Scott Johnson, of the Montagnard Foundation, wrote the following guest post. Any regular reader here knows how deeply I believe that the U.S. is literally throwing away both its sole negotiating card for human rights in Vietnam along with the U.S.’ credibility as a defender of human rights. All thrown away for the enrichment of the “new class” in Vietnam and some Western businessmen, and for a photop of President Bush in Hanoi on a planned trip next November. Vietnam is independent of but deeply in bed with China, its powerful northern neighbor. Speculations of Vietnam being an ally of the U.S. in any future military engagement with China is baseless.

Please read about this shameless appeasement:

The recent announcement by the Vietnamese government in August 2006 that they will release “some” dissidents in a general amnesty reminds me of a conversation I had with a former US State Department official about his dealings with the Soviets during the cold war. “Throw them a dissident” was what he said and he described how the Soviets would play the stalling game, by keeping Western diplomatic pressure at bay for a time. Every now and then the Soviets would just release a dissident from the gulags. The former official also noted the Soviets would sometimes arrest a bunch of dissidents just before an important US diplomatic visit - specifically to have some prisoners to release, thus in effect creating their own bargaining chips. The pressure would ease off for a while until it built up again and they would release another poor dissident or two. On and on it went…..and of course the Soviet Union never eased up on human rights violations or permitted multi party elections. No, of course the old communists clung to power until they had it eventually wrenched from their iron grip.

With Vietnam, it’s the same ol’ story. On the eve of getting into the World Trade Organization (WTO), we see Hanoi up to its old tricks, releasing a dissident or two. While some thousands of prisoners are due to be released, how many of them are actual political prisoners? How many are indigenous Montagnards (who have been electric shock tortured)? According to Vo Van Ai of the Buddhist Information service in Paris there are only four prisoners of conscience, out of 5,313 and he describes this “piecemeal amnesty” as a “propaganda exercise”. Kok Ksor of the Montagnard Foundation states “he has serious doubts the Vietnamese would release the 350 Montagnards currently held in prison”. Mr. Ksor should know, as he has a brother currently serving a seven year jail sentence for merely trying to flee the country as a refugee. His 80 year old mother too had her ribs broken by police during an interrogation.

As to the fate of Mr. Ksor’s people the Montagnards, the indigenous peoples of Vietnam’s central highlands, these people were America’s loyal ally during the Vietnam War. At any one time some 40,000 Montagnards served with the US military during the Vietnam War. Yet, how many people know that after 1975 the vengeful communists commenced a decade’s long policy of land exploitation, Christian religious repression, torture, killings and imprisonment of the Montagnards? Today in September 2006 the US State Department has continued to maintain Vietnam on the “country of particular concern” (CPC) watch list of countries that are the worst violators of religious freedom. In fact the entire Montagnard population faces continual repression by security forces who commit regular human rights violations against them.

Yes, a lure has been cast out to the United States, just prior to Congress’ vote on Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) scheduled with Vietnam in September 2006. A lure to catch the US Congress. PNTR you see is a stepping stone for entry into the WTO and the proponents of PNTR will argue economic engagement is the key to Vietnam’s development. They will say ‘we must engage economically with Vietnam and this will assist Vietnam in changing its repressive ways”. This is what the US trade lobby argues, and to be fair they have a point. However, Vietnam’s northern neighbor (and communist big brother) China, has spoiled the “miraculous cure all” remedy of economic engagement. The United States indeed granted PNTR to China some years ago and it didn’t result in any great reforms. No, judging from a comment by Senator Charles Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, one can see that China has actually ruined the image of economic engagement. Senator Grassley stated in a Senate Hearing on PNTR negotiations for Vietnam that, "We need to make sure that we aren’t played for a sucker in the case of Vietnam, as we have been with China."

The question should really be, how does the United States do things differently to ensure Vietnam does indeed bring about the promised human rights reforms? Admittedly this is a dilemma as Vietnam has a history of diplomatic trickery and is one of the most corrupt nations in the world. But we can safely say that outright appeasement will not work. Once Vietnam gains PNTR and accedes to the WTO, there are few if any sticks left to wield against Hanoi. But such outright appeasement is a real danger and possible reality. Recently in July 2006 Chris Seiple of the religious based think tank, Global Institute for Engagement testified in front of the US Senate Finance Committee stating “we should send a strong and unambiguous message to Vietnam’s leaders that we are willing to work with them. Establishing PNTR and lifting CPC sends that signal.”

In other words, the onus is on the United States to appease the oppressors, (i.e.: we reward Vietnam, for doing something they should never have been doing in the first place). It is difficult to comprehend whether Mr. Seiple’s organization has starry eyed ideals or simply wants to protect their future visas to Vietnam. (I hesitate to claim they are on Hanoi’s payroll). Perhaps I just read their title wrong, was it Global Institute for “appeasement”? No, of course I read it right and yet, as I read it again each time I have clear visions of Neville Chamberlain coming back from Nazi Germany waving a paper, “peace in our time”.

In Vietnam’s case the United States needs to engage with Vietnam, but not in a weak position on human rights. Now is the time to stand strong with the dissidents, time to show courage and state loud and clear that the United States will not tolerate repressive governments in lieu of trade deals. It is time for the United States to give hope to the embattled Montagnard population inside Vietnam, its former ally, to give hope to all Vietnamese citizens. Engagement yes, but not appeasement. The old chain smoking communists in power in Hanoi, they know how to play the West and will resist and lie all the way. They will never change, they will only die off, but unfortunately for those who desire freedom in Vietnam, in particularly the younger generation of people in Vietnam, the old communists will just not die off fast enough.

Today’s editorial in the San Diego Union-Tribune, “Say no, governor: Democrats seek state takeover of health care,” succinctly sums up the incredible inanity of California’s liberal Democrat legislature.

It's hard to imagine anything worse than giving control of health care to the same folks who brought California the power crisis, budget deficits, crumbling freeways and struggling schools. But that's precisely what Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, has in mind….
Setting aside political tactics, there remains this dreadful bill. SB 840 would do away with private health insurers. Instead, a state agency would pay doctors and hospitals, in part with cash from existing health subsidies for the poor. The rest of the money would come from a new payroll tax.
New taxes require a two-thirds majority in the Legislature. Kuehl knows she can't muster the votes. So her bill would create a state bureaucracy to sit around until some future Legislature raised taxes for government-only health insurance. Without a trace of irony, Kuehl claims her new bureaucracy would operate with lower overhead costs than the private insurers it replaced.
Certainly, expanding coverage to the state's 6 million uninsured is a noble goal. But a government takeover is precisely the wrong way to help more people. European government systems are plagued with poor quality, long waits and other forms of rationing.
The proper role of government is to get out of the way as private industry attacks the core problems of our health system. Given the right tools, doctors and patients will fix health care. Medicine is far too important to be left to unimpressive legislators in Sacramento.

Ed Morrissey weighs in, with customary common-sense:

Previous California legislation on workers-comp protection and workplace regulation helped start an exodus of corporate headquarters for better business environments. Creating a whole new bureaucracy for health management and putting rationing decisions in the hands of bureaucrats may start a new exodus of healthy people looking for less-intrusive and less-costly tax regimes. Despite the long wait times for anything but primary care issues in single-payer nations such as Canada and the UK -- the latter of which has to destroy organs for lack of doctors to transplant them -- California wants to add to its already top-heavy bureaucracies and add more budget-busting entitlements to a budget that resembles science fiction.
Hillary Clinton tried to foist the same system onto the entire country, and the nation reacted by ending forty years of Democratic domination in the House. Perhaps the same result could come from this irresponsible social engineering project. When people start to understand that they just created a DMV for health care, California voters may just revolt against the entrenched Democratic power structure. Even the Democratic nominee for goverrnor won't endorse the Kuehl bill. Phil Angelides wanted to push more health-care mandates onto the private sector instead, a bad idea but nowhere near as disastrous as this.
In a move typical of the myopic state legislature, the bill doesn't even address the costs that the new bureaucracy will create. The Assembly noted that it will take several years to implement the mandate -- which means that they're going to pass the buck to another group of legislators. Term limits keeps Assembly members from serving more than six years, which means damned few of the culprits will be around to account for the massive bill that will come. However, they have considered revenue streams for the new regime -- an additional 8 percent on the payroll tax that businesses pay and a 3 point hike on the state income tax. That will come before the sunset of the health-care plans that businesses and their employees buy, creating an overlap of costs -- and that assumes that the revenue stream will be enough to pay for the massive spending necessary for the state-run system.

People around the country may shrug this off, figuring that it's just California. However, don't be surprised to see utopians in your neighborhood heralding the coming Brave New World in the Golden State and agitating for the same system where you live.

I weighed in a few days ago, with “Will California Dictate Your Health Care?” An in-depth study of the cruel joke of the Kuehl bill is included.

I’m shocked, just shocked, that there’s politics in politics!

Today’s editorial in the Washington Examiner, “Big Government Failure is Katrina’s Lesson,” points out the obvious:

Katrina was essentially a man-made disaster thanks to big, bureaucratic, distant, wasteful and ponderously slow government.

California, today, offers the lesson again, adding in, as in New Orleans, corrupt and incompetent politicians’ influence on bad planning. Remember this when California’s burgeoning Central Valley is the next Katrina man-made, politically-blessed disaster.

That’s how government usually is. Competing interests, including the venal, are usually blended into compromises that may promise to get by for now but often lead to future shortcomings. That isn’t to say that better can’t be done. It is to say that more public involvement in getting it more correct up front is needed, which requires more transparency by and into government, or in standing against wrongheaded bills to begin with before they lead to more predictable disasters.

