WhirledView

In Tribute to John Charles Dyer (November 22, 1948 – November 21, 2013)

By Patricia H Kushlis and Patricia Lee Sharpe

With great sadness, we must report that our UK correspondent John Charles Dyer died on November 21, 2013 in Lytham, St. Anne’s, a village next to England’s Irish Sea just a day short of his 65^th birthday, after a several month struggle against aggressive brain cancer.

John’s political astuteness and analysis, his wit and way with words, his voice of conscience for the underrepresented and his ability to explain UK politics to a foreign audience made John’s weekly WV commentaries significant parts of this blog’s voice.  So too, did his lighter travel posts in which he transported us by bus, rail, car and foot to less visited places in the UK and the US through personal stories and glorious photographs.

His posts are part of this blog’s permanent archives and will remain an important part of WV.  They are accessible through the following link: http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/john-c-dyer/

He described himself on WhirledView as follows:    John C. Dyer, UK correspondent Public Policy "wonk" with over 34 years public service experience, over 17 as state level policy counsel, legislative advocate and analyst.  Writer.  Poet.  Dual citizen relocated to UK 2010.

What John did not say is that throughout his lengthy public service career he was Chief Counsel to the California Department of Food and Agriculture from April, 2004 through August, 2007, and prior to that he was a counsel for the department from July, 1996. This special expertise is reflected in the first two posts he wrote for WhirledView. Entitled “How Is Water Like Booze” they appeared on February 11 and 18, 2010 and placed in perspective the contents of a feature in the Economist on water problems in California’s heartland. 

His poetry was published in Poetry Cornwall while he was living in Florida before relocating to the UK – another ambition achieved.  

John Dyer grew up and was educated in California’s Central Valley – he graduated from the University of Pacific’s Raymond College and McGeorge Law School - but he was also a dual citizen, had traveled extensively in the UK prior to relocating there and, in truth, always had a foot on both sides of the Atlantic.  His all too short marriage to Victoria Buchan brought him much love, caring and a special safe haven for the last three and one-half years of his too short life.  So did his close relationship with Ed and Jessica Dyer, his two children, and grandchildren Rickie Surber and Haley Dyer.   

 May he rest in peace.  We will sorely miss him.    

(Photos of John Dyer by Victoria Buchan, of Victoria and John by Jessica Dyer and of the gull over the Irish Sea by John C. Dyer.)

In Typhoon Haiyan’s Wake

By Patricia H Kushlis

It’s been more than a week since Typhoon Haiyan (known in the Philippines as Yolanda) devastated the central Philippines leaving cities, villages, fields, roads, people and coconut plantations destroyed in its wake. This is the 26^th tropical storm to strike the islands this year – the worst since 1993. For days, the newscasts here in the US characterized the situation on the ground as chaotic.   News anchors (both US and British), by the way, have also mispronounced the name of Taclóban, the principal city.  For those who still don’t have it right, the stress is on the second, not the first syllable.

Videos have been filled with horror stories of looting and decomposed bodies lying in the open for days. Even reports of a Red Cross convoy held up by gunmen in this weapons-happy country are there for the downloading.        

The media coverage of the disaster in these United States has been substantial – hard-luck stories tend to bring out reporters in droves - yet unless another typhoon hits the ravaged area, these messages will all too likely trail off into a too soon forgotten black void.   The American public’s attention span is short and correspondents who cover disaster stories are expensive to maintain in remote areas for long.  But this one may last longer in the public eye than most given the extreme conditions, the logistical hurdles faced and the extent of the damage.   Moreover, Filipino-Americans are the second largest Asian-American ethnic group in the US according to the 2010 census with strong familial ties to their ancestral home and the US Navy clearly has effective public affairs teams on the ground.   

Yet how many more shots of the dead, sound bites of hard luck stories of survivors and destroyed buildings can there be to attract all but the most fervent viewers over the long run?  Once the relief efforts set in in earnest – which is now happening - only the tragic stories of underserved remote villages will linger on.  

