Monthly Archives: July 2014

View 832 Friday, July 11, 2014

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

More locusts devour time at Chaos Manor, but it is time to comment on the border situation. Fortunately, Peggy Noonan has done that well:

Her conclusion is chilling:

"There is every sign (Obama) let the crisis on the border build to put heat on Republicans and make them pass his idea of good immigration reform. It would be "comprehensive," meaning huge, impenetrable and probably full of mischief. His base wants it. It would no doubt benefit the Democratic Party in the long term.

The little children in great danger, holding hands, staring blankly ahead, are pawns in a larger game. That game is run by adults. How cold do you have to be to use children in this way?"

http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-crisis-on-the-border-1405029753

As to what can be done: First, what do we want to do with them? It is pretty clear that those who get here have passed a survival test of some importance, or have good luck: either is of great value to future Janissaries.

The Turks used to levy tribute on their conquered Christian provinces: send us your children. The boys were then enslaved, forcibly converted, and trained to be the elite of the Sultan’s army. Obviously a Republic cannot do this, but it is rapidly becoming clear that we aren’t living in a Republic.

I start with Los Angeles, where the city owned Department of Water and Power is an independent fiefdom subject to no financial control, and whose Union Business Rep controls a pair of “non – profit” corporations that receive $4 million a year in city tax funds. It has already received and spent $40 million. No one but the union boss knows how that money was spent: it was paid in salaries and expenses, but to whom, and how much to whom, and expenses for what are questions he says are private to the corporations, because the money is no longer public money after the corporations receive it. Two court actions have ordered him to produce the records, but he has appealed, and now appeals the denials of his appeals, and it is clear that years will go by before there is any resolution. And now the City Council has tried to not pay the $4 million that is due, but he has said that they must pay. Since almost all of them were elected with campaign funds donated by his union it looks as if the money will be paid, ‘just in case.’ Otherwise there will be trouble.

If this is democracy (and looking at Greece and Italy it appears to be that) then surely whatever we had back when I was young, whatever you call it, was preferable?

It is the same here: whatever we propose regarding the immigrant children, the lawyers and courts will prevent it from being done. About all we can do is tell the United States Air Force to fly them home. All of them. Take them to their country of origin. How do we determine that? It’s not hard. Perhaps make it one more of the tests: they survived getting here now have they learned survival skills like English and ways to charm or hoodwink Federal Agents? Those who haven’t get sent home. That gets that lesson across. And don’t publicize the exceptions, the one smart enough to get past all that: them we send to good schools where they can learn citizenship. It would be useful to have a supply of young people who grow up with a good education and have been taught patriotism. Let them go to the schools our military people send their own children to. In fact, let some become children of the regiments… It has worked for nations other than the Turks…

I suppose it’s late and I am tired. I can’t be meaning all this. Forget the exceptions. Send them all home. But that’s not a comforting thought either. And I keep thinking, if they’re tough enough to get here, and smart enough to get past our gate dragons, then don’t we want them on our side? And should someone be learning patriotism and love of America in schools, now that our public schools don’t want to teach that?

In Fall 1980 after the election President-elect Ronald Reagan asked General Schriever to write transition team papers on space and defense policy.  General Schriever assigned that task to Dr. Francis X. Kane, Col. USAF Ret., who had been his Director of Plans in Systems Command.  Duke Kane was the unacknowledged co-author of The Strategy of Technology by Stefan T. Possony and Jerry Pournelle. He asked me to help in performing this task.  I asked Larry Niven if he could host about 60 experts, ranging from Buzz Aldrin and Pete Conrad to George Merrick and Dr. Gould of North American, Max Hunter of Douglas, Lowell Wood, General Graham, and a number of others for a long weekend meeting where we would hammer out policy papers.  He agreed if I’d chair the meeting. Mrs. Niven with a crew of volunteers would do the cooking, serving all meals so we could keep working without going out.

The papers were delivered to the President.  There were subsequent meetings. All urged that the United States adopt a policy of strategic and tactical defense.  This was one origin of the SDI policy, and many concepts, and several exact quotes appear in the President’s “Star Wars” speech in 1983.

MDAdigest_2014_07_11

MISSILE DEFENSE AGENCY

MDA DIGEST

July 11, 2014

A daily compilation of excerpted news stories from around the world dealing with missile defense or of interest to the missile defense community. Use of articles does not reflect official endorsement.

NEWS ARTICLES

1) PENTAGON DIALS BACK LONGSTANDING ASSESSMENT THAT IRAN COULD TEST ICBM BY 2015, Inside Defense, July 10, 2014. The Pentagon in a new report to Congress is dialing back a longstanding assessment that Iran could flight-test by 2015 an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of striking the United States, an apparent break with U.S. intelligence estimates since 1999. An unclassified executive summary of the Annual Report on Military Power of Iran, dated January 2014 and not previously reported, does not — unlike past years — offer an assessment of the technical feasibility of Iran’s potential to demonstrate an ICBM capable of reaching the United States in 2015. Instead, the two-page executive summary states: "Iran has publicly stated it may launch a space launch vehicle by 2015 that could be capable of intercontinental ballistic missile ranges if configured as a ballistic missile."…

2) S. KOREA CONDEMNS NORTH MISSILE TEST AS ‘SERIOUS PROVOCATION’, Agence France Presse, July 10, 2014. South Korea on Thursday condemned a series of missile launches by nuclear-armed North Korea as a "serious provocation" that threatened stability on the peninsula. The South’s defense ministry expressed particular concern over the launch Wednesday of two short-range ballistic missiles from a front-line base near the western section of the heavily guarded border. "We see the recent series of North Korean missile launches as a serious provocation toward South Korea and the international community as it endangers stability on the Korean peninsula and violates UN resolutions," ministry spokesman Kim Min-Seok said. UN resolutions bar the North from conducting any ballistic missile tests. Wednesday’s test was "unusual", the spokesman said, because the missiles were fired from a sensitive location close to the demilitarized zone (DMZ) which has bisected the peninsula since the 1950-53 Korean war ended in a fragile armistice. "It appeared to be aimed at delivering a message… that South Korea could be the target of surprise attacks by North Korean ballistic missiles anytime and from any place," Kim said…

3) RUSSIA’S ISKANDER-E MISSILE SYSTEM READY FOR DELIVERIES TO OTHER COUNTRIES, RIA Novosti, July 10, 2014. Iskander-E mobile theater ballistic missile systems are ready for export, awaiting a decision by state authorities, the head of the Russian delegation to arms and military exhibition MILEX-2014 Valery Varlamov said Thursday. "Iskander-E [NATO reporting name: SS-26 Stone] is ready for deliveries to other countries, as well as S-400 Triumf [NATO reporting name: SA-21 Growler], but the state authorities need to approve it first," Varlamov said. The representative said that Russia "will deliver [the systems] to any country, if there is such a decision of the president and the government." A few years ago, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that S-400 will be produced only in the interests of Russia. Even partners such as Belarus and Kazakhstan will receive them only after the Russian missile defense system is fully equipped, the ministry said…

4) TESTS OF THE NEWEST ANTIMISSILE SYSTEM S-500 ARE UNDERWAY, DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia) – Rossiyskaya Gazeta, July 9, 2014. Test launches of the long-range missile for advanced air defense missile system S-500 passed successfully. Missiles of this type will be able to kill all types of air targets including tactical and even strategic missiles. This means that it is possible to say that air defense of the country and Ground Forces will receive mobile air defense missile systems with antimissile defense elements. S-500 Prometey is being currently developed by specialists of air defense corporation Almaz-Antey. It will supplement the well-known S-300 systems and the S-400 systems that are being supplied to the troops now.

5) ROCKET FIRE FROM LEBANON STRIKES ISRAEL, JOINING GAZA MISSILES AS OFFENSIVE ENTERS ITS 4TH DAY, Associated Press, July 11, 2014. Gaza rocket fire struck a gas station and set it ablaze Friday in southern Israel, seriously wounding one person as rocket fire also came from Lebanon for the first time in the four-day offensive. The attack on the gas station in Ashdod looked to be the most serious attack in Israel in the four days of fighting that has seen Israel deliver a heavy blow to Gaza’s Hamas leaders… In northern Israel, rocket fire struck near the Lebanese border and the military responded with artillery fire toward the source in southern Lebanon, military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said. The Lebanese military said three rockets were fired toward Israel around 6 a.m. (0300 GMT) and the Israelis retaliated by firing about 25 artillery shells on the area…Southern Lebanon is a stronghold of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which has battled Israel numerous times. However, recent fire from Lebanon has been blamed on radical Palestinian factions in the area and Hezbollah has not been involved in the ongoing offensive. A Lebanon-based al-Qaida-linked group, the Battalions of Ziad Jarrah, claimed responsibility in the past for similar rocket attacks on Israel…

6) NORTHERN ISRAEL HIT BY ROCKET FROM LEBANON: ARMY, Agence France Presse, July 11, 2014. A rocket fired from Lebanon struck northern Israel early Friday, causing troops to hit back with artillery fire over the border, the Israeli army said. The rocket hit an open area near Metula at Israel’s northernmost tip without causing casualties or damage, the army said…A military spokeswoman told AFP that Israel had filed a complaint to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which monitors the border between Lebanon and Israel, following the incident…Military officials told the radio they believed the attack was carried out by a small Palestinian group in an act of solidarity with militants from Gaza’s Islamist Hamas movement who are engaged in a major confrontation with the Israeli army which began on Tuesday. ..Troops "managed to find rocket launch pads, as well as two rockets ready for launching. A military expert arrived at the scene and dismantled the projectiles," the statement said. It added that Israel had launched "25 shells" at Lebanon, causing no casualties…

7) ROCKET HITS ASHDOD GAS STATION, ONE SERIOUS INJURY, Arutz Sheva, July 11, 2014. A rocket fired by terrorists in the Hamas enclave of Gaza hit a gas station in the coastal city of Ashdod on Friday morning, causing at least one serious injury. ..Gaza terrorists have only continued to increase the rate of fire, with sirens being sounded as far north as Haifa on Thursday night, making it the first time since the 2006 Second Lebanon War. The terrorists have fired 407 mortars and rockets that struck Israel, with another 118 rockets being shot down by the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system since the start of Operation Protective Edge on Monday, an IDF spokesperson told AFP. Those rockets were joined by a rocket from a new front on Friday morning, as a Katyusha rocket was fired from Lebanon on the upper Galilee in Israel’s far north. The IDF returned artillery fire on the source of the fire…

8) 3 ROCKETS DOWNED OVER TEL AVIV, HAMAS SAYS FIRED ON AIRPORT, Agence France Presse, July 11, 2014. Three Gaza rockets were shot down over the Tel Aviv area on Friday as Hamas militants claimed they had fired M75 missiles at Ben Gurion airport. All three were shot down by the Iron Dome anti-missile system, an army statement said. "Three rockets were launched at central Tel Aviv. All three were intercepted over the Tel Aviv metropolitan area," it said. The rocket fire was claimed by Hamas militants in Gaza who said they had launched "four M75 missiles at Ben Gurion airport" just outside Tel Aviv. A spokesman for Israel’s Airport Authority told AFP Ben Gurion airport was closed down for "nine minutes" but then resumed operations as normal. Witnesses in Tel Aviv said four or five explosions were heard shortly after sirens wailed across the area, sending people fleeing for cover…

