Wasn’t there a time when Republicans knew something about economics?

Trudy Rubin: Why so little passion about Darfur?

On Sunday, the Save Darfur coalition will hold a mass rally in Washington to focus public outrage on the genocide in that country….
But, although the Sunday rally will be large, it appears the numbers won't be sufficient to make a truly powerful statement -- unless more demonstrators travel to Washington at the last minute. (For rally details, see www.savedarfur.org or www.genocideintervention.net…
After the Rwandan slaughter of 800,000 in 1994, there seemed to be strong public sentiment against permitting another such slaughter.
Bush reportedly wrote in the margins of a study on Rwanda: "Not on my watch." The movie "Hotel Rwanda," a true story about a hotel manager in Kigali who saved 1,200 guests from death by machete, gave Americans a graphic portrait of the Rwandan tragedy. Don Cheadle was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as the hotelier, Paul Rusesabagina, who proved that one man can make a difference.
So it was depressing to hear the real Rusesabagina speak at the Free Library of Philadelphia about his January 2005 trip to Darfur.
"What we didn't learn in Rwanda, we didn't learn in Darfur," he said bluntly. He recalled that, while flying back from Darfur, he watched a TV broadcast of the 60th anniversary celebrations of the liberation of Auschwitz.
"How many times shall we keep lying 'never again'?" he asked.

The Democrats Never Did Understand Economics
One thing about the Democrats, though, is that they can always make the Republicans look good by comparison. The latest Democratic proposal is for a "windfall profits tax," whereby they would steal the oil companies' money and create a windfall for themselves. This might be the single stupidest thing that could be done in connection with the current shortage of gasoline. If we steal the oil companies' money, the result will be less investment in drilling, pipelines and refineries, which means less supply of oil, which means higher prices indefinitely.

Chavez Wins It For Garcia (Venezuela has to buy oil!)

Pledging fealty to ‘vilayat e faqih’ in Iran’s impending war with the West

Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba form economic/political alliance

Bolivia's new left-leaning president signed a pact with Cuba and Venezuela on Saturday that rejects U.S.-backed free trade and promises a socialist version of regional commerce and cooperation…. Dressed in his typical olive green uniform, Castro, who turns 80 in August, said sharing the spotlight with two younger, like-minded leaders "makes me the happiest man in the world."
The U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas hemispheric trade pact stalled last year, but Washington since has signed nine free-trade agreements with Latin American countries….
Chavez is likely eyeing Peru as a potential ALBA member if nationalist Ollanta Humala prevails in a presidential runoff expected for May 28 or June 4. Humala was the front-runner in the April election.

British troops in Iraq are afraid to open fire, secret MoD report confirms

British troops in Iraq "lack the confidence to open fire" because of a "fear of prosecution", says a confidential Ministry of Defence (MoD) report seen by The Sunday Telegraph.

It confirms that soldiers believe that if they shoot dead insurgents they will become embroiled in a "protracted investigation" and if prosecuted will receive "no support from the chain of command".

…
Patrick Mercer, the Tory spokesman on homeland security, who is a former infantry commanding officer, said last night: "We went through all of this in Northern Ireland 30 years ago and we arrived at rules of engagement that worked. The MoD has got to be held to blame for eroding a soldier's ability and willingness to defend himself. You can't send lads into action who are not completely confident that they will be backed to the hilt by the people who sent them to this war in the first place. The MoD has been consistently economical with the truth on this matter."

Third World veto leaves UN in budget crisis

Third world nations have blocked a sweeping United Nations reform package that is backed by the West, in an acrimonious showdown that has left the troubled organisation heading for a budget crisis in June….
Adam Thomson, Britain's deputy head of mission, expressed dismay at what he called the "destructive move" by the so-called Group of 77 - which represents 133 poorer nations - after it forced the vote in a UN budget committee that traditionally works by consensus. France's UN ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere, said: "This was a victory for the radicals."
Western diplomats fear that the ambush has sabotaged the best chance for reforming the organisation after its authority was left in tatters by disclosures of corruption and incompetence in the oil-for-food programme.
The UN also faces an immediate funding crisis following the 108-50 vote, since, at US insistence, the assembly agreed in December to delay setting a two-year budget until there was progress on reforms. Instead it set a temporary budget that will run out at the end of June.

This morning’s Washington Post spurs me to ask: What part of NO don’t you understand? The “N” or the “O”.

It also reminds me that NO can stand for Nuclear Option. Which leads me back to the first question.

For those who see threats of or resorts to force as unacceptable, regardless of the alternatives or in the face of real existential threats, the lessons in the Middle East run contrary.

David Ignatius writes about “Misreading the Enemy: What we don’t grasp about militant Islam.” Next to that is an op-ed, “The Untold Story of Israel’s Bomb,” a shorter version of this in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, opposed to nuclear weapons under almost any circumstances.

Ignatius asks, with reference to Iran, “how do you resolve a confrontation with an adversary that appears unable or unwilling to negotiate a settlement?” Ignatius is pessimistic. Perhaps searching for some ephemeral ray of light, Ignatius ends with this misleading delusion:

The Muslim demand for respect isn’t something that can be negotiated, but that doesn’t mean the West shouldn’t take it seriously. For as the Muslim world gains a greater sense of dignity in its dealings with the West, the fundamental weapon of Iran, al-Quaeda and Hamas will lose much of its potency.

Ignatius, however, should have re-read his own column, to see what really works:

French analysts believe the Iranians displayed a similar refusal to negotiate during their long and bloody war with Iraq in the 1980’s. The exhausted Iraqis made efforts to seek a negotiated peace, but the Iranians rejected their feelers. After America and France covertly aided Saddam Hussein, the Iranians finally accepted a United Nations-mandated cease-fire in August 1988.

Even Iran is sane enough to read the writing on the wall, at least when it is seen as real. This stands in stark contrast to today’s European equivocation, Russia and China’s obstruction, and the United States’ appearing to call for directions from the back-seat, that Iran does not take seriously. (See here, and here, for the latest of Iran’s attitude of imperviousness.)

Ignatius might also have referred to the Middle Eastern satraps’ self-interest and extensive efforts to stir up anti-Western and anti-Israeli sentiment and actions, in order to distract their downtrodden peoples from their rulers’ self-enrichment at their expense. Pride, self and others’ respect, will only come when Middle Eastern peoples eject these satraps.

The “Untold Story of Israel’s Bomb” concludes: “It is time for a new deal…with Israel telling the truth and finally normalizing its nuclear affairs.” That normalizing -- in the eyes of those with moral equivalence, or in the eyes of those who would rather countenance anything, any horror, rather than contemplate the nuclear option -- would have Israel renounce its secretive nuclear capability, in the face of repeated and current calls and efforts by its regional neighbors to eradicate it.

I’ve heard stories (but not seen authoritative proof) that Israel told Nixon and Kissinger that it would resort to nuclear response as a last resort to prevent being overrun in the 1973 Yom Kippur War surprise attack. This prompted the late-in-the-day airlift of U.S. arms resupply – which arrived too late, as Israel’s generalship and citizen-resolve turned the tide, but did alert the Soviet Union to not up its ante of pre-supplying the Arab invasion.

“The Untold Story of Israel’s Bomb” does point out that in a 1969 meeting by Nixon with Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir:

Meir, in turn, probably acknowledged – taciltly or explicitly – that Israel had reached a weapons capability, but probably, pledged extreme caution. (Years later, Nixon told CNN’s Larry King that he knew for certain that Israel had the bomb, but he wouldn’t reveal his source.) Meir may have assured Nixon that Israel thought of nuclear weapons as a last-resort option…

Over time, the tentative Nixon-Meir understanding became the foundation for a remarkable U.S.-Israeli deal, accompanied by a tacit but strict code of behavior to which both nations closely adhered. Even during its darkest hours in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel was cautious not to make any public display of its nuclear capability.

Israel didn’t have to. Friends and foes knew full well – especially in those days of greater international respect for Israel’s steely, determined resolve -- that Israel very well may so respond rather than face eradication.

The lessons are clear for those who see, and obscured by those who shield their eyes.

Which would you rather spend several hundred billion dollars on?:
A war, or
Investing in energy exploration, refinery and distribution capacity, alternative energy sources, and conservation.

If we continue the way we are, we're going to be up the creek without a paddle. (Scroll down for photo of this course.)

We very well may see war costs, as there's more than oil involved in Iran's nuclear and missile ambitions and threats.

Either due to war, or due to the increases in demand from China and other developing countries running up prices, and China and Russia controlling more of the supplies, the U.S. is facing huge increased costs for its continued reliance on imported oil, along with increased political pressures on us and Europe to go along with Chinese or Russian ambitions on top of with the instable satrapies of the Middle East, Africa, and Venezuela.

The only way out of this trap, self-set, is by investing in "fencing" ourselves off from treacherous costs and countries. That can only be done by getting ourselves off the addiction to oil. At least, if we're up a stream we'll have a paddle.

No More Secret Numbered Accounts
In 1970, the U.S. government passed the Bank Secrecy Act which (among many other things) required U.S. citizens and residents to file a report that gives the location and account number of all foreign financial accounts held by or for U.S. persons. The Act introduced severe penalties for a willful failure to disclose the existence of any foreign accounts but proving that a failure to report such accounts is willful is difficult and only a few people were assessed penalties.

In 2004, the Government introduced a new penalty of up to $10,000 for a non-willful failure to file the Foreign Bank Account (FBAR) form. And, in the past few years, the IRS has acquired information about offshore credit cards from a variety of sources. Now they have a way to identify scofflaws who have foreign accounts that are not reported on Treasury Department Form 90-22.1 on or before June 30th of the year following the reporting year.

US Jews leading Darfur rally planning
Thousands of people will be marching this Sunday in Washington, DC under a banner that carries a simple two-word demand: "Save Darfur."…
Little known, however, is that the coalition, which has presented itself as "an alliance of over 130 diverse faith-based, humanitarian, and human rights organization" was actually begun exclusively as an initiative of the American Jewish community….
Though there are other major religious organizations, like the United States Conference on Catholic Bishops and the National Association of Evangelicals, both of which have giant constituencies that number in the millions, these groups have not done the kind of extensive grassroots outreach that will produce numbers….
…the other striking aspect of the coalition is the noted absence of major African-American groups like the NAACP or the larger Africa lobby groups like Africa Action. When asked to comment, representatives of both groups insisted they were publicizing the rally but had not become part of the coalition or signed the Unity Statement declaring Save Darfur's objectives.
She thinks the strong Jewish response has to do with the memories of Rwanda. "The Jewish community has probably had a higher level of lingering guilt over Rwanda than the average person," Messinger says. "And now learning about another genocide, I think people are beginning to understand that we are close to making a mockery of the words 'Never Again.'"

