Seasonal flooding is expected in Venice.  But this autumn —  for the fourth time since 2000 — the  high water has substantially exceeded historic norms.

The Venetian experience and response offers analogies for decisions unfolding from Sandy:  In particular should our strategy lean toward absorbing or resisting?

Over the centuries Venice has made choices across this continuum.  Some islands have been largely abandoned.  Architectural, infrastructural, and economic adaptations have anticipated flooding.  Large-scale engineering projects are underway to protect the city from flooding.

Much will depend, I expect, on the experience of the next two-to-five years.   If Sandy is framed as an anomaly, choices will default to status-quo-ante.  The 1821 flooding of the Battery is barely remembered.  The Long Island Express of 1938 was an even worse storm and did not seriously dent post-war development.  But if last year’s experience with Irene and this year’s with Sandy is followed in short order by a third perceived calamity: policy, strategy, and behavior will shift.

It is worth remembering that until the Portuguese, Dutch, and English began sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, Venice was the great European trading center and a significant Mediterranean power.  The decline of Venice was mostly a matter of shifting trade patterns, but  a series of powerful storms and floods  in the year 1600 and afterwards accelerated the decline.

…Thus did Venice rise,
Thus flourish, till the unwelcome tidings came,
That in the Tagus had arrived a fleet
From India, from the region of the Sun,
Fragrant with spices — that a way was found,
A channel opened, and the golden stream
Turned to enrich another. Then she felt
Her strength departing, yet awhile maintained
Her state, her splendour; till a tempest shook
All things most held in honour among men…

Samuel Rogers

While not exactly scintillating, a very timely read might be the National Disaster Recovery Framework (September 2011).

From the document’s Executive Summary:

Experience with recent disaster recovery efforts highlights the need for additional guidance, structure and support to improve how we as a Nation address recovery challenges. This experience prompts us to better understand the obstacles to disaster recovery and the challenges faced by communities that seek disaster assistance.The National Disaster Recovery Framework (NDRF)is a guide to promote effective recovery, particularly for those incidents that are large scale or catastrophic.The NDRF provides guidance that enables effective recovery support to disaster-impacted States, Tribes and local jurisdictions. It provides a flexible structure that enables disaster recovery managers to operate in a unified and collaborative manner. It also focuses on how best to restore, redevelop and revitalize the health,social, economic, natural and environmental fabric of the community and build a more resilient Nation. The NDRF defines:

• Core recovery principles

• Roles and responsibilities of recoverycoordinators and other stakeholders

• A coordinating structure that facilitates communication and collaboration among all stakeholders

• Guidance for pre- and post-disaster recovery planning

• The overall process by which communities can capitalize on opportunities to rebuild stronger, smarter and safer

These elements improve recovery support and expedite recovery of disaster-impacted individuals, families, businesses and communities. While the NDRF speaks to all who are impacted or otherwise involved in disaster recovery, it concentrates on support to individuals and communities.

Yesterday FEMA said that at least 95,000 residents of New York and New Jersey are eligible for some form of emergency housing assistance.  This is an increase from an earlier estimate of 34,000.  Some details on the Disaster Assistance Housing Program from the Department of Housing and Urban Development:

In response to those needs, and at the request of New York and New Jersey, FEMA has activated its Transitional Sheltering Assistance (TSA) program, which allows eligible survivors who are in shelters and cannot return to their homes due to storm-related damages to stay in participating hotels or motels until more suitable housing accommodations are available. FEMA’s contracted vendor, Corporate Lodging Consultants, is maintaining a list of participating hotels and motels, and working to bring on more hotels to ensure that the needs of all survivors are being met. Hotel and motel owners who wish to become a participating hotel can sign up at https://ela.corplodging.com/

HUD is coordinating with FEMA, and affected States, to identify housing providers who may have available housing units, including public housing agencies and multi-family owners.  HUD’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and HOME programs give State and communities the flexibility to redirect millions of dollars to address critical needs, including housing and services for disaster survivors. HUD’s Section 203(k) loan program enables those who have lost their homes to finance the purchase or refinance of a house along with its repair through a single mortgage. It also allows homeowners who have damaged houses to finance the rehabilitation of their existing single-family home.

There has been discussion of using FEMA trailers in Staten Island, Breezy Point, Seaside Heights and other less dense neighborhoods.  But last week FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said trailers were unlikely to be used.

“Given the rental market and the availability of hotels and motels,” FEMA expects to be able to put all displaced residents of the storm-hit East Coast in existing housing, Fugate said in a conference call with reporters. Some 9,000 people are currently in temporary housing, he added. “That number is fluctuating, but in some areas it’s going up as people go home and discover their homes are flooded and they can’t stay there,” Fugate said. “So we’re working directly to provide people with assistance to get into hotels and motels, and then assess who’s going to need longer-term assistance.”

In New York by Executive Order of the Mayor (November 5)  ”Owners, residents, employees of businesses, and other members of the public (other than authorized government personnel and essential emergency personnel) may re-occupy buildings in Zone A only upon determination by the Department of Buildings that the occupation is permitted.”  Zone A is the most flood-prone area of New York and was designated for mandatory evacuation as Sandy approached.  Roughly 375,000 people reside in Zone A.

Many displaced survivors and evacuees are currently staying with family or friends, but when it becomes clear that original housing will not be available in a timely way, many more will avail themselves of Transitional Sheltering Assistance.   FEMA pays participating hotels and motels the “government rate” established for the city. Hotel stays for Hurricane Katrina survivors reached a peak of roughly 85,000 participants about eight weeks after landfall.  This would be around Christmas for Sandy.

Both quality-of-life and financial incentives exist to move as many as possible as quickly as possible from hotels and motels into rental housing.   As was the case after Katrina, this could be difficult post-Sandy.  ”We don’t have a lot of empty housing in the city, so it’s hard to find it when we need it,” Mayor Bloomberg has said.

For example, the exact number of long-term displaced on Staten Island has not yet been established.  But it is estimated to be a few thousand and potentially many more.  Checking the FEMA  Housing Portal on Wednesday there were 112 rental units available on Staten Island.  The housing portal almost certainly does not encompass the entire market, but it is unlikely that most of those who have been displaced can be relocated proximate to their previous neighborhoods. This has implications for employment, educational continuity, healthcare, family support and much more.

Replacement housing is going to be expensive, messy, and the problem is going to persist well into the New Year.

From: Wave of Death Hit New York Enclave, Wall Street Journal, November 5

This may just be blogger-bluster and I don’t want to suggest it is more than that, but it seems more and more likely we are — I am, many in New York, Trenton, and Washington DC  are  –  not yet acknowledging the huge long-term financial implications of Sandy.  This is especially dangerous if we inappropriately frame the problem during its genesis.  This is the moment when our judgments, whatever they may be, will have the greatest influence.

1836 deaths are blamed on Katrina. No matter how many more victims are found Sandy’s death toll will remain at less than ten percent that number.  Despite several serious problems, the evacuation for and response to Sandy was handled with much more competence and effectiveness than for Katrina.

But the “good news” of preparedness and response — and an election — has obscured profound issues of recovery that are just unfolding. The pre-Katrina population of New Orleans was 484,674.  The population of Staten Island a bit more than 468,000. The population of coastal New Jersey, the Rockaways, and other areas affected by Sandy is much higher than that directly impacted by Katrina.  Building inspectors are just beginning to access areas that have been without electricity.   Certainly the scale of damage at Breezy Point or Midland Beach or Seaside Heights, New Jersey is analogous to the Lower Ninth Ward or Lakeview or Long Beach, Mississippi.

