A cautionary tale

Oh that darned Canadian medicare -- just so inefficient and bureaucratic!
I can hardly wait until some Canadian politician privatizes medicine again so Canadians can also get service like this:

. . . Kaiser is a very large and old HMO, with a huge presence in the Bay Area and northern California . . . in 2002, a transplant surgeon . . . proposed to Kaiser that it could save money, and increase the utilization of its hospitals’ surgical capacity, by bringing the kidney transplant program in-house . . . As of mid-2004, Kaiser patients on the waiting list were informed that they would no longer be covered for transplants at UCSF or UC Davis, though they were free to go ahead and have them if they could come up with the money (roughly $100,000) . . . then Kaiser completely screwed up the program . . . [the Kaiser patients] looked like new names on the list, and so all of their accumulated waiting time, one of the main determinants of priority, would vanish . . . Losing seniority on the transplant lists wasn’t the only problem. Kaiser did very few transplants, compared to the number of organs which were available . . . in part because of what seems to have been mis-placed perfectionism or caution. These combined to the point of repeatedly turning down “zero mismatch” kidneys, ones where the likely compatibility over-rode considerations of seniority. This happened several dozen times at least — twice for one patient alone. Again, needless to say, patients weren’t told about this. In a “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature” moment, Kaiser initially attempted to defend its program by pointing out how few patients had died after transplants — since they’d done so few . . . In most kidney transplant programs about twice as many patients receive transplants as die while waiting; Kaiser managed to reverse that ratio . . .

So if anyone is thinking that privatized health care invariably results in efficient, top notch service to everyone who pays their premiums, think again.

Beirut then and now

You have to see it to believe it:



From here via Juan Cole.

I guess Iran won, and without firing a shot

Tonight on Countdown, I finally heard an American media outlet give a straight story about what has happened in Iraq.
And the news is, Iran won.
It was Olbermann who said it. The transcript hasn't been posted yet so I cannot quote directly, but here is the summary from my memory:

The Bush administration and the American neocons were sold a bill of goods about Iraq by their so-called friend Ahmed Chalabi. They thought they were going to gallop into Baghdad in 2003 and watch Iraqis install Chalabi as Prime Minister. Now it has become apparent that Chalabi was working for Iran all along. So Iran tricked America into taking out Saddam, thus allowing Iraq to become a Shiite Muslim nation and new Iranian ally.

Raw Story also highlights additional news coverage on this same point, quoting from a former US ambassador, Peter Galbraith (John Kenneth's son):

. . . Galbraith further argues that the invasion of Iraq destabilized the Middle East while inadvertently strengthening Iran. One of the administration's intentions in invading Iraq was to undermine Iran, but instead, the Iraqi occupation has given Tehran one of its greatest strategic triumphs in the last four centuries.
Once considered to be Iraq’s worst enemy, Iran has now created, financed and armed the Shiite Islamic movements within southern Iraq. Since the Iraqi Parliamentary elections of 2005, the Shiites have made considerable political gains and now have substantial influence over the country’s U.S.-created military, its police, and the central government in Baghdad. In addition, Iraq is developing economic ties with Iran that Galbraith believes could soon link the two countries’ strategic oil supplies.
Galbraith says that, “thanks to George W. Bush, Iran today has no closer ally in the world than the Iraq of the Ayatollahs.” As a result, he argues, sending U.S. forces into Iraq, has in effect, made them hostage to Iran and its Iraqi Shiite allies and left the U.S. without a viable military option to halt Iran’s drive to obtain nuclear weapons.

This story also notes that Bush didn't know the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni Muslim a month before the Iraq invasion. Well, neither did I, of course, but then I'm not the President of the United States....

The offense is against all of us

I've heard lots of criticism of Human Rights Commissions and overreach and all that, and to some extent I can sympathize. But I do believe these Commissions, with their authority to investigate and bring charges to tribunals, are the best way we have to stop people from continuing to do this kind of shit:

. . . Erica Sheppard and Debra Van Eijk were dedicated, hard-working employees, with 14 years of Burger King work between them. But shortly after Seacastle Enterprises took over the restaurant the women, both in their 20s, were fired. Their fellow workers later told the tribunal that one of the owners, Shawn Dhillon, stated women that age should be at home starting a family. The tribunal also heard Dhillon described other female employees as the "short, fat one," or the "short, ugly one." . . .