During Katrina, several of my posts discussed a parallel disaster to Katrina coming in California’s Central Valley, from collapsing old levees. For example, here, I quoted from Jeffrey Mount, director of the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences and a member of the State Reclamation Board, and commented about the economic relocation and population pressures in the Central Valley to rampantly develop. Development and housing is needed, but must not be irresponsibly behind weak levees.:

1. “Levees, the principal line of defense in both New Orleans and the Central Valley, were overtopped and breached due to a high flood stage.”
2. “We have knowingly developed flood-prone landscapes….creating spiraling land values and population growth within deep floodplains with ever-escalating demands for more protection.”
3. “We are, and continue to be, victims of self-inflicted engineering hubris….escalated demands for more levees, more pumps and more dams.”
4. “New Orleans and the Central Valley – Sacramento in particular – are wedded to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as our principal partner in flood management….multiple projects that failed to live up to expectations, with significant cost overruns and time delays, and some important surprise findings about overall vulnerability.”
5. “New Orleans and the Central Valley have systematically removed their natural shock absorbers. For New Orleans, the levees have cut off sediment and water that sustained the marshes that historically surrounded the city….We have accomplished the same effect by severing the connection between river channels and their floodplains.”

Mount calls for more planning in California, to head off a catastrophe like New Orleans’. Whether that will happen, or be worthwhile, or followed through upon, remains to be seen.

What can be seen, clearly, particularly clearly if not through race-colored prisms, is that the natural and man-made precursors and causes to flooding have little at all to do with race, unless California’s Central Valley has suddenly become 2/3rds Black instead of filling with White retirees and a long commute from more affordable homes for other Whites (and other ethnic groupings) to coastal jobs.

The state Senate’s leader of Sacramento’s heavily liberal Democrat legislature unceremoniously dumped a collection of bills to put teeth and responsibility into levee protection and responsible development nearby. A $500,000 donation to his political action fund was promptly received from the state’s Builders Association, to promote public financing of levee repairs and a myriad of other state infrastructure. Builders, in effect, want state taxpayers to subsidize developments in flood plains. This blatant and grossly irresponsible “coincidence” has led much negative comment, the Tri-Valley Herald reporting “Perata reconsiders bills amid bad press.”

The Sacramento Bee’s editorial today is scathing and unsparing of blame, “Flood tide of inaction.”

The political intrigue is about as thick as bayou muck.

About eight bills are in play, including ones to improve flood mapping, make flood risks a part of a city's general plan and finance upgrades for Delta levees. These are all fine measures, but they don't deal with the reality that cities and counties are building new homes in basins that lack adequate levee protection, with no plan for improvements.

Assembly Bill 1899, by Lois Wolk of Davis, would attack this syndrome by requiring local governments to demonstrate safety before putting more families in floodplains. For a while it appeared Perata and other key senators supported it. Then Perata mysteriously shelved Wolk's bill and others, claiming he didn't want the governor to "cherry-pick" and veto certain bills. Then we found out that the California Building Industry Association -- the major opponent to Wolk's bill -- had provided Perata's bond campaign committee with a $500,000 donation.

Stung by the bad publicity, Perata held a meeting with lawmakers Monday night. The meeting was a farce. Wolk didn't get a chance to present possible amendments to her bill. Instead, Sen. Mike Machado, D-Linden, dominated the session, claiming her bill would hurt his Stockton district.

Machado is often a sage voice on water and corrections policy, but he has acted like a petulant child in dealing with recent flood bills. He voted for AB 1899 in committee, but then kept coming up with more and more objections. If Machado has a better approach for ensuring that development doesn't outpace levee upgrades, we would like to hear it. He had months to articulate it, but didn't. His lack of action speaks volumes….

Schwarzenegger helped create this mess by failing to engage early and come up with alternative flood proposals. Perata may end up repeating this mistake, which does not bode well for the $4 billion flood control bond the two politicians have placed on the November ballot.

Will voters agree to put $4 billion of their money into a bond championed by two leaders who have failed so miserably on flood legislation? Possibly not. That means that 2006 could a lost cause for levees, one year after Katrina.

UPDATE: Several readers wrote that some of the critical levees weren’t topped but collapsed from inadequate engineering and construction. Correct. The quoted comments are from a year ago, regarding topping, before facts emerged. Today’s Investor’s Business Daily points out more facts that emerged, despite inadequate media engineering and construction of the “news.”

Instead, the sea surged, the levees broke and a big part of the city was washed away. The inadequate levees had been in place for decades — a failure, to be sure, but one that spanned many years and multiple presidents, mayors, governors and FEMA leaders.
In short, this was an avoidable tragedy. We should learn from it and fix problems. That might not be easy, though, since many in the media treat Katrina not as a chance to improve a vital part of our homeland security, but as another chance to score debating points against the Bush-led GOP in midterm elections.

Former Senators Bob Kerry and Warren Rudman’s focus in “Securing Future Fiscal Health” is upon the process of government commissions to deal with, primarily, entitlement programs. Left on autocourse,

Over the next 30 years, spending on federal programs is on track to go up by 50 percent as a share of the economy. If revenue remain at their historical level, the resulting deficits will approach 20 percent of gross domestic product by 2036 -- almost 10 times the current size. The debt will surge to 200 percent of GDP -- twice what it was at the end of World War II.

Political realities explain why nothing has been done about this. Changing course would require substantial spending cuts from projected levels or equivalent tax increases. Neither party wants to be the first to propose these tough choices out of fear that the other side would attack it. Similarly, neither side wants to discuss possible compromises of its own priorities, out of fear that the other side will take the concessions and run. Unfortunately, these fears are justified.

It will be difficult for the most august of commissions, however, to deal with the entitlement issues without better understanding among the populace of the cost-drivers, and taking on all at once may well be too much an endeavor for any group. However, in the realm of health care much can be accomplished, and is in motion.

No subject I deal with gets a lower response than health care, possibly reflecting the avoidance of making choices. Everyone wants the best, the overwhelming majority do get the best, and few are willing to pay directly for the best. Possibly the inattention stems from most of the commentators are themselves satisfied.

Schemes for nationalized healthcare are consistently rejected as imposing undesirable bureaucratic controls and rationing while not resulting in significant savings. Schemes for consumer-directed care and tax-favored savings accounts founder on the inability to intelligently shop, which most wouldn’t do anyway if they had the info, and the limited attractiveness to those seriously ill whose health care is most of overall spending.

America’s Health Insurance Plans, the national association representing nearly 1,300 member companies providing health insurance coverage to more than 200 million Americans, commissioned a study from PriceWaterhouseCoopers of “The Factors Fueling Rising Healthcare Costs 2006.” PriceWaterhouseCoopers reviewed “government and private surveys” and had “discussions with actuaries as well as reviews of available research and literature.”

Several statistics stand out in the PwC study. Premium increases continue, primarily from increased utilization, technology, and wonder drugs, but are 36% lower in 2006 than 2002, largely due to shifts from inpatient to outpatient treatments and increased availability of generic drugs for many conditions. Premium increases closely track underlying costs. 86% of premium dollars go to care. Consumer services, provider support and marketing consume 5%. Government payments, compliance, claims processing and other administration costs 6%. Profits are 3%, hardly the fatcat gouging accused by opponents of private insurance companies.

Two other statistics of import in the PwC study are that about 10% of health care costs are due to defensive medicine, excess tests and procedures to avoid litigation, which is included in the 30% of health care costs identified in another study as “poor quality health care.”

Interestingly, as Senators Kerrey and Rudman would be glad of, the consensus on reducing this 30% due to “overuse, misuse, and waste” cuts across responsible Republicans and Democrats. President Bush has pushed for measures to increase the collection and dissemination of health care quality information. The Democratic Leadership Council is on board with this effort (while the Democrats' far-Left continues pursuing statist schemes):

In the last fight to restrain costs, employers and many governments adopted managed care. The widespread use of managed care helped tame medical inflation from 1994 to 2001. But managed care failed to win the public's trust necessary to restrain costs, and instead provoked a backlash, sometimes undermining health care quality. The lesson is clear for this round of cost cutting: Quality improvement must be pursued in tandem with cost restraint.

The movement to cut costs by improving quality owes its beginnings, in part, to the Midwest Business Group on Health, a coalition of private and public employers in 11 states that has charted a new course for purchasing health care. In its landmark 2003 report, "Reducing the Costs of Poor-Quality Health Care Through Responsible Purchasing Leadership," this employer group acknowledges that "purchasers of health care benefits bear some responsibility for poor quality."

The report identifies the causes of poor-quality health care as underuse, overuse, misuse, and waste of medical services. It estimates that 30 percent of all direct health care outlays today are the result of poor-quality care. A 2004 report by the RAND Corporation reinforces this point, as it finds that American patients receive proper care only 54 percent of the time.

The uber-commission that Senators Kerrey and Rudman envision may be too big a bite, but this example of where a major source of cost-saving can come from, with bipartisan support, is encouraging and should be pursued.

The just deserts being visited upon Israel’s enemies is serving to deter them, at least until the next time.

Congressman Tom Lantos, as often, seems to be one of the few in power trying to prevent a next time. Lantos is blocking U.S. aid to Lebanon’s reconstruction to pressure Lebanon’s Hezbollah-scared government to allow UNFIL blocking the Syria border crossings to rearm Hezbollah.

"The international community must use all our available means to stiffen Lebanon's spine and to convince the government of Lebanon to have the new UNIFIL troops on the Syrian border in adequate numbers," said Tom Lantos, the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives' International Relations Committee.

Lantos said he was putting a legislative hold on Bush's proposal to provide $230 million in aid for Lebanon in the aftermath of the 34-day war between Israel and Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas.

As the top Democrat on the International Relations Committee, Lantos has the power to hold up legislation.

Most of those worrying about the esoterics of Just War or Proportionate Response or using it as propaganda during the last phase of Israel’s ongoing defense against those who could care less lacked real concern about the disproportionate tactics used or results sought by Israel’s enemies in death of a people and a nation.

Now, Hezbollah’s Nasrallah appears to have been, temporarily at least, taught the proper lesson of tempting Israel’s response: he and his followers will get their a—handed to them, and Nasrallah can spend the rest of his miserable life hiding from personal justice.
Consequently, Nasrallah says,

"We did not think that there was a 1% chance that the kidnapping would lead to a war of this scale and magnitude," Sheikh Nasrallah said.

