Friday, July 9, 2010
Blackwater Strikes Again
The Gods have their own rules.
Ovid, Metamorphoses
One of the many nice things about being a United States Senator is that you can ask just about anyone in government to explain actions being taken and anticipate a response and, in many cases, a change in conduct. Here is one example of how a United States Senator was able to influence policy. It pertains to Blackwater.
On February 25, 2010 Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee sat down and wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to investigate whether Xe Services, (formerly known as Blackwater) had made false or misleading statements when it bid for an Army contract in Afghanistan. The reason for his letter was that he had just finished conducting a hearing reviewing the results of an investigation of Blackwater. In his opening statement at the hearing Senator Levin said that: “Blackwater operated in Afghanistan without sufficient oversight or supervision and with almost no consideration of the rules it was legally obligated to follow. The means by which Blackwater acquired weapons for its contractor personnel in Afghanistan showed just how little regard company personnel had for those rules.” Senator Levin did not limit his letter writing to writing the Attorney General. He also sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
In the letter to Secretary Gates he said the Pentagon should consider deficiencies in Blackwater’s past performance before awarding it additional contracts. He said: “[W] e received evidence that Blackwater may have: used a front company for the contract; made false official statements and misled Department of Defense officials in its proposal documents; misappropriated government weapons and carried weapons without authorization; and hired unqualified personnel with backgrounds that included assault and battery, larceny and misappropriation of property, insubordinate conduct, and drug and alcohol abuse; and violated CENTCOM’s movement control policies.” He concluded saying the Department of Defense “should review the transcript of this hearing and consider the deficiencies in Blackwater’s performance . . . before a decision is made to award the police training work to Blackwater.”
The investigations Senator Levin requested may be ongoing. So is the awarding of lucrative contracts to Blackwater. Jeff Stein who writes “Spy Talk”, reported on June 21, 2010 that the State Department gave Xe Services a $120 million contract for providing “protective security services” at new U.S. consulates in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif. Two days later he reported that the Central Intelligence Agency had hired the company to guard CIA facilities in Afghanistan and other places. Xe was not the only contractor interested in obtaining the work. In connection with both of those contracts DynCorp and Triple Canopy had bid on the jobs but lost out to Blackwater.
Senator Levin’s reaction to these awards has not been reported. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky’s have. They are hardly surprising. She was outraged. Her outrage was prompted by her familiarity with Blackwater and its performance. In November 2009 she learned that the government had given Blackwater an indefinite extension of a contract to provide “Aviation Services” in Iraq and said: “Given the company’s history of massive abuses and misconduct, I believe it is inappropriate for the United States government to continue doing business with this firm.” Upon hearing of the newest contracts in Afghanistan she said, speaking to ABC news: “I’m just mystified why any branch of the government would decide to hire Blackwater, such a repeat offender. We’re talking about murder . . . . A company with a horrible reputation that really jeopardizes our mission in so many different, different ways.”
For all we know, the Justice Department may be conducting an investigation of Blackwater’s conduct in both Afghanistan and Iraq in response to the letter it received from Senator Levin. For all we know the CIA may be investigating Blackwater’s prior conduct even though it has just agreed to pay the company $125 million for its services. For all we know, the State Department may be conducting its own independent investigation in response to Senator Levin’s letter. Here is what we know for sure, however. The mystery to which Ms. Schakowsky was referring has been unraveled by CIA Director Leon Panetta.
In a June 27 interview on ABC News Mr. Panetta said that in a war zone “we continue to have needs for security. . . . Unfortunately, there are a few companies that provide that kind of security. The State Department relies on them, we rely on them to a certain extent. So we bid out some of those contracts. They . . . . outbid everyone else by about $26 million. And a panel that we had said . . . that they have shaped up their act. So there really was not much choice to but accept that contract..” That explains it all. Sort of.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Indians and Immigrants
All of our people all over the country-except the pure-blooded Indians-are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, including even those who came over here on the Mayflower.
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Campaign speech November 4, 1944
It is too late for Native Americans (or Indians as they were then called) to enact anti-immigration laws although they have probably wished many times over the last four hundred years that they had thought of it as the earlier, uninvited and, therefore, presumptively illegal, immigrants were arriving. They probably view current events with a mixture of regret that they didn’t think of it, and amazement at how descendants of those uninvited and illegal immigrants are treating the current crop. It was brought to mind because of the news that nearly 20 state legislature are eagerly awaiting the start of the 2011 sessions in order to mimic Arizona’s assault on the illegal immigrant.
Arizona’s assault came in the form of enactment of what might be called the “Look and Stop” statute. Among other things, it gives police the right to ask anyone whom they stop to provide proof of legal residency. Absent proof, the illegal immigrant is deported. Arizona was not the first to attack the problems posed by illegal immigrants. In 2006 the citizens of Hazelton, Pennsylvania attacked illegal immigration in a creative way although one that was ultimately thrown out by a federal court.
Hazelton’s 2006 ordinance provided that a landlord would be fined $1000 for each illegal immigrant renting property from the landlord. Any business that employed illegal immigrants would lose its business license. Merchants were prohibited from selling merchandise to illegal aliens thus depriving the aliens of the right to buy, for example, groceries. All city documents were to be in English thus, among other salutary results, removing the need for the annoying telephone message that asks the caller to indicate by pressing a number on the keypad, what language is preferred. Hazelton’s ordinance was ultimately struck down by a federal court but those wanting to put illegal immigrants in their place (which is any place but here) have continued their efforts and two highly creative solutions to this problem have made news in recent days-one in Arizona and one in Nebraska.
