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Through

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As of Sunday morning, the 101 was still closed in Montecito, so I resolved to head down to Westwood for the Ecstatic Dance LA celebration. After lunch, rather than heading up to the Getty Center, I was inspired to visit the Armand Hammer Museum.

It was deja vu all over again as – just as when I visited with my sons during Kevin’s attendance at UCLA – most of the museum was closed for their annual rotation. Apart from the standing collection (mostly French and American oils from the 19th century), they had four environmental experiences.

The most profound is Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s Saydnaya. Saydnaya is the death prison established by the regime of the Syria dictator Bashar al Assad. During the course of the civil war, more than 13,000 people have been destroyed there.

The guards at the prison maintained control through a strict regimen of silence. Any significant noise was punished by beatings – even the screams of those beaten were punished with further abuse. As a result, every sound was impressed upon the victims. Through acoustic forensics, interviews with those released have reconstructed the organization and operations of the prison.

The installation is simple: at the entrance, two large speakers that first demonstrate the effects of a 19 decibel drop in sound – reflecting the drop in the volume of the prisoner’s speaking when the prison stopped serving any investigative purpose and became simply a death camp. The recording starts with a loud siren, and drops through a series of declarations of annihilation (including the extinction of frog species in the Amazon). When the volume is inaudible, the recording continues with the testimony of a prison survivor describing the use of silence as an instrument of torture. Finally, the artist and acoustic specialist describe their methods.

The entry is dim, as the main installation is set off by a large partition. Walking around the partition, we are confronted with a number of overhead projectors, each bearing a ray tracing of the acoustic reconstruction. Two smaller text projectors add testimony of the investigation to the setting.

I entered during a lull in the recording, and stood in the center of the room, amidst the projectors, trying to feel my way into the situation. It was distant until I turned around to look behind me, and found that my shadow had fallen across the ray tracing on the partition. The pain washed through me then, and I turned my back to the young female docent as I allowed it to penetrate. When I finally left, I made the mistake of asking her “Do they have a PTSD therapy program for you after you spend all day in here?” Her face nearly cracked with grief. I don’t think that she understood before that moment.

I went down to the Peet’s Coffee on the corner and resolved to soak in the sun and listen to music. Brahm’s First Piano Concerto seemed appropriate, but the street traffic was noisy. After finishing my coffee and scone, I thought to head back into the Hammer atrium where I’d be able to focus on the music. As I stepped into the quiet, I had the sudden inspiration that I should do my listening in Hamdan’s exhibit.

The first movement of the concerto is an elegy to Robert Schumann, Brahm’s unstable contemporary who committed suicide at a young age, leaving a wife and young children. Much as the exhibition’s recording, it opens with crashing orchestral chords that evoke the trauma of receiving news of a tragic loss. After extended orchestral development, the piano solo enters with an echo of those chords. It was at that point that I paused the recording before walking up the stairs.

As I settled on the floor in the back of the projection space and resumed the concerto, the exhibition recording started, blaring loudly over the music. Again, the trauma and sorrow washed over me.

This was the process, then: holding onto the pattern of the music as the noise and words stepped over it. The stronger chords exerted themselves even through the loudest sections, but Brahm’s meditation has passages of delicate arpeggios and simple, haunting melodies that even hushed voices would occlude.

The thought that I projected was only this:

If they won’t let you speak, then hear this; share it.

To not be forgotten. To receive evidence that love transmutes sorrow into beauty. And, as the first movement ends with it’s playful re-iteration of the opening themes, to hope that children would come to restore joy where greed and fear have made a wasteland of the human heart.

Cruise Out-Of-Control

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Genesis 2 introduces the seventh day of Creation with a brief lull in the relationship between God and the world.

By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

[NIV Gen. 2:2-3]

Having rested, God – who is Unconditional Love – then picks up his work in the Garden of Eden, demonstrating to Adam and Eve the virtues of love. In that context, there is peace between the animals. That peace is shattered when Adam and Eve choose to eat of the fruit of “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” They chose no longer to submit to the guidance of love. They chose to figure out how to do it on their own.

Jesus is the hope of the world because he had the strength to demonstrate the power that stands behind those that chose to love unconditionally. In the years both before and after that demonstration, however, we see that the Darwinian practices of brutal confrontation are often strong in the human relationships and politics. Many people still live like animals.

This is the context for my reaction to the decision by the Trump Administration to launch missile strikes against the regime of Syria’s dictator, Bashar Assad. The immediate response of Russia has been to claim the diplomatic high ground, asserting that the US action was illegal.

