Wampum

Valuing Pain and Suffering

Santorum Exposed, by way of Atrios, reminds us that Rick Santorum is a hypocrite with regard to statutory limits on pain and suffering awards in personal injury actions. They link to this ABC News piece:

In recent years many doctors and politicians have complained that frivolous malpractice lawsuits and disproportionate jury awards are a problem in need of reform.

But when "Primetime" did some investigating, it turned out that at least some of the people in favor of reform -- even some of its loudest proponents -- have themselves benefited from the current laws.

Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., says that the No. 1 health care crisis in his state is medical lawsuit abuse and in the past he's called for a $250,000 cap on non-economic damage awards or awards for pain and suffering. "We need to do something now to fix the medical liability problem in this country," he declared at a rally in Washington D.C., this past spring.

But Santorum's wife sued a doctor for $500,000 in 1999. She claimed that a botched spinal manipulation by her chiropractor led to back surgery, pain and suffering, and sued for twice the amount of a cap Santorum has supported.

That Santorum is a hypocrite on the issue is no surprise to you, dear Wampum readers, as we informed you of that fact some time ago. See here and here.

One item in the ABC News piece did catch my attention. Senator Santorum is quoted as follows:

Santorum declined a request for an interview, so "Primetime" caught up with him at the signing of his new book in Pennsylvania this August to ask if he thinks his stance and history are in conflict.

"I guess I could answer that in two ways," he said. "Number one is that I've supported caps. I've been very clear that I am not wedded at all to a $250,000 cap and I've said publicly repeatedly, and I think probably that is somewhat low, and that we need to look at what I think is a cap that is a little bit higher than that."

Let’s leave aside for the moment the issue of Santorum sponsoring legislation that he thinks is bad public policy. Instead, let’s focus on a different issue. If, as a matter of public policy, we decide to cap awards for pain and suffering, what criteria will be used to determine the amount at which to set the cap?

One of the basic arguments for imposing a cap on non-economic damages is that juries have no reference point from which to set an award for pain and suffering. As one insurance company, arguing for a damages cap, put it:

People who serve as jurors approach the task of evaluating injuries with no reliable reference points in their personal lives and with no belief that their actions will affect them in any direct way. The same people who might have a very accurate understanding of the value of a house, a car or a loaf of bread have no measuring stick with which to gauge the value of a life or a disabling injury.

Now, I do not think that is right. Ordinary people have a great deal of experience in placing monetary values on pain. If a patient pays $30 for a novocaine shot to avoid a half hour of pain at the dentist’s office, has that patient not placed a value on the avoidance of pain? Merck sold a couple billion dollars per year of Vioxx to people seeking relief from pain. Were those patients, as well as Merck, not placing a value on the avoidance of pain?

In addition, proponents of a cap on non-economic damages are happy to allow the jury to measure the value of pain and suffering as long as the value is low. Can you imagine the hue and cry if legislation was introduced to set a floor of, say, $50,000 on all non-economic damages awards, no matter how slight the injury? Tort reformer’s heads would explode as they argued that some amounts of pain simply are not worth $50,000. That argument would presuppose that the value of pain and suffering is determinable from the evidence. Why is it also not determinable when the amount of pain is great?

That, however, is a diversion from the main point of this post. If we buy the tort reform argument that juries have no basis for valuing pain and suffering, on what basis is a legislator to do so? The jury, after all, has a specific case with specific evidence about the nature of the injury, as well as the severity and duration of the pain. The jury is deciding on the value of pain in one specific case. The legislator imposing a cap must, of necessity, decide the maximum award for all cases regardless of the specific facts. That is a far more difficult task. What criteria would the legislator use?

The most common proposal for a damages cap is $250,000. As best I can tell, that number was chosen because it was the number used in California in 1975. According to the inflation calculator at BLS, if adjusted for inflation, that cap would be a little over $900,000 today.

Would a $900,000 cap on pain and suffering be fair? Rick Santorum thinks that $250,000 is too low. Why does he think it is too low? What does he think is more appropriate? What criteria did he use to make that determination? The proponents of a cap owe it to the public to explain exactly how they determine the level of the cap. I have never seen such an explanation. Why is that?