"Now you ask me if this was 11 July and there was a 1% chance that the kidnapping would lead to a war like the one that has taken place, would you go ahead with the kidnapping?

"I would say no, definitely not, for humanitarian, moral, social, security, military and political reasons.

Ed Morrissey points out:

If all Nasrallah can get back are the bodies of his own men and the handful of jihadis who got captured during the fighting, the Lebanese people will see who really won this war -- and they will not take very kindly to Hezbollah's destruction of the nation just for the sake of their Syrian and Iranian paymasters.

But, the U.N. knowingly plants the seeds of next time, as it refuses to meet its own weak words about preventing the rearming of Hezbollah.

The United Nations peacekeeping force to be deployed in Lebanon is facing further criticism after the admission that its forces will not even be allowed to intercept shipments of arms to Hezbollah from Syria.

Speaking in Brussels before heading to the region, Kofi Annan, pictured below, the UN Secretary-General, confirmed that the 15,000-strong force will not meet Israeli demands to police the routes used by the militia to smuggle missiles from Syria.

"Troops are not going in there to disarm - let's be clear," he said. Instead, the Unifil force will only carry out interception missions if asked by the Lebanese government - which has made no such request. Syria, meanwhile, accused by Israel of re-arming Hezbollah during the recent conflict, has said the deployment of any UN forces near its border would be considered a "hostile act".

Mr Annan's disclosure of more limits on the UN force's remit will act as a further blow to its credibility as a peacekeeping force. It is already devoid of any mandate to disarm Hezbollah of its existing weapons, and now appears powerless to stop the militia re-arming. Critics point out that new stocks of weapons and missiles could end up being used against the Unifil troops themselves, should their mission go awry and end up in clashes with Hezbollah fighters.

Thankfully, decency has a Tom Lantos. Will the Left’s Netroots make him their next target to purify the Democrat Party of anyone with a spine?

Remember big jars of free pickled eggs in bars? It used to be fairly universal. A few years ago, I went into a bar in Dusseldorf, Germany, and to my delight saw one. After reaching in for a few, a bill was presented for several Euros apiece. That’s also the story of healthcare, here and there: There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Our and their health care costs are increasing, with ageing populations, medical marvels, and senses of entitlement. Our and their premiums and co-pays are consequently increasing. There, however, one faces waiting lines, rationed care, limited remedies that are available here, and medical innovation and pharmaceuticals taken at forced discounts that shift costs across the Atlantic, on to us

Nonetheless, proponents of what they call “single-payer” healthcare, actually government-run and dictated health care, continue to peddle a “free lunch” panacea that is illusory, if not dishonest.

With 1 of 8 Americans living in California, what happens in California doesn’t stay in California. The impact of government programs in California is felt in public policy debates elsewhere, and occasionally the sheer economic weight of California impels changes elsewhere.

One of California’s preeminent columnists, Dan Waters of the Sacramento Bee, writes about the health care stakes in the November Schwarzenegger- Angelides governor race: (free registration)

This year's version is Senate Bill 840, carried by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, that cleared the Senate on a straight party-line, 25-15 vote, and will be passed by the Assembly in the next few days. It would create a California Health Insurance Agency that would contract for health care for all Californians, bar private health insurance for services the agency provides, with financing from "an equitable and affordable premium structure."

Based on what's happened in other countries, it appears inevitable that a California single-payer system that envisions freezing or even reducing total expenditures would shrink the insured medical services that many enjoy to expand coverage to the nearly 20 percent of Californians who have no insurance now and often depend on hospital emergency rooms or "doc-in-the-box" clinics for care. It is, as much as anything, an ideological question that's affected by the simple fact that the vast majority of Californians who vote -- 90 percent or more -- already have health care coverage, while the vast majority of those lacking coverage do not vote.

Twelve years ago, by a 3-1 margin, California's voters rejected a Canadian-style, universal health care ballot measure that the California Medical Association proposed. Two years ago, albeit by just 1.6 percentage points, they nullified another stab at universal health care, centered on employer mandates, that a very liberal Legislature and former Gov. Gray Davis had enacted.

A recent poll conducted for the California Association of Health Underwriters -- insurance companies that write health policies and oppose SB 840 -- found Californians sharply divided over health care, especially over whether government should adopt the lead role in providing it, but opposed to increasing taxes to expand health care access and in general leaning against the SB 840 approach.

Schwarzenegger's Democratic challenger, Phil Angelides, has embraced, conceptually, universal health care, and the governor's campaign apparatus has cited that as one example of Angelides' alleged intention to saddle Californians with billions of dollars in new mandates and taxes. Given that, the chances of Schwarzenegger's signing Kuehl's bill are virtually zero.

I wouldn’t be so sure of that. Schwarzenegger indicates he will sign off on a scheme that will lead to California using its purchasing power over MediCal (California’s version of Medicaid) to force pharmaceutical companies to give discounts to uninsured Californians, thus reducing economic incentives and ability to innovate new drugs.

The sweeping program would serve the uninsured who earn up to $60,000 a year for a family of four – about triple the federal poverty level – providing them with discounts of up to 40 percent on brand-name drugs and 60 percent on generic drugs…

Those companies that don't comply would face having one or more of their drugs taken off the list of medications approved for Medi-Cal patients.

Medi-Cal, the federal/state program that serves about 6 million low-income residents, spends about $4 billion a year on prescription drugs.

Once a drug is taken off the Medi-Cal list, physicians have to obtain special permission to prescribe it, which could dramatically lower sales, costing drug companies millions in revenue.

The sponsor of the health care bill passing the legislature is described by her local Santa Monica newspaper thusly:

State Senator Sheila Kuehl – often seen tooling around Sunset Park in her red Porsche – is taking a shot at changing legislative and health care history with her “California Health Insurance Reliability Act,” which comes up for a vote in the State Assembly next week, most likely on Monday.

One of her supporters says:

“There’s going to be a huge fight to make this happen,” predicted Savage, whose organization is leading a year-long public relations blitz to raise the consciousness of voters throughout the state.

The Health Economics Consulting Group, comprised of “faculty affiliated with a number of research universities across the United States, including the University of Iowa, Texas A&M University, University of California - Berkeley, Emory University, University of Louisville, University of Nebraska, Purdue University, and Washington University,” issued an analysis of the California “single-payer” bill, divided into the following sections:

ACCESS: …centrally planned systems, by design, require rationing, typically in the form of waiting lists. Waiting lists, together with increasing tax burdens, are often cited as the principal drivers of discontent with centrally-planned systems.

QUALITY: …According to a recent study of 21 quality indicators from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, England, and the United States (Hussey et. al. 2004), the U.S. ranked either best or second-best in more than half of the indicators….In addition, single-payer plans imply some degree of “regression to the mean” in the scope of benefits and, perhaps, the quality of care. According to Newhouse and Reischauer (2004), “If the single-payer plan has benefits that are around the current average, roughly half of people with above-average coverage will have less coverage under reform, something that they are unlikely to take kindly…and if the single plan is much better than the current average, costs explode.”

ADMINISTRATIVE COSTS: …the assumption that CHIS [the bill] will be able to achieve 1.8% administrative costs is weak. Apart from the aforementioned accounting problems [For example: “It is likely that a non-trivial proportion of capital costs in countries with government-run health plans is not counted as administrative costs to the program.”] …the estimated savings from the statewide reduction in administrative costs is inaccurate because the Lewin report overstates private health insurance administrative expenses [by a third].

TECHNOLOGY AND ADAPTATION: …Incentive attenuation includes reduced incentives to attract new customers, reduced incentives to invest in up-to-date capital and equipment, reduced incentives to innovate (processes and products), and reduced productivity (i.e., from reduced ability of decision-makers and risk takers to share in entrepreneurial returns.)

REGULATORY INSTRUMENTS: …Throughout the text of the legislatuion, references are made to the role of CHIS as the regulator of price and capacity. However, the cumulative knowledge on economic regulation suggests, consistently across studies and industries, that the imposition of economic regulation on an industry results in higher costs and prices…Rate and capacity regulation has been shown to have similar effects in the U.S. hospital industry….

TAX-BASED FINANCING: …There is no guarantee that bureaucrats and politicians will be able to finance the system at levels aligned with consumer demand, nor is there any guarantee that, in the aggregate, consumers would be willing to vote in favor of tax increases sufficient to fund adaptation and growth. Residents of countries in which single-payer plans are available consistently indicate that the single most important action that government can take to improve the system is to “spend more money.” …A related issue, which has been voiced by residents of single-payer countries, is the extent to which medical decision making becomes “politicized.”…

COSTS: The proposed single-payer plan is not immune to the cost inflation problems common to the existing health care system….

IMPLEMENTATION: …replacing the private system with a government system will result in a net loss of $33 billion over the 5-year post-CHIRA enactment period. This loss more than offsets the $8 billion net gains estimated by the Lewin report.

Schwarzenegger needs to be reminded of these facts, for California’s and other states’ sake.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if liberals claimed Barry Goldwater’s legacy? They may be trying.

Reflection on our past, and idols, can be constructive. Next month, September 18, HBO will air “Mr. Conservative: Goldwater on Goldwater.” This reflection, however, seems to be more of a 2006 campaign argument to use the usual debates in the Republican Party among traditionalists, libertarians and newer thinkers and doers who predominate to divide and denigrate Republicans. An indicator is that Editor & Publisher highlighted the coming show.

This debate is one of the healthy reasons the Republican Party has been so successful over the past decades: it is a big tent. By comparison, the Democrat Party has been narrowing its appeal and membership. To my surprise, a local friend, quite liberal, believer in open forums, former MSM reporter, former publisher, still a widely respected columnist, just resigned along with his wife from registration as a Democrat due to his opinion that too many Democrats have become insensitive to Jewish concerns and due to the treatment of Lieberman, even though my friend has come from support to wanting a reasonable timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

Barry’s granddaughter, C.C., is the originator of the project. As she told an interviewer:

Growing up, Goldwater knew little of her grandfather's politics. She didn't know what he stood for. She didn't quite understand where people were coming from when they told her either how fantastic or what a warmonger he was.

