The Human Race & Other Sports

The Citizen and the Passport

bq.All persons born . . . in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States. . . .
— Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

August 2008 was a banner month for passports. They played a significant role in world events that garnered them rare publicity. Two of the events demonstrated how easy a government can make it to get passports and one demonstrated how difficult it can be.

In August, Russia and Georgia got into an argument over whether Abkhazia and South Ossetia should be allowed to leave Georgia and become independent or should remain part of Georgia. For the last several years Russia has been issuing passports to residents of South Ossetia, thus bestowing Russian citizenship on the holders. Thus, when invading South Ossetia, Russia was simply going to the aid of its citizens, albeit many of them Russian-come-lately. (If George Bush were clever he would have issued passports to Iraqis prior to invading their country and then announced he was simply acting to protect United States citizens.)

China, too, issued passports in furtherance of national objectives. In November 2007 an associated press release described the success of a young girl gymnast, He Kexin. He was one of the stars at China’s Cities Games in November 2007. Xinhua, the Chinese Government’s news agency reported on her success in those games and said she was 13 years of age. Olympic rules require that for a gymnast to compete in Olympic games the gymnast must attain age 16 in the year in which the games take place. For He to leap over the years that separate 13 from 16 in a mere 9 months was something that not even a gymnast as accomplished as she could hope to accomplish. It was accomplished instead by issuing a passport. In 9 months He aged 3 years and her team became the first Chinese women’s team to win a gold medal in gymnastics. Passports can, of course, be withheld in furtherance of a country’s foreign policy, as the United States showed.

A law that goes into effect next year requires anyone crossing between the United States and Canada or Mexico to present a passport instead of a birth certificate or driver’s license. As a result the thousands who cross borders daily because of employment must now obtain passports. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that many United States citizens who were born in South Texas are having difficulty obtaining passports.

Ordinarily a passport can be obtained by furnishing the issuing authority a certified copy of a birth certificate, acceptable identification and the appropriate fee. Whereas Russia made it easy for people in South Ossetia to get passports, the State Department has made it difficult for people in South Texas to get theirs. A birth certificate is not always accepted because the State Department has learned that some people in South Texas have fake birth certificates. Those people were delivered by mid-wives and some of the mid-wives were convicted of forging birth certificates for children born not in South Texas but in Mexico. The forgeries may have affected as many as 15,000 people. Although people in South Texas can vote, become border-patrol agents or president of the United States, they may not obtain passports without additional proof that they were born in the U.S.A. Here are some of the things these presumptively non-citizens can do to satisfy the State Department. They can obtain affidavits or testimony from the mid-wives who delivered them, assuming the midwives can be found and can remember whom they delivered dozens of years after the birth. They can produce newspaper announcements of their births or they can produce hospital records going back dozens of years to show they were treated in the hospital if, indeed, they were. Juan Aranda is someone who has been unable to get a passport and here is what he has done.

Juan submitted all the required documentation and when he was turned down sent in school records going back 38 years showing that his kindergarten records recited that his birthplace was Weslaco, Texas. He sent in a picture of his kindergarten class that included him. He sent in a baptismal certificate with a church seal reciting he was born in that town. He explained that pre-natal medical history was unavailable because his mother was too poor to have pre-natal care. The State Department told Mr. Aranda that he hadn’t “fully complied with the request for additional information” and he should start the process to become a naturalized citizen. Instead, Mr. Aranda hired a lawyer. If his lawyer is successful it may soon be as easy for an American citizen to get an American passport as it is for a Georgian citizen to get a Russian passport. Mr. Aranda’s success would be remembered as another example of the courts being invoked to protect the citizens of the United States from the administration of George W. Bush.

Bush, Babes and Human Rights

I hate [slavery] because it deprives the republican example of its just influence in the world-enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites-causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity.
— Abraham Lincoln, 1854 speech at Peoria, Illinois

It was a dreadful coincidence and no one felt sorrier for George Bush than I. He made a perfectly wonderful speech in Thailand and was done in by the timing. It made him sound the perfect fool. That is because he made the speech the same day that the military tribunal in Guantánamo rendered its verdict in the case of Salim Ahmed Hamdan.

When Mr. Bush was in Thailand he thought it would be a good time to criticize China’s human rights record, which everyone agrees is terrible. The problem is that the Hamdan verdict reminded everyone that both China and Mr. Bush who pride themselves on their respect for human rights have nothing to be proud of.