In my experience media often over-play disaster coverage.   In this case, I wonder if even the hyper-competitive NYC media are missing a major story muffled (temporarily) by a combination of competence, complexity, and presidential politics. (The Thursday NYT has reduced front-page coverage to a lower-right corner photo of snow falling on ruins.)  I am not suggesting shouts and hand-wringing or more TV interviews with survivors about their feelings, but  reports on electricity, fuel, other supply chains, port restoration, housing, and analysis of implications would be helpful.  I expect — hope — some future Sunday Times will have a major analytical feature.  But the sudden reduction in regular reporting in the hometown paper seems way strange.  The Post and Daily News may be giving marginally more attention to the Nor’easter, but otherwise not much different.  Weirdly the New York Observer is, at least proportionally, focusing more on Sandy’s implications than her big brash brothers.  (See a collection of the NYO’s “recovery” focus.)

There are social, economic, and geographic differences that may make recovery from Sandy less fraught than that from Katrina.   Nearly 300,000 homes were destroyed by Katrina and the levee failures.  The final accounting for Sandy will not get anywhere close. But there are also issues of population density, infrastructure vulnerability, economic priority, and political power that could make Sandy a disaster that keeps on giving… and expecting to receive.

As I write this another Nor’easter is descending on the the Tri-State.   Record snowfall of between 4 and more than 7 inches with strong winds is reported. Winter officially begins on December 21.  Snow and ice was not a problem in post-Katrina recovery.

THURSDAY EVENING UPDATE

Several developments on replacement housing just today.  The following details are from an Associated Press report filed at 6:40PM ET.

• The federal government is moving manufactured housing into areas in New York and New Jersey that were hit hardest by Superstorm Sandy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday.
• In New York and New Jersey, FEMA has determined that more than 101,000 people are eligible for temporary housing at hotels or motels in the region but it’s unclear exactly how many people are taking advantage of that option.
• More than 56,000 people have also been ruled eligible for FEMA’s individual and households program, which provides money for renting a new place or housing repairs.

Above: Truck rack for loading product to tanker truck

The fuel crisis in New York City, Westchester County, Long Island, northern New Jersey, and nearby is important.  Obviously it is important to the residents of these areas.  Less obviously, it is important to those of us who are involved in homeland security policy and strategy.

I have continued to aggregate fuel-related stories to the Friday post below.

In Sandy’s wake supply has not met demand.  Not unreasonably, policy makers and strategists have viewed this as a lack of supply.  Significant steps have been taken to increase supply.   Senator Schumer pushed the US Coast Guard to reopen the ports of New York and New Jersey to fuel deliveries.  Secretary Napolitano waived the Jones Act which allows foreign shipping to deliver fuel into the ports.  President Obama ordered the military to deliver fuel into the hardest hit areas.

All of these steps have increased supply to the mid-Atlantic and served to suppress price increases.   Many far removed from the New York metro area are benefiting from gasoline price reductions related to these steps to increase supply.  It has been a vigorous response.

It is not, however, targeted at the present problem.  Supply itself was never the problem. There are two fundamental problems:

The fuel distribution terminals have been damaged and have not had electricity. South and east of Newark Airport and just west and north of Staten Island is a handful of places where pipelines and tankers deliver gasoline (Google Map).  All of these venues lost power.  None of these venues were on the utility’s priority restoration lists.  The utility — and most policy-makers and strategists — did not know the role nor even the existence of these places.   This is where tanker trucks pull into truck racks and gasoline is pumped from storage tanks and blended into tanker trucks which then proceed to various gas stations.   There has been no electricity to operate the truck racks and that’s a fundamental problem.  There are other problems with debris removal, personnel,  damage to the storage tanks, and communications as to which gas stations have power, but these problems have not been the most serious impediments.

Two-thirds (or more) of gas stations have not had electricity to run their pumps and otherwise transact business. Many gas stations  have plenty of gasoline, but do not have electricity to pump that gas.   Why, you might ask, do gas stations not have back-up generators to pump their gas?  This is required in Florida and, maybe (?), Louisiana.  It has been successfully resisted in most other jurisdictions partly because  it would further diminish the number of independent operators and enhance the market dominance of chains.   Most gas stations would lose money on gasoline sales alone and make their (very small) profits on selling salty and sugary snacks, soda pop, beer, and cigarettes.  The capital and personnel requirements for purchasing and safely maintaining a generator for conducting sustainable commerce — not just pumping gas — are significant especially for the smaller independent operator.

There are a range of policy and strategy options to address these fundamental problems.  In the next two weeks is the right time for New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and others to actively and inclusively consider these options.

It is also my impression — but I don’t have sufficient evidence to prove — that from Tuesday morning to Thursday afternoon/evening, these fundamentals were not being communicated to Governors Christie and Cuomo, Mayor Bloomberg, and other senior policy makers and strategists.  As a result, considerable energy, time, and effort were being expended on measures that were peripheral to the current problem and may have distracted from resolving the truck rack problem identified above.  This, too, is an issue worth considering while memories are fresh and more accurate after-action outcomes can be specified.

To be explicit:  There is absolutely no evidence of anyone being negligent or passive (quite the contrary).  There is evidence that a crisis, as usual, has exposed aspects of reality that now deserve sustained and thoughtful attention.

Some quick aggregation and analysis on three critical nodes.  For this summary I have focused on the current situation in the Greater New York City area.  This is not a region in which I specialize, I would welcome reader corrections.

By “current” I mean Thursday evening, November 1.  This is the oft-referenced 72 hour mark since Sandy came ashore.

Power: 43 percent of New Jersey electric customers (1.7 million),  over 1.5 million New Yorkers and close to 350,000 citizens of Connecticut are still in the dark.  Several utilities report they expect to reach the 90 percent restoration point within the next ten days (November 9-12).  See more details from the US Department of Energy. I have not found any reports of Sandy causing long-term impact on power generation.   (There was a Sandy-related safety alert at the Oyster Creek Nuclear Power Station, but this operation had already shut down for scheduled maintenance before the superstorm hit.)  According to the regional grid coordinator,  even at the height of the storm there was “enough generation available in the region to cover the loss of those generating stations that are out of service because of the storm. “Transmission capacity, especially in New Jersey, was affected. There were 22 230-kilovolt transmission lines out of service because of flooding in substations in northern New Jersey.   The storm compromised 41 transmission facilities in the multi state region most directly impacted by Sandy. But the storm’s biggest impact, as usual, was on the distribution system.  In Westchester County alone over 600 roads remain closed because of downed power lines.  Flooding has seriously impacted buried lines and substations in New York City and other coastal communities. According to reports in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “We had massive damage to our infrastructure,” said Chris Eck, a spokesman for Jersey Central Power & Light Co… The New Jersey utilities lost numerous substations to floods, in addition to losing power lines and pole-top transformers. The substations, which serve large areas of customers, must be drained, dried and cleaned before they can be reenergized. Ralph A. LaRossa, PSE&G’s president, said Thursday that cleanup crews were engaged in “hand-to-hand combat” with filth in substations, using toothbrushes and rags to remove dirt.”

