Chemical Weapons ...

– useful only for committing war crimes and acts of genocide. It is easy to forget that Hitler had huge stocks of chemical weapons he never used in combat.  Understanding the realities about and behind ABC weapons is useful for any game designer or writer who is interested in realism -- and for anyone who wants to understand modern politics and military matters.


His only successful deployments were in committing acts of genocide. Saddam Hussein had significant stocks from time to time, yet as the war crimes trials in Iraq noted, the only significant use his government ever got of them was in committing acts of genocide.

The Taliban and the Russians both had access to the same chemical weapons. Neither got any significant use out of them at all. And as for the nerve gas assault on the Tokyo subway that made the news? The gas used is flammable and killed fewer people than if they had just lit the canisters on fire and thrown them into the crowd.

Part of the problem is the threshold – you usually don’t buy the weapons off the rack like you would with guns and bullets and anti-tank weapons (just visit Armada International — www.armada.ch — to read reviews of MBTs, coastal diesel submarines, etc. to get an idea of what is being sold “off the rack” to governments).

Thus, to begin with, you have to develop a chemical agent. Once you have one, you have to figure out how to deliver it. Both tasks take about ten years and developing delivery systems only works after you have the weapon. Then, after the twenty year lead, you have to find a way to deploy them effectively.

The rub comes in at every level. First, there are lots of poisons, but developing one that you can make, store and use takes more effort than you would expect. Then, there is deployment. Nerve gas seems pretty simple. But as the Tokyo subway incident shows, getting it to actually affect anyone is harder than it looks.

An acquaintance of mine, who specializes in ABC weapons and disarmament said she told her husband to only get her out of the shower next time when it was a “real” attack, once she saw the fatality numbers from Tokyo.

She referred to it as the pseudo-Sarin attack (it may have been nerve gas in canisters, but a real weapon would have killed thousands, not a couple score of people). Finally, there is the issue of getting the targets to sit still for the weapon’s use.

Not that there is not a huge market. The United States manufactures, uses, and sells more nerve gas products than the rest of the world combined. They are called “insecticide” and on a perfect day, against insects who don’t move out of the way, they work pretty well. But as many dictators have discovered, to use them against people you basically need to be able to line the people up in controlled areas using firearms.

By the time you are able to successfully use poison gas against them you could have already shot them hours (or days) before. Anything else in the way of targets and the wind blows your gas away, or on your own troops (the Russians, when doing maneuvers and training with fully geared and protected troops, considered 15% casualties in the practice troops a success).

The problems are severe enough that the end of Hitler’s war saw the Germans unwilling to use the stockpiled chemical agents. The benefit was never as great as the downside even when the downside was complete and crushing defeat.

Next I’ll cover Biological Weapons – good for shooting yourself in the foot and nuclear weapons – or a way to pay five times as much for half the result. Then we can move on to other topics, like why it is better to defend than attack, and other military facts. But if you have questions about WMDs, why people are so emotional about them, or why they are so useless, I’ll be glad to talk

Dispute Resolution Links

Cherryh has a series of novels where the protagonist is a mediator.  The following are some links to materials that would help anyone trying to use a mediator as a protagonist.