Sure, I know the women could sue individually for wrongful dismissal (if they can afford to, that is.)
But this kind of language and behaviour is an offense against all of us and against Canadian society, not just an offense against individuals.

Yeehaw! is not a foreign policy

This is what I have been afraid of -- that the Bush administration thinks Iraq and Afghanistan aren't enough. They want the whole Middle East up in flames.
John LeCarre said three years ago that the United States had gone mad. He was right.
And if the rest of the world doesn't tell them STOP, then we'll all go down in flames with them.
Sydney Blummenthal describes the nightmare scenario in Salon magazine:

. . . The neoconservatives are described as enthusiastic about the possibility of using NSA intelligence as a lever to widen the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah and Israel and Hamas into a four-front war . . . Rice's diplomacy in the Middle East has erratically veered from initially calling on Israel for "restraint," to categorically opposing a cease-fire, to proposing terms for a cease-fire guaranteed to conflict with the European proposal, and thus to thwarting diplomacy, prolonging the time available for the Israeli offensive to achieve its stated aim of driving Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon. But the neocon scenario extends far beyond that objective to pushing Israel into a "cleansing war" with Syria and Iran, says the national security official, which somehow will redeem Bush's beleaguered policy in the entire region. . . .

Emphasis mine.
See? A "cleansing war"? This is an insane concept developed by people who obviously watched too many TV commercials while they were growing up --You'll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pesodent! and Mr. Clean scours like a White Tornado! -- the very same people who have spent five years now losing wars.

Having failed in the Middle East, the administration is attempting to salvage its credibility by equating Israel's predicament with the U.S. quagmire in Iraq. Neoconservatives, for their part, see the latest risk to Israel's national security as a chance to scuttle U.S. negotiations with Iran, perhaps the last opportunity to realize the fantasies of "A Clean Break."
By using NSA intelligence to set an invisible tripwire, the Bush administration is laying the condition for regional conflagration with untold consequences -- from Pakistan to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Israel. Secretly devising a scheme that might thrust Israel into a ring of fire cannot be construed as a blunder. It is a deliberate, calculated and methodical plot.

The United States does not, of course, have the troops or the equipment or the airplanes or ships to fight such a large war. What they have are nuclear weapons. To "win", they will need to use them.

Operation Freedom Eh

Over at Daily Kos, "Bill in Portland Maine" has a suggestion -- and I sincerely hope that neither Rummy nor Steve read Bill's column:

Not that anyone asked, but, yes, I do know how to solve the Middle East crisis. Since our military is stuck in Iraq and Afghanistan, and two-thirds of our Army National Guard units are not ready for combat, we're out of the picture militarily. President "Yo" Bush and Condi Rice are preoccupied with their treadmills, so ixnay on the iplomacyday. That leaves one option which has the full backing of Bill Kristol and the service-dodging young Republicans:
The Pentagon must sub-contract Canada to invade Iran and Syria.
We did a little checking and concluded that this move is a slam dunk. According to our friends at Mightbeaccurateipedia, there are over 7 million Canadian males age 15-49 who are "fit for military service." With their 114 Leopard battle tanks and 98 fighter jets leading the charge, they could roll into Tehran by lunchtime and have the entire afternoon free to be greeted as liberators with sweets and flowers. But wait...it gets better.
Once parliamentary democracy takes root in 6 to 12 days, they can then roll across the Jeffersonian democracy of Iraq (we'll waive the tolls) and swoop into Damascus. Then, with the two main supporters of Hezbollah and Hamas effectively neutralized, the terrorists in Lebanon will flee into the Mediterranean Sea and drown themselves.
Best of all, Operation Freedom, Eh will only cost $1.7 billion. So c'mon, Canada...it's time to step up to the plate and help us turn a few more corners.

