Several people have noted that the magnitudes of the recent quakes in California and Iran were both 6.5 - and that the destruction and loss of life in the former pales beside the devastation wrought by the one in Iran.

While the Iranian Red Crescent Society "has built up an enviable reputation for its disaster response capacities" (due to the unfortunate frequency of earthquakes in Iran), and they will perform heroically, we should not forget the most important factors in determining whether or not an earthquake will also be a disaster:

• Earthquakes don't kill people. Buildings kill people.
• Bad architecture trumps emergency preparedness.

(These nearly perfect statements summarizing everything you need to know about the dangers inherent in earthquakes come from this lecture on "Minimizing the Impact of Earthquakes".)

UPDATE: The lecture linked above is no longer available. Try this one instead.

The Clark campaign will run an ad in New Hampshire during Saturday's game between the Patriots and Jets.

" 'We as Americans know what it takes to be great,' Clark says in the ad, as the camera closes tightly on his face. 'It takes leadership. It takes teamwork. It takes spirit, and sacrifice, and commitment . . .'

'And let's face it, you have to be strong on defense,' he continues, as the camera pulls back to reveal that he's wearing a Patriots sweatshirt. 'You also need to be strong on offense. And having a heck of a quarterback doesn't hurt.'

He concludes, with a little smile, 'We are all Patriots.' "

Article today on the "softly, softly" strategy of the Dutch troops in Iraq.

" 'It's all about respect. Respect for the locals and other cultures and their values,' says Lt. Col. Richard Oppelaar, the Dutch commander. 'If you don't grab the culture, you won't grab the problem.' "

I have looked at the list of Dean's foreign policy and national security advisors. The name that jumps out at me is the one from my field (economic development): Jeffrey Sachs.

That particular choice is not confidence inspiring at all.

UPDATE: Yeah, I suppose I can't really leave that hanging.

Jeff Sachs was one of the architects of the "shock therapy" policies with regard to Russia's economy. There is some debate about whether or not it was a good way to go about changing creaking, communist Russia into crumbling, capitalist Russia. I happen to think "shock" was a bad way and that it led directly to the looting of the economy, as well as contributing to the stillbirth of real democracy there. So, I'm not encouraged by that aspect of his record.

I have had private conversations with people who know him to the effect that he learned some lessons from the Russia experience and that he has changed. Furthermore, he always says the right things in his interviews and op-eds.

However, he has yet to acknowledge his mistakes and the cost in human potential and lives. Instead, he talks about "misunderstandings" and "foolish simplifications" and wishes we would all just read his publications - where, of course, he comes off very well.

I remain unimpressed.

In this bright new day after the darkest of desert nights, after the capture and imprisonment of the tyrant, I wonder what life will be like. And I think back to an article from April by Ethan Bronner of The New York Times, "To Imagine Iraq After Saddam Hussein, You Must Think Like an Iraqi".

" But what I found during my visits is that many Iraqis, perhaps a majority, seemed to believe in and identify with Mr. Hussein. While they feared their ruthless leader, what they feared even more was life without him. "

Ending Saddam's chapter at least gives Iraq and its people the opportunity to move ahead. But it won't be easy, in large part because Iraqis, dizzy from the pace of change, don't yet know which direction is forward.

Many Iraqis apparently do not believe that it was Saddam who was captured.

The Christian Science Monitor profiles some humanitarian efforts in Iraq, "How an Iraq aid group stays safe".

" Tribal sheikhs seeking help and businessmen hoping for contracts parade through the aid group's office, untroubled by armed guards or pat-downs for weapons. In a war in which civilians are frequent targets, typified by the November suicide bombing of the Red Cross, it's an almost shocking scene. ... Mercy Corps, based in Portland, Ore., is one of a handful of foreign groups that have maintained a relatively large footprint in Iraq by pursuing an 'acceptance strategy' that, it calculates, offers better protection than highly visible guards and barriers.

The approach, used by the Red Cross until the Baghdad attack that killed 12, relies on constant consultations with local communities, hoping that their support for aid projects will produce the intelligence needed to keep workers safe. 'It's a high-risk strategy, but we believe it's less risky,' says Mercy Corps country head David Holdridge. 'The coalition lives behind high walls, but mortars hit them all the time.'

