Moyen," the lowest of three Tournoux forts which dominate the confluence of the Ubaye and the Ubayette Rivers.  Though it was built starting 1852, Fort Tournoux's guns only had their baptism of fire in June 1940, when they supported the Maginot forts further up the Ubayette to stop the Italian advance.  The fort was in service in one way or another until the late 1980s.

Up the valley, a testament to an earlier age, the Berwick Redoubt (photo, left) built in the Vauban tradition in the 18th century.  Though its stone construction has withstood the test of time better than its wooden North American counterparts, it is redolent of the frontier forts of the French and Indian War of the same period.

France's mountain military tradition continues, though during our stay a contingent based in another historic fortress lowered its flags for the last time.  A local woman remarked on the imminent closure of another Alpine unit in the valley, at a time when some of Europe's highest mountain passes offer exceptional training opportunities for France's expeditionary missions.  But base closures are never a simple matter for the economies of the communities concerned, and President Sarkozy did promise a major defense realignment last year.  "The cannon recoils; the artilleryman never," the proud insignia etched (click on photo, right) on the high altitude barracks on silent Fort Tournoux.  Ah, but the artilleryman and the chasseur alpin must bow to the new defense realities and the priorities of their civilian masters.

Europe's internal borders are disappearing, and the "chasseurs alpins" are more likely to see action in Afghanistan's rugged mountains than in these parts.  The Schengen Treaty has led to the dismantling of border posts, and EU internal cross-border threats are better handled by customs & immigration "flying patrols" than by the mountaintop Maginot Line.

Outsourcing Border Controls: American Passports

Before my blog service started to go haywire, I had drafted a post to draw readers' attention to what I think is a very important article by fellow ex-Foreign Service blogger Pat Kushlis in "Whirled View."  Writing last Friday in "Losing 'the keys to the kingdom'," Pat drew my attention to what has to be one of the worst ideas yet in the realm of "outsourcing" and "privatizing" functions that used to be national and governmental.  Passports.  American passports.  Made in... Thailand.

This is the second time in two weeks that American passports, the keys to the kingdom, have been compromised. Bill Gertz of the Washington Times, of all newspapers, broke both stories. These are two separate instances of gross mismanagement and perhaps even malfeasance. Both relate to the outsourcing epidemic for which our current administration is famous.  Not only did the GPO – the federal government’s printing press – grossly overcharge the State Department for the production of passports when GPO is supposed to undertake the work at cost, but it also outsourced the work to Smartrac, a European company with production facilities in Thailand. “Smartrac,” according to Gertz, “divulged in an October 2007 court filing in The Hague that China had stolen its patented technology for e-passport chips, raising additional questions about the security of America's e-passports.” (emphasis added)

When you put the words "US high-tech e-passport chips," "technology stolen by China," and "production facilities in Thailand," in the same sentence, someone's common sense alarm should have been ringing loudly.  And all this, for a RFID technology that has itself been shown as vulnerable to hacking.

But rest assured, the GPO tells us, according to The Federal Times:

The government had no choice but to outsource a key security feature of the new electronic passports to a foreign corporation, the Government Printing Office said in response to a series of critical news reports by The Washington Times last week.  GPO is contracting with a Dutch company, which does part of its work in Thailand, to produce and implant a data chip in the back cover of each new passport. The company, Smartrac Technology Ltd., was the only company in the world that produced a chip to store passport information that met the State Department’s standards.  Smartrac warns that because Thailand is politically unstable, production could be halted, according to news reports.

I sent "Losing the keys to the kingdom" to a longtime expat in Thailand with extensive experience throughout Asia.  After first thinking that it was an April Fool's gag, this is what he had to say:

Very unwise to not have total control over the production of passports. There have been several arrests of Pakistani forgers over the years, producing every kind of valuable document from student IDs to national passports. Imagine if they got just a few blanks. Also, China fields many workers in high-tech factories in the USA, where secrets are obtained and transferred to the motherland.  With the virtual takeover of Thailand by Chinese business people, and Thailand's proclivity to corruption and making a quick buck, the idea of making passports outside the USA should not be even considered.

Well yes, but then GPO honcho Robert C. Tapella is a believer in the power of private enterprise in public ventures, and a practicioner of the revolving door; here he is in an interview with a printing industry journal after his appointment by President Bush:

I was involved in the Bush campaign, and when President Bush was elected in 2000, I was asked whether I wanted to continue to work in the government and what type of assignment I would like. The only thing I was interested in was the GPO. In my roles with Congress, I had been a customer of the GPO.

My guess is that someone is on a fast track to some lucrative future business with Smartrac or some other outsourcers, and who cares if the next administration has to clean up the mess?  And this cavalier approach to sensitive documents (remember, with a stolen valid American passport, a potential infiltrator has a much easier time of slipping into the US) is from the same team which uses the highest of hi-tech to spy on Americans in order to "protect" its citizens.  Let's just hope that Smartrac opens their planned factory in the US before some resourceful Thai or Chinese entrepreneur gets his hands on "the keys to the kingdom."