Estimates of Unauthorized Migrant by State, per Pew

State Senate Supports Immigrant Walkout On Monday (Are they out of their darn minds!)
California's state senators on Thursday endorsed Monday's boycott of schools, jobs and stores by illegal immigrants and their allies as supporters equated the protest with great social movements in American history.

Iran has missiles that put Europe in range: report
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Iran has received a first shipment of missiles from North Korea that are capable of reaching Europe, Israel's military intelligence chief was quoted on Thursday as saying.
Known in the West as BM-25s, the Russian-designed missiles have a range of around 1,500 miles, giving them a longer reach than the Iranian-made Shihab-4 missiles which are capable of hitting Israel.
The intelligence chief, Major-General Amos Yadlin, was quoted by Israel's Haaretz newspaper as saying in a lecture on Wednesday that some BM-25s had arrived in Iran.
The BM-25 was originally manufactured in the Soviet Union, where it was known as the SSN6, a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, Haaretz reported.
After the Russians decommissioned the SSN6, the missiles were sold to North Korea, which adapted them to carry a heavier payload, the newspaper's military affairs correspondent said.
In February, a German diplomat, citing his country's intelligence data, confirmed a German newspaper report that said Iran had purchased 18 disassembled BM-25s from North Korea.

EXTREME SWEDEN

Counterterrorism in African Failed States

This morning I was interviewed by one of Radio trade TALKERS magazine’s “Heavy Hundred” (the 100 most important radio talk hosts in America), Brad Messer of CBS’s San Antonio station KTSA.

Brad said he’d tried to have a journalist from Iraq on his show at least once a month. However, his parent CBS usually tells him there’s none available there or just a local stringer.

Last month, I posted “Media in Iraq: Cowardice or Cheapness” that “a more central problem” than bias or risk in the U.S. media’s inadequate coverage of the war and developments in Iraq may be “the cheapness of the media in devoting resources to the war.” There are too few reporters to cover the many positive stories, instead focusing on the “if it bleeds, it leads” bombings around Baghdad, often staged for their coverage.

I ended that post:

If I were more of a Marxist, I would see a media capitalist conspiracy!
BTW: I have an excellent op-ed prepared going into much more depth and revelation on this subject. Any help getting it placed would reduce my Marxist suspicions.

Leading journalism trade newspaper Editor & Publisher kept me from waving the red flag by publishing my column, “Is the Press Covering the Iraq War On The Cheap.”

Letters to the editor of E&P from knowledgeable readers were favorable.

What one news business commentator calls “the news media’s dirty little secrets” is that inexpensive freelancers and locals are heavily used, of sometimes questionable abilities and agenda. A Committee to Protect Journalists article in 2004 on these “fixers” has the Knight Ridder bureau chief in Baghdad saying, “Their work has changed in the last year I’ve been here from making phone calls to going out and covering stories.” The Islamabad bureau chief for Associated Press says, “Their role is changing from a source to a contributor.”

There have been some cases of such locals being suspected of complicity in staging “news” of bombings, or of fabricating news. See here, or here, and here, for examples.

Today’s E&P front-pages James Carroll, former editor at the Los Angeles Times, speaking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors:

Carroll said bluntly that the goal of current newspaper owners is “money, that’s it.”…”It’s not surprising that there is a backlash today against those who are presumed to be gatekeepers.”…[Carroll] noting that too many owners are going for “milking a dying business for all it is worth. The symptoms of harvesting are staring us in the face.” He added that it is “most especially, in high profit margins.” He said that the average newspaper profit margin remains 19.5%.

Another newspaper business analyst points out in The New Yorker, that just sold McClatchy newspaper chain’s “operating margin last year was twenty-eight per cent….newspaper chains have become relentless in their pursuit of cost-cutting. Although much of this has been bad for the art of journalism, it has been very good for the bottom line.”

Those newspaper margins are far higher than those of oil companies, or most any other industry. Talking heads are often paid millions of dollars for their frequent inanity.

Gee, do ya think the press can spare something more than pocket change to serve their customers with the better coverage deserved about the Iraq war?

Political Psychology: The Bush Bubble Myth

No, Mr. Bush is a clear-eyed realist when it comes to his circumstances, and ours. He is not in political trouble because he inhabits a bubble. He is on trouble because he has undertaken a difficult war against a relentless enemy and is determined to see it though despite the public's fatigue and doubt. He is in trouble because from the start of his administration he has faced relentless domestic political enemies who are determined to cripple and, if possible, ruin his presidency. And he is in trouble because some allies he should be able to count upon appear to have adopted the fallacious arguments of his enemies or in the case of Congress are afraid to directly address them.

A Reporter’s Confession

Regular readers of Maggie's Farm know that I am a newspaper reporter by profession…
Thus when I see the big city reporters publishing pieces on classified material, and the like, I understand it completely. Reporters, in moments of weakness, will sell their souls, or their country, to try to redeem the sense of purposelessness of their lives. They want to be engaged, and not objective observers. In my opinion, that is reporting in bad faith.
In our newsroom, in our medium-sized city, we sometimes amuse ourselves with the New York Times, which many newsmen view as a political tool. We figure out what they leave out, what they bury on page 21, how they spin stories, and what they decide to cover. We howl over their lame corrections. They have become highly agenda-driven, with a socialist, multi-cultural, anti-Israel, anti-American bent, but will not admit it. And I am telling you why that happens - it's not just that they have a leftist mission: it's about ego. They want to "make a difference" and they want to "feel virtuous" with other people's money - but without doing anything real other than typing on a keyboard. In other words, the NYT reporters are nothing more than full-time bloggers, who get paid and who kill trees.

Media Again Ignore Consumer Confidence Highs (which correlates with incumbency at election-time)

On April 25, The Conference Board reported that it found consumer confidence at a four-year high. The network evening newscasts all ignored the news, focusing instead on their continuing drumbeat about high gas prices.

India Gets Expansionist

Now, with India joining in the effort, the republics of Central Asia will come under even more democratic influence. India's new economic growth requires dependable sources of energy, and the region has the reserves and the capacity to deliver. The military bases will provide India the necessary security for their pipelines, but it will also serve to strengthen the independence of Tajikistan from the increasingly autocratic domination of Moscow.

Sinai Under Siege

What really needs to happen is Mubarak needs to liberalize the economy and bring in more investment as quickly as possible while relaxing the security regime. He also needs to stop mindlessly cracking down on liberal forces in the country. If he actually did this, then he’d be worth supporting.

The cold war for energy heats up

When Presdient went on a gas price political offensive – anticipating November mid-term elections – his tactics also reflected heating up of the energy issue worldwide. Whatever the rhetoric, ultimately competition for international energy dictates rising prices….
Arrival in Washington in late April of a relatively obscure Central Asian chief, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, is another piece moving in this giant chess….he owes his continuing patrimony to U.S. strategy linking Caspian oilfields to Western markets by skirting Russian infrastructure….In addition to oil, Azerbaijan lies next to Iran with twice more Azeris than Aliyev’s domain..Basses there could be critical if and when the Iranian WMD crisis explodes.
Alliyev’s oil-related travels aren’t unique. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is meeting President Valdimir Putin in Tomsk, western Siberia, a petroleum treasure trove. Merkel will be walking a fine line; she won’t be lecturing Putin on human rights as at their first meeting. She will be coaxing Russian’s oil tsar [Moscow is now No. 2 exporter] toward a new European Community energy agreement, seeking to level the playing field between Russia and its biggest customers. But oil is a weapon Putin hopes to use to recover superpower status. Unfortunately Merkel had the rug pulled from under her when her predecessor – in a scandalous abuse of power as he left office – signed a huge new gas pipeline deal. Gerhard Shroeder got plushy retirement as chairman of the new enterprise. But since it runs through the Baltic skirting Poland and the Baltic states, it gives Putin additional leverage over his EU customers. Merkel’s calls for diversification of EU’s energy sources, however grim the prospects, rings very true.
Although China’s mushrooming imports have tapered off a bit, President Hu Jintao made a beeline for Saudi Arabia after departing a somewhat cool Washington visit. Never mind the Saudis abetting Moslem Uighur rebels in China’s westernmost province of Singkiang where Beijing’s own relatively minor new oil and gas is found and where they will soon connect with Kazahstan, and perhaps, even Caspian oil. Nor is it the only place where Beijing’s supposed alliance with the U.S. in the war on terror collides with oil hunger. In Sudan, Osama Ben Ladin has just declared war on American-backed peacekeeping forces before they arrive to halt genocide on fellow Moslems in Dafur. But his murdering Khartoum allies are selling China oil after Canadians retreated in the face of human rights activists.
Hu’s trip to the Big Pump [Saudi is the largest exporter and has the largest reserves] was preceded only a few weeks with agreement on proposed Chinese purchases of Australian uranium. Down Under has 40 percent of world uranium reserves. That deal came after offshore Australian gas was sold to a Chinese government oil firm, according to Ozzie commercial media, at disadvantaged prices in the heady Antipodean “China boom” atmosphere..
The competition’s intensity has sworn enemies, India and Pakistan, talking up energy collaboration to pipe Iranian gas to the Subcontinent….
But in a globalized world economy, the intensity of the interplay has probably never seen its equal.

Medicare Rule Guarantees Continuity of Drugs

The Bush administration issued a new policy on Wednesday that protects Medicare beneficiaries against the sudden loss of coverage for drugs they are taking under the prescription drug program.
Under the policy, insurers can still change their lists of covered drugs, known as formularies. But if they drop any drugs or impose new restrictions, they must exempt beneficiaries who are now taking those drugs. …
The policy addresses one of the chief criticisms of the Medicare drug benefit. Democrats and a few Republicans in Congress had said it was unfair that drug plans could change their formularies at will while most beneficiaries were locked into a drug plan for the full year. This disparity was a major concern for many consumer advocates and for some beneficiaries….
In most states, 40 or more drug plans are available. They differ in premiums, co-payments, deductibles and other details. Some plans cover fewer than 800 drugs. Some cover more than 1,800….
Dr. McClellan, the Medicare administrator, said his agency had received 4,600 requests from drug plans that wanted to change their formularies. About 3,100, he said, involve the addition of drugs or relatively minor changes. About 1,500 requests involve more significant changes that will be covered by the new requirement, he said.

