Rio Olympics at Risk?

As I was posting my last item, the following drama was taking place:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8313631.stm

See the videos in the link above

BBC at 22:08 GMT, Sunday, 18 October 2009 23:08 UK


Extra police after Rio violence

Several thousand extra police officers are on the streets of Rio de Janeiro
Brazilian officials have deployed thousands of extra troops on the streets of Rio de Janeiro a day after violent clashes with gang members.

At least 12 died during the clashes in the city's Morro dos Macacos - or Monkey Hill - slum.
Police said on Sunday that two suspected drug traffickers had also been killed overnight.
Officials also sought to calm fears about security in a city due to host the 2016 Olympic Games.
"Rio de Janeiro has a safety problem. We are fully aware of this problem, it is one of the city's most historic problems," said state public safety director Jose Mariano Beltrame.

"We proved to the Olympic Committee that we have plans and proposals for Rio de Janeiro."
Police killed in Rio helicopter crash

He added that the city's policy is not only about "going into battle, it also consists of keeping the peace".

On Saturday, two Brazilian policemen were killed after their helicopter was shot down above the city.

The helicopter came down and burst into flames after the pilot was hit in the leg by a bullet.
Several buses were also set on fire during the worst outbreak of violence since the city was awarded the Games two weeks ago.

The attack on the helicopter followed an outbreak of fighting between rival drug gangs in a shanty town in the north of the city.

One resident said it was the one of the most intense gun battles he had witnessed in the area in recent years.

Securing the 2016 Rio Olympics

I was excited by the announcement, October 2, that Rio will host the 2016 Olympics and by the sense that this event could be transformational for both Rio and Brazil, and I want to be part of that process. Brazil, known often humorously as "the country of the future" since the phrase was introduced by Stefan Zweig, is fast moving from being an "emerging power," and a Goldman Sachs "BRIC," to becoming a key member of the G-20 and a major power on the world scene, and as such a likely strong ally to the United States and the West. Though a sports event might seem somewhat trivial in that pursuit, sports has been one of the most positive expressions of Brazil's potential greatness and will continue to inspire this still young country. The economic and social potential for these games is huge.

Security at all levels is the key to a successful Olympics. But the games must help rebuild Rio not militarize it. We should not come up with schemes to surround the games with thousands of soldiers as was done at the Pan American Games in Rio, but to civilianize and socialize the effort so that a military solution will be unnecessary, except as a backstop measure.

I served for a total of six years in Rio as US vice-consul, consul and acting Consul General (in addition to the two years as Principal Officer of the US Consulate in Salvador da Bahia) over two decades. I was put in charge of Rio's crime issue at the Conulate General as the Ambassador considered it a political as opposed simply a consular matter. After departing Brazil, I worked closely with Law Enforcement agencies both US and Latin American, as the South American Division Chief, of the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL). I was responsible for approval of US credits for the Amazon Surveillance System (SIVAM), a $1.4 billion project won by Raytheon.

I am considering ways in which I can contribute to the success of the Olympics by playing a role in its security, look forward to future opportunities to collaborate and am reaching out to many friends to this end. This will hopfully result in the formation of a security consultancy that will bring to bear many capabilities to assist Rio to have successful and secure games.

It is Rio! Start preparing…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrcYBHIt-Vs&hl=pt-br&fs=1&

(August 25, 2009 - Suffolk, Va) Dan Strasser briefs the deploying members of the U.S. Joint Forces Command's (USJFCOM) Ready JEC team on the history and political sensitivities of the Afghan region prior to their deployment to the area of operation. USJFCOM's Joint Enabling Capabilities Command (JECC) maintains small joint service teams that can deploy with little notice to existing or emerging theaters of operations and instantly establish command and control in the most austere environments. (DoD photo by: Staff Sgt. Joe Laws, USAF)
(Released by USJFCOM Public
Affairs Office)

A War of the World

We are currently involved in World War IV, but we are unwilling to admit it. The Cold War was World War III, of course. Sometime in the 1990s, a political/military movement of radical Islam, born in the cauldron of the response of global Islam to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, emerged drunk with its own success, frustrated by its inability to play a role in their own native countries--ruled by authoritarian monarchies or personal dynasties and committed to subservient military and economic ties with the infidel United States and the West--launched a global insurgency to wrest power in the Muslim world. The United States did not see this coherently, but merely as a scattered group of marginal crazies and bomb throwers intent on gaining attention.