It wasn't until she got into researching the film that she understood their reaction to a man unrestrained by spin doctors and political niceties.

He was "brutally frank."

"Right or wrong, he always said what he felt. In some situations, it was not completely right. In other situations, it was right. But it was always honest," she said.

However, a reviewer sees an agenda in the show’s thrust:

Pic reflects on a contempo religious GOP right wing that would have profoundly alienated Goldwater, who rarely brought God into his politics.

The selection of interviewees appears to reinforce this leaning:

The list of interviewees underlines it's not a big right-wing project: it includes Walter Cronkite, Ted Kennedy, Al Franken, Helen Thomas, James Carville, Bob Schieffer, Andy Rooney, Julian Bond, Ben Bradlee and Sally Quinn, John Dean, and erstwhile Goldwater Girl Hillary Rodham Clinton. A few righties appear (Richard Viguerie, George Will) and some more centrist GOP types do, too (John Warner, Sandra Day O'Connor).

I usually don’t harken back to former posts, but this once please see this one, “Conscience of a conservative” from last September.

An excerpt:

There aren’t many of us who remember Barry Goldwater’s challenge to the excessively liberal common wisdom of the 1960’s, his conscience of a conservative trumpeting the creed that put the individual first and launched the modern conservative movement said to dominate the Republican Party, which in turn is said to dominate American politics.

But, that creed has morphed into a political machine in which the purism of Goldwater’s beliefs are peripheral to obtaining, keeping, and using power, as often for self-enrichment and glorification as any statist. There aren’t many of us who remember Barry Goldwater’s libertarian core in the 1970’s running contrary to some of the social conservatism that much of the Republican alliance rested upon. Most Republican leaders paid him as much false homage as to Lincoln, but treated him mostly like a loved but aged and quirky uncle. Today, I can’t even remember the last time I heard his name, not to mention his views, mentioned by a Republican.

There are faint echoes today of the debates over the fundamental meaning of conservatism and of liberalism that dominated discourse in the 1960’s and 1970’s. But, that’s all they are, faint echoes heard in the halls and media of power, largely treated as trivial to the business at hand. And, that’s what is at hand, the business of power, not the power of ideas, including the powerful idea of individual responsibility and morality….

Out of their loss of power, like conservatives in the 1950’s, liberals are at last realizing they need new thinking. It may be comfortable to see their state of thinking epitomized by their equivalent of conspiratorial Birchers whose insanities we highlight, but below that surface there are some saner thinkers stumbling toward a newer more attractive vision that may resonate over the coming decades. Meanwhile, the primary contrary thinking from the right is more concerned with cutting spending, but of the other guy’s programs, or the same programs but at a state instead of federal level, but not much new that recognizes the fallibility of relying on government programs to the relative exclusion of individual initiative and acceptance of the limitations of group programs.

Both liberals and conservatives have reached virtual bankruptcy of ideas. Both are rummaging around their vaults of oldie goldie slogans, and polls show most Americans except the few most partisan see through both’s emperorial clothes. Both need to really rethink their core assumptions, and take on their vested interests. If conservatives don’t get a new Barry Goldwater soon, the liberals may find theirs first.

It’s been said that what makes the British such good travelers is that they expect so little when they travel. Whether this is true of the British, I don’t know, but it sums up well my own relation with the American entertainment industry. Because I expect so little from Hollywood, I’m rarely disappointed when I go to the movies. Over the years I’ve developed three helpful rules: 1) Don’t go to the movies too often, 2) Choose your movie based on the director, and 3) Avoid all Oliver Stone movies.

But I recently broke my third rule. Since Mr. Stone’s film “World Trade Center” is only the second Hollywood attempt in five years to address September 11, I felt obligated to see it, if for no other reason than to be aware of what my students will have seen when they return next week. I was prepared to be thoroughly disappointed. At least as far as this movie is concerned, I was wrong about Mr. Stone. He has produced a restrained, respectful, apolitical film that is well worth seeing.

The critics have been generally respectful, though some on both the left and the right disagree with its apolitical approach. They accuse Mr. Stone of failing to put September 11 in “the proper context,” by which they mean he should take a stand on Iraq--show us either why we shouldn’t be there, or why we need to win. But my question to such critics is: Since when have we expected moral or political guidance from Hollywood? That’s what friends, family, and colleagues are for. Besides, since we already know where Mr. Stone stands on this, we don’t need a cinematic illustration.

In a way, Mr. Stone’s movie isn’t really about September 11. Rather, he uses the extraordinary events of that day to narrate the story of two ordinary Port Authority policemen, Sergeant John McLoughlin and Patrolman Wil Jimeno, and through their story Stone shows us something universal about all of us--or, one would hope, true of most of us, most of the time.

For one thing, the duties of the present and the pain of the past pushes us toward forgetfulness. We’re busy. We’re tired. We move on. We remember what is useful or seems necessary, which doesn’t always coincide with what’s really important. In watching Mr. Stone’s film I realized how much I had forgotten about that day: What a beautiful day it was; that only 20 men were pulled alive from the rubble; the stunned, open-wound look on the faces of my students; the feeling of shared grief and unity with my fellow citizens. It all came flooding back. It was all worth remembering.

This film is not flawless. There are things that don’t work, but they are more than offset by the many short scenes that achieve perfect pitch. Stone’s attention to detail has a telling, cumulative effect. Take, for example, the opening scene. Sgt. McLoughlin’s day begins at 3:30 am, but he turns off the alarm at 3:29, so as not to wake his wife. It’s a considerate act that reveals the man. But his wife is awake, though she doesn’t let him know--to avoid saying good-bye, perhaps? All is not well. This scene, like so many others, is part of a carefully crafted whole.

This movie is also a surprise, and thoroughly un-Hollywood, in the way it presents men. There are no men cheating on their wives or acting like bumbling fools before their uncomprehending adolescent children. Instead, we see men trying to be good husbands, good fathers, and good policemen. A series of scenes that cut between McLoughlin and Jimeno buried in the rubble, and their families waiting for word of their fate, show us people, who in the midst of their grief, remember that it’s not just about them: The pregnant mother who is reminded that her baby is going through this too; the mother worrying about how she will tell her daughter that her father might not be coming home; the son accusing his mother of not caring about his father because she won’t immediately drive to the World Trade Center. And yet she is wise and loving enough to know her son doesn’t really mean it.

We see people putting others first, on this, the worst day of their lives because they’ve been doing it every day of their lives. And if you spend your life as a husband and father putting those you love first, then when the crucial day comes chances are that as a policeman you’ll put the people in the North Tower first as well. In a pivotal scene, beautifully done, Sgt. McLoughlin says, “We’re going to evacuate the North Tower….Who’s coming? Step forward.” And after an uncomfortably long pause, Jimeno says, “I got it Sarg.”

That one scene speaks volumes about the true nature of courage. Courage is not the absence of fear. Anyone present at ground zero that day would have been a fool not to feel fear. We see that these men are afraid, but they overcome it. And fear isn’t overcome without leaders. Sgt. McLoughlin asks for volunteers; the others can say yes or no. Jimeno is the first to say yes, and then others follow his example.

Courage as a virtue is increasingly misunderstood in our society, especially among the keyboard class. As our lives become more comfortable and protected, we forget who does the protecting. A better understanding of this might bring solace to those family members whose lost loved ones are not explicitly mentioned in this film.

McLoughlin and Jimeno are courageous not because they survive under the rubble. They are trapped. They don’t want to be there. One of them even wonders if the whole day was pointless: they saved no one. But it was their courage that put them there, back when they still had a choice. For the many who didn’t survive, their “yes,” their “I got it, Sarg,” began when they became one of those who protect the rest of us.

By choosing a narrow focus, Mr. Stone has done well something Hollywood almost never does. He’s given us a glimpse, a reminder, of people like those we all know, people living good lives by doing the little things day after day that good people do: Loving your spouse, trying to be a good parent, doing your duty. We are surrounded by such people but tend to take them for granted. Often, they’re no further away from us than the next room.

My blogger friend wrote to me the other day he was suffering “Idiot Fatigue” at puncturing holes in the thin fabric of fabrications that too often pass for mainstream commentary on war, peace, and life. I shared his thoughts with some others, of various backgrounds and leanings, and heard much the same. With one big difference: those older were wiser about how perseverance, faith, and sheer fightingness almost always overcomes, and how the doomsayers beguiling words are most often wrong.

One of the friends I often turn to is Jack Risko, blogger extraordinaire of Dinocrat. He marries hard-headed realism, solid numbers, and judgment, rather that being caught up in whatever furor the MSM, or fellow bloggers, is currently peddling.

Let me give you two recent examples:

Last week, Jack wrote about “Malthus, Eurabia, and the vagaries of mathematical projections.” Jack expects Europe to wizen up, and the U.S. as well, due to facing the real external threats and internal bankruptcies of runaway entitlement spending.

The projections of Eurabia are based on assumptions about the underlying docility of the supposedly enervated populations of Western Europe. That assumption of docility is in turn, in our view, based on potentially questionable projections of economic growth and prosperity. Our point is this: Europeans have among the nastiest histories of brutality, barbarism and genocide on the planet. From the 1790’s in France, through the 1930’s in Germany, and, to pick a tiny example, 1290 - 1656 in England, Europeans have shown themselves to be every bit as bloodthirsty and ruthless as anyone on the planet. It is unwise to assume that these characteristics can be bred out of peoples so quickly, no matter what the doddering elites and their court jesters in the MSM seek to portray.

Eurabia may well emerge. It is, however, our expectation that upheavals far worse than anyone is currently forecasting lie ahead for Europe and America in the intervening years.

Yesterday, Jack wrote about “Big economy, small deficits.”