Teachers' Unions are Cheating Their Members

Tom Elia has a link and analysis to a story in the LA Times about how the NEA recommends certain retirement funds to their members. They then receive premiums from the insurance companies totally millions of dollars. It is just unfortunate that the policies they recommend are bad deals financially for the teachers making the investments.

Yesterday, the editor of journalism’s leading trade newspaper, Editor & Publisher, was kind to publish my column, “Is the Media Covering Iraq On the Cheap?” (See footnote)

It is important to note that the editor of Editor & Publisher is very and outspokenly critical of President Bush and of the U.S. engagement in Iraq. In the finest tradition of journalism, which liberal and conservative critics bemoan receding, the editor of journalism’s leading trade newspaper saw a worthwhile and documented point of view in my piece even though not necessarily (I don’t know) his own and critical of the major media. Similarly, the two interviewees in my piece are highly critical of the Iraq war, and know I’m a supporter, but graciously gave of their time.

I’ve, over the years, had op-eds in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, and elsewhere in what’s called the MSM. I am not known for hiding my views under a basket, and haven’t. Whether these papers’ editors disagreed with my views, they saw something worth being read.

Yesterday’s column was selected as worthwhile by RealClearPolitics.com, and its core point recognized by leading blogs like Instapundit.com and others. That core point was that, independent of and even regardless of views of the Iraq war, a major cause of inadequate journalism about it – overfocus on the bombings around Baghdad and underfocus on the more positive rest of the story – is the cheapness of the MSM to commit enough and trained reporters there, while less costly local stringers are used.

Meanwhile, several emails I received from knowledgeable bloggers and friends criticized my piece for what it left out: reporters being safer and seeing more by being embedded than wandering on their own, or additional insurance solutions.

Although those points, quotes and documentation, and others, were included in my original draft, and were edited out, the fault isn’t the editor’s but mine.

Unless a major established name, or in a venue that runs extended pieces, the pretty hard-and-fast rule of op-eds is they must be between 600-750 words, and closer to the lower. My original draft was 1162 words, and my submitted draft 936 words. The published piece was 807 words. I agreed to the edits, as their removal did not distract from the core point, even though they may have added to it.

Last week I wrote a semi-snarky blog post, “What are you saying, Bruce?” in which I said:

A columnist friend says that I know too much and try to fit that information and its nuances into my posts. Columnists focus on only one point, and I cover many.

Then I proceeded to write two-sentence positions on 9 different major topics. One doesn't have to go to that extreme, but brevity and succinctness are important.

Myself and others are too often critical of the MSM for its slants or omissions, and too often not self-disciplined in our writing – or considerate enough -- to break through.

484 words!

Footnote: For some reason, in a later edition, the title was changed to “Is the Press Covering the Iraq War on the Cheap?”; My original title was, “More, Not Less, Media Needed in Iraq.”

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, Yom Hashoa.

"Never Again" does have special meaning for us. My middle name, Neach, is for my grandfather's brother, principal of the Jewish "college" in their area of Belarus, who was beaten over the head with a shovel and thrown in the ditch, along with almost all from the schtetl of Horaduc, except for some teens who escaped and fought as partisans, often being attacked by locals as well.

Judith Klinghoffer posts the song of courage, “Never Say”, from her uncle Mordechai who fought as a partisan:

Never say there is only death for you.
Leaden skies may be concealing days of blue -
Because the hour we have hungered for is near;
Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: We are here!

From land of palm-tree to the far-off land of snow,
We shall be coming with our torment and our woe.
And everywhere our blood has sunk into the earth,
Shall our bravery, our vigor blossom forth!

We’ll have the morning sun to set our day aglow,
And all our yesterdays shall vanish with the foe,
And if the time is long before the sun appears,
Then let this song go like a signal through the years.

This song was written with our blood and not with lead;
It’s not a song that birds sing overhead,
It was a people, among toppling barricades,
That sang this song of ours with pistols and
grenades.

So never say that there is only death for you.
Leaden skies may be concealing days of blue -
Because the hour we have hungered for is near;
Beneath our tread the earth shall tremble: We are here!

NEXT time you meet someone with a stomach for appeasement, have them see this.

Journalism’s leading newspaper just published my column, “Is the Media Covering Iraq On the Cheap?” My sincere thanks to E&P’s editor.

EDITOR & PUBLISHER, April 25, 2006
Is the Media Covering Iraq On the Cheap?
The media needs to send more "troops" to cover the war and provide much-needed coverage. What's stopping them? Fear of violence, certainly, but also limits on training and insurance. Joe Galloway also notes the military's "growing resistance" to embeds.

By Bruce Kesler

(April 25, 2006) -- Journalists are reviled by many for alleged negativism and over-focus on bad news in Iraq. Or perhaps the problem is: Their employers are just trying to do it on the cheap. Ironically, the same media that criticizes the U.S. for sending too few troops to stabilize Iraq send too few reporters to cover much more than the dramatic bombings around Baghdad.

“I hope we keep out of the post-Vietnam thing that the press lost the war,” Joe Galloway, soon to retire military editor for Knight Ridder, recently told me in an interview. But discrepancies in what’s reported, or an imbalance, are daily highlighted by military bloggers in Iraq and conservative commentators here at home.

If truth is journalism’s goal, cheapness within journalism undermines it. Embedded reporter Paul McLeary wrote in Columbia Journalism Review not long ago, “In Iraq, the untold stories pile up, one by one by one,” because “there just aren’t enough of them [journalists] to give the conflict its due.”

I turned to Joe Galloway’s 41years of experience in military reporting to see what can improve military-press relations. Some 692 journalists embedded during the invasion of Iraq. Interviews by the Institute for Defense Analysis reported, “The participants’ overall assessment &hellipwas that it was successful and that it benefited the military, the media, the public, and the military families.” Yet, the program has withered to several dozen embeds today.

Why? Galloway says there’s “growing resistance from the military to [those] embeds” it considers negative. Meanwhile, the $30,000 or more per month (above wages) cost of supporting reporters in Iraq is more than most media organizations want to spend, even though this is a major war and more important than many other beats.

Media bureaus in Baghdad now operate largely through inexpensive Iraqi stringers. I asked Galloway how such Iraqis are vetted for reliability. Galloway said that in the case of Knight Ridder, the bureau chief is fluent in Arabic as her primary check.

Perceived danger is important in the reluctance of reporters to get out and about. Most reporters in Iraq stay close to Baghdad, and that’s where the bloody news and contentious politics are, often staged for their coverage. Articles about boring days patrolling peacefully in other 15 provinces, or of Iraqis rebuilding, are not considered as newsworthy.

Two American journalists have been killed from 2003 to 2006. Sig Christenson, military reporter for The San Antonio Express-News and president of the Military Reporters and Editors, comments: “Everybody who goes over there, they’ve got families back at home&hellip.It isn’t easy for them to pack their bags and get on a plane and leave knowing how dangerous it is over there.” Yet, American media haven’t energetically sought better insurance to encourage more reporters to go, and reduce costs.

I asked Galloway what insurance exists for reporters. He said large media organizations self-insure several times salary, or seek a special insurance policy. Special risk policies for individual employers cost from $100-$200 per day for disability and death benefits of ten-times salary to a cap of $1-million. But insurance policies available to government-contractors through larger group underwriting cost a fraction of that. Reporters Without Borders negotiated special policies for European Union reporters.

Galloway said he never heard of any U.S. media association negotiating such favorable policies for journalists. I emailed Linda Foley, president of the Newspaper Guild, to ask whether the Guild was pursuing such insurance. She responded: “We have looked at sponsoring plans...but health and disability insurance is delivered almost exclusively through employers &hellipWe have bargained with employers to provide these type of benefits, and some do.” But surely other approaches could be attempted.

Training reduces danger and increases understanding military operations. In the fall and winter of 2002, over 100 journalists went through a one-week course with the military, preparing for possible action in Iraq. But after that, many media organizations grew nonchalant about that. Galloway told me about the highest levels of the military offering courses to journalists, but being rejected.

With many Americans suspicious of journalists, and journalists having their own fears to deal with, what can one expect from efforts by Galloway and others at the Military Reporters and Editors group to improve embedding? Galloway said more standards are needed to govern negotiations and relations with the military during embedding. That may be so, and fruitful. But the more fundamental problems of a reliable press, and more constructive cooperation between media and military, may rest in the media committing more “troops” to Iraq, with better training--and better insurance premiums.

Bruce Kesler (letters@editorandpublisher.com) writes for Democracy-Project.com, American Enterprise institute Online, and Augusta Free Press. Kesler, a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran, owns an employee benefits firm in Encinitas, CA.

The impact of the Internet, and how it serves our warriors, is the focus of two important posts today. Put these against the rants of OBL and friends, often absurd but always featured by the major media, and see another reason why they’re no match for our guys.

Dan Glover of National Journal’s Beltway Blogroll does a fine job of covering last Saturday’s MilBlog Conference, “MilBloggers With Attitude.” An important theme was the developing and sometimes uneasy relationship between the bloggers and the Department of Defense.

The military certainly has taken note of the blogosphere. At least one official from U.S. Central Command, for instance, attended the conference. That is just one example of attempts at blog outreach that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mentioned in a February speech.
The Defense Department research wing that created the Internet also is looking to cull information from foreign-language blogs. And just last week, the department's press service announced that the Defense Science Board this summer will study the military impact of blogs.

But bloggers see room for improvement. John Donovan of Argghhh, a milblogger at the event, said in an interview that the Pentagon right now is just sending "obvious pieces of recruiting propaganda" that milbloggers are rejecting. "They're frankly clumsy about it because they still don't understand blogs," he said.

Bill Roggio of The Counterterrorism Blog and The Fourth Rail offered this message to the Pentagon public affairs team: "Accept us like you accept the media. ... Allow your people to talk. The risk you take with [operational security] is miniscule compared with the benefits you can get from engaging the milbloggers."

