Update no.492

Update from the Heartland

No.492

16.5.11 – 22.5.11

Blog version: http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/

To all,
The follow-up news items:
-- The BEA continues to dazzle us. They located the debris field of Air France Flight 447 {31.5.2009} [391], at the bottom of 13,000 feet of ocean [486], and recovered the FDR & CVR to the BEA’s Le Bourget laboratory [490]. They announced this week that both the FDR & CVR were fully readable. I have not seen any of the data as yet, but hope to soon. I expect eventually we will see a reconstruction animation based on the FDR data, perhaps even with the CVR recording superimposed. Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the French government and the BEA, we may eventually learn what happened to the ill-fated, trans-Atlantic flight.

Monday morning, I was a smidge late for work. I simply had to watch the historic launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour on its last mission (STS-134) to the International Space Station. Shuttle commander Captain Mark Edward Kelly, USN – husband of wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords [473] – flew a picture perfect ascent. Prior to lighting up the skyrocket, Kelly said, “As Americans, we endeavor to build a better life than the generation before and endeavor to be a united nation. In those efforts we are often tested. This mission represents the power of teamwork, commitment and exploration. It is in the DNA of our country to reach for the stars and explore. We must not stop.” Well said and spot on, Mark. Godspeed and following winds. They return to Earth next week.

It only takes one discourteous, oblivious, disrespectful person to make the daily commute a miserable event. Invariably, the offender is in one or more of three categories: 1.) an older person (older than me), 2.) a person using a handheld device (usually talking on a cellphone, but a few times text-ing; it seems all other brain function ceases), and/or 3.) a woman installing makeup (while driving 60 mph; which absolutely baffles me). I actually saw a woman doing both – one hand holding her cellphone, the other hand squeegee-ing on mascara; presumably steering with her knees . . . at 60 mph. Why do these disruptive individuals exist almost solely in the United States, compared to Europe, Canada or Japan? Why can’t these distracted individuals simply move over to the far right lane [the lorry lane, as we called it in Italy]? Or, better yet, pull off onto the shoulder until they have finished their communications or make-up.

“For the Highest Fliers, New Scrutiny
by Mark Maremont and Tom McGinty
Wall Street Journal
Published: May 21, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703551304576260870733410758.html?mod=djemalertNEWS
The technology to gather and interrogate such information has been available for a number of years. I have used comparable websites to track specific flights for family or friends. Yet, I find the collection of this type of travel information on celebrities really creepy, intrusive and verging upon a citizen’s fundamental right to privacy. It is one thing to collect such information in generalities, with anonymity. It is altogether an action far more ominous and threatening when specific names are attached to such information. When we combine all the other technologies that enable government and even private citizens to intrude upon our privacy with this sort of assimilation capability, we should all be very concern and wary. These data may be tantalizing and seductively interesting, but this public presentation crosses the line. Just because we can collect and correlate information does not mean that we should or tolerate such conduct.

Human life is a vast array of colors, variations and adaptations:
“The cursed legacy that still haunts Vanessa Redgrave”
by Tim Adler
The Daily Mail [of London]
Last updated 16th May 2011; 6:53 PM
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1384460/Cursed-legacy-Vanessa-Redgrave.html
I wonder if their behavior would have been less radical or destructive with a more tolerant and accepting society. After all, non-heterosexual conduct was a felonious crime in the United Kingdom and the United States during a goodly portion of this era.

A frequent contributor and friend offered the following essay for our contemplation and opinion:
“What’s a Big Government?”
by James Kwak
The Baseline Scenario
http://baselinescenario.com/2011/05/12/whats-a-big-government/
There are certainly elements of Kwak’s opinion that strike resonance. However, the political bias is unavoidable. Kwak wrote, “But what is the size of government, anyway? When a typical anti-government person thinks of government, she probably has in mind the EPA, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the ‘jack-booted government thugs’ at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, OSHA, and all those government agencies that prevent businesses and individuals from getting on with their lives.” As I have written before, both big political parties – Democrat & Republican – seek big government; they both simply love to spend money . . . on their . . . stuff. So, the choices we are given boil down, which stuff is more important to each of us, taking all of us deeper into debt, and we are left to argue – cut his stuff, not my stuff. It is all about spending the Treasury to gain our votes. In doing so, we have the two parties competing with each other to see who can spend more money . . . to gain more votes. I believe we are spending far too much money in this process and much of it on projects or programs that are NOT within the intended and constitutional purpose of the Federal government . . . and in my humble opinion, not within the scope of any government. Kwak wants his stuff.

“Afghanistan has three wars at once. Let’s fight the right one”
by Douglas A. Ollivant [LtCol, USA (Ret.)]
Washington Post
Published: May 20 [2011]; Updated: Saturday, May 21, 7:44 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/afghanistan-has-three-wars-at-once-lets-fight-the-right-one/2011/05/16/AFk7Ay7G_story.html
Ollivant wrote:
“First, there is the fight against al-Qaeda and related terrorist groups.
“Second is the war to protect and support the fledgling Afghan government against the Taliban insurgency.
“The third war is the least understood but the most enduring: the internal social and cultural battle between the urban modernizers of Afghanistan, mostly based in Kabul, and the rural, tribal, anti-modern peoples who live in the country’s inaccessible mountain regions.”
Ollivant has far more direct experience with such things. To my limited knowledge, I would say he pegged the Afghan situation fairly well. Allied efforts can deal with the first two, but the last one is entirely up to the Afghans. We can be of some assistance, but the Afghans must reconcile – as we all must do – the old and the new, the modern and the traditional. The struggle within Afghanistan is not particularly different from the challenges we face in this Grand Republic between those who wish to live by strict fundamentalist values and those who do not. Perhaps naïvely so, I hope we will all learn – Afghans and Americans – to live our lives the best way we know how, and leave other folks alone to live their lives by their choices – not as we would wish them to live.

As I was doing the research for and writing about all this “birther” nonsense [489], I happened upon an odd constitutional case. In October 2002, two U.S. citizens gave birth to Menachem Binyamin Zivotofsky in Jerusalem. Two months later, Menachem’s mother, Naomi Siegman Zivotofsky, applied at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel, for a Consular Report of Birth – an official record of U.S. citizenship for a person born abroad. Naomi insisted Menachem’s place of birth be recorded as Jerusalem, Israel. The embassy staff refused and followed long-standing State Department policy – to remain neutral regarding the sovereignty of Jerusalem; thus, Menachem’s place of birth was recorded as simply Jerusalem (no country added). Naomi then claimed the State Department was in violation of §214(d) of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Year 2003 [PL 107-228; H.R.1646; 116 Stat. 1350 (30.9.2002)], which stated:
“(d) RECORD OF PLACE OF BIRTH AS ISRAEL FOR PASSPORT PURPOSES- For purposes of the registration of birth, certification of nationality, or issuance of a passport of a United States citizen born in the city of Jerusalem, the Secretary shall, upon the request of the citizen or the citizen's legal guardian, record the place of birth as Israel.”
When President Bush signed the legislation into law, he objected and noted §214(d) violated the separation of powers, and thus was not enforceable. The Constitution’s Article II, §3, grant of authority to the President to “receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers” implies the power to recognize foreign governments. The district court and the 3-judge panel of the DC Circuit declared §214(d) unconstitutional on that basis. This case has no direct bearing for most of us, but it was an interesting read, regarding the intrusion of Congress on the authority of the Executive.

