Denali Day Two - More Bears, Some Ducks, Weather Change

We've been comparing how little snow there was this year compared to last year.  But now that I've checked last year's posts, it's clear.  Yes, last year was a heavy snow year and this year it was lighter and warmer.  But last year we were there May 3 and  May 4  and this year May 17 and 18.
You can go to the links to see the differences.

After Friday's magnificent day, Saturday gave us a contrast.  Clouds started coming in and by the time we were walking back up from the Teklanika bridge, the first drops began.  But even a rainy day in Denali is a treat.  So here are a few more pictures.

After a few caribou driving to Savage River (where the paved road ends) we (and many others) got to watch this bear fairly close to the road.

There were lots more caribou throughout the drive.  Saturday we were pretty much headed for Teklanika.  This is a campground 30 miles into the park with an overview and lots of bathrooms.  It's a stop for the tourist buses, which don't start running until tomorrow.  Well, that turns out to be not completely true.  There were tan guided tour buses that were running pretty frequently.  In any case, the Denali road is normally closed to private cars at Savage River.  But in the spring, as they clear the road of snow and repair any damage from winter, they open the road - up to Teklanika.  So it's a chance to drive in and stop where you want and watch animals, hike, bike, picnic.  Whatever.  Friday we'd hiked the short Savage River trail (one mile each way.)  It's a loose, but we only did the west side because there was a big glaciated spot that blocked the trail on the east side.  We met people who'd climbed around the ice, but we aren't that young any more.  

We did stop at a pullout about mile 25 and I rode the bike a couple of miles, until there were trees on both sides (and it's harder to spot nearby bears.  Though I don't think there's ever been a biker attacked on the road, but I'm not sure.  Very few people - under five I believe - have been killed by bears in Denali.

So after the bike ride we got to the first small pond before the Teklanika campground which had a Northern Shoveler floating around.  (I'm having trouble focusing my Canon Rebel on objects in the distance, so that's why this bird is so small.  If you enlarge it, you'll see how out of focus it is.  I need to work on this problem.  The manual is challenging and I haven't found good sites on this particular problem online yet.)

The next pond, just past the campground, had a bufflehead pair and a pintail duck.

The Teklanika overlook area was packed with cars - so much so people were parking on the road.  And lots of people had their bikes.  And on the hill not far from the bridge (about a mile away) there was a wildlife ranger (Jake) monitoring a bear sow with two cubs that was about 150 yards below the road.  Well, he said, that they try not to intervene with the wildlife, leaving them as free as possible.  Normal distance to be kept between people and bears is minimum of 300 yards, but since the bears were down below in the river bed and they'd been there for several hours, he wasn't concerned.  Though earlier there'd been about 40 people including barking dogs (they can be on the road on a leash) so he had to quiet down the people.

They were digging for roots he said.  The vast majority of their diet is vegetation in the park.

Here you can see the mom digging.

She had her head down and her claws in the earth most of the time.

Jake noted that the cubs were making noises.  Eventually they get hungrier than roots satisfy, and they wanted to nurse.  I wouldn't know that that is what they are doing in this picture if he hadn't told me.  She's lying down and they're on top of her.









As we headed back up the hill to the car, the first drops began to fall.  Here are some contrasts to yesterday's pictures.


Here's from the viewpoint where I took the pictures of Denali.   This was an idea I had 40 years ago after our first several trips to the park - a postcard of what Denali looks like to most tourists.

Here's yesterday's view from the same spot.  You can't even see the foothills.

It wasn't all just a grey mass, mostly we could see more.

And for a contrast with yesterday's ptarmigan picture, here's one whose feathers are still more in the winter than summer phase.

And here's yesterday's ptarmigan picture again.  Much more brown, less white.

Here's one from yesterday.  I didn't put it up because she was mooning me.  But so you can see the contrast I'll post it here.

We only saw one moose yesterday - while I was on the bike and didn't have my camera.  And it was so close to the road I didn't want to dawdle.  And we see moose often enough in Anchorage, even on our street and chewing on the trees in front of our house, that moose are not that big a deal.  In fact, Friday, the first animal we saw on the tip was a moose beside the Glenn Highway still in the Anchorage city limits.

Nevertheless, they're still magnificent animals, and seeing them in more natural settings like this is still a thrill.  And this rain-dulled picture is pretty much what it looked like up on the hill.  There were a couple other moose with it.

We're back home with lots to do

Damn This World Is Complicated Part II: Beach Hoppers [UPDATED]

 [UPDATE Aug 9, 2021: See this LA Times section on Recovering California Beach Dunes.]

OK, this one won't be as involved as the last one [Part I: Snowy Plovers.]   But remember, this is one of the main food sources of the threatened Western Snowy Plover, so it extends the discussion.  Our guide yesterday pointed out the beach Hoppers.  I grew up on nearby beaches and so I saw these as a kid, but I never knew their name and never looked at them carefully.  Beach Hoppers are small and much easier for me to capture in my camera so my pictures here will make up for the lack of photos of the Snowy Plover.   In fact, the digital camera makes it relatively easy to see them larger than you can with the naked eye.

So, let's get started with Beach Hoppers.

The Monterrey Aquarium website has a set of cards for kids that you can print out and learn about the beach life.  Here's their beach hopper card.

For more detailed pictures of a beach hopper labeled Orchestoidea californiana see Peter J. Bryant's website.

A 1964 Ecology article by Darl E. Bowers discusses two species of Orchestoidea - O. californiana and O. corniculata.  I'm guessing mine are californiana, but I'm not sure.  Bowers writes, in part:

"Competition for burrows between hoppers of the same species is commonly observed. In the early morning hours, large males may be seen fighting for possession of holes left open the night before. Fighting is presumably less energy-consuming than digging a burrow, but since most pugnacity is shown by mature males, possession of a burrow already occupied by a female is also of prime importance. Skirmishes for food items are likewise to be seen. Beach hoppers are eaten by an array of avian predators, mostly diurnal birds, and there is evidence that raccoons, moles, humans, beetles, and other animals take a toll of the hopper populations."