If they told Emerson they would re-write the softwood lumber deal to our liking, Steve might even go along with it.

Losing ground

This is not surprising at all.:

A new poll suggests Tory support is sliding over voter concern that Canada has become too cosy with the United States on Middle East policy.

You gotta walk it by yourself, Mel

So Mel Gibson thinks Jewish people are supposed to "help him heal"?
Mel, try to imagine how little anybody cares.

Mel Gibson acknowledged making anti-Semitic slurs during a drunken driving arrest and begged Jewish community leaders Tuesday to meet with him to find "the appropriate path for healing."

Why should any Jewish person care to meet with Mel Gibson anyway -- does he think he's something special, God's gift to Judaism maybe, that he now deserves personal help?
I think Mel better get busy solving his own problems.
I used to hear the same BS during the early days of the women's movement -- it was supposed to be a women's job to educate her man about how wrong his sexism was (as well as do the housework, I guess). If he continued to be a sexist pig it was somehow HER fault for not teaching him well enough or something.
Note particularly how this attitude lets the man off the hook for making any personal changes or doing any work or taking any responsibility for educating himself -- while woman's work is never done . . .
Well, its the same now with Mel and his anti-Semitism -- its up to him to do the work he needs to do to change his attitudes -- and if he finds out now or later that no Jewish person wants anything to do with him anymore, well, that's the penalty he pays -- this still wouldn't let Mel off the hook for changing his own prejudices.
Like the hymn goes:
You've got to walk that lonesome valley
Well you gotta walk it by yourself
Well there ain't nobody else gonna go there for you
You gotta go there by yourself

Today's Nelson moment

Ha ha!
Ross is on holidays, I think, so I am taking the opportunity to note this story - Trade minister acknowledges softwood deal could be 'dead on arrival'

'It is fair to say that if we do not have sufficient buy-in from industry there really isn't an agreement to bring before Parliament,' Emerson said Monday. 'So the first bridge we have to cross is to get the agreement supported by the appropriate number of players in the industry, otherwise you're dead before arrival.'

Yes, we knew that.

Hezbollah (or Hizbullah or whatever)

One of my previous posts has quite a discussion going on in Comments about Hezbollah and terrorism and Israel and the whole damn thing. Here is an interesting contribution to that discussion -- Juan Cole's description of how Hezbollah and Al-Quaeda are different:

Western and Israeli pundits keep comparing Hizbullah to al-Qaeda. It is a huge conceptual error. There is a crucial difference between an international terrorist network like al-Qaeda, which can be disrupted by good old policing techniques (such as inserting an agent in the Western Union office in Karachi), and a sub-nationalist movement. Al-Qaeda is some 5,000 multinational volunteers organized in tiny cells.
Hizbullah is a mass expression of subnationalism that has the loyalty of some 1.3 million highly connected and politically mobilized peasants and slum dwellers. Over a relatively compact area.

Read the whole article if you can. Cole concludes:

The Israelis cannot win this struggle against a sophisticated, highly organized and well armed subnationalism.
The only practical thing to do when you can't easily beat people into submission is to find a compromise with them that both sides can live with. It will be a hard lesson for both the Lebanese Shiites and the Israelis. But they will learn it or will go on living with a lot of death and destruction.

Great line of the day

John at AMERICAblog notes that Mel Gibson has been directing a mini-series about the Holocaust. He suggests some additional directorial pairings:

Black Like Me, by David Duke.
The Harvey Milk Story, by Jesse Helms.
The American Presidents, by Squeekey Fromme.
A Brief History of Time, by George W. Bush.
The Laramie Project, by the Rev. Fred Phelps.
The Wonderful Field of Nursing, by Richard Speck.
Kids Say the Darndest Things, by John Wayne Gacy.
And of course...
The Naked Chef, by Jeffrey Dahmer.