Communications: The Federal Communications Commission reports that one in four cell phone towers were out of service at the height of the storm.  Verizon declared a “service emergency.” Thursday’s Wall Street Journal reported:

Eleven years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Verizon Communications Inc. is once again scrambling to repair severe damage to a key switching facility inside its historic headquarters building in lower Manhattan. The massive facility for interconnecting key communications lines sustained heavy damage after planes struck the Twin Towers more than a decade ago. This time the enemy was water shoved ashore by Hurricane Sandy. The building is one of the worst hit of a number of facilities that carriers were rushing to fix Wednesday… Verizon employees said Monday night’s storm surge was so powerful that it breached the protective plugs that surround cables coming into the building. As a result, water flooded the critical basement “cable vault” that takes in communications cables and directs them to switching gear upstairs, which wasn’t damaged.

AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and smaller wireless carriers were also reporting tower outages and system instability across Metro New York and northern New Jersey.   Wireless providers are not required to report on system status, but most expert observers seemed to agree roughly twenty-percent of the network is still non-operational across the most affected areas.  The power outage is complicating and delaying restoration efforts.

Above: Flooded lobby of Verizon data center at 140 West Street

Fuel: Roughly 25-30 percent of regional fuel refining is offline.  The Colonial Pipeline is expected to resume deliveries to the New York metro market on November 2. This major source of Gulf Coast petroleum product has been shut-down since October 29.  Late November 1 the Ports of New York and New Jersey were reopened to maritime fuel deliveries.  But availability of supply is not — yet — the fundamental problem. Several  gasoline terminals are not able to receive or transfer product because of damage caused by the storm surge.  Roughly 75 percent of the New York metro’s gasoline supply is distributed from terminals in the Linden, New Jersey area. One company executive estimated the terminals at his site could take four to six weeks to repair.  In any case, many gasoline terminals do not have  electricity to pump product.  Utilities anticipate this issue may be resolved over the weekend.  Because of power outages many gasoline service stations cannot pump what they have in their storage tanks.  Mike O’Leary, vice president of Raceway Petroleum Inc., based in Piscataway N.J., said only three of its 50 stations “were able to open with power restored” to run gas pumps cash registers and credit-card transaction devices.  In Paterson, N.J., the state’s third-largest city, the Police Department was trying to negotiate emergency contracts for gas, and short of that, said it would beginning siphoning it from other city vehicles to keep police cruisers running. The EPA has issued emergency waivers through November 20 related to Reformulated Gasoline Requirements in order to maximize gasoline availability in the states impacted by Sandy.

Supply is not the problem. Identifying demand is not the problem.  The network for delivering supply to demand has mostly — though not entirely — survived.

In all three cases the distribution system has been disrupted.  In particular, transfer capability is a serious challenge for each sector. For example, fuel needs to be transferred from refineries, pipelines and barges and eventually into trucks.   The Linden terminals play this function.  The Verizon “cable vault” is analogous to the fuel terminals, as are electrical substations.

Our three heroes share a similar weakness.  Is there a D’Artagnan to rescue them?

LATE FRIDAY UPDATE:

I’ve been offline, but (mostly) good news today in terms of gasoline distribution in the NYC metro area:

According to Dow Jones:

NuStar Energy  said the truck-rack facility at its petroleum-products terminal in Linden, N.J., will be back in service by the end of day Friday.  NuStar crews were able to bring a generator from one of its Gulf Coast facilities and procured another regionally to power up the truck-rack bays in Linden. The rest of NuStar’s 4.5-million-barrel capacity storage-and-distribution terminal in Linden remains shuttered until commercial power can be restored and damage assessments completed.

According to Reuters:

In an effort to reduce the impact of crippled fuel flows in the Northeast, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano issued a temporary blanket waiver of the Jones Act on Friday. The move allows foreign oil tankers from the Gulf of Mexico to enter Northeastern ports to provide additional fuel resources, a service usually restricted to domestic vessels. About half of the region’s gasoline and diesel comes from the Gulf Coast via the Colonial Pipeline or via tanker from overseas.

Despite some continued disruptions to supply, other critical terminals and refineries continued to reopen on Friday.

Colonial Pipeline, the 825,000 bpd conduit that ships fuel from the Gulf Coast to the East Coast, said it had restarted a large section of Line 3, its Northeast mainline that runs from Greensboro, North Carolina, to Linden, New Jersey, on Thursday. It also resumed deliveries at its key Linden junction to a connected Buckeye terminal.

“While Colonial’s pipelines and facilities were spared significant damage, many of the terminals in the Linden area will require days if not weeks to fully recover,” it said.

Kinder Morgan said on Thursday it would resume shipping from its New York and New Jersey terminals in the next day or two, after the company brought in generators to power pumps and other equipment. The terminals in Carteret and Perth Amboy in New Jersey and in Staten Island, New York, will begin to receive and move refined fuels in the next 24 to 48 hours.

Royal Dutch Shell said Thursday that all its New York borough terminals were still down. Its Shell-branded network was 84 percent open in Connecticut, 47 percent open in New Jersey, 62 percent open in New York and 83 percent open in Pennsylvania.

Motiva Enterprises said on Wednesday it reopened more of the fuel terminals it shut because of Hurricane Sandy, but four terminals in Sewaren and Newark, New Jersey, and Brooklyn and Long Island, New York, have no restart date.

Magellan Midstream Partners, one of the largest U.S. pipeline and storage terminal companies, said it now has limited operational capacity to receive inbound vessels and barges at its New Haven terminal.

Buckeye Partners said its main New York Harbor area terminal in Linden, New Jersey, was reconnected to its power supply and fully operational by noon on Friday. The company expects its two other New York area terminals in Inwood and Long Island City to return to service by November 2 midnight. The company is supplying jet fuel to the three airports in the New York City area.

EARLY SATURDAY UPDATE

According to the Energy Information Administration:

Based on today’s (November 2) emergency survey of gasoline availability, EIA estimates that two-thirds of gasoline stations in the New York metropolitan area do not have gasoline available for sale. This number includes stations that reported no gasoline available and those EIA could not reach after numerous attempts, and consequently assume that the station was closed. Of the stations sampled, one-third had gasoline available for sale, 3% were not selling gasoline because they had no power, 10% had power but no gasoline supplies, and 53% percent did not respond to attempts to contact them.

According to the Associated Press:

Above: Governor Christie, President Obama, Administrator Fugate

For many years the emergency manager’s mantra has included, “Emergency management will never win an election, but it can certainly result in losing one.”  This is usually recited by the EM priesthood within ear-shot of mayors or governors.   (In the Vedic traditions a mantra is a sound, syllable, word, or group of words that is capable of causing transformation.)

The truism, even the Truth, at the heart of the traditional mantra is that the effectiveness and more broadly the vigor of a disaster response — good, bad, or whatever — is usually personified in the leader of the time.  Rudy Giuliani and George W. Bush emerged from 9/11 as heroes to many.  Ray Nagin and George W. Bush never recovered from Katrina.

It will be interesting how post-Sandy — combined with post-9/11 and post-Katrina — may amend the mantra.

At least in the short-term, vigor has usually seemed more important than effectiveness.  Effective or not, the response to 9/11 was energetic, active, forceful, intense.   It was the perception of inactivity in the immediate aftermath of Katrina that indicted those then at the helm.  The photo of President Bush doing a flyover of New Orleans in Air Force One took its totemic meaning from a preexisting sense of passive detachment.  He did a flyover of Ground Zero too.  That’s not what we remember.

In the context of a major disaster a leader is vicariously vigorous  (or not).  The leader is acclaimed or blamed largely for the vigor or non-vigor of others.  Giuliani was undoubtedly vigorous, but his was also a dramatic personification of heroism demonstrated by thousands of others.  Some have argued President Bush was very engaged in Katrina operations and unfairly tarred by the less-than-vigorous performance of others.   Others offer the President suffered the karma caused by his neglect (or worse) of FEMA.

