Maureen Dowd, "Game of Drones": Will Charlotte Leave Maverick for Another Woman?

"Top Gun 2"? Is that where we have arrived? Maybe the film should begin with rumors concerning Maverick's latent homosexuality after the failure of his marriage to Charlotte (call sign "Charlie"), who leaves him for another woman.

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Game of Drones" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/opinion/game-of-drones.html?ref=opinion&_r=0), Maureen Dowd broaches the possibility of a "Top Gun" sequel, then segues into talk about Google, Amazon, Facebook and drones. Dowd concludes:

"Even before one falls from the sky and kills somebody or crashes into a building, the tech drones will mean, as [Jim] Gleick says, 'we’re living in a dystopian novel, with a continuous eye in the sky on everything that happens down below.'

He muses: 'Are Google’s drones going to be watching while Amazon’s drones deliver my packages? How will we distinguish the drones with cameras from the drones with cameras and guns? How long before the N.R.A. insists on the rights of drones to bear arms? The Constitution says people have a right to bear arms. And the Supreme Court says that corporations are people. Do the math.'

Forget 'Top Gun 2.' This sounds more like 'Risky Business.'"

Sorry, but I'm not living a novel or a movie for that matter. Drones? What sticks in my mind is a line from the 2006 remake of "Casino Royale":

"Do I look like I give a damn?"

Maureen Dowd, "Mommy, the Drone’s Here!": Welcome to Our Brave New World

Are you old enough to remember when the milkman would arrive at your home and deposit glass bottles of milk in a special box outside your door and collect the empty bottles? Do you remember the cream floating at the top of the bottle (I hated it)? Although you might not remember the jokes about how a certain child resembled the milkman, you might have seen the South Park episode in which Kyle concludes that his mother is getting it on with the UPS delivery man.

Well, all of these delivery (pun intended) jokes may soon be coming to an end if Jeff Bezos has his way. In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Mommy, the Drone’s Here!" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/04/opinion/dowd-mommy-the-drones-here.html?_r=0), Maureen Dowd observes:

"The novelty of flying cars never materialized. But flying novels are right around the corner.

If you aren’t nervous enough reading about 3-D printers spitting out handguns or Google robots with Android phones, imagine the skies thick with crisscrossing tiny drones.

'I know this looks like science fiction. It’s not,' Jeff Bezos told Charlie Rose on '60 Minutes' Sunday, unveiling his octocopter drones.

The Amazon founder is optimistic that the fleet of miniature robot helicopters clutching plastic containers will be ready to follow GPS coordinates within a radius of 10 miles and zip around the country providing half-hour delivery of packages of up to 5 pounds — 86 percent of Amazon’s stock — just as soon as the F.A.A. approves."

Query: Will each of us have a special landing pad for such home deliveries?

I order books and DVDs from Amazon. (I don't have a Kindle and like to write notes in my books; the movies I see again and again, and I have never been keen on VOD.) But is there anything I need so urgently that it requires drone delivery?

Perhaps such deliveries will be fuel efficient. Perhaps such deliveries will eliminate jobs and reduce the health care and retirement costs of employers.

Welcome to our brave new world.

Thomas Friedman, "Democrats, Dragons or Drones?": Poison Gas, Natural Gas and Farting

Want to earn a degree at home in Middle Eastern studies after seven minutes of course work? Sorry, I'm not in that business and can't help you. However, if you read today's blog item - a bit longer than usual - I promise that you will know more about the Middle East than President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman rolled into one.

Yes, I know that's not setting the bar very high.

The Middle East today? If you take anything at all away from this blog entry, remember: The Middle East is all about poison gas, natural gas and farting.

Poison gas? Chemical weapons were indeed used on Tuesday against civilians near the northern Syrian city of Aleppo by either the rebels or forces still loyal to Syrian mass murderer Bashar al-Assad. You remember Bashar al-Assad? He's the guy who was visited by Kerry almost a half dozen times at the behest of Obama, and who, after dinner with their wives and an intimate motorcycle ride through the streets of Damascus, was labeled "my dear friend" by Kerry.

Kerry, you will recall, not long ago told us that "Americans have the right to be stupid." Well, Kerry continues to exercise that right. Following the deaths of more than 70,000 innocent persons over the past three years in Syria, Kerry declared on Monday that the United States does not oppose arms shipments to the rebels from . . . the UK and France. As reported by the VOA (http://www.voanews.com/content/syrian-opposition-meets-to-pick-prime-minister/1623489.html):

"'President Obama has made it clear that the United States does not stand in the way of other countries that made a decision to provide arms, whether it is France or Britain or others,' said Kerry.

Kerry said there is a military imbalance in Syria, with President Bashar al-Assad receiving help from Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia. That imbalance is creating what he called a 'global catastrophe' of Syrian refugees fleeing to Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey."

Yup, a "global catastrophe," so let the English and the French deal with it. You know, more of the Obama doctrine of leading from behind. But wait, out of the mouth of babes . . . . Wasn't it indeed the UK and France that created the artificial borders of the modern Middle East pursuant to the 1916 Sykes-Picot Treaty, when the two allies were busying fighting the Ottoman Empire?



As the old saying tells us, "You break it, you buy it," even if it happened almost a century ago.

Natural gas? As observed by David Brooks, in a recent New York Times op-ed entitled "The Axis of Ennui" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/12/opinion/brooks-the-axis-of-ennui.html):

"Daniel Yergin, an energy guru, noted in Congressional testimony last month that the revolution in oil and gas extraction has led to 1.7 million new jobs in the United States alone, a number that could rise to three million by 2020. The shale revolution added $62 billion to federal revenues in 2012. At the same time, carbon-dioxide emissions are down 13 percent since 2007, as gas is used instead of coal to generate electricity.

Most of us have grown up in a world in which we assumed that energy was scarce, or even running out. We could now be entering a world of relatively cheap energy abundance.

Most of us have grown up in a world in which oil states in the Middle East could throw their weight around because of their grip on the economy’s life source. But the power of petro-states is on the wane."

Moreover, Brooks failed to mention that Israel also has huge deposits of oil shale. As reported by Amiram Barkat for Globes (http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000686073&fid=1724):

"'Within a few years, Israel will become one the largest producers of oil and gas in the world.' That is the belief of Dr. Harold Vinegar, who until three years ago was Chief Scientist, Physics, of energy giant Royal Dutch Shell. Talking to 'Globes', Vinegar says that he estimates that exploration for gas will yield impressive results, but that Israel's true future lies in oil. He believes that the chances of finding regular oil are not high, but that huge quantities of oil shale will make it possible to produce oil in quantities approaching the production of Saudi Arabia"

Can you imagine tiny Israel rivaling Saudi Arabia as one of the world's energy giants? Yes, there is still a glimmer of hope for this world.

In a nutshell, the Muslim Middle East will soon no longer be able to hold the United States over an oil barrel.

And now we come to the matter of human flatulence.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Democrats, Dragons or Drones?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/opinion/friedman-democrats-dragons-or-drones.html?_r=0), would-be Middle East expert Thomas Friedman writes:

"Given its history of brutal dictatorship, Iraq might seem to be the last place in the Middle East we should have tried to help give birth to a self-governing democracy. In fact, it was the most important. Just look at Syria and you’ll understand why. Iraq was made up of all the sects that populate the different Arab countries and have been held together over the last 50 years by iron-fisted dictators. If Iraqis could demonstrate that, once their dictator was removed, the constituent communities of Iraq (Shiites, Sunnis, Kurds, Turkmen, Christians) could forge their own social contract for living together peacefully — rather than being ruled brutally from the top down — then some kind of democratic future was possible throughout the Arab world.

That possibility is yet to be fulfilled."

Oh really? Still no "self-governing democracy" in Iraq? Who would have ever imagined that Iraq's Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds wouldn't be able to let bygones be bygones? Not Thomas Friedman. A decade ago, Friedman wrote (http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/22/opinion/thinking-about-iraq-i.html?ref=thomaslfriedman):

"It is not unreasonable to believe that if the U.S. removed Saddam and helped Iraqis build not an overnight democracy but a more accountable, progressive and democratizing regime, it would have a positive, transforming effect on the entire Arab world -- a region desperately in need of a progressive model that works."

Sorry, Tom, but it was unreasonable.

And if cheerleading the Second Gulf War was not sufficiently inane, Friedman more recently was to be found in Cairo's Tahrir Square, ballyhooing the Arab Spring, which brought us the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohammed Morsi.