Assad has survived in Syria for one reason, and one reason only: Putin’s support. Russia has used its veto power in the UN security council to prevent coordinated global action against the Syrian tyrant. When the rebels were poised to oust Assad, Russia then intervened militarily, and along with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, have now put the rebels on the defensive.

In a series of votes in the UN Security Council, the Obama Administration had established Russian complicity in the humanitarian crisis in Syria. Our NATO ally, Turkey, has suffered greatly as the destination of opportunity for 3 million Syrians fleeing the war. Both of those institutions – the United Nations and NATO – were therefore poised to demand Russia’s removal from the UN security council, allowing unified international action to suppress Russian and Chinese military adventurism around the globe.

Russia was the guarantor the Syria had no chemical weapons. By resorting to force before the international community had established that indeed a chemical weapons attack had occurred using sarin gas, Trump has made the conflict one of brute force between two parties. By acting without consultation with our allies, Trump has undermined the institutions that could have acted to discipline Putin across the globe.

It’s all very satisfying to punch a bully in the nose, but it just adds confusion to a situation that should be managed by institutions of law enforcement. Trump has undermined US authority in those institutions – NATO and the United Nations. His action will have long-term consequences that will be to the advantage of those that seek to sow chaos across the globe – principally for the purpose of preventing humanity from grasping the enormous power that arises when we adopt peace and love as the guides to our conduct in all spheres of life.

A far better course would have been to mount a campaign to expel Russia from the UN security council.

Russia and the United Nations

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The cease-fire in Syria was shattered today when Russia mounted a massive bombing assault on the city of Aleppo. Included in the targeting were two supply centers for Syria’s non-partisan White Helmets, the rescuers that rush in to neighborhoods after an assault to attempt to save civilians trapped in the rubble.

This turn of events is being interpreted as a failure of foresight by John Kerry, US Secretary of State, but it was forecast as early as last week when the alliance led by the Russians bombed a UN relief convoy attempting to reach Aleppo, where nearly a quarter of a million people are attempting to survive a government siege.

The Syrian rebellion was triggered by a drought that forced rural settlers to the cities. The government of Bashar al-Assad ignored their plight, leading to protests that were met with government violence. Seeing parallels with recent events in Georgia and the Ukraine, the UN attempted to issue a proclamation rebuking al-Assad and demanding a negotiated end to hostilities, but the resolution was vetoed by Russia and China in the Security Council.

Despite this, the Syrian war was almost over last year with rebel forces ready to mount an assault on the capital, Damascus. Russia joined a government alliance including Iranian forces and Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon. The three foreign governments are all united by a common purpose: erode US, Israeli and Saudi influence in the region.

But Putin’s Russia is not just thumbing its nose at the US, it’s also challenging the legitimacy and authority of the United Nations. Throughout, it has used its position on the Security Council to advance its own aims in the world, against the consensus of the body as a whole. So I think that our next step is obvious: the Security Council was recently expanded by adding additional states on a temporary basis. I think that now the US needs to work to establish procedures to remove members from the Security Council. Russia would be first on my list, and the recent assault on the relief convoy is sufficiently egregious that if established as a criterion for ejection, no other state should ever qualify.

As for Syria, al-Assad is obviously nothing more now than a Russian toadie. With the exception of Damascus, the nation is in a ruin. Even if, as he claims, the government manages to reclaim control of the land shown on the map as ‘Syria,’ the people of the nation will burn with hatred of him. He will never again be able to claim legitimately that he serves as their “president.”

Russian to the Brink

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While Nikita Khrushchev once pounded a negotiating table with his shoe, promising that “[the USSR] will bury you,” Vladimir Putin seems committed to a course of “let’s all drown together.” Whether it be oil or violence or rising oceans, the real risks facing his people are clouded in his mind by the demands of keeping a nation of eight time zones under his thumb.

As an industrialized nation whose ports are locked in ice for six months each year, Russia has a mania for warm weather. That was expressed in the ’50s in currying favor with its neighbor Iran, and in the ’80s with the invasion of Afghanistan. As global warming gained steam, the failure to secure a warm-water port made Russian nominally the only nation standing to benefit from climate change.

That wasn’t enough for Putin, whose seizure of Crimea was a thinly-disguised grab for an outlet to the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, a good piece of Ukraine stood between Russia and its new acquisition. Western opposition to the dismemberment of the Ukraine has frustrated Putin’s ambition and exposed the weakness of his military. The flurry of airspace violations by Russian fighter jets has died down as the maintenance bill mounted.

Instead, Putin has shifted to support of Bashar Assad in Syria. This is an escalation of the asymmetrical warfare epitomized by suicide bombers, except in this case the walking dead are the refugees fleeing conflict. The cost of managing the millions fleeing the region is mounting, and borne almost exclusively by the European countries who have responded to Russian adventurism with diversification of their fossil fuel supply.

Again, this geopolitical aim is shrouded in a lofty rationale: Russian claims to be fighting Daesch, the Islamist caliphate that is looting the abandoned regions of eastern Syria and western Iraq. In reality Russian military might is strongly aligned with Assad in his battle with the rebellion again his criminal regime.

In the meantime, Russia continues to pump oil into the Chinese and other markets. Its primary competitor in supply is Saudi Arabia, whose cheap production costs and small population allowed flexibility to decrease production during an oil glut to stabilize global output. Unfortunately, Sunni Saudi Arabia is locked in a regional struggle for dominance with the Shiite regime of Iran, nominally a supporter of the Allawi regime in Syria. This has led it into military adventurism in Yemen, at the cost of $17 billion a month, and is now prompting the Suadi’s to consider intervention with ground troops against Daesch in eastern Syria. An obviously a side-effect is to secure the existence of a Sunni bastion in a region about to be dominated by Shiite states. But it also creates a drain on the Saudi treasury that forces it to sell oil, driving down the price even further.

Saudi Arabia is not the only threat to Russian control of Syria. The rebels being bombed by Russian jets are not going to go away should the regime reestablish control of their strongholds. They will melt into the population, and continue to operate as insurgents. And of course, there’s all those returning refugees to provide for. Just as in Ukraine, Putin is setting himself up to be trapped for the long term in the Middle Eastern quagmire.

Finally, we have the paradox of the melting Russian tundra, composed in no small part of methane crystals that are evaporating. How much of Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure will be swallowed in sinkholes is anybody’s guess. At the very least, we can expect roads and rail lines to be disrupted. Worse, some estimates are that the continental shelf along the Arctic Ocean will soon burp up enough methane to drive global temperatures up by 2 C in the next ten years. That will moderate as the methane burns off, but the effect will be to increase desertification of Russian agricultural land. While warming Siberia is huge, it is dominated by tundra and boreal forest, possessing only a thin layer of soil. It’s not going to be a breadbasket anytime in the next thousand years.

Russia has always been a marginal state, held together by the repressive fist of the tsars. As the last of that line, Putin is playing a game of personal power on the global stage driven by the need to prove his strength to the Russian people. While it’s anybody’s guess as to how soon the Russian state will collapse under the weight of his ambitions, all we can hope is that there’s something left for the Russian people to rebuild with.

Surely You’re Putin Me On?

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Desperate to bury the cumulative effect of the Bengazi persecution, fratricide against current and potential House Speakers, the mendacious Planned Parenthood hearings, the onrushing consequences of global warming, and bellicosity from the Chinese state to which we have outsourced our electronics manufacturing – well, the Republican Party is doing what it does best.

It took almost a year before POTUS 43 declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq. But with Russian and Chinese entry into the quagmire of the Middle East, Chris Christie and others have declared victory in less than a week. Russian victory, of course.

Let’s look at the beneficial side-effects of this development.

First, we’ll have to diversify our manufacturing sources. India has rushed into the 21st century with all wombs at full capacity, creating a labor glut that is consciously intended to undermine the economics that have made China the world’s manufacturing powerhouse. Given India’s position as a leading supplier of information technology services, India is ideally positioned to rapidly take up the role we must shift from China.

Of course, with a newly assertive Chinese navy operating in the South China Sea, the choke-point for most of Asia’s container shipping, we’d be well advised to bring our manufacturing back to the US. That will require an about-face from conservatives trying to destroy American unions. Then again, given Chinese dependence on Windows XP, the NSA might be able to force our adversaries to their knees in less than a week.

Secondly, we’ll have to limit our dependence on foreign oil. That will involve an “Apollo Program” style investment in renewable energy supply. Let’s hope the Koch Brothers are completely blind-sided by the opportunity.

Thirdly, we’ll have to relocate all of Israel to the United States. This innovative and educated community will spark a boom in our high technology industry.

Fourth, we’ll have the opportunity to seize interest payments on our Chinese debt, at a single stroke balancing the federal budget.

Sadly, we’ll accrue none of these beneficial outcomes. Russian victory in the Middle East is no closer than it was when Bush made his speech on the USS Independence. The bellicosity of the “Axis of Evil” – Russia, China, Iran and North Korea – reflects desperation in the face of unified action by the G20 to oppose their aggression with economic sanctions. They are playing 20th century great power politics, and will discover in due time the true cost of their adventurism: restless and demoralized populations at home, loss of markets, and attrition of military might and geopolitical stature in asymmetrical conflict against suicide bombers.

We’ll see how long it is before the oligarchs in the two countries organize the replacement of their military despots. And whether greedy American CEO’s will ever recognize the stupidity of outsourcing to dictatorships for the purpose of driving down global labor costs.

Epitaph for Syria

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This came out of me in April 2014 in response to a prompt at a writer’s meetup. The “bear and falcon” in the third line are Russia and Iran. ISIS exists and is sustained in large part due to Putin’s intervention, early in the rebellion, to preserve Assad’s rule. The deployment of Russian forces to sustain Assad, though coupled with a call to arms against ISIS, is another manifestation of Putin’s pathetic reliance upon military force to command respect from the world. My sense is that, as in the eastern districts of Ukraine (where Russia has its own refugee crisis, largely hidden from Western media), Russian intervention will serve only to extend suffering.

I pray that President Obama will deliver him a fitting rebuke when they meet at the UN next week.

Land of sands and cypress, olives and figs,
Gnawed by neighbors from heights to river.
Convenient playmates of bear and falcon,
Proud kings feared their sons and daughters:
Your people breathed freely and fell silent.
Oh, Syria, your beauty has become dust.
Your streets are still, where voices called for prayer.
May Allah and God meet in the marketplace,
And grant your wanderers peace.

What’s Foreign about Success?

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When President Clinton’s team left office, they warned the incoming Bush Administration that some military response had to be mounted against Al Qaeda in the aftermath of the Cole bombing. The Bush security team, dominated by Cold War hawks, dismissed the warning as a Clinton albatross, and set off to renegotiate the arms treaties with Russia to allow construction of a nuclear missile shield.

The rest, of course, is history. Osama bin Laden, encouraged by U.S. flaccidity to believe that one last strike in the heart of America would cause us to curl up in a fetal position, set about planning the 9/11 attacks.

In the Middle East, we face a similar situation with Israel, still living in the memory of the Holocaust, and even after 60 years unable to build a lasting peace with its neighbors. They turn to America again and again for financial and military aid, but do not heed our requests to negotiate a lasting peace. Instead, as recent perusal of the Jerusalem Times reveals, they rewrite the history of Israel to present themselves as victims rather than armed aggressors.

I agree that the state of Israel should survive, but the conditions of that survival have to reflect the realities of the politics of the Middle East. That means, if we are going to pursue conflict against those that seek to destroy it, we must establish impeccable moral credentials. That means talking to the leaders of Israel’s enemies, and giving them the opportunity to participate in the success that comes with liberal economics. It means eroding the “American + Israel = Axis of Evil” rationale for suppressing Iranian dissent. Simply beating Iran down because Netenyahu says so is going to inflame the entire region against American involvement, bring terror back to us at home, and – given the asymmetrical practical realities in the region – ultimately result in Israel’s destruction.

So, people of Israel, you need to elect a different leader. And Republicans in Congress – you need to stop playing politics with Israeli lives.

The situation in Russia has similar characteristics. Arguably, Vladimir Putin is criminally psychotic, having recently awarded medals of honor to two members of the personal hit squad that has assassinated those attempting to document the costs to Soviet society of Putin’s psychosis (Metsov being the most recent). But the very fact that Putin caters to these men is a revelation of weakness. Where once he was heralded as the guarantor of economic stability in Russia, recent military adventurism (in Georgia as well as the Ukraine) has caused the West to unite in economic sanctions against Russia, and stimulated weaker neighbors to seek NATO membership. The oligarchy recognizes this, and so Putin is left with only one tool for managing opposition: murder.

The Soviet Union experienced such a reign of terror under Stalin, and one of the causes of Russia’s declining global influence in the ’70’s and ’80’s was the creation of a Politburo that ensured no one man would ever again wield that kind of power. Russians have experience with this kind of tyranny, and while it may take time, the oligarchy will not allow Putin to purge them as Stalin purged his foes. Putin’s adventurism is the death knell for his regime.

That President Obama defers to Germany’s Chancellor Merkel in this matter should be considered a blessing to us at home. It allows us to focus on the worsening situation in Syria and Iraq that is fanning sectarian tension and generating powerful sympathy for Iran among Iraqi Shias. That Merkel counsels against providing advanced lethal assistance to Ukraine reflects her nation’s experience in winning the Cold War. It was economic power that brought Germany back together, and it is economic power that will eventually hold sway in the Ukraine.

So, again, Senate Republicans, try to be good neighbors. Stop playing politics with the lives of our allies.