Partly due to the mysterious alchemy of perceived vigor, one of the results of Sandy may be increased attention to preparedness.  The “big ones” — that seem to be unfolding with increasing frequency — are beyond the capacity of the most robust response.  As evidence, consider Breezy Point or the Battery Brooklyn Tunnel.   Serious and sustained attention to mitigation is becoming a precondition for any response that hopes to appear vigorous, even more so if effectiveness is a goal.

–+–

Ommm… Mitigation is preparedness for response.

Ommm… Mitigation accelerates recovery.

Ommm… Mitigation is the path to enlightenment (and re-election).  OMMMMM…

HLSWatch was founded as a non-partisan source and forum.  The current stable of posters has endeavored to maintain this tradition, perhaps this rigor…

Still, I hope regular readers know I am a self-declared conservative with libertarian tendencies and a life-long Republican who nonetheless actively worked for candidate Obama in 2008.   I have previously exposed this background to allow you to filter my worldview.  I want you to understand my predispositions and challenge my analysis when you perceive my bias is getting in the way of accurately engaging reality.

It can be difficult to recognize reality.  It is important to try our best and depend on the help of our friends (and others) to do better.

Below is yesterday’s much discussed New York Times’ lead editorial.  I am obliged to enter it into the Homeland Security Watch archives.   The analysis is timely, accurate in its details, and — it seems to me — could contribute to confusion regarding distinctions of form and function.

It is my judgment that the Obama campaign, Obama administration, current FEMA leadership, extant statutes, long-time tradition, and practical priorities of strategy, operations, and tactics all defer to state and local leadership of emergency management: preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery.   On this functional foundation there is no substantive difference. (Prevention is a complicated matter that would require much more time and attention to accurately analyze.)

Form matters.  How functions are defined, organized and directed will have consequences.  Substantive differences exist between Mr. Obama and Mr. Romney, between Democrats and Republicans, and between various corners of the EM community on many important issues of form. (See RecoveryDiva for a good aggregation of recent attention to these formal distinctions.) But I perceive in this instance the NYT editorial board is using a formal strawman to argue a functional difference that does not exist.

(The embedded links in the NYT editorial below were in the original online version.)

THE NEW YORK TIMES: OCTOBER 30, 2012 EDITORIAL

A Big Storm Requires Big Government

Most Americans have never heard of the National Response Coordination Center, but they’re lucky it exists on days of lethal winds and flood tides. The center is the war room of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where officials gather to decide where rescuers should go, where drinking water should be shipped, and how to assist hospitals that have to evacuate.

Disaster coordination is one of the most vital functions of “big government,” which is why Mitt Romney wants to eliminate it. At a Republican primary debate last year, Mr. Romney was asked whether emergency management was a function that should be returned to the states. He not only agreed, he went further.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.” Mr. Romney not only believes that states acting independently can handle the response to a vast East Coast storm better than Washington, but that profit-making companies can do an even better job. He said it was “immoral” for the federal government to do all these things if it means increasing the debt.

It’s an absurd notion, but it’s fully in line with decades of Republican resistance to federal emergency planning. FEMA, created by President Jimmy Carter, was elevated to cabinet rank in the Bill Clinton administration, but was then demoted by President George W. Bush, who neglected it, subsumed it into the Department of Homeland Security, and placed it in the control of political hacks. The disaster of Hurricane Katrina was just waiting to happen.

The agency was put back in working order by President Obama, but ideology still blinds Republicans to its value. Many don’t like the idea of free aid for poor people, or they think people should pay for their bad decisions, which this week includes living on the East Coast.

Over the last two years, Congressional Republicans have forced a 43 percent reduction in the primary FEMA grants that pay for disaster preparedness. Representatives Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and other House Republicans have repeatedly tried to refuse FEMA’s budget requests when disasters are more expensive than predicted, or have demanded that other valuable programs be cut to pay for them. The Ryan budget, which Mr. Romney praised as “an excellent piece of work,” would result in severe cutbacks to the agency, as would the Republican-instigated sequester, which would cut disaster relief by 8.2 percent on top of earlier reductions.

Does Mr. Romney really believe that financially strapped states would do a better job than a properly functioning federal agency? Who would make decisions about where to send federal aid? Or perhaps there would be no federal aid, and every state would bear the burden of billions of dollars in damages. After Mr. Romney’s 2011 remarks recirculated on Monday, his nervous campaign announced that he does not want to abolish FEMA, though he still believes states should be in charge of emergency management. Those in Hurricane Sandy’s path are fortunate that, for now, that ideology has not replaced sound policy.

The word “homeland” was used once,  the term “homeland security” not at all  in the three presidential debates.  But a close-reading of the transcripts does expose HS-related discussion.

Below are direct excerpts from the debate transcripts.  I have purposefully not identified who said what.  Where the candidates seem to mostly agree, I have only quoted one of them.  Occasionally a candidate asserted a difference that — at least to me — seemed either non-substantive or illusory.  I have not included these assertions.  There are subtle distinctions.  I have chosen excerpts that I hope bring these forward.

To me the distinctions — on these issues —  often run counter to each candidate’s stereotype. President Obama comes off tougher than the other side wants to admit, Governor Romney more reasonable than he is portrayed.  Debate posturing?  Meaningful insight?  My own eccentric tendency to see what is shared more than what divides?

FIRST DEBATE: THE FUNDAMENTALS

The first role of the federal government is to keep the American people safe. That’s its most basic function…

The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The role of government is to promote and protect the principles of those documents. First, life and liberty. We have a responsibility to protect the lives and liberties of our people…

SECOND DEBATE: IMMIGRATION, DOMESTIC COUNTER-TERRORISM, AND RESILIENCE

Immigration

First of all, this is a nation of immigrants. We welcome people coming to this country as immigrants… I want our legal system to work better. I want it to be streamlined. I want it to be clearer. I don’t think you have to — shouldn’t have to hire a lawyer to figure out how to get into this country legally. I also think that we should give visas to people — green cards, rather — to  people who graduate with skills that we need. People around the world with accredited degrees in science and math get a green card stapled to their diploma, come to the U.S. of A. We should make sure our legal system works.

Number two, we’re going to have to stop illegal immigration. There are 4 million people who are waiting in line to get here legally. Those who’ve come here illegally take their place… What I will do is I’ll put in place an employment verification system and make sure that employers that hire people who have come here illegally are sanctioned for doing so. I won’t put in place magnets for people coming here illegally. The kids of those that came here illegally, those kids, I think, should have a pathway to become a permanent resident of the United States and military service, for instance, is one way they would have that kind of pathway to become a permanent resident…

If we’re going to go after folks who are here illegally, we should do it smartly and go after folks who are criminals, gang bangers, people who are hurting the community, not after students, not after folks who are here just because they’re trying to figure out how to feed their families. And that’s what we’ve done. And what I’ve also said is for young people who come here, brought here often times by their parents. Had gone to school here, pledged allegiance to the flag. Think of this as their country. Understand themselves as Americans in every way except having papers. And we should make sure that we give them a pathway to citizenship…

Domestic Counterterrorism (or Whole Community or gun control)

So my belief is that, (A), we have to enforce the laws we’ve already got, make sure that we’re keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, those who are mentally ill. We’ve done a much better job in terms of background checks, but we’ve got more to do when it comes to enforcement…

Weapons that were designed for soldiers in war theaters don’t belong on our streets. And so what I’m trying to do is to get a broader conversation about how do we reduce the violence generally… Part of it is also looking at other sources of the violence… And so what can we do to intervene, to make sure that young people have opportunity; that our schools are working; that if there’s violence on the streets, that working with faith groups and law enforcement, we can catch it before it gets out of control…

And so what I want is a — is a comprehensive strategy. Part of it is seeing if we can get automatic weapons that kill folks in amazing numbers out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill. But part of it is also going deeper and seeing if we can get into these communities and making sure we catch violent impulses before they occur.

