Thanksgiving Eve

Jimi Hendrix would have been sixty today, and with the news from Europe comes the sound of Voodoo Child and the wail of his tortured Star Spangled Banner. Remember how controversial it was? I remember when they reported him dead, choked in his bed. So many deaths that season long ago. Janice and Jim, too, the deaths seeming to come in threes, like JFK. MLK and RFK. We started to wake up to the fact that what everyone was doing was dangerous, and that at least part of the Woodstock experience might have been toxic.

Purple Haze, on my brain. Many things, it don’t seem the same.

Jimi had that part right, but so much else seems to be on an endless loop of repetition. There are improvisations on a theme, though. We’ll be able to swipe credit cards for McDonald’s toxic burger and fries next year. The Company is hoping to get the wait per customer down to 90 seconds by eliminating cash transaction. There is rioting in Haiti, this time the legal government of Aristide is clubbing people down in the streets instead of the other way around. The first inspection of Iraqi weapons site has been conducted without note after a four year hiatus. The team reportedly split in two, nukes and chem-bio types in two groups. No media permitted, no results to speak of. One site inspected, 799 sites to go. The Iraqi spokesman indicated that shooting at U.S. aircraft in the no-fly zones has nothing whatsoever to do

A cautionary note from Asia. The Koreans have better access to broadband than we do. That is a surprising development on the face of it, but reflects the advantage a developing nation has in leapfrogging over the industrial age infrastructure of places like the U.S. or the U.K. The BBC reports that they are reaping the consequences. A South Korean kid died after playing video games for 86 consecutive hours, the first documented broadband casualty. He developed blood-clots after becoming addicted to on-line role playing games, the same sort of fatality suffered by frequent long-haul airline travelers. The Korean government has created a counseling program to help kids connect to reality. Addicts reportedly spend more than four hours of non-work time on line a day. Hmmm.

Perhaps we need a center right here in Arlington. I know that my withdrawal from broadband was painful. I hope to be back up and running by Friday, but going from broadband to dial-up is a physical shock.

Things are strange here. The DoD reorganization has put everything on hold through the summer. The Congress finally gave us a Defense Authorization, and contained within it is the new position of Undersecretary for Intelligence. No one knows who that might be, or what sweeping changes might result from the resulting reshuffling. My staff at Langley feels like it is on the sidelines, and despite the continuing flurry of memos and PowerPoint slide shows, there really isn’t anything happening. We are totally reactive to what is happening outside the Community. Secretary Tommy Thompson of Health and Human Services was over to talk to the DCI yesterday for a couple hours- strange bedfellows on this, since HHS never had a classified thought in its collective head until the attacks, and now they are responsible for responding to the use of weapons of mass destruction. New links and connections have to be made, and in the background is the establishment of the new Homeland Security ! Department. So many changes, so much uncertainty. There has not been so dramatic a change in the government since the establishment of the  Department of Defense over a half century ago.

I am thankful that things are in motion, finally. It is now a question of how we ride the tiger.

I have an invitation to dinner tomorrow and will not be eating beanie-weenies and watching The Skins and the Cowboys by myself at the apartment. My older boy is home safe, retrieved from the airport the day before the massive travel day. Some rhythms go on, variations on an unchanging theme.  Life is sweet.

Copyright 2002 Vic Socotra