9) TEL AVIV AND JERUSALEM TARGETED AS MILITANTS INTENSIFY ROCKET ATTACKS, The Guardian (UK), July 10, 2014. Tel Aviv and Jerusalem were both targeted by rocket fire on Thursday as Palestinian militants launched their most intense barrage against southern and central Israel since the beginning of the latest conflict with Hamas in Gaza. Many residents awoke to explosions that shook buildings even in the north of Tel Aviv, while air raid sirens sounded later in the morning forcing thousands of residents to run to bomb shelters or take refuge in the stairwells of their buildings. Later in the day a volley of rockets was shot down in the skies over the city. On the beach in north Tel Aviv, sunbathers and swimmers stopped to gaze at the sky as Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted rockets. Later on Thursday, residents of both Jerusalem and Bethlehem reported hearing explosions in the skies. There have been no casualties in any of the rocket attacks on Israel from Palestinian militants so far. Iron Dome has managed to prevent any rockets landing in Tel Aviv, but the first barrage this morning saw shrapnel fall over Florentin, a trendy southern neighborhood popular with artists, musicians and writers…"[We’ve had] three interceptions over Tel Aviv in the past 24 hours, so the city is prepared for any scenarios. There might be more missiles. We know that our military believes that there is a long-range arsenal that is not being used," he said…

10) HAMAS’S DEADLY REACH: WILL NEW MISSILES DENT ISRAEL’S IRON DOME?, The Globe and Mail (Canada), July 10, 2014. The Hamas-fired missile that slammed into Hadera – an Israeli seaside town midway between Tel Aviv and Haifa – likely travelled a long, circuitous and murky route from Syria via Iran, Sudan and Egypt before its last flight from Gaza on Tuesday. The missile, believed to be a Syrian-made M-302 Khaibar, eluded Israel’s much-vaunted Iron Dome anti-missile shield and heralds a new and deadlier phase in the vicious war of indiscriminate attacks on population centres. With a range of at least 100 kilometres, the Khaibars give Hamas a fearful new weapon capable of reaching most of Israel’s population, including well beyond Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the nation’s main airport. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly accused Iran of being the primary arms supplier to Hamas, the Palestinian group that controls the Gaza strip…

11) ISRAELI ROCKET DEFENSE SYSTEM IS FAILING, EXPERT ANALYSTS SAY, MIT Technology Review, July 10, 2014. Even though Israel’s U.S.-funded "Iron Dome" rocket-defense interceptors appear to be hitting Hamas rockets in recent days, they are almost certainly failing in the crucial job of detonating those rockets’ shrapnel-packed explosive warheads, expert analysts say…On Thursday, the Israel Defense Forces said missiles from the system had intercepted 56 rockets fired out of Gaza, preventing strikes in several cities. Yet Richard Lloyd, a weapons expert and consultant who is a past Engineering Fellow at Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems, says that because these interceptions had almost certainly not detonated the rockets’ warheads, the system is essentially failing. The Iron Dome system-meant to hit rockets traveling tens of miles from launch to landing-is a smaller cousin to the Patriot system, which attempts to hit much longer-range, faster incoming missiles. Iron Dome fires interceptors six inches wide and 10 feet long and uses sensors and real-time guidance systems to try to zero in on the rockets. When an Iron Dome interceptor gets close to an incoming rocket, a proximity fuse triggers the interceptor to detonate, spraying out metal rods that are intended to strike and detonate the warheads on the incoming rockets, neutralizing their ability to maim people and destroy things on the ground…

12) GORTNEY: DEFENDING HOMELAND A ‘SACRED TRUST’ FOR MILITARY, American Forces Press Service, July 10, 2014. Defending the homeland is a sacred trust for the military, and U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command are at the center of that effort, Navy Adm. William E. Gortney told a Senate panel today. Gortney, who testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been nominated by President Barack Obama to succeed Army Gen. Charles H. Jacoby Jr. as the commander of these two important posts. The headquarters of both are in Colorado Springs, Colorado…Ballistic missile defense is an important part of his duties. Gortney emphasized the nation needs to make necessary investments in the proper maintenance and modernization of the existing ground-based interceptors. Following that, it is imperative the nation improve "the kill vehicle itself and then improvement to the sensors that would allow us to better discriminate the threats that might be coming to the homeland," he said…

EDITORIAL

1) MISSILE DEFENSES WORK, The Wall Street Journal, July 10, 2014. The Palestinian terror group Hamas continues to attack Israeli civilians with dozens of rockets launched each day from Gaza, and as we went to press on Thursday no Israeli had been killed. This wasn’t due to some Holy Land miracle but to the stunning success of Israel’s Iron Dome missile-defense system. The Hamas missiles lack accurate guidance systems, so they are essentially shots in the dark. The Israelis don’t activate the Iron Dome system unless they judge that the missiles could hit a civilian or military target. Haaretz.com quotes Israeli defense sources as saying Iron Dome had been activated to intercept about 27% of the roughly 180 missiles that had been fired between Monday night and midday Wednesday, successfully intercepting nine out of 10. U.S. sources have confirmed the Israeli figures. That’s a remarkable record since Iron Dome is essentially firing a bullet to intercept a bullet…