Now I know that this blog item is inordinately long and you are growing tired, but before saying goodbye, please note, kind reader, that the US is still providing Egypt with $1.5 billion in aid each year. What is this aid buying America? See what the Muslim Brotherhood has to say in its own words in its official English website (http://www.ikhwanweb.com/article.php?id=30731):

"The 57th session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), taking place from March 4 to 15 at UN headquarters, seeks to ratify a declaration euphemistically entitled ‘End Violence against Women’.

That title, however, is misleading and deceptive. The document includes articles that contradict established principles of Islam, undermine Islamic ethics and destroy the family, the basic building block of society, according to the Egyptian Constitution.

This declaration, if ratified, would lead to complete disintegration of society, and would certainly be the final step in the intellectual and cultural invasion of Muslim countries, eliminating the moral specificity that helps preserve cohesion of Islamic societies.

A closer look at these articles reveals what decadence awaits our world, if we sign this document:

1. Granting girls full sexual freedom, as well as the freedom to decide their own gender and the gender of their partners (ie, choose to have normal or homo-sexual relationships), while raising the age of marriage.

2. Providing contraceptives for adolescent girls and training them to use those, while legalizing abortion to get rid of unwanted pregnancies, in the name of sexual and reproductive rights.

3. Granting equal rights to adulterous wives and illegitimate sons resulting from adulterous relationships.

4. Granting equal rights to homosexuals, and providing protection and respect for prostitutes.

5. Giving wives full rights to file legal complaints against husbands accusing them of rape or sexual harassment, obliging competent authorities to deal husbands punishments similar to those prescribed for raping or sexually harassing a stranger.

6. Equal inheritance (between men and women).

7. Replacing guardianship with partnership, and full sharing of roles within the family between men and women such as: spending, child care and home chores.

8. Full equality in marriage legislation such as: allowing Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men, and abolition of polygamy, dowry, men taking charge of family spending, etc.

9. Removing the authority of divorce from husbands and placing it in the hands of judges, and sharing all property after divorce.

10. Cancelling the need for a husband’s consent in matters like: travel, work, or use of contraception.

These are destructive tools meant to undermine the family as an important institution; they would subvert the entire society, and drag it to pre-Islamic ignorance.

The Muslim Brotherhood urges the leaders of Muslim countries and their UN representatives to reject and condemn this document, and to call upon this organization to rise to the high morals and principles of family relations prescribed by Islam.

The Muslim Brotherhood also calls on Al-Azhar (the highest seat of learning for Muslims) to take the lead, condemn this declaration, and state clearly the Islamic viewpoint with regard to all details of this document.

Further, we urge all Islamic groups and associations to take a decisive stand on this document and similar declarations.

In conclusion, we call on women's organizations to commit to their religion and morals of their communities and the foundations of good social life and not be deceived with misleading calls to decadent modernization and paths of subversive immorality.

God Almighty says: "God wants to forgive you, but those who follow whims and desires want you to deviate far away from the Path). {Quran 4 : 27}

The Muslim Brotherhood

Cairo: March 13, 2013"

Enough said. As promised at the onset, if you have read this blog entry from beginning to end, you now know more about the Middle East than President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry and New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman rolled into one. Yes, I know that's not much of anything, but it's a start.

Bill Keller, "Smart Drones": Keller Never Served in the Military and It Shows

New York Times columnist Bill Keller never served in the military, and it shows. But heck, everyone is entitled to an opinion regarding anything and everything, and as Secretary of State John Kerry so aptly declared, "In America you have a right to be stupid."

In his latest Times op-ed entitled "Smart Drones" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/17/opinion/sunday/keller-smart-drones.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0), Keller weighs the morality of "fully autonomous weapons" with a special focus on drones. Not surprisingly, Keller points an accusing finger at Israel:

"Israel is the first country to make and deploy (and sell, to China, India, South Korea and others) a weapon that can attack pre-emptively without a human in charge. The hovering drone called the Harpy is programmed to recognize and automatically divebomb any radar signal that is not in its database of 'friendlies.' No reported misfires so far, but suppose an adversary installs its antiaircraft radar on the roof of a hospital?"

Israel's Harpy? Sorry, but it only carries a 70-pound high-explosive warhead, which will cripple a radar facility, but not bring down Keller's "hypothetical" hospital. Moreover, unbeknownst to Keller, the issue is anything but hypothetical:

• In its last two engagements with Israel, the Hamas leadership has hidden in the basement of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
• During Israel's Operation Pillar of Defense in November, the IDF attacked a Hamas intelligence headquarters in the Al-Showa Media Building in Gaza, where Agence France-Presse and Al Jazeera had offices.
• Over the past decade, most of the rockets and missiles fired at southern Israel from Gaza have been launched from heavily populated residential areas.
• Much of Hezbollah's arsenal of missiles for launch against Israel is housed in villages throughout southern Lebanon.
• In the past, Hezbollah has fired rockets at Israel from positions in close proximity to UN bases so as to avoid counterstrikes.

In a nutshell, both Hamas and Hezbollah have not hesitated to make use of human shields in violation of the Geneva Convention.

How did Israel, using its smart weapons, manage during Operation Pillar of Defense, which involved an asymmetric conflict? According to the Israel Defense Forces, 57 civilians died and 120 combatants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad were killed. Compare this ratio with the estimated ratio of three civilians killed for every one combatant in Afghanistan and an estimated four-to-one ratio in Iraq.

Keller concludes his opinion piece by observing:

"If war is made to seem impersonal and safe, about as morally consequential as a video game, I worry that autonomous weapons deplete our humanity. As unsettling as the idea of robots’ becoming more like humans is the prospect that, in the process, we become more like robots."  

Keller worries "that autonomous weapons deplete our humanity," but consider how Hamas fired more than 10,000 unguided rockets and missiles at Israel's civilian population over the past decade. Was this somehow more humane? And on the subject of morality, where were the protests from Keller, executive editor of the Times from 2003 until 2011 and his op-ed pundits, while this was happening?

Bottom line: War is inhumane; however, Israel has demonstrated that smart weaponry can significantly reduce civilian casualties.

Gail Collins, "Talk Of The Town": Rand Paul Drones On

Sure, you're a law abiding citizen, but let's suppose an SUV just ran a red light and smashed into the passenger side of your vehicle. Your car can still be driven, but your husband has been severely injured in the accident and is unconscious and losing blood. The nearest hospital is twenty minutes away. Do you wait for the police and an ambulance, or do you hit the gas and, en route to the hospital, exceed the local speed limit of 40 miles per hour? A no brainer, right?

But now let's look at the hypothetical situation I posed yesterday (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2013/03/maureen-dowd-repent-dick-cheney.html). Suppose terrorists have hidden a dirty bomb in Manhattan and are threatening to detonate the bomb unless the US releases all of its Guantanamo prisoners. The bomb is timed to go off in another two hours, and there is no time to evacuate the city. Millions are expected to die slow painful deaths from radiation poisoning and cancer unless the bomb is found and defused. Then suddenly, one of the al-Qaeda conspirators is captured, but he refuses to talk. Would you read him his rights and wait for his lawyer or waterboard him?

Again, I know what I would do.

There are emergencies that demand immediate action. On the other hand, there are also instances when life and death comes into play, but there is time for judicial oversight.

In her latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Talk Of The Town" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/opinion/collins-the-talk-of-the-town.html?_r=0), Gail Collins grudgingly acknowledges that Senator Rand Paul may have a point with regard to his filibuster of the confirmation of John Brennan as director of the Central Intelligence Agency:

"Paul had no particular problem with the nomination, which he acknowledged was going to pass once he stopped talking. But the debate over Brennan had brought up the question of drone strikes. The junior senator from Kentucky wanted President Obama to promise not to use drones to kill Americans on American soil. “At least we need to know what are the rules,” he said sometime during hour five.

Fair enough. The Obama administration had been unnecessarily dodgy on this point. The very fact that the president was ordering the death of American citizens anywhere without oversight was worrying. Shouldn’t there be a special court to sign off on these things?"

Collins concludes in irritatingly vapid fashion:

"Still, after years of faux filibusters, it was a nice change of pace. Exhausting yourself and irritating your colleagues for a cause is way better than stopping progress without taking the least bit of trouble."

I'm no Tea Partier or fan of Rand Paul, but his insistance on reviewing the guidelines involving the use of drones to kill suspected terrorists and inevitably innocent bystanders goes beyond "stopping progress," as Collins would have it. Apparently, people like Collins have no problem administering death sentences so long as Barry has his hand on the joy stick.

More information concerning the Benghazi attack, which is increasing pointing to the fact that the State Department should have seen it coming? Why would Collins want any such information, which could further discomfit Barry and jeopardize Hillary's chances in 2016?

