Category: The World

Now let me make sure I understand this. We will hand over “sovereignty” to Iraq on June 30, but they won’t be able to command their own armed forces, and they won’t be able to make their own laws. If George III had offered this “opportunity” for self-government to our Patriot forbears during the Revolutionary War, much laughter and gunfire would have ensued. Please remember that these words were written by people who overthrew a legal government.

In the meantime Fallujah is officially a quagmire. Oh yeah, and we have more reports of American snipers shooting schoolchildren. What a clever way to defuse the situation.

Speaking of schoolchildren, back in the United States, a licensed, state certified and probably “highly qualified” teacher ordered a student thrown out a window. I have spoken about “No Child Left Behind” before, and cannot understand why we can’t get people like this permanently out of the classroom. Want to promote excellent schools? How about we promote enough independent thought that this girl’s classmates realize that’s a bad idea?

An Associated Press poll finds that Americans are still worried about terrorist attacks. President Bush says he isn’t surprised, and adds that it’s hard to defend our country from terrorists, and we should be patient.

Mr. Bush isn’t surprised. Nor should he be. Didn’t his advisor Condi Rice say just days ago that we should expect terrorists to attempt to disrupt our November elections? Didn’t Mr. Bush himself warn us that just because the PATRIOT Act was set to expire didn’t mean the risk of terrorism would expire too? Doesn’t the Department of Homeland Security tell us there is at this moment an Elevated Risk of Terrorist Attacks? That’s Threat Advisory Code Yellow to you and me. Frankly, we should be concerned if Mr. Bush were surprised. After all, his entire team has been telling us to Look Out!

In the meantime, the Washington Post reports that we may need to send more money to Iraq. Here’s the no registration required version. My inner cynic wants to know why. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to send our tax dollars directly to Halliburton and the other gauging contractors?

If you didn’t see this very moving picture of flag-draped coffins coming home from the Middle East yesterday, take a good look at it now. The people responsible for bringing it to you have been fired.

Back at home, over half of American workers are concerned about job security. Add to that record high gas prices, and Greenspan pointing out the elephant in the living room — the fact that interest rates will eventually have to go up — and things aren’t looking good for Joe and Jane Average. And that’s before they think ahead to whether their son may someday be drafted into the military.

Or, Into the Valley of Death Rode the 504

A sad milestone has been reached in the cradle of civilization. It has been confirmed that 700 American soldiers have died in Iraq,* 504 of them in combat. Don’t like CNN? Here’s Reuters and here’s the Associated Press.

However, there is some question about the priorities of the American press in reporting what is really happening in Iraq. Apparently, CNN actually questioned whether Al Jazeera wasn’t missing the point by reporting Iraqi deaths. Well, let’s be realistic. Their audience is more interested in knowing whether friends and relatives in Fallujah might be under attack than whether some guy from Ohio has been killed — no offense or disrespect intended. Being an Arab language publication, they feel that “there is no bigger story in Fallujah than the deaths of civilians.”

Even the British press is reporting that the situation in Fallujah is really more of a massacre than anything else. Once you get past the American press, it is clear that things are awful. Ambulances are being shot at, their drivers specifically targeted by snipers. Empty or full of wounded people, it does not matter. People are even getting shot by Marine snipers for trying to use the outhouse. How dare they not pee in their pants; don’t they know there’s a battle on?

It seems clear to me that The Tiger Force mentality has not been thoroughly rooted out of our military.

Support our troops: pray for peace.

* Those of you who didn’t know that modern day Iraq is the same ancient land in which writing was invented, used to write down the first written epic and the first written code of law, in which were built one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (the Hanging Gardens of Babylon), in which Daniel survived the Lion’s Den [Dan. 6], I urge you to read a little history.

Remember when you were a kid? It was enough to know that The Joker™ was trying to bury Gotham City under six feet of strawberry jam because he was Evil. Lex Luthor™ trying to blow up a mountain to get to the Kryptonite deposit deep inside? Evil. Prince of an alien planet wanting to kill everybody on the Earth so he could sell the planet? Oh yeah, Evil.

But here’s the problem. We grew up, and found that the Joker was also criminally insane. We found out that Lex Luthor was a greedy capitalist. We found out the Prince decided to marry a debutante-inventor and start a family on Earth.

Nevertheless, here is the kind of rhetoric we are hearing about Iraq:

Because we stand for freedom. And the terrorists hate freedom. And they’re attacking us because we’re bringing freedom to Iraq. And terrorists hate freedom. Therefore they hate us. And since they hate us so much of course they fight us.

This is one of those Snake-Eating-Its-Tail deals of “They did these things because they are evil. We know they are evil because they did these things.” There is no way to argue this point because if you ask why they did it, see statement one. If you ask, “yes, you’ve said they are evil but how do you know that?” you are referred to statement two. We can’t ask why anybody hates us enough to attack us, or how we know they “hate freedom,” because the answer is they must be evil. And you must hate Everything We Stand For not to see that.

The discussion is over.

But wait, it gets worse. When your world-view is that somebody or some group is simply evil, there is no room for negotiations. There is no room to revise your opinion. There is no room for facts inconvenient to your view. Contradictory thoughts must be wrong, misinformation from your enemy, who is evil. More dangerous still, there is the tendency to lump all your evil enemies as necessarily related. Compare this transcript with this shorter version: a question about Iraq is directly answered with a comment about September 11. Never mind how little the two have to do with one another.

I conclude by urging you to read the words of a man I expect you to not like or agree with. Among the salient points are several things we can all agree are true: “The greatest rule of safety is justice, and stopping injustice and aggression.” “[V]igilant people do not allow their politicians to tamper with their security.” “We must take into consideration that this war brings billions of dollars in profit to the major companies, whether it be those that produce weapons or those that contribute to reconstruction, such as the Halliburton Company….” “Heeding right is better than persisting in falsehood.”

These are the words of Osama Bin Laden.

It’s a lot easier believing we are good, everything we do is good; they are evil, everything they do is evil. The truth is your enemy does not see himself as evil.

Finally, two things. First, a succinct essay by security expert Bruce Schneier on why a National ID card is worse than a waste of money, it in fact would make us less secure. Oh, and remember 2 weeks ago we learned 308,000 jobs had been created in March? Well last week 360,000 people filed for unemployment benefits for the first time. If that’s not enough for you, people aren’t quitting to take better jobs for the most part, and a new poll says people would rather have job creation than a tax cut.

A happy thought for tax day: you only had to pay income taxes if you had income.

If the situation in Iraq is not a fiasco, nor a quagmire, then would somebody kindly tell me what must be added to the situation to make it so? Can we at least say it’s a SNAFU?

Just a quick review. It’s been a over a year since a largely American force stormed into Iraq to liberate its people from a brutal dictator, and/or find Weapons of Mass Destruction, and/or root out Al Qaida cells, and/or put oil fields in friendly hands. It has been a year since Saddam Hussein was toppled, just short of a year since President Bush declared hostilities over, and just short of 5 months since Hussein himself was dragged out of a hole in the ground (longer, if you put credence in the date theory).

The rebuilding effort has been spotty at best: the nation as a whole still does not consistently and reliably have things like electricity, potable water, schools, navigable roads, and the like. The only people who seem to be benefitting from the reconstruction of Iraq are certain contractors. Heck, they even have a problem keeping police officers alive. American soldiers, some of whom are looking at extended tours, are only safe inside the fortified “green zone.” As of this writing 650 of them are known to have died. Do not blink; this number is subject to rapid change, particularly inasmuch as 51 have been killed just this week. The families of these brave men and women deserve the sincere sympathies and kind thoughts of us all.

These things being true, the United States is still trying to ram through a single, democratic government that will nevertheless leave a government friendly to government interests. This ignores several basic facts. Iraq is made up of 3 basic ethnic groups that hate each other (Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds — and the first two have decided to declare truce long enough to oust the Americans). They have radically different ideas about what their ideal government should be about, fundamentally different ideas about the role of religion in government. Heck, they have radically different ideas about whether women should have human rights. Frankly, the only way to forge these peoples into one country is a strongman dictator. Rather like the one we deposed. Single, democratic government friendly to American interests? The combination platter isn’t available.