2) MISSILE DEFENSE IS SAVING ISRAELIS, Investor’s Business Daily, July 10, 2014. Israel’s Iron Dome system has intercepted nearly 90% of the Hamas rockets that it has targeted. It’s time that the free world embraced Ronald Reagan’s vision of a defensive shield against all our enemies. Top ex-Soviets cite Reagan’s commitment to building his vision of a nuclear missile defense "peace shield" — the Strategic Defense Initiative — as a central cause of the demise of the Soviet Union. Vladimir Lukhim, for instance, a high-ranking Soviet official who would become Moscow’s ambassador to the U.S., said in 1992 that it was "clear that SDI accelerated our catastrophe by at least five years." Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev so feared a U.S. nuclear missile defense that he offered the U.S. unprecedented concessions in nuclear arms talks in a fruitless attempt to get Reagan to abandon SDI. And this week, the use of missile defense to save Israeli lives from airborne Hamas terrorism confirms how well Reagan’s much-maligned idea ended up working…Israel is one of a dozen nations using Raytheon’s battle-tested Patriot Air and Missile Defense System. Others include Egypt, Germany, Japan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Taiwan… ________________________________________

Missile Defense Agency / Public Affairs

5700 18th Street, Bldg 245

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mda.info@mda.mil

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View 832 Thursday, July 10, 2014

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

The locusts have been swarming around Chaos Manor this week, and have devoured much of my time. Meanwhile the world goes on, and not all that well, alas.

Russia & Putin

Dear Jerry,

The situation in Ukraine grinds on. The Ukraine forces appear to be regaining control over their eastern territories, and the Russians are not intervening to prevent that.

I see no reason to assume the conscript based Russian army would be more capable than the Special Operations forces presently deployed. The alternative is at least as likely. Specifically, these units would prove far less capable, and also far less motivated.

http://russiamil.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/new-pay-structure-for-conscripts-announced/

The basic pay for riflemen works out to less than $30 a month. Meanwhile Putin is paying the "volunteers" in the eastern Ukraine many times more than that. Putin himself has frequently said he wants to move to an all-volunteer force like the USA has. But so far the "siloviki" he depends on politically have frustrated that. As Rumsfeld said, you go to war with the army you have. Or you don’t go to war with it, as in this instance.

Putin’s high poll ratings rest on an apparently bloodless and cost free victory in the Crimea. Now things aren’t so bloodless and the costs are running up fast.

I cannot believe that President Putin has renounced his claims to the Russian speaking Russians in Ukraine, so what is his strategy?

I think the strategy adopted by Putin and his war advisers was that Kiev was going to roll over two months ago on "Novy Russia", just as it did in March in the Crimea. This didn’t happen. As a result he now has no end game strategy. This kind of fundamental strategic miscalculation is fairly common in war, as you know.

I had thought he would have the pro-Russian rebels fall back and consolidate, then offer some kind of deal in which there comes to exist an autonomous region still part of Ukraine but friendly to Russia. That may yet be the goal. We can only watch and wait.

Who is supposed to fund this proposed settlement long term? Kiev, the EU and the USA won’t. This leaves the bills for 5 million to 17 million people being delivered to The Kremlin, PO Box 1, Moscow, Russian Federation.

A few months ago there was a widespread faith bruited about in these regions that "Uncle Vovo" would effortlessly improve the general living conditions of the local Want-To-Be-Ruled-By-Russia Russians. And which "Russians" are disproportionately concentrated in the large towns and cities of eastern Ukraine. "Ukrainian speakers" dominate in the villages of the countryside far into eastern Ukraine. The "Russian separatists" have no demonstrated ability to hold the intervening countryside between cities like Slavyansk and Donetsk. This is because they command almost no support in this countryside.

Those "Ruskis" who do support annexation by Moscow have instead gotten the opposite result from what they expected. Their provinces have been turned into battlefields, the local civil economy has collapsed, a flood of refugees have poured into Russia and Europe and a horde of mercenaries and foreign adventurers have been turned loose to pillage and rape.

Meanwhile "Uncle Vovo" steadfastly refuses to mobilize either his tanks or his Oil & Gas Stabilization Fund.

The first reason he won’t roll is the non-zero risk the force he can send would be defeated in the field. The second reason is he has no domestic political mandate to run up high casualties with that ill equipped and poorly trained conscript force. The third reason is the scale of the international sanctions costs that will fall on vital parts of Putin’s ruling coalition.

Best Wishes,

Anon

A reasonable analysis. Putin does have some Regulars, and conscript training is getting better, but as the West has known since the English Civil War, militias and untrained conscripts are not the formula for winning wars. Republics need time to train conscripts and turn them into Legions; given that time and economic productivity, they are highly effective. As the Germans discovered in two World Wars.

Putin comes from a different tradition and a people with a different history.

He certainly has not abandoned Ukraine; the question is, how much of it does he think he can get over the long haul? He has Crimea. He has gambled and lost with Trans-Don Ukraine; but he hasn’t lost all that much.

Why We Lost Iraq

Jerry

There’s an interesting I-told-them-so piece in the Washington Post by a guy who was there, describing how we stuck with Maliki far past the point we should have if we wanted to keep Iraq unified and in our sphere.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-we-stuck-with-maliki–and-lost-iraq/2014/07/03/0dd6a8a4-f7ec-11e3-a606-946fd632f9f1_story.html

Leaving aside the argument over whether we should have been the regional hegemon at all, as long as we were we should at least have been a competent one. Once we’d broken Iraq expensively then put it back together at great further expense, washing our hands and walking away long before the glue had set was not the wisest way to express disapproval of prior policy.

Porkypine

That’s one view and a good case can be made for it. We could at least have a portion of it viable: Kurdistan comes close to what we thought we could make out of all of Iraq. It’s not too late to salvage that. I note that the Mahdi Army is demonstrating what the English speaking people learned from the English Civil War and the Commonwealth: militias generally cannot defeat regular armies, and untrained yeomen are not the key to victory. George Washington at Valley Forge was allowed to create the Continental Army and carefully nurtured it, using it in connection with militia until Lafayette brought him a fleet and some more regulars. It was done very effective, as at Cowpens. Greene gave these instructions to the militia: Give me three volleys, boys, and you can run. To the Continentals: stand fast when the farmers run, and let them get close. A classic battle. Sorry for the ramble.

