Denmark in World War Two

Today we visited the Danish National Frihedsmuseet, or Museum of the Danish Resistance 1940-1945.  It's all about what went on in Denmark during the second world war.

The museum is organized chronologically, beginning with "Operation Weserübung," the German invasion of Denmark and Norway on 9 April 1940.  They had a video of an interview with a man who was 15 years old at the time, and he talked about how strange and surreal it was that life went on as usual - he went to school and learned about how to calculate compound interest, and he saw German soldiers buying pastries at a bakery, all while Denmark was being invaded. That stuck in my mind for some reason.

That military operation was ostensibly to protect Danish and Norwegian neutrality against an alleged British planned invasion. The Danish government continued to exist. The museum displayed a letter from the king that was circulated all over the country, saying that the government had decided to welcome the Germans - there was no way the small neutral country on Germany's norther border was going to repel the invasion. Convinced that Germany would win WWII, Prime Minister Thorvald Stauning decided to cooperate, in return for which he got to keep most of his Government, the kind remained on the throne, and Denmark retained control of its police force and judicial system, unlike most other Nazi protectorates. With the fall of France just a couple months later, many Danes also believed that a German victor was inevitable. We saw a uniform of a Danish soldier who fought on the German side against the Russians when the eastern front opened in the summer of 1941.

Soon enough, though, the abhorrent Nazi ideology led to the birth of various resistance groups. When wartime rationing led to minting coins with softer metals like zinc, people carved anti-nazi slogans into the coins: we saw one with a hammer drawn across the curve of the number 5 to make a hammer-and-sickle and one that said "Down with Hitler." Then people began printing illegal newsletters advocating resistance. We saw another video interview with a member of the first known active resistance group, a bunch of high school students who printed pamphlets and then started stealing weapons from the Germans and burning warehouses.

This eventually evolved into several very active sabotage groups, coordinating their efforts with British spies and doing significant damage to the occupiers. As Denmark became harder to control, Germany cracked down, imposing more and more restrictions on the country, which added fuel to the revolutionary flames. The Nazis also used terrorism against the population to try to stop the acts of sabotage. For example, if a German officer was killed they would execute a random Danish citizen; they also blew up random buildings in the wake of significant resistance successes. Over six thousand political prisoners from Denmark went to concentration camps.

Meanwhile, the museum also showed what was happening to Denmark's Jewish population. Many were smuggled out of the country during the early days of the occupation, when Denmark still had significant control over domestic policy and was able to rebuff German demands to oppress the Jewish population. But even so, hundreds of Danish Jews were murdered by the Nazis.

It was an emotional experience, touring the museum (which does a great job of having everything labeled and explained in both Danish and English). Some stories were horrible, others were inspiring. The museum itself grew out of an exhibition that started just after the war ended, and it's well worth a visit.

Book review: Diplomacy (Henry Kissinger)

Henry Kissinger gives us a really thick book about, first, the ebb and flow of international relations among the European superpowers from Richelieu to World War Two, and then, the prosecution of American foreign policy through the period of the Cold War. I just finished reading it, having assigned it to myself as homework (along with a shelf of other diplomacy books) when I passed the Foreign Service Exam.

The book's mission as outlined above involves going over a lot of history, much of which I was already familiar with, but in a way that ties it together usefully - although at a level of simplification, imposed of necessity by the need to keep the book under a thousand pages, that occasionally calls into question the accuracy of the author's perception of national, not to say global, events, and compels him at other times to omit some ideas that might enhance understanding of the book's themes.

In addition to the history lessons, there were a fair amount of facts that were new to me, correlations I had not drawn myself, and insights into motivations with potential applications to analogous present and future situations - enough of these that it always seemed worthwhile to me to keep reading.

The second part of the book, about the Cold War, naturally enough included a good deal more of the autobiographical; a couple of chapters seemed more directed at answering the many critics of Kissinger's policies while in office than at informing the student of international relations.

One of Kissinger's main philosophical premises throughout the book is that American foreign policy has, throughout the period of the nation's international engagement, been what he terms "legalistic" or "Wilsonian" - i.e., (perhaps excessively) focussed on allegedly universal principles. Americans have internalized Kant's assertion: "Das Problem der Staatserrichtung ist, so hart wie es auch klingt, selbst für ein Volk von Teufeln (wenn sie nur Verstand haben), auflösbar. [The problem of state-building is, hard as it seems, solvable even for a race of devils - if only they have reason.]" And the American ideology applies this not only to relations among individuals in the state, but to the relations among states (and their constituent individuals) in the international system.