Barbara McAdoo: Negotiation Skills Fundamental in Teaching - VideoBarbara McAdoo discusses why a negotiation class is the most important class a law school student can take.
McAdoo, Barbara: Transparency and Clarification - VideoBarbara McAdoo emphasizes the importance of clearly defining what the party is and is not getting through mediation.
McAdoo, Barbara: Mediate.com InterviewThis is the complete interview with Barbara McAdoo, longtime mediator and faculty at Hamline Law School, filmed as part of Mediate.com's "The Mediators: Views from the Eye of the Storm" Series.
Barbara McAdoo: Disappointing that Mediation is not Defined - VideoBarbara McAdoo shares her disappointment with how the field has not been defined and how mediators cannot communicate what mediation is to consumers.
Barbara McAdoo: Importance of Defining Mediation - VideoBarbara McAdoo explains reasons why the mediation profession should be clearly defined.
McAdoo, Barbara: Ethical Issues with Judge - VideoBarbara McAdoo shares an anecdote about a judge who revealed to her that he mediates all his cases before he tries them.
Barbara McAdoo: High School Project Leads to 'Helping' Values - VideoBarbara McAdoo shares a life-changing experience she had as a senior in high school when she chose to do a project on segregation.
McAdoo, Barbara: Lack of Research - VideoBarbara McAdoo observes the little research that has compared parties' settlements and experience from mediation to parties' settlements through other processes.
McAdoo, Barbara: Seeing Litigation as Wrong Path in Many Cases - VideoBarbara McAdoo speaks of her experience with litigation and feeling like the clients were not addressing the problem in the right way. She felt they could have communicated more openly and directly with each other.
McAdoo, Barbara: Consequences From Spread of Mediation - VideoBarbara McAdoo discusses that the spread of mediation is what most pleases her about the field. However, she is also concerned with the institutionalization of the practice.
McAdoo, Barbara: Neutral Evaluation - VideoBarbara McAdoo shares her concern with mediators not being able to clearly define what mediation is compared to neutral evaluation as well as the acceptable, ethical boundaries that each has.
McAdoo, Barbara: Lawyers Need Communication Skills - VideoBarbara McAdoo describes her concern with lawyers waiting for mediators or others to be able to relate bad news or other news to their clients.
A Style Index for MediatorsThe Mediator Classification Index (MCI) is designed to assist in understanding the approach or style a mediator tends to use during the mediation process. The MCI is a valuable tool which you may ask prospective mediators to complete as part of the mediator selection process. This is also a valuable tool for mediator self-examination.

I'm in a podcast interview

At http://saveordie.info/?p=596 -- I'm afraid it doesn't offer much new, but it was a lot of fun.

Klingons in the first sentence

"See, we don't need your imaginary Klingons" said Kathryn as the porch failed to shake, the blast doors remained down, and the imploding reactor cores of the incoming battleships failed to light up the night sky.  Knitting needles continued to click.

"The Laadan Ladies Knitting and Terrorist Society is not a soft target."

More knitting.

"Kathryn, no one ever said that our brand identity, 'The power of women talking'  .. "

      ... "and knitting" a voice interrupted

"And knitting," almost an eye roll "meant that we were a soft target."

"But those battleships show"

    ... "that a strong force can't even penetrate our Oort cloud"

Knitting needles clacked.

"That people still think we are a soft target."

"You know, we all know, it is words and perception, it is the talking that has the most power. After all, we did not get to be the most successful linguistic metaphor wielding terrorists in humanities' history without words."

   ... "But ..."

"No buts.  Fictional or not, over 20% of the confederation population believes that Klingons are a part of the real history, over 90% are willing to accept them."

   ... "No, please ..."

"It has to be done.  I know that you prefer to be anonymous, we all do.  However, with this announcement, no one will doubt that we are an impossibly hard target and these attacks by fools will cease."

The knitting needles stopped for a moment.

"It is agreed, as the press announcement will read, we will give thanks for the repulsion of this latest attack to K'thrnn, Battlemistress of the Fifth Klingon Mercenary Protective Force."

Slight smile, more knitting.  The quiet night continued.

Or what I got from Writing Excuses yesterday. ;)

Writing Excuses -- Killing Sauron in Every Chapter

Apo Mechanes Theos is my alternative blog, for everything off topic for my "other" blog.

While I did one link to Writing Excuses with http://ethesis.blogspot.com/2011/08/writing-excuses-podcasts-comments.html  I've decided to put the rest here.

This is about a novel where you have to kill Sauron in every chapter (inspired by one of their podcasts).

It hit me as we sat plotting (which is all anyone ever does).  "Where did Sauron Nine Lives get his name?"

