military-industrial complex

America's most important ally in the Iraq war may be a multinational force after all — one composed of private military contractors. There is no official count of how many paid civilians are stationed in Iraq, but analysts estimate that the number could be as high as 20,000. (Britain, by comparison, has 11,000 troups in Iraq.) These contractors, often former military personnel from armies around the world, are employed not by any sovereign government, but by multinational corporations. (new york times magazine, 2003-12-14)

Interestingly my former group at Aerospace Corporation was nearly one of these civilian contractor groups in Iraq. Our group's specialty is in remote sensing of airborne chemical compounds, and one of the applications is defense from / detection of chemical weapons. Rather than go through the bother of training soldiers to use the equipment, the military wanted the whole group from Aerospace to hop over to Iraq to operate these sensors there.

Privitization of the U.S. Military ... add it to your watch list.

it is our last, best hope (Eastshore Park)

At Kenny's suggestion, he and I and Diane headed off today to a park in Albany. It's a sort of pirate island composed of industrial rubble, where sculptures, paintings, and lucky charm fortresses rise from the jungle, from the plants and the concrete and rusting metal.

Then we got home and I did the afternoon kitchen clean, the outside clean, and then cleaned all of the dishes from special dinner.

[edit: see Diane's entry called "my own island"]