| 19 February 2005 Gil-White The winter is not over. It is right outside. I crawled out of bed and began to work on the list of things to do. There is some left over business to be complete; no job is done until the paperwork is filed, after all. I had some giddy conceptual moments at Coast Guard headquarters at Buzzard's Point and the Office of Naval Intelligence at Suitland, Maryland, yesterday and am still rolling them around in my mind. A network to bring together disparate sensors, elegant and flexible, able to teach itself and detect anomylies in the wild data storm of the airplanes and ships and trucks as they hurtle toward our homeland. Most of them are benign. A few of them are not. Maybe there is a solution to identifying them. I should start writing a proposal and see if the Labs can come up with something, a network-centric approach. I started to read my e-mail as the ideas swirled and the coffee began to energize my fingers. I opened a note from my pal who teaches economics. He lives in the city where we went to school with his bride, a saucy and intelligent woman of great spirituality: Last night while channel surfing, we caught the last 3 minutes of the Hannity/Colmes show. They interviewed a Professor of Psychology at U of Penn, Francisco Gil-White. Part of the issue is this: Gil-White has accused his psychology department Head (PROF Lustick) of being a US Intelligence agent working against Isreal. Lustick worked for State Department 25 years ago. Gil-White has likened the PLO to Nazis and argues that NATO framed Milosivec. Gil-White apparently had been terminated (no tenure, maybe) for expressing his political views. Hannity (the # 1 ass-hole on TV) asked him whether he had stated publically if he thought 9/11 was an "inside job." The Prof said he had no expertise on 9/11 but agreed with a colleague said it was. This guy also apparently has unorthodox opinions regarding US/Israel relations, arguing the US works to undermine Israel. Do you have any info on this? I, as a "prof" at a public college, and as a believer in the 1st Amendment, am very alarmed. Maybe I did not see enough of the show/interview to get a full picture. Is the Neo Con right beginning a "purge" of academic intellectuals? Ward Churchill, the environmentalist at U of Colorado who offended the Coors family and is fired, now this...I think the purge of left leaning intellectuals is underway. Lustick argues that Gil-White's research is not good enough to be retained at Penn. Interesting stuff. We need to stay on top of this. I guess it took a while for the public to show outrage against McCarthyism. Same is true here. This is most reprehensible administration in US History. The whole administration should be in jail. (((except Gail Norton because she is so HOT!))) Muhammad, worried as usual†I puzzled over the message and hit Google to see if there was anything worthwhile to put the professor and his message in context. I was still smarting over my visceral reaction to Ward Churchill, the Colorado academic who fiercely defended his characterization of some of those who died in the World Trade Center as having had it coming. I thought Churchill's remarks were protected under the First Amendment, but that his status as a tenured professor deserved some examination. But I had over-reacted, characterizing him as a bogus Native American with a bogus sense of entitlement. Who knows? He might actually have a legitimate claim to either, or both. I wanted to have my facts straight on this latest threat to the Constitution. I also once met Secretary Norton and thought very highly of her. Gil-White was easy to track down. He has a nicely engineered web site that is filled with his academic accomplishments and several quite vivid hallucinations. I spent a half hour with him, and then returned to the e-mail queue. There was a note that said it is the anniversary of the invasion of Iwo Jima, one of the most savage encounters of the Pacific War. My Aunt Hazel's husband Harold had been there, with a flame-thrower, sixty years ago today, a life defined in a month spent in hell. He had been defending the Constitution that month, among other things. I wrote back to my pal, trying to keep from spewing venom. Mohammad, I would reserve a special trailer for Secretary Norton so that she might enjoy regular conjugal visits with admirers. I took a look at Gil-White's site. I regret to inform you that if he is an outstanding professor of ethnology and cognition, he is also a shitty military analyst. He hangs his proposition that the terror attacks were an ''inside job'' on the contention that the Administration "grounded the Air Force" on 9-11. He says the proof is that there are two squadrons of Air National Guard fighters at Andrews Air Force Base, about ten miles from downtown DC, and they did not react. Proof positive of complicity at the highest levels to murder thousands of innocent citizens. He is right about one thing. There are fighters at Andrews. Reserve jets . In peacetime. I have been a member of a fighter squadron and a couple carrier air wings. Here is how an alert system works: In the normal alert status, the aircrew are briefed on weather up to the minute and they are attired to go flying, i.e., flight suits, but are not wearing g-corsets or parachutes. They can be in the Ready Room and drink coffee and use the bathroom. The jets are fueled and armed and have the huffer hooked up to start the engines. The aircrew can stand that sort of alert for a long time, although it is a pain in the ass. That is similar to what the SAC bomber crews did in their alert shacks, bombs on the airplanes but otherwise like fire fighters at the station. "Alert 15" is a more intensive alert, meaning the crew is wearing their flight gear, ready to run to the airplanes and man up. "Alert Five'' means you are ready to launch in five minutes. On the carrier that means you are on the catapult, and the engines are running. The later two alert conditions are very stressful and no one likes to stand them. The Reserve squadrons at Andrews were not on alert. They were not armed. They may or may not have been fueled. The aircrew, reservists, are supported by active duty enlisted folks but the troops cannot fly the airplanes. The Reserve pilots fly on the weekends, and during the week they have jobs like everyone else. They were not even on the base on 9/11, and in fact were probably flying commercial jets somewhere. The Reserves managed to get people to the base, briefed them, fueled and armed the aircraft in a relatively swift manner. But the alert aircraft under the operational control of NORAD, the military command with the responsibility to act on orders from the President, were indeed on strip alert at Langley and Otis airbases,. Strip alert means that a very small number of airplanes- far smaller than you would imagine- actually have pilots in them, ready to launch. There was some confusion about actually getting them airborne, but that is all in the 9/11 report. Eventually they launched. But they were not told to go anywhere. Since the terrorists turned off the transponders, there was no radar track to vector them to, and for good or ill, the F-15 Eagles that launched out of Langley were placed in a holding pattern pending identification of a target. So, my conlusion is that Professor Gil-White is a horse's ass. Being a horse's ass is protected by the First Amendment. But my understanding is that Tenure was intended to protect only academic speech, not the ravings of lunatics. Any opinions he has about ethnology and cognition are fully protected, and you can see on his site that he has some interesting opinions. But like I said, the man is an idiot when he is out of his field, and while Constitutional, I do not believe that entitles him to an eternal dip at the tenure trough. But that is for the academics to decide. Just an opinion. I hit the send button and wondered if I had time to do a load of laundry. I wandered off and cooked an egg. When I passed the computer again I saw that there was a message in response. Muhammed must be up early. Thanks for research on the jerk Gil White. I only saw 2 minutes of him on TV and his views seemed a bit screwed up even for my taste. I think you have convinced me that I may have to re think my extreme laissez faire views on both free speech and academic freedom. I know I would be pissed if some-ass hole spewed forth bullshit rather than solid economic theory in a principles classroom. Shit, there are just so many dumbasses out there. Funny, but the bio of George Washington I am reading really emphasizes his struggle with dissent and free speech. Muhammad I munched part of my egg with a bit of toast. Being a dumbass is totally protected, I thought. It is just disconcerting that there are so many of them. Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra |