Orbis Non Sufficit (The World is Not Enough)

In retrospect, I wish I hadn't used the title "Arm Yourself Because No One Else Here Will Save You" for an entry over the summer. That line is from the opening song to Casino Royale, referring to - you guessed it - the dangers in espionage. I used it as a metaphor for being knowledgable about lifestyle decisions and ethics.

So here's another James Bond title, and another question of ethics.

Tonight there was a lecture by a retired member of the CIA, Jim Olson. He's written a book called Fair Play on the ethics of espionage and the lengths the CIA will go to to provide for national security. He grew up in a small town in Iowa and had dreams of finishing law school, finding a nice Iowa girl, settling down, and having a family. But in his last year of law school, he was contacted and recruited by the CIA. He went through years of training - physical training, psychological tests, crash courses in language immersion, skill building. Everything we've ever dreamt or seen in the movies from jumping out of airplanes to using innocent looking gadgets as deadly weapons. Over the next 31 years, Jim would meet his wife Meredith, also a CIA officer, and have three children - all while on assignment overseas. They moved a lot, and took a different job every time they got a new assignment, and therefore a new cover. Jim noted how difficult life would have been if Meredith hadn't also been involved with the CIA and understood the sacrifices.

For the length of time that they served in the CIA, neither Jim nor Meredith told any of their friends or family members about their true work. Jim took various covers as everything from a banker to a fertilizer salesman - Meredith's father just thought he couldn't hold down a steady job. It wasn't until the Olsons were undercover in Vienna, Austria and had a terrorist issue a death threat against their family that Jim and Meredith were forced to tell their oldest son about the nature of their work, in hopes that he would help look out for his younger siblings. They finished their assignment in Vienna safely.

But it wasn't his exciting life, nor the extent of his clandestine career that Jim came to lecture about. He posed the question: how ethically correct are the decisions that the United States Government makes in terms of acquiring intelligence and protecting the country? He set up several real situations and had us vote "yay" or "nay" on whether or not the decision was morally correct. All of the situations presented really happened.

First: It is against CIA protocol to treat people inhumanely or to practice espionage within US borders. So, somewhere overseas, the CIA enlists the help of other foreign allies to kidnap the head of a dangerous terrorist group, place him in a windowless room of an abandoned building, and beat him until he reveals the identities of his group members. The CIA did not participate in harming the terrorist, but they organized and funded the kidnapping. Right or wrong?

Answer: We, as audience members voted by a show of hands. Roughly 80% of us voted no, this was not morally correct, while 20% voted yes. But what did the US think? Well, let's just say the terrorist revealed the other members who were subsequently arrested and executed. When Jim asked if anyone would like to comment on their decision, people expressed frustration. A man lamented that he felt uncomfortable voting without knowing exactly how dangerous and volatile these terrorists were. Another older man was enraged that the US would even have been involved in something as reprehensible as torture. This guy was pissed. But he couldn't deny the fact that the US, indeed, was involved.

Next: Another well known terrorist group leader is known to be in a certain place. It is not possible to kidnap him, or arrrest him. With the extent of his dangerous work in mind, is it okay to employ the use of explosives or other technology and assassinate him?
This is the one that kills me. I voted no, it's not okay to assassinate people. I was among the 25% of the auditorium that thought so.

Some situations dealt with faith, Notre Dame being what it is. Is it ethical to take a cover as a missionary, or a member of the clergy? You would still be spreading God's Word and doing good works - you just wouldn't really be a missionary. And you would be using the relationships that you form to gain information and access to terrorist religious sects. I was sitting next to a priest who lived on campus. He was very friendly, obviously glad to meet someone to talk to. He had spent time working overseas in Africa - as a legitimate clergy member. I watched him out of the corner of my eye as we voted - me for using religion as a cover, and him against. The rest of the auditorium was split 50/50.