Meanwhile, humanitarian relief was initially hampered by a prolonged logistical and environmental nightmare initially exacerbated by a Filipino government in which no one seemed to be in charge and apparently absent adequate long term planning at both local and national levels for the gale force winds and the 16 foot high wave tsunami.    Yet the country has a functioning government and plays host to various international relief organizations with long time offices in Manila. This has and will make a huge and positive difference in the days and months to come.       

The early arrival of the American military with its world class logistical superiority and its lengthy successful track record in international disaster relief– in particular the US Navy – coincided with the Filipino decision to send in its own troops to restore order in stricken villages and permitted the US Navy to take over air traffic command at Guiuan, the region’s second most important airfield.

The situation on the ground is stabilizing.  This is allowing civilian NGOs – international and domestic – to feed the hungry, care for the sick and injured, bury the dead, restore clean water and begin the next phase – the long term and costly rebuilding, repairing and resettling of hundreds of thousands of refugees whose lives and livelihoods have suddenly been torn asunder in one of the poorest areas of the Philippines.

The Philippine Red Cross, I understand, is the largest NGO in the country with relief workers in the afflicted areas since early on.  It is also headed by the capable Richard Gordon once mayor of the city of Olongapo in the 1990s at a critical time in the city’s history.  But many other international relief organizations are on the ground and donations of charity are gratefully accepted.  The aid comes from governments and individuals from around the world most notably the British, US, Japanese, Thai, French and Australians.  A recent Newshour report also showed packages of aid from Germany being off loaded for distribution and said that the Chinese have finally sent an emergency medical unit and a naval hospital ship. But let’s face it, the Chinese contribution and the country’s response could and should have been far better for a major power located next door.

As is the usual case in tragedies such as these, donations of money to reputable charities working in afflicted areas are far more helpful than goods.  Money travels faster and is more cost effective.  It also helps the local economy by allowing the relief organizations to purchase goods needed from local sources.       

US-Philippine relationship – lengthy and sometimes contentious

The Filipino-American relationship has been lengthy and sometimes contentious. The Philippines became America’s only colony at the conclusion of the Spanish-American War of 1898.  The island nation gained independence on July 4, 1946 after the US reconquered this devastated colony from the Japanese in World War II. The US reduced its military presence in fits and starts thereafter and the last US forces (the Navy) left the country in October 1992 although a tiny US military contingent has been working with the Filipino armed forces in anti-terrorist activities in Mindanao since 2001 – the country’s southernmost island long beset by struggles between the government and armed insurrectionist Muslim groups.  Meanwhile, a mutual US-Philippines defense treaty has remained in force for decades as has a generally harmonious relationship between the US Navy and the Philippines.

It’s the US Navy that is leading the US military relief efforts there now - from photo mapping remote areas through special P-3 flights so as to better target humanitarian aid to delivering bags of rice and other food stuffs to hungry villagers and townsfolk on the ground in coordination with Filipino military helicopter crews.      

A Deadlocked America Dealing with Iran: No Paradise for Diplomats

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Some Right-leaning members of Congress take an all or nothing approach to policy and legislation. To them compromise is a violation of principle with connotations of betrayal and heresy. The martyrdom of starvation is infinitely preferable to gaining half a loaf.

Neither Bombs nor Bombast

Hard-nosed to the bitter end, such ideologues also find it difficult to embrace the art of diplomacy. Regarding Iran, they prefer bombs or missiles to what they see as time-wasting bombast, an echo of the motto here at home: don’t stoop to improving an imperfect government; starve it; destroy it.

If negotiation leading to compromise equates to moral defeat among Tea Partiers and their camp followers, how can signed-and-sealed win-win agreements or treaties be viewed as anything but a ceding of sovereignty, a kowtowing to the enemy, a clipping of the national wings, even when the equalizing consists mainly of polite words: a diplomatic victory not crowed about but delicately expressed to avoid humiliating the weaker side, which otherwise might not have signed? When articles of secular faith are at stake, evidently, no face-saving concession is too minor to oppose—and yet, without civility, how is diplomacy with Iran (or any other country) possible?

It’s not, which greatly pleases the Israel lobby in Washington.