In Guantánamo, a military tribunal convicted Osama bin Laden’s driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, of providing material support for terrorism. Mr. Hamdan is the first person in Guantánamo to be tried by the military commissions that were created in 2006. Mr. Hamdan was convicted on a Wednesday and the prosecution asked for a life sentence. On Thursday the commission sentenced him to 5 ½ years in prison with credit for the 61 months he has already spent in prison. Within 5 months he will have served his sentence. Unfortunately, that is the end of the good news for Mr. Hamdan unless something unexpected happens. That’s because at the end of the 5 months he will still be an unlawful combatant and that means Mr. Bush can keep him in prison as long as he wants or until the war that Mr. Bush has declared is declared over by Mr. Bush, whichever happens first

Although the trial does not by itself, do anything to hasten Mr. Hamdan’s release, the verdict to the contrary notwithstanding, it serves one useful purpose from Mr. Bush’s, if not Mr. Hamdan’s perspective. It enables the administration and its supporters to point out that, because the trial has been conducted, human rights are being observed and the military commissions are working in a way that proves the United States is a country that follows the rule of law even though it doesn’t. (The people who believe that, of course, are the ones who invented this new justice system. The rest of the world is less credulous.)

As I said at the outset, the timing of the verdict was awful. That did not inhibit the national orator. On the same day Mr. Haman’s sentence was imposed Mr. Bush gave a speech and that was where the awkwardness came in. The speech was given by Mr. Bush during a stop-over in Thailand on his way to the Olympics in China.

Mr. Bush relished the opportunity to be the first U.S. president to attend an Olympic ceremony outside the U.S. In part he viewed it as a reward for the tough time he has had during the last 8 years. The opportunity came, appropriately enough, during the twilight of his perpetually dark administration. And there could hardly be a better reward for a job poorly done, than to attend the games as the leader of the entire free world (except for Guantánamo.)

It was clearly a fun time. He took his wife and one of his daughters. There were lots of good parties including a dinner for 300 people to which he and his father and other important people were invited. He got to play a little beach volley ball with one of the very pretty bikini-clad beach volley ball women, tap one on the back and have his picture taken with her with their arms around each other, he wearing a cocky baseball cap and looking every bit the frat boy he was in college and still is. But even though this was a fun trip he was mindful of his responsibilities as leader of the free world and took advantage of the trip to make a verbal show of being committed to human rights. And that is why he made a really good speech in Thailand.

In that speech he expressed “deep concerns” about restrictions on faith and free speech in China. He expressed concern about the detention of dissidents. The detained dissidents are not, of course, the detainees at Guantánamo. Those people are not called dissidents. They are called unlawful combatants. They have something in common with dissidents, however. Both dissidents and unlawful combatants are kept in jail until the country that is holding them decides, in its sole discretion, when they can be released. Nonetheless, all in all it was a good speech and Mr. Bush had a very good time in China.

The Games and The Promises

I stood there in the whirling summer,
My hand capped on a withered heart,
And thought of China and of Greece. . . .
— Richard Eberhart, The Groundhog

Now that the Olympic games have begun, it is time to compare promise with performance.

China’s first attempt in recent memory to host the Olympic summer games was in 1993. At that time its efforts to be selected were Herculean. The visit by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to evaluate Beijing’s bid took place in March 1993 when smog hangs heavily over the city. The authorities knew that if the committee got wind of the smog it would never select Beijing as a site for the summer games. To reduce coal smoke in the atmosphere the government cut off all heat to large areas of Beijing.

Taxi drivers and peddlers with cars were advised to take a vacation so that the IOC members would not be slowed by traffic or offended by seeing people munching on food purchased from street vendors. Three hundred thirty thousand school children were enlisted to clean traffic signs. All buses and 30,000 taxicabs were required to post window-stickers supporting the city’s Olympic bid. The government reduced its surveillance of foreign reporters. And that was not all.

China modeled itself after the state of Utah that 2 years earlier had lost out to Nagano, Japan for the 1998 winter games, Saddened by its loss to Nagano, but determined to do better when bidding for the 2002 games, Utah began wooing African IOC members by offering them and members of their families tuition and athletic training assistance in what some perceived as an attempt to get their votes when the venue for the 2002 games was determined. (The effort was enhanced when 5 years later the Salt Lake City bidding committee paid some individuals $500,000 in scholarships, 6 of the recipients being relatives of IOC members.) Recognizing what a good idea Utah had, the Chinese followed suit. They presented the IOC committee with a pair of cloisonné vases estimated to have a value of about $40,000. In addition, they gave the new Olympic museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, a terra cotta soldier from Xian for which China had earlier reportedly declined a $100 million offer. China’s bid for the games did not succeed in 1993, but the IOC has a long memory and that may explain in part why Beijing is hosting the 2008 games.

When Beijing was awarded the games some, but not all, thought it would enhance human rights in China. In an interview with Ray Suarez on the News Hour shortly after the games were awarded, Sally Jenkins, a sports columnist for the Washington Post, was asked whether awarding the games would affect China’s human rights policy. She said there was no evidence to support that. She was right. Two weeks before the games were to start, Liu Shaokun was sentenced to serve a year of “re-education through labor” because he posted pictures on the web of schools that had collapsed during the recent earthquake. He was charged with “disseminating rumours and destroying social order.” Ye Guozhu was convicted in 2004 of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble” for trying to organize a group against forced evictions without just compensation in order to make way for construction in preparation for the games. His sentence served, his release was delayed until after the Olymics thus preventing him from being interviewed by visiting reporters. Smog, traffic and press freedom have fared no better than human rights.

Smog covered the Beijing during much of July and early August. In 2007 authorities said driving restrictions would not be needed to solve the pollution and congestion problems. July 21 marked the first workday in which “car restrictions”: were imposed on Beijing’s residents.

The press, like driving, were restricted, contrary to earlier assurances that the press, like cars, would be able to operate freely. In 2001, Wang Wei, Secretary General of the Beijing Olympic Games Committee, told the IOC that the international press would have “complete freedom to report when they come to China.” “Echoing those comments”: last month, Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee president and Cheer Leader In Chief “told Agence France-Presse”: “For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China.” On July 31 it was reported that the IOC had failed to insist on unfettered press access to the Internet. On August 2 Kevan Gosper, press commission chief of the IOC said somewhat enigmatically: “We believe we are moving to a point where you will be moving toward a point where you can report in an unfettered way.”

The games have begun, the smog’s in the heavens, the cars clog the roads, activists and the Internet are imprisoned and all’s right with the world. As Mr. Rogge said on August 2: “Come the 9th of August the magic of the games and the flawless organization will take over.”

A Fairy Tale From South Dakota

If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.
— Gloria Steinem, The Verbal Karate of Florynce R. Kennedy, Esq.

Herewith a suggestion on how to improve the South Dakota Fairy Tale that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit has approved for reading to women before they undergo abortions. The case was Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, et al vs. Mike Rounds, et al. It pertained to a piece of legislation passed by the South Dakota legislature, a mostly male body that has, until now, unsuccessfully tried to tell women what they may and may not do with their bodies. Thanks to the Court it has finally succeeded.

The essence of the case was that although women may continue to get abortions in South Dakota, the physician performing the procedure is required to read aloud to the prospective mother. Under section 7 of the statute a woman is required to receive oral disclosures about the procedure she is about to undergo. Some of the information must be given orally AND in writing and other information only in writing although the language of the statute can be read to require that all information must be imparted orally by the physician.

Although the prescribed reading (and writing) is not the sort of thing the mother would read aloud to the child were the child to be born, it has a certain fairy tale like quality to it. Among the things the physician is required to tell the mother is that an abortion will “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being,” that the woman has an “existing relationship with that unborn human being, ” that the relationship enjoys protection under the United States constitution and under laws of South Dakota” and that “by having an abortion, her existing relationship and her existing constitutional rights with regards to that relationship will be terminated.”

It is patently absurd to describe the embryo has a “whole” and a “separate” human being since whatever else it may be, it is neither whole, having many months to go before it achieves that state, nor is it “separate” since ordinarily it cannot survive outside the mother’s body at the time the abortion is performed. It is equally absurd to say that the “relationship” “enjoys protection under the United States Constitution” since it does not. Sarah Stoesz, president of the regional Planned Parenthood office, said the statute represents an “unprecedented interference in the doctor-patient relationship and unprecedented interference in a woman’s life.” She also observed that the law is “non-science” based but as we have been taught by none other than the president of the United States and his minions, science is an elective subject whose proofs one may accept or reject based on one’s personal biases. And speaking of science, we are brought to the Environmental Protection Agency’s most recent pronouncement that if added to the South Dakota statute, will bring the number of abortions performed in South Dakota to zero.

The E.P.A. issued a report on July 19, 2008 that pertained to a matter with which few people knew the E.P.A. was concerned. The report said the value of a human life has gone down from $8.04 million to $7.22 million. That does not mean, as the report is careful to point out, that every reader of this column is worth that. Some will be worth more and others less and most readers know to which group they belong.

The reason it is important to know the value of a human life is that when you have the answer to that question you can decide whether certain governmental actions are worthwhile. If something is proposed that a governmental agency determines will save 50 lives and cost $500 million, the agency determines if the proposal makes sense by multiplying 50 lives times $7.22 million. If the product is less than $500 million, the project is abandoned and if more, it may be implemented. If, in that example, 200 people were affected, then the math would justify the cost.

Now that this information is available, the South Dakota legislature should promptly amend House Bill 1166 to include a requirement that the fairy tale be refined to add a section that will inform the woman that not only is she “terminating the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being” but she is also disposing of an asset that has a scientifically established value of $7.22 million. Armed with that scientifically correct information most women will immediately spring for the cash and abortions in South Dakota will come to an end. There will, of course, be a modicum of disappointment when the kid hits college age and the parent goes looking for the $7.22 million the parent knows was being stowed away. Parents will find, to their dismay, that the $7.22 million was, like much of the rest of the language in the South Dakota Fairy Tale, made up by ignorant busy bodies more interested in controlling women’s bodies than in educating their proprietors.

KBR Revisited-Again [2]

For every time she shouted “fire!”
They only answered “Little liar!”
And therefore when her aunt returned,
Matilda and the house were burned.
—Hilaire Beloc, Matilda

At first it seemed outrageous. Then the reader put it in perspective. It wasn’t that big a deal. This is a war that has cost millions of Iraqi lives and more than 4000 American lives. This most recent disclosure involves only 13 American deaths and they were not killed because of enemy fire, landmines, defective or inadequate body armor or humvees that were inadequately protected. These were deaths that were caused by a surge. Not the surge of which George Bush was so proud but an electrical surge that was not planned and in a well managed war would never have happened. The reports of the deaths were almost unnoticed and might still languish in the graveyard of Bush mistakes alongside the corpses he helped create, were it not for the death of Sgt. Ryan D. Maseth.

In January of this year Sgt. Maseth was taking a shower on his base in Baghdad and was electrocuted because of defective electrical wiring. At first the army explained to Sgt. Maseth’s mother that her son had an electrical appliance with him in the shower that caused his electrocution. That, as so much else associated with this war is, was a lie. He was electrocuted because a water pump in the building was not properly grounded and when the shower was turned on Sgt. Maseth was electrocuted. Sgt. Lambeth was not the first person to be electrocuted. According to Pentagon documents more than 12 other people have been electrocuted and many more injured by electrical shocks. In one barracks there were almost daily reports of its inhabitants receiving electrical shocks.

According to the New York Times an Army survey of February 2007 noted “a safety threat theater-wide created by the poor-quality electrical fixtures procured and installed, sometimes incorrectly, thus resulting in a significant number of fires.” In early July of this year an electrical fire resulted in the destruction of 10 buildings.

The first thing one is tempted to do when learning of something like this is to assume it is KBR’s fault. That is because KBR is the poster child for what went wrong with private contractors in Iraq. Among other things, it charged for food it did not serve the troops, it failed to build a pipeline for which it was paid $75.7 million and failed to deliver safe water for hygiene uses. (Some people may wonder how one company can get so much wrong. The answer is since the war began it has been paid more than $24 billion and has 40,000 employees in Iraq. That affords it lots of opportunity to perform incompetently and it has taken advantage of many of them. More are coming its way. KBR was recently awarded a part of a $150 billion contract for restoring the oil fields in Iraq. It will develop the southern oil fields while two other companies, one of which, Parsons, that has had its own share of shoddy performance, will develop those in the North.)

It would not be fair to blame KBR for Sgt. Maseth’s death just because it was responsible for the Radwaniya Palace Complex (RPC) where Sgt. Maseth died. That is because it is not required to act prophilactically. Reporting on the RPC electrocution, CNN reported that KBR said its contract did not cover “fixing potential hazards. ” It was only required to fix things after they broke down. KBR and the Pentagon would probably agree that a shower that electrocutes the bather is a shower that has broken down but the only way that can be discovered is after someone has been electrocuted. Heather Browne, a KBR spokeswoman, said the company found no link between its work and the electrocutions. As is sometimes the case when KBR explains what happens, not everyone agrees with its self-analysis.

Ingrid Harrison, an official with the Pentagon’s contracting management agency was quoted in the Times as saying: “KBR has been at R.P.C. for over four years and was fully aware of the safety hazards, violations and concerns regarding the soldiers’ housing.” KBR, said she, “chose to ignore the known unsafe conditions.” Electricians who were formerly employed by KBR said their repeated warnings to their superiors as well as to military personnel about unsafe electrical conditions were ignored. That probably explains why 283 electrical fires took place between August 2006 and January 2007. There should be fewer in the future. According to the New York Times, “senior army officials have ordered electrical inspection of all buildings in Iraq maintained by KBR. Chris Isleib, a spokesman for the Pentagon said: “We consider this to be a very serious issue.” He got that right. KBR, as usual, got it wrong. It won’t affect its owners-only the soldiers who have died or been injured and the taxpayer who rewards the company for its incompetence.