For What It Is Worth

Please be vigilant around Madison.

CUBA LIBRE.

Beginning of an opening?

I Was a Public Kid Dropped in the Private Dorms.

Ridiculous disparities between policies involving substance use in the UH and UW dormitories.

Unfortunately, I'm Starting to Care...

...about the district 5 election.
Good thing nobody's sent me any lit or knocked on my down yet!

Maybe I'll vote for 2 more years.

Confirmation.

Your blog is worthless.

ReLaunch?

Perhaps.

Noon Snowplow Run Down Langdon.

Why Madison city snowplows need to be out running three or so days after the last snowfall is a bit beyond me...
Especially if the city's budget is already blown over by the massive plow deployment over the last few weeks with the early snowfall.

Maybe the city is just trying to prove it can actually respond effectively to snowfall and clear roads? In a stupid, costly way?

What the hell...?

"I can't, I can't, I can't."

Yes.

Still alive.
That's about it.

Police State (Capitol)

At 2AM, I count twenty police officers standing in groups on the 500 block of Frances Street, between Langdon and State.

Overheard from a passerby: "If there were this many cops out normally, maybe they could stop the muggings..."

Live-Blog: Gary Sick, US Expert on Iran, in UW Intro to Middle East Lecture

Gary Sick, one of the most well-known and knowledgble experts on Iran in the US, is going to be speaking to a class I am taking on the modern middle east.

***Keep in mind that this will also work as my class notes, so it might be a bit crazy and probably not very refined.

The topic for the lecture is a dialogue on Iran and the 1979 revolution.
He will be giving a lecture tonight at 8 at the Morgridge Center on whether or not a US strike on Iran is inevitable as well.


-We are going to be talking about "ancient history".... before 1980. Only Sick and Loewenstein were born before then. *Laughter* Nobody here remembers the revolution... so its a new experience.

- Sick was in the White House at the time, and served as the pointman for the administration dealing with the groups, and was present at all of the decision making at the time, documented in his book, "All Fall Down," a "blow-by-blow account" of the event for more details...
Will be giving a personal narrative in a somewhat condensed form, although many other versions exist.
Describing himself as "not particularly delicate," and "do not mind being asked hard questions." Seeing as several students here are Iranian, this might be interesting.
Recommends Charles Kurtzman's book on it as well, "Iran: The Unthinkable Revolution" ... "or something like that." Recommended as one of the best books on it in all.
Will be discussing the THEORIES of the revolution, notsomuch the hostage crisis. Why did the first theocratic regime in modern history emerge in Iran, is the topic, as is the topic of this lecture.

- Crisis decision making: every crisis is like every other crisis, and each is also like none other. Every event has a history of other events; every one is the same since the stakes are high, always an overload of the decision-making process, rumors, questions, information than one can possibly manage, needing to figure out how to sort it out.
As time went on, and the entire intelligence apparatus was focused on this, Sick found that 1000 items came onto his desk in ONE DAY. It would have been impossible to read it all, and just as hard to understand what was important of it all.
Also, there was imperfect information coming through. They didn't have the ability to winnow through the BS... so when thinking of decision-making and governance... "Don't be too hard on them.... They're capable, intelligent, smart... And working VERY hard.... Things that might be obvious years down the line might be" not during the crisis. And this is the same in all crises.

The specific circumstances and location make it different...
The LOCATION of the Iranian Revolution makes it important. The US had made the Shah its representative of its interests ALONE in the Middle East, unlike ANY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.
**The personality of those involved does make a difference: different people in the same position can make things change. And that is what citizens vote on, who to put in those situations.

The relationship with the Shah was totally at the top, very personal, but otherwise the US didn't know anything about Iran otherwise, was very ignorant about it. There was almost nothing in popular culture giving information about Iran, not even stereotypes, "with a few things floating around in our heads, almost randomly."
As an example, free word-association usually would find: cats, carpets, and maybe "if very sports minded, it had something to do with marathons... That isn't very much."

The question of ignorance starts in 1972: Nixon and his NSA, Kissinger, came to Tehran, and met the Shah. This was the high point of careers for BOTH the Shah and Nixon: right before Watergate; and the following year the Shah discovered he had cancer, "and it was all downhill from there for him... the United States didn't know about his cancer, it was one of the best-kept state secrets, ever... We were totally dependent on him... If we knew that he had a fatal form of cancer, you immediately start to look for who to support after the Shah. He knew that was a piece of information he didn't want us to have... He concealed it so closely that he didn't get the kind of treatment he needed... He treated it with pills, which could mask the symptoms but not treat it... He committed suicide for a state secret."

During these meetings, the US was looking for somebody to take over responsibilities in the Middle East - wanting to find our proxies in the time of Vietnam: the Nixon Doctrine. "Nixon looked across the table at the Shah and said, 'Protect me'... Very few people were unaware that we had placed so much" on the Shah, the "mantra of foreign policy in the Middle East... it is ALWAYS a mistake to personalize a country... We are in danger of doing the same thing with Musharraf... It's a very weak read. If he goes, what do we do?"
"We had no safety net, and could not even admit that the whole thing might collapse, that it might fail, because the costs were too high... We were then held responsible for everything the Shah did" then, in Iran.

Everyday decisions are just as intense as ones decided at the national level, according to Sick. Governments act like everything is in chess, however, that the other actor is rational, working within the rules in increments, with perfect information. That's just not true always: "revolutions are not a chess board; revolutions are what I like to call the hurricane model. You know that something is coming, and you have a basic decision: do I stay and board up the windows, or do I stick around?"
"99% of what governments do can be handled by a chessboard model... That 1% is where governments tend to fail, and that's true of governments everywhere."

There was a lot of wishful thinking... that the Shah would deal with the domestic problems, but he had done it for 37 years, and it wasn't that new. People believed it, and it wasn't too irrational to believe at the time.
"The country is lost, for the King cannot make up his mind," was the best description ever heard about the situation.

Before the crisis, usually attaches from local embassies would talk with Sick once every six weeks. Everyone - from Germany to Israel - thought that things were not good, but his SAVAK and military forces, oil wealth, IOUs to all major governments in the world, could put it down... "Who's on the other side: a group of clerics, out of the mosques. Who would you vote for? We voted the same way."

Misjudgments committed by the US:
- The Shah had self-destructive tendencies, learning that the military was the biggest threat to his power... so he put people in charge of the branches who hated each other. When the military had to work together, it had zero experience in doing it, and even with US assistance, cooperation failed. "As a result, he helped bring himself down."
- Islamic fundamentalism - and its political parts - started with the revolution. "We were in uncharted territory... One of my colleagues said, 'Whoever took religion seriously?'"
- US foreign policy was aimed to stop the Soviet Union, with containment. Iran was lynchpin to that, seen always in Cold War terms. When the demonstrations started, the Shah got himself in trouble, many people assumed it was the Soviets who did it. "That was such a widespread idea, since the people in Iran, the elite at the top, could not imagine the religious types... organizing anything, they had nothing but contempt for these people, and refused to believe they had done it for themselves."
Other choices were the communists, some in the White House truly believed it was a Soviet plot at the time... that "By the time you get proof [of non-intervention], the Soviets will be in Tehran."
The other was the Americans, "that somehow we were behind this, that we really wanted to get rid of the Shah and replace him with a fundamentalist... You need to look around to see who could do such a thing, and the Americans were the clear choice."

All of this happened at the same time as the Camp David accords in the Arab-Israel dispute... Not in separate compartments, but competing with each other. Carter paid very little attention since he was so deeply involved in that, Sick describes himself as "the little guy waving his placard, screaming, 'Hey, something's wrong!'"... By the time the US looked at it, it was too late.

Would it have made a difference if the US had taken note? It's a good question, Sick is unsure of the answer. "There's no question the Carter administration was not ready for the revolution, but if they had been, would it have made a difference?"... As the mobs take over, "people's minds change. In revolutions, you start out at the beginning and nobody things this bunch of ragtag opposition people can carry the day... And then as time goes on... there comes a time when a lot of people, independently... begin to jump ship and move to a different side... Once that begins, it's all over... People had already gotten to that point by the US we had taken notice... Even if we had inserted troops, we would have been in the middle of a civil war that we didn't understand... Only one person could have change the course of events, the person who had the responsibility for it, that was the Shah..." who was unwilling to do anything... "We were reduced to damage limitation. The name of my book is 'All Fall Down,' and I mean it... Civil wars have to be either nipped in the bud, or they go all the way."


Question and Answer Period

Q - What did the Mullahs have to do with it?
A - The Shah did a good job of stopping almost everyone in pubic from speaking out. The Mullahs used the mosques, the one place where you could meet freely and conspire. The Shah wasn't unaware of it, but he had such contempt for the religious leadership that they thought nothing would come of it.

Q - What were the US interests in the region that it wanted to protect?
A - "Oil." Production in Iran dropped after the revolution and never returned to the same level, but the entire Persian Gulf area was the key. "...If this had happened in Bolivia, it would be something we could have been fine with." In 1971 the British left, and at that point the US was bogged down in Vietnam, and felt it couldn't take over from the British. "It looked like the Soviets might make a play for warm water ports... viewed as a huge threat, related to oil as well."

Q - What percentage of information received was pertinent? How could we increase the percentage of pertinent over unimportant?
A - That is the essence of the problem of the US intelligence community, which they're trying to reform today. At that point, Sick had almost all the highest code-word levels, an immense amount of information. Reading specific speeches from world leaders many times repeatedly will tell what specifically the nation wants to do in its foreign policy, even if its hard to listen to - "it'll pop out... If you get yourself into the mindset of that elite, you will recognize changes." Without the internet, it was a different world, with the radio being the best technology. "Being tied to my computer these days, I wonder how we did it at all." Discriminating between good information and bad information is what makes a good analyst. Making connections and finding relationships is the key. "It's a puzzle solving process... You monitor all those data points, and you're willing to shift, you don't get too tied into your analytical model... asking what was wrong with the original model and how can I change it?... It isn't easy, and it can be wrong." "If you're in the middle of a waterfall and its gushing down, that little piece that just went by might not strike you as that important... It might go right on by you and will deeply regret that you didn't recognize it later on in the future."

Q - What else falls down, between the US and Iran, after the revolution?
A - "There were a lot of people in the US who really didn't want to come to the conclusion that these people were here to stay." There was a lot to talk about, including arms trade negotiations. Both sides tried, but then the radicalization of the revolution after the hostage crisis led to all ties being broken. "No Presidential candidate can afford to be seen as soft on Iran... Similarly in Iran , the slogan of "Death of America" and the "Great Satan" is built into the system, opening relations is a huge risk and problem.

Q - How was the revolution presented to the US public?
A - Sick served as note taker for the meetings with the President and NSA, and would wake up at the crack of dawn with a radio on AM talk. They did every night for a year, led by Ted Koppel, "America Held Hostage" - this was the first crisis brought into homes for the first time in history. If you see people screaming Death to America nightly, it has an effect, "a permanent mark on the American psyche." Popular culture side was very important to it.

Q - What would a possible solution have been to the revolution?
A - The only institution intact was the military, it was the last thing to go. After the military surrendered, there was nothing left, and it was the fault of the Shah due to his failure to train them well, even though they were loyal to him. He should have brought them out in full force, early, then make reforms early on. That would have undercut insurgency and "taken some of the steam out of the revolution early on." But waiting until the end was a total failure, the military refused to act, and then the Shah had to worry about his own troops joining the opposition, or throwing a coup. "It could have been a sensible, humane dictatorship, or it could have been something like Saddam Hussein. We'll never know. The generals who were arguing that this had to be done, and were told by the Shah that they would have no authority, left. Those bloodthirsty types who were willing to go to the wall for the Shah were gone, leaving only the bureaucratic types."

Q - Was there any influence from the US government upon popular culture's portrayal of the events?
A - The government is intensely aware of the power of the media, and there are many ways to try to control them. In its first four years, the Bush administration was the best of doing that in history, no leaks, no breaks. The Carter administration was very bad at it, and the media knew it, and could discuss more inflammatory things. The media can take it into their own hands, and won't trust the administration.... The Carter administration never got to that point, whereas the Bush era is there right now.