Resilience (?)

I believe in self-reliance and individual initiative and risk takers being rewarded.

THIRD DEBATE: COUNTERTERRORISM, CYBER, AND DRONES

International Counterterrorism

But we can’t kill our way out of this mess. We’re going to have to put in place a very comprehensive and robust strategy to help the — the world of Islam and other parts of the world, reject this radical violent extremism, which is — it’s certainly not on the run. It’s certainly not hiding. This is a group that is now involved in 10 or 12 countries, and it presents an enormous threat to our friends, to the world, to America, long term, and we must have a comprehensive strategy to help reject this kind of extremism…

A group of Arab scholars came together, organized by the U.N., to look at how we can help the — the world reject these — these terrorists. And the answer they came up with was this: One, more economic development. We should key our foreign aid, our direct foreign investment, and that of our friends, we should coordinate it to make sure that we — we push back and give them more economic development. Number two, better education. Number three, gender equality. Number four, the rule of law. We have to help these nations create civil societies…

The other thing that we have to do is recognize that we can’t continue to do nation building in these regions. Part of American leadership is making sure that we’re doing nation building here at home. That will help us maintain the kind of American leadership that we need…

We make decisions today… that will confront challenges we can’t imagine. In the 2000 debates, there was no mention of terrorism, for instance. And a year later, 9/11 happened. So, we have to make decisions based upon uncertainty…

Cybersecurity

We need to be thinking about cyber security. We need to be talking about space…

International Counterterrorism (Again)

Pakistan is important to the region, to the world and to us, because Pakistan has 100 nuclear warheads and they’re rushing to build a lot more. They’ll have more than Great Britain sometime in the — in the relatively near future. They also have the Haqqani Network and the Taliban existent within their country. And so a Pakistan that falls apart, becomes a failed state, would be of extraordinary danger to Afghanistan and to us. And so we’re going to have to remain helpful in encouraging Pakistan to move towards a more stable government and rebuild the relationship with us. And that means that our aid that we provide to Pakistan is going to have to be conditioned upon certain benchmarks being met…

Drones

We should use any and all means necessary to take out people who pose a threat to us and our friends around the world.

International Counterterrorism (Again)

There’s no doubt that attitudes about Americans have changed. But there are always going to be elements in these countries that potentially threaten the United States. And we want to shrink those groups and those networks and we can do that.  But we’re always also going to have to maintain vigilance when it comes to terrorist activities. The truth, though, is that Al Qaeda is much weaker than it was…and they don’t have the same capacities to attack the U.S. homeland and our allies as they did four years ago.

I expect partisans of each candidate will complain I have obscured important differences.   In my judgment a narcissism of small differences is epidemic.   I have no interest in abetting the fever.  More interesting to me is — for good or bad — the considerable consensus that is articulated.

Another definition for resilience:

Resilience is an innate tendency, usually consisting of several inter-related parts, that allows a system to flex under stress and bounce-back to something similar to its preexisting condition once the stress is lessened or removed.

Three inter-related parts that seem to recur in many systems:

Resilience is more likely to emerge if the system is characterized by diversity, decentralization (self-organization), and adaptation (including the improvisational and opportunistic sorts).

The more diverse roles and functions embedded in a system (nation, region, community, company, neighborhood, firm, family or many other examples) the more likely one or more of the roles and functions will effectively adapt to stress.

The more self-organizing a system —  the  more capable participants are to choose and act in accordance with Strange Attractors of Meaning — the more likely some participant will find an effective way of adapting to stress.

Resilience can mitigate the negative consequences of change through adaptation. Resilience expects change and spawns structural and behavioral characteristics that accept considerable change as a way of avoiding catastrophic change. Diversity does not ensure effective adaptation.  A decentralized and/or self-organizing system produces many mal-adaptive features.  But the more diverse and self-organizing the system the more likely the system will generate – nurture and facilitate – effective adaptation.

–+–

These notions began to knock about last Wednesday afternoon.  I had lunch with a FEMA colleague and we talked about how efficiency often conflicts with resilience.  After lunch, before driving to Dulles to catch a plane, I walked over to the Hirshhorn Museum to see the new Ai Weiwei exhibit.

Ai Weiwei is a leading Chinese artist.  If you pay any attention to such things you know he has been in trouble with the authorities:  arrested, jailed, beaten, fined, and not allowed to leave China.  But until visiting the exhibit I had forgotten what started his troubles. As recently as the 2008 Olympics Ai Weiwei was officially celebrated.

Entering the exhibit the visitor is confronted by a huge wall covered in Chinese characters, clearly a listing or inventory of something (see below).   A small English-language label explains these are the names and basic details of 5385 school children who died at their desks in the May 12, 2008 Sichuan Earthquake.  Ai Weiwei and other artists began to collect and publish the names when the government failed to do so.  The artists’ investigation also suggested official corruption in school construction had contributed to many of the deaths.

The entire list of dead school children is available here.

An audio recording announces each name.  Several other pieces in the exhibit are related to the destruction and death — and official deceit — related to the earthquake.

Another small English-language label quotes the artist:

A name is the first and final marker of individual rights, one fixed part of the ever-changing human world.  A name is the most basic characteristic of our human rights: no matter how poor or how rich, all living people have a name, and it is endowed with good wishes, the expectant blessings of kindness and virtue.

In acting on this Strange Attractor of Meaning, Ai Weiwei has earned official censure, unofficial violence, and a sustained effort to suppress his inclination to diversity and self-organization.

–+–

The world is ever-changing.  We face this flux with a small set of (near) certainties:  my name, your name, the nature of our relationship.  In some relationships — such as this blog — even the names are uncertain.

But in this digital space and its most proximate socio-political space, diversity proliferates and self-organization permeates.  Problems are presented and debated, proposed solutions even more so.  Expectations of kindness and virtue are often disappointed.  You dismiss me as a  Pollyanna (effeminate fictional character).  I decide you are a selfish cynic (dog-like).  But despite ourselves: we listen a tad, we learn a bit, we adapt grudgingly to one another.

I do not seek to deny or diminish our difficulties.  I wish for more kindness and virtue.  But especially in the face of cruelty and cravenness I am glad to be part of a system that does not suppress diversity of opinion and self-organization of solutions.

I predict plenty of troubles ahead — whoever is elected, whatever becomes of the Euro, regardless of why the earth is warming, no matter what Israel does (or does not do) to Iran or vice-versa, however Assad falls — there will be dark days. Want to debate that?

It is clear to me that whatever troubles descend we will be better off if we nurture diversity and facilitate self-organization.   From the relationship of these two characteristics emerges adaptability and in an ever-changing world adaptability is the best friend we’ve got.

According to The Guardian, Reuters, and others, a video was released on Friday in which Ayman al-Zawahiri praises the attack on the Benghazi consulate, calls for more protests against US diplomatic facilities, and encourages, “free and distinguished zealots for Islam to continue their opposition to American crusader Zionist aggression against Islam and Muslims”.  Similar statements have been made by AQ-affiliates in North Africa and Yemen.