There were also situations of a different sort: like, there's a female CIA officer. She's joined a local tennis club in hopes of recruiting future CIA members. However, a government official from another country frequents the club as well. They form a friendship, playing sets and having lunch. The female officer notices that he might want more than friendship - and is prepared to seduce him in order to recruit him to the US. Ethical?

Then, there was the case of a terrorist who was secretly feeding information to the CIA. He demands that the US provide him with a prostitute, or he'll stop helping. Jimmy Carter was president at the time. He said okay.
Another was about sex and blackmail: There's a member of an Iranian sect who came to the US and frequented homosexual bars and engaged in homosexual activity. The FBI picks up on this and alerts the CIA to his presence. The strict Muslim policy of the terrorist group would be enraged if they found out the man was homosexual - he would be fired, to say the least. Should the CIA contact the man and threaten to tell his superiors about his sexuality unless he provides them with information?

You know, there was an article in TIME magazine last summer, back when my dad had that subscription. I remember topics of waterboarding. All kinds of ethical, controversial fun. Then there was one, which I have dug up for the sake of sharing the tenet of kindness. There was an Al-Qaeda operative that was captured and held in a Yemini prison for about a year. His name was Abu Jandal, and he was Osama bin Laden's chief bodyguard. The FBI came in to question him, unsuccessfully. He was uncooperative and difficult. And he didn't eat any of the cookies that were served at the meeting. One of the FBI officers learned that Jandal was diabetic, and couldn't eat sugar. So the next meeting, the officer brought him sugar-free cookies. The big bad bodyguard was touched. He softened. And started talking.

No form of physical or psychological torture was required.

Take Your Bank Before I Pay You Out

There's this filmmaker named Michael Moore. He's famous for making bold documentaries challenging government actions and other controversial topics like terrorism (Fahrenheit 9/11), gun violence (Bowling for Columbine), and health care (Sicko). But his main focus is on economics - namely, the downfall of the American economy.

Today, I watched his most recent documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story. It followed Moore as he examined the effects of a money-driven society on people's lives - specifically, what happens when you can't pay back bank loans. Answer: they take your house. Or whatever it is you have left. But the real kicker came in after we watch a family clean out their house and take their things to the local dump (the bank could have the house stripped for them, but they offered the family $1,000 to do it themselves). After they had burned the last few wooden armoires, the son remarked that at least he still has his hobby - flying. He aspires to be a pilot - something I've always viewed as an honorable profession. However, almost as a cruel stroke of irony, Moore's documentary goes on to confess that pilots are some of the lowest paid workers in the US. Which is absolutely ridiculous, considering the about of pressure placed on their profession. But they're seriously only paid a starting salary of around $20,000 a year; it's common for rookie pilots to live on food stamps for a while. It takes years to reach the high 20ks.

I always thank pilots at the end of a flight just because it's polite. I'm going to start shaking their hands.

Anyway. That was just a side fact, no one's clearly to blame. But a couple of other things addressed in the documentary caught my attention. Like, there was a woman who decorated cakes at Wal-Mart - she suddenly died of a severe asthma attack. Her family, of course, was left with hospital bills and funeral expenses - and was infuriated to find out that Wal-Mart had taken out a life insurance policy on her, but named themselves as the beneficiaries. Wal-Mart got $81,000. The family got more bills. This same situation happened to a family in Houston - the husband worked for Amegy Bank and was diagnosed with cancer. Amegy got over $1.5 million when he died. And it's perfectly legal. Something called "Dead Peasants" policies that corporations take out on their employees - some even estimate what percentage of their workers will die every year and factor it into the annual budget.

And then there's the thing with the government. On September 18, 2008, there was this huge financial crisis. Before then, everything was fine, nothing out of the ordinary. But all of a sudden, that Thursday morning, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson gave Congress a five-page document demanding a $700 billion bail-out plan, or all hell would break loose. The White House was quick to encourage Congress to sign the plan immediately - which conveniently included a clause saying it was not to be reviewed against any legal measures to save time. Eventually, a deal was cut.