He argues that armed guards provide only 'illusory protection.' 'We have a policy of nondeterrence,' Mr. Holdridge says, 'and relying on good relations with local leaders and notables.'
...
Holdridge says security can't be guaranteed. 'This is the most ambiguous security situation I've ever seen. The only thing that comes close is Beirut in '80, '81. If someone gets hurt, I'll probably never get a job like this again. But we have a job to do, and we've decided not to adopt a self-defeating strategy.'

Mr Holdridge is, appropriately, quite careful not to claim too much for the "acceptance strategy". Mercy Corps continues to work in Iraq and safely, but tomorrow may bring new threats and will certainly bring new challenges. However, working closely and transparently with the local community, providing them with a stake in an agency's success, is a strategy that has been used successfully elsewhere - and by other organizations in Iraq.

We should not underestimate the forceful statement with which the article concludes: many, perhaps most, other strategies to accomplish the goals of the organization would be self-defeating.

. . .

Mercy Corps is an excellent humanitarian aid and development organization and if you were thinking about a Solstice donation, you could do much worse than sending them a few pennies in this "Season of Commitment".

" Flight is ubiquitous now — more than a convenience, it is a necessity of modern life. The principles of flying are the same as they were when they were applied at Kitty Hawk a century ago, no matter how much the machines have changed. Yet unlike most of life's necessities, flying will probably never be completely commonplace.

When that moment of lift occurs and a jet rises from the runway, there are always passengers who marvel at the fact, no matter how much they have flown. The reason is simple. It is still a marvelous fact. "
— The New York Times, December 17, 2003

Flight nearly seems to me like a birthright. I cannot remember a time before I had flown: I was taken on an airplane for the first time when I was just one year old - and at that time three of my grandparents still had yet to fly. On my first "unaccompanied" flight, I was five. I have lost count of the miles I have flown, though they certainly are more, many more, than a million.

I never fail to marvel.

This clock is just wicked cool.

CARE pulled all of its expatriate staff out of Iraq in late November.

Why is this significant? Because CARE has more experience in Iraq than almost any other NGO, with expat staff who have been there for decades. If they don't feel safe, then it isn't safe!

In other words, I wouldn't send an outsider to Iraq right now.

. . .

Why wait three weeks to mention this? I wasn't sure what the whole story was.

Several NGOs have pulled out some or all of their expatriate staff, so it wouldn't seem remarkable to most people that CARE had also done so. However, given CARE's history of working in Iraq, it would be quite significant if true. When CARE said they pulled their expat staff out, I wasn't sure if they really meant all of them. They did.

Yesterday, I waxed less than enthusiastic about the capture of Saddam Hussein.

It is not that I fail to be pleased. His capture after all was part of the job of my military and I like it when they do their job well. Good job, men and women! You get a cookie!

It is also always a good thing when a notorious criminal is brought to the dock. No more cookies - ever!

But, really, truly, and seriously, this changes very little in the day-to-day experience of Iraqis - or Americans. There will be no effect on unemployment in Iraq, the lack of power, or the lack of fresh water. Elections are no closer. The CPA is no more efficient or responsive today.

The capture is also not likely to lessen the violence in Iraq. Saddam is Iraq's past, but the fighting is about Iraq's future. It is past time we realized that.

So, in order to maintain my credibility as a patriot, do I have to offer the appropriate hosannas of how good the news is before I lapse back into my healthy skepticism? Ah, fuck that. Let's just call this "cynical Sunday".

This morning, as we listened to the press conference about the capturing of Saddam, Mrs Martial tilted her head, cocked an eyebrow, and said,

"Its been a humiliating week for Bush what with the reconstruction contracts, Halliburton profiteering, and the steel tariff smackdown.

"How convenient that the world should this weekend be treated to the graphic humiliation of Bush's enemy."

And, this afternoon as I watched some footage of Saddam, I thought to myself that if we are looking for a strong man with a mustache, well we've found one . . .

Josh Marshall says what I've been thinking:

" I have some real questions and concerns about just what Baker's agenda is going to be as the grand dealmaker. But at least it won't be amateur hour. "

Whatever else - and there is always something - Baker gets things done.

"You must be very proud," he said.

I was speaking this week with a colleague and good friend, a non-American, about a variety of things including the upcoming election here in the US. He said something very interesting, something that made me sit up and take notice before sitting back to do some thinking.