Then came 9/11. It was a wake up call of major proportions, but the West did not learn the lessons of that experience. It looked at it and subsequent major terrorist acts in London, Madrid, Bali and others as brush fires to be put out by pouring special operations forces on them to put them out. In a move that totally ignored the causes of this non-state movement, the US attacked and occupied Iraq in 2003, only throwing oil on the fires of Muslim resentment and anti-Westernism. Saddam was a madman and a threat to the Middle East, but he never made war against the West. It was good that Saddam was removed, but he could have been contained without the ruinous cost associated with his removal. Although little attention has been given to the impact of the US engagement in Iraq on the 2008 recession, it is hard to imagine that such a monumental financial expenditure of making war in the 21st century--i.e. expensive--would not have contributed to the financial debacle along with the sudden dramatic strike in oil prices of that year. The housing crisis of course was the straw that broke the camel's back, but Iraq was clearly a pillar of the US policy of spending beyond its means, in this case to carry out ill thought out policies with little understanding of the Muslim world, or the world at large for that matter.

As wrong as the Iraq was, it was a genie that could not be put back in the bottle. Although the US and its allies managed to quell Al Queda in Iraq, due largely to the global movement's own brutality and insensitivity to tribal structures and affinities, which caused a massive movement of the tribes to ally themselves with the US, especially in Al Anbar province, Iraq, including the indignities of Abu Gharaib and the images from Guantanamo, could be interpreted by global jihadists as proof of the war of the West against Islam itself. This spurred a huge growth in the Muslim world, in the hands of radical, resentful mullahs, of youths willing to fight and die for in a cause they little understood but for which they were willing to commit suicide. Iraq may have been saved, although its future remains clouded by ethnic and religious cleavages, but the global jihad continues.

The battleground has returned to Afghanistan, where it started and should have remained, but was abandoned by the West. The process is well documented in Ahmed Rachid's book, Decent into Chaos: the US and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, so I will not dwell on it. What has emerged, however, from the lessons of Iraq and a shift in leadership both military and civilian in the conduct of the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq, is a new/old strategy of counterinsurgency or COIN in the military jargon.

As a former pacification advisor in rural Vietnam in the early 1970s, everything that has emerged in General David Petraeus's new concept of COIN, promoted by his Australian advisor David Kilcullen (who has written his own book, The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One), is totally familiar. It is what came to be called disparagingly "Winning Hearts and Minds." But the concept was never a bad one, just poorly implemented in Vietnam because the grass roots level efforts to win over the Vietnamese peasantry was never matched at the national level by democratic leadership and governance. Instead, corruption and a tenacious will t retain power were the dominant leitmotifs of the Vietnam conflict.

There is no question that we are in a war of the world with radical, militant, intolerant Islam. The cause of the Muslim people, and all the resentments of a people whose place in history was diminished in 1492 with the expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian peninsula and the late colonization of the Muslim world by the European powers in the early 20th century has been assumed by this movement. We used to be able to ignore other parts of the world, especially those whose customs and mores were quite different from our own. We did not consider human rights to be possible to apply all over the world at a pace that was not consistent with local cultural norms and doubted whether underdeveloped countries could possibly become democracies except as a long-term process of development. However, the attack upon the West does not allow us to ignore the roots of the issues that caused young men to commit suicide in pursuit of a new militant and aggressive ideology to reestablish a Muslim Caliphate.

One of our biggest problems, however, is that the American public does not yet understand that we are in a war of the world, not the one mentioned by Niall Fergusson to describe the 20th century's linked world wars, but the new one that pits the liberal, progressive and "modern" parts of the world, including not only the West, but also the more educated and globalized elites and middle classes of the rest of the world, against a medieval yet newly empowered movement of young, resentful, self-righteous and restless Islamist crusaders. What makes this war so critical is the ability of even a small number of militants willing to kill thousands of innocents and commit suicide in so doing and the advent of weapons of mass destruction that makes such a toxic mixture of human motivation momentously threatening. It is not inconceivable that members of this movement could detonate a small atomic device or a "dirty bomb," or unleash deadly chemicals or biological agents in the middle of a major Western city, at the very heart of our civilization, threatening tens or hundreds of thousands of people and triggering monumental economic, social and, ultimately, political consequences.

