26 September 2007

Pressure

It was easier to think in the shower this morning, as it has been for the last few days. Normally the water pressure blasts through the old pre-green-era gooseneck, hard enough to push you down the length of the tub, and splash up over the curtain and pool on the checked tile floor. I have learned to take precautions, and place an old towel outside the shower to soak up the excess water.

There is not much better in life than a scalding hot blasting cascade of water, and not much wore than a parsimonious lukewarm trickle. Some people in Big Pink suffer from the latter, something to do with corrosion in the old riser pipes or the new low-flow shower-heads. I don't, or didn't, at least. Sunday was when I noticed that the shower was not blasting me with the usual fervor. Monday and Tuesday confirmed my observation. It was just an average bathing experience, nothing exuberant about it at all.

Naturally my mood darkened. On top of everything else- the credit crunch, the looming devaluation of the currency and the shuffling of the world economic order- I would have to hunt down Leo the Engineer and find out if some well-meaning scheme had been imposed to make the building more efficient and less pleasant. Do-gooders are out there, and I could appreciate the fact that using less hot water would be a net savings for us all, and a good thing for the bottom line.

It would also be part of a slippery slope into the gray future, one in which, ultimately, we would all stand below a chilly trickle of water from super-efficient showerheads and yearn for the past. If this turned out to be the result of a conscious decision by the Big Pink Board, it would mean a nasty fight to restore a wasteful luxury at the most local and bitter level of politics.

I don't have time to go to the meetings right now.

Amare the Ethiopian was manning the concierge desk when I dragged up form the garage yesterday. He handed me a flyer from my mailbox as I dragged in yesterday. He works two jobs to get by, and gives us his time from four in the afternoon until midnight, five days a week. The memo was in bold type. It said that residents had reported low water pressure in the building and that all of Big Pink's plumbing systems had been examined and checked out fine. The Arlington Water Authority sheepishly had reported a 36-inch main had lost its integrity, and that was the cause of the problem. Source of the leak was about a mile away, so we were in good company.

The memo concluded that pressure would be restored within the next day or so, and I would be soaking my floor again, right as rain.

That buoyed my mood, and I decided I could go back to worrying about things further away than my bathroom shower.

Naturally, I thought about the strange New York performance of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran. Like the students at Columbia University, I was appalled at the hostile introduction by President Lee Bollinger. Not that what he said wasn't true, but if you extend an invitation to speak, common civility would suggest that you not insult the man to his face. The Iranian leader said as much, before launching into one of his loopy justifications for Iran's long list of national aberrations, which includes murder.

He also claimed there are no homosexuals in Iran, that being a purely New York phenomenon, to the general mirth of the audience.

Yesterday, he spoke before the General Assembly of the United Nations, part of the parade of world leaders that prompted delegations to rise and make symbolic exits from the great hall. In the rambling speech, he mentioned that the controversy over his country's nuclear program “closed,” and that Iran would henceforth deal only with the International Atomic Energy Agency.

That was what I found curious, and realized that the Iranians feel themselves under a great deal of pressure at the moment. Since we are concentrated on the bombast, we miss the nuance of what was said.

There is so much involved in the dance of diplomacy that was not on display in New York. There was nothing at all from the Syrians in the circus, though they have been acting as the broker of Iranian covert action against the main enemy of Israel.

That is as surprising as the famous riddle from Sherlock Holmes: “What did the dog do in the night?”

Well, of course the dog did nothing, and the failure of the hound to bark was the key to unraveling the mystery.

The Iranians have been expecting some sort of action from Israel for months. At the beginning of the summer there were reports circulating that quiet discussions were held to determine the position of the Americans on unilateral action to take down the Iranian nuclear facilities, as they did Saddam's French reactor a quarter century ago.

The threat of military action was part of the larger strategy of countering Iranian support to the insurgency in Iraq. Whether or not it was serious, the Iranians certainly thought that an attack was probably coming. Equipment was dispersed and hardened. Air Defense networks were improved at great expense, the Russians providing the most advanced radars around the main reactor site at Bushear. The Revolutionary Guards went on increased alert.

For their part, the Syrians, being closer to Israel, were well down the road in preparing for conflict with the Israelis. In January, President Vladimir Putin and Syrian president Bashar Assad inked a $70 million dollar deal to transfer the state-of-the-art SA-18 Igla-S should-fired missile to Syrian air defense. The Russians are providing the very latest in air defense sensors as part of a broad strategic initiative to restore their influence in the Gulf.

So that is what is curious about the silence of the Syrians, and what the Iranian President has been saying in New York.

The Israelis struck the target in Syria through one of the most densely defended national air defense systems in the world. They came and went as though they were invisible. All the money spent on missiles and radars provided exactly zero deterrent.

The President of Iran appears to understand what the implications of the raid are for Iran. That may account for the behavior of the Syrians in the night, and the fact that Mr. Ahmadinejad seems to be feeling a bit of pressure.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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