Will Franklin also helpfully points out that major entitlement spending, currently around 9% of GDP, is expected to continue to rise sharply in coming years. And that is perhaps a useful item with which to conclude our summary: the US economy is astonishingly, unimaginably large, about $13 trillion (6-7x that of China for example). The US budget deficit is smallish, around $260 billion (or around 2% of GDP). And, stories to the contrary, expenditures on the military are miniscule by historical standards, at 4% or so of GDP. [See the graph at the link.] What the US needs to guard against and control over the next period of time are runaway entitlements. Otherwise, things are pretty good, and certainly outstanding by comparison with history.

We all need to read Jack, and be Jacks.

One of the biggest myths to come out of the Vietnam war is the exaggeration of PTSD. A major analysis, even the New York Times recognizes as “authoritative,” debunks significantly, yet the blogosphere is largely silent. I don’t know why, but guess that preoccupation with the latest news crowds it out.

That’s a mistake. Such as PTSD exaggeration have and continue to tarnish the understanding of Americans about then and now. Not only that, but for those who suspect all that comes from the mainstream media being “bad” news, it was the New York Times and Associated Press which highlighted the new analysis, while even most conservative blogs did not.

Over the past three decades, deficient studies and media have ingrained PTSD into Americans’ consciousness as a particular result of Vietnam. Similar politically motivated assertions have been made about our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The stress of engaging in a war often without clear battlefronts and enemies frequently hidden among civilians was said to produce extraordinarily high rates of post-traumatic disorders among our soldiers and Marines. Of course, this fit the anti-war narrative that somehow such stress is peculiar to that war’s opposed policy.

More and more empirical evidence is emerging that this is quite untrue. The publisher of JunkScience.com discusses what happens when “Politicized Science Produces Bad Public Policy.”

In the end, unbiased science stands a greater chance of providing policymakers with useful information and -- more importantly -- helping those who have sacrificed and suffered for their country.

Sunday’s Washington Post frontpages a long visit with a female who served in Iraq diagnosed with PTSD, “Home but Still Haunted.” One must go 1/3rd through to see that,

Women appear to be showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health troubles at roughly the same rates as men. If this result holds true, it would stand out because women studied in the overall population show markedly higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder than men – about twice as much.

My post of August 17, "PTSD: Science Deflates Politics," which links to several prior corrective more factual articles, focuses on the latest study – that even the New York Times calls “authoritative.” As it turns out, the incidence, persistence and severity of PTSD is a fraction of what had been previously presented.

Military.com has republished my post, as “Rethinking PTSD” for its audience of 8-million. Curiously, there’s been virtually no blogosphere coverage of this deflation of anti-war politics by science.

A fellow blogger emailed me the other day that he’s suffering “Idiot Fatigue,” over deflating bad reporting of the Israel-Hezbollah war. If prior bad reporting is not corrected, it’s more difficult for me to see how current or future media behavior will be more on guard about it.

The squalor and lack of elemental help for wheelchairs and such that disabled veterans of the former South Vietnamese armed forces are forced to live in by their conquerors is and should be shocking.

Last February, I posted an email from a very caring Vietnam veteran friend, who served as a photographer, of his trip to South Vietnam to investigate and help the plight of severely disabled veterans of the South Vietnamese armed forces, “Forgotten South Vietnamese Allies.”

DelVecchio, Del as friends call him, is returning soon to South Vietnam. He is carrying no other agenda than to help these tormented men. With the help of other volunteers, the Vietnam Healing Foundation, a tax-deductible charity, has been formed.

A wheelchair cobbled together from bicycle parts costs about $100. Several months’ of relief from bare subsistence can be had for $36. Please see, for example, these two case histories and photos, for the need.

Aside from our collective voluntary amnesia about our responsibilities toward former allies, the Vietnam Healing Foundation faces another major hurdle: The Hanoi regime does not permit the sort of giving to these veterans that allows the accounting required by major foundations, necessary to get their support. The funds must be sneaked into the country and distributed in cash to individuals in need. All a donor can rely upon is the honesty of the Vietnam Healing Foundation. I know these people and can vouch for that.

Meanwhile the official Vietnam Red Cross Society recently kicked off a new campaign to help similar veterans in need, but all the aid was restricted to 8 Northern provinces. Donors include the Red Cross Societies of Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Spain, Norway and the United States, plus the Ford Foundation and the Belgium-Vietnam Friendship Association. (Source is offline now: July 5, 2006, Vietnam News Briefs)

Please HELP: contribute and spread the message of worthy need.
Contributions can be sent, and questions can be asked, to:

Mailing Address:
VHF
c/o P. TRAN
P.O. BOX 40151
RALEIGH, N.C. 27629
Phone: 919-872-2343
Fax: 919-882-1201

vnhf@yahoogroups.com

Too much of our public debates about wars are consumed with arguments over what was or could have been known, what actions were or could have been taken, and who or what is to fault. Among the downsides of this are excessive divisiveness that reduces our abilities to constructively appraise the present, unify, and choose more productive future courses.

This is not a new phenomenon. Such divisive debates occurred over Pearl Harbor, the onset of the Cold War, Vietnam, 9/11, and the latest war on Israel’s borders.

The educative benefit of such public debates is very important, not just for historians but for testing and expanding our understanding. However, the tenor of these debates has also sapped public confidence in leadership, often unjustifiably by retrospective rather than contemporary standards of evidence or what was actually known or at stake, and hampered unity at getting on with whatever the job is at hand.

An example: The Clinton and Bush administrations have been lambasted for errors in judgment and actions with regard to Iraq, largely due to poor intelligence. But, Israel certainly has better intelligence and capabilities with regard to Lebanon and Hezbollah compared to what the U.S. had about Iraq in 2003, and more experience in the terrain and modes of warfare appropriate, and still made many similar errors.

The problem is not so much intelligence but rather the uses, internal and external, that information is put. Policy misconceptions and weak will are more and more often to fault.

To consider weak policy or will absent the context of democratic societies, the proper and strong public impulse to be inner-directed must be prominent (compared to the purposeful external we-them distraction from internal horrors and ineptitude that is necessary to sustain dictatorial regimes) and the political context and constraints within which leaders must act.

To consider weak policy or will absent the context of other current events is to grievously misunderstand, and is a selectively misguiding path to present policy or actions, which also occur in the context of other current events.

Ultimately, conspiracies have been proven again and again to be false. Those who insist upon them do little or nothing to further public understanding or consensus, or more adept current or future policies.

Now, all this said, there are commonly accepted lessons that have been learned from prior wars: The U.S. involvement could and should have been undertaken sooner or with more force.

The U.S. remained militarily unprepared -- isolationist thinking being predominant -- for World War II in the face of the clear threats, needing a year and more after Pearl Harbor to come up to strength. The U.S. disarmed rapidly – as the home front desired -- in the face of clear Soviet intent to subjugate Eastern Europe, and was reactive to that and the invasion of Korea, the reality shock of that to many leading to pendulum swings of emotion. In 1964, the electorate clearly rejected the overwhelming force needed to be directed directly on Hanoi to rein in Hanoi, and only in 1972 were some of these measures taken but to speed exit negotiations. Border and internal security defenses may have avoided 9/11, but were contrary to prevailing thought and emotions about civil liberties and budget priorities, and we’ve been playing slow catchup since, even hindered by those who ignore the lessons. The Sharon initiative in Suez was clearly successful, but the understanding and will to be so bold and successful was clearly lacking among current leaders in Israel whose electorate more desired peaceful seperation.

We don’t need conspiracy theories to understand the repeated failures to understand. Conspiracy theories are a democracy’s version of we-them, serving more to divert attention from realities than to enlighten or reliably guide.

Editor & Publisher, leading trade daily, publishes today a column about “Photojournalism in Crisis” by David D. Perlmutter, an authority on the subject, which calls for the kind of investigation and reforms that I and many others in the blogosphere have demanded. Similar demands have not been prominent among MSM coverage of the staged and doctored photos of the Israel-Hezbollah war, or for that matter the terrorism from Hamas and associates in Gaza.

As Perlmutter points out:

In each case, these bloggers have engaged in the kind of probing, contextual, fact-based (if occasionally speculative) media criticism I have always asked of my students. And the results have been devastating…

Perlmutter is, according to his E&P bio:

Professor and Associate Dean for Graduate Studies & Research at the University of Kansas¿s School of Journalism & Mass Communications. He is author of "Visions of War, Photojournalism and Foreign Policy," and a book of documentary photography, Policing the Media."

Perlmutter points out the two paths that media organizations may take, and the stakes:

News picture-making media organizations have two paths of possible response to this unnerving new situation. First, they can stonewall, deny, delete, dismiss, counter-slur, or ignore the problem. To some extent, this is what is happening now and, ethical consideration aside, such a strategy is the practical equivalent of taking extra photos of the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The second, much more painful option, is to implement your ideals, the ones we still teach in journalism school. Admit mistakes right away. Correct them with as much fanfare and surface area as you devoted to the original image. Create task forces and investigating panels. Don’t delete archives but publish them along with detailed descriptions of what went wrong. Attend to your critics and diversify the sources of imagery, or better yet be brave enough to refuse to show any images of scenes in which you are being told what to show. I would even love to see special inserts or mini-documentaries on how to spot photo bias or photo fakery—in other words, be as transparent, unarrogant, and responsive as you expect those you cover to be.

The stakes are high. Democracy is based on the premise that it is acceptable for people to believe that some politicians or news media are lying to them; democracy collapses when the public believes that everybody in government and the press is lying to them.

This isn’t just a problem of photojournalism, or of the Middle East. It extends to other geographies of crucial concern to Americans, and extends to the very hires by media organizations, and not only of suspect stringers.

The latest example, Reuters’ Havana correspondent is formerly Havana-based correspondent of the CPUSA People’s Daily World, and a harsh critic of US policy.

Regardless of excuses or evasions, our major media organizations have demonstrated over and over again, too frequently for mistake, the willingness to accept sources and to hire those whose behavior and reporting contradicts every standard these media organizations hypocritically purport as their policies.