Comments and contributions from Update no.491:
“One more round on the whole bin Ladin thing and then I’ll drop it for good.
First, I still think they should have gone for a live capture. Not for moral reasons, which are nonexistent in this situation. For the same morale reasons they captured and pointedly, publicly humiliated Saddam Hussein. That would do far more to demoralize his followers than unproven (in their eyes) reports of his death.
“Secondly, many of bin Ladin’s followers are prepared to die in the moment of taking actions against those they hate. Osama bin Ladin survived taking such action and lived on for over nine years. His followers might not be impressed with our killing him this much later.
“Now to the important (to me) part of this reply. Please do not excuse alcoholics and addicts from responsibility for their actions. Not only is that a gross insult to their victims and society at large, it also takes away the addicts’ (including alcoholics) opportunity to change. Put simply, if they have no consequences for their drinking or using, they have no reason to change. Excusing their actions harms the addicts almost as much as it does their targets. That goes very well with your discussion of the need for regulation (not prohibition) of prostitution and currently-illegal drugs. Society has an obligation to control people’s actions when they harm others; moral values are and should be individual.
“I will note that if the helicopter in the famous picture is indeed a military secret, I would not discuss it in a public forum. I advocate government transparency to a higher degree than most people, but the specific points of advanced weaponry are beyond even my boundaries.”
My reply:
We will probably not know definitively for 20-50 years, but today, I believe the team’s orders were “capture or kill.” Their Rules of Engagement (RoE) probably told them to minimize their risk in a high-risk operation in the heart of another sovereign (ostensibly friendly) nation. Warriors say, it was a close run thing. If their orders had been assassination, there were a myriad of safer, less risky methods than inserting a large, multi-dimensional team in the middle of another country that did not invite us.
There is no question UbL’s followers are probably frothing at the mouth and will certainly act. This war is long from over.
Re: addiction. I have read and re-read my words in Update no.491. I am not sure how I may have said or even implied I was excusing addictive behavior. Quite the contrary! I think addicts must bear some culpability, even if they blackout and are raped. How is that excusing their addiction to intoxication? Yes, the government has a responsibility to regulate conduct that harms or threatens another individual. Yet, in doing so, that purpose does NOT give us the right to intrude upon a citizen’s freedom of choice in how he wishes to live his life, including drinking himself into a stupor and to liver failure, overdosing on heroin, or performing as a sex worker. I want the citizen’s decision to ingest intoxicants of any kind to be an accountable act, not an excuse.
Just about everything about Operation NEPTUNE SPEAR, except the outcome, should have remained TOP SECRET for 20+ years – not the team, their size, their weapons, their orders, where they came from or where they went, not the evidence, nothing other than the outcome. Not one word beyond the President’s announcement Sunday night. Let the conspiracists say what they will. The hierarchy of al-Qa’ida knows the outcome.
. . . round two:
“I apparently misread your section addressing alcoholism. My personal view is that intoxication ought not to affect charges or sentencing. As stated, full responsibility for one's action is both fair and the best hope of healing for all parties. The closest thing I have to a caveat is a difficulty in investigating. Alcoholism in general includes blackouts, a loss of memory during drinking episodes. In the situation you gave, involving two college-student drunks, there is a very real and strong possibility that neither party has any clear memory of what happened. Therefore, getting a picture of the event sufficiently clear to remove ‘reasonable doubt’ might prove impossible.”
. . . my reply to round two:
We are in complete agreement.
We can argue whether drug or alcohol addiction is a disease; however, from my perspective, it does not matter. I am comfortable with any citizen’s fundamental right to privacy, and thus the right to ingest whatever they wish for whatever purpose they wish as long as they do not injure or threaten another person. Blackouts or loss of memory are not an excuse either; they made the decision to take themselves to that state in a situation where others are at risk.
In my examples, the females in each case lost memory, and yet oddly none of the men did. Each male claimed consent. The females either intentionally ingested or were surreptitiously given intoxicants. I believed but I could not prove the felonious conduct of the males involved. None of the females chose to file criminal file charges, thus tying the hands of the police. The most I could do was counsel the females and warn the males. It was in preparation for and contemplation of those cases that my opinion regarding an individual’s accountability for placing themselves in situations and ingesting intoxicants. I take it back to the decision to attend a “party” with unknown or untrustworthy people, i.e., trusting each of them to respect and protect you. Sadly, victims sacrifice a goodly portion of their credibility in subsequent investigations as you so accurately noted.