See?  As I said in the previous post, the more we know, the more we realize how much we don't know.  I was only vaguely aware of these critters before yesterday's beach walk and now I know quite a bit.

And it's a helpful reminder that we ought to dig a little deeper into all the important issues of the day.  They are more complex than we think, but a little research on the internet, finding a good book that gives an overview of the issues can help us quite a bit. 

Check the guys peeking from below

Marinebio.net has great pictures of beach hoppers and other animals living on the beach including kelp flies that will be in the next post.


There we learn:

Beach hoppers burrow under seaweed to escape the dryness and heat of the day. They prefer the damp sand under the piles of rotting seaweed. This picture shows what you might see if you pulled up a pile of rotting seaweed ... the beach hoppers will jump (hop) this way and that. It is very easy to identify a beach hopper because it is the only species on the beach that will hop. At night many of the beach hoppers are out of the sand and hopping around the beaches in search of food.

Hopping and digging in the sand require specialized legs as seen in these views [You have to go to marinebio.net to see their great shots] of the beach hopper's segmented body. The hoppers dig head first, inserting their antennae in the sand (left). As they dig their abdomen is the last part seen (right) before the hopper plugs up its hole. Beach hoppers are in the crustacean group whose members are called amphipods. The beach hoppers found on the sandy beaches of Santa Barbara belong to the genus Orchestia or Orchestoidea. Beach hoppers are sometimes called 'sand fleas' but they are not fleas (nor are they even insects) and are not able to bite humans.

Hey, don't get squeamish here.  These are like tiny, shell-less shrimp.  And without the kelp washing up on the beach for these critters to hide and feed in, the snowy plover would have to change how it eats. 

Beach Hoppers is also the name of a musical group, a bicycle, and a boat.

[Update:   Part III:  Kelp Flies]
[Update June 5, 2017:  This post about a study of micro plastics in the environment. The researchers fed beach hoppers micro plastics to see how they affected the food chain.  I found out about this because someone got to this post from a link there.]

Enstar Digs Up Newly Paved Street A Month After Anchorage Paves It

There's an alley across the street.  The alley became a street a couple of years ago and even got a name.  Apparently because a house was remodeled and has an entrance and street number facing what was an alley.   It's been unpaved since.

This summer, the street got paved for the first time.  I guess that's good.  Less dust and mud, but pavement has environmental problems too, and this alley never got much traffic.  The other alleys in the neighborhood remain unpaved.

Today, Enstar was digging a big hole right in the new pavement.

When I went over to find out why they were digging up the newly paved street, Arthur told me they were replacing the old copper pipe and connectors for ones that had fewer connections and thus fewer opportunities to leak.  Below is one of he old ones.

But don't the Municipality and Enstar communicate on things like this?  He said he thought they did, but not this time.  They came out at the beginning of the summer to see what they were going to do and there was a dirt alley way.  And now they show up today and it's paved.  

I left a message with the Municipality Street Maintenance people.  I'll update when (I'm pretty sure it's when, not if) I hear back.  My basic concern is to be sure they have a system and this just was an odd situation that fell through the cracks.  If not, they need a way not to do double the work.  It was just paved, maybe a month ago.  Today Enstar had to dig through that paving and then patch it up.  Well, it's flat and even with the paved part, but it's not repaved yet.  And they've got another cut out a little further down that I guess they'll dig up tomorrow.  

Carving a Parking Space or White on White

It's hard to see much here, because the snowplows just keep pushing the snow to the sides of the street. We now have about a ten foot snow berm in front of the house. My car is in the garage because if I parked it in the street it would block the road. But my wife would much rather have hers there than have to go outside to a cold car. So my exercise these days is digging out a parking place between the mailbox and the street. The picture is from the driveway. The mailbox is to the left of the picture. The street is barely visible in all the white. I'll leave a protective wall of snow between my car and the drivers. It appears it will be a while before the city starts clearing the snow.

Slow, but sure, gets the job done. I've already made a lot of progress!

As Shell Is About to Drill, What Do We Know About Arctic Sea Ice?

Image from World Atlas

I'm treading on ground I know little about here, but one thing led to another.  Given the assurances BP gave us about safety in the Gulf, I think it behooves us to ask as many questions as we can about safety in the Chukchi Sea. There's a lot here and it's technical, but I dare you to go through it, even if you only skim.  And this post has also been influenced by power and internet outages.  So the present tense changes each time I start writing again.

This post began with an email from the University of Alaska Fairbanks Frontier Science website about their new Arctic Sea Ice videos.  I thought it relevant to see what Shell Oil had up on sea ice in the Chukchi Sea.  I was close to posting Tuesday night when I was having trouble with blogger and saved the post and reopened it to find most of the post gone.

A severe storm that's been predicted for Anchorage has just made its presence known through noisy wind slamming windows and mimicking airplanes flying over the house.  We're supposed to have 80 to 100 mile/hour winds.  I was sure that the electricity would go out before I finished this.  Now that I have to recreate much of it, I can only cross my fingers.  I've gotten candles out just in case.  In my heart of hearts, I know this will be a better post for being rewritten, but I'm still not happy. 

Here are two Frontier Science videos on Arctic ice.  The first is Modeling Arctic Ice:




and the second one on Bering Sea Ice Movements


Tuesday 10:26pm - the electricity just went out, but J had lit the candles already.  The wind is huffing and puffing and banging tree limbs against the house. 

So, I wanted to see what Shell Oil had about sea ice.  At the Alaska Press Club Conference in April I learned at one panel that included a Shell representative and other Arctic researchers, that Shell (and I think other corporations) had agreed to share their research findings in the Arctic and not keep them proprietary.  So if that has happened, then the Frontier Scientists should have access to it.