For the above reasons, it is imperative that we "get it right" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This also means that a new generation of American and European youth recognize the nature of the challenge and understand the need for a new sense of patriotism and sacrifice. Despite the positive nature of the Millennial Generation, it is not evident that it has awakened to either the threat or the responsibility for preserving not just Western Civilization but Civilization itself. Nor have our leaders yet awakened in them this urgent necessity. A true revolution in consciousness is necessary to raise the new generation to the challenges of the 21st century. The very freedom and relative high-tech comfort in which they find themselves may depend on their willingness to defend them and the pillars which sustain them. And an understanding on their part that the globalization has reached a point where it is impossible for one part of the world to ignore what is happening in other, even remote parts of the world is imperative. One of the hardest things to preach, without sounding like a doomsday soothsayer, is that our current way of life can be instantly transformed by unexpected world events. We seldom feel the ground shifting under our feet until the earthquake is upon us. These techtonic shifts are what we need to begin to steel and prepare ourselves for. One hopes that a liberal democracy can--as in WWII--call a great generation to the challenge.

Lou Dobbs is Dangerous

An email received from Democracy for America from Jim Dean:

Supporter -It's time to get Lou Dobbs and his hate speech off the air.Yesterday, our friends at Media Matters for America, who are dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media, caught Lou Dobbs promoting hate and inciting violence towards Governor Howard Dean.With violence from right-wing extremist groups on the rise and Republican backed mobs hanging cardboard versions of members of congress in effigy, Lou Dobbs' statement is dangerous. Enough is enough.It's time for CNN and the United Stations Radio Network to fire Lou Dobbs.

WATCH THE CLIP AND GET THE NUMBERS TO CALL NOW This isn't the first time Lou Dobbs has used the air waves to promote hate and embarrass CNN.His relentless promotion of debunked, racially charged conspiracy theories about President Obama's birth certificate have already seriously damaged CNN's credibility. Yet, Lou Dobbs remains on the air.Now, he's gone too far. He's not just making CNN look bad, he's inciting violence to stop Governor Dean from fighting for President Obama's health insurance option. That's not just un-American, it's irresponsible and dangerous.It's up to us to make sure CNN and the United Stations Radio Network know we've had enough.CALL NOW AND DEMAND LOU DOBBS BE TAKEN OFF THE AIRThis isn't just about my brother Howard; this is about the America we all want to live in.Thank you for everything you do,-Jim

Jim Dean, ChairDemocracy for America

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Some Great Restaurants...in Brazil

When a high school friend of mine, Sheryl Appleton, read my posting about my trip to Brazil (below) and said something nice about it, I jokingly responded that I could have included some great dining experiences, but wanted to keep the blog "serious," to which she answered, "Why don't you write about those restaurants too?" However, it was only after reading a great article in the New York Times (Sunday, May 17) about "Brazilian cuisine" in Sao Paulo, by Seth Kugel (clipped and sent to us by a friend Margie Krems from Poughkeepsie), that I decided to go ahead.

I could not consider the restaurants I discovered in places like Morrettes, Parana state; Florianopolis, Santa Catarina; and Rio de Janeiro, to be of the gormet status that Kugel describes. Moreover during the trip to Parana and Santa Catarina with my college group, we ate at dozens of places, some better than others, but just about all following the "all you can eat" buffet style that has taken over Brazil, from barbecue to pizza joints. The two that were memorable was one called Medalozo in Morretes, Parana state (http://www.madalozo.com.br/), which specializes in the Paranaense traditional dish, barreado, an interesting boiled beef which taste better than you would think and is well served on a terrace overlooking the Nhundiaquara river that goes through the center of town; the other was a Japanese sushi restaurant (proliferating all over Brazil) named Taisho (http://www.taisho.com.br/) , where the sushi was not only unlimited by of excellent quality, and the restaurant itself very impressively and grandiosely decorated.

However, some of the really good dinners I had were when I was on my own and able to explore a bit. Two excellent seafood restaurants were discovered over a weekend in Florianopolis, capital of Santa Catarina and something of a Brazilian Hawaii. Santa Catarina is totally located on an island and hosts annual surfing championships. There is a laid back, relaxed attitude on this green paradise, and I felt absolutely no risk at riding on the well organized, inexpensive public buses to get around the island. In the center of town, however, I discovered an excellent seafood restaurant called Toca da Garoupa, Rua Alves de Brito N 178. There I had an excellent Bahian style shrimp bobo (bobo de camarao) that was enough for two.