Engaging them is only half the equation, though; the other half is not quashing them. Panelists repeatedly urged milbloggers to remember one key principle before posting content to a blog: that their words can be read by enemies like al-Qaida terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. That means milbloggers need to write responsibly.

Missteps may well come, the panelists said, but the military should not respond by regulating blogs. "If the Army restricts bloggers," said Matt of Blackfive, "all you will have are ... dissident bloggers who are willing to take a risk."

John Noonan of OPFOR offered another idea instead: "We will help you and do it in a less abrasive way."

Strategy Page provides some of the other important tactical, strategic and political impacts that MilBloggers are having:

…The mass media ran with the six generals, but got shot down by the troops and their blogs, message board postings and emails. It wasn't just a matter of the "troop media" being more powerful. No, what the troops had going for them was a more convincing reality. Unlike the six generals, many of the Internet troops were in Iraq, or had recently been there. Their opinions were not as eloquent as those of the generals, but they were also more convincing….

The military has become a lot more responsive to "what the troops want" in the last decade, since the Internet became widely available. What happened was simple. The troops got on line, found each other and have been sharing opinions and experiences, getting to know each other, and doing it all very quickly. The most striking example of this is how it has changed the speed with which new weapons and equipment get into service….

But the troops also exchanged information on tactics and techniques, as well as anything else they knew that could help keep them alive in combat. This alarmed the Department of Defense, which put some restrictions on active duty bloggers. The troops did not fight back, as, once reminded, they understood that, in public forums, anyone could read what they were saying, including the enemy. So a lot of this information continued to be exchanged email and private message boards. The military got into the act by establishing official message boards, for military personnel only, where useful information could be discussed and exchanged. All this rapid information sharing has had an enormous impact on the effectiveness of the troops, something that has largely gone unnoticed by the mass media.

The military is eagerly building a "battlefield Internet" for use during combat, and parts of this are up and running and heavily used in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This is all uncharted territory. There's never been an army before where all the troops were so well connected with each other. So far, the benefits have outweighed any liabilities. But no one is sure where it will go next, and the public is largely unaware of the impact, because the mass media has not grasped nature and extent of the changes.

Tens of Thousands Protest 70k Murders in Venezuela

What do 70,000 unsolved murders look like? That’s what Venezuelans tried to show today in a unique and passionate protest in Caracas.
The most visible legacy of Hugo Chavez’s regime is murder. As the entire governmental infrastructure becomes politicized, one hard hit section is the police. Bad cops, so long as they are Chavistically loyal, are the ones hired, while the ethical cops get thrown out. Not only that, the government is focusing its resources on prosecuting political, not criminal, cases. That leaves the cops who could make a difference out of luck. Lastly, Chavez encourages lawlessness, telling people that to steal is all right, so long as it is for food. It doesn’t take long for a slippery slope to come down when the government itself endorses theft against private property.

The tough and decisive Al Maliki is chosen to head Iraq's post-Saddam Government

Some important points from Mashhadani's speech:

1-We will not let sectarianism lead the people of Iraq to internal fighting.
2-Consitution is the reference but this constitution is amendable and subject for improvement when necessary (indicates a desire to amend some articles).
3-We will not allow the marginalization of any group or segment of the people.
4-The legislative authority will not be an obstacle in the face of the executive authority but rather a watching eye.
5- Building and reforming the armed forces on basis of loyalty to the nation.

The Grand Alliance: A review of Churchill and America by Martin Gilbert

Peel away the layers of the Left's disdain for the Bush Administration and you find a fundamental discomfort with the idea of American exceptionalism—the idea, as old as the founding itself, that America is a special, even providential nation because it is, in Leo Strauss's words, "the only country in the world which was founded in explicit opposition to Machiavellian principles." In sum, the chief political division of our time may be over the nature and meaning of America itself.
It is not surprising, then, that Europeans, committed to an increasingly watery internationalism, take exception to American exceptionalism. Winston Churchill was one of the few foreign statesmen of the last century who embraced American exceptionalism and understood its importance for the world.
…
One crucial theme downplayed by Gilbert's approach is Churchill's thought on the nature of American and British democracy, and the differences between them. This bears especially on Churchill's longstanding grievances with American isolationism. He attributed American isolationism in part to the Constitution: "The American Constitution was designed by the Founding Fathers to keep the United States clear of European entanglements—and by God it has stood the test of time." Churchill, it seems, disliked the separation of powers at the heart of American constitutionalism, which constrains the president's power in war and foreign policy….One wonders, then, how complete was Churchill's understanding of American democracy.

A year ago Gilbert reflected in the Observer on whether George W. Bush and Tony Blair might become heirs to the legendary Churchill-Roosevelt partnership:
Although it can easily be argued that George W. Bush and Tony Blair face a far lesser challenge than Roosevelt and Churchill did—that the war on terror is not a third world war—they may well, with the passage of time and the opening of the archives, join the ranks of Roosevelt and Churchill.

9/11 and MS. MCCARTHY

With her revelations McCarthy not only tried to prevent Rice from enlarging the American anti- terrorist coalition but put significant pressure on its existing coalition partners. In other words she set out purposefully to harm American strategic interests.

Success As An Orphan

The editors of National Review explain why the selection of a compromise prime minister in Iraq "is a major victory for that country’s fledgling political class, and for the Bush administration." They also note that
Purveyors of doom on Iraq now have some explaining to do: If the country is in the midst of a full-scale civil war fatal to our project there, how is it that elected representatives of the major factions were able to sit down and hammer out an agreement on the top positions in a national unity government? Iraq pessimists act like they have a special immunity from ever having to recalibrate their view of the conflict, as they instead move on to the latest iteration of their metaphysical despair.
Just so. The Iraqis continue to disappoint the American left by doing things like voting en masse and compromising on difficult issues. The MSM, even with its Baghdad bureaus, is rarely able to predict these successes. And after they occur, the MSM never bothers to ask what other positive things must be true about Iraq in order for the successes to have happened.

Paperless news is doing just fine

Newspapers are dying. This isn't an ideological statement or a heartfelt wish, just a simple observation. Horse-drawn carriages yielded to cars, and steamships and ocean liners yielded to airplanes. Consumers prefer efficiency, and the market cannot be denied.
The news business, on the other hand, has never been healthier….

And political news-gathering isn't less vibrant today than 20 years ago. It is a golden age of information availability even as the old elites and gatekeepers drown their sorrows at the corner bar because nobody needs them anymore. Power Line (www.powerlineblog.com), Time magazine's blog of the year in 2004, has launched a news service as well as a citizen-journalist site. The three lawyers who run it have done this for free. Instapundit (www.instapundit.com) and the Truth Laid Bear (truthlaidbear.com) have teamed to start Porkbusters, the most effective citizen-journalist watchdog movement in a generation. Right Wing News (www.rightwingnews.com), Michelle Malkin (www.michellemalkin.com), Captain's Quarters (www.captainsquartersblog.com), and Polipundit.com, Fraters Libertas (www.fraterslibertas.com) and Roger L. Simon (www.rogerlsimon.com) - all of these bloggers are producing a huge amount of original and powerful content, subject to the editing of hundreds of thousands of readers.
And Day by Day by Chris Muir (www.daybydaycartoon.com) is just the first of many online cartoons - a syndicate of one.
Old, slow and - sorry to say so - lazy reporters are dizzy at the pace and glee with which the new media report, analyze and move on.
The republic is safe as far as news-gathering and reporting, debate and analysis can make it safe. But newspapers and their employees, well, think stagecoach drivers and clipper-ship captains. There are a few of each still around - as conversation pieces.

Germany's Economic Growth: On a Stable Path... [DOWN]

Schuyler and Schwarzschild (Black conservative)

Jewish rescuers in the Holocaust largely ignored

Hillel Kook traveled from Mandatory Palestine to the United States in 1940 to create a Jewish legion to fight against the Nazis. But when he arrived and found out about the mass slaughter of European Jewry, he devoted himself to informing the American public about what was happening and pressing for political action to stop it.
His style clashed with that of American Jewish leaders, who preferred a backroom approach, but it succeeded in raising awareness and pushing US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to create the War Refugee Board. That agency, in turn, tasked Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg with rescuing Hungarian Jews, some 100,000 of whom he was able to save….
"When you tell the story of those who acted, you also have to tell the story of those who didn't act. And the context of the Jewish leadership in the United States during the Holocaust who didn't act is a problematic one," she said to The Jerusalem Post ahead of her speech. "It's easier to forget what happened."…
Bill Mehlman of the Jerusalem Working Group, however, offered more sinister explanations. He touched on theories that had to do with the level of religiosity or political affiliation of individuals like Kook - a member of the Jabotinsky Revisionist school, which was at odds with the other, more powerful Zionist leaders. And, he said, "there are people who felt that the Jewish Agency, which was the governing body in pre-state [Israel], was far more interested in the future establishment of a Jewish State than in getting involved in the rescue of European Jewry."
"That's a question we're asking - why have their stories been ignored?" he said. "Why aren't there films? Why aren't there streets named after them? Why aren't they taught in the curriculum?"

Why no special prosecutor for the latest CIA leak case?

A special counsel must be appointed forthwith, to discover whether the CIA has been manipulating the media. All civil servants and all reporters with knowledge must be urged to comply, and to produce their notes or see the inside of a jail. No effort must be spared to discover the leaker. This is, after all, the line sternly proposed by the New York Times and many other media outlets in the matter of the blessed Joseph Wilson and his martyred CIA spouse, Valerie Plame.
I have a sense that this is not the media line that will be taken in the case of McCarthy, any more than it was the line taken when James Risen and others disclosed the domestic wiretapping being conducted by the NSA.

Last Saturday, the first MilBlog Conference was held in Washington, D.C. La Shawn Barber live-blogged the event, capturing one of its most important messages:

Think about the timelessness of what you’re writing, beyond the next election. What do you want the next generation to know about the war?

Blogger friends who did attend posted some very touching messages to the world, which answer. This is the “other” MilBlog Conference, which takes place daily among the 2 ½ million who served in Vietnam, the millions since, the near-1/2 million who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Politicians and commentators who disregard or denigrate this honorable service, these noble risks in defense of the downtroddens’ freedom and future, demonstrate to these veterans and other Americans their degeneration and reinforce our pride and comradeship.