A Shell webpage on Oil spill prevention and response got me to a pdf of a report:  PREVENTING AND RESPONDING TO OIL SPILLS IN THE ALASKAN ARCTIC.   On page three it had a Prevention Toolkit.  The tools listed included:

• Redundancy - "Shell applies a multi-layered well control system designed to eliminate the possibility of a low probability, high impact event. If any one system or device fails, it should not lead to a blowout."     It suggests that there are different systems to notice problems so if one fails another will pick it up.  I'd note that in Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell wrote that airplane crashes happen when five or six backup systems go wrong at once.
• The Safety Case Approach - "As an example, Shell has used the “Safety Case” approach recommended by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling for all its contracted drilling rigs, globally, for many years."  That's odd, since the spill occurred in 2010 and the National Commission report came out in 2011.  How could they have used this approach for many years?  Maybe the approach was around and the Commission endorsed it in its report.  Ah, writing is so tricky.
• Safety Culture - "Since 90% or more of all incidents are caused by human error, a true culture of safety that permeates and guides all activities is perhaps the most important method of spill prevention"
  
• Blowout Preventer - "In the unlikely event that measures of early detection fail, mechanical barriers such as blowout preventers (BOP) can seal off the well."
• Ice Management - For the previous tools, I've just given an excerpt of each, but since this is the issue we started with, I should give you their whole explanation:

"Shell’s exploration activities will occur during a four-month period from mid-July through October, in predominantly open water conditions. However, to address the natural variability of ice conditions during thaw and freeze up, Shell has developed an Ice Management Plan (IMP) to ensure safe drilling operations and identify conditions that may put operations at risk.

Shell’s ice management system is a combination of ice monitoring, forecasting, and management techniques. Monitoring includes satellite-based Synthetic Aperture Radar, airborne and vessel reconnaissance. Forecasting incorporates data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Canadian Ice Service. Shell will use specialized software to integrate ice speed and direction data from the vessel’s radar, aerial reconnaissance, and satellite imagery in order to predict individual ice floe movement, allowing modification of ice management operations on a real-time basis. Shell has established strict protocols to be followed in the event of potential hazards. Ice management vessels can be used to deflect approaching ice around the rig and, if necessary, the rig can quickly stop drilling, secure the well, and move safely off-site."  [emphasis added.]

I wasn't paying close enough attention the first time and glazed over the Ice Management Plan (IMP) but I did see "strict protocols to be followed in the event of potential hazards" and googled that and got to "2010 Plan of Cooperation Camden Bay, Alaska" and this relevant paragraph:

"Shell has developed and will implement a Critical Operations and Curtailment Plan (COCP), which establishes protocols to be followed in the event potential hazards, including ice, are identified in the vicinity of the drilling operations (e.g., ice floes, inclement weather, etc.). Like the IMP, the COCP threat classifications are based on the time available to prepare the well and escape the location. The COCP also contains provisions for not initiating certain critical operations if there is insufficient time available before the arrival of the hazard at the drill site."

At this point I started questioning my obligations as a blogger.  How far am I supposed to go digging? Couldn't I just say my job was to start raising these issues and let someone else take the baton from here?

But how much trouble would it be to look up COCP and IMP?  It turns out, not much at all.  I found them easily.  But then writing up what I found was another issue altogether. That took time.  Time enough to lose most of what I wrote and then get disconnected from the internet by a windstorm taking out our electricity.  I just looked out the window.  It is really, really dark out.  The only lights I can see are a few car lights off in the distance.   I guess a severe storm is an appropriate context for writing about Chukchi Sea emergency oil drilling procedures.  I have an hour left on my laptop battery.


CRITICAL OPERATIONS AND CURTAILMENT PLAN (COCP)
Chukchi Sea, Alaska  (Total of 16 pages)

That's a mouthful, but if you actually think about it, it really says what it's about - a) critical operations and b) curtailment plan.  You'll see below.  It basically is about procedures.  It . . .

• Identifies Planned and Unplanned Critical Operations
• Identifies Circumstance/Conditions  Requiring Curtailment 
• Severe Weather Sea    
• Ice     
• Sea Spray .
• Unavailability of Materials, Personnel, and / or Equipment   
• Well Control

The first three are weather caused issues.  The fourth is about human caused issues.  The last one isn't real clear.  Here's what the COCP says about Well Control:

"Critical operations, other than efforts to restore primary well control, will not be undertaken during a well control event (e.g., drilling will cease pending circulation of a kick out of the hole and adjusting mud density to prevent further kicks from entering the wellbore). The curtailment of critical operations due to a well control event is the responsibility of the Shell Drilling Foreman."

I guess this means if something goes wrong with the well, they'll stop everything else, but I'm not sure. 

Then it goes into different kinds of Time.
There's ST or Secure Time which is how long it takes to secure the rig
There's MT or Move-Off Time - how long it takes to get people evacuated
There's  T-Tine or Total time, which combines ST and MT.
But there is also HT or Hazard Time, how long, in hours, before the hazard arrives.

My question was what if the Hazard Time is less than the T-Time?  That is, if the hazard is due to arrive before they have time to curtail and evacuate? It turns out that got answered in IMP below.*

Then there's the curtailment decision process which basically is about who makes the decisions and who gets told by whom.

And then there's training:

All personnel will be made aware of their roles and responsibilities described within this COCP and the IMP through a training program to be taught before the vessel is on site. All persons with a key position in the COCP will be provided a copy of this document, and training will be provided by Shell prior to deployment. This training will include a table-top exercise that will be carried out prior to initiating operations in the Chukchi Sea.

 Table-top exercise, according CSOOnline,

"is a great way to get business continuity plans off the written page without the interruption of a full-scale drill. Rather than actually simulating a disaster, the crisis management group gathers for three hours to talk through a simulated disaster.

Just talking is good up to a point.  I'd really like them to be doing some shipboard training in a storm. 

ICE MANAGEMENT PLAN (IMP)
(Total 50 pages)

Then I went looking for the Ice Management Plan (IMP). [Doesn't Shell know the definition of 'imp'?  Dictionary.com's first definition of 'imp' is:

"a little devil or demon; an evil spirit."]

Is that the acronym you'd want for your plan for managing ice [assuming humans can do more than respond to ice movements in the Arctic] to prevent oil spills?  Was it a Freudian slip?