There was no way Iraq could have been left intact, especially with the Shiites being given total control once we’d disbanded the Baathist controlled army and started the purge of all trained government officials. This was obvious to everyone who had any experience there, but neither Bush nor Obama understood. We could have built three – possibly four – reasonably stable nation states, formed an alliance with two of them, and got the hell out, at far les cost; but that wasn’t considered by anyone.

I’m not sure I know what being the competent hegemon would have been when Obama took office.

Battle of Cowpens

Dr. Pournelle: the patriots at Cowpens were led by Daniel Morgan, not Nathanael Greene.

Robert Evans

Of course it was Morgan.  Thanks for the correction

The flap over the Hachette/Amazon dispute has died away a bit, but it still roils the Science Fiction Writers of America. Some of the old time members have never discovered self publishing and are suspicious of those who have; and a number of newer members signed away most of their electronic rights to a Big Publisher and have  animus toward those who not only kept their eBook rights, but are making more money now from self-publishing than they would ever have made if they’d signed with a regular publisher. I don’t know how many of these people there are, but apparently there are a number of SFWA members who don’t want to see successful professional writers who make money self-publishing science fiction to be accepted as members of SFWA. I’d hope not very many, and perhaps I’m making all this up; but I do know there is apparently some opposition to allowing those making professional money from self-published SF to join SFWA, and that has exacerbated the original effects of SFWA officially signing a petition that appears to be anti-Amazon. That act was hated by the Independently Published – self-published if you will – professional SF writers; which of course astonished some of the old line traditionally published writers who haven’t thought about any of this.

After all, Amazon is a big corporation, and stopped taking pre-orders for Hachette published books, and that’s bad for authors. Of course it’s only bad for authors who have books coming out soon but not yet published, and actually of those it’s only the lead authors who will be affected: most mid list writers don’t get any pre-orders in the first place. Pre-orders can affect print runs for books that the publisher (and of course the author) hopes will be a best seller. Most of those books will have received a big advance, and in general big advances aren’t going to be earned out, so the financial impact on those authors isn’t so large after all. Of those who get big advances, and those earn out – well, we are down to a pretty small number now, and most of those don’t know such people.

Which is not to say that there shouldn’t be some solidarity between Big Name Best Selling Authors and the more typical mid list sometimes lead but not often authors, and vice verse, and over the years SFWA has managed to keep some of that solidarity intact; but for the most part outfits like SFWA don’t do much for the Really Big Names.

None of this means much to the Independently Published writers. What does have importance is Amazon, which is typically responsible for about 905 of their income; and for SFWA to be seen as taking sides with Hachette and the Big 5 Traditional Publishers (all of whom will have to go through the same contract negotiations as Hachette; Hachette just happens to be first. Think auto union negotiations and Ford) – for SFWA to be seen as on the side of outfits that pay 10% royalties on printed books, and really would like to keep royalties on eBooks down in that range, was startling, and appears suicidal.

And indeed it would be, but of course that wasn’t what, in a hasty action just before the 4^th of July holiday, SFWA President Steven Gould (yeah, him, one of those Big Names) decided to exhibit some solidarity with other writers and the Author’s Guild, and sign the petition castigating Amazon for harming writers, and asking them to stop doing that in their negotiations with Hachette. He probably wasn’t even aware that Amazon had already offered to join Hachette in paying into a fund that would compensate authors harmed by the consequences of Hachette and Amazon taking so long to negotiate a contract on who sets prices, who can discount what, and what percentage of cover price Amazon would have to pay Hachette for books – both physical books and eBooks. Amazon sells both, 85 – 90% of eBooks and something like 40% of printed books. And the contracts between Amazon and Hachette expired weeks ago, so Amazon doesn’t know what it will have to pay to get books it has taken pre-orders for.

I suspect that the SFWA board members weren’t all that aware of the background to the Hachette dispute, and this didn’t look like that big a deal anyway. Sure, writers organizations support writers. That’s what they’re for. Solidarity forever, and God Bless Us.

And then the storm hit the fan hours after the announcement, most of the SFWA Board were unaware of the storm, being engaged in holiday events – many at SF conventions, or course. So they came home to find they were in the middle of something they had no awareness they were starting.

No good to say ‘They Should Have Been.’ That’s already been said, and every one of the SFWA leaders now wishes mightily that they’d called a few other members, past presidents, independently published writers (there are many of them already SFWA members because they had made traditional print sales before doing the math and discovering that for them there was more gold in them there independent hills), and so forth.

The storm is dying out, and it should. And perhaps the lesson was learned. And we can all get back to work on pay copy.

I should never be President.  The Mexicans are still holding an American Marine in durance vile – and vile it is – on a silly technicality that should at worst cost him a few hundred dollars fine, and they won’t let him go. They are having fun with it.

Were I President I would call the Mexican President and tell him that a delegation of his fellow Marines, unarmed, are coming in to visit him and expect to take him home with them; and if they fail in that mission, his whole regiment with whatever support it needs from the San Diego Fleet, will make another visit to that prison, and they will carry their weapons.  And they will not leave Mexico without him. “The unarmed delegation leaves in one hour.  I suggest you call the Tia Juana Federales and prepare them.”  I suppose it’s a good thing I am not President.

In the land of the free:

http://dailysignal.com/2014/07/07/son-skips-church-father-arrested-child-endangerment/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell

‘The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s most accurate, up-to-date temperature data confirm the United States has been cooling for at least the past decade.’

<http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/06/25/government-data-show-u-s-in-decade-long-cooling/>

———–

Roland Dobbins

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View 832 Monday, July 07, 2014

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

The President of Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) has spoken regarding the SFWA position on the Amazon/Hachette dispute. (See yesterday’s View.)

It hasn’t appeared in public yet so I won’t quote it, but it is a public announcement intended to be read by everyone, so eventually you’ll see it.

My first impression brings to mind the word stonewalling. Far from apologizing for giving an incorrect impress, it asserts that SFWA did nothing wrong and is only supporting authors who have been harmed by Amazon’s tactics. And it informs us that SFWA did not call for a boycott of Amazon. It doesn’t say “not yet”, and perhaps it was not intended as a veiled threat, but why else would one bring that up? Of course a moment’s thought would tell you that a command for a boycott of Amazon is not going to happen unless the President and Board are all suffering from hypoxia (hard to do since they meet Skypishly, not in the same room), but again the question arises, why bring it up at all in a public message?

Mystery upon mystery. It is like watching an episode of Doc Martin, only in this episode Dr. Martin and all his friends have been subjected to nitrous oxide.

I can now reprint this morning’s SFWA release re: the Amazon/Hachette fracas and SFWA’s endorsement of the petition:

SFWA’s support of Douglas Preston’s open letter reflects our concern about Amazon’s tactics in their dispute with Hachette and the way those tactics are impacting writers and their careers. We are, unfortunately, aware that this is not the first time Amazon has used negotiating tactics that have injured writers. To be clear, we are doing this in support of writers (members and otherwise) not, as some have suggested, to support Hachette Book Group and “Big” publishing over self-published and small press authors.

SFWA is a _writers_ organization and we have fought against practices that harm writers, no matter what the source, including “Big” publishing, scam agents, vanity presses, etc. If we are unwilling to weigh in on behalf of traditionally-published authors in disputes with online distributors like Amazon, Nook, and Kobo, what chance do we have of supporting other writers in the same arena?

Even as we are signing on to Mr. Preston’s letter, we have not called for boycotts of Amazon, we have not called for members to stop publishing with Amazon, and we have left our Amazon links up on the SFWA website. We recognize that suppliers and distributors negotiate the terms of their relationship but we hope that both parties can conduct this business in ways that do not punish _the very people who provide the products they both sell._ This is not about a conflict between traditional and independent models of publishing and efforts to frame it as such do more to harm than help the lives of _all_ working writers.

Steven Gould
For the Board

As I said, stonewalling, or doubling down, do not seem to be inappropriate words.  To the best of my knowledge no further explanations from the SFWA officers is forthcoming.

The situation in Ukraine grinds on. The Ukraine forces appear to be regaining control over their eastern territories, and the Russians are not intervening to prevent that. I cannot believe that President Putin has renounced his claims to the Russian speaking Russians in Ukraine, so what is his strategy? I had thought he would have the pro-Russian rebels fall back and consolidate, then offer some kind of deal in which there comes to exist an autonomous region still part of Ukraine but friendly to Russia.  That may yet be the goal.  We can only watch and wait. There is still fighting going on, but so far it’s not city-leveling destruction.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

View 832 Sunday, July 06, 2014

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

I haven’t done much this week. I’ll try to catch up a bit now.

I heard today that Bill Gaubatz, the project director for Douglas who built the DC/X, has died. Bill was the engineer who took the DC/X concept and turned it into flying hardware, on schedule, and under budget. He knew how to build teams and get them working, and this without much support from his employer: a reusable spaceship would not be as profitable as selling more and more expendables, and Douglas already sold expendables to the the Air Force. Still, they did bid on the project, they put a good man in charge of it, and they got out of his way.

I’ve told the DC/X story before, but last time I told it was when I had just missed my last chance (as it turned out) to see Bill Gaubatz again. I’ll repeat it here:

I missed the 20^th Anniversary of the DC/X which happened in New Mexico over the weekend. A lot of people wanted me to come to it, and I’d have liked to go, but the logistics couldn’t be arranged. We’d planned to get together with Phillip and the grandchildren on this weekend a long time ago, and while the DC/X was important and it sure wouldn’t have happened without me (well, me, Max Hunter, and General Graham were the ones who went to VP Dan Quayle then the Chairman of the National Space Council –

Rather than make that a long parenthetical I may as well tell the story. The Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy came about in a curious way. Back in August of 1980 before the election there was a planetary encounter or some other event at JPL, and G Harry Stine and BJO Trimble were there. Mrs. Trimble was the Star Trek fan club activist who had pretty well sparked the big push for another season of Star Trek when it was being considered for red or green light by the network, Harry was an old space enthusiast, consulting engineer, pilot, and science fiction writer, and I was an SF writer with some political experience. We planned a small conference to be held at Larry Niven’s house later in the fall to see what we could do to promote the space budget in the incoming administration, which we thought would likely be Reagan’s. I’d done some briefings when Reagan was Governor and I was in the professor business. None of this was important and it wasn’t worth making notes about.