Now, what is one of the basic freedoms we enjoy in a modern democracy? Why, there’s freedom of the press! So, if we are trying to build a democracy in Iraq, it makes no sense to shut down a newspaper, even if it prints things the interim government doesn’t like. You won’t catch the Federal Government trying to shut down, oh, lets say the Fort Worth Star Telegram because they printed a critical essay. But those rules don’t apply in Iraq, where the Americans shut down a newspaper for printing items critical of the Americans. This of course was a marvelous excuse for general rioting, not to mention a power grab by a young cleric and Future Dictators Club member called Moqtada al-Sadr. The Americans didn’t much care for this either. Being a cleric, it was only normal for al-Sadr to take sanctuary in a Mosque. His followers being militants, it was completely predictable for there to be shots exchanged between the Mosque and the Americans who demanded al-Sadr be handed over. The term “Branch Davidians” comes to mind, but a more correct cultural translation would be if the Army had surrounded and started shelling the Boston Arch Diocese to force them to surrender all suspected pedophiles.

Add to this mix the fact that Islam, like Christianity and Judaism, has a major religious holiday right around the first full moon after the Spring Solstice. This means pilgrims are converging on the embattled city of Kerbala. Some even blame the Americans for engineering this crisis to disrupt the holy days.

Oh, and one more thing. Various forces have begun the time honored tradition of taking political hostages. Indeed, they are threatening barbaric deaths for the hostages, such as being beheaded or lit on fire. The Japanese are not happy about this. They are not alone either. Political turmoil in Iraq has now streamed over the physical border. Events there dominate the top news stories of almost any source that covers world news. Stock markets on 3 continents have been effected. Politicians past and present are letting their thoughts be known.

It seems clear now that there was a grievous under-estimation of what it would take to liberate Iraq, re-stabilize it, and make it a member of the international community. The number of troops required was more than expected. The length of time the troops would be there was more than expected The amount to rebuild was more than expected. The resistance to American “interference” was more than expected. And of course, the Weapons of Mass Destruction that were found were much much less than expected. For their part, President Bush and Donald Rumsfeld maintain that everything will be under control shortly. It sure must be nice to handle a high pressure always-on-call job from your fishing hole.

We may still hand Iraq over for self-rule on June 30. But June 30 of what year?

Meanwhile, the real terrorist is getting away.

Today, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that gruesome pictures of Vince Foster’s body at the scene of his suicide did not have to be released to the public. The actual ruling is 17 pages long, but can adequately be summarized in this single sentence from Justice Anthony Kennedy: “”Family members have a personal stake in honoring and mourning their dead and objecting to unwarranted public exploitation that, by intruding upon their own grief, tends to degrade the rites and respect they seek to accord to the deceased.”

I realize that the tin-foil hat crowd is saying I forgot the word “so-called” when discussing Mr. Foster’s suicide. That last link even asserts that the Bush Administration is complicit in covering up “alleged” misdeeds of the Clinton Administration, a charge that on it’s face seems far-fetched. Even Special Investigator Kenneth Starr, the man whose job was to find dirt on the Clintons, declared Mr. Foster’s death a suicide. Don’t you think if the actual evidence had been the least bit credible, Starr would have investigated it more thoroughly?

Mr. Foster has been dead over 10 years. The Supreme Court made the right decision, but frankly they have more important things to do than consider decade old crime scene photos. Perhaps the resources wasted here could be better put to use investigating the outing of Valerie Plame. Instead of continually hammering on the death of one man, help these people find out how almost 3,000 people were allowed to die.

Did you ever think Arlen Specter would be “not conservative enough”?

It is symptomatic of how very far to the right the NeoCons are that Specter — and for that matter John McCain — seem moderate.

It seems that Senator Specter faces a tough primary battle for his own Senate seat. Although he officially has the White House nod, the fact of the matter is that if he truly had White House backing — and by extension the support of the Republican Party — there would be no primary. His nomination would be all sewn up. Instead, he is a mere 9 points ahead of his also-Republican competition in the polls, and must spend millions of dollars of campaign money just to be allowed to play in the November elections. Conservative mouthpiece Fox News points out his so-called liberal streak.

You know, this could have something to do with his statements yesterday that there was “a lot of blame to go around” for allowing 9/11 to happen. And yes, he did say it was preventable.

I have two recommended news items today. First, from CNN. Scroll down towards the heading “Jobs ‘Not Happening'”:

Michigan’s tour representative, Laura Tropea, 26, moved home after graduating from law school in New York in June and failing to find a job. She lives with her mother in South Lyon while working at a deli part-time, earning $8 an hour despite having passed the Michigan bar exam.