Here's the overview from the the little devil's Table of Contents:

• VESSELS  COVERED BY IMP  
• SHELL ICE AND WEATHER ADVISORY CENTER
• ICE ALERT LEVELS AND PROCEDURES  
• ICE MANAGEMENT PHILOSOPHY  
• WELL SUSPENSION   
• MOORING SYSTEM RELEASE/RECOVERY MOVING ONTO OR RETURNING   TO THE DRILL SITE
• TRAINING

In more detail:

• Vessels - this is probably the most technical section that describes the ships and their capabilities.  For example:
  
  "The Kulluk has an Arctic Class IV hull design, is capable of drilling in up to 600 feet (ft) [182.9 meters (m)]) of water and is moored using a 12-point anchor system. The Kulluk mooring system consists of 12 Hepburn winches located on the outboard side of the main deck, Anchor wires lead off the bottom of each winch drum inboard for approximately 55 ft (16.8 m). The wire is then redirected by a sheave, down through a hawse pipe to an underwater, ice protected, swivel fairlead. The wire travels from the fairlead directly under the hull to the anchor system on the seafloor.
  
  The Kulluk is designed to maintain its location in drilling mode in moving ice with thickness up to 4 ft (1.2 m) without the aid of any active ice management. With the aid of IMVs, the Kulluk would be able to withstand more severe ice conditions. In more open water conditions, the Kulluk can maintain its drilling location during storm events with wave heights up to 18 ft (5.5 m) while drilling, and can withstand wave heights of up to 40 ft (12.2 m) when not drilling and disconnected (assuming a storm duration of 24 hours)."

• Shell Ice and Weather Advisory Center (SIWAC)   - Unit in Anchorage that monitors ice and weather conditions and gets the information out to the drilling rigs.
  
  
• Ice Alerts and Procedures    - Color coded chart from green to red (black is shut down.)  This gives a sense of how long it takes to shut down, because 24 hours notice is green.  Between 24 and 12 hours they initiate risk assessment.  Between 12 and 6 hours limited operations and begin to secure the well.  Under 6 hours the well should be shut down and anchor recovery should commence.
  
  *This section also answers the question I had above about what happens if the hazard time is greater than the total time to shut down:
  
  "Guidance Note: If T-Time becomes greater than HT at any time, well securement and drill site evacuation contingency plans will be implemented."
  There are also more detailed charts and description of who is responsible for doing what in the event of a shut down.

• Ice Management Philosophy   -  I don't know how to take their use of the word Philosophy here.  Is it an attempt to make this sound grander than it is?  If so it is good to know that Philosophy still has a noble image.  But I'd hardly call this a philosophy.  Particularly after reading McPhee's The Control of Nature, I'd call this more a religious doctrine of faith - We believe that if we have these procedures in place, God will not allow bad things to happen. Really, this is just a list of conditions of alleged readiness.  For example:
• "The IMVs will be capable IMVs, with the appropriate ice strengthening, and have been contracted to support the exploration campaign."
• "A systematic approach for risk mitigation is adopted by developing effective work processes.
  Development of effective ice management strategies based on available information (global and local)"
  
• Well Suspension Procedures  - Why is this not reassuring? 
  
  "As part of securing the well, well suspension procedures will be established. These procedures will supplement the detailed well securing procedures that will be contained within the Rig Operations Procedures and will be specific to securing the well in response to the threat of hazardous ice."
  OK, it's not quite that bad.  There is a more detailed table of things to do (p. 16) though I don't have the expertise to know how adequate it is.  


• Mooring System Recovery and Release  - Again, I don't have the expertise to evaluate this, but it is always disconcerting when one of the options - Running of Wires - in the cell for "Advantages" has the word 'none.'  If there are no advantages to that method, then why is it there? 
  
• Moving onto the Drill Site   -  Clarifies who decides when to return to the rig.
  
  
• Training -  Each ship will have a table top exercise and it has a list of people who will participate. 

Both the IMP and the COCP have what I'll call a "good judgment clause."

This is obviously a complicated affair.  These two plans - the CRITICAL OPERATIONS AND CURTAILMENT PLAN (COCP) and the ICE MANAGEMENT PLAN (IMP)  are more about gathering weather data, who makes decisions and who communicates with whom.  These are important things, but they don't really address the technical issues of ice flows in the Arctic and how to shut actually shut down the rig in an emergency.  Those are referred to, almost in passing, in what I'm calling the IMP's 'good judgement' clause. (p. 1)

"This plan is not a substitute for good judgment.

Guidance Note: This document is not intended to contain detailed procedures. Detailed procedures are contained within the vessel-specific operating manuals." [Emphasis added.]

So, the actual procedures for dealing with ice emergencies are yet somewhere else.  Perhaps they are so detailed that there is a justifiable reason for their not being here with these plans.  And presumably each vessel has different plans.  But those more detailed manuals would be critical for someone evaluating the adequacy of the plans.  And given the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, I don't think anyone is willing to just trust the assurances of the oil companies.  But the internet is still out at my house this morning - though the electricity came on around 7am, so I can't search for the operating manuals of the vessels.  (That's an excuse I'm happy to use to get this post done.  Maybe I'll do a follow up post.)

I would note that the Critical Operations and Curtailment Plan (COCP) also has a 'good judgment' clause:

"No contingency plan can adequately cover all conceivable situations and circumstances, nor is this plan intended to be a substitute for good judgment and experience in dealing with unexpected situations."

This is way more than I was expecting to do on this and I haven't even scratched the surface.  I hope it piques some people's curiosity and they try some links and go exploring further.  If you find anything interesting, please report back in the comments.

NOTE: It's 2:30pm Wednesday.  I'm at the dentist's office where there's wifi.   I need to review this, but I'm not sure the internet is working at home, so I'm scheduling it to post at 5pm. I think it's mostly ok. If our home internet isn't working and there are problems, I'll fix it later.
5:51 - I didn't have internet at home so now I'm at Loussac library working on this.

It wasn't until the end of this that I found the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) webpage with lots of links related to their permitting of Shell's 2012 Chukchi oil exploration.

2:35pm Thursday - I thought this went up Wednesday night, but it didn't.  OK, I'll hold it another day.

Figuring Out My Anonymous Blog Commenter

I've gotten a blizzard of posts from an anonymous blogger urging me on to keep digging about for skeletons in the Stevens' case.

With the traveling I haven't had time to go through everything carefully, but there are three key thrusts that stand out so far:

• He (I'm assuming the poster is a he) doesn't think much of Chad Joy
• He is similarly ill-disposed toward Wev Shea
• He points to the identities of the attorneys who interviewed Bill Allen "who (which, where etc) was the basis to tube the conviction(jury nullification)" as the crux to finding the 'real story' of the Stevens case.

Unlike a traditional newspaper reporter's source, this source posts all his tips are as comments on different posts related to the trial, out in the open for all to see. I've suggested he just send me an email, but it's all going up in comments. Maybe 10 or 15 posts in a couple of days. Most would never make it into the letters to the editor column. Most friends have raised their eyebrows and wondered about the writer's sobriety. The posts defy the rules of grammar and leap to conclusions with fragmentary evidence.

His last couple of posts have been much more grammatical and coherent and specific. Maybe he's getting impatient with me not being responsive enough. But I have been on airplanes a lot of the last 48 hours and still have one more (I hope that's all - I'm in Salt Lake City right now and the plane is listed as on-time about 3 hours from now, but I can only find pay wifi, and I'm not THAT addicted that I can't wait, so I can't check on volcanic activity) til we get to Anchorage.

But I have been thinking about him and here are some thoughts about ways to evaluate an anonymous poster. Here are some factors, each of which would have a continuum from a version of bad to a version of good.

1. Motive - Is this something he's doing for self gain or does he see this as a public service? Is he out for revenge or for justice? Is he trying to settle a score or right a wrong? These are not necessarily mutually exclusive. For example, revenge to right a wrong could be both for self-gain and public service.
   
   
2. Access to Information - Does he have insider information? Or is he someone who doesn't have special access to this story, but may have an ax to grind with some of the players.
   
   
3. Judgment/Wisdom - Assuming for the moment, that his motive is good and he has inside information, does he have the wisdom and judgment to interpret what he knows accurately? Or is he the type of person who sees a few bits of information which pass through his mental models and spit out nonsense? Having access to the facts is just step one. Then we have to interpret them. Is this guy good at doing that?
   

I don't know enough to determine the answers to these questions. It clearly has a greater interest in the details of this case than most people, and writes about details that the average person knows nothing about. So probably he's more insider than outsider on this case. But the other two factors I can't judge yet.

Then there is the question: Why me? Why this blog? He thinks Chad Joy has done wrong and he thinks that people on the inside have thrown the case leading to the dismissal of the conviction. I've voiced doubts about the substance of the Joy complaint and raised questions whether this case was just badly handled or whether there were people intentionally messing it up. He might see me as someone who is open to the arguments he's making. But maybe I'm not the only one getting this stuff.

At least one reader has told me that I've already been charmed by Kepner into seeing things her way. Others - non-Thais in Thailand who know little about the case - are highly cynical about everything and think this could be someone trying to use me for some unknown agenda.

As I said above, the last couple of posts have gotten more coherent and specific. Maybe I don't have to do anything except let the poster keep posting comments.

Matthew, who's hawking Delta credit cards has offered me access to his wifi so I can even post this before I go.

Why Making Real Time Sense Of Israeli-Gaza War Is So Difficult -Part II

This is a truly touchy topic all around.  I'm listing here some of the aspects that I feel are critical to understand (no, be aware of is a more realistic goal).  Assume that I am torn in different directions and not pushing an answer one way or the other.  

Part I of these posts gives an intro to these posts and covers:

 1.  PROPAGANDA, MISINFORMATION, OBLITERATION OF TRUTH

2.  THE PROBLEM OF NETANYAHU 

3A.  HISTORIC ANTI-SEMITISM

3B.  THE HOLOCAUST

PART II

4.  GENOCIDE

The word "genocide" was coined to give a name to what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust.   

"Seventy years ago this fall [2014], the word "genocide" made its debut into the English language, on page 79 of the 674-page Axis Rule in Occupied Europe [which you can find here in Reading 3], in a chapter called "Genocide—A New Term and New Conception for Destruction of Nations."

The writer was Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born lawyer who had fled the persecution of the Holocaust and moved to the United States in 1941. A few months after his arrival, he heard a radio address in which British Prime Minister Winston Churchill told listeners about the horrors of World War II. . .

[Lemkin] decided to create a name for the crime without a name. He came up with genocide, which he defined as the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group. He said he created the word by combining the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing). In 1948, nearly three years after the concentration camps of World War II had been closed forever, the newly-formed United Nations (UN) used this new word in the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide," a treaty that was intended to prevent any future genocides."

The US Holocaust Museum defines the term in more detail 

"Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. These acts fall into five categories:

• Killing members of the group
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

There are a number of other serious, violent crimes that do not fall under the specific definition of genocide. They include crimes against humanity, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and mass killing."

Netanyahu would argue that his intent is to secure Israel from terrorist attack, not to kill Palestinians.  

Whether what's happening in Gaza is genocide or one of the other crimes listed probably doesn't matter too much, but I'm sure those fighting against Israeli bombing in Gaza are relishing the irony of charging Israelis with genocide.   

Since I wrote these words on genocide, the South African complaints about Israeli genocide to the  International Court of Justice has become available.  In it, starting from page 60, they quote a number of Israeli officials, in different ways saying things that suggest Israeli intent to obliterate Gaza.  Here's just one example from Prime Minister Netanyahu:

"The Israeli Prime Minister also returned to the theme in his ‘Christmas message’, stating: “we’re facing monsters, monsters who murdered children in front of their parents . . . This is a battle not only of Israel against these barbarians, it’s a battle of civilization against barbarism”.445 On 28 October 2023, as Israeli forces prepared their land invasion of Gaza, the Prime Minister invoked the Biblical story of the total destruction of Amalek by the Israelites, stating: “you must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible.  And we do remember."