The Manichaean Fallacy

Adding to the psycho-philosophical difficulty that impedes inter-party cooperation in Congress is the Manichaean religious sensibility that underlies much contemporary American conservatism. There are Catholic and Protestant variants, but in either case the problem presented is this: those defined as evil don’t get pardoned and asked to dinner; they have earned eternal damnation. Ronald Reagan may be long gone, but to many Republicans as well as  other conservatives Iran is still an Axis of Evil from which no good can ever be expected. Iran cannot, ever, be trusted—and Iran is certainly not to be trusted to uphold an agreement inhibiting its development of nuclear weapons.

Oddly enough, the religious right in Iran is of the same mind. The U.S. is the Great Satan with whom the new president of Iran should not be negotiating. Instead of dealing with America Rouhani should be joining in a far from uninimous chorus of “Death to America!”

So American and Iranian hard liners are utterly in accord on perpetuating eternal enmity. Neither, I suppose, would appreciate the humor of this situation.

The Israel Factor

But there’s a third obstacle to successful nuclear negotiations with Iran. Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose Iranian policy consists of bombs, bombs and more bombs, is working over the U.S. Congress, which all too often behaves like a sub-committee of the Knesset. And thus, ever subserviant to Israel, U. S. conservatives are expressing shock! shock! that U.S. negotiators have made some inconsequential concessions to Iran during preliminary talks whose ultimate goal is going to be very hard for Tehran to swallow: crippling Iran’s ability to become a credible nuclear threat.

The truth is that the Obama administration and the conservatives—and even Mr. Netanyahu—all have the same goal: no nukes in Iran. Another truth is that economic sanctions have actually worked. Iran’s economy is in such poor state that its leadership is willing to talk. The complexities are many and I do not plan to discuss them here because nothing is possible if the U.S. Congress cannot give itself a crash course on how effective diplomacy is conducted. Conservatives need to learn how to interpret language that does not include an ultimatum.

So here’s the conundrum for the Obama administration. Both America and Iran need to sound relatively hawkish to satisfy their at home hard-liners, but overdoing the vitriol will cause problems for the diplomats on the other side of the table who can’t afford to look as if they are weakening under threat.

The Danger from Diplomatic Illiteracy

In order to get things going, the U.S. has dangled a modest little carrot whose significance must be magnified to convince Iranian hard-liners that Iran is already getting something, although Iran’s savvy diplomats surely know how modest the offer really is. The danger is that Congress will misconstrue the tactical magnification, which sadly is already happening. Conservatives, primed to believe that Obama will give away the store, are looking at legislation to limit the flexibility of our own very clever diplomats.  This would turn them into puppets unable to seize a terrific offer from the Iranians should it appear in a guise not foreseen by a fearful Congress.

And so, thanks to a distrust-ridden, dead-locked American political system, another round of talks would go down the drain.

Does all this sound too complicated? Welcome to the world of diplomacy. When you are negotiating, you have to be aware of countless interacting possibilities and correlative hazards. Getting through the tangle is never easy. But if you have to negotiate the briar patch with your hands tied and your mouth muzzled by cut-throat politics on your own side, it’s a lot harder.

Maybe President Rouhani will turn out of be an evil bag of hot air intent on protracting negotiations while his centrifuges turn out ever more potent fissile material. But maybe he’s not a devil.

The only way to know is to give serious negotiations and competent diplomats a chance.

Talking to the Walls

By Patricia H Kushlis

Years ago when I was educational exchanges officer in the Cultural Section of the US Embassy in Moscow, the KGB routinely bugged our apartments as well as the Embassy.   We were also surrounded by a phalanx of KGB operatives who “worked for us” in the Embassy’s non-classified sections.  Excluding the drivers, I found their presence rarely helpful except when I wanted the KGB to know about some untoward action of their making that was thwarting the life and work of an American exchange student, researcher or professor – to get them to call off their dogs so to speak.  This tactic, by the way, often worked. Sometimes in surprising ways.