But then Reagan won the election, and he asked General Schriever to prepare a paper for his incoming administration: a space and defense policy. At this point it gets complicated. Back in 1968-70 I was the junior author of a book called The Strategy of Technology. The senior author was Dr. Stefan T. Possony, then a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford. We had worked together on some other projects, and Steve was very much my mentor. The Strategy of Technology was a succès d’estime, meaning that it sold reasonably well, but got really good reviews and was interesting to the people we had written it for – it eventually was a textbook at all three service academies in one class or another, as well as in the War Colleges, and there are copies used in some senior military seminars even to this day. (The principles are still valid but all the examples are from the Cold War or Seventy Years War era when the Soviet Union with its 26,000 nuclear warheads and enormous delivery capacity was the main threat to the US. Those who remember that era will understand; but there is now a generation that doesn’t remember the USSR and its Strategic Rocket Service and Tsar Bomba and the rest of it. But I digress.) Anyway there was a third author to The Strategy of Technology, Francis X.Kane, Ph.d., Col. USAF. As an active duty Air Force officer Duke didn’t want his name on the book, which was quite critical of some US policies. Kane had been Director of Plans for General Schriever, and General Schriever asked Duke to do the transition team space plan that Reagan had asked for. Kane obtained his Ph.D. in political science from Georgetown University where his principal advisor was Professor Stefan T. Possony. Possony had been in the Pentagon during much of WW II, then to Georgetown, and thence to the Hoover. (Possony got his Ph.D. from the University of Vienna about the time I was born; he was active in the Schussnig government which opposed – with the help of Benito Mussolini – Hitler’s bid to take over Austria.  Obviously that opposition failed. When Austria fell, Steve fled to Czechoslovakia, and when that fell he fled to France where he was an advisor to the Air Ministry – until 1940, when he fled to unoccupied France and managed to get passage to Oran and thence to the United States.  Steve was fond of saying that the Gestapo had his library – three times.)

Steve and Duke asked me if I could help get this space plan together. It would need a meeting of a number of aerospace people, and a good working environment. The Nivens had already committed to a space promotion conference, and agreed to expand it. It expanded beyond even his home’s ability to provide guest space for all those who were coming – about 40 all told – but Marilyn Niven with some volunteers said she could handle the meals, and the house was certainly large enough and had the right atmosphere for a space conference. We reserved a nearby motel for sleeping rooms; everything else would happen at Niven’s house in Tarzana.

I started inviting people mostly by phone, with the promise of an opportunity to be persuasive at a level where persuasion might have some effect. We had a pretty good turnout, starting with Buzz Aldrin, George Merrick who was manager of the Shuttle program at North American, Dr. Gould from North American, Max Hunter, General Graham, Gordon Woodcock from Boeing, George Koopman, several other military officers, Phil Chapman, Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy, Lowell Wood from Teller’s people, Steve Possony of course, a number of science fiction authors I thought would be useful including Robert Heinlein, Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, Dean Ing. Gary Hudson and some space entrepreneurs. Art Dula. Phil Chapman. BJO Trimble was recording secretary and in charge of building a fan base. I’m naming names off the top of my head, and I will forget a lot of them. SF publisher Jim Baen. More active duty military people none of whom were officially there. We worked all weekend and produced a paper for the transition team, then at the President’s request we started in on a plan for after inauguration at another meeting. The President read the full reports, which strongly recommended Strategic Defense. In 1983 he made his Star Wars speech. It included several phrases from the Council reports.

Anyway, after that frantic period between November 1980 and January 1981 we were asked to continue to work on space policy, and we were all space enthusiasts. I was chairman, largely because I had found someone willing to host the conference and Niven sure didn’t want that job. We did some good work in the next eight years. Then, in 1988, we had a meeting at which Max Hunter said “Maybe it’s time to revive the X Programs.” There’s a long story in that. Anyway, a much smaller group still under the name of Citizen’s Advisory Council on National Space Policy (well, I had to call it something; Newt Gengrich thought it was a pretty good name) devised the SSX project, which General Graham, Max Hunter, and I took to DC just after the inauguration. Mr. Bush had pretty well cleared all the Reagan people out of the White House, but he couldn’t fire VP Dan Quayle, and Quayle was ex officio the chairman of the National Space Council and also had been “the respected junior Senator from Indiana” even in the New York Times until the day he was the Republican VP nominee after which, in under 24 hours, he became a bumbling philandering fool in much of the media; but in fact he was a pretty sharp cookie. He had control of a fair amount of the Strategic Defense Initiative research budget. The SSX Project was 600,000 pounds Gross Lift-Off Weight. There wasn’t enough money in the SDI funds to built that, but there was enough to fund a scale model to test many of the vital concepts of Single Stage to Orbit, and Mr. Quayle was able to get that project funded after having RAND and some other people reevaluate the feasibility of Single Stage to Orbit – which most of the aerospace industry had decided was impossible. There were also questions about control at low speeds and low altitudes. DC/X would test those questions and others. But this isn’t an essay on X projects – for that see my Access To Space.

Anyway, after that Mr. Quayle passed the SSX proposal to the National Space Council which got DC/X funded. Bill Gaubatz made the ship happen, on time, under budget, not paper studies but flying hardware, and I’d have liked to have been at the 20^th Anniversary. And of course the whole story is more complicated than this; but it would not have happened without Dan Graham, Max Hunter, and for that matter me. So I’d love to have gone to the Anniversary. But I’d rather have spent the weekend with my grandchildren.

What I would have said had I been at the anniversary is that the SSX Project as proposed by the Council back in 1989 would still be an excellent X project. The 600,000 GLOW is still just about right, and with new structure materials and vast improvements in computers, gyros, avionic – both in capability and weight savings – SSX might actually make orbit. Max Hunter used to say “We may not make orbit with SSX but we’ll sure scare it to death.” And we would learn just what we would need to make a fleet of ships that were savable and reusable, and which could fly several missions a month, at essentially fuel costs. That’s access to space. One day we’ll do that. Not by government built ships; but government does have a role, as it did in development of aircraft. Not building airplanes but in funding research. And X projects are still one of the most valuable tools for developing technology. But then I’ve said all this before. If I’d have gotten to the meeting I’d have said it again.

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/ssx-dcx-star-wars/

I note that over the years many of the participants in making DC/X possible have died. Those include Robert Heinlein, Harry Stine, Duke Kane, Steve Possony, Dan Graham, and I’m sure many more. I hope they’re all waiting to welcome Bill Gaubatz to the old space warriors club.