Our major media organizations must reform their practices or, as Perlmutter says, not “if its practitioners and owners are determined to jump into the abyss.”

Franck Salameh, who teaches Arabic at Boston College, has penned a revealing op-ed for Real Clear Politics on Middlebury College's Arabic Summer School. His work was sponsored by Campus Watch, which I direct.

Middlebury's famed summer Language Schools are a destination for hundreds of determined students each year. They're intensive programs--students must pledge not to speak English on penalty of expulsion--and the immersion is total. In the classroom, on campus, during meals, it's all-foreign language, all the time.

If you go there to study French, German, Italian, or any of the other languages offered, you'll doubtless benefit tremendously. But if you study Arabic there, as Franck shows, you'll be bombarded with enough hyper-nationalistic propaganda to either turn you into an Arabist ideologue, or turn you away from this part of Middlebury's language programs.

Inside the classroom and across campus, administrators and language teachers adhered to a restrictive Arab-nationalist view of what is generically referred to as the "Arab world." In practice, this meant that the Middle East was presented as a mono-cultural, exclusively Arab region. The time-honored presence and deep-rooted histories of tens of millions of Kurds, Assyrians, Copts, Jews, Maronites, and Armenians--all of whom are indigenous Middle Easterners who object to an imputed "supra-Arab" identity--were dismissed in favor of a reductionist, ahistorical Arabist narrative. Those who didn't share this closed view of the Middle East were made to feel like dhimmi--the non-Muslim citizens of some Muslim-ruled lands whose rights are restricted because of their religious beliefs.

Maps that didn't include Israel, which showed the Syrian/Lebanese border as "provisional," and which renamed the Persian Gulf the "Arabian Gulf" are only the beginning of the story. The dining hall was halal (adhered to Muslim dietary restrictions) even though only 20 percent of the students were Muslim, students who appeared to be members of the U.S. military were cold-shouldered, and the Arabic School was alone among the language schools in not celebrating the Fourth of July.

All of this is but a symptom of Middle East studies in America, which is perhaps the most politicized field in academe. Every intellectual malady that plagues history, comparative literature, language study, political science, sociology, and more is found in MES. And all at a time when we most need excellence in this field.

America needs many more trained Arabic speakers to press our war against Islamic extremism. But we can and should offer language training by professors who don't disdain America and the West.

The New York Times report of a new study of PTSD, the NYT’s summary remarking the new study is “viewed by experts as authoritative,” knocks the air out of the Vietnam war and Vietnam veteran punching bags that stress disorders among our combatants was especially severe, long-lasting, and extraordinary. This canard is currently used to similarly undermine the U.S. war effort in Iraq, a war similarly often without clear-cut fronts and enemy.

Other qualified analysts have come to this conclusion before, such as the co-authors of One Nation Under Therapy, who critiqued earlier studies, for example, here. Another comprehensive critique by an expert on PTSD appears here.

Another take on the flip-side of PTSD, that “Some Veterans Feel Lives Enlarged by Wartime Suffering,” points out another PTSD expert’s observation:

“The whole field, in the last four years, has shifted to a certain extent [to focus on] resilience, on human potential….[studies of World War II veterans showed] Yes, I’ve suffered…but I wouldn’t have given up this experience for anything in the world….The things I experienced have made me a better man today.”

Other studies have found a similar rate of PTSD as experienced by troops in combat as among civilians experiencing severe stress in their lives, as well as among civilians experiencing terrorism attacks or among firemen.

Today’s New York Times says a “Study Finds Fewer Cases of Post-Traumatic Stress in Vietnam Veterans.” The study, containing much important detail beyond the NYT’s article, appears in the August 18 journal Science from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Contrary to the widely reported figure of a third of Vietnam veterans having developed PTSD, post traumatic stress disorder, this more careful study reports a, nonetheless serious, occurrence of 18.7% having temporary symptoms and 9.1% having lasting symptoms 10+ years after the end of the war. At the same time, the study points out “the majority of the veterans with high and very high MHM [military historical measure: “probable severity of exposure to war-zone stressors"] did not develop war related PTSD.”

“I’d like to think that this study would help settle the debate, and that both sides would see that this was good science,” said the report’s lead author, Dr. Bruce Dohrenwend, a psychiatric researcher at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
“It’s true we found a significant reduction in the lifetime prevalence of these disorders,” he said, “but on the other hand we also found that more than 9 percent had current pathology, which is a substantial number of people.”
Richard McNally, a psychologist at Harvard who is skeptical of the earlier estimate, agreed, saying that the new study confirmed his and others’ suspicions. “It knocks the 30 percent number out of the box,” he said.
But, he added, the findings “should not be used as a justification for short-changing services that are needed to help veterans” of Iraq or Vietnam.
The new report is a reanalysis of a landmark 1988 study in which researchers tracked down 1,200 Vietnam veterans around the country and interviewed them…

The reanalysis of the data, plus additional investigations, are the result. Another notable finding in the study itself is a very low rate of compensation-seeking exaggeration.

Another notable result in the study itself is that:

T]he trajectory for most veterans with war-related PTSD that causes substantial impairment is toward amelioration or complete remission. This tendency toward improvement is present even for ~10% [approximately 10%] of veterans who still had impairing current PTSD at follow-up; the impairment most of them showed by this time [10+ years after the end of the Vietnam war] was not severe. The functioning of the veterans who had developed war-related PTSD but who no longer met criteria for the disorder at follow-up differed little from that of veterans who did not develop war-related PTSD.

Like all good studies, the conclusion calls for “investigations of other factors that may contribute to initial resilience and psychological adjustment after traumatic war experiences.” This is an important and worthwhile path of study for all of us and our lives. The traits of resilience are fundamental to our health and success, as individuals and as a nation.

The question is why I have to get this news from an Australian newspaper, when Nicole Kidman and 84 other Hollywood heavyweights take a strong stand against Hezbollah and Hamas? I just checked google news and there isn’t another story on this out there.

The entire article is below:

Kidman condemns Hamas, Hezbollah

From correspondents in Los Angeles

August 17, 2006 08:51am

Article from: AAP

NICOLE Kidman has made a public stand against terrorism.
The actress, joined by 84 other high-profile Hollywood stars, directors, studio bosses and media moguls, has taken out a powerfully-worded full page advertisement in today's Los Angeles Times newspaper.

It specifically targets "terrorist organisations" such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine.

"We the undersigned are pained and devastated by the civilian casualties in Israel and Lebanon caused by terrorist actions initiated by terrorist organisations such as Hezbollah and Hamas," the ad reads.

"If we do not succeed in stopping terrorism around the world, chaos will rule and innocent people will continue to die.
"We need to support democratic societies and stop terrorism at all costs."

A who's who of Hollywood heavyweights joined Kidman on the ad.
The actors listed included: Michael Douglas, Dennis Hopper, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Danny De Vito, Don Johnson, James Woods, Kelly Preston, Patricia Heaton and William Hurt.

Directors Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Michael Mann, Dick Donner and Sam Raimi also signed their names.

Other Hollywood powerplayers supporting the ad included Sumner Redstone, the chairman and majority owner of Paramount Pictures, and billionaire mogul, Haim Saban.

If you go to the web site at http://www.letssaythanks.com/ you can pick out a thank you card and the Xerox Corporation will print it and it will be sent to a soldier that is currently serving in Iraq. You cannot pick out who gets it, but it will go to some member of the armed services. It is FREE and it only takes a second. Wouldn't it be wonderful if the soldiers received a bunch of these?

How AMAZING it would be if we could get everyone we know to send one.

There’s two stories involved here: What did a Marine Corps congressional briefing officer actually say that led to both Rep. Murtha and Rep. Kline, both retired senior Marine officers, Murtha a Democrat and Kline a Republican, to denounce the Marines at Haditha? The second story, posted by a left-leaning blogger (whom I hadn’t heard of before, but expressing my sentiments) is below in entirety.

Kline may have done the right thing to apologize but seems to have compounded that with a cover-up. I trust the USMC to provide justice, based on what I’ve seen in the press so far doubt the case against the Marines, but we have yet to see what evidence may have been gathered, and owe it to these Marines and to ourselves to reserve judgments. Rep. Murtha, are you listening to your former comrades in arms, or to Nancy Pelosi?

Monday, August 14, 2006 On Republican accountability As Glenn Greenwald mentioned last weekend the right has been eager to bash John Murtha over his Haditha comments, but have failed to mention that comments as bad or worse were made by conservatives and Republican lawmakers like Rep. John Kline (Minn.). So, Glenn seems to have forced the hand of the lawyer suing John Murtha, who added Kline to his lawsuit. Kline backed down fast, but get this bit of sweet backtracking. Kline wrote that news outlets used incomplete statements that gave the false impression that he had concluded the Marines broke the law.

"I am, of course, very concerned regarding any allegations surrounding misconduct by U.S. troops in Iraq," Kline wrote in his statement. "Such allegations must be taken seriously, but we should never rush to judgment before all the facts are known and the military criminal justice process is completed."

Kline, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he was briefed on Haditha by Marine Brig. Gen. John F. Kelly, the legislative assistant to the Marine commandant. At the time of the briefings, the official investigations were not complete, and Kline emphasized that "conclusions have not been reached."
Does Kline think so little of the American people that he thinks they'll buy that comments like these were taken out of context?
There is no question that the Marines involved, those doing the shooting, they were busy in lying about it and covering it up — there is no question about it.
Or...
This was a small number of Marines who fired directly on civilians and killed them...This is going to be an ugly story.
Or...
Representative John Kline, a Minnesota Republican who is a retired Marine colonel, said that the allegations indicated that "this was not an accident. This was direct fire by marines at civilians." He added, "This was not an immediate response to an attack. This would be an atrocity."
Kline, like Murtha, is a retired Marine field-grade officer. I might be impressed with him if he could simply say, "I was wrong," but this is an apology-free apology. He's saying that he didn't really say those things, because the press took his statements out of context. Some apology.