. . . round three:
“We are in agreement that alcoholics should bear the consequences of their disease.
“I suppose that we could argue whether alcoholism is a disease, but the American Medical Association declared it so in 1956, and alcoholism is listed in the ICD (International Classification of Diseases) in both the psychiatric and medical sections.
“I disagree with you with you on the probabilities of what happened in those incidents involving college students. Given the prevalence of blackouts in heavy drinking, I tend to think that the women's loss of memory is usually honest and the men's memory is frequently, as you might think, a convenient fiction used to produce a defense. While your rape scenario likely happened in some of the incidents, we cannot make such an assumption in any given case. One of alcohol's better known effects is to loosen drinkers' inhibitions. To assume rape in such cases is to deny women's sexuality. Plenty of (recovering) women alcoholics do not attribute similar incidents to men's violence but to the loss of their own inhibitions. Certainly rapes happen and should be prosecuted. Rape is wrong in all instances. Assuming that rape has occurred because we think the victim would have resisted were she (or he) sober is rash.
“Incidentally, counseling those women about their drinking choices was your duty but was futile. If they were not alcoholics, they had already learned that lesson through suffering. If they were alcoholics, they were not able to make rational choices about their drinking. That is the nature of the disease.
“I have had the uncomfortable personal experience of overhearing as one woman explained to another that she had recently been raped anally while too drunk to physically resist. While she did not recall the experience of rape itself, her description of the situation and of her physical state the following day convinced me that this awful experience had indeed occurred. She suffered the degradation and emotional pain that accompanies rape, and physical pain as well. I came to understand rape on a deeper level that day. The other thing I came to understand concerns alcoholism. She never once considered the part that drinking played in this terrible experience. While she changed her drinking companions, the fact that she had been too drunk to resist (or even object verbally) in her own telling of the story seemed to carry no significance to her. Sadly, that is the nature of the disease.
“Other addictions consist of very similar symptoms. This is a field of study in its own right, but that's a picture of one aspect of its complexity. ‘The truth’ is a very elusive concept in this context.”
. . . my reply to round three:
Agreed. As I said earlier, I do not think the disease determination matters a hoot from my perspective . . . kinda like it does matter a hoot whether homosexuality is genetic; all non-heterosexuals deserve equal rights and respect, just as all addicts deserve respect for their freedom of choice. Conversely, whether a disease or not, addiction should not, cannot, must not be even the slightest, fractional rationale for injurious or aberrant public conduct.
I suspect we are more in agreement than disagreement regarding my student examples. In fact, my opinion of the facts in those incidents is virtually identical – “convenient fiction” indeed. As for “loosen[ing] drinkers’ inhibition,” I believe that is a popular myth used conveniently to justify abnormal behavior. You made a good point; it is certainly not my intent to deny a woman’s sexuality, which is a whole other topic. Loss of inhibition or sacrificing control . . . all the same thing from different perspectives. The sad reality is there is usually no way to prove whether consent was given, or implied, or simple incapacitation was taken advantage of, which is why the “victim” must bear some responsibility and accountability for the event – sad but reality.
Re: counseling. Well said and spot on! I believe it is nearly an axiom of life . . . the only person or process that can help the addict is the addict himself; only he must convince himself that he must change his behavior.
Your overheard example is quite similar. Sadly, as you said, that is the nature of the disease.
As we have discussed in other venues, addiction – all addictions – are complex; and yet, somehow I suspect a significant, if not major, contributing factor in addiction is the secrecy, the prohibition, the oblivion of addiction. I still contend the best thing we can do is eliminate the stigma, so we can allow those so inclined to indulge themselves until they either reach bottom and decide to get out of the hole, or die.

My very best wishes to all. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Cheers,
Cap :-)