The big flap started last Thursday with a letter to all Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) members from SFWA President Stephen Gould:

Dear SFWA Member,

Author Douglas Preston has written a protest/response to Amazon about its recent behavior in its negotiations with Hachette Book Group and is inviting co-signers in support of this message. I think it strikes a pretty good balance between respectful and accurate and I will be signing it as an individual and as President of SFWA. In addition, the Board had decided to endorse this message and we invite members to co-sign as individual authors (by emailing Preston at djpreston@me.com .)

Steven Gould

President, SFWA

This was followed by a storm of protests from independently published writers who believed that SFWA had taken the side of traditional publishers of which Hachette is one the Big Five, against Amazon, which is the major publisher of independently published works, fiction and non-fiction, science fiction and fantasy and all other genres, and incidentally also the book seller of nearly half the printed books sold in these United States.

The story was told that this was a deliberate insult by SFWA aimed at independently published writers, and worse, it comes in the midst of a long and drawn out debate within SFWA over whether to admit as ‘professional writers’ those whose only credentials are self-published worked. One of the people who brought up the issue of admitting self-published writers to SFWA was me, and the case I used as illustration was Dr. Jennifer Pournelle, my daughter, whose book Outies, a book written (with permission) in the universe of The Mote In God’s Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle has been a top selling science fiction book for decades, and remains popular (and very readable I would say, but then I would, wouldn’t I?). When Jenny wrote the book she solicited offers from publishers and received several, all with generous (for first novels) advances, but terms that gave the publishers the lion’s share of eBook rights so long as the book was “in print”; and since electronic books never go out of print, that means the life of the copyright. She did some calculations based in part on Mote sales, and some expectation the author’s name would attract some attention and sales, and decided to self-publish the work, again with our permission. The bottom line is that the book earned more in a year than the advance offered by the publisher, and she still owns all the eBook rights; and it’s still selling, as indeed it ought to since it’s a pretty good read. Not as good as Mote, say I, but then I’d say that, wouldn’t it?

I pointed out that this ought to qualify as a valid credential for joining the Science Fiction Writers of America. She was offered publication by a major publisher, and has earned more in self-publication than she was offered, and she retains all her rights in the book, and surely that’s professional? And since she has been the publications manager for a major California university, she’d be a pretty darned valuable member. My point was that if SFWA is the organization of those who write and publish science fiction in America, she blooming well qualified, and so did a number of other writers out there.

SFWA has dithered over this for two years. Since we were in the process of moving incorporation from Massachusetts (a rather bad place to incorporate a national organization because of their laws about face to face annual meetings) to California (not my recommendation but better than Mass.) and that didn’t get finalized until last month, we couldn’t have changed the by-laws anyway, but we could have been ready to do it when we legally could, but we didn’t and hence I say dithering. The current schedule is that the officers will vote on the matter at the end of August, and then put it to the membership, and it will all be settled by the end of November, and I still call that dithering; but we are slowly making progress.

But with that record of inaction on the matter comes the action last Thursday, without notice and without consolation with anyone, not past presidents, not the committee that has been studying admission of independently published writers, not any readers, not a Ouija Board or a spirit medium in an attempt to make contact with founder Damon Knight, nor anyone else. Just suddenly the President, apparently authorized by a vote of the board, puts the organization on record as endorsing that petition; and this has been interpreted by nearly everyone in the Independently Published Author community as a slap in the face.

Not so, not so, at least one past president, and at least one board member, has said; but of official word from President or Board comes there none as of this afternoon, and the professional science fiction and fantasy writers who have been independently rather than traditionally published have begun declaring their unhappiness over this. I can’t really blame them, but I do wish they would wait a bit before believing that SFWA wanted to insult them. I doubt that was the motive.

But that has taken up some of my time this weekend, and probably shouldn’t. I would better have used my time writing something here, or working on several projects I have going including one with Niven called “Story Night at the Stronghold” which takes place a couple of years after Hammerfall for those familiar with Lucifer’s Hammer (and if you aren’t you are missing one whacking good story). I doubt I have persuaded anyone, and I am chagrined that the Masters of SFWA have not acted at least to issued a clarification of what they meant by endorsing that petition, and stating that they are not taking sides in this commercial dispute but protesting the tactics of one side, Amazon . I would also like them to protest the tactics of the other side, the traditional publishers, who want to lower royalties and payments to authors, yet like to be thought of as the authors’ friend.

As to my own experience with Amazon, a reasonable part of my income now comes from eBook sales of my backlist (and the collaborations with Niven). Amazon pays much higher royalties than the traditional publishers, and pays them monthly, not every six months for the period ending six months ago.

Anyway it’s dinner time, and if you’ve heard anything about this flap, it really ought to be a tempest in a teapot, but I can well understand independently published authors some of whom are making considerably more per month than some traditionally published SFWA members make in a year feeling a bit miffed about this restriction on just who is professional and who is not.

More another time.

‘The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s most accurate, up-to-date temperature data confirm the United States has been cooling for at least the past decade.’

<http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2014/06/25/government-data-show-u-s-in-decade-long-cooling/>

——

Roland Dobbins

‘The levels of Antarctic sea-ice last week hit an all-time high – confounding climate change computer models which say it should be in decline.’

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2681829/Global-warming-latest-Amount-Antarctic-sea-ice-hits-new-record-high.html>

————–

Roland Dobbins

And more and more data accumulate to show that whatever the climate is doing, we don’t have a model to explain it.  Perhaps there won’t be a Krakatoa or Tambora volcano in the 21st Century.  But what if there is?

Subject: : Does anyone today remember the cost of freedom????

This was just one beach.

.http://thefallen9000.info/

William Ellern

Some still remember.  Some have forgotten.  And increasingly, more never knew.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.