— Bruce Kesler

If the New York Times is the stalwart proponent of no secrets by government that it purports to be, it should publish an editorial like that in today’s Washington Examiner, “Spending money behind closed doors?”, and if bloggers who support the New York Times’ exposure of national security secrets are more concerned about excess secrecy than undermining America’s defenses they should post support like that of “Captain” Ed Morrissey, “Exposing Earmarks.”

A quick check at Memeorandum, at 7:18 AM Pacific time, shows neither source of support for exposing which congressmen stuffed, as the editorial describes, “1,867 secret spending earmarks worth more than $500 million in the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriation bill now before Congress.”

As the editorial outlines:

Earmarks are spending orders inserted in pending legislation by individual members of Congress.
The politicians create earmarks behind closed doors as House and Senate committees draft the 13 separate annual spending bills that fund the federal government. The secrecy lets members insert earmarks that may help favored campaign donors, other political friends and associates or even themselves without until now having to justify the earmark in public to the taxpayers.
No wonder disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff’ called Congress the “favor factory.” Congress is out of control with earmarks, as the number has skyrocketed from 4,126 worth $29.6 billion in 1999 to 15,887 worth nearly $50 billion last year, according to the Congressional Research Service.

The Washington Examiner provides a link to examine the earmarks, and a way to take action:

Check out the earmarks for your state and then call your congressman and ask if he or she sponsored any of your state’s earmarks.
If the answer is yes, ask why the congressman’s name isn’t on the earmark. If you recognize the institution designated to receive the earmarked tax dollars, call them and ask them what they intend to do with your money.
Then use info@examiner.com. to tell The Examiner what you found out (Be sure to put “Earmarks” in your subject line.) Examiner reporters will be asking questions on Capitol Hill about many of these earmarks in coming days and we’re confident many if not all of the congressional sponsors of these 1,867 earmarks will eventually be identified. Then we’ll all be better off because, as Abe Lincoln said, when the American people have ALL the facts, they know what to do.

Democracy begins with us.

California’s Pacific Advantage, PacAdvantage, purchasing pool for small businesses just went out of business. This smorgasbord of offerings has shrunk over the years to where, as PacAdvantage’s president told the San Francisco Chronicle, “we don’t have a product to offer to our members.”

It’s not that there wasn’t clout behind PacAdvantage. As the Sacramento Business Journal explained of PacAdvantage’s sponsor:

Pacific Business Group on Health, headed by CEO Peter Lee, collectively purchases more than $5 billion in health-care coverage for more than 3 million enrollees and their dependents. It represents many of the Bay Area's and the West Coast's largest employers, including Bank of America, Bechtel Corp., the California State Automobile Association, Chevron Corp., McKesson Corp., Pacific Gas & Electric Co., Safeway Inc., Target Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co.
Despite its clout, it found it can no longer afford to offer this service to small employers.

The Contra Costa Times reports further:

Pacific Health Advantage, or PacAdvantage, said Friday that it will stop its pooled health insurance coverage to 6,200 small businesses in California at the end of the year because of the withdrawal of health plan providers from the program. The plans now cover a total of 116,000 people across California….Created as the Health Insurance Plan of California by the state in 1992 and taken over in 1998 by Pacific Business Group on Health, PacAdvantage is an independent, non-profit purchasing pool for small businesses with between 2 and 50 employees. It was intended to make health insurance more available and affordable and to ensure a choice of health plans for employees of small businesses.
At its peak, in 2002, its membership stood at 9,000 employers and 147,000 employees. But participation from insurers was voluntary, and under the weight of increasing health care costs and other unfavorable market pressures, they bailed out one after the other, Grgurina said

Basically, Pac Advantage participating insurers suffered from a combination of competition from more attractively priced benefits from carriers outside PacAdvantage, and rules within PacAdvantage that resulted in “adverse selection” shifting the more ill and their costs toward certain plans.

Some reformers tout the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) as a model for expansion to all employers. However, that would require virtual elimination of other choices and slow innovation of benefit designs, as required would be forced participation in order to work. The FEHBP is the only choice available to federal employees, all 9-million of them.

Worthy of note is that the 3+-million employees of the Pacific Business Group on Health who sponsored PacAdvantage were not forced to participate in PacAdvantage, private corporations knowing better.

Expanding FEHBP to all the nation’s employees would create such enormous purchasing power, which along with inevitable government over-regulation and intrusions, that a combination of price controls and benefit mandates would accelerate the decline of choices and innovations. Customer information and service would also decline, as government employees are not subject to the extent of scrutiny and court correction as are private insurers. The role of agents as informed and influential intermediaries would be lost to customers. Lastly, it would drastically reduce the constitutional rights of the states to regulate the practices of insurance.

The Pacific Research Institute in 2001 noted some of the similar problems with FEHBP that PacAdvantage suffered:

The FEHBP has also experienced an exodus of plans in recent years. In addition to 17 national fee-for-service plans, there are a large number of health maintenance organizations (HMOs) that serve local areas. But the number of HMOs has dropped precipitously, from almost 400 in the mid-1990s to about 165 next year. HMOs have experienced more aggressive government regulation, which has increased their costs, and they have seen a decline in popularity.

According to a May 2000 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office, insufficient enrollments and noncompetitive premium rates have been the most frequently cited reasons for HMO withdrawals from the FEHBP. As a result, more federal employees have coalesced into higher-cost plans….

The FEHBP is also hurt by the imposition of defined benefits. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which oversees the program, and federal legislators have moved away from their previous hands-off approach by specifying benefits that all plans must cover….

Health plans in the FEHBP are financed through a modified version of a defined contribution, called “premium support.” The federal government contributes a maximum of 72 percent of the weighted average premium toward the federal worker’s chosen plan, but the amount decreases for low-cost plans because the government contribution is not allowed to exceed 75 percent of the premium for any particular plan.

At first blush, the 75-percent limitation sounds like a sensible cost-saving measure, but it reduces the incentive for federal employees to choose low-cost health insurance….By making the government contribution the same for any plan, federal employees would have the strongest incentive to shop wisely for their health plan.

Such problems are not unique to America, or to FEBHP. In Germany, which has a national health care plan that requires employee contributions toward required employer-coverage from a selection of insurers, the same issues occur, as this current Reuters report discusses:

Hans Juergen Ahrens, head of the national association of AOK insurers, told Reuters proposals for reforming Germany's €140 billion ($178.9 billion)-a-year health system would lead to more bureaucracy and higher costs than at present. He also questioned Social Democrat Health Minister Ulla Schmidt's vow to introduce in 2008 a new fund to gather and distribute health insurance contributions.

For those who posit a greater economic efficiency by the government, or lower administrative costs, the experience of the federal legal assistance program is instructive:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The federal program that provides legal help to poor Americans turns away half of its applicants for lack of resources. But that hasn't stopped its executives from lavishing expensive meals, chauffeur-driven cars and foreign trips on themselves.

Those advocating nationalized health care schemes primarily come from the ranks of some academics, whose own health plans are generally rich and supported by taxpayers and tuitions rising faster than inflation, or from government unions and others profiting from enlarged government employment and powers, or from those who can afford to pay for their own insurance but who try to shift the responsibility on to others. Seniors and the poor are already covered.

An recent op-ed in the Washington Post , “Federal Pay: Myth and Realities” points out that federal pay levels have increased at almost double the rate of private enterprise employees, and federal employees’ generous benefits are among the reasons.

The high level of federal pay is problematic in and of itself, but so is its rapid growth. Since 1990 average compensation for federal workers has increased by 129 percent, the BEA data show, compared with 74 percent for private-sector workers….the federal civilian workforce has become an elite island of secure and highly paid workers, separated from the ocean of private-sector American workers who must compete in today's dynamic economy.

Federal workers receive generous health benefits during work and retirement, a pension plan with inflation protection, a retirement savings plan with generous matching contributions, large disability benefits, and union protections. They often have generous holiday and vacation schedules, flexible hours, training options, incentive awards, flexible spending accounts, and a more relaxed pace of work than private-sector workers.
Perhaps the most important benefit of federal employment is extreme job security.

The above doesn’t even address the huge cost to taxpayers of the FEHBP, and the huge liabilities to future taxpayers of its retirement benefits. Subject for another column. But, to get a quick fix on the scope, the state of New York was just the first to issue a reckoning of its retiree health costs (free registration) counted by “the standards of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board in 2005, which requires large governments to apply the same accounting standards used for pension liabilities to payments and services provided for retirees other than pensions.”

The figure, which could reach $54 billion, was unveiled by Governor George Pataki's Budget Office this week, but does not change the obligation the state has to fund retiree health care. E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a group that tracks the state's finances, warned the total cost for taxpayers could reach $200 billion when including local government retirees, the AP reported.

There are 125,000 retirees and 194,000 current state workers.

There are about 9-million federal employees, and many more millions of federal retirees.

The BBC, famous for its comedies, is now about to make a bigger joke of itself.

The BBC’s newly-created “editorial executive of diversity” says in this Observer report that “the ‘cultural accuracy’ among reporting staff was on her hitlist.”

She continues:

I think what’s really important is that BBC News reflects the audience that it’s serving. You need valid and culturally accurate voices speaking.”

The report provides the punchline:

Two of BBC’s leading reporters who regularly report from Africa, Asia and the Middle East are John Simpson and Fergal Keane, both white. Rageh Omaar, the Somali-born reporter, has recently left the corporation to work for al-Jazeera.

Judith Klinghoffer posts photos of childrens’ stuffed animals amid the rubble in Lebanon, and asks “REAL OF STAGED? You decide. But they sure are precious and awfully clean.”

Tim Rutten in today’s Los Angeles Times, calling for a serious, major examination of wire service practices, comments “Reuters might want to check its freelancers’ expenses for unexplained Toys R Us purchases.”

At freerepublic.com the answer to both questions was posted yesterday. Unfortunately, I am a complete boob at importing photos into this blog software, so you’ll have to look for yourself. An Associated Press photographer, the photos captured at Yahoo, took photos of childrens’ stuffed toys being staged for propaganda photos.