The next day, Sunday, I took a bus from the downtown bus station in Florianopolis, which was walking distance from our hotel, out to the bridge that connects the two closest points of the Lagoa da Conceicao, a large lagoon that occupies almost a third of the island, to have lunch at Chef Fedoca (http://www.cheffedoca.com.br/) , also a fantastic seafood restaurant located at the Ponta da Areia marina. A small upstairs dining room overlooked the marina, boats and water. I could not resist having a couple of coconut milk batidas (the batida,made with Brazilian cachaca (cane alcohol) was once thought of as Brazil's national drink, but has been almost totally replaced by the ubiquitous caipirniha or more commonly the caipirovska (made with vodka). The difference is like that between an Alexander and a Margarita. I had them with some of the best cod fish croquettes (bolinhos de bacalhau), a Portuguese specialty, I have ever eaten. I decided to go all the way, and ordered a lobster moqueca, unbelievably delicious!! Bobo and muqueca are both Bahian dishes, and both use dende (palm) oil and coconut milk, but differ in that moqueca is a stew, whereas bobo is based on manioc flower and dried shrimp. While one might ask why eat Bahian style seafood in Brazil's extreme south rather than in Bahia itself, I can only say that to a tremendous degree, Brazil's regional foods have become nationalized. My best Bahian restaurant when we lived there in the late 80s, for example, was always Bargaco. Though I have not been back to Salvador for a decade, only a year or so ago, I was visiting Brasilia and went out to a new dining area along the lake to find a branch of Bargaco there, which was identical to what I had known before . Similarly, such a traditional Southern Brazilian food as gaucho-style barbecue (churrasco) can be found in any corner of the country and indeed abroad.

In Rio as in Sao Paulo, we mostly were received by friends and family in their homes for dinners, but in Rio had the pleasure of dining with my brother-in -law Max and his wife Frances at one of their favorite restaurants, Bar Urca (http://www.barurca.com.br/) in the bohemian district of Urca the pathway to Rio's famous Sugarloaf. Bar Urca, is both a bar and a restaurant (upstairs) and the street in front of it along the water of Guanabara Bay facing urban Rio is lined by couples enjoying the night air and darkness. Bar Urca mostly serves very traditional Brazilian dishes such as fried shrimp with "Greek rice," and filet of sole belle munier. The most fun about the restaurant was the men's bathroom that listed seven rules for taking a leak. Another great restaurant which we have gone to for many years, and this time went with our friends Janette and Sergio, located in the posh Leblon neighborhood is Alvaro's. A tiny little corner on Leblon's main commercial street, two blocks in from the beach, it is also a famous bohemian style place, which is well know for its meat, cheese or sh imp turnovers (pasteis), which is great with the ice cold draft beer served. Their meats are superb. We all had either the the filet minon or the chataubriand a la francesa (made with shoestring potatoes, fried up with onions and ham), served to perfection. I cannot fail to mention one of the most delightful and inexpensive meals we had with our adorable friends Marion and Luis, just before going to Rio's Hippy Fair tourist market on a typical Sunday. This was a total revelation to our friends, but a place I had been going to informally for several years in Ipanema. Called Galitos, it serves the particularly delicious and simple small roasted chickens (galetos) accompanied by fries or a variety of rice or salads and well eaten with a cold beer. Our friends were delighted even though we had to wait half an hour for a table on the crowded sidewalk.

Well so much for eating as a subject. I could be embarrassed to focus on it, but also recognize that food is a huge part of traveling abroad and in many ways sets the, um, flavor of a visit to a foreign country. Brazil is no exception and offers a variety of regional and national dishes to please the pallet of any visitor.

Conversations with Total Strangers

I wrote recently about my trip to Brazil. I have the habit when I travel of talking to people. If I am sitting at a restaurant or on a line for theatre tickets, I will engage in a conversation with the person next to me because I am sure that they have something interesting to learn about. I started talking freely to people while on a trip two years ago to Italy. It turned out that we learned a lot from people about good restaurants and hotels. It even resulted in a couple of kilted Scotsmen in Rome buying us a bottle of wine as they departed the restaurant and in finding the best place in Florence to try a steak Florentine.