One Vietnam-era veteran friend who attended the MilBlog Conference still chooses to remain anonymous at his blog. Hopefully, with this post, saying “I owe these men a lot, for helping me to come out of my shell,” he will. He’s traveled a long road, like so many of us, of coming to terms with then, between, and now.

Another blogging veteran friend emailed me after their meeting at the MilBlog Conference, that he wishes to all Vietnam veterans “they could feel the relief he feels. Some things are just criminal,” and respecting my other blogging friend’s privacy refers to him as “John” in a very moving post, “Stolen Honor Reclaimed”:

There are days when a man feels compelled to reflect and self-evaluate. It is usually when surrounded by peers whose respectable accomplishments and character compels one to look up far more than simply across. Saturday was one such day….

For the better part of this fine man’s life, his honor and the honor of his service to this country had been stolen from him. His honor was stolen by an entire culture and its media establishment….You see, his honor had only been stolen from view. It had always truly been there….No one, not even an entire culture, can steal a man’s character. They can only cast an illusion….

The post continues, reflecting on the transformation of much of the major media post-Vietnam:

The battle was not to be against communism, but clearly against America’s own military by the sole arbiters of information flow. The battle was engaged against John….

MilBlogs, especially those written in-theater, changed that. Permanently.

The post concludes with the essence of one of the bonds among veterans, from generation-to-generation, from war-to-war:

Growing up, my grandfather was my hero….Yet he was, I am told, human. But, to this day, I often imagine him standing behind me watching me go about my day, confronted with choices. When I do, I rarely fail. What would he think of me if I choose X? What would he think of me if I choose Y? I dare not disappoint and I still strive to please him.

While I lay no claim to superior character, I battle every day to live my life in an honorable manner. And, while I do not always win, my battle is my victory. I will never give up.

John’s battle has been his victory, too. John never gave up. John never stopped living his life honorably. He had simply been convinced to hang his head in shame without due cause.

No more. Not now. Not ever.

Welcome home, John.

I emailed him:

“John” is like many. But so am I. And so is O’Neill. And so is the very many other “types” and “reactions,” very diverse, as one should expect among what, after all, is a very large family. The coming together isn’t over policy, then or now, but of brotherhood, with jokes about our foibles, regrets for our failures, respect for our feeble humanity, but pride in being men who care and shared.

That’s where John Kerry blew it, irreparably.

The people of Knoxsville get it, as do most other Americans. CBS and Kerry, and their ilk, still don’t, and need to be repeatedly reminded.

SEE: Scott Swett, whose site WinterSoldier provided the Internet glue among veterans to tell the truth about John Kerry's 2004 "run", was at the MilBlog Conference, and also has this posted comment about the CBS attempted resurrection.

DON'T MISS: Tom Bevan's slice-n-dice of Kerry's rehashed persona.

AND ADD this in for good measure.

No Proof of Secret C.I.A. Prisons, European Antiterror Chief Says

The European Union's antiterrorism chief told a hearing on Thursday that he had not been able to prove that secret C.I.A. prisons existed in Europe.
"We've heard all kinds of allegations," the official, Gijs de Vries, said before a committee of the European Parliament. "It does not appear to be proven beyond reasonable doubt."

When There Was No Jewish Lobby

I am speaking, of course, of the Hitler era, 1935-1945, when there was no powerful political lobby in the United States representing Jewish “parochial” interests. These were the years when millions of European Jews were desperately trying to flee the charnel house on the continent and the Jews of America were too weak, or too intimidated, or too assimilationist and anti-Zionist to effectively petition their government to extend a helping hand. [Click, and keep reading]

Fighting to Speak: Tunisia vs. a fundamental right.

It has been more than two years since President Bush requested Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to allow political freedoms and freedom of the press. Ben Ali ignored Bush's request. There have been no substantive reforms. Rather, Ben Ali has increased oppression under the guise of combating terrorism. In reality, it is not terrorism the Tunisian regime is combating; its wrath is directed at even the most moderate and peaceful political voices….

Liberalism will perish unless the White House and its European allies keep up the pressure to keep Arab liberals safe.

How to Stop Medicaid Fraud

For more than a decade, Medicaid has been the fastest-growing item on many state budgets. Unfortunately, state and federal efforts to uncover and stamp out the astonishing amount of fraud in the program (whose costs the states split with Washington) have lagged. Experts estimate that abuses of Medicaid eat up at least 10 percent of the program’s total cost nationwide—a waste of $30 billion a year. Unscrupulous doctors billing for over 24 hours per day of procedures, phony companies invoicing for phantom services, pharmacists filling prescriptions for dead patients, home health-care companies demanding payment for treating clients actually in the hospital—on and on the rip-offs go. The cheating is brazen because scam artists have figured out that years of lax oversight have made Medicaid easy plunder.
… [Much detail]…

Even with tougher enforcement, states must confront the troubling reality that Medicaid programs have grown too large and complex to manage easily. With even faster growth rates projected in the immediate future, trying to minimize fraud, waste, or simple errors in Medicaid will only get harder. “All this complexity has created a breeding ground for fraud and abuse,” Florida governor Jeb Bush said last year.
That’s why the best idea for reducing fraud over the long term may be Florida’s push to overhaul its entire Medicaid program. Last fall, the federal government gave Florida permission to try a drastic revamping of the system. The state will stop acting as a giant health insurer and instead move recipients into private plans. Florida will pay the insurance companies a yearly fee to enroll the recipients, in the same way that a private employer now pays for its employees to receive health coverage. As in the private sector, each insurer will be responsible for auditing bills and sniffing out fraud by providers or recipients in its system. In effect, Florida will be breaking its Medicaid system into dozens of smaller units, managed by the private sector, where lax efforts to eliminate waste, inefficiency, and incorrect billings will eat away at companies’ bottom lines.

Terrorists, Inc.

The Hamas government of the Palestinian Authority underscored its terrorist nature by placing one of the more notorious terrorists in charge of its new Islamist security forces. Jamal Abu Samhadana, whose track record includes the murder of US Marines in Gaza during a diplomatic mission, will create and command the new force…

The US should immediately challenge Qatar and Saudi Arabia for their support of this regime and their funding of its operations. We need to make clear that those people who participated in the murder of our Marines while on a mission of peace -- remember that the diplomatic mission was to help the Palestinians in Gaza! -- will never comprise any government with which we will engage. Those Marines and their families deserve that much for their sacrifice. We should point out that nations who pay the salaries of those murderers will not be viewed as friends by the US.
Addendum: I find it interesting that the Washington Post put this report on page A16. Doesn't the creation of an Islamist terrorist force by the PA, headed by a man responsible for the murders of three Marines, justify a little more visibility than that? I do have to commend the Post for at least reporting the development; so far the LA Times couldn't be bothered, and the New York Times puts the issue of the murdered Marines below the "friction" Samhadana's appointment and the Islamist force will create with Mahmoud Abbas. Also, the NYT never quite gets around to mentioning that the force will comprise Islamist terrorists -- instead, it calls them "militants". All the news that fits our mindset, eh?

Understanding Key Parts of the Massachusetts Health Plan

Any comprehensive plan to reform health care will contain complex, and likely contentious, provisions. The recently enacted Massachusetts plan, based on a proposal by Governor Mitt Romney, is no exception. It contains complex provisions that have raised questions and concerns. But much of this controversy stems from confusion about the provisions. Therefore, understanding these provisions, especially in the context of the larger reform, is important.
The individual “mandate”: Thanks to regulatory changes that are a part of the Massachusetts plan, residents will be able to satisfy the mandate merely by purchasing catastrophic coverage through a high-deductible health plan or a Health Savings Account (HSA). With this regulatory change, the plan will promote HSA/high-deducible plans and make health care coverage more accessible and somewhat more affordable for individuals. The state will also provide lower-income individuals with a subsidy

The new employer “mandate”: This new fee can easily be avoided: firms subject to it need only offer their employees a Section 125 Cafeteria Plan and give them the opportunity to buy coverage through the new health insurance Connector on a pre-tax basis to escape the levy at little expense. Further, the actual assessment is likely to be less than the statutory maximum of $295 because the other legislative provisions in the plan are designed to reduce the demand on the uncompensated care pool.

The regulation of health insurance: The health care reform plan achieves four regulatory changes. First, it allows small businesses and individuals to buy insurance through the “Connector,” which will expand coverage options, especially for those in the individual market. Second, it allows HMOs to also offer HSA-qualified high-deductible health plans, which are more affordable than other plans. Third, it permits insurance plans offered through the Connector to contract with health care providers as they choose, relieving them of the costly “any willing provider” requirements that prevent plans from steering patients to providers that offer the best value. And fourth, it permits insurers to offer plans to individuals between the ages of 19 and 26 subject to fewer costly state mandates and puts a two-year moratorium on any new insurance mandates while the state conducts a review of all mandated benefits. The Governor projects that this new flexibility could reduce average premiums for individuals from $350 to $194 per month

The role of the “Connector”: It is also similar, broadly, to the Federal Employee Health Benefit Program (FEHBP), which allows federal employees to choose from a variety of competing, private health insurance plans and keep the plan of their choice if they change jobs within the federal government.

LONG LIVE SOCIAL SECURITY REFORM

But reform isn't dead. It can't die. Reform is inevitable, because the Social Security system really is in crisis, in the sense that the accounting mirage of the Trust Fund doesn't hold any real assets to pay off the system's obligations. Even if it did, the assets would be exhausted in a few short decades as the baby boom generation retires.

So the Left remains mobilized t keep reform off the table as long as Republicans are in power. The Left wants to be sure that their favored constituencies -- unions and minorities -- get all their entitlement goodies left intact. And the Left wants to be sure that reform doesn't diminish the size and scope of government interference in our lives, as President Bush's proposal for individual investment accounts would surely have done….
When the Trustees' report finally comes out in a week or two, it will undoubtedly show the existing system's continuing downward spiral into bankruptcy. When the opponents of reform are done griping that the report was late, maybe they should actually read it, and find out how deep the crisis really is. And for the good of the country, maybe they should forget their partisanship and actually do something about it.