This friend is an experienced and curious America-watcher. Working internationally, he feels he needs to be aware of what the superpower is doing - or what it thinks it is doing. But not being an American he doesn't perceive our politicians as attempting to win his vote. So, when he watches and listens to our political process he sees actual issues discussed and he hears the actual statements made by our politicians, unfiltered through what we characteristically call a politician's "baggage" (in the context of an election "baggage" is simply how we perceive a candidate's electability; in other contexts "baggage" is how we describe a politician's credibility).

"Those Democratic candidates are exceptional," he said. "They are the best your country has to offer. You must be proud that your country has nine superbly talented, intellectually brilliant, extremely committed, truly patriotic people who have chosen to put themselves through this grueling process. Any one of these people could do anything they set their minds to do, and they have chosen service.

"Some of them know they will not get very many votes, but they still conceive it as their duty to engage in the process and to provide debate on the critical issues facing your country. This is nearly unique in the world, you know.

"You should be proud."

What I am is humbled. And, yes, I am proud of them.

When I was a child, I knew a hero.

She was unusual in many ways, her outer oddities hiding a far stranger core. She had immigrated to the US in the late 60s as an older woman, her Scottish husband already retired from the police force. They followed their oldest daughter to this country, but they did not settle too close, leaving a couple of hundred miles to soften the family's rough edges. She adored the Red Sox and knew more about the game of baseball and how to play it than many managers. She baked the best chocolate chip cookies.

She never condescended to children, always treating them as rational beings and forgiving them when they acted their age. She never tolerated adults who acted any less than theirs.

Her husband was Scottish, but she was not. She was German, and she met him when he was a soldier in Europe. He was not in combat, but was working in a group that opened prison camps and tried to assist the prisoners. They met in a prison camp.

I said she was a German; I did not say she was a Jew. Blond, blue-eyed, tall, and strong, she was Hitler's icon. And she despised the Nazis.

All through the cold years the Nazis gathered power closer, Germans made their terrible choices. Some joined, some fled, some spoke out, but most stayed silent, including her family. Not her, she spoke - even though she was just one woman, not wealthy or well-educated, raised with a sense of propriety and a knowledge of right and wrong. She mocked their pettiness, laughed at their little leader, raged against their black and white world. One woman, her laughter and her anger accomplished nothing, held back not one drop of that evil tide.

So she stopped talking and she fought. She was a member of the German resistance, that tiny group who helped downed fliers and passed what intelligence they could back to the Allied command. She was good at it. She was young and beautiful and she could go places no man could go, do things no man could stomach to do, and she willingly faced worse than death to drive evil men from authority.

Her family, having made the choice to remain silent, still knew what she did. And then they made the choice to speak - against her.

To her country and her family, she was a traitor. To me she was a teacher. But to humanity, always and forever, she is a hero.

. . .

Context

I hadn't spoken to him one-on-one for several months, though we'd both been at some dinner parties where the conversation was kept light and airy. Last week we arranged a dinner so that we could really talk, but we were already on the phone so we began a conversation about the world.

Or, rather, I should say that he did. He knows what I do for a living. Still, he needed to tell me how well things were going in Iraq.

I asked him how he knew.

He told me that everything that had happened was justified.

I asked him on what basis.

He told me about the reconstruction of Germany and Japan.

I asked him how those experiences applied and what we had learned.

He told me that success in those countries took years of direct rule.

I asked if we would spend the same years this time.

He told me that the Administration was doing the best that they could.

I asked what their plan was so we could try to measure that "best".

He told me it wasn't about oil.

I asked what it was about.

He told me that anyone who used chemical weapons should be destroyed.

I asked under what circumstances and with what methods.

He told me nuclear proliferation was unacceptable.

I asked what we could do about it.

He told me Israel was right.

I asked about what.

He told me that Arafat was the whole problem.

I asked what would happen if Arafat left the scene.

He told me it was okay to kill terrorists.

I asked about children and innocent bystanders.

He told me it was war.

I asked with who.

He told me things were going well and getting better. He told me that it was too early for me to pass negative judgement.

I asked who? was passing negative judgement. I finally offered an opinion that if it is indeed too early, as he suggested, then perhaps the confidence he expresses might also be premature.

