The Human Race & Other Sports

The Undercover Drone

Like one that stands upon a promontory,
And spies a far-off shore where he would tread,
Wishing his foot were equal with his eye.
—Shakespeare, King Henry the Sixth

It’s all because of the little noticed annual report for 2010 from the United States Department of State Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS). The document was released March 2011. Some especially interesting language is found on page 26 in a section entitled “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.” It describes how the “Department of State coordinated with the U.S. Department of Defense and other government agencies to research using Tier 1 (low altitude, long endurance) unmanned aerial vehicles in high-threat locations such as Iraq and Afghanistan. This effort led to a successful test in Iraq in December. DS plans to deploy unmanned aerial vehicles to support U.S. Embassy Baghdad in 2011. The program will watch over State Department facilities and personnel and assist Regional Security Officers with high-threat mission planning and execution.” The “unmanned aerial vehicles” to which the document refers are popularly known as “drones” and have already proved their usefulness in killing, among others Abdulrahman al-Awlaki in Yemen. Now the United States would like to use them for spying. But first, Abdulrahman.

Abdulrahman was born in Denver Colorado but moved with his family to Yemen. As reported by Time magazine, on September 15 the 16-year old Abdulrahman left his home in Yemen looking for his father, Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen and radical cleric who was hiding in the southern province of Yemen called Shabwa. The United States had long targeted his father and during the time Abdulrahman was searching for him his father was killed by a CIA sponsored drone. Two weeks later another drone attack killed a senior al-Qaeda militant whom the United States had targeted. The luster of the raid was dimmed because Abdulrahman, one of his cousins and six other people were also killed. They were not targets but, as one U.S. official in a clever, if not particularly sensitive turn of phrase put it when referring to Abdulrahman’s death, he “was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” That was, of course, self-evident. Now we are privy to discussions about drones used for spying instead of killing.

For years it has been accepted that countries routinely place their intelligence agents under cover in other countries in an attempt to learn what is going on in those countries that may affect the spying country’s interests. Now, thanks to modern science, a country is not limited in its spying on another country to boots on the ground. Instead, it can use drones. There is, of course, one small problem with that. The country over which the drones fly may not react cordially to the idea that the United States can fly drones wherever it wants. Indeed, it is likely that the United States would not take kindly to learning that Russia was routinely flying drones in U.S. skies for purposes of gathering intelligence.

It has now been disclosed that the United States, which is responsible for the chaos that reigns in Iraq following the successful conclusion of the war it started, plans to fly drones in order to protect what is the biggest United States embassy in the world. Formally opened in 2009, the embassy will house more than 11,000 people and be protected by 5,000 private security contractors and an undisclosed number of drones. The embassy is as big as the Vatican and includes a 16,000 square foot ambassador’s residence and a 9000 square foot residence for the deputy ambassador. At the opening ceremony in 2009, U.S. ambassador Ryan Crocker said the opening signaled a “new era for Iraq and United States relations.” He was probably not thinking of drones. The Iraqis now are and drones promise to become another nail in the coffin in which a “new era for Iraq and United States relations” lies.

The Iraqis are upset at the idea that the United States believes it has the right to fly its drones wherever it wants. They don’t think a foreign country, which the United States is now that its troops have gone home, should have the right to violate its air space. They think the United States should get permission to operate the drones in Iraqi airspace. Commenting on the proposal to use drones, several key advisors to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said they had not been consulted about the Americans’ plans and one of them who opposes the drone program said: “Our sky is our sky, not the U.S.A.’s sky.” That idea might shock the State Department. Another Iraqi, Mohammed Ghaleb Nasser, an enginer from the northern city of Mosul said: “If they are afraid about their diplomats being attacked in Iraq, then they can take them out of the country.” Of course he probably wasn’t thinking of the fact that the embassy is practically brand new. The United States would be as reluctant to leave the new embassy as Saddam Hussein was to leave his assorted palaces for a prison cell.

Permitting the United States to fly drones wherever it wants is the price a country may have to pay for friendship with the United States. Some countries may think that price too high.

The Condom's Cousins

And prove their doctrine orthodox
By apostolic blows and knocks.
— Samuel Butler, Hudibras

Health care coverage is one horse that the Church has chosen to ride in order to protect its belief in the sanctity of its beliefs. Sex, rather than God, is its focus. If God’s perceived commandments on how one deals with one’s fellow man come into conflict with the Church’s opinion on sex, its opinion on sex wins out every time, irrespective of the effect it may have on fellow man. Examples abound but two recent ones make the point and both involve health care, an employee benefit the Church will happily sacrifice in order to protect its notion of appropriate sexual conduct.