A few things are wrong with what happened that day. First, I don't know about you, but I had no idea that happened. As far as I was concerned, 9/18/08 was Bailey's 17th birthday. It was a Thursday. I must have even watched the news that evening at dinner like I do every other night. But I definitely didn't hear about this. Actually, here are the headlines that ran that day on a democratic news site. I've only been able to find a couple of very carefully worded headlines on very specific sites. You'd think that news of a national crisis would have made it to the general public. However, the government keeping information from the public, I can understand - they're in a position of power. But the government keeping information from themselves? I mean, Congress was straight blindsighted by that bailout plan.

This probably isn't the way things are supposed to work in the US. So here's what I think: obviously, we're supposed to have a democracy - meaning the people have power. And the government knows this, as well as the big-shot corporations. And so they'll do anything to keep the public from being educated on behind-the-curtain actions - if we don't know there's anything wrong, we won't try to change anything. But not everyone here is bad - some of the people involved in these actions are as in the dark as we are. Moore interviewed someone in the government banking industry who said that there's pretty much a "don't ask, don't tell" policy in place. They don't ask the government what they're going to do with the money, and so the government doesn't tell them.

When Franklin Roosevelt was in office, he proposed a "Second Bill of Rights" in a State of the Union address. It has also been called an Economic Bill of Rights. It outlines basic "rights" - I put that in quotations because, while they're such basic things, there are people who unjustly live without them. Things like a job, health care, adequate income, and education. FDR died a year or so later, and no action was ever taken on his proposition.

Ivories that Slice Sedatives in Half

On Thursday morning, I woke up to realize that the left side of my mouth was swollen where I got my wisdom teeth out - three weeks ago. I figured it would get better, and that it was probably just a reaction to something I ate - spicy food or something seemed plausible. But this morning it seemed to be a lot worse, so I called the Urgent Care center to make sure they were open (of course they were, considering how many idiots with access to fire crackers were running around today). I knew I had an infection, and really only needed antibiotics to clear it up, and it seemed like entirely too much trouble to go and sit in the waiting room at UC for that, especially when I wasn't positive that they would even give me a prescription. So I called Dr. Parker's office, and they got him on his cell phone. He offered to call in a prescription for more antibiotics and threw in another for Lortab as well (which, come to think of it, was a rather iffy move - I could have easily been lying to get more drugs).

Anyway, before I called Dr. Parker, I looked around on the Internet to see if there were any over-the-counter options I could use, only to find that it's illegal to sell OTC antibiotics in the US. But some other sites came up, offering brand suggestions in the UK - where OTC antibiotics are legal. This must be one of the many areas that the US and UK differ in - censorship, government, and health care. After doing a bit of research, I've come up with a significant list of pros and cons.

The most widely accepted reason for limiting public access to antibiotics is that excessive use could lead to the development of resistant strains of bacteria - rendering antibiotics obsolete, and leaving people in a whole lot of danger. However, an article I found in the Oxford Journals (naturally) states that there really isn't much solid proof that overusing antibiotics can lead to uber-bacteria.

Then we get into the fuzzy areas. The UK made OTC antibiotics legal so that the people would have more access to health care - trusting that they would use them responsibly and that it would only do them good. This is where the idea of universal health care comes in - it's thought that if you provide health care to everyone, the doctors and pharmacists won't be needed as much, and therefore lose business and jobs and money. But in my opinion, if more people can be helped at the expense of someone's already ample paycheck, then why not?

And, of course, if something in the US is illegal, there's going to be people finding ways around it. An article I came across listed four main options: pet stores, the Internet, back-ally ethnic supermarkets, and Mexico. Basically, they're all pretty risky. The "pet store" option is the funniest to me - the antibiotics used on fish are chemically the same as the stuff we use for ourselves, so you just go in, buy some, and take an extra large dose.

Sadly, I have a really bad reaction to Lortab, including nausea and dizziness, so I'm going to have to cut this short here. I'll try to be more prolific when I'm off these pills.