Overall, thoroughly impressed with Sick's presentation.

Halloween?

I might be going as this guy.

The Trollfest? It Was Good.

David Horowitz. What to say...
Most evidently? Anti-Nazi.

Since apparently the leaders of the middle east currently are - with the exception of a few golden boys like Assad Bashar, Fuad Siniora, Ehud Olmert (except for those off days with identity crises, or maybe trying to flee the rape allegations), Hosni Mubarak... yeah, everyone else - Nazis, Jew-haters, etc... Horowitz argued that the Islamic radical movement derives much of its power from antisemitism, dating back to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during WWII trying to recruit Muslims to join the Waffen SS to exterminate the Palestinian Jews.

Interesting points:
- The concept of a Palestinian state is bullshit, considering that it was named for the Filisteens, redheaded fishermen who have no relation to the Arab peoples... and the "Palestinians" who claim the land never actually controlled it... ever... since the Turks had it before them, followed by the British.
- That abandoning Iraq now would lead to a massive invasion by Iran, followed by an invasion of Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East, culminating in World War Three. (If true, that's another scenario Clancy called...)
- That left-wingers are idiots generally, and support the radicals by trying to give them shelter from the ungodly-might of the United States and all that is good and righteous in the world.

Only once did the 9/11 Truth fools try to interrupt it. Didn't work.
And only once did a certain David L. scream out "GO BOLSHEVIKS" to try and provoke the lefties to actually erroneously agree with him...

Granted, while I do NOT agree with all he was saying.... and need to look into it a lot more myself before making judgments about the content...
All in all, an extremely entertaining and worthwhile talk.
I haven't seen the mindless PC campus left get ravaged that badly by an outsider, well, ever until now. Bravo.

Small Town Bust.

One need not go to New York or Miami to have action with the DEA apparently.

Who needs Colombia when we got Madison?

Mayor Dave Makes an Israeli Daily

Since nobody else seemed to notice this...

Mayor Cislewicz , attending a conference of mayors from around the globe, made the news in Jerusalem yesterday in the nationally-respected daily, HaAretz.

...because he didn't know Israeli companies had any technological prowess.


"I did not understand coming in the extent of the biotech industries in this part of the world, and we also have an economy increasingly based on biotech and high-tech industries," said David Cieslewicz, mayor of Madison, Wisconsin. "It's a relationship we can really build on."

Yes, Mr. Mayor, the Israelis have one of the most booming economies on the planet, and make incredible technological bounds constantly... great way to represent your city.

Then again, with some of Madison residents' views (including those of a certain professor for a class in which I am taking a midterm in an hour... during which where students have booed at the mention of Israel), not too big a surprise that locals and even our leaders would be ignorant about that part of the world.

No word yet if Dave will be blacklisted by any of the number of Madison and UW anti-war/anti-Zionist groups anytime soon.

For the Record.

Enjoy the archives, as that's all that will soon remain of this.
For the time being.

Well... That Was Fun.

An extra shift at the union tonight....
Equated to being locked inside while a potentially murderous and suicidal man ran around campus. With a gun! Trying to get shot! On the loose! Cops lost him! RUNNING AROUND CAMPUS EVERYWHERE AND ANYWHERE.

6:30pm: I get word that some really bizarre situation is going on by the hospital... suicidal shooter? Okay... no problems here. We ask if we're going to change anything for the night, naw, we're good.
Everything continues as normal at the union.

8:30: LOCKDOWN!!!
Apparently the union was never locked down in a security crisis before in recent memory, because nobody really knew what the hell was going on.
When the management ask each other to call their cell phones to convey messages (mind you, saying this over the union's walkie-talkie system (although customers can hear it)) somethin bad is going on.
When they then say, "lock all external doors NOW," that's also not a good sign.

I ended up with the choicest of guard positions, to both keep potential gunmen outside (even though with a shot through the floor-to-ceiling pane, I'd be screwed in keeping them out) and keeping guests/hostages inside: the door facing the red gym, the ONE door that can be opened from the inside even if locked.
Thankfully, and I mean that, nobody found out about that.