Indeed, absolutely nothing should stand in the way of Obama as he continues to populate his cabinet with white guys comprising the worst and the dumbest.

The latest embarrassment for Obama: On Friday, Michelle Obama and John Kerry will award the Secretary of State’s International Women of Courage Award at a State Department ceremony. Among those who have come to Washington to receive the award is Samira Ibrahim, who tweeted on July 18 last year, "An explosion on a bus carrying Israelis in Burgas airport in Bulgaria on the Black Sea. Today is a very sweet day with a lot of very sweet news." As further reported by The Weekly Standard (http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/michelle-obama-and-john-kerry-honor-anti-semite-and-911-fan_706547.html):

"As a mob was attacking the United States embassy in Cairo on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, pulling down the American flag and raising the flag of Al Qaeda, Ibrahim wrote on twitter: 'Today is the anniversary of 9/11. May every year come with America burning.' Possibly fearing the consequences of her tweet, she deleted it a couple of hours later, but not before a screen shot was saved by an Egyptian activist."

Can it get worse during Obama's second term?

Yes It Will!

David Brooks, "Florence and the Drones": Do You Suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Do you suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder ("PTSD")? Do you even believe in its existence? Personally, I'm not big on labels. Yes, I've witnessed the aftermath of suicide bombings from up close, I've got a hairline trigger temper, it's hard for me to forgive and forget, and I have few expectations involving human charity and compassion. But then I suppose that we all have unresolved issues from the past, and I'm not complaining about the hand that I was dealt. After all, I chose to sit down at the blackjack table.

David Brooks latest New York Times op-ed, "Florence and the Drones" (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/08/opinion/brooks-florence-and-the-drones.html), is a must read. Brooks's opinion piece brings into focus Obama's policy of using drones to deter terror, which has finally captured the attention of the public owing to questioning on Thursday by the Senate Intelligence Committee of John Brennan, the president's nominee for director the CIA (see: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/brennan-defends-drone-strike-policies/2013/02/07/f7384950-7145-11e2-ac36-3d8d9dcaa2e2_story.html?hpid=z2).

Brooks writes:

"There are still terrorists out there, hiding in the shadows and plotting to kill Americans. So even today’s leaders face the Machiavellian choice: Do I have to be brutal to protect the people I serve? Do I have to use drones, which sometimes kill innocent children, in order to thwart terror and save the lives of my own?

When Barack Obama was a senator, he wasn’t compelled to confront the brutal logic of leadership. Now in office, he’s thrown into the Machiavellian world. He’s decided, correctly, that we are in a long war against Al Qaeda; that drone strikes do effectively kill terrorists; that, in fact, they inflict fewer civilian deaths than bombing campaigns, boots on the ground or any practical alternative; that, in fact, civilian death rates are dropping sharply as the C.I.A. gets better at this. Acting brutally abroad saves lives at home."

However, Brooks also believes that Obama's use of drones demands oversight:

"Drone strikes are so easy, hidden and abstract. There should be some independent judicial panel to review the kill lists. There should be an independent panel of former military and intelligence officers issuing reports on the program’s efficacy."

Indeed, al-Qaeda has not been neutered, as the Obama administration wanted us believe prior to the tragedy in Benghazi. Moreover, as recently acknowledged by The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/world/middleeast/syrian-rebels-tied-to-al-qaeda-play-key-role-in-war.html?pagewanted=all), "The lone Syrian rebel group with an explicit stamp of approval from Al Qaeda has become one of the uprising’s most effective fighting forces, posing a stark challenge to the United States and other countries that want to support the rebels but not Islamic extremists."

My dark vision of the world, which may or may not be affected by PTSD? I wouldn't make too much of an issue of drone strikes. Ultimately, al-Qaeda and its counterparts will adapt their tactics to the drone threat, rendering it entirely ineffective - akin to bacteria growing resistant to antibiotics. New medicines will need to be sought in this protracted war against terrorism, which shows no sign of abating.

If you ask me, not nearly enough has been done to obstruct terrorist financing. Without funds, al-Qaeda and Hezbollah cannot perpetrate their abhorrent outrages. But in order to choke off the financing, Europe and the world's banks need to cooperate. Then, too, the US requires a secretary of defense with a no-nonsense, uncompromising attitude toward terror and not the contradictory, self-serving views of Chuck Hagel.

But then who is asking?