Guilty on Arrival: DHS Agent Asks "What's UNESCO?"

In its quest to win hearts and minds in the Arab world, the administration has hired no less than three high powered Undersecretaries of State for Public Diplomacy; Karen Hughes, the latest to declare victory and go home (obviously she hadn't paid attention to this advice from former US diplomat John Brown); her predecessor Margaret Tutwiler, a retread from the George H.W. Bush White House who left in frustration after five months; and Charlotte Beers ("the most powerful woman in advertising"), brought in from Madison Avenue to revamp the US image before it went down the tubes in "Mission Accomplished."

But read this account of the recent US tour of legendary Lebanese composer and musician Marcel Khalife and you'll get an inkling of why all the high-priced PR people in the world cannot help the US deal with the Arab world.  Khalife describes his arrival experience:

At the end of the interview [see below*] with the immigration officer (naturally, this was not the first time; anywhere I landed, I had the same conversation), I had a CD and I gave them a copy and I told him I would like to give you this as a gift so that you’ll know I am just an artist and musician. He was surprised I gave him a CD. I told him at the same time, I'm the UNESCO Artist for Peace. And he said, what does UNESCO mean?  This happened here in New York. I told him this was a UN organization for culture.

The lucky but clueless Immigration officer (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of DHS) had just received an album from the "Bob Dylan of Arab music," (which probably understates his talent) and UNESCO, of course, is the UN's Educational and Scientific Organization.

My point here is not to excoriate some hapless immigration official in a chaotic JFK arrival hall.  No, my point is that Marcel Khalife, on his way to concerts throughout the United States in this time of American travails with the Arab world ("why do they hate us?") -- and in the week before the Annapolis conference -- misses an opportunity to win points through its welcome (or lack thereof) to one of the most influential artists in the secular Arab world.  I stress secular, since Khalife has been attacked by extremists in Bahrain and elsewhere, who once objected to his presentation of an ancient Arab love story.

In other hands, in a different age, the US might have handled this differently.  The US Information Agency, which former Senator Jesse Helms succeeded in dismantling and handing over to the State Department, might have organized a US tour for Khalife.  It would have ensured a smooth arrival in the US, and would have given his American tour prominent coverage on the Arabic service of VOA.  Instead

*Once I come to the airport, you feel a certain difference in treatment, in the negative, not positive sense. Once our names are checked in the computer, the computer reacts unnaturally. They isolate us inside rooms and questions are asked which have to do with our very humanity.  ... the identity that you have become grounds for accusation.

When I was a young vice consul at American embassies, I quickly learned that foreign visa applicants had no Constitutional right to a US tourist visa.  In fact, the burden of proof is on the applicant.  There is an assumption of ineligibility, if not "guilt" per se.   But  Khalife had already been through the visa process, and in fact had been to the US before (I remember hearing him on NPR a couple of years ago).  Does "traveling while Arab" mean that humiliation is de rigueur at every "checkpoint" - even after you've been approved?

I think Khalife has probably left the US by now, and is presumably back in Lebanon.  Maybe the State Department should task its cultural attache in Beirut to organize a little gesture - a dinner invitation? a concert? a travel grant?- to make amends to Marcel Khalife.  It could go a long way.

Happy St. Hubert's - And a Good Day for National Unity

Well, actually St. Hubert Day was celebrated on various days throughout Belgium, France, and Luxembourg this autumn, but it was our commune's turn this glorious Sunday afternoon.  It's great fun, with red-coated musicians playing hunting horns, and dozens of dogs gathered for the priest's blessing.  Our mayor (bourgmestre) was supposed to have presided, but since he also serves as the President of the Belgian Senate, he's been asked by the King to help broker a deal between the parties of the putative coalition.  Today, his duties included receiving a petition signed by 150,000 people calling for national unity.  On the streets, 35,000 people of all persuasions marched in the same cause, and there were more flags draped from balconies to quietly express solidarity with the notion of Belgium.  All of which was orchestrated by a Belgian matron, Marie-Claire Houard, who was extremely pleased with the turnout.

Back to the dogs (and horses; this time there were no cats, birds, rabbits, etc., though that has been known to happen).  There was a demonstration by the police and several of their German shepherds of techniques for catching baddies.  People and their pets lined up for individual blessings and - probably just as much a drawing card - coupons for dog food from a popular pet store.  It was all very autumnal, and a welcome counterpoint to the political fervor.

St. Hubert is the patron saint of hunters.  Now why would animals show up to be blessed by the patron saint of the guys with the guns?  Well, the blessed are mostly dogs and horses, and therefore usually not in season.  And hunters - appearances and uninformed non-hunter prejudices to the contrary - pride themselves as the original environmentalists and friends of nature.

In France for the last several presidential elections, there has been a candidate from the CPNT Party ("Chasse, Peche, Nature, et Tradition"), the party of hunters and fishermen.  Amazingly, it got as much as a million votes in the 2002 primary elections.  Belgium, to my knowledge, has no such party, nor does it need one: things are complicated enough as they are.