An Al-Qaeda affiliate in Pakistan Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the so-called ‘Pakistani Taliban’, has claimed credit for the assassination attempt on Malala Yousufzai (above), a 14-year old Pakistani girl who has campaigned to protect the right of girls to go to school.  The TTP justified its attack saying she was encouraging “Western thinking.”  Malala survived but is in critical condition.

It is in the self-interest of AQ, Salafists, and other religious extremists to characterize their struggle as combating an external threat presented by the United States and the West-in-general.   Westerners too often unwittingly play along and reinforce the message.  It is a false claim and a terrible trap.

The struggle that matters most is internal to Islam.

A teenaged classmate’s of Malala, interviewed on Pakistani television, said, “I am worried about Malala. The whole of Swat is worried about her. But every girl in Swat is Malala. We’ll educate ourselves. We will win. They can’t defeat us.”

In a Sunday column for Dawn, a Pakistani daily, Cyril Almeida is not as confident:

EVERYONE it seems has questions this week.

Some are of the stupid variety. What kind of human being would shoot a 14-year-old? Answer: a monstrous one. And there are a lot of monsters here.

How can anyone call themselves a Muslim and do this? Answer: Because they believe they are the true Muslims, not the weak-kneed moral relativists who pretend to be Muslims. A true Muslim does what needs to be done for the glory of Islam.

What kind of society teaches people to kill little girls trying to get an education? Answer: a sick and troubled society. A society that is in denial of the sickness in its midst.

Other questions are asked with a sly innocence. These are the more malign ones.

Why can’t we condemn all violence, by drones and by guns? Haven’t we had enough of killing? Can’t we now find a more humane way of ending the violence? Why don’t we try and understand this mindset instead of trying to destroy it?

These are malign questions because they are asked with a specific purpose.

The purpose is not to end jihad and violence, but to enable it, to perpetuate it, to make Pakistan the custodian of Islam, to create the perfect Islamist state in an imperfect world.

The trick the men with the malign questions have perfected is to sound reasonable.

See, we’re here on TV, talking things out, making our case, condemning all violence, trying to do our bit to make Pakistan peaceful and calm.

We all live here, we’re all the same. Let’s learn to understand why this is happening to us. It’s the Americans. It’s the Jews. It’s the Indians. Get rid of their influence and the wayward souls here will return to the fold.

They’re right about one thing: we all do live here. But we’re not the same, we don’t want the same things, and the men with the innocently asked but malign questions are not on the side of those asking in fear why this is happening to us.

Denial, confusion and obfuscation have meant that the difference isn’t as obvious as it should be.

Surely, both sides are well-meaning, people will ask. Surely, we can figure out a way to all live alongside in peace and happiness, people will say.

Yes, we could. But not if the rules are set by the other side.

Denial, confusion and obfuscation have meant that Pakistanis are not clear there is a continuum from the religious right to violent Islamism. It is not a difference of kind, only of degree.

The religious right creates an enabling environment for violent Islamism to recruit and prosper. And violent Islamism makes state and society cower and in doing so enhances the space for the religious right. One feeds off the other and together they grow in strength.

Denial, confusion and obfuscation have meant that the continuum from Jamaat-i-Islami to Al Qaeda, from Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam to the Taliban is barely recognised, let alone understood.

If there is outrage at that statement, at conflating the two, that is a testament to the success and deep-rootedness of the denial, confusion and obfuscation.

The mullah of today is the same as the mullah of yesterday. What’s changed is that the mullah of today has his goal in sight and the means to achieve it. The means is the continuum from the religious right to violent Islamism — one feeding off the other and together edging closer to their goal.

For years now, the problem of Pakistan has been seen as a problem of the state. But perhaps what it really is is a problem of society. A decrepit and broken society whose decrepitude and brokenness the denial, confusion and obfuscation have masked.

There is surely a problem of the state too. A certain poverty of imagination and moral bankruptcy have fashioned a state that can no longer do what is right and necessary.

It’s not always about complicity and sympathy. Often it’s just about fear. In Balochistan, I have wondered why the state doesn’t just take out the Lashkar-i-Jhangvi killers. After all, there can’t be more than a few dozen of them.

I asked and asked until someone finally offered, “They’ll never forget. You take them on and eventually they’ll get you. Maybe while you’re serving, maybe when you’re retired, but they will get you and probably your family too.”

The same question I’ve asked in KP and Fata. Why can’t they wipe this out? This isn’t a foreign army operating; these aren’t alien areas; yes, it was always going to be a slow grind, but why are the results so obviously patchy? Ask and ask and eventually — after theories and philosophies of missing holistic strategies and drivers internal and external — an answer comes. “Because they don’t know. They don’t know if that’s what’s really wanted. And because they don’t know, they’d rather live to see another day, to go back to their families.”

The state is a broken project. The foot soldiers are fearful because the high command is locked in denial and the certainty of old ways.

But perhaps it is society that is broken too. A society that laments its misfortune but can’t see the cause. A society that sees evil in its midst but never its facilitators. A society so manipulated by denial, confusion and obfuscation that the grotesque can masquerade as salvation.

Mercifully, the violent Islamists aren’t very bright. The shoot a little girl, they flog a teenager, they do terrible things that make Pakistanis recoil in horror.

But perhaps they can afford to not be very bright. Because they have the men with the innocently asked but malign questions.

They have the mullah to deny, confuse and obfuscate and lull society into believing the problem is without when it really is within.

It’s not always about us.  We are usually no more than an excuse.  But too often we respond in a way that reinforces the excuse and encourages our adversaries.

Dane Egli at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory has authored an important new report: Beyond the Storms: Strengthening Security and Resilience in the 21st Century.  If it’s available online I don’t know where and cannot find it.  Out of respect for the author’s work, I will not make it downloadable here until certain I have a final version.  (I don’t know the author and did not receive my copy from him.)

The 216 page document is a product of Egli’s independent scholarship.  It was not commissioned by any public or private entity beyond the Applied Physics Laboratory.  It is not (directly) related to getting a grant or other such instrumental purpose.  When it is available online, I will let you know.  Or you let me know when you see it.

The report deserves to be read in its entirety.  It is expansive and comprehensive.  It aggregates a wide-array of elements that are usually treated separately. The pieces are important, but regular readers of HLSWatch are familiar with the pieces.  More valuable is Egli’s  weaving together of a whole picture that provokes a much more interesting conversation than obsessing over any particular piece.

Indeed Egli’s whole picture demonstrates that it is the interdependence of the pieces that really matter.

The report defines resilience as “the ability to bounce or spring back into shape or position after being pressed or stretched.”  But Egli goes on to argue that “resilience is not only the ability to recover from, or withstand, the impact of hazards, and flex — instead of snapping — but also includes the ability to get stronger as a result of adversity.”

In the illustration above, taken from page 2-9 of the report, resilience is identified as an active virtue integrated into all operations and systems.  I like that.  Not much more is specifically offered in terms of this virtuous character, but in context I take it to mean that resilience is a beneficial quality, an innate strength, and a capacity to act that is self-consciously developed.

I very much appreciate Egli’s multiple references to Elinor Ostrom’s work in Collective Action and his effort to integrate Ostrom’s findings into a disciplined cultivation of resilience.  (One of many examples of Dr. Ostrom’s contributions is the 2010 text: Working Together: Collective Action, the Common, and Multiple Methods in Practice, coauthored with Amy Poteete and Eric Janssen.)  Ostrom and her colleagues have looked at real communities dealing with real problems and gathered real data on what works and does not work in terms of resilience and related.