Arizona’s newest proposal is brought to us courtesy of Russell Pierce, the author of the Look and Stop statute. Believing that the sins of the father should be visited on the children, he has proposed a law that would strip citizenship from children born to illegal immigrants in the United States. The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution has a slightly different take on the rights of those children. It provides that: “All persons, born . . . in the United States. . . are citizens of the United States . . . .” It “bars any state from making or enforcing any law that takes away the privileges or immunities of citizens.” Mr. Pierce is not impressed. Explaining his proposal he says that: “granting citizenship to anyone born in the U.S. encourages illegal immigrants to come to this country to give birth and secure full rights for their children.”
Mr. Pierce’s analysis differs somewhat from Arizona Governor Jan Brewer’s analysis. On June 25 she said: “I believe today, under the circumstances that we’re facing, that the majority of the illegal trespassers that are coming into the state of Arizona are under the direction and control of organized drug cartels and they are bringing drugs in. There’s strong information to us that they come as illegal people wanting to come to work. Then they are accosted and they become subjects of the drug cartel.” Of course, it is possible that both are correct. Running drugs does not preclude procreation.
For activity on a more local level we turn to Fremont, Nebraska. In a special election held on June 21st, the good citizens of that town adopted an ordinance that will certainly rid it of illegal immigrants, assuming it survives expected court challenges.
The “ordinance”: provides that anyone wanting to rent a place to live must first go to city hall and obtain a license that permits the prospective tenant to rent. The official responsible for issuing the license will determine the residency status of the applicant and if the resident is illegal, no license will issue. Although it is hard to imagine illegal immigrants being able to work in Fremont since they will be denied housing, on the off chance that some of them decide to commute, the ordinance says employers must use the federal E-verify database to ensure the prospective employee is a legal resident.
Contemplating the foregoing, native Americans may well, when in pensive mood, wonder how different their lives might have been had they adopted these progressive approaches to keeping out and ridding themselves of the unwanted back in the 1600s.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Russia and Texas and Evolution
The world has arisen in some way or another. How it originated is the great question, and Darwin’s theory, like all other attempts to explain the origin of life, is thus far merely conjectural.
— Jean Louis Agassiz, Evolution and Permanence of Type (1874)
Texans are probably feeling a touch despondent, not that it affects them directly. It would have been nice, however, if they could have pointed to Nebraskans instead of Russians as another example of enlightened thinking.
After the stories of the Texas School Board’s success in putting evolution in its place in Texas text books and giving Creationism and its fellows a more prominent role in educating the young, news from Nebraska’s Board of Education has to distress the non-evolved who object to the notion that they have, should or might, (including especially the Texas Board of Education) the Omaha World Herald on June 13, 2010 reported that the teaching of evolution will continue as a cornerstone of science education in Nebraska if proposed new standards are adopted by the state Board of Education. Three of the board’s members have said they know of no efforts to introduce intelligent design into the curriculum and Jim Woodland, director of science education for the Nebraska Education Department, told the World-Herald that the board expects students “to develop an understanding of biological evolution.”
The adoption, when it comes, will stand in marked contrast to Texas where Don McLeroy, former school board president, commenting on Texas’s successful assault on evolution in Texas textbooks said: “Whooey. We won the grand slam and the super bowl. . .Our science standards are light years ahead of any other state when it comes to challenging evolution.”
Disappointed in Nebraska, as they may well be, Texans should take comfort in a new found ally, Russia, although as of this writing it is not clear whether it is a reliable ally.
Russia is a country that in neither this nor former times, (except for its size) would have seemed a natural ally for Texas. A recent report suggests that fundamentalists in Russia, however, like the same group in Texas, are concerned with what their children are being taught in schools. The concern is inspired not by some minor sect that lacks credibility, being out of the main stream, but by the Russian Orthodox Church.
According to a report by Conor Humphries for Reuters, the church is concerned about the fact that in Russian schools there is a “monopoly of Darwinism.” Railing against the teaching of evolution, Hilarion Alfeyev, (who was elected Bishop of Volokolamsk on March 31, 2009 and elevated to the post of Archbishop on April 20, 2009) was quoted by Reuters as saying in a lecture to a group of officials from Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Moscow that: “The time has come for the monopoly of Darwinism and the deceptive idea that science in general contradicts religion [sic]. These ideas should be left in the past. Darwin’s theory remains a theory. This means it should be taught to children as one of several theories, but children should know of other theories too.” Reuters said his talk was “dedicated to fighting ‘fanatical secularism’ of liberals hostile to religion.”
Texas can view the Archbishop’s attack on Darwin as just another benefit of the collapse of communism in Russia. When the Soviets governed, atheism was the official state religion and Darwin was its useful ally since the explanations offered by him for evolution ran counter to the religious teachings of fundamentalists as to the origin of the species. Nonetheless, Texans should not get their hopes up. Neither should the Archbishop. If past is prologue to the future, Russian courts may not be much help to those seeking to overthrow Darwin.
On August 1, 2006 Maria Schraiber and her father of St. Petersburg filed suit against the Ministry of Education of Russian Federation demanding that Darwin’s theory of evolution, that they described as not scientifically grounded, be excluded from school textbooks. Maria said that schoolbooks that only teach evolution violated freedom of conscience and religious rights and were, therefore, unconstitutional. Her father said that: “Darwin only presented a hypothesis that has not been proved by him or anyone else. Therefore, we think that when schools impose this theory on children as the only scientific option, they violate the human right of free choice.” The court did not agree.
On February 21, 2007 it ruled against Maria. Maria left Russia and moved to the Dominican Republic where at last report she was working in a real estate and travel agency. Evolution continues to be taught at her former school. Given that depressing result (from the perspective of Maria and the Archbishop) the Archbishop should probably limit his efforts on behalf of creationism to speeches and writing and Texas should look elsewhere for allies in its ongoing battle against Darwin.