In 2010 the Council of the District of Columbia voted 11-1 in favor of a bill to legalize same-sex marriage. The ordinance requires that same-sex couples receive the same employment benefits as are given heterosexual couples by their employers. The Catholic Church is not a huge fan of same sex marriage and the ordinance gave pause to Catholic Charities, an organization that, according to Catholic on Line, in the District of Columbia alone, “serves 68,000 people. . . through a range of services, including shelter, nutrition, counseling, employment and job training services, legal and health care assistance, immigration assistance and more.” When the ordinance was enacted Catholic Charities made certain changes to its operation and, among other things, said that beginning March 1, 2010 there would be no health benefits for partners of new hires and partners of those already employed who had not elected to participate in the insurance program, whether heterosexual or homosexual and whether married or not. Thus, its disapproval of the gay community’s sexual behavior caused it to sacrifice the provision of health care coverage for partners of its employees. Now the condom’s cousins have jumped into the fray and once again health care may be placed upon the Church’s altar as the sacrificial lamb.

Prior to the passage of the Obama health care reform, 15% of the U.S. population lacked any form of health insurance. In an attempt to improve the quantity and quality of health care available in the U.S. , the president proposed and Congress passed, legislation known as Obama Care. Among other things, the legislation addresses the plight of those who heretofore have been without health insurance. The legislation requires that insurers include “preventive health services” in their policies and may not charge for including those provisions in their policies.

On August 11, 2011 the Department of Health and Human Services issued an interim final rule stating that insurance plans had to include contraceptive service for women without charging a co-pay, co-insurance or a deductible. The interim rule, however, allowed “non-profit religious organization that offer insurance to their employees the choice of whether or not to cover contraceptive services.” On January 20, 2012 the administration issued the final rule and said all insurance plans must include coverage for contraceptive services. It made no exception for non-profit religious organizations. It concluded that employees of non-profit organizations who are not hostile to the idea that women should be permitted to control their own bodies, should have the same opportunity as employees of for profit organization to decide if and when they will bring children into the world. The only concession made to those hostile to birth control was postponing the effective date of the rule as applied to them to August 1, 2013. Not unexpectedly, the Church was upset. The idea that the government, rather than the Church, should be deciding whether women should have freedom of choice was deeply offensive to assorted prelates (and certain evangelical sects.)

According to the New York Times, “Catholic bishops have said they would fight the ‘edict’ from the government.” Archbishop designate Timothy Dolan of New York is the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He was quoted as saying “In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.” The conscience to which he is referring is the conscience that enables men of the cloth to tell women what to do with their bodies. He said: “To force American citizens to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their healthcare is literally unconscionable. It is as much an attack on access to health care as on religious freedom. Historically this represents a challenge and a compromise of our religious liberty. We’re unable to live with this.” There is, of course, no reason to think that church employees will be foregoing access to health care if the rule is enforced unless the soon to be Archbishop is suggesting that the Church would be prepared to drop all employer health insurance plans rather than comply with the requirement. Non-church members would find that a shocking way of expressing the church’s disapproval of the rule. Given the precedent set by Catholic Charities, however, that would not be beyond the realm of possibility. After all, when Church doctrine bumps into human’s rights, doctrine must prevail.

Monkeys and Solons

From an evolutionary point of view, man has stopped moving, if he ever did move.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man

Those who hated to see the primary come to an end in New Hampshire and, with it, the extensive coverage that small state received, can take heart in another development that will for at least some, permit New Hampshire to continue to receive the publicity it so enjoys. The device by which this goal is achieved is New Hampshire House Bill 1148.

HB 1148 was introduced by Jerry Bergevin, a Republican member of the House and is one of several that have cropped up around the country in 2012 that address the problematical issue known as evolution. Although the Republican presidential wannabes who had the strongest opinions about the viability of evolution have left the race, thanks to Mr. Bergevin evolution will continue to command its rightful place in debates in public schools and universities in New Hampshire. The bill adds a new paragraph to the law that describes the duties of the State Board of Education and says that evolution must be “taught in the public schools of this state as a theory, including the theorists’ political and ideological viewpoints and their position on the concept of atheism.” To help the board understand the intent of this bill, House Bill 1457 was introduced by two other Republican members of the New Hampshire House, Gary Hopper and John Burt. Like HB 1148, it adds a new paragraph to the duties of the State Board of Education. Entitled “Scientific Inquiry”, it requires “science teachers to instruct pupils that proper scientific inquire [sic] results from not committing to any one theory or hypothesis, no matter how firmly it appears to be established, and that scientific and technological innovations based on new evidence can challenge accepted scientific theories or modes.” The aim of that language is to keep evolution from becoming too uppity and self-important and reminding it that in the eyes of some, it is no better than the theory that the earth is flat.