 In addition, I had a Russian housekeeper hired through UPEDIKA, the KGB department established to handle foreign embassy employee “special needs.”  She was an excellent cook and incredibly protective of my blond, blue-eyed toddler who she referred to as her “zolotoy malchik” (golden boy). This was during the Cold War after Brezhnev had suffered a stroke but was not yet gone from this world and all the while Moscow Central was attempting to cope with more resident foreigners from capitalist countries than before 1917. 

What, then, is an overwhelmed spying operation with limited resources supposed to do?    

I decided early on that I didn’t care what the KGB’s minions heard and reported – or didn’t. I seldom read classified materials – didn’t need to, didn’t want to. Besides the fishbowl atmosphere wasn’t all that different from my youth in McCloud, a small company-owned town in California’s far north. 

Basically, I thought that the Soviet eaves droppers were foremost wasting their time and energy on me - especially when subjected to my seemingly interminable tussles with my pre-school aged son – although there were times when our verbal interchanges - so to speak - might have enriched Russian foreign language vocabularies depending on what kind of English they had been taught at school.

The walls had ears - sometimes they responded too   

Occasionally I would also talk to the walls.  No I was not paranoid.  When the trash in the halls had not been picked up for days, the best way to find it disappeared was to grouse loudly to the ceiling next to our apartment entrance. Poof – the trash would suddenly vanish.  Today, however, my walls are deaf – apparently my cell phone and Internet connection have reportedly gone live but, frankly, the NSA’s just not as helpful as the KGB was.  Data overload perhaps? The least the NSA could do is to send out the trash collectors, leaf rakers or repair men when I complain.

One spring afternoon in 1980 near the end of my Moscow assignment, I saw three well-dressed Russians emerge from our apartment house’s stairwell – two men in business suits and a bleached blonde in a stylish pale blue outfit that had clearly been designed and made in the West.  They were carrying oversized shopping bags and cases with what I presumed brimmed over with reel-upon-reel of tapes.  Their next destination was anyone’s guess – whether to deliver the reels to a transcribers’ office somewhere in the bowels of Lublyanka or simply to have the tapes tossed on to what I imagined to be an ever growing Payatas-sized dump in some cavernous underground warehouse of mostly forever unlistened to conversations.

I never thought the Soviet system could handle the volume of tapes of foreigners’ exasperated nannies attempting to cope with pent-up kids.  Or me bitching about the lack of basic edible products available even in the hard currency stores or having to pay the black market ruble equivalent of $10 for a single cucumber at the “rynok” or farmers’ market, before New Year’s. 

Meanwhile, that ever present threat of KGB surveillance did nothing to endear me to the strangest place I had ever lived even though I was never was convinced that the KGB found me at all interesting.

Simply because it can be done doesn’t mean it should be

Now it seems the shoe is on the other foot and it’s quite clear that our run-amok National Security Agency is in need of as much, if not more, adult supervision than the Kremlin's spies.

This time around our very own over-funded electronic snooping agency is likely scooping up and storing somewhere my conversations with my son who works for the private sector in London. This regardless of the fact that we are both US citizens and have previously held US security clearances as former US government employees. Note employees, not contractors.

What exactly does the NSA think it’s going to learn from collecting and storing such familial exchanges just because it can?  Yes, I think this agency’s wholesale surveillance is counterproductive (Nicholas Kristof said it best in Thursday’s New York Times), questionably legal and at the very least needs a choke chain and a much shortened leash.  Hello out there, just follow WhirledView if you want to know what I really think. You don't need to eavesdrop. 

And simply because the NSA has the technology to do so?  What a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money.  No wonder we supposedly don’t have enough to cover food stamps for the poor- let alone publically supported health insurance - at least according to the Republicans.  Please, an increase of the NSA budget (to more than $10 billion per year - according to the New York Times) should never have happened and needs a major roll back.  The agency’s behavior reminds me of the proverbial kid in a candy store whose over indulgent parent doesn’t know when to call halt.

The Alternative

Meanwhile, this country would be far better off once again with well trained and experienced diplomats working outside their fortress embassies talking to people and experiencing the local scene first hand. This, by the way, should include formal and informal meetings with foreign leaders and officials.  It means putting what is learned into context for the officials in Washington who make the policies.