STILL EMBEDDED

Remember embedded reporters? Most people probably forgot about them after the fall of Baghdad. They were regarded with suspicion on the right and openly reviled on the left. But I thought they did, for the most part, a good job.
Since the fall of Baghdad, I think they've done a much better job. The pell-mell chase across the desert was a difficult thing to capture in words and an easy inspiration to enthusiasm and hyperbole. Reporting on the slow grind of a fight against insurgents and terrorists, however, is exactly the kind of thing that requires close and long-term contact with the grunts. And the question of military morale is so important to the domestic debate about the war, with widely ranging estimates of where it stands, that you'd think the embedded reporters would have everyone's attention right now.
You'd be wrong....
Exactly when they became useful, the big media seemed to lose interest in them. Who will give you better pictures of realities from Iraq? An embedded freelancer in Ramadi or Mosul, or a high-priced son of the First Amendment who never leaves the Green Zone except for a ride home to Manhattan?
My money's on the embeds. But they rarely seem to get into print outside their hometown newspapers. I keep up with them via the occasional update wraps provided by Greyhawk and others.

Yesterday I featured the Congressional testimony of Ethan Gutmann on the aid of U.S. companies in Chinese oppression. Today, I started reading Edwin Black’s bestseller, IBM And The Holocaust (NY: Three Rivers Press, 2001,2002). As the Washington Post review said, “Black establishes beyond dispute that IBM Hollerith machines significantly advanced Nazi efforts to exterminate Jewry.”

The parallels of how Cisco follows IBM’s infamy are striking, sickening and saddening.

First, Gutmann:

During construction of the first Chinese public access web in ’96, Chinese authorities suddenly became interested in blocking forbidden websites and in keyword searching – “looking into the packets.”…

Cisco prevailed…Cisco’s General Counsel denies selling any special configuration. Chinese engineers who actually worked on the firewall project are equally adamant that it was custom made….[for] Cisco’s capture of 80% of the Chinese router market…

By 2003, Cisco’s “Policenet” was deployed as the Internet backbone of the Chinese State Security System….

A policeman or PSB agent using Cisco equipment could now stop any citizen on the street and simply by scanning an ID card remotely access his … political behavior, family history, fingerprints, and other images. The agent could also access his surfing history for the last 60 days, and read his e-mail. All in real time….

Detailed information on more than 96 percent of the Chinese population is now recorded on police databases…

Now, Black:

[Hitler’s] quest was greatly enhanced and energized by the ingenuity and craving for profit of a single American company…That company was International Business Machines…

Der Fuhrer’s obsession with Jewish destruction was hardly original….But for the first time in history, an anti-Semite had automation on his side…

IBM, primarily through its German subsidiary, made Hitler’s program of Jewish destruction a technologic mission the company pursued with chilling success….More than 2,000 such multi-machine sets were dispatched throughout Germany, and thousands more throughout German-dominated Europe….

IBM’s subsidiary, with the knowledge of its New York headquarters, enthusiastically custom-designed the complex devices and specialized applications as an official corporate undertaking…The machines were not sold, they were leased, and regularly maintained and upgraded by only one source: IBM….Moreover, the fragile machines were serviced on site about once per month, even when that site was in or near a concentration camp….

The Germans always had lists of Jewish names….But how did the Nazis get the lists?…The answer: IBM Germany’s census operations and similar advanced people counting and registration technologies….IBM Germany invented the racial census – listing not just religious affiliation, but bloodline going back generations….

People and asset registration was only one of the many uses Nazi Germany found for high-speed data sorters. Food allocation was organized around databases, allowing Germany to starve the Jews. Slave labor was identified, tracked, and managed largely through punch cards. Punch cards even made the trains run on time and catalogued their human cargo….

How much did IBM know?…IBM officials…were almost constantly in Berlin or Geneva, monitoring activities, ensuring that the parent company in New York was not cut out of any of the profits or business opportunities….

Ultimately, I assembled more than 20,000 pages of documentation from fifty archives…Many of these materials had simply never been accessed…

Now, over 60-years later, the records of 17.5 million people murdered by the Nazis that were captured in Germany are going to be released. How many IBM punch cards will there be among the 30-million documents?

When the Chinese have finally shucked their current despots, how many Cisco, and Yahoo, and Google, and Microsoft documents of collaboration in their enslavement will be revealed.

First we had this or that ethnic or racial group identified as a hyphenated American. Now, we have, for example, all whether here legally or for generations or illegally from any Spanish speaking country called Latinos or Hispanics.

We had this or that political leaning or particular partisan position identified, particularly to distinguish it from the quite different European heritage of these terms, as WASP or Main Street or Southern or Western or worker. All clearly American. Now, we have capitalized Liberal or Conservative, with only electoral counting taking regard for Independent, but little mention of the specifically American context. Blue state and Red state, grouping all within a boundary, is another layer of removal from the reality of the mix of positions and intensities and the differences from area to area or group to group or individual to individual.

The partisans delight in either calling each other, or anyone whose specific view on an issue, a Liberal or Conservative, or pejoratively a RINO or DINO, rather than respect that a thinking and honest person is not a label nor a party platform.

What has been relegated, far too much, in our public discourse and our private relations and listening is that we are all Americans. We are here, today or our forefathers and mothers, because we are individuals who refused to be grouped and treated as cogs in someone else’s machinations, but rather insisted on being considered and rewarded for what we are and contribute. That’s Americans.

An essential part of that is mutual respect for differences, and civil discourse among us to reconcile natural differences.

It’s only those who, outside of outright treason, do not engage in civil discourse who might be considered at odds with being American. Otherwise, we need to listen to each other more, with respect and civility, and reclaim the name of Americans, and quit the divisive and inappropriately divisive other hyphenations and labels.

Yahoo accused of helping jail China Internet writer

Yahoo Inc. may have helped Chinese police to identify an Internet writer who was subsequently jailed for four years for subversion in the third such case, an advocacy group for journalists said on Wednesday. News implicating Yahoo in the imprisonment of Jiang Lijun in 2003 surfaced on the eve of a summit between Chinese President Hu Jintao and President Bush in Washington. It was the third such case involving the U.S. Internet giant. Yahoo was accused of providing electronic records to Chinese authorities that led to an eight-year prison term for Li Zhi for subversion in 2003 and of helping to identify Shi Tao, who was accused of leaking state secrets abroad and jailed last year for 10 years. The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders said it had obtained a copy of the verdict showing that Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) helped Chinese police to identify Jiang by confirming that the e-mail account ZYMZd2002 had been used jointly by Jiang and another pro-democracy activist Li Yibing. "Little by little we are piecing together the evidence for what we have long suspected, that Yahoo! is implicated in the arrest of most of the people that we have been defending," the group said. … China has intensified a crackdown on the media in the past year, sacking newspaper editors, arresting journalists and closing publications.

CIA mines 'rich' content from blogs

President Bush and U.S. policy-makers are receiving more intelligence from open sources such as Internet blogs and foreign newspapers than they previously did, senior intelligence officials said.
The new Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA headquarters recently stepped up data collection and analysis based on bloggers worldwide and is developing new methods to gauge the reliability of the content, said OSC Director Douglas J. Naquin.
"A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we're getting a lot of rich information on blogs that are telling us a lot about social perspectives and everything from what the general feeling is to ... people putting information on there that doesn't exist anywhere else," Mr. Naquin told The Washington Times.
Eliot A. Jardines, assistant deputy director of national intelligence for open source, said the amount of unclassified intelligence reaching Mr. Bush and senior policy-makers has increased as a result of the center's creation in November….
The OSC uses powerful computers and software technology to "sift" the Internet for valuable intelligence. It also buys information from commercial databases.

Germans: U.S. More Dangerous than Iran (These are the people who are supposed to have become sane since WWII! Nah.)

Unless U.S. values are exclusively monetary, regardless of the human rights consequences, the lead witness, Ethan Guttman, at today’s China human relations hearing of the House International Relations Subcommittee for Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations told a sad truth:

I would guess that few people in this room actually desire intrusive government intervention and oversight of U.S. companies. I certainly don’t. I’m a former consultant to American corporations operating in China and a former vice-chair of the Government Relations Committee for the American Chamber of Commerce Beijing. I’m also a former believer in the concept that we would change China, not that China would change us.

But I now believe that the Internet Freedom Act may not be comprehensive enough, particularly in explicitly sanctioning Internet surveillance technologies….It is the history of a collision course, not so much between Washington and American Internet companies, but between American corporate decisions and American values….

Regarding Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, as I said, I consider the Online Freedom Act to be a tragedy. We did not have to reach this point.

Back in the winter of 2000, Microsoft fought the Chinese state and won…Microsoft built a coalition of the American Chamber of commerce, the US-China Business Council, the Japanese Chamber, and European entities….Microsoft let it be known that if the Chinese government did not back down it would pull out of China….

…American internet companies could form a new industry coalition, collectively ready to walk away…

…the only other option is the Online Freedom Act: routers based outside of China, regular audits, litigation in China and at home….

Yet the question that Microsoft, Google and Yahoo should be focusing on is this: Will the Chinese Communist Party still be in power in ten years from now? How about twenty years? And who is my primary customer base, the Chinese Communist Party or the Chinese people?…

It’s not going to be 10 years

All of this points toward a faster development cycle for Iran than anyone has predicted. If they develop a P-2 centrifuge cascade and have plans and a working model on which to build a design, the Iranians only need the fissile material itself in order to produce nuclear weapons. Their existing cascade has been assumed to be P-1 technology, but the Iranians have busied themselves with secret work at Ishfahan and Natanz to fortify and expand both facilities while refusing to answer IAEA questions about their work on the P-2.
If the Iranians have the P-2 technology, they can create fissile material much faster and in greater quantities than has been reported previously. When they have enough, they will move directly into weapons production, and that will not be in 2015. That could well be next year.

Rallying against genocide
George W. Bush was the first and only world leader to have said plainly that the mass killings in Darfur are genocide. And at Freedom House in Washington on March 25, the president emphasized: "When we say genocide, we mean genocide must be stopped." He continued by pointing out that the African Union's small force in Darfur is not enough: "There should be a NATO overlay of support.
However, it was appalling to hear, on PBS' "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," NATO head Jaap de Hoop Scheffer say that "Africans feel very strongly" that they should take care of problems on their own continent. So, he added, one "should be careful" about imposing oneself on them. "There is not yet the need for declaring a willingness for [NATO] to participate." There is not yet a need when more than 300,000 unarmed African Muslims in Darfur have been killed or died of disease; 2 million have been displaced; and when the United Nations' chief humanitarian coordinator, Jan Egeland, declared on April 4 that barbarism in Darfur "is changing dramatically for the worse."
…
The April 30 "Rally to Stop Genocide" will take place between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. on the National Mall, between Third and Fourth streets in front of the U.S. Capitol Metro Station Federal Center SW (Orange and Blue lines). The crowd will assemble from 1:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m.
For information on this rally and how to be a part of it, the Web site is: savedarfur.org/rally, or call Chuck Thies, the rally coordinator, at (202) 478-6302.