I am completely baffled. The confusion - this baffling - is ongoing and seemingly perpetual, even though every day there is something new that inspires it. I just don't understand what harm being honest is going to do. It can't possibly have anything to do with "credibility" - since the dishonesty is so transparent that credibility has already been sacrificed. It just doesn't make any sense!

" U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said on Thursday that the decision to end steel tariffs was based on studies showing the tariffs were no longer needed rather than out of fear of retaliation. "

Brad DeLong notes, " even a month ago nobody in the administration thought that the steel tariffs had 'accomplished their goal' ".

Parts of the Bush Administration really are conservative - in the worst sense. The reflex in Iraq to any suggestion made by Iraqis is always to say "No!"

According to the New York Times, they've rejected a workable - and cheap as these things go - plan to provide a census for Iraq.

" As the American occupation officials rejected the plan to compile a voter roll rapidly, they also argued to the Governing Council that the lack of a voter roll meant national elections were impractical. "

What more can possibly be said?

Bruce Sterling writes briefly and movingly on free software in Extremadura, Spain. What is striking about this and other free OS movements around the globe is that government, that supposed bastion of reaction and inefficiency, is leading the way.

" As a business, it makes no sense to wire Extremadura's scattered hamlets. If the locals weren't given Net access by state fiat, they'd never manage to pay for it. They can't afford fancy brand-name software, either. So they have two choices: sit on their hands and watch the information revolution pass them by, or boot up a new kind of digital socialism. ... Free software has always been free for the sake of technologists, providing open range for code wranglers and server farmers. Now Extremadura is claiming it for the campesinos. Here, open source isn't about the process of collaborative development or objections to intellectual property. It's about power to the people. The LinEx stork is a direct connection to the global economy. "

Lawrence Lessig informs us that, meanwhile, in Burlington, Vermont, the city itself is building a network.

" Why should government be in the business of providing high-speed networks? Isn't that what free markets are for? Haven't we all learned that the market is more efficient at supplying goods and services? ... The answer, as Cornell economist Alan McAdams argues, has [...] everything to do with basic economics. ... [A]s McAdams nicely puts it (so nicely that we might call this the McAdams theorem), you don't monopolize yourself. "

If politics is local, and at its best it is, then you would expect local politicians to promote and increase their regional capacities. Government, as these examples demonstrate, can provide a responsible stewardship when people respond to the challenges of the present by looking - and planning - ahead.

In a world seemingly increasingly dominated by global concerns, regionalism turns out to be an effective strategy.

" If one characteristic expression of late modernity is the globalised standard, another is the value increasingly placed on the uniquely local. "

As Steven Shapin reminds us in his review (found via Arts & Letters Daily) of a new book by Pierre Boisard, Camembert: A National Myth.

Or to put it another way: there's no place like home.

Been receiving some traffic around the announcement that Berke Breathed is back in the Sunday funnies with Opus. Seems some people want to view the 'toon on their glowing screen rather than in their local daily.

Sorry, folks. Opus is not available on the web.

Buy a Sunday paper and support your free press - rather than spending your Sunday trying to get your press for free.

Running the United States of America is the toughest and most thankless job in the world. I have made it a practice to avoid outright condemnation of an Administration until it has had two years to get its bearings (substantive criticism, of course, should never be stifled; after all, how else can the loyal opposition remain loyal?). The doubt should benefit all equally, and our own imperfect knowledge should temper our outrage.

Three years in, Jim Henley reports the mounting horror many of us feel:

" The pattern is clear: everything dubious turns out to be much worse than initially reported. "

Of course, likewise, our knowledge should inform our fury. We now know more than enough to ask whether this Administration has any sense of the national interest. Can they spell out - using plain speech, actual logic, and real numbers - how any of their policies benefits America, how any of them makes ours a stronger and not a weaker nation, how any of them contribute to a better world?

Good god, they're hurting my country and I want them to stop.

The Presidential pardoning of a turkey has always struck me as bizarre - and not a little bloodthirsty. Swedish anthropologist Magnus Fiskesjo has put a fair amount of specialist thought into this ritual - and agrees with me.

Meanwhile, Andy Borowitz wonders what Ashcroft thinks of the turkey.

(via Public Nuisance)