"The Prime Minister referred again to Amalek in the letter sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers.447 The relevant biblical passage reads as follows: “ The Prime Minister referred again to Amalek in the letter sent on 3 November 2023 to Israeli soldiers and officers.447 The relevant biblical passage reads as follows: “ Now go, attack Amalek, and proscribe all that belongs to him. Spare no one, but kill alike men and women, infants and and sucklings, oxen and sheep, camels and asses."

This is the tenor of the evidence of intent that the South African complaint offers to International Court of Justice.  And as I write this, I always keep in mind the possibility that this whole document is a fake, that the quotes are fabricated.  But I don't think so.  Some of the Prime Minister's remarks are almost identical to the "Civilization versus Savages" theme  I posted above in Section 2 on Netanyahu that appeared in his 1995 book.  

But remember, these are like the prosecutor's opening argument.  It's their side of the story.  The defense hasn't yet had a chance to put things in context or to refute the arguments.  

Because I'm taking forever to write this, I can add the Israeli response.  Ha'aretz, the oldest Israeli newspaper, has this report on the Israeli response to the South African allegations.

[Being mindful of Issue #1 - Propaganda, Misinformation - the first link in the previous sentence is to the Encyclopedia Brittanica  article on Ha'aretz.  The second links to their report.]

5.  ZIONISM

This is another term that gets bandied about.  I'm not going to try to define it here, but you can see a couple of differing definitions/commentaries at the links below.

Wikipedia's treatment

The Foreign Policy Institute's take

The Promise and Failure of Zionism

Many people seem to have trouble distinguishing between Zionists, Jews, and Israelis and use two or all of those terms interchangeably to mean the same thing.  As though all Christians believe the same thing or act the same way.  People who identify (or are labeled) Jews come in many flavors, beliefs, ideologies, lifestyles.  The same is true of Israelis.  

6.  ISRAELI MISTREATMENT OF PALESTINIANS 

After World War II much of the world was shocked to learn of the mass extermination of Jews by the Nazis.  (If you don't believe the Holocaust happened, don't comment here.  I'll delete it as soon as I see it.  Rather educate yourself and get past your ignorance.)  Among Jews, the campaign to create a Jewish state in historic Israel was not universally supported.  But after the war, with many displaced Jewish refugees, many of them survivors of the Holocaust, sentiment supported establishing the state of Israel.  The newly formed United Nations approved. 

For the first years, the world heard heartwarming stories of the "Land of Milk and Honey," of the miracle in Israel making the desert bloom  When Israel was attacked in 1967 by surrounding Arab countries, Israel fought back and quickly defeated their enemies and kept the territory they took.  Moshe Dayan was an international hero, easily recognized with his black eye patch.  

But from the beginning the story wasn't so rosy.  Jews forced Arabs to abandon their homes and land.  Many fled to other Arab countries.  Over the years attempts to establish peace were thwarted by Palestinian rejection of the idea of Israel even existing.  Israeli supporters in the West used this rejection to show the Arabs were intransigent.  But it's clear that from the Arab perspective, the creation of Israel was similar to other colonial conquests where the indigenous people were simply removed for the colonists.  Even if the colonists were themselves a displaced people.

In the last 20 years or more, Israel has increasingly been a very oppressive ruler over the occupied territories.  Israel's annexation of West Bank Arab lands to build settlements for Israelis has exacerbated things.  People began talking about an Israeli apartheid. One can easily see similarities between the occupation and the way Black Americans are frequently treated by the police in the US.  

It's clear that many Israeli soldiers treat Palestinians with disdain. There are many places you can read about this, but I would offer Colum McCann's Apeirogon as a good place to start. [I highly recommend  reading Apeirogon]  It's the story of one Palestinian and one Jewish father who have both lost teenage daughters to the violence in Israel.  They are brought together and work with a group that advocates for peace and understanding.  There are very detailed descriptions of the indignities that Palestinians suffer daily.  

I believe that this treatment comes from 

• Israelis always feeling threatened (and Hamas does its best to stir up those fears) and 
• the ethnocentrism evidenced in Netanyahu's belief they are fighting a noble war between civilization and savagery.  [See Part I on Netanyahu]

As I mentioned in the post on The Battle of Algiers, people with little or no power, dominated by another people with lots of power, have few options other than guerrilla warfare.  

I'd also mention that other Arab countries tended to not take Palestinians as refugees into their countries.  One explanation was that by making Israel the collective enemy of Arabs, they could distract the Arab world from intra-Arab conflicts, and they could distract their own citizens from protesting their own authoritarianism.  Another explanation has been they simply didn't think they could handle the influx of so many Arabs with a somewhat different history in their own countries. 

7.  TEACH YOUR CHILDREN WELL - PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELI EDUCATION

There are lots of articles about how Palestinian schools teach hate, such as this 2022 Times of Israel headline:

"UNRWA textbooks still include hate, antisemitism despite pledge to remove — watchdog

Israeli organization says that rather than taking the material out of the 2022 curriculum, the UN Palestinian refugee agency has merely taken it off its public education portal"

It takes a little more digging to find counter arguments such as this one from The Palestine Chronicle by Rima Najjar:

Zionism is an insidious ideology. Its ideologues often gain traction by well-placed and oft repeated constructs – in films and TV series, in posts and comments on social media, and even in academia. So, it is no wonder that people end up having ideas about certain things, like the nature of Israel, the Zionist Jewish state, or the nature of Palestinian Arab culture and identity, or the nature of Jewish culture and identity, as if by osmosis.

One of these “memes” in the air, if you will, is the oft repeated comment by hasbara agents on social media that says Palestinians teach their children to hate Jews. This notion can also be found in numerous attacks on the Palestinian Authority curriculum with the same accusation of “teaching children to hate Jews”, when in fact, the opposite is true, as is often the case with Zionist propaganda (see Nurit Peled-Elhanan’s Palestine in Israeli School Books: Ideology and Propaganda in Education – Library of Modern Middle East Studies).

My understanding is that 

"'teaching children to hate Jews', when in fact, the opposite is true, as is often the case with Zionist propaganda"  

doesn't mean the Palestinians teach their kids to love Jews, but rather means that Israelis teach their kids to hate Palestinians.  