People had no clue the building was being shut down at first. The union gave a five-minute period where leaving was allowed, but word spread quickly and people who thought they could leave missed the deadline. Now there were 50 people standing in the lobby. Some were pretty (extremely) pissed that they were being forced to stay inside with nothing but Babcock ice cream to satiate their hunger and thirst (got a lot of complaints about that one, although the Rath was already closed). One woman was so infuriated and eager to one-up the employees that she ran around the entire building, going upstairs to the upper deck to get out the ONE door not covered by an employee and still somehow open.
Go get killed lady, just don't sue the university, they tried to save your life.

Half an hour later:
"What is the protocol for letting people go?" / "This isn't going according to protocol."
Great news.
The union then let anyone who wanted to leave do so - in groups of 3, since groups are less likely to be targeted by homicidal maniacs or something like that. Anyways, lots of freshmen headed over to the Witte and Liz Waters dorms in packs, people gave us lots of nasty glares, and we now only had about 10 people waiting around.

One man actually waited until 11:30, when the building officially shut down (although it had a zero-admittance policy from 8:30pm) to leave, and then grumbled, "You know, they always tell you about when crazy people are on the loose... Never about when they've found them." He called a taxi (FREE TONIGHT!! although I didn't use mine for the two-block ride up Langdon, damn!) and took off.

So the madman hasn't been caught. I'm guessing he's hiding in Grainger Hall.
Or maybe he never came on campus at all! That's a nice little twist added by the UWPD - they're now apparently skeptical that the gunman was ever on campus. Peachy.

And classes haven't been cancelled... what the hell, I guess come 40 below temperatures or insane crazies, the lectures must go on.


I hope nothing serious happens on this campus. I wouldn't want to be at the union if something truly awful occurred... not after tonight.


Obvious note: I do not represent the Wisconsin Union in any way, shape, or form.

Exclusive Details on Wednesday's Night's Abnormally High Crime Rate...

More details an extremely criminally-active last night...

Madison Police has reports up for two unrelated strong-armed robberies that occured last night, in addition to the one this blog reported.

Particularly concerning is that these crimes/attempted crimes took place around the entire Madison near-campus area:
- 200-block of Langdon
- 100-block of East Gilman
- Mills Street at Emerald


And a BREAKING REPORT which I have just received, not reported yet to any other media outlet, and is currently being relayed to the MPD....
"I was in front of the union and red gym when i noticed the car lights ahead. They didn't stop until I was a block or two away from the red gym and a block or so away from frances on langdon. I was directly across from that building that has a lot of painting on its big windows [Hillel, on the 600-block of Langdon]."

Someone then emerged from the car and began accosting the victim. The suspect apparently knew extremely details on the victim's background, calling him out for being affiliated with a campus organization. The victim reports that the suspect seemed to be deliberately hiding his hands - the victim feared that the suspect was holding a knife.

Details on the suspect's appearance:
"White male, pale, 6 feet tall. He had brownish hair, I think, but it was dark out. He wore really nice silver prep glasses and had a huge gut, but wasn't overweight elsewhere."


As always, residents of the Langdon neighborhood in particular are advised to NOT TRAVEL ALONE AFTER SUNDOWN TONIGHT.
Further details should be forthcoming.

Extreme Sketchiness - An Attempted Mugging? - On Langdon Street - ON SIDE OF MY HOUSE

According to a close source, a possible crime attempting mugging took place tonight on Langdon Street.
What concerns me, personally, was that it occurred directly in front of my house.

The account follows:
"My roommate was walking back to our apartment down Langdon Street. He walked past our fraternity house. Someone came out from behind a car, parked next to the house, he was hiding. This person was wearing a black hat and a black shirt. He started to follow my roommate. My roommate took off as he realized he was being followed closely, at which point the other guy turned and ran the other direction."

I know the two people who own the cars that park next to the house, and neither were recognized by the would-be victim.

Once more, proof that Langdon Street is a major focal point of crime in Madison.

I Didn't Get Jumped Last Night...

...because the muggers were on Mifflin last night!

By the way, the student victim was not drunk.
Alcohol might NOT be the cause of all Madison's crime?!
Oops.