David Harsanyi: We-Don't-Want-to-Talk-About-It-Gate

Harsanyi writing today,

Americans honor the courageous informant, the gutsy citizen who stands against the savagery of the profit-mongering conglomerate. Well, sometimes. It appears, believe it or not, that there are those who aren't religiously tethered to this sacred obligation.

For now -- because of revelations of the ClimateGate scandal, in which hacked e-mails revealed discussions among top climate scientists about the manipulation of evidence -- Phil Jones, head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit in Britain, has stepped down from his position. Michael Mann, architect of the famous "hockey stick" graph, is now under investigation by Pennsylvania State University. Similar inquiries should follow.

More over the weekend on Climategate. Way too much money was being dished out not to be suspect about global warming. Now it seems use skeptics had plenty to be skeptical about.

Shabaab suicide attack in Mogadishu

WARNING: Very Graphic video via Al Jessera but worth viewing by anyone who believes there are nonviolent althernatives to dealing with Radical Muslims who will do this to fellow Muslims. H/T Bill Roggio,

Al Jazeera provides footage of the Shabaab suicide attack in Mogadishu, Somalia. The bomber detonated at a graduation ceremony for medical students.

Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/videos/2009/12/shabaab_suicide_attack_in_moga.php#ixzz0Yie3sFR4

XP Bill Baar's West Side

Iraqi reporter hurls shoe at Montazer Zaidi

Via Alsumaria TV,

An Iraqi journalist threw his shoe on Tuesday at Iraqi reporter Montazer Al Zaidi who was imprisoned for throwing his shoes at U.S. President George W. Bush.
The shoe hit the wall next to Al Zaidi’s head. The attacker accused Al Zaidi of siding with dictatorship.

Following the incident, Al Zaidi argued that he threw his shoe at occupation not at a fellow Iraqi citizen.

منتظر الزيدي يُضرَب بفردتي حذاء بعد سنة من قيامه برمي بوش بحذائه
الأربعاء 02 كانون الأول 2009 06:52 GMT

أقدم الصحافي العراقي سيف الخياط على ضرب مراسل قناة البغدادية منتظر الزيدي بفردتي حذائه أثناء عقد الأخير ندوة في العاصمة الفرنسية باريس عصر اليوم عن واقع الإعلام في العراق، وتزامن الحادث مع الذكرى الأولى لرمي الزيدي فردتي حذائه على الرئيس الأميركي السابق جورج بوش.

وكان الزيدي قام بالاعتداء على الرئيس الأمريكي جورج بوش برميه بفردتي حذائه ونعته بـ"الكلب" في شهر كانون الأول من عام 2008 أثناء مؤتمر صحافي مشترك عقده الرئيس الأمريكي جورج وبوش ورئيس الوزراء العراقي نوري المالكي في بغداد.

وقال الخياط في حديث لـ"السومرية نيوز" إن قيامه برمي فردتي حذائه على الزيدي جاء "بسبب تنظيم البعثيين للمؤتمر الذي أقامه اليوم الثلاثاء في العاصمة باريس فضلا عن تسميته للجماعات الإرهابية بالمقاومة خلال المؤتمر"، بحسب قوله، مشيرا إلى أن المؤتمر نظم من قبل الإعلامي العراقي سعد المسعودي، الذي وصفه الخياط بأنه "احد عناصر مخابرات نظام صدام حسين السابق".

واعتبر الخياط أن "الزيدي تجاوز على الصحافيين العراقيين واتهمهم بعدم الحيادية ومحاولة تمرير المشروع الأمريكي في العراق"، وروى قائلا "قمت وسألت الزيدي عن سبب الحفاوة السورية به وسبب وتسميته الجماعات الإرهابية بأنها مقاومة، ثم رميت فردتي حذائي عليه، وصحت بصوت عال إنها لك يا زيدي من الصحافيين العراقيين الأحرار".

وأشار الخياط إلى أن شقيق الزيدي وبعض الحرس الذي يرافقونه فضلا عن منظم المؤتمر سعد المسعودي "حاولوا الاعتداء" عليه، إلا انه رفع احد الكراسي مهددا إياهم بـ"الضرب" في حال الاقتراب منه، بحسب ما قال.