Michael Kaplan gave this example, in 2014, of Jews teaching their kids to hate Palestinians.  When Israelis Teach Their Kids To Hate. 

Two, more thorough, academic studies of Israeli text books suggest it's more subtle, but just as invidious.  

Here's the abstract of 2012 book by Nurit Elhanan-Peled

"The present book presents a critical multimodal study of one aspect of the Israeli-Zionist narrative as it is reproduced in school books of three disciplines: history, geography and civic studies. It consists of an analysis of the visual and verbal texts that represent the 'others' of Zionist Jews, namely Palestinians – both the citizens of Israel and the non-citizens who have been living under a military regime in the occupied Palestinian territories since 1967.The book shows that Israeli textbooks use racist discourse, both visually and verbally to represent Palestinians."

I only could find a few passages at the link to the publisher, but here's one to give you a sense of the book:

"... Texts present Palestine before 1948 as barren land and empty territory, abandoned since biblical times, waiting for Jews to redeem it while expunging Palestinian history and culture transforming 'Palestinian Arab students into "present absentees" as they learn about "the land of Israel"' (Abu-Saad, 2008: 24) without them. These texts are 'designed to "de-educate", or dispossess, Indigenous Palestinian pupils of the knowledge of their own people and history' (Abu-Saad, 2008: 17;Al-Haj, 2015;Mazawi, 2011;Peled-Elhanen, 2012;Raz-Karkotzkin, 2001). Textbooks construct Palestinians as 'backward, unproductive and untrustworthy; or even more negatively as murderers or rioters' while Jews engage 'in a justified, even humanitarian, war against an Arab enemy that refused to accept or acknowledge the existence and rights of Jews in Israel' (Abu-Saad, 2019: 101; Bar-Tal, 2001;Meehan, 1999). ..."

A 2020 Ha'aretz article - eight years later than the Elhanen book -  describes a Tel Aviv University study:

"Ben-Amos set out to explore how Israeli textbooks and pre-college matriculation exams address the occupation. He calls the situation 'interpretive denial.'”

Ben-Amos set out to explore how Israeli textbooks and pre-college matriculation exams address the occupation. He calls the situation “interpretive denial.” . . .

In most textbooks, “the Jewish control and the Palestinians’ inferior status appear as a natural, self-evident situation that one doesn’t have to think about,” he writes in an article to be published in a book on teaching history edited by Eyal Naveh and Nimrod Tal. . . .

Ben-Amos says the textbooks’ ignoring of the occupation or attempts to normalize it stem from self-censorship. In the absence of clear guidelines, nobody wants to be blacklisted and denounced, which was the fate of teachers and publishers who tried to convey a more nuanced message than the one permitted by the Education Ministry. . . .

Elhanen has continued writing articles on the subject of how 'the other' is treated in Israeli schools and textbooks.  You can see a list of books and articles here, some with links to full text.

I did find one more book- Palestinians in Israeli Textbooks (2016) - which seems to  say that it was bad in the past, but things are much better now.  

It's hard to find ways to peace when Palestinian children are regularly taught in schools and in the streets  to hate Jews and when Jewish children are given texts that either omit Palestinians or reinforce the idea that Jewish superiority over Palestinians is the natural order of things. 

Though as one Palestinian responded (paraphrasing), "Palestinian kids don't need to be taught in schools to hate Jews.  They pick that up by living under Israeli occupation."

Part III is still being written.  Here's the link.  

Walking While Black

Here's an excerpt for a beautifully written essay in Lit Hub on walking by a Jamaican connoisseur of walking. The whole essay is worth reading, but in these days police killing black males (and who knows who else that don't get headlines because nobody caught them on video), maybe this rather long excerpt will help people understand why African-Americans are angry and weary.

Garnette Cadogan first writes in this essay about learning to walk in Kingston to avoid an abusive step-father at home. Then again as a college student in New Orleans. Now he's in New York, having gone back to Kingston to visit his dying grandmother just before Katrina struck. An aunt in New York dissuades him from returning to New Orleans and to come to New York first. It helped she gave him the airline ticket. So now he's learned the rules of walking while black in New York, but he gets careless and, late to meet friends, runs to the subway station.

"After a sumptuous Italian dinner and drinks with friends, I was jogging to the subway at Columbus Circle—I was running late to meet another set of friends at a concert downtown. I heard someone shouting and I looked up to see a police officer approaching with his gun trained on me. “Against the car!” In no time, half a dozen cops were upon me, chucking me against the car and tightly handcuffing me. “Why were you running?” “Where are you going?” “Where are you coming from?” “I said, why were you running?!” Since I couldn’t answer everyone at once, I decided to respond first to the one who looked most likely to hit me. I was surrounded by a swarm and tried to focus on just one without inadvertently aggravating the others. 

It didn’t work. As I answered that one, the others got frustrated that I wasn’t answering them fast enough and barked at me. One of them, digging through my already-emptied pockets, asked if I had any weapons, the question more an accusation. Another badgered me about where I was coming from, as if on the 15th round I’d decide to tell him the truth he imagined. Though I kept saying—calmly, of course, which meant trying to manage a tone that ignored my racing heart and their spittle-filled shouts in my face—that I had just left friends two blocks down the road, who were all still there and could vouch for me, to meet other friends whose text messages on my phone could verify that, yes, sir, yes, officer, of course, officer, it made no difference. 

For a black man, to assert your dignity before the police was to risk assault. In fact, the dignity of black people meant less to them, which was why I always felt safer being stopped in front of white witnesses than black witnesses. The cops had less regard for the witness and entreaties of black onlookers, whereas the concern of white witnesses usually registered on them. A black witness asking a question or politely raising an objection could quickly become a fellow detainee. Deference to the police, then, was sine qua non for a safe encounter. 