Kara snorted, the beer sputtering everywhere.  "You idiot, everyone knows it has to do with the fact he is alive in nine places, nine bodies at once.  That is why we are having such a hard time figuring out how to kill him."

"No, I know that.  Sheesh.  Where did the 'Sauron' part of his name come from?"

Dead silence.  "Uhh." 

"Never mind" I said, "Now we just have to figure out how to kill him nine times -- maybe ten or eleven if we don't do it fast enough and he brings a body or two back while we are at it."

---

And that is how you write a novel where you kill Sauron in every chapter. ;)

Next, how to write a YA novel where the first person narrator, protagonist/heroine gets eaten at the start of Chapter 2 and parts of it are written in second person imperative. 

Drawing Down Law (Drawing Down Law, a Spirit's Guide)

Drawing Out Law: A Spirit's Guide by John Borrows

In the 1970s I began working on a project involving narratives and heroquests [1].  It was more or less finished in 2004 [2].  Since I started law school in 1979, well after the project began, Drawing Out Law was a welcome perspective, blending as it does the themes of narratives and heroquests in connection with First Nations law.

It was interesting to see the blending of perspectives and the organic nature of the way ideas were presented, often without any prescriptive conclusions.  I've been following the ethics writings of Dr. De Mars, which stem from a First Nations perspective [3].  Doing the same with law seems natural.

Dome of the perspectives are though provoking, ones I would never have considered.  For example, in a discussion of abortion, he draws an analogy between reproductive rights and the (re) development of tribal entities as mature(ing) life in the body of another nation. Throughout discussing the rights and interests, autonomy and perspective, Borrows refuses to engage in prescription, merely providing multiple reframings with a bottom line that more reframing from a First Nations perspective would be valuable.

The pattern of acknowledging multiple approaches, perspectives and frames, suggesting more in the context of soft bordered stories, but not prescribing a result, prescribing a frame or insisting on any perspective, is what marks the book.  It invites thought rather than provides conclusions.

In reading the book it helps if the reader is able to accept Jared Diamond's core premises:  (1) that those distant from us in time or culture are not "the other" and (2) regardless, it is wrong to abuse, exploit, exterminate or dominate other groups regardless of whether we consider them inferior or less organized than our reference or not. [4]

If you come to the book rejecting those two premises, you are probably not going to get very far.

The book does not go astray very often. [5]  Over and over it presents attacks on the author or his discussions and meets them not with responses or answers, but with narratives and invitations to explore.

I was amazed to see the last chapter was titled after the Wendigo (Windigos in the book).[7]

 Recommended.  Then read Kevin Worthen's essays again.[6]


[1]  I eventually gave in and read Campbell in the 1980s.   I would suggest that he is more enjoyable if you do not know the Ishtar cycle before you read him.

[2] Arcane Lore, Heroquests and Heroquesting August 2004 Issaries Press (now generally publishing under Moon Publications).

[3] http://www.spiritlakeconsulting.com/intranet/blog/

[4] Cf Collapse, pages 9 and 10.

[5] I've just run across the trickster and dogs looking for their tales story too many times to appreciate it once more, though telling it twice (early in the book and then at page 215) made me smile.

[6] Such as http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1462378

[7] I know, this note is out of order, but it should be the last word, so I've put it this way.  Cheeby-Akeeng is really an afterword, a coda, rather than a last chapter.

ADR Web Sites

I used to do a newsletter and as a part of that I would note new websites and links.  Here is one:

http://www.internationalpeaceandconflict.org/main

Guide to MA Level Programs in Conflict Resolution and Related Fields

Guide to Ph.D. Programs in Conflict Resolution and Related Fields

Guide to Training in Conflict Resolution and Related Fields

Guide to Scholarships and Fellowships in Conflict Resolution and Related Fields

Materials for Writing a Successful Scholarship Application

Worth a visit,