This is a list of some of my publications. I hope you find them interesting and useful.
Visit Allison Haywood’s SkepticsEye to keep up on campaign financing issues. If she doesn’t have the whole goods, she’ll steer you to who does.

Iranian group seeks British suicide bombers

The Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the Global Islamic Campaign, which claims to be independent but has the backing of the regime, said it is targeting potential recruits in Britain because of the relative ease with which UK passport-holders can enter Israel.

Mexico Harsh to Undocumented Migrants

Considered felons by the government, these migrants fear detention, rape and robbery. Police and soldiers hunt them down at railroads, bus stations and fleabag hotels. Sometimes they are deported; more often officers simply take their money.
While migrants in the United States have held huge demonstrations in recent weeks, the hundreds of thousands of undocumented Central Americans in Mexico suffer mostly in silence.
And though Mexico demands humane treatment for its citizens who migrate to the U.S., regardless of their legal status, Mexico provides few protections for migrants on its own soil. The issue simply isn't on the country's political agenda, perhaps because migrants make up only 0.5 percent of the population, or about 500,000 people - compared with 12 percent in the United States.

Of Words (THAT ALL MUST BE READ, FROM MICHAEL YON)

The Civil War did not start subsequent the invasion; it was already underway. The former Iraqi regime had slaughtered unknown thousands of civilians and buried many of them in mass graves that are still today being discovered and catalogued. If anything, the previous Civil War has merely changed shape, the advantage has clearly shifted, and now that Americans and Europeans are in the combat zone, the war gets more complicated.
…
True, I am anti-war, but I recognize that at this juncture in human history that refusing to fight in many parts of the world means that we agree to be beaten to death, or we agree to allow airliners to ram into our buildings. War is a pitiful human reality that we must face, and we are far from finished with facing this demon. We live in a rough world where strength is rewarded, weakness is penalized.
…
What is also new is that in the absence of better reporting of the complex situation on the ground, good and bad, Americans are increasingly turning against this mission. They are not ignoring poor media but are rewarding it by paying attention to it. The people are not ignoring the poor media, but they are doing something far worse: they are ignoring our troops!
…
These people, whether we call them freedom fighters, insurgents, thugs, or terrorists, have a stated mission to attack anyone who is not like them, wherever they can. They are not bluffing. They cannot be appeased. They will not stop if and when we leave, if we leave without completing the mission. If we leave, all vestiges of progress will be lost and those Iraqis who risked their lives to work with us to gain that progress will no longer trust Americans. If we run, the enemy will follow us. They will kill us. They will not stop until we stop them. I might be anti-war, but I am much more anti-terrorist. No more needs to be said on the subject of whether or not a portion of the violence in Iraq should be called a civil war, unless we want to argue about the definitions while the place explodes around us. There are more pressing issues than the limitations of our dictionaries.

Blood Money (So, now the Palestinians can steal Arabs’ $ instead of ours)

“We have received pledges from the Arab world that will help us operate for several months,” the minister said on the website of Hamas. “In all, $20m from Saudi Arabia, $40m from Kuwait and $20m from the UAE are to be transferred,” he said. “We will not collapse despite the war being waged against us by the racist Zionists, by the United States and the European Union,” he said.
Abdelrazek said earlier that the government still faced a $120m monthly budget shortfall, despite having received $35m from Algeria.
We didn’t mention the $50 million from Iran.

Busted! Cindy Sheehan's Story Hits a Snag!
(This is even sadder and sicker than her deranged politics.)

Is the bloom off the Tulip?

Kyrgyzstan, formerly the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic during Soviet times, gained its independence from the Soviet Union in August 1991. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Askar AKAYEV became President of Kyrgyzstan and the country seemed to be on the road to democracy. However, over time corruption became rampant, the country suffered from a poor economy, and there was blatant nepotism in the country. This led democracy activists to protest against his government. The Kyrgyz non-governmental organizations (NGO) and many young people began protesting the corruption, and against unfair parliamentary and presidential elections. The Kyrgyz government cracked down on opposition groups and the NGOs, and many government opponents were imprisoned and harassed. Newspapers critical of the government were also shut down. The protests became known as the Tulip Revolution, a relatively nonviolent revolution that forced AKAYEV to resign and flee to Moscow in March 2005.

The Tulip Revolution brought Kurmanbek BAKIYEV into power as the President, and Feliks KULOV as the Prime Minister. BAKIYEV ran on a democracy ticket and pledged to fight corruption within the government. Now, a year after the Tulip Revolution, the economy is still weak, President BAKIYEV has failed to deliver on his promises of reforms, and there is fear that the Kyrgyz government is being taken over by organized crime figures and thugs….

Kyrgyzstan is important to the United States, and is an ally in the fight against terrorism. Shortly after the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, the Kyrgyz government granted the United States the use of an airbase located at Manas Airport in Bishkek, the capitol of Kyrgyzstan…. The US and coalition forces have used the base for operations in Afghanistan since 2001. The airbase in Kyrgyzstan has become more important since the Uzbek government has evicted the US from the airbase in Uzbekistan after the US was critical of the Uzbek government’s crackdown on protestors last year.

Americans donate and volunteer for a lot of good causes abroad

While it is well known that past and present U.S. governments spend much less on foreign aid as a percentage of GDP than most other rich countries do, the enormous amount of private aid is less well known outside the U.S. The State Department summarizes a new study:
The U.S. private sector donates to international causes at a level nearly four times the amount spent by the U.S. government on official development assistance (ODA), according to a report about to be published by the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Prosperity. Called the Index on Global Philanthropy, the report tallies $71 billion in international donations by U.S. private charities, religious organizations, universities, corporations, foundations, and immigrants sending money home for the year of 2004 (the latest year available). That compares to $20 billion in government foreign aid for the same year. (...)
According to the Hudson Institute, "the tradition of private giving is considerably less developed in Europe than in the U.S." (...) Close to half of all American adults do volunteer work, according to Independent Sector, a forum for charitable organizations. The index estimates volunteering for international projects totals 135,000 full-time work hours per year -- worth more than $4 billion.

A columnist friend says that I know too much and try to fit that information and its nuances into my posts. Columnists focus on only one point, and I cover many. Consequently, many of those who look at headlines or the first paragraph to decide what to read during their busy day, pass me by.

Blogging is a relaxed discipline compared to 600-750 words allowed in a newspaper op-ed, and should invite greater depths. Nevertheless, for the time impaired, and the bottom-line oriented, here’s two-sentence (OK, some may be long) positions on some of the subjects I’ve dealt with at greater length in posts and daily Interesting Stuff:

IRAQ: We’re there, so get over it Dems and trying to get elected in 2006 or 2008 based on 2003, regardless of the more dangering national and international security impacts. The consequences then and now of not finishing the job are worse, we’ve pretty much achieved our strategic objectives, and President Bush can quell the unease to buy time to finish and spur Iraqi politicians to act in national interests by announcing a caveated withdrawal schedule over the next 5-years – which all know we’re going to do anyway.

IRAN: We’re not there, but may need to be in some way very soon, regardless of the Europeans who have not had a firm moral or military policy of defense even during the Cold War. Again, the consequences of not acting or by half-measures -- a la the Clinton years vis a vis Iraq, Afghanistan, or terrorists -- breed worse and are worse, and Europe is useless.

ISRAEL: Israel’s moral struggles to survive, including fencing off real security threats to reduce them and be allowed less of a garrison-state, stand starkly beside the immoral and counter-productive irredentism of Palestinians and their repeatedly chosen leaders who would rather drive Mercedes, loot and allow destruction of Palestinian means to earn, wink at best and usually incite murderous thugs, and their Arab thugocracy state supporters’ facilitation to distract their own repressed, and profiteering amoral allies in Europe.

INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS: Whether in China, North Korea, Vietnam, Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Mexico or an additional too-long list, “never again” is a platitude when not policy and practice. We can’t solve all, but those who are silent or speak but not act are complicit, as much or nearly as any “good German.”

RELIGION: One need not go so far as saying that only faith separates parties to see the divide, to see that those nations and interest-groups that lack the optimism and resolve of belief in divine guidance and better futures are more in population, economic and moral decline and selfish excuses for it.

HEALTHCARE: A rich, ageing and caring country will inevitably spend increasing amounts on healthcare, which can more effectively and economically adapt and meet disparate needs and means through freer market resolutions than through inevitably stagnant and cost-creator nationalized programs, as those countries that have gone down that path demonstrate and our present and emerging programs succeed better.

IMMIGRATION: Americans have empathy for immigrants and recognize the work ethic of most, alongside Americans’ respect for our culture and laws, and concerns about the negative effects on those as well as the allowing of domestic ghettoes of resource-sapping poor, illiterates among the illegals. Before leniencies must come enforced, severe employer sanctions and reasonable border security.

MEDIA: The Fourth Estate is increasingly in abandon of basic standards of journalism. Sins of omission, of facts, documentation and soundly-based alternatives, along with cheapness to devote adequate reportage and research to complex events and issues, are even more at fault than outright commission of bias, but amount to the same.

REPUBLICANS: All Americans' right to criticize has a parallel responsibility to act responsibly. Democrats aren’t meeting that responsibility, but neither are Republicans who emotionally or self-servingly serve the worse alternative by undercutting or failing to endorse reason and cooperation among Republicans and others.

There: 656 words.

Judge Rumsfeld by His Successes And Failures

The facts why: Rumsfeld is arguably the most successful Defense Secretary in American history. Let's treat him that way.