The cops ignored my explanations and my suggestions and continued to snarl at me. All except one of them, a captain. He put his hand on my back, and said to no one in particular, “If he was running for a long time he would have been sweating.” He then instructed that the cuffs be removed. He told me that a black man had stabbed someone earlier two or three blocks away and they were searching for him. I noted that I had no blood on me and had told his fellow officers where I’d been and how to check my alibi—unaware that it was even an alibi, as no one had told me why I was being held, and of course, I hadn’t dared ask. From what I’d seen, anything beyond passivity would be interpreted as aggression. 

The police captain said I could go. None of the cops who detained me thought an apology was necessary. Like the thug who punched me in the East Village, they seemed to think it was my own fault for running. 

Humiliated, I tried not to make eye contact with the onlookers on the sidewalk, and I was reluctant to pass them to be on my way. The captain, maybe noticing my shame, offered to give me a ride to the subway station. When he dropped me off and I thanked him for his help, he said, “It’s because you were polite that we let you go. If you were acting up it would have been different.” I nodded and said nothing."

I first became aware of 'walking while black' in the summer of 1967 when I visited my Peace Corps  roommate from the summer before (on my way to the second summer of training) at the University of Missouri and he pointed out all his escape routes and the people he needed to escape from.  I wrote about that in a post about the University of Missouri football players speaking up about racism on campus last November.

I've had heard numerous examples like these over the years of how the United States looks very different to blacks than it does to whites.  Cadogan talks about these issues more elegantly than most.

One more thing.  Did you notice this line?

"None of the cops who detained me thought an apology was necessary."

I can understand cops stopping suspects and being nervous.  But when they find out they made a mistake, why wouldn't they apologize?  Because they figure he's guilty of something else and deserves this?  Because they enjoyed getting their aggression out on him?  Because they think they don't have to?

When I did grievance work, I found that most people who were abused, simply wanted an apology, and if the offending supervisor had just said, "I'm sorry" the incident(s) never would have been elevated to a formal grievance.  I think African-Americans might be more sympathetic to cops if their encounters with them weren't so random, so demeaning, and if they were given an apology afterward.  Only the captain in this case acted with any decency at all.  After he'd been humiliated and mistreated and eventually was clearly not the person they were looking for.  The only thing he had in common with the suspect was his skin color.

And I'd strongly recommend reading the whole essay.  Walking down the street in most US cities without thinking about being stopped by the police is one of the privileges white people have that blacks don't.  This essay richly riffs on that theme.

Seattle's NW Flower And Garden Festival

Being dependent on a ferry to get places really puts a cramp on one's outings.  We wanted to go to the Flower and Garden Show, but our granddaughter - on a week school break - had a morning program at the KidiMu that ended at 12:30pm. It's right near the ferry terminal, but fhe ferry for Seattle leaves at 12:20, which we missed, of course, and then again at 1:30pm. So we got a late start.  Catching the bus up to the convention center meant walking half a mile when the trip wasn't more than a mile.  So we walked.  (I think there were better bus options but I didn't see them when I looked.)





But we got there.  We went before in 2013.  It's a little crazy - lots of vendors selling garden related and not-so-related stuff.  (Like rain gutters with screening to keep the leaves out, and hot tubs, hazel nut shells for garden paths. )  There was lots of candy and artsy stuff as well.  But there were also lots of bulbs and tubers and potted plants for sale.

These metal and glass insects were the most dazzling things I saw for sale.  I was always a bug freak as a kid and my time in Thailand was highlighted in part by the abundance of magnificent insects, including scarab beetles like the one above.  I've included the picture below so you can get some sense of the sizes.

Our six year old enjoyed trying out the trampoline (all zipped up inside of a net).  The other part (well, besides food and winning a small pot with sprouting daffodils) was the display gardens.  These are gardens designed specifically for the show that compete for prizes.  There were 21.  It wasn't the gardens so much, but the scavenger hunt for kids.  She got a list of all the gardens and she had to find the model airplane in each garden.  A few were out in plain sight, others were a little trickier.

This one - the Herban Sanctuary - is described in the program

"You're stepping into the year 2050, with the urban center of Seattle serving as the 'sci-fi like' setting.  But rays of hope and positivity abound:  medicinal and edible plants are integrated into a planting scheme emphasizing native plant material  And resident have fully embraced clean energy, with use of solar panels and cooker.  A unique feature:  a tent that serves as a central gathering place for inspiration and healing. . . "

 "Shalimar"

"Now a UNESCO world heritage site, these splendid gardens were laid out as a Persian "paradise garden." [Now in Lahore, Pakistan]  Constructed in `1641, they are representation of an earthly utopia where humans co-exist in perfect harmony with all elements of nature."

 Meanwhile, we went from garden to garden looking for the hidden airplanes.  Some, like the one on the left, were almost invisible.  This one is a black airplane in a dark tree.  It's in the middle of the picture, but I can't even see it anymore - even when I enlarge it.  But the young one was persistent and found them all.

It's a clever way for the Show to keep kids interested while the parents and grandparents are taking in the gardens, though we got hijacked into helping find planes.

These two were from "Orchids in Balance."

"Imagining Ireland:  Myth, Magic and Mystery" featured a rainbow of primroses which had a pot of gold at the end (the bright yellow just to the right of the leprechaun house on the left.)  This one had the airplane flying out in the open on a steel frame.  And one of the creator's relatives didn't like it particularly, so he made two more much fancier model planes to fly with it.  And my plane collector was rewarded with a bit of gold from the end of the rainbow.

This dragon was part of "Mystic Garden" a beautiful Chinese style garden.  

In San Francisco's Japanese Garden we were shown a 400 year old bonsai tree.  Since San Francisco isn't nearly that old, and the Japanese garden is much younger, I asked.  It had been begun in Japan long ago and brought over much later.

So when I saw this 520 year old Alaska Yellow Cedar, it didn't make sense.  How would a Japanese gardener get such a tree 500 years ago?   It turns out, the tree is that old, but it's only been 'in captivity' we were told for a much shorter time.  It was a natural bonsai found in the wild.  It was only after we left for home that I began thinking about people digging up 500 year old trees in the wild to display as bonsais.  Are people really allowed to go into forests and mountains and dig up these ancient trees?  Do they need permits?  Are there limits on how many can be "captured"?