I like the document’s consistent recognition that many (most?) of the crucial issues are complex.  Egli writes, “The current threat environment presents an asymmetric and irregular flow of ‘black swan’ events — ones we don’t expect and cannot predict based on existing data, and ‘wicked problems’ — known challenges that are overwhelming to current emergency planners; and this trend appears to be growing in complexity and uncertainty.”

I am very glad the document situates resilience as a matter of national economic security.  For Egli resilience and the broader goals of national preparedness are key to “supporting the American economy and global markets that depend upon the free flow of commerce.”

Egli has his doctorate in public affairs and retired as a US Coast Guard Captain after a career that included assignments to the US Northern Command and the White House.  The pedigree shows.  His findings are well-organized, reasonably framed, and defensible while being written in brief, accessible, declarative chunks that build an argument.  He includes several short case studies to illustrate findings and ground recommendations.

I don’t agree with every finding.  In my opinion some of Egli’s judgments and recommendations reflect a career spent mostly in the public sector.   While he recognizes resilience is mostly a matter of private sector engagement,  I perceive he may not recognize the profound shift in government’s role and method that will be needed to systematically advance resilience.  But I will wait to argue these critiques after you have a chance to read his work.  It is very good work.

I am in New York for a few days.  I arrived Wednesday for private sector meetings on supply chain resilience, catastrophe preparedness, and related. The city is packed for the opening of the United Nations.

When I checked in the guy in front of me asked the desk clerk, “How many Presidents do you have staying here?”  ”Too many,” she replied.

My President’s speech on Tuesday received considerable media attention, but most of  the coverage I saw, heard, or read focused on either the Iranian nuclear issue or domestic political implications.  Following are a few consecutive paragraphs that have — at least for me — important homeland security implications.

Before these remarks the President held up Ambassador Chris Stevens as an example, condemned the attacks on US diplomatic facilities,  and called the video that catalyzed — or justified or created cover for — the violence “crude and disgusting.”  Then he offered an explanation of the American right of free speech blending principle with pragmatism:

I know there are some who ask why we don’t just ban such a video.  And the answer is enshrined in our laws:  Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.

Here in the United States, countless publications provoke offense.  Like me, the majority of Americans are Christian, and yet we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs.  As President of our country and Commander-in-Chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day and I will always defend their right to do so.

Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views, even views that we profoundly disagree with.  We do not do so because we support hateful speech, but because our founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views and practice their own faith may be threatened.  We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities.

We do so because given the power of faith in our lives, and the passion that religious differences can inflame, the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression; it is more speech — the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect.

Now, I know that not all countries in this body share this particular understanding of the protection of free speech.  We recognize that.  But in 2012, at a time when anyone with a cell phone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button, the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete.  The question, then, is how do we respond?

It’s a question that is very much alive in the United States.   When more control of information is advocated, the justification usually involves some aspect of homeland security.  As Chris Bellavita recently reminded us, “the Preamble to the Constitution is especially relevant to homeland security.  It offers – in 29 words – a majestic vision of the homeland security mission.”   There can be trade-offs between security and liberty.   But the homeland that matters most is secured by preserving liberty.

There is considerable expectation that an Executive Order will soon try to pick up the pieces from a failed effort at cybersecurity legislation.  You can read more at CNET, Wall Street Journal, or The Hill (for three very different angles on reality).

Technical challenges, political problems, and real philosophical differences complicated the legislative process.  I already gave attention to many of these issues in a February post.  Whatever the text of the Executive  Order these complications will persist.

Many of the most vexing problems are not particular to cyber.  Similar issues are encountered in regard to strategy, policy, regulation, innovation, security, resilience, and competition in domains seemingly as diverse as eCommerce, supply chains, and the global financial system.

Sunday there was a brief two-page essay in the New York Times Magazine that focuses on how the Internet was created.  Following are a few key paragraphs.  As you read cut-and-paste your preferred networked-entity over the word Internet.  When I do that,  the author’s explanation still holds.

Like many of the bedrock technologies that have come to define the digital age, the Internet was created by — and continues to be shaped by — decentralized groups of scientists and programmers and hobbyists (and more than a few entrepreneurs) freely sharing the fruits of their intellectual labor with the entire world. Yes, government financing supported much of the early research, and private corporations enhanced and commercialized the platforms. But the institutions responsible for the technology itself were neither governments nor private start-ups. They were much closer to the loose, collaborative organizations of academic research. They were networks of peers.

Peer networks break from the conventions of states and corporations in several crucial respects. They lack the traditional economic incentives of the private sector: almost all of the key technology standards are not owned by any one individual or organization, and a vast majority of contributors to open-source projects do not receive direct compensation for their work. (The Harvard legal scholar Yochai Benkler has called this phenomenon “commons-based peer production.”) And yet because peer networks are decentralized, they don’t suffer from the sclerosis of government bureaucracies. Peer networks are great innovators, not because they’re driven by the promise of commercial reward but rather because their open architecture allows others to build more easily on top of existing ideas, just as Berners-Lee built the Web on top of the Internet, and a host of subsequent contributors improved on Berners-Lee’s vision of the Web…

It’s not enough to say that peer networks are an interesting alternative to states and markets. The state and the market are now fundamentally dependent on peer networks in ways that would have been unthinkable just 20 years ago…

When we talk about change being driven by mass collaboration, it’s often in the form of protest movements: civil rights or marriage equality. That’s a tradition worth celebrating, but it’s only part of the story. The Internet (and all the other achievements of peer networks) is not a story about changing people’s attitudes or widening the range of human tolerance. It’s a story, instead, about a different kind of organization, neither state nor market, that actually builds things, creating new tools that in turn enhance the way states and markets work.

Legislation, regulation, many theories of management and the practice of most managers assume someone is in charge of something.  Someone is accountable for discreet action that leads to reasonably foreseeable consequences.  There are intentional practices to regulate, systematize, and evaluate.   Certainly this is part of reality, but only part and its proportion of the whole seems to be decreasing.  In homeland security I expect most of our reality cannot be accurately described in these traditional “Newtonian” terms.

When I have most seriously failed it has been because I have very reasonably, diligently, and intelligently applied the lessons learned in one corner of reality to another corner of reality without recognizing the two realities are almost totally different.

On the second Friday since four Americans were killed in the US Consulate at Benghazi,  two weeks since a  virulently vapid video produced in the United States caught the attention of millions of Muslims, and on the first Friday since Parisian cartoonists insisted on their right to be provocative there were a range of reactions.  Three caught my attention:

In Pakistan what the government had tried to orchestrate as peaceful protests spun out of control.  According to DAWN:

Friday which was designated by the government to demonstrate love of the Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) and condemn the anti-Islam video produced in the US by some extremists was hijacked by our home-grown extremists who turned it into a day of unbridled violence, killings, arson and robbery.

At least 23 people were killed and over 200 injured and violence in some places continued till late in the night.

The internal security system virtually collapsed, giving way to tens of thousands of violent protesters to rule the streets in several cities, from Peshawar and Islamabad to Lahore and Karachi, burn down shops, cinema houses and police vehicles, and ransack whatever else that came in the way. (MORE)

In Lebanon thousands peacefully protested. According to The Daily Star:

Peaceful demonstrations took place throughout Lebanon Friday in protest of an anti-Islam film and a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad, amid strict security measures across the country.

France closed its embassy and consulate Friday, and many French schools did not hold classes in anticipation of protests against the publishing of a cartoon of the Prophet Mohammad by a French satirical magazine earlier this week.

This came days after an anti-Islam film produced in the U.S. outraged many Muslims, who took to the streets in countries across the world.

Several thousand supporters of the Sidon-based Sheikh Ahmad Assir gathered in Beirut’s Martyrs Square to rally against the insults to the Prophet. (MORE)

In Benghazi tens-of-thousands of ordinary Libyans confronted and, for the time being, expelled a terrorist militia considered complicit in the consulate attack.  According to The Telegraph:

Cheering protesters in Benghazi have stormed a base occupied by a militant Islamist group accused of complicity in the killing of the US ambassador to Libya, saying they were ‘reclaiming it for the nation’.

Some reports suggest at least ten Libyans were killed in clashes with Islamist militias before the evictions succeeded.

Elsewhere rallies and protests were comparatively small and peaceful.  In Cairo where several hundred had threatened violence last Friday, only “dozens” protested peacefully this Friday.   According to Reuters,

Condemning the publication of the cartoons in France as an act verging on incitement, Egypt’s Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa said it showed how polarized the West and the Muslim world had become.

Gomaa said Mohammad and his companions had endured “the worst insults from the non-believers of his time. Not only was his message routinely rejected, but he was often chased out of town, cursed and physically assaulted on numerous occasions.

“But his example was always to endure all personal insults and attacks without retaliation of any sort. There is no doubt that, since the Prophet is our greatest example in this life, this should also be the reaction of all Muslims.”

As a friend headlines in a still-to-be-published piece: Newsflash: All Revolutions Involve Chaos.   There will be many chaotic days ahead.  But yesterday’s very mixed results are worth our attention.   From this distance we too often hear and see only the worst.  Reality is more complicated.

Yesterday Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt joined our ongoing conversation.  They write:

Have we become America the brittle?

“Resiliency” has finally entered the lexicon of American political leaders. The military has instituted programs for the fighting force. Officials are looking to the experiences of such countries as Britain and Israel, examples of individual and national resilience earned the hard way.

Federal law enforcement and homeland security experts are advising corporate America to build better security into their business practices — to safeguard their goods and services, to recover from attack and, from the companies’ perspective, to boost their brand…

See their entire essay.

From Wednesday’s Times-Picayune:

Dwight Robinson spent Wednesday afternoon looking for his mother’s casket along the levee in eastern Plaquemines Parish. He had just driven past his aunt’s crypt, now tucked in the slant of the east bank levee that skirts the Mississippi River. Robinson, 59, was walking through the world in utter shock. He was overwhelmed and in disbelief that Hurricane Isaac had moved the crypt about a quarter mile from its cemetery…

“I tried to go back to see if my mom’s tomb was there,” he told a Times-Picayune reporter while waiting along the levee in mud-soaked sneakers. “I just fear it might have floated away.” He looked up at the levee as though he might see her…

He then drove about 100 yards before noticing a beautiful pink casket with ornate metal fixtures resting parallel to the river.

He swerved off the road, stranding his car in some mud along the highway. Later, the Mercury had to be pulled out by a nearby truck.

He climbed the levee and studied the pink casket, attempting to find markings.

“I wonder what you could do to know … to identify these things?” he pondered.

When asked whether he thought it belonged to his mother, he said he wasn’t sure but that it looked familiar.

“I started to think what color her casket was, and pink is what came to mind,” he said. “I hope it’s not hers. Well, in a sense, I’m hoping it is.”

Robinson said his biggest fear is that it might have floated down into the Gulf.

He noticed the casket was upside down. He quickly flipped it, water pouring out as it turned. No identifying markings were present on its top.

Despite it all, he says he’s going to rebuild in Bertrandville.

“This is our little piece of the swamp,” Robinson said. “It’s a swamp but it’s our little piece. Our little piece of America.”

“It’s a mess, but, you know, this too shall pass.”

–+–

Plaquemines Parish is a narrow straw of land bisected by the Mississippi River extending southeast from New Orleans into the Gulf of Mexico.

The 2010 census found 23,000 people up from 12,500 since 1910.   There is about 850 square miles of (sometimes) dry land down from about twice that in 1950.

Once dependent on hunting, trapping, sugar, citrus, and piloting ships from the Gulf to New Orleans, Plaquemines is now an operational center for oil and gas drilling for much of the northern Gulf.

Like most of southern Louisiana, Plaquemines  is made up of sediment deposited by the Mississippi.  About 1200 years ago the river’s course shifted east and the erosion of the Northern Plains began forming this new spur of delta.

Over the last half-century not nearly as much sediment has arrived and most that does flows right by.  The engineering of the Mississippi has reduced sediment flows by 50-to-70 percent.   Where the delta once meandered and moved and thereby replenished itself, we now maintain persistent navigation channels.   And because the mouth of the Mississippi has reached the edge of the continental shelf,  our navigation channels are very efficient at delivering the silt into a thousand-foot-deep maw.

In January the State of Louisiana and others announced a plan to reverse land loss in the Mississippi delta.  The core concept is to open up diversions on the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers to allow silt and freshwater into marshlands, build new ridges, pump sediment into eroded marshes, build new shorelines, and pour sand onto barrier islands.  Basically it is an engineered approach to what happened naturally before our engineering got in the way.

Experts are divided on the plan’s prospects for success.  But in May the Coastal Master Plan was adopted unanimously by the Louisiana state legislature.  From my layman’s perspective, the plan is more likely to be effective in restoring the wetlands west of Plaquemines.  With one mile of land on one side of the river and, maybe,  a mile-and-a-half on the other, sitting on the edge of an underwater cliff, Plaquemines is an inherently vulnerable place.

Dwight Robinson says, “This too will pass.”  Well… yes it will, but not necessarily to a better place.

The last few weeks we have been using this blog to explore resilience: For several thousand, Plaquemines is home.  This is where their mother is buried.  This is where they were married and raised their children.  The economy of Plaquemines is stronger than many other places.  The seafood is among the best in the world.  On a bright March morning with the sun rising over the Gulf, it is one of the most beautiful places in the world.

This week Plaquemines looks like the Reuters picture at the top and a mother’s casket has gone missing.  Today a remnant of Isaac makes a return visit.   Next week or next year another hurricane will hit.

Resilience is, I have argued, mostly a matter of human relationships.  The stronger, more numerous, and more diverse our relationships the more resilient an individual or community or organization or nation.  These relationships are quite often tightly tied to a shared place.   We cling to those we love and the places where we have loved them.

Even to our detriment.  Sometimes even to our death.

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Following are the lyrics for Between the Devil and Deep Blue Sea. Surprisingly, I couldn’t find a YouTube of Ella Fitzgerald’s version.  Her voice communicates this sometimes exquisite, sometimes perverse sort of resilience better than any words alone.

I don’t want you
But I hate to lose you
You’ve got me in between
The devil and the deep blue sea

I forgive you’
Cause I can’t forget you
You’ve got me in between
The devil and the deep blue sea

I oughta cross you off my list
But when you come knocking at my door
Fate seems to give my heart a twist
And I come running back for more

I should hate you
But I guess I love you’
You’ve got me in between
The devil and the deep blue sea

She’s no Ella, but here’s a 1957 recording of Lee Wiley that begins to suggest the power and pathos of profound attraction to… almost anything.

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Related Links:

Plaquemines Resiliency Index

Atlas of Shoreline Changes in Louisiana from 1853 to 1989

Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act website