ولفت الخياط إلى أن رميه للزيدي بالحذاء جاء لـ"إفشال مخطط البعثيين للتمدد بين الإعلاميين في باريس فضلا عن إسكات صوت معاد للتجربة الديمقراطية في العراق" بحسب تعبيره.

يذكر أن الخياط عمل في عدة مؤسسات إعلامية عراقية خلال الأعوام الأربعة الماضي مثل قناتي الفيحاء والعراقية فضلا عن كونه مراسلاً لوكالة الأنباء اليابانية قبل أن يقرر طلب اللجوء في فرنسا والإقامة فيها نهاية عام 2008.

More on Expert Panels

From Doug O'Brien in Big Government.

Under Obamacare, new cost effectiveness panels will join the advisory panels like the Preventive Services Task Force. Instead of just making clinical recommendations primarily intended to improve the quality of patient care, they will make recommendations intended to also contain the cost of care. So when the cost effectiveness folks decide that mammograms are only indicated every two years and only for women over 50, that will become the reimbursement policy for Medicare and Medicaid, and the mandate for private insurance that must comport with coverage standards. Sure, you could pay higher premiums for more coverage or pay out of pocket if your and your doctor think it wise to have annual mammograms at age 40, but wait, we were told Obamacare would save us money and wouldn’t decrease our coverage.

So we have a federal panel of “experts” setting policies for medical treatment. That will hopefully prevent people from consuming unnecessary care that drives up the total cost of health care. (Never mind that defensive medicine caused by liability concerns are strictly off the table.) But we have just seen the knee jerk reaction of Congress and the White House to what is only a non-binding recommendation, where they instantly caved to public opinion and special interests (in the form of radiologists and the American Cancer Society) and disavowed the recommendations and assured American women that they could go right ahead and keep getting all the mammograms they want.

What will Congress do when the cost effectiveness folks decide that expensive colonoscopies should be denied to all but a limited group of patients? Is it possible that when voters start calling their offices that Congress will step in to protect access to limitless colonoscopies? Every time Congress or future administrations bow to pressure cost containment becomes more and more impossible.

We'll have political medicine. Talk about a mess.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen: Worse Than War; Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity

I've made it to page 84 but probably will not finish Goldhagen's turning of the social scientist's eye on genocide here.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's books are events. They stir passionate public debate among political and civic leaders, scholars, and the general public because they compel people to rethink the most powerful conventional wisdoms and stubborn moral problems of the day. Worse Than War gets to the heart of the phenomenon, genocide, that has caused more deaths in the modern world than military conflict. In doing so, it challenges fundamental things we thought we knew about human beings, society, and politics.

Drawing on extensive field work and research from around the world, Goldhagen explores the anatomy of genocide—explaining why genocides begin, are sustained, and end; why societies support them, why they happen so frequently and how the international community should and can successfully stop them.

As a great book should, Worse than War seeks to change the way we think and to offer new possibilities for a better world. It tells us how we might at last begin to eradicate this greatest scourge of humankind.

Not that I particularly disagree with his book. I just get numb from it. And what's worse than war is tangible in Chicago. We've become home for the trickles of survivors from the past century's slaughters. From the women I remember as a teenager in the garment factory with numbers on their forearms, my friends from Vilna every Christmas, to my barber in Elgin.

But of the devastation that drove the Bun family from Cambodia, they know nothing. That is how Bun prefers it, for now.

His choice is not unique.

Sometimes for now, not looking back is best... but don't doubt there are things worse than War. Chicago is filled with those who know.

James Corum: Surprising results from Afghanistan Debate

Corum tells the outcome to the motion: America cannot and will not succeeed in Afghanistan/Pakistan

Going into the debate, the sentiment was very much for the motion and for withdrawing from Afghanistan. The audience was polled before the debate and voted with a two to one margin in favour of the proposition (withdraw from Afghanistan): 48 per cent to 25 per cent. That is not surprising. New York is very liberal and New York University is far to the left. This is a part of the US where Obama won with over 60 percent of the voters and at New York University it was probably over 80 percent.

What was surprising was the poll after both sides presented their case for America’s Afghanistan strategy. The audience was evenly split, 45 to 43 percent against the motion - and supporting the reinforcement of the US effort. In short, a large part of an audience that leaned overwhelmingly to the left changed their minds and were won over to supporting General McChrystal’s Afghanistan strategy. If a very liberal New York audience can be won over, it means that one could win very strong support from the American public for a revised strategy that reinforces the effort in Afghanistan. However, such support can only be mobilized if the political leaders present their proposals in a clear and articulate manner.

Obama Salutes

CC chastises failures to google.

Made me recall Blackfive's recent post on Obama Salutes, and this link to the NYT. Reagan started the practice.....

Presidents have long been saluted, but they began returning salutes relatively recently. Ronald Reagan was thought to be the first, in 1981. He had sought advice on the matter from Gen. Robert Barrow, commandant of the Marine Corps. According to John Kline, then Mr. Reagan’s military aide and today a member of Congress from Minnesota, General Barrow told the president that as commander in chief he could salute anybody he wished. And so it began.

Mr. Reagan’s successors continued the practice, and I continued to be conflicted — believing that when it comes to salutes (and one or two other matters), presidents deserved to be cut some slack, but also feeling a little uneasy about the whole thing.

My ambivalence came to an end last week, when I saw a videotape of the president’s midnight trip to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where he had participated, very early that morning, in the “dignified transfer” of 15 Army soldiers and three Drug Enforcement Administration agents killed that week in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama stood ramrod straight and saluted as six soldiers carried the coffin bearing the body of Sgt. Dale Griffin of Indiana off a C-17 transport aircraft and into a waiting van. His salute, it struck me, was impeccable in every way.

I'm guessing after Obama announces his new Af-Pak strategy next week, I'll be Obama's defender here, and the anti-Obama emails in need of research we'll be flying the other way.

In defense of Empire

From an interview with Jan Urban,

What is your take on the Czech Republic today?

I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am enjoying every day. On the other hand, I was born Czechoslovak and educated Czechoslovak. To people like myself, the Czech Republic was an entirely different concept. I did not like being defined by my language. I think that I am much more complicated. I want to be much more complicated. I believe that if you are looking for the most tragic mistake in European history it is acceptance of the concept of language-based nationalism.

Just yesterday I was giving a lecture in Vienna and said a hundred years ago Vienna was my capital. We only had one political system, one parliament, one currency, one transportation system. After two world wars and the expulsion of millions, are we any wiser?

As we get closer to 2014 and the centennial of the start of WW1 expect more on what was lost with multicultural i.e. multilignual Empires.

Boredom on the Earth

From The Prague Daily Monitor,

Prague, Nov 25 (CTK) - Former president Vaclav Havel yesterday gave the Vaclav Havel Library prize for the best student essay to Krystof Vosatka, from English College in Prague, for his work Boredom on the Earth.

Eighty-six secondary school students from throughout the country sent their essays to the first annual competition called Twenty Years of Freedom after Communism.

Havel said the time had come for a new and free reflection of yesterday's situation and a "deliberation on what we dislike and what should be."

Society needs a vision of its further development, Havel said, adding that it did not need a physical, but "a sort of existential revolution."

"Who else but you and your children should be its bearers," Havel said.

The competition focused on essay as this is the favourite genre of Havel, a writer and playwright.

Wonder what a YRUU manifesto of existential revolution would read? World does need one. Not sure we UUs or Liberals of any stripes the vessels.

Peace Making: The Dawn's Editorial on US Taliban Covert Talks

The closing paras from The Dawn's Editorial,

Ultimately, there has to be a negotiated end to the war. The issue is how to go about it. Do you talk to the enemy from a position of weakness, as Pakistan did during the Musharraf era and learned to its sorrow that this approach only served to strengthen the rebels? Or do you talk from a position of strength? To think that Hamid Karzai could help in this regard is to be naive.

Going by what Richard Holbrooke said on Monday, Washington has been in touch with Islamabad on the new AfPak policy yet to be unveiled. Pakistan has vital stakes in the outcome of the war.

All one hopes is that a phoney peace will not be achieved for the sake of a hurried withdrawal to placate an increasingly sceptical public in the West.

The Obama administration and those involved in back-channel probes must realise how dangerous it would be to quit Afghanistan in a manner that leaves the Taliban in a dominant position.

My emphasis on the final two paragraphs. I hoe this is not the route we're headed towards.

Also Bill Roggio on the Pak Army's hedging it's bets Pakistan hedges on Taliban as West seeks talks: Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2009/11/pakistan_hedges_on_taliban_as.php#ixzz0XyKfM08U

A perception of this wavering has also influenced the Pakistani military. An armed forces spokesperson claimed recently that the army had reached the headquarters of the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan after a month-long campaign, and taken control of all key positions. The next step, under pressure from the US, was to have been to move into neighboring North Waziristan, the purported headquarters of al-Qaeda and the largest Taliban-led group, the Haqqani network.

However, the military, given the signals coming out of Britain, Italy, France and Canada, and the dithering of US President Barack Obama over sending more troops to Afghanistan, is not prepared at this point to extend its operations.

Abdul Rahim Wardak on Obama's long awaited and over elaborated decisions.

Al Jeezera via Bill Roggio's Long War Journal,

Abdul Rahim Wardak, Afghanistan's Defense Minister announced the Afghan Army would be expanded to more than 240,000 soldiers. Wardak described President Obama's process to decide on a US increase in troops as "long awaited and over-elaborated," which prompted laughter from the senior US generals in attendance, including General Stanley McChrystal.

Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/videos/2009/11/afghanistan_to_expand_army_to.php#ixzz0XaLtVBQU

Long awaited and over-elaborated.... no way for a Commander-in-Chief to be seen.

Inside Surgery on the New Mammogram Guidelines

More on why I'm appalled with Expert Panels taking over practice in the name of reform: we'll get political medicine looking for budget fixes; and that's exactly what's happening with this latest goofy guideline. Via Inside Surgery

The federal government released new guidelines this week that recommend some startling changes in how women should be screened for breast cancer.

Current recommendations call for most women to get a baseline mammogram at the age of 40 and to get yearly screenings thereafter.

However, the 17 member panel of the United States Preventive Services Task Force (none of whom are oncologists or breast specialists) that made the recommendations now say that women who are of average risk of contracting breast cancer should begin regular, routine mammograms at the age of 50 and that yearly mammograms are not necessary. They are also recommending that women abandon the practice of self breast exams.

Should one infer then that if the panel is not recommending mammogram screening and not recommending self-exam, they are not recommending any diagnosis of breast cancer before age 50?

xp My Medical Informatics Blog

The Guarian: Climate sceptics claim leaked emails are evidence of collusion among scientists

Warmists uncovered, via The Guardian,

Hundreds of private emails and documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world's leading climate scientists during the past 13 years have been stolen by hackers and leaked online, it emerged today.

The computer files were apparently accessed earlier this week from servers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit, a world-renowned centre focused on the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change.

Climate change sceptics who have studied the emails allege they provide "smoking gun" evidence that some of the climatologists colluded in manipulating data to support the widely held view that climate change is real, and is being largely caused by the actions of mankind.

The veracity of the emails has not been confirmed and the scientists involved have declined to comment on the story, which broke on a blog called The Air Vent.

and here's The Air Vent.

We covenant with each other...

Ogre wrote at comment on 1:26 PM,

I believe that the understanding is that we covenant with each other, not with the church.

Yes, but, at my Church at least, there is a sense that those others includes everyone who has signed in the past and I suppose we could think of that as the Church.

Sam Shem at HIS talk on Mammograms and Health Care

at HIS Talk today,

Re: mammograms. An independent body, after review and analysis of eight clinical trials, comes out with EVIDENCE that mammogram screening in under-40-year-olds has little or no value. What happens? The radiologists are up in arms and the Obama administration, in the person of DHHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, tells patients to just keep doing what you did last year. And they want to cut costs by a billion dollars over the next decade to pay for national health insurance? If anyone really believes this country will ever control the costs of health care, they are living in a dream land!”

Interesting, too, that nobody’s paying much attention to the study that showed that electronic medical records haven’t improved outcomes or cost so far, even as the government is spending lots of money on those, too. At least EHRs have potential. In an economy where jobs are dying out, politicians don’t have the guts to make serious change since the people unhappy with health care don’t have the clout of those who like it just fine. I cited statistics here years ago saying that health care was making a staggering economy look robust because of rising costs, profits, and high employment, all unsustainable in a global economy.

I suppose the question then is how confident anyone can be the government as opposed to markets can make Health Care a sustainable sector in the economy.

Considering the Gov's placing its bets on tick-box medicine, voodoo economics on preventive med, and EHR; I'm not very confident. I think it has to do with politicians guts and lack there of. Sarah Palin maybe? She has guts.

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