In Brazil as I moved around with my college group, I also tried to talk to people. During a boat cruise of the bay of Bobatinga, our group was practically the only passengers except for a Brazilian family made up a father, mother and their teenage son. These people were very simple folks, not at all the international travelers we were. It was Mother's Day, and they had decided to make a day trip from their home in a small town in the interior of Santa Catarina to the coast, make this boat tour of the bay and have a nice seafood lunch. The mother was the most conversational but the husband warmed up as we casually exchanged information about ourselves. He was a small man with the mannerisms of a worker. He had his own body shop and his teenage son was working with him there when he wasn't studying at high school. I said, "so you are the inheritor (a term of endearment in Brazil for the son who will step into his father's shoes), and he just smiled back. I asked them what they thought about how Brazil is doing, and they said it was doing well. The "crisis" they call the recession, was only having a limited impact on their lives. We said goodbye and I suggested they try the same restaurant that we were going to. Nothing of real importance transpired, but I felt that a certain bond had been established.

The morning after we arrived in the beach town of Balneario Camboriu, I got up pretty early since I had gone to bed early and did not go out after dinner with the others. I was the first person to enter the hotel's breakfast room at 7 a.m. (Brazilian hotels always include a rather substantial buffet breakfast with their rooms), but another gentleman entered shortly after me. We sat at separate tables, but I started a conversation with him and asked if I could join him. He turned out to be an Uruguayan engineer who had built soccer stadiums all over Latin America. He was in Brazil to line up contracts to build stadiums in Brazil for the 2014 World Cup Championships which would be taking place in a number of cities around the country. This fellow was 82 years old and still very vigorous and obviously still still ambitious. Unfortunately, he was also very bigoted, thoroughly disliking anyone in Latin America of indigenous, black or mixed race and made his feelings known rather easily. I hesitated to mention to him that I am a Jew. Later in the day I saw him at the hotel in meetings with what seemed to be some important people. I never spoke to him again or got his name or business card.

Our tour bus stopped at a very good restaurant and general store on the outside of Joinville. Basically it was a truck stop, but in Brazil, these roadside restaurants are literally eating palaces. This place called Rudnick (pronounced Hoodiniki in Portuguese) was quite a place, and its specialty was roast duck on its buffet. It turned out that we had walked into the restaurant when a rather large graduation party was taking place. I got to the buffet line just as they were getting on line behind one of my travelling companions. I had to decide whether to cut in front of about 20 people in the graduation party in back of my friend, or go to the end of the line. Since this is Brazil, I chose to cut in line, but asked the woman behind me if she minded my joining "my friend." She said no, and this started a conversation about who was who. The woman said her daughter was a model in New York. I offered email addresses of my own NY based kids which she took. I later looked up her daughter in Google and realized she was probably one of the top ten Brazilian models int he US today. My kids never heard from her daughter, but I did get emails from her son who was looking for advice about how to get a visa for his girl friend. (I don't know if my advice did him any good.) Maybe if I ever go back to Joinville I will look this family up.

.

Yeda and I were at Guarulhos Airport in Sao Paulo waiting for our plane to Rio's Galeao. Seated across from me in the waiting room was a young, thin and well dressed woman wearing some very elegant reading glasses and reading her book. Next to her was a gentleman in an airline uniform, and I ventured to ask him if he would be our pilot. He said yes, and I jokingly said I therefore felt in very good hands for a safe trip. The woman reading by herself chimed into the conversation. I can't remember exactly what subjects kicked off our discussions, but soon enough she, Yeda and I became very much engaged in conversation about just about everything. Her name is Ana, and though originally from Rio, she thoroughly disliked her birth city and preferred living in Sao Paulo with her husband who was also originally a carioca, and their two children. She particularly disliked Rio's high crime rate (though it is questionable if it is any worse than that of Sao Paulo). She was a very accomplished woman in her late 30s, one of the few women in Brazil to become an engineer at a good university in Rio, and had a fabulous job with a major company. She was only coming to Rio to visit her mother who was ill. However, it seems that her family lives in what in Rio is called the "North Zone," well inland from the posh beach boroughs of Rio and where working and lower middle class cariocas reside. We thoroughly enjoyed her company throughout the flight, and in the end, instead of giving us her card, she gave Yeda her picture, which we considered very endearing, yet odd. I would love to meet Ana again but doubt we ever will.