As with primaries, New Hampshire’s day in the sun is shared. Other states are anxious to climb into the Looney bin and there is certainly room for them. In Indiana, Dennis Kruse, a Republican legislator, has introduced Senate Bill 89. It is succinct. It simply provides that “The governing body of a school corporation may require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science, within the school corporation.”

Another competitor for a place in the bin (and the winner if space is limited) is Missouri, the “Show me State.” Missouri is leaving nothing to chance. Its bill has much more specificity than the bills introduced in either of the other two states. House Bill 1227 was introduced on January 10, 2012. It is baptized the “Missouri Standard Science Act.” It includes a series of definitions, among them the definition of “Biological Evolution” that it defines as “a theory of the origin of life and its ascent by naturalistic means.” The section on biological evolution is relatively short. By contrast, “Biological Intelligent Design” takes up most of the discussion in the legislation. Much emphasis is placed on events that took place “previous to written history” which probably includes the times when dinosaurs were roaming the earth they being, by all accounts, unable to read or write. The bill says that “Conjecture concerning an event previous to written history as to the occurrence of the event . . . shall be taught as theory or hypotheses . . . .” In addition, when teaching about such events “the naturalistic process shall be duplicated by an analogous naturalistic process.” An “Analogous naturalistic process” is either a “present-day naturally occurring process similar to a past naturalistic process or the human-directed duplication of a process similar to a past naturalistic process.” Whether an animated cartoon showing something climbing out of the slime and metamorphosing into the form of the legislators who support this bill would qualify as an “analogous naturalistic process” is unclear.

Although it is not stated in the legislation, a careful reading suggests that the book of Genesis that is found in the Bible would constitute “written history” and, therefore, would not be subject to the same kind of rigorous scrutiny that attaches to the period during which illiterate dinosaurs were roaming the earth. Even if it were, presumably the required “physical evidence” would be provided by the presence of the humans in the classroom and no additional evidence would be needed.

The complexity of the Bill means teachers will need retraining in order to understand it. The Missouri legislators thought of that. House Bill 1276 introduced January 11, 2012 says, among other things, that the educational authorities in the state shall “endeavor to assist teachers to find more effective ways to present the science curriculum where it addresses scientific controversies.” Such assistance will surely include interpreting House Bill 1277.

It’s too bad dinosaurs didn’t know how to write. Their written
description of their existence would make all this legislation unnecessary.

The Senate's Holiday

Although the Senate is much given to admiring in its members a superiority less obvious or quite invisible to outsiders, one Senator seldom proclaims his own inferiority to another, and still more seldom likes to be told of it.
— Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams

The Republicans’ newest way of countering criticism that Congress spends more time on recess than it does working occurred when it went home for the Christmas holidays. The criticism occurs because in 2011 Senate and House Members were in session for 112 days, according to the Library of Congress, leaving them 253 days of free time. (These numbers are imprecise. They may have inadvertently worked a few more days than shown.) To counter the impression that they do not work very hard the Republican Senators agreed to pretend they were working when most of them were spending the holidays away from Washington. They agreed that when they were gone they would not be gone.

One explanation for their action could have been a desire to be paid while out on recess but Senators get paid no matter how they spend their time so that was not a plausible explanation. The real reason Republicans pretended to be working when they were vacationing was because they didn’t want other people in Washington to be working when they were vacationing because it made them look bad. By senatorial fiat, they said they would pretend to be at work while they were on vacation but, as when they were formally at work in Washington, they would follow their long established tradition of doing nothing. The only difference between doing nothing when they were in town and doing nothing when they were out of town was the geographical location of where they did nothing. Here is how it worked.

On January 6, 2012 (and other days were similar) the Senate met) at three seconds after 11 A.M. and adjourned 29 seconds later. Since it had a 29 second session that day it was not considered to be out on recess even if assorted Senators around the country were playing on swing sets or teeter-totters the way juveniles do when they are out on recess. By pretending to be working when playing, they hoped to keep two other federal agencies from doing any work, work that would make the Senators look lazy. The two agencies that threatened to embarrass the Senators were the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (C.F.P.B.)

The N.L.R.B. is charged with, among other things, investigating and ruling on cases that involve unfair labor practices and conducting elections for labor union representation. Because of the way it is structured and a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision, the NLRB can only decide cases if at least 3 members of its 5 members are in place. Effective January 1, 2012 the board would only have had 2 members and, thus, would, like the Senate, not have conducted any business. By pretending not to be on recess they hoped to prevent the President from making recess appointments that could only be made when the Senate was not in session. The President was not fooled. He made three recess appointments so that the board could perform its statutorily assigned duties in 2012.