For the record, since she did not lose a full time job, she was never counted as unemployed. And if she loses this part time job, she will still not be counted as unemployed. Never mind that she is a licensed attorney who is making sandwiches for a so-called living. Never mind that she did the right thing and got a good education.

Finally, Robert Marcin of TheStreet.com tells us how the price of everything seems to be going up while the official inflation rate does not. It’s alright to be angry when you are done reading.

If you know anybody in the computer business, he knows somebody who has been out of work. Maybe out of work quite a long period of time. The Information Technology field lost over half a million jobs in 2002 alone. IT is particularly susceptible to outsourcing because, frankly, it doesn’t matter whether you type code in Seattle or New Delhi. In fact, the true unemployment rate among computer professionals is subject to being masked by calling oneself “self-employed” or a “consultant.” Waitresses and cashiers just can’t do that.

Have no fear, the Department of Defense is working on a plan to solve this problem. They would like to institute a “targeted draft” of computer experts and linguists. Of course they would need Congressional approval, but this proposal solves several problems. First, it gives the military technical expertise they desperately need. Second, it puts out of work experts in jobs. Remember, this will positively effect the unemployment rate and the payroll figures.

Oh, and then there is the final benefit. By and large, computer programmers are smart people. And many of them are opinionated. And the unemployed ones have plenty of time to blog and participate in online communities and be politically active. Putting them to work in the military effectively limits what they can spout off about, if nothing else by keeping them busy. Want to know what genuine geeks think of this? Check out the Slashdot commentary, where I initially learned of this story.

There is already loose talk of needing to reinstitute the draft. It is not a big stretch to add a special provision for the draft of skilled professionals. The fact that we are talking about skilled professionals in a field where there have been job losses is strictly gravy.

Remember to vote this fall.

Some people like to have one or two primary, presumably trustworthy news source from which they derive the overwhelming majority of their information about the world. Maybe they watch one particular news show, or read one particular newspaper. I prefer to consult as many sources as I can get my hands on. I feel this mitigates any bias that might be inherent in a single source. I also feel this gives me a much better feel for “the big picture.” Thank goodness for Google news and RSS readers.

Oh yeah, and I occasionally read the Sunday Paper.

And that is how I came to a startling discovery. When even Dave Barry thinks the Budget Deficit is a concern, we are all in trouble.

Also from the morning paper, evidence that if there is a housing bubble, it is real close to going off. Low income housing is increasingly hard to find Oh, and getting harder to find thanks to the Bush Administration. The ability to find affordable housing is even more strained in areas where real estate has already been expensive, such as Southern California.

This is one singular area where I think Fannie Mae is actually helping keep prices from accelerating even more rapidly, by regulating the maximum loan amount they will repurchase from other lenders.* If you want to finance more than this amount, you will have to either break it into multiple mortgages, or get a “super jumbo” (or “non-conforming”) mortgage. Because the mortgage holder can’t sell this debt to someone like Fannie Mae, you will pay a higher interest rate. So, by saying they won’t buy a mortgage of more than $333,700, and assuming you have a 20% down-payment, they are effectively putting a lid of $417,125 on housing prices in most areas. There is also anecdotal evidence that appraisers are helping put a lid on housing prices by refusing to rubber-stamp high valuations. Yes, they are saying “that house is not worth that much money,” and mortgage companies are refusing to put in a first mortgage for more than the appraiser says it is worth.

Finally, a follow-up. I said months ago that high-handed TSA tactics would result in more business charter flights, more privately owned aircraft, and less traditional air travel. From the New York Times: “The number of corporate jet flights is on the rise as the economy rebounds, in planes owned by major corporations or shared through fractional ownership, sold somewhat like time-share condominiums. And manufacturers of private planes are planning new “microjets” — small, relatively cheap planes designed for flying at the altitudes, if not the speeds, of the big airliners.”

In summary, Private Jet ownership is up. The three big players appear to be Bombardier, Raytheon, and Cessna, but it seems like there is plenty of room for an upstart, particularly one that can offer some economic advantage.

* What does this mean? Well, when Local Bank of America sells their mortgages to someone like Fannie Mae, that frees up money they can loan to someone else, making a nice origination fee in the process. Fannie Mae will still get all the money, but they may have to wait 30 years until the loan is paid off. Search my site for “Fannie Mae” to get more links and information.

HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, is a law that among other things codifies patient privacy rules. It says when a doctor or hospital can release data, when they must release data, when they must not release data, what data they can give to whom, and under what circumstances. Compliance is a highly necessary very expensive legal nightmare — and your doctor probably did not attend law school. The 5 year cost of implementing it is estimated at $22.5 Billion. If you really want to know about HIPAA you might try looking here or here, but the short version is this: healthcare providers must try to keep your private data private; they can send information to your insurance company because you sign a form that says they can; they can send your information to an insurance claims clearinghouse for processing — and they have to keep your data private too — because they are a middleman between your doctor and the insurance company; some data must be reported to a state or local health department under state or local law (e.g., sexually transmitted diseases, signs of abuse); data which does not personally identify you can be used in academic medical studies (“total cases of flu reported” or “male patient presented with unusual symptoms”). There are even limits on what they can tell your immediate family without your direct permission.

Figuring out the rules and helping healthcare institutions follow them is big big business. There is physical security of keeping people who don’t belong out of the files. There is educating the staff so they don’t say things they shouldn’t in front of people who do not have a right to know. There is computer security, since most medical offices use electronic billing and some use electronic medical records. Double this concern if anyone uses the internet to obtain the most up-to-date medical data; triple it if anyone uses email to communicate with patients or other healthcare professionals. Beyond all this, theoretically medical offices must insure that other businesses they deal with are also compliant, from the insurance companies and clearing houses, to any outsourced billing, right down to the cleaning service that sweeps the file room.

These things being said, I offer three current news items with HIPAA concerns. The first happened in Denton, TX. Denton, less than an hour north of Dallas-Fort Worth is home to the University of North Texas. It is also home to a pharmacist who refused to fill a prescription for a “morning-after pill” presented by a rape victim. You may recall having seen this story last week. Today’s news is that the pharmacist in question and 2 coworkers have been fired. Yes, one of the issues was that he violated company policy: “Eckerd’s employment manual says pharmacists are not allowed to opt out of filling a prescription for religious, moral or ethical reasons.” Frankly problems could have been avoided with a proper new employee orientation meeting. The other reason he was fired is that he violated HIPAA, and admitted it on CNN: “I actually called my pastor … and asked him what he thought about it.”

Violating company policy is one thing. Violating Federal law is another.

Another news item with HIPAA compliance concerns is being whipped up by none other than Attorney General John Ashcroft. The Government wants 6 hospitals to hand over sensitive medical records for hundreds of women — to determine whether a medical procedure they may have had was medically necessary. Yes, the procedure is a type of abortion, this time. Maybe next time it will be Botox injections; after all, botulism is a dangerous germ that could be used by terrorists you know. The hospitals in question have correctly maintained that turning over the records would violate patient privacy. Legal wrangling before a series of Federal judges has ensued. From the article: “Citing federal case law, the department said in a brief that “there is no federal common law” protecting physician-patient privilege. In light of “modern medical practice” and the growth of third-party insurers, it said, “individuals no longer possess a reasonable expectation that their histories will remain completely confidential.”” Perhaps the Department of Justice should read the HIPAA rules.

Finally, I present what must at first seem tangential. This week Microsoft admitted there is a security flaw in Windows that “could allow hackers to break into personal computers and snoop on sensitive data.” Or three, including one that could “offer up complete control of the computer. From there, the sky’s the limit: a hacker could install new software (including, for instance, Trojan horses), wipe hard drives, hijack files, or any of a thousand other things.” One computer security firm claims there are 7 more to be reported. TechWeb’s Security Pipeline, in an article about the still circulating “MyDoom” virus, says “In other words, there will be vulnerable machines and those machines will become infected, no matter how heroic your efforts. It’s a reminder that even the leanest of enterprises faces security challenges of daunting complexity. Even the most rapidly responsive IT security team must deal with attacks that spread in minutes.”

Yes, they just said that no matter what you do, your Windows network will be attacked by viruses. And personal data on such a computer or network is not secure. Yes, including personal data on, say, the computers your doctor’s office uses for billing your insurance company. It is therefore my contention that Windows is inherently not HIPAA compliant.

Maybe Ashcroft would have better luck sending crackers after those medical files.