My guess is that the proposed level of a cap on non-economic damages has nothing to do with fairness to the injured party. I suspect, instead, that it involves a delicate balancing act between what is politically saleable and what the insurance industry and the other groups that fund pro-tort reform politicians want.

It would be easy for tort reformers to prove me wrong, of course. All they would have to do is to provide a decent explanation of why $250,000 is the right number. Any takers?

On this date...

Three years back, a small, insignificant event took place in the blogosphere.

The first post on Wampum.

Walking on Armistice Day

It took 18 days to collapse (and invert) the Iraq Army defensive perimeter, from the initial movement order to the final investment of central Baghdad.

One plan, which I will characterize as "Stay the Course", broadly retains US forces as they were on Day 18, until resistance, operations by the inverted Iraq Army and civil defense forces, cease, and the Second Iraq Army obtains a lasting monopoly on operational violence.

One plan, which I will characterize as "Transition and Downsize", broadly reduces US forces from the Day 18 force level, synchronized with decrements in the operations by the inverted Iraq Army and civil defense forces, and increments in the operations by the Second Iraq Army towards a lasting monopoly on operational violence.

One plan, which I will characterize as "Substitution in Place", broadly substitutes other forces for US forces from the Day 18 force level, and proceeds along the trajectory of the "Transition and Downsize" plan.

These differ in the estimated period of time it takes to achive the end of reducing US forces in Iraq to levels which are operationally insignificant, though all share an inability to state how an indefinite "Exit Strategy" is finally operationalized, and within each there are variations of form, specific to the composition of the US force structure, but they share the predicate condition, the ceasation of operations by the inverted Iraq Army and civil defense forces.

They also all share a comon area of operations model. The universe of Iraq's territorial extent is flat, undifferentiated, without exception.

The test of theory is predictive value.

The theory that the Iraq Army would not invert when the Iraq Army defensive perimeter was collapsed has been tested. To a first order, it is theory unsupported by fact.

The theory that civil defense forces would not organize and operationalize in the rear areas has been tested. To a first order, it is theory unsupported by fact.

The theory that operations by the inverted Iraq Army and civil defense forces would be made ineffective by military or political means, has been tested. To a first order, it is theory unsupported by fact.

The theory that the occupation model of Iraq's territorial would remain undifferentiated, that the occupation cost in lives and material would be location independent, restated, that no "no go" areas would come into existance, requireing concentration of US forces and forcing draw-downs elsewhere, imposing a pursuit of a coordinated guerilla model on US forces, has been tested. To a first order, it is theory unsupported by fact.

Military planning that is consistent with an accurate prediction of oppositional forces and their capabilities and intentions is superior to military planning which is not.

US forces will continue to loose operational advantage to the inverted Iraq Army and civil defense forces at discreet time and location. The rate of loss, and the cost of recovery of advantage, is not converging. The primary locus of areas where US forces will continue to loose operational advantage is the area in which US forces moved into on days 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 of the maneuver and annihilation phase of the US invasion of Iraq.

A plan, which I will characterize as "Step Back", broadly reverses the advance of US forces from their position on Day 18 to their position on Day 1, allowing the inverted Iraq Army and civil defense forces to deinvert and reform the Iraq Army defensive perimeter. Within the Iraq Army defensive perimeter, the monopoly on violence would be uncontested by US forces, The distinction between the inverted Iraq Army and the Second Iraq Army, mooted by the recent "junior officers" decision, will be resolved by means other than maneuver and annihilation.

This is a plan for an Amistice. A Walking Armistice. At the rate of a month's planned reverse for each day of reckless advance, one that would, in its first months, walk the last US units out of central Iraq. One that would leave US forces in southern Iraq much longer, and at some point, recreate the northern and southern "No Fly" zones, on the ground, and finally place US forces where they were before the initiation of hostilities in 1991.

---

This note is incompatible with the plans offered by Juan Cole, Wes Clark, John Kerry, and of course, George Bush.

Fill in the Blank

Some years ago, among certain people, it was considered witty to remark that a conservative was a liberal who had been mugged. Google returns 138,000 hits for “conservative” + “liberal” + “mugged”.

Let’s turn the adage around and ask “a liