D.M. Schwartz's Open Salon Blog

Will Israel Nuke Iran?

Mon, 2 Apr 2012 16:04:53 -0400

I’ve previously written about why Iran won’t ever nuke Israel, but recent saber rattling causes me to consider the possibility that Israel will nuke Iran. There has been much discussion concerning Israel’s options for stopping Iran from getting the bomb. Most commentators agree that a strike with conventional weapons, including the giant “bunker buster” bombs provided to Israel by the U.S.A. won’t do more than delay the Iranian nuclear weapons program by at most five years. Given the hugely damaging side effects of any attack on Iran, such as chaos in world petroleum markets, why would anybody bother to go through all that pain for a temporary respite? I suspect the answer is they won’t. Instead, if the Israelis decide Iran’s soon-to-be bomb is an existential threat, they will do whatever it takes to make the threat go away, permanently.

If Israel has learned anything from its numerous wars over the past 63 years, it’s that any win has to be decisive. Half-way measures, like the south Lebanon war and Gaza incursion have proven ineffective at permanently removing threats. Iran’s nuclear program is protected by a difficult to defeat combination of secrecy, dispersion and hardened facilities. It’s safe to assume that Israel has beached Iranian security to the point of knowing all secret facilities. Everybody already knows the locations of the other nuclear facilities. The problem is that some of those known facilities are buried deep in mountains or underground, covered by many feet of steel-reinforced concrete. Even multiple hits by the biggest bunker buster bombs are not guaranteed to destroy those.

The obvious answer to obliterating hardened or deeply buried facilities is nuclear weapons. While the largest bunker buster is equivalent to 30,000 pounds of TNT in destructive force, it is widely believed that the smallest nuke in Israel’s undeclared arsenal is a so-called “suitcase nuke” of about 380,000 pounds of bang. Then, there are Israel’s 2,000,000,000 pounds of TNT equivalent “megaton” warheads. I’m guessing the little ones are probably sufficient for the task.

My prediction is that if Israel decides to remove Iran’s nuclear program by force, they will do a thorough job of it. And that means nukes. Let’s hope the Israelis conclude they can live with a nuclear-armed Iran.

Our Free Range Psychos

Thu, 1 Mar 2012 14:03:40 -0500

Another school shooting and three kids are dead. Sad, tragic, didn’t have to happen. Yes, psychos kill innocents in other first-world countries, but it’s rare. The Scottish schoolchildren massacre of 1996 springs to mind. Recently, 77 people were murdered by a psycho in Norway. Aside from those two incidents, there aren’t many. In our fair and free country, it seems to happen almost every year.

You can shrug your shoulders and think the death toll is part and parcel of our love of firearms. If we restricted gun ownership adequately would the shootings stop? I don’t think so. Not that better gun laws aren’t needed, it’s that they don’t address the real problem: untreated, mentally disturbed people roaming our streets, living in our homes, attending our schools, serving in the military. The idea that the mentally ill are best served by integration within the larger community, as opposed to being institutionalized is a good one in the general sense, but only safe for the rest of us if we each do our job, which is to pay attention and react appropriately to the psychos among us.

After every school shooting, we hear the same story from those who knew the shooter. The parents didn’t think their child was murderous. The classmates didn’t notice anything too far out of the ordinary about the guy, and it’s almost always a guy. His Facebook posts were just joking, right? The teachers didn’t notice the kid had any serious issues. And the neighbors? They say he seemed like a nice enough boy.

The key to putting a stop to these shootings is to look in the mirror. The person staring back is the one responsible for prevention. Learn the external markers that indicate that your child, or your student, or your classmate, or your colleague, or your neighbor, or your Facebook friend might be a free range psycho. Here:

Behavioral

Strange posturing
Odd or bizarre behavior
Feeling refreshed after much less sleep than normal
Excessive writing without meaning
Cutting oneself; threats of self-mutilation
Deterioration of personal hygiene
Hyperactivity or inactivity, or alternating between the two
Staring without blinking - or blinking incessantly
Agitation
Severe sleep disturbances
Drug or alcohol abuse (This may be a coping mechanism: self-medicating)

Thinking and Speech

Things around them seem changed in some way
Rapid speech that is difficult to interrupt
Irrational statements
Extreme preoccupation with religion or with the occult
Peculiar use of words or odd language structures
Unusual sensitivity to stimuli (noise, light, colors, textures)
Memory problems
Severe distractibility

Social

Sensitivity and irritability when touched by others
Refusal to touch persons or objects; wearing gloves, etc.
Severe deterioration of social relationships
Dropping out of activities - or out of life in general
Social withdrawal, isolation, and reclusive
Unexpected aggression
Suspiciousness

Emotional

Inappropriate laughter
Inability to cry, or excessive crying
Feelings of depression and anxiety
Inability to express joy
Euphoric mood Personality
Reckless behaviors that are out of character
Significantly prolonged drops in motivation or speech
Shift in basic personality.

Of course, not every person who displays one or more of the attributes of a psycho really is one or will become one. My point is, it’s everyone’s responsibility to pay attention and say something to the appropriate persons in authority when it becomes clear that a person we interact with regularly appears disturbed. Early intervention is one of the best strategies for dealing with mental illness. Thinking, “well, he’s just eccentric, withdrawn, or naturally sad” and letting it go is not a good idea.

Thanks to...

http://www.hopevancouver.com/Early_or_Warning_Signs_of_Psychosis.html

Could Friday save the music business?

Fri, 6 May 2011 16:05:05 -0400

(C) 2011 YouTube

By now, you’re probably one of the 130 million people who have watched Rebecca Black’s YouTube hit, “Friday.” Wherever you are on the critical spectrum, from “I can’t believe she had the nerve to post this” to “What a wonderfully cute pop song,” you have to admit the video is popular. In that fact I see a glimmer of hope for the commercial viability of new, unknown musicians.

As we all know, the music industry is a commercial wasteland. Very few new artists can get a toehold, let alone make a living at it. Blame the Internet, blame industry greed, blame a dearth of new ideas, whatever… Who or what is responsible for the situation is not my concern. I would like to see a renaissance in the music business, both for entrepreneurs and artists.

Rebecca’s song gives us a clue. It has a high entertainment value, be it for morbid curiosity or honest appreciation. Is that worth one of your dimes? I think so. That’s a lot of dimes, and $13 million is a lot of money. Split among artist, production and distribution, it would make everyone involved very happy. Let’s say you paid the dime every time you watched the full length, HD version of a YouTube clip. (The short versions and standard resolution versions would remain free.) If you paid for one clip per day, you’d add about $36 to your annual entertainment budget. A lot of people could afford that.

I know, micropayments are not a new idea. Applying them to YouTube clips is a worthwhile application of it. And who knows, it just might rejuvenate the music industry.

I’m too sexy for my razor

Tue, 8 Mar 2011 23:03:09 -0500

I must have missed the memo; the one that said men only have to shave their faces every three days. But then, had I got the message I wouldn’t have been able to read it. As far as I can tell, Palestine is where this started and I’m pretty sure all of Yasser Arafat’s memos were in Arabic. Confused? I guess some background is in order.

Following World War II, facial hair was déclassé. Veterans of the war associated a week’s beard growth with privation, fox holes, misery and death. A clean-shaven face meant its owner had hot water, money for shaving cream and razors, as well as the luxury of time to do the job. Let’s not forget that women liked that smooth skin. This was a critical factor for couples trying to make babies. A lot of that was going on post-war, too. See, “Baby Boom.”

Fast-forward to 1966. The Vietnam War, hippies, protests and civil disobedience were front page news. Unlike the situation in WWII, most of the grunts in Vietnam had a place to shower and shave when they weren’t on patrol. Hippies wanted to distinguish themselves from “straights,” so they got really hairy. Beards, long hair, ponytails and braids were the freak flags of the day.

Meanwhile, in the Middle East, the Palestine Liberation Organization was getting its act together. By the time Yasser Arafat became leader of the group in 1969, the PLO’s mission was clear: armed attacks on anything “Zionist.” Initially smooth-shaven, Arafat and his lieutenants must have realized that real terrorists need to look menacing, rugged, manly and too busy with guns and ammo for niceties like shaving, or neckties for that matter. And what better way to convey that image than to sport a three to five-day beard?