You know, along those lines, I always remember my reaction to the Dayton talks that ended the Bosnian War. Specifically, the Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina that came out of those talks has specific provisions relating to the various ethnic groups, such as the three-member presidency with one member from each group. At the time, although recognizing that this type of explicitly-defined power-sharing solved a lot of Bosnia and Herzegovina's particular problems, I thought it strange that such an arrangement should be not only written into law but into the constitution itself. Of course, I was only 15 at the time, but I do still feel that a Constitution "should" be a law of fundamental, universal applicability. I had a similar reaction to a complex arrangement outlined by Betsy John at Vienna in 2000 for securing global peace by a system of overlapping geographic, economic and cultural groupings. That system might have worked, but it lacked the elegance of a framework that would be eternally and universally pertinent, regardless of the vagaries of shifting relative economic strength or regionally dominant powers.

So I don't know if I came by these "legalist" criteria for evaluating solutions by growing up American, or if I'm just naturally the sort logic-driven, Enlightenment-era rationalist personality type to whom universal principles naturally appeal. Both, probably.

Moving back to the book review. It would seem presumptive of me, with a seven-year-old bachelor's degree in International Relations and a scant ten months' experience in the Foreign Service, to dispute the conclusions of the former Secretary of State. I do take issue with some of his analysis, mostly from a perspective of interpretation, but I'll save specific arguments for when I meet him. ;)

In the meantime, one quibble that I will allow myself to express here is basically stylistic. Kissinger is constantly discussing what "would have happened" if country X had adopted policy Y, often in ways that seemed to me, subjectively, to be somewhat smug - as if the author would have done a better job at running international relations than the leaders he writes about. This is made more annoying when, at one point, he dismisses intellectual historical what-iffing as pointless, then goes on to continue engaging in it every couple pages for the rest of the book. Kissinger's leitmotif of defending the idea that countries should follow their "national interest" had lead him to defend a historical course of action that, in his own analysis, increased the likelihood of conflict, but he casually passes over that analysis as a meaningless conjecture - whereas, by implication, all the conjectures he does not qualify in that way must, I guess, be quite meaningful.

Another question that gave me food for thought throughout the book was this very concept of national interest. Kissinger likes the phrase "balance of power." His thesis is that Americans often ignore the fact that nations have interests and should pursue those rather than vague universal principles that leave themselves open to subjective interpretation in various situations. But he does not explore the question of where the national interest comes from, beyond the conception of it as territorial expansion and control over resources in the sections on colonial-era European diplomacy. He notes that this understanding of national interest must be revised in the post-colonial world, but does not really answer, from what I could glean, the question as to what new definition should replace it. Nonetheless, countries should still be out for their own national interests.

For instance, at one point Kissinger seems to suggest that the United States should oppose any future developments that might lead to another country or combination of countries (Europe, Russia, an alliance between Japan and China...) to supersede it as the predominant global power, even to the extent of weakening both sides through direct confrontation, as long as we have a good chance of keeping the number one position. Does that hold water? Is our goal, in fact, to promote global peace and progress, or is it to hold on as long as possible to the top place on the scoreboard in a giant real-life version of Risk? I realize my phrasing of the question is leading, but actually I can see the merits both points of view, although I think this is one of those where it can't be had both ways - obviously, to a very large extent, we can do both (policies geared toward maintaining US leadership are also the very policies that will make our country and the world more peaceful and more productive), but philosophically, a mutually exclusive choice between the two outlooks can be easily envisioned. As for my own opinion, I think the UK is in a pretty good position now, for example, despite having lost an empire that covered a quarter of the globe. On the other hand, as another great man once said, "I am an American."

POTUS

Ambassador Laurie Fulton introduced the President of the United States (POTUS) to a group of about fifty Embassy employees.