Similarly, the C.F.P.B. was unable to perform all of its statutorily assigned functions because it lacked a director. The agency was created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. All the Republicans in the Senate opposed the passage of that Act and figured out that by filibustering the appointment of a Director, whose appointment was critical to the functioning of the agency, they could accomplish indirectly what they could not accomplish directly. As a result, the President made another recess appointment in order to get the agency up and running.

Republicans were, of course, furious, since as far as they were concerned the fact that they were not conducting any business during the time they were away from Washington was no different from how they behaved when they were in Washington and they should not, therefore, be considered to be out on recess. Furthermore, by enabling the agencies to perform their assigned tasks, the President thwarted Republican attempts stop the functioning of those agencies.

The Republicans will almost certainly sue to try to invalidate the recess appointments. For them it is a matter of setting a precedent. If every time they do nothing they are deemed to be on recess then a court could easily find that the Senate was on recess all last year except for the occasional petulant outbursts from Mitch McConnell. The President would then be free to get all sorts of things done that the Senate was mindlessly blocking and an enlightened public would soon discover that the Senate was a useless body with which we could, as we have in recent times, easily do without.

Arms and the World

Democracies cannot dispense with hypocrisy any more

than dictatorships can with cynicism.

— Georges Bernanos, We French

Arms sales are not as straightforward as one might think. For one thing, Russia and the United States are both eager to maintain their respective positions as the most successful merchants of death dealing devices. That causes them to sacrifice principle to expediency. And there’s a good reason why they are eager to sell lots of arms. It boosts their respective economies. And times were bad in 2010 and needed a boost in 2011.

In 2010 worldwide arms sales dropped by 38 percent from their 2009 levels to the lowest levels since 2003. In 2009 $65.2 billion in worldwide arms sales agreements were signed compared with $40.4 billion in 2010. Of those amounts the U.S. had $21.3 billion in arms sales whereas Russia had only $7.8 billion. Happily, 2011 turns out to have been a much better year. Projections for Russian arms sales for 2011 were more than $9 billion and by year’s end it had contracts to sell approximately $3.8 billion in arms to Syria.

The United States is not happy that Russia is supplying arms to Syria, a country of whose leader, Bashar al-Assad, the United States and other Western leaders strongly disapprove. Commenting on Russia’s selling arms to Syria, Secretary of State Clinton said in August 2011: “We want to see Russia cease selling arms to the Assad regime.” Russia is unaffected by her comments. It knows that to remain competitive with the United States in the arms sale competition it needs to sell arms wherever there’s a market. Since the United States is more principled than Russia, it does not sell arms to Syria. Instead it sells them to countries that it thinks are in tune with its goals on the international stage-like Iraq.

Iraq is the country the United States devastated in order to help it out. Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is its Prime Minister and we are happy to sell him arms. At the end of December 2011 it was disclosed that we were selling the Iraqi military about $11 billion worth of arms and training. We sell to Iraq because it is our friend. We refuse to sell to Mr. Assad because he is not our friend. Mr. Maliki, has let it be known that he supports President Assad even though Mr. Assad is busy slaughtering his citizens in order to keep them in line. Mr. Maliki supports Mr. Assad because Iran, a country to which the United States has not sold arms since Mr. Reagan was president, encouraged Mr. Maliki to befriend Syria. So now the United States is arming Iraq which is allying itself with Iran and supports Syria whom the U.S. thinks Russia should not arm.

A few weeks ago it was disclosed that that United States had put on hold a planned sale of $53 million of arms to the Kingdom of Bahrain. Bahrain has proved itself a good friend of the United States since it is home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet. Bahrain’s ruthless ruler is King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. He brutally put down an Arab spring uprising that took place in Bahrain beginning on Valentine’s Day in 2011. More than 40 of those participating in the uprising were killed by the King’s forces. Thousands more were imprisoned and brutalized. When news of the proposed arms sale reached members of the United States Congress, they demanded that the sale be put on hold pending a detailed report of what went on during the uprising to determine whether an arms sale to Bahrain was appropriate. As a result, the arms sale has not yet taken place.

King Hamad was aided by Saudi Arabia in putting down the uprising. According to a March 15, 2011 report in the Los Angeles Times, one month after the revolt began, “hundreds of troops from Saudi Arabia and police officers from the nearby United Arab Emirates. . . entered Bahrain at the request of the ruling family. . . .” to help put down the uprising.

On Christmas Eve it was announced that the administration would sell $30 billion in fighter jets and other arms to Saudi Arabia. This was part of a $60 billion arms sale that was approved by Congress in October 2010. Although the sale to Bahrain was put on hold, there was no need to put the sale to Saudi Arabia on hold since it is a REALLY good friend to the U.S. even though it helped King Hamad put down the uprising in his country.

There are some countries to which the United States will not sell arms-like Syria or Bahrain. It does not hesitate, however, to sell arms to their supporters-like Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Go figure.