Ted Barlow is back from one of his bi-monthly breaks.
Archives for 2003
Good Post
Here is a good how-to on how to be an honest blogger– go read Kevin Drum discussing Medical Malpractice.
On reading the report more carefully, I now note that all these figures are for median payouts, which wouldn’t be affected at all by a few huge awards. I’m not sure what’s going on, but this is so obviously the wrong statistic to use in this case that there must be some kind of axe to grind here. I’m now very skeptical that this report is, as it claims, “not driven by a political ideology or industry-driven self-interest.”
What’s more, although Appendix 2 does indeed show that premiums have gone up only 35% in states without caps, there are several states with enormous increases and several with tiny increases, and it’s hard to see any correlation at all between median payout increases and median premium increases. This might be due to the use of medians, it might genuinely be due to different regulatory regimes, or it might be something else. Who knows?
Why can’t we get this type of honesty and self-scrutiny from the mainstream media?
Close To Home
This hit close to home:
Four soldiers from the Army’s 1092nd Engineer Company, a civilian Army contractor, two civilian captains and two boat drivers were sailing up the Shatt al Arab waterway in the al Faw peninsula Sunday to pick up Iraqi South Oil Co. personnel when they were taken by force by Iranians, a spokesman, Cmdr. Dan Gage, said from Central Command headquarters in Tampa.
I served in Detachment 1, Company C, 1092 ECB for five years. IF anyone has any information on the names of these individuals, please forward it to me ASAP.
This Is Not Good
Sure- It is all about Palestinian Statehood:
And, at a time when the Israeli government has accepted the right of Palestinians to statehood, most Muslim populations surveyed believe by wide margins that the needs of Palestinians cannot be met so long as the state of Israel exists.
What happens when Israel follows all of the outlined actions required of them in the Road Map, and the ‘moderate’ Muslim populations sabatoge the peace. Then what?
IS Talk Left Down?
Am I the only one who can not get Talk Left to load?
*** Update ***
The Middle East
Fareed Zakaria in today’s WaPo:
If nothing else, this week’s Middle East summits will produce a great many photographs of smiling leaders. But to understand how long and hard the road to peace is, consider the photograph that you have not seen. Last Thursday Ariel Sharon met with the new prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. It was, everyone agreed, a serious and productive meeting, the kind that politicians love to publicize. Except that there is no public photograph of it, nor of their first meeting on May 17. Each side claims that the other didn’t want to release pictures of the two men shaking hands or even seated together. You know things are fragile when diplomacy isn’t even at the photo-op stage.
Congo Update
Now that French led contingent of 1200 soldies are en route, Kofi Annan is pressing the Security Council to raise the limit of troops that can be sent to the Congo:
For a chance at lasting peace in the region, Annan argued in a new 28-page report that 3,800 peacekeepers in Ituri were needed to disarm combatants, rather than the 1,700 expected to replace the French-led force in September.
”Even a force of that strength would not be able to provide comprehensive security throughout Ituri or secure all major roads or the border with Uganda,” Annan wrote. But he said he expected the troops to provide security for a host of other U.N. personnel to run radio stations and organize police.
Currently there are about 5,000 U.N. military personnel on the ground throughout the vast country as part of the U.N. Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, known as MONUC.
Bangladeshi and other troops and others expected in August would to raise the number to close to 8,000. The Security Council has imposed a ceiling of 8,700 personnel and Annan now wants it raised to 10,800.
What meets the troops, regardless of how many are eventually sent, is what has been described as “Mission Impossible:”
Naming all the belligerents in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s recent history would be a good trivial pursuit question if the answer did not need continuing updates.
Take, for example, the Union for Patriotic Congolese (UPC). Just as the ink was drying on the all-inclusive political agreement, this group sprang into the headlines for the worst possible reasons its fight for control of the town of Bunia in northeast Congo.
Part of the problem facing the troops is that there simply are not enough of them for the task, another problem is the fuzzy mandate they have been handed:
The United Nations force in Congo (Monuc) of about 4000 does not have the capacity to deal effectively with the complex situation… A ceiling of 8000 troops has been authorised for Monuc but the UN has struggled to find nations willing to contribute. Compare this with the 18000-strong UN force sent to Sierra Leone in its civil war. Analysts say it was a simpler scenario there government versus rebels. The Congo conflict was regional and civil.
Monuc has also been hamstrung by its chapter VI mandate that provides for unarmed observers rather than “peace enforcement”. The allure of the Congo job has not been heightened by reports earlier this year of the slaughter of two unarmed UN personnel.
The UN emergency force is vital to contain the situation in Ituri. But its role, and that of a longer-term beefed up Monuc force, needs to be far wider than finding a military solution. It needs to fill the governance gap. It must put in place sustainable structures for maintaining peace and security and must be backed by thorough regional, international and multilateral support measures. Space must be created for the fledgling central government to prove it can be effective.
As long as military issues continue to sideline economic growth and investment in the Congo, and as long as the country is awash with arms and people ready to act as proxies for all comers, nothing much will change.
I’ll post more when I can find more.