President Obama gave a brief speech thanking those of us lucky enough to be at that gathering for all the hard work that the entire Embassy had been doing to support his visit to Denmark and all the other aspects of the U.S. delegation to the Copenhagen UN Conference on Climate Change. He mentioned that he was glad to be able to meet some of us, since he hadn't been able to do that when he was here a couple months ago to support Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Olympics. He said how important it was to him to meet some of us, because he wanted to show that we have a President who understands the importance of the Foreign Service and its mission of promoting diplomacy in all parts of the globe. (He did try to manage our expectations, though, saying that although this was his third trip to Scandinavia in the last three months, he might not be able to come here quite that frequently throughout the rest of his presidency.)

I had come over to the Bella Center, the convention hall where the conference takes place, with both of my Consular FSO colleagues at about 10:30. We were expecting to be gathering for the "meet and greet" at 13:40, but wanted to make sure we could get through the long lines and potential transportation delays. The trains ran fine, and when we got there we got an update saying the event would start at 13:00 and we should meet at a specified place at 12:15. We walked around a bit, had some lunch, and looked at some of the different places in the convention center.

This banner is at the entrance to the Bella Center.

The U.S. Center, with an animated globe that shows how climate change affects the earth.

The meet and greet was postponed several times, and seemed like it might be cancelled altogether, as the POTUS got involved in the high-level negotiations and his schedule kept getting busier. During the wait, we did get to watch his speech to the plenary session on one of the closed-circuit televisions.

I also watched the speeches of Danish PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, but I admit I didn't pay attention to any of the other world leaders. Shortly after Obama addressed the conference, it was announced that our event was moved back again to 14:30 and we dispersed. But not long after that, our Deputy Chief of Mission saw me walking the halls and said it had been moved forward again and we should gather immediately.

We dodged through the crowd to reach our designated meeting point, where Secret Service agents conducted us through a labyrinth of back rooms and kitchens to a small meeting room where there was a lectern on the other side of a rope. After we had arranged ourselves, the Ambassador came in, followed by the leader of the free world. Following his short speech, he made sure to shake the hand of each person in the room, including mine. Everyone applauded and wished him success with the climate negotiations. Barack Obama is a truly inspiring leader, and I hope I will be able to live up to the high expectations that he has for those of us who work for him.

Trip to Lübeck, Germany

It's been a great weekend. We are halfway through the two-week Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-15) which is being held in Copenhagen. It's been such a busy time at the Embassy that Bongsu and I decided it would be good to enjoy the weekend as much as possible. We joined a group of people taking a day trip yesterday to Lübeck, Germany.

Which turned out to be a great idea.

We woke up early and went to the train station, found our group and got on the train for Germany. It was great watching the Danish countryside roll by, our first chance to see parts of Denmark outside of the Copenhagen metropolis. Then the train car went on a ferry and we crossed the Fehmarn Belt to Germany. A couple stations later we arrived in Lübeck, which is famous for its Brick Gothic architecture, marzipan, open-air Christmas markets, and being the hometown of Willy Brandt and Thomas Mann.

The picture above (which we didn't take; it's from Wikipedia) shows the town gate, a nice example of the Brick Gothic, built in 1478. We also enjoyed a lunch in nice authentic German restaurant, a thick snowfall, and walking around the old town until we were tired enough to sleep through much of the train ride home.

We were not too tired, though, to be up again this morning and walk around Copenhagen some more. Today we saw the changing of the guard at Amalienborg Palace, the Danish royal family's winter residence. We also found a nice coffeeshop, walked along the harbor, and went to a Christmas music choir concert in the Marmorkirken (the picture below is also from Wikipedia).

After such a great weekend, I am totally ready to get back into the slow-motion explosion of COP-15 tomorrow. Stay tuned for an update about that.

The First Two Months in Copenhagen

We've been here two months now. They've gone by so quickly!

We arrived on a cold, gray, rainy day. Copenhagen has a lot of those, and it's always nice to be inside and warm and dry, looking out the windows at the shivery rain on the cobblestone streets. Since we arrived the days have been getting shorter and now the sun is only out about eight hours a day. When I go to work around 8am the sky is just starting to cobalt, reflected in the pools of rain on the sidewalks in front of the dress stores, the bakeries, the antique shops.

It's a five-minute walk from our apartment to the Embassy. When I get there every morning I go through the little security outbuilding and into the main building, then down the hall to the Consular section. I have my own office, but I spend more time at the visa interview window. We see all kinds of different visa applicants. Although Danes can travel to the US for up to 90 days for tourism without a visa, they are still the most common nationality of our applicants, whether they want to stay longer or get a different type of visa for work, study, etc. I've also interviewed people from all over the world who happen to be in Denmark for one reason or another and want to go to America. It's important to understand, for each case, the type of visa that would be appropriate, what the qualifications are for that type of visa, and whether the applicant meets those qualifications. So it's very bureaucratic, but there's also a big element of detective work and, in the end, a lot of judgment calls. The wide variety of applicants keeps the work always interesting.

In addition to doing all the non-immigrant visa (NIV) interviews in Copenhagen, I'm in charge of running our NIV unit - updating our procedures and work flow, coordinating with Washington on unusual visa cases, and managing two Danish employees and two Americans who got jobs in the consular section while their spouses are assigned to the embassy. They all have their own roles in the visa process (communicating with the applicants to answer questions, managing the appointments schedule, data entry, printing the actual visas, and a wide range of other important parts), plus they continuously help me understand how to do my job. It's interesting being the "boss" of people who have been doing this far longer than me and know a lot of things I don't. I'm trying to share my own knowledge with them so that they can be as helpful to my successor as they have been to me. My own boss the Consul is probably my most important mentor. He's been a consular officer in Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Bangladesh and Iraq. The amount of immigration law and regulations he can retain in his head is almost scary. The consular section that he runs consists of me and my staff, another first-tour officer who is in charge of immigrant visas and services for American citizens in Denmark, his staff, and a couple other locally hired employees. It's a very fun team to work with; everyone is enthusiastic about doing a good job.

There's also a lot to do outside of work. We had Thanksgiving dinner with my boss, his family, the other vice-consul, and a few other guests from the Embassy and expat community. They had a great traditional American feast. We've also been enjoying walking around Copenhagen. There are lots of parks. We've been to the Danish National Gallery of Art and another famous art gallery that was founded by Carlsberg beer founder J. C. Jacobsen. We've visited Rosenborg Castle, previous residence of the royal family which is now a museum exhibiting the crown jewels of Denmark and other national treasures, with each room devoted to a different former monarch. We've gone to the top of the Round Tower, a 17th-century astronomical observatory. We've walked on Copenhagen's celebrated pedestrian shopping street and visited the symbol of the city, the statue of the Little Mermaid in the harbor. There is still a huge amount to see and do, but what we've already seen has been great so far.

Packout, Consultations, Moving

There's a lot of paperwork involved. The key document for transferring to a new post is something called the TM-4, or "travel orders". It takes the form of a cable and specifies who is going where for what job and for how long, how to get there, and what resources are available to take care of people and property before, during and after the transfer. Any time you try to tap into those resources, you need to fill out a form and provide a copy of the travel orders.

Our travel orders allowed us to have the movers come on September 18, pack up all of our stuff and put it in two categories: four huge boxes to send by airplane, and three giant shipping crates with the furniture and other things we can live without for a while, to send by boat. Then the orders let us stay in a hotel in DC for ten days, which was a mixed experience - I had reserved a room at a boutique hotel thinking it would be nicer than one of the big chains, but we were disappointed and ended up going through a lot of hassle to move to a Hilton. On the other hand, we did enjoy being right in the District with access to restaurants and things.

The next thing our orders allowed us to do was to spend two days in New York City, because we have "consultations" (State Department lingo for "meetings") with the Department of Homeland Security before going to a first tour as a consular officer. Those who go to Europe have the DHS consultations in the Big Apple. The meetings themselves didn't take up too much time, so it was a lovely trip for me and Bongsu. Then, finally, the magic travel orders had us board a flying machine in New York and get off the following day in Copenhagen, where we were met at the airport by our Embassy sponsor and driven through the rain to a hotel where we stayed for the first two weeks here.

After our own apartment was ready, we moved in and a couple days later received our UAB ("unaccompanied air baggage" - the four sarcophagi of air freight mentioned above), followed a few weeks later by the HHE ("household effects" - the sea freight). When the HHE arrived, the delivery truck had one of those elevator vehicles which they used to hoist everything up to our third-floor apartment. Luckily we have one large window that opens and everything was able to fit in there. And thus we arrive at the beginning of our adventure.

