State Dept. Use-Cases

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Hi Everyone,

I have finally gotten around to a task that has been hanging fire for 
months now, the request Ranjeeth made for us to come up with some 
Use-Cases related to State Department Issues which might be useful 
for working up some enthusiasm for supporting the HumanML initiative, 
perhaps even to the extent of funding us, in the State Department 
among histacts there.

I'm hoping the better late than never will apply if he decides to 
pass these ideas along.

Basically, I'm also doing something I rarely do, at least I hope I 
rarely do this. I am going to change to my mind about using current 
events and issues rather than recent past events that have some track 
record to cite. I was going to elaborate on the P-3 Surveillance 
Aircraft forced down by the PRC Mig pilot whose aggressive flight 
maneuvers damaged the P-3 and his jet, and which caused the loss of 
his life and an international incident over the forced landing of the 
P-3 on a PRC Island. I may get back to that because it is more 
clearly related to the use of specific terms (apology v. regret) and 
how those were translated by each side for their own purposes.

Instead, I am going to attempt to show how our recent 
counter-insurgency measures in Iraq are likely to be culturally 
misperceived by the innocent Iraqis whose daily lives have and will 
continue to be disrupted and intruded upon more than is already the 
case by these necessary, but culturally insensitive, "Force 
Protection" measures.

To this end I will construct a few scenarios drawn as directly from 
CNN coverage as I can, since it is easily accessible and verifiable. 
I will then present them, both textually in descriptive prose, and 
diagrammatically using conventional UML Use-Cases symbology. It would 
be helpful to our cause if we can then put them into presentations 
similar to what we developed for CIDOC CRM.

I will develop these incidents as cases where HumanML can be applied 
very shortly after the fact to analyze interactions in order to 
understand where our measures could be mispercceived as arrogant and 
intrusive instead of protective of both our own forces and Iraqi 
civilians. This will also, hopefully, show how learning from our 
blunders can be put immediately into improvements in the measures we 
take.

I will also develop these incidents as cases where we can employ 
native speakers and first and second generation arab/Iraqi immigrants 
to our country to explain where and how the cultures do not 
understand each other and where and how we can better understand each 
other. At the same time, this will be demonstrating how a current 
description of a culture can be developed, and added to by using the 
techniques of building and using knowledge bases. Doing this will 
also demonstrate why HumanML cultural descriptions need to be built, 
maintained and used to compare actions with rhetoric and to better 
understand the consequences of our actions in respect to other 
cultures.

Ciao,
Rex
-- 
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com
Tel: 510-849-2309
Fax: By Request