Over-reach

So Israel is suspending the bombing campaign and withdrawing from a ground offensive -- but its not a cease-fire like the world has been asking for, oh no, not at all.
OK, call it whatever you want. Maybe this debacle will end as incoherently as it began.
Steve Gilliard says:

I can't stress enough how badly this has gone. The IAF [Israel air force] has become renowned for blowing up hospitals. . . . Now, after the inevitable errant bomb, Israel is shamed before the world. . . . Hezbollah has not been much better, but Israel lost the battle of equivency when they tore up gas stations and red cross convoys. Now, Hezbollah's rockets are a footnote to Israel's bombs.

The other losers in this battle are the United Nations, and the United States.
In spite of Kofi Annan's own calls for ceasefire, protesters trashed the UN offices in Beirut and Palestinian gunmen assaulted the UN compound in Gaza City.
And the US government isn't getting any respect these days, either. Lebanon's government reportedly refused to meet with American Secretary of State Condi Rice. And Ireland refused permission for the use of Shannon airport by US planes flying bombs to Israel.
That last one has me shaking my head in disbelief -- Ireland? Telling the big bad United States to PFO?
The Bush administration overreached too -- they seized on the Israel-Hezbollah war as the ideal time to try again to get John Bolton through the Senate. Bad idea.

Great line of the day

Watertiger at Firedoglake writes:

If this week proved anything it was that Bush is to Middle East diplomacy what Ted Bundy was to blind dates. Only without the social skills . . . or boyish good looks.

18 days in July

Former CIA agent Ray Close describes how close the world is to widespread war in the Middle East:

. . . intelligence being produced for the Bush Administration by the Pentagon strongly supports the thesis that Hizballah operations are directly controlled and closely managed from Teheran ... this [is] an exaggerated picture of the real situation [which] contributes to an unhealthy and even dangerous mindset in Washington, leading to potentially serious miscalculations and errors of judgment by President Bush and his closest advisors at this very critical time . . .

Former CIA agent Larry Johnson provides further details:

I am disturbed to learn that this analysis enjoys so much credibility at the senior levels of the USG [United States government]. This is, of course, the point of view being pushed so hard by both the Israelis and the neocons in Washington.
I was equally upset to hear this view repeated unanimously (and identically) by a variety of people on national TV yesterday, coming from Senators McCain, Schumer, George Allen and John Warner as well as official spokespersons from State and the NSC. It was as if they were all reading from the same artfully crafted briefing sheet . . . It is a dangerously one-sided point of view that furthers Israel's long-standing objective of luring the US into a violent confrontation with Iran. The ultimate consequence could be that everyone in the USG --- Democrats as well as Republicans --- from the President on down --- will, by such dangerously oversimplified logic and careless rhetoric, accelerate America's momentum toward:
(1) officially defining and treating Hizballah's actions against Israel just as if they were atrocities by international terrorism aimed directly at the people of the United States, and thereby:
(2) making it almost inevitable that both political parties in the US will talk themselves into a "moral" commitment to aggressively confront those who encourage, support and harbor Hizballah terrorists (i.e. Syria and Iran), and thereby:
(3) making impossible the establishment of any constructive dialogue with either Iran or Syria in which other critical issues, such as Iraq and nuclear proliferation, for example, might be dealt with by means short of violence. In other words, this widely-supported urban legend is rapidly becoming another potentially disastrous conflation of biased intelligence analysis, simplistic political bombast and lunatic fringe right-wing Christianity that could drive us toward another major military confrontation --- whether or not that was really our carefully considered and intelligently reasoned objective.
I do not think I am overstating the danger here. Once momentum starts moving in that direction, we might soon find ourselves in another situation where stubborn pride, as much as anything else, would make it hard for us to modify our rhetoric and admit our inability and that of our Israeli allies to disarm and dismantle the military arm of Hizballah. It's a proxy war right now, but if our surrogates (the Israelis) fail to achieve their objectives, they will attempt very purposefully to broaden the conflict into a much larger one directly involving the United States and Iran.

Halifax protest

Hmmm - this is interesting:

Hundreds demonstrated in Halifax on Saturday to condemn Prime Minister Stephen Harper's defence of Israel's attacks on Lebanon . . .

When we were in Halifax, though of course we were there for just for a few days, it struck us as a very pro-military town. So if THEY are protesting, I wonder what the rest of the country thinks...