Iraqi Sunni leader turns his guns on foreign insurgents

Sheikh Jadaan's armed followers claim to have arrested and killed 300 would-be jihadis entering from Syria, many bound for service as suicide bombers with Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Sheikh Jadaan fled Iraq in 1998 after falling out with the regime. Last November he accused US and Iraqi forces of heavy-handedness, calling for the "American occupiers to get out of Iraq and leave Iraq to the Iraqis". However, he is convinced that the presence of foreign terrorists such as Zarqawi risks leading Iraq into permanent chaos - potentially prolonging the occupation.
Sheikh Jadaan's stance follows similar moves by many secular Sunni insurgents, who have ended their marriage of convenience with al-Qaeda in protest at its brutal methods.
The split is understood to have received tacit encouragement from the US military, although it is reluctant to encourage private militias, which it says operate to no agreed military guidelines and could pursue private feuds.

Iraqi Forces Take Lead in Operation Cobra Strike

Iraqi army soldiers are gradually taking the lead in all operations in Haswah and Iskandariyah, stabilizing the northern Babil province, military officials in Iraq reported.

IRAN’S CONTINGENCY PLANNING FOR WAR AND ITS ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT THE US

LETS REVIEW THE ASSUMPTIONS THAT IRAN IS MAKING ABOUT THE UNITED STATES IN ITS UNAPOLOGETIC QUEST FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS, AND ITS LAUGHING AT SANCTIONS AND POSSIBLE MILITARY ACTION:
(A) PERHAPS OTHER COUNTRIES WOULD KEEP THE US FROM DOING ANYTHING WHATSOEVER ABOUT IRAN, THROUGH THE UN OR OTHERWISE;
(B) THE US WOULD ATTACK IRAN WITH PRECISION AND RESTRAINT IF AT ALL;
(C) WHATEVER TACTICS IRAN WOULD USE IN RESPONSE TO A US ATTACK — TERRORISM, OIL EMBARGO, CHAOS IN IRAQ, USE OF THE MSM — WOULD CREATE A “QUAGMIRE” BEYOND THE “STAMINA” OF THE US TO WITHSTAND;
(D) THE LACK OF IRAN’S ACTUAL WARMAKING POWER WOULD BE OFFSET BY A COMBINATION OF MILITARY SELF-RESTRAINT BY AMERICA, GLOBAL AND DOMESTIC PROTEST AT AMERICAN ACTION, DOVISH POLITICAL OPPOSITION IN THE US, THE MSM’S AMPLIFICATION OF WHATEVER IRAN WOULD DO TO PUT IT ON A SUPERIOR FOOTING TO AMERICAN MILITARY ACTION, AND PERHAPS FACTORS UNKNOWN.
WE CAN ARGUE ABOUT VARIOUS OF THE ASSUMPTIONS IF YOU LIKE, BUT THERE IS ONE ASSUMPTION THAT IRAN IS MAKING THAT IS INCONTROVERTIBLE: THE US WILL NOT USE OVERWHELMING FORCE TO LIQUIDATE IRAN’S NUCLEAR CAPABILITY, ITS MILITARY AND THE COMMAND STRUCTURE.
IRAN’S BASE CASE APPEARS TO BE THAT THE US WILL USE PINPRICKS IF IT DOES ANYTHING AT ALL. IN RESPONSE IRAN WILL UNLEASH AN ARRAY OF TERRORISM, ECONOMIC PENALTIES, AND DAILY DOSES OF US TROOPS GETTING KILLED IN IRAQ AND ELSEWHERE, DIAL UP THE MSM TO VIDEO THE MISERY, AND WAIT FOR THE QUAGMIRE TO DEMORALIZE THE INFIDELS. SHOCK AND AWE MIGHT JUST AS WELL BE SHUCK ‘N’ JIVE. EVERYONE IN THE WORLD UNDERSTANDS NOW HOW TO WAGE A PROPAGANDA WAR AGAINST THE US, USING THE COMPLICIT MSM: YOU CAN JUST PICTURE THE DAILY SCENES OF CAR BOMBS AND SUICIDE MISSIONS AGAINST AMERICANS, AND IRANIAN WOMEN WAILING WITH BROKEN BABIES ABOUT THE CRUELTY OF THE US ON FOX AND CNN. FINAL SCORE: QUAGMIRE 100, US 2.
GIVEN THE WARMAKING STYLE OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION, AND THE TOTALLY NON-WARMAKING STYLE OF ITS DEMOCRATIC OPPOSTION, IRAN’S ASSESSMENT SEEMS PRETTY CORRECT TO US.

IRAN’S RHINELAND MOMENT

So how would bombing Iran serve American interests? In over a decade of looking at the question, no one has ever been able to provide a persuasive answer.
The answer to their question above is obvious. Destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities would hamper Iran from going nuclear, which must be America’s number one objective, as we have discussed. Like the men of the 1930’s, these commentators list reasonable objections to American or Western action against the aggressor of the day. The objections are sound in all but one aspect: they fail to deal with the actual totalitarian aims of the Nazi or Islamic enemy. Undoubtedly all sorts of problems ensue from wiping out the aggressor’s coveted capabilities, and we should expect him to retaliate. So what? The Clarke/Simon line of thinking refuses to engage the larger issue that is just over the horizon, and must be faced.
How much worse will it be when Iran actually has nuclear weapons and the capability to deliver them? How much worse will it be when Iran uses them or credibly threatens to use them against the US, Israel or other allies? Why indeed should Americans take it for granted that the US would retaliate massively against Iran if American cities are hit by nuclear blasts of disguised origin in martyrdom operations? The world faced similar questions seventy years ago, but the stakes are higher today, given the devastating impact of nuclear weapons. Will we once again wait too long and once again pay the much higher, more tragic price? Consider this: there is no greater basis for believing that a nuclear Iran will not use its nuclear weapons than for believing that men will not fly airplanes into skyscrapers.
From the reoccupation of the Rhineland to the start of World War II was three and a half years. Where will we be three and a half years of inaction from now?

DANISH CARTOONS: DEATH WISH PART II

Unlicensed email servers illegal under new rule

China's new rules also prohibit use of email to discuss certain vaguely defined subjects related to 'network security' and ' information security', and also reiterate that emails which contain content contrary to existing laws must not be copied or forwarded. Wide-ranging laws of this nature have been used against political and religous dissenters in the past.

The Fedora Gap

A lot of really bad decisions clearly happened, yet there is no evidence that Bush huddled in a dark room somewhere with Haldemanesque cronies and plotted in classic Nixon fashion to willfully deceive the public -- and if all goes well, destroy the world. If he did, the tape hasn't surfaced.
The Downing Street memo was a bust. Plame is still foggy, hard to follow. The list goes on and on. Desperation for material is the real reason Dick Cheney's hunting accident took off as a story. For a few days there, it seemed that the veep was finally becoming the Strangelovian madman he's always needed to be for this tale to work. Then he went on TV, the picture of contrition. Fizzle.

A General Misunderstanding

AS the No. 2 general at United States Central Command from the Sept. 11 attacks through the Iraq war, I was the daily "answer man" to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld….I never saw him endangering troops by insisting on replacing manpower with technology. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, we always got what we, the commanders, thought we needed….The outcome and ramifications of a war, however, are impossible to predict. Saddam Hussein had twice opened his jails, flooding the streets with criminals. The Iraqi police walked out of their uniforms in the face of the invasion, compounding domestic chaos. We did not expect these developments.
We also — collectively — made some decisions in the wake of the war that could have been better. We banned the entire Baath Party, which ended up slowing reconstruction (we should probably have banned only high-level officials); we dissolved the entire Iraqi Army (we probably should have retained a small cadre help to rebuild it more quickly). We relied too much on the supposed expertise of the Iraqi exiles like Ahmad Chalabi who assured us that once Saddam Hussein was gone, Sunni Arabs, Shiites and Kurds would unite in harmony.
But that doesn't mean that a "What's next?" plan didn't exist. It did; it was known as Phase IV of the overall operation. General Franks drafted it and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department, the Pentagon, the Treasury Department and all members of the Cabinet had input. It was thoroughly "war-gamed" by the Joint Chiefs.
Thus, for distinguished officers to step forward and, in retrospect, pin blame on one person is wrong. And when they do so in a time of war, the rest of the world watches.

The Pelosi Doctrine : Darfur and the Democrats' security delusions

The job of the special envoy, she says, is to find ways to "stop the violence, bring the people to the negotiating table and get humanitarian relief to the people who need it." These are contradictory goals. Bringing "people" to the table means giving Sudan's government--the perpetrator of the genocide--a seat and thus a veto over how and when the Darfur crisis is resolved. It is Khartoum that is the chief obstacle to deploying U.N. troops in the region.
This is of a piece for what passes as a security policy in most of Ms. Pelosi's party….

Her "special envoy" is a substitute for the kind of action that might actually make a difference. In the short term, that would mean arming the Darfuris so they can defend themselves. In the long term, it means regime change in Khartoum--which would almost certainly require the use of U.S. military force.
Mr. Bush's reluctance to commit U.S. troops in Sudan is understandable given our current battles in Iraq and Afghanistan and our obligations around the world. But if Ms. Pelosi's outrage over Sudan is more than posturing, she'd focus less on the White House and more on the fecklessness and obstruction of the countries and United Nations that she typically invests with so much moral authority.

Saudi Justice : The kingdom's reforms haven't gone nearly far enough

Whatever liberalization has been accomplished does little to enable ordinary Saudis to exercise basic human rights. For millions of Saudi citizens and foreign residents, the absence of enforceable legal standards means that officials still wield power arbitrarily, and that the rich and powerful remain above the law. Equal protection and consistent enforcement would radically alter the corrupting exercise of power that currently stymies law-abiding Saudis.

Revising a myth: Revelations from KGB files challenge the legend of Chile's Salvador Allende

In recently revealed KGB files, Allende emerges as a client of the Soviet Union and its most important asset in Latin America after Fidel Castro….

As part of operation TOUCAN, the KGB forged a letter tying the CIA to an assassination campaign by Chile's intelligence service, known by its Spanish acronym DINA. Many fell for this Soviet disinformation, including the late syndicated columnist Jack Anderson. The “World Was Going Our Way” includes the entire letter and also notes that, in 1976, The New York Times published 66 articles on human rights abuses in Chile and only four on Cambodia, where the communist Khmer Rouge had begun a murderous genocide that killed an estimated 2 million out of that nation's 7.5 million people. The authors find no adequate explanation for this “extraordinary discrepancy.” …

Chile has since become a model of democratic politics and free-market, free-trade prosperity under a center-left coalition friendly to the United