Bureau of Legislative Affairs

For my second five-week bridge assignment, I worked in the Legislative Reference Unit of the State Department's Bureau of Legislative Affairs (also known as H, for "[Capitol] Hill").


What with the timing of office turnover and work to be done, there were some days when they didn't really have much for me to do. On the one hand, that meant that I was occasionally underutilized; on the other hand, it gave me the opportunity to seek out assignments in various parts of the office and not get stuck in a routine. So I was able to help with a lot of aspects of the work that H does as liaison between State and the Congress: sifting through legislation to identify reports that Congress wants to receive from the Department, sending taskings to the varoius regional and functional bureaus that could prepare those reports or answer questions from Senators and Representative, maintaining databases, and so on.

Most excitingly, I even got a chance to help to prepare for a briefing on the current situation and future possibilities in Iraq by Amb. Christopher Hill before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chaired by Sen. John Kerry. I also got to attend the briefing and help take notes. Ambassador Hill is one of the most inspirational people in the State Department for me; before becoming the Obama administration's Ambassador to Iraq, he served as the principal U.S. negotiator in the Six-Party Talks with North Korea, having previously been a very successful Ambassador to South Korea. So that was definitely one of the coolest experiences of my time in DC.

Assisting Victims of Crime

It turns out I wasn't finished with FSI training after all - when arranging my arrival in Copenhagen with my future boss, he suggested that I add one more course onto my training schedule, and my boss in my second bridge assignment graciously allowed me to take a few days off for it.

The three-day course focused on what services the U.S. Embassy can provide to Americans who become the victim of a serious crime while abroad. A major part of it was on how to interview and talk to someone who might be a victim of domestic abuse, which unfortunately is something many consular officers will have to do on a regular basis. Although I may thankfully never have to be part of such cases, there's always the possibility that I will, and the course definitely made me feel a little bit more confident that I'd be able to muddle through. It would be a lot of responsibility, of course, but fortunately the embassy is not the principal resource for victims, as of course consular officers are not trained as social workers.

Some of the stories from the Victims Assistance course were pretty sobering, but I'm still excited about moving overseas again!

Office of Nordic and Baltic Affairs

My A-100 classmates and I are just a dozen days away from the milestone of six full months as Foreign Service Officers. Ever since May we've been saying goodbye as some of us headed off to various posts worldwide, and now quite a few of us are out there. It's been great to hear some of the experiences our friends are having in Niger, Korea, Canada, Italy, and so on and so forth.

We aren't the newest generation in the State Department anymore either. The 145th and the 146th have come and gone, some of them are even out at post by now, and the 147th is at FSI now, looking forward to their Flag Day on the 31st.

Meanwhile, I've had my chance to experience some changes as well. As reported in the previous update, I finished my classroom training over a month ago. Since then I have been keeping busy, moving on to my OJT (On-the-Job Training) at HST (the Harry S Truman Building, also known as Main State). Not all FSOs get OJT as part of their initial training, so I feel very lucky to have had the opportunity.

This was my desk for the past five weeks. As a matter of fact, it was the first time in my life that I've had my own office, with a door and everything. The office is in a suite of rooms in HST occupied by the Office of Nordic and Baltic Affairs, which is part of the Bureau of European Affairs. Working in EUR/NB was a great experience. I learned a lot (about how the building works, what Washington expects from us at our Embassies abroad, what a future DC tour might be like, and not least, how to write for the State Department). I met some great colleagues, with whom I hope I'll have other opportunities to work together in the future. And I felt again the satisfaction of being productive, making an actual contribution - you know... working!

For the first two weeks of my mini-tour, I filled in for the Denmark/Iceland Desk Officer. The previous incumbent had already left for his next post, and his replacement hadn't arrived yet. That was an incredible opportunity, and it was fascinating to follow the reporting coming out of Copenhagen - basically consuming the stuff that I will soon be producing. It was great timing, too, because I was able to help out with our new Ambassador's preparations for departure - she had just received Senate confirmation before I started, and she arrived in Denmark on July 29.

After the new desk officer started, I had three weeks of generally helping out with the EUR/NB portfolio of eight countries (Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia). I contributed to all sorts of really fascinating projects, including some drafting, which was a great opportunity to learn first-hand about the writing style that this bureaucracy needs. Fortunately the people in the office are all great editors, and great at mentoring in general - people were continually finding interesting projects that I could work on, telling me about their own career paths, giving me advice about what to do once I get to Copenhagen, and generally getting me some exposure to an exciting side of real Foreign Service life.

It seems somewhat common for people in this career to look down on tours in Foggy Bottom. "I didn't join the FOREIGN service to stew in D.C.," they say, or they make snide remarks about ladder-climbers who keep coming back to domestic assignments just for the career-enhancing networking opportunities they provide. I do not subscribe at all to this view. In the admittedly limited exposure I've had to State Department HQ, I found it to be a great working environment, full of people totally committed to working with foreign diplomats, other US government agencies, our Embassies abroad, and the general public to advance our worldwide foreign policy goals.

This is where policy is made; when we get to post, we are taught repeatedly, we can recommend actions to Washington, but the final decision-making happens here, and the people in Washington tell the embassies abroad what to do, not the other way around. This is also the one place where the world comes together into a big picture; each post is responsible for the relationship with one country, but here in offices like mine we have a team of people working on a whole region and seeing how it fits together. One floor up are teams of people looking at larger regions and issues that span the globe. All this, and it's also a really fun place to work. I do hope to serve here in the future, so don't think you're finally getting rid of me for good just because I'm a diplomat now!

Political/Economic Tradecraft

As of today, I've finished the last course of my initial training at the Foreign Service Institute. My final class was the three-week course on how to be a political officer (the second year of my rotation at Embassy Copenhagen). It was definitely a high point of the overall instruction.

One of the best aspects was a good overview of basic economics. Through lectures and a book ("Naked Economics" by Charles Wheelan) we got just enough of an introduction to speak somewhat comfortably about international economics.

In the second week, we had opportunities to practice various skills of an embassy's political section. We prepared three-minute briefings on a topic related to our destination countries (mine was on the Danish government's environmental policies), wrote and revised cables reporting to Washington, created and presented a PowerPoint on the destination country's economy, and practiced "elevator briefings" (the subtle art of boiling down a complex issue to a sixty-second explanation that one could give to a VIP during the ride in the elevator down to the meeting room). They also showed us some technology, ranging from a pretty cool wiki that the US government uses to share sensitive and classified information between various agencies, to the sometimes bizarrely counterintuitive program that we use for writing and sending "cables" to the Department.

During the Pol/Econ course I was also able to join a meeting the Danish Embassy in DC held for various U.S. diplomats who will be going to Copenhagen this year. My friend Spencer, who passed the FSOA with me and was in the A-100 class right before mine, helped set that up for me. It will be fun working with him in Denmark. The embassy lunch meeting was a great chance to hear the Danish point of view on issues ranging from the climate change conference to prospects for economic recovery in the EU to the best way of keeping a healthy lifestyle in Copenhagen. It was also a good opportunity to enjoy real smørrebrød prepared by a professional Danish chef.

Another highlight was a briefing by Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter, State's Director of Policy Planning. She said that she enjoys meeting new officers and encouraged us to go out and have great careers. She also gave us some insights into Secretary Clinton's major speech at the Council on Foreign Relations this week, and into the general style and substance of the Obama administration's approach to foreign policy.

While we were at the main State Department building for the meeting with Dr. Slaughter, I also had a chance to meet with one of the coordinators for our delegation to the climate change conference in December. In general, I've been impressed with how easy it is to make appointments with all kinds of different people who have information that might help me in Denmark, and how happy they are to take the time to share that information. People have prepared print-outs of briefing info for me, talked about the kind of reporting they need to receive back from post, what I can do to make their jobs easier and what I can do to make my own work more rewarding. It seems like a great atmosphere at the Department. Which is good, because another office I checked in on that day was the Office of Nordic and Baltic Affairs in the European Bureau, where I'll be working for five weeks starting on Monday. I introduced myself to the receptionist, confirmed that they're expecting me, and checked out the room that she thinks will probably be my office. I am most definitely looking forward to being productive again - while I've enjoyed learning new things for the past 20 weeks, it will be nice to feel like I'm making a contribution, and earning the salary on which the government is spending your tax dollars.