Tim Rutten calls this the “most troubling of the possible explanations for these fraudulent photos, which is that some of the photojournalists involved are either intimidated by or sympathetic to the Hezbollah terrorists. It’s a possibility fraught with harsh implications, but it needs to be examined thoroughly and openly.”

I previously called for a major, independent investigation and reforms here and here.

This seriousness of this behavior by Reuters and others goes well beyond matters of truth in journalism to complicity -- and it increasingly appears as knowing complicity -- in a carefully orchestrated phase of the Hezbollah battlefront upon which peoples lives, and possibly the very survival of their nations, are being lost.

ALSO see here as reputable photojournalist Bryan Denton writes of seeing bodies unearthed from their graves for staged photos. [HT: Media Lies blog]

For those who want to argue that the U.S. letting Vietnam’s ruling class continue to fill its pockets by Vietnam’s entry to the World Trade Organization, the reality is that it just entrenches Vietnam’s rulers oppression. The Open Net Initiative has issued its latest country study, on Vietnam:

… The technical sophistication, breadth, and effectiveness of Vietnam's filtering are increasing with time, and are augmented by an ever-expanding set of legal regulations and prohibitions that govern on-line activity. Vietnam purports to prevent access to Internet sites primarily to safeguard against obscene or sexually explicit content. However, the state's actual motives are far more pragmatic: while it does not block any of the pornographic sites ONI tested, it filters a significant fraction (in some cases, the great majority) of sites with politically or religiously sensitive material that could undermine Vietnam's one-party system. Vietnam's Internet infrastructure and market are dynamic and fast-changing, but it seems inescapable that the state's on-line information control will deepen and grow.

Vietnam focuses particular effort on blocking access to sites related to topics that challenge the state's political orthodoxy, such as those treating political dissidents, political democracy, or the proposed Vietnam Human Rights Act in the United States Congress. Sites on topics related to domestic religious faiths, such as Buddhism and Caodai, are also subject to blocking, though less extensively. In nearly all cases, sites in the Vietnamese language are far more likely to be blocked than sites in the English or French languages.

Western businessmen are profiteers at the Vietnamese peoples' cost, and politicians -- from George Bush to John Kerry -- for various reasons either agree with the businessmen, or don't care. Along with the Chinese, who are betrayed by Western Internet companies' willing censorship, the United States is seeding future generations and leaders' resentment and distruct of the U.S.

My cyberfriend Dana at Common Sense blog applies it to Kos’, or his lack thereof.

Read it and decide, and act, before it’s too late.

My op-ed is up at the Washington Examiner, “Why not nationalized health care in the United States.”

The majority of the American people recognize why when they’ve voted. Read the op-ed and see why.

“Recipients of ‘Leaks’ May Be Prosecuted, Court Rules,” headlines the post by the secrecy expert at the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, Steven Aftergood.

Aftergood condenses the import of a 68-page ruling from the U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Virginia:

[E]ven private citizens who do not hold security clearances can be prosecuted for unauthorized receipt and disclosure of classified information….The Judge ruled that any First Amendment concerns regarding freedom of speech involving national defense information can be superseded by national security considerations….The provisions of the Espionage Act are not impermissibly overbroad or unconstitutional, the Judge ruled, because they are limited by the requirements that the prohibited behavior be both knowing and willful.

Aftergood points out that the ruling pertained to documents, the judge adding:

Finally, with respect to intangible information [as opposed to documents], the government must prove that the defendant had a reason to believe that the disclosure of the information could harm the United States or aid a foreign nation….

Aftergood says, “Others will disagree.”

Like at the New York Times. They should beware if they land in this judge’s court.

27 Years Later, a Formal Inquiry Begins Into Khmer Rouge Atrocities (Gee! Wonder when the U.N. will get around to Hezbollah?)

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia, Aug. 1 — More than 27 years after the mass killings and after nearly a decade of wrangling between Cambodia and the United Nations, formal proceedings have begun against surviving leaders of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime.

The media war

In bygone wars, it was often said that the less divulged, the better. Israel's upper echelons - both civilian and military - often conduct themselves as if this were still the case. It isn't. Today's media war is often inseparable from the physical conflict. Neglecting the war of words and images inevitably weakens Israel's ability to pursue its cause on the ground and in the air.
Hizbullah and the Palestinians know the value of propaganda. They often fight their media battles by the dirtiest possible means. An expose in these pages on Thursday by former Sunday Telegraph correspondent Tom Gross revealed that Hizbullah officers supervise CNN reports, that a CBS reporter admitted Hizbullah overseers determine what's filmed, that repeated shots of several downed buildings lend Beirut the erroneous image of devastated WWII Dresden, that journalists are threatened, that Hizbullah holds their passports for ransom, that their analyses are skewed to curry favor, and so on.
Not only doesn't Israel engage in significant preemptive damage control, it often seems resigned to lose by default. The axiomatic official Israeli attitude often seems to be that "the world hates us."
It may indeed deny us a fair shake, but there's a difference between giving up a priori and trying to do something about it. To forfeit without a fight is reckless neglect. It can only impact on Israel's image, its standing abroad, and the pressure on international politicians to take unsympathetic positions, and thus directly on Israel's future well-being.

Roth's False God (Human Rights Watch)

The moral equivalence that has infected him and his organization has, sadly, spread far on much of the left, from the United Nations to the International Red Cross and Amnesty International and the editorialists of the New York Times, who yesterday, stunningly, said any ceasefire they would favor must allow Hezbollah "to claim some sort of victory." That such confusion has not gained traction among American Jews or, for that matter, on the Christian right in this country is testament to the bond of shared values between America and Israel. Those values have a base in something higher than the false god of international law before whom Kenneth Roth has brought a once-idealistic institution so low.

Is Hezbollah on the verge of destroying Lebanon? (Obviously, except to the blind)

And that is what is most potentially worrying. To detract attention away from its own responsibility for the war, Hezbollah may well choose to go on the offensive inside Lebanon, politically and even militarily. Instead of facing Shiite anger, it might opt to redirect it against those Lebanese who, many Shiites feel, failed to satisfactorily sustain the "resistance" in its existential struggle against Israel.
This is the essence of Lebanon's dilemma as the war nears its fourth week. Does Hezbollah agree to integrate itself into the Lebanese political system and disarm? Or does it exploit its substantial reserves of men and weapons to bring all of Lebanon forcibly into line with the party's priorities? The first means the end of Hezbollah as we know it and is a suicide option; the second could bring Lebanon down around everybody's head in renewed civil war. Call it Hezbollah's Samson option.

SEVENTH CIRCUIT OPINES: IBM'S CASH BALANCE PLAN NOT AGE DISCRIMINATORY UNDER ERISA (NOTABLE QUOTES)

That’s where this litigation went off the rails: a phrase dealing with inputs was misunderstood to refer to outputs.

"THE LANGUAGE OF THE MAILED FIST"

Now that the corrupt, Jew hating UN has gotten into the act with a Security Council resolution which, if actually implemented, will stop Israel before completing the destruction of Hezbollah, there will surely be increasing clamor for the U.S. to sit down and talk with dictators Assad of Syria and Ahmadinejad of Iran. It has already begun. This has the all too familiar feel of the late 1930's …when the educated classes in Europe wanted to believe war could be averted through signed diplomatic agreements.

A photojournalist weighs in on the Adnan Hajj scandal

Naturally, there’s one other piece to this puzzle, one that I hesitate to mention because it’s circumstantial at best, and maybe even downright wrong. But I think it’s interesting, so I present it for my readers to make up their own minds.
In 2004, Reuters opened an office in Bangalore, India, staffed with 20 Indian journalists covering “2,000 small to medium-sized American companies” and a team of six editors.
“Reuters admits costs are 60 per cent less in Bangalore than its ‘onshore’ centres in New York, Britain and Singapore,” wrote Randeep Ramesh of The Hindu.
“This is just the beginning for Reuters in Bangalore. The company’s data unit, which archives material for 30,000 global firms, already employs 300 people and will grow by another 300 next year.”
“The average age in the office is 25.”
In the words of one reader, “You get what you pay for.”

MSM reporters repeatedly comment about how the anti-war Ned Lamont, now official Democrat Party candidate for U.S. Senator from Connecticut, is paradoxically a wealthy businessman.

If these MSM reporters had any research skills, they would report both his financial and ideological inheritance.

Ned Lamont’s grandfather (see "Whoops" at end of post), Corliss Lamont, was a brilliant, very wealthy by inheritance, communist fellow-traveler through the ‘30’s and ‘40’s and ‘50’s, who continued in such anti-U.S. foreign policy crusades on to his death in 1995, having opposed the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

In 1934, Corliss Lamont identified himself to former communist Max Eastman as a “Truth Communist,” saying he – according to Eastman – “did not accept the policy of political lying to the masses practiced by the official communist parties under Stalin.” However, 1n 1938, Eastman wrote to Lamont that,

[Y]ou continued to run with the Stalinist chiefs. You never exposed their political lies, or said publicly what you said to me in private. For a very long time you played friends with both Lie Communists and Truth communists, and gave your money with one hand to the Stalinists and with the other to independent revolutionary papers…Anybody who plays both sides in quiet times will be found in a crisis on the side of power….

In 1952, Corliss Lamont wrote in “The Myth of Soviet Aggression”:

The fact is, of course, that both the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations, in order to push their enormous armaments programs through Congress and to justify the continuation of the cold war, have felt compelled to resort to the device of keeping the American people in a state of alarm over some alleged menace of Soviet or Communist origin.

In 1961, Corliss Lamont wrote in “The Crime Against Cuba”:

[T]]he abortive 1961 invasion at the Bay of Pigs was worse than that. It was an outright crime against the Cuban people; and it was also a crime against the American people, against the United Nations and against world peace.

In 1975, Corliss Lamont wrote in “The Meaning of Vietnam and Cambodia”:

We have rejected and still reject, the attempts of President Ford, Secretary of State Kissinger and the U.S. Establishment