As permanent underdogs, the PLO terrorist image appealed to European youth looking to make an anti-establishment statement. Before you could say “Baader-Meinhof Gang,” thuggish looking white guys were everywhere. It took about a decade for that look to become a fashion statement, then a sexy style trend, and finally blow west to New York City, and from there to society at large.

I wonder, how many of those rugged Vanity Fair magazine men’s underwear models know their scruffy three-day beards are traditionally worn with an AK-47?

My Friends, the Gun Nuts

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 13:01:30 -0500

No matter how hard I tried and after hundreds of shells, I never hit a single skeet. My old high school friend and National Rifle Association instructor, Dave Litman didn’t give up on me. He figured maybe the shotgun recoil was affecting my aim so we switched to an H&K 91 battle rifle. After a few more sessions with that piece at the Allegheny County Gun Club, I could reliably hit a stationary target at 100 yards. The pistols were another story. Didn’t matter if the gun was an historic Luger or a modern 9mm Beretta, I couldn’t get on the paper at 10 yards.

Small arms training wasn’t my idea. As a would-be pacifist, I’d almost moved to Canada to avoid the Vietnam war. If the Pentagon hadn’t reclassified me from 1-A to “Undesirable” for anti-war activity, I’d probably be in Toronto, now. It was Litman’s nagging that got me to the gun club. He constantly reminded me that most of my extended family and most of his had been murdered in cold blood by the Nazis. Litman never tired of saying Jews should arm themselves and be ready to take a couple neo-Nazis with them should it ever come to that. Eventually, I figure there was no harm in at least learning how to use guns properly. After all, my uncle let me to shoot a .22 rifle when I was 10 years old.

Litman was at the extreme end of the gun ownership spectrum. Wherever you sat in his apartment, you could be sure there was a loaded pistol in a drawer or under a cushion within arm’s reach. His gun cabinet was full and his closet had another half dozen rifles and shotguns. I thought he’d change his ways after his girlfriend got drunk one evening and shot holes in the walls, but no, the guns everywhere policy remained in effect. The neo-Nazis never came to get him. In the end, a heart attack killed him while he slept.

My college friend, Jan Junge was a gun nut, too. I didn’t know that until I visited him and his wife, Kyra at their home after he graduated. The shotgun mounted over the fireplace in their living room was loaded. The coffee table had a police .38 caliber pistol as did the nightstand in the guest room. Jan and Kyra were concerned about break-ins, though they’d never had one. They also liked to drink vodka, lots of vodka, and argue. Their freezer was stocked with Stolichnaya.

Kyra called me early one morning to tell me Jan was dead. Kyra had heard something outside the night before. Jan went to look and took the shotgun with him. Apparently, he tripped walking down the front steps in the middle of the night and fell on the gun. Some friends of Jan’s who never liked Kyra thought maybe they’d been drinking, had an argument and picked up guns. Wouldn’t surprise me. Whatever. The police investigation called it an accident.

My best friend, Caney, may he rest in peace, finally convinced me to buy a gun in the 1980s. He was a lawyer and serious yachtsman. Caney kept a 9mm pistol in his car, a .357 caliber pistol and a shotgun on his boat. He was prepared for carjackers and pirates. Living in Washington, DC, Caney had a point about carjackers. But, practically speaking, it’s hard to imagine how a pistol in the glove compartment would be much help when somebody points a gun at your side window when you’re stopped at a traffic light. I asked Caney when was the last time pirates had boarded a vessel in the Chesapeake Bay. He said the real problem was robbers getting on your boat while you’re at the dock, sleeping. Robbers never visited Caney’s boat. He fell off his yacht after spending the evening in a bar drinking with his buddies and drowned.

I guess my friends’ paranoia infected me. I was living alone in a fairly secluded cabin at the time. So I bought a 9mm pistol and practiced with it at the local range. A few years later, when I got married, I locked the gun in box on my boat. After our first child was born, I sold the pistol. I already knew that guns and alcohol don’t mix. It didn’t take much research to find that guns and kids don’t either.

Occasionally, like when our car is broken into late at night or a neighbor’s house is robbed I wonder if maybe I should have a shotgun handy. Then, I remember the statistics about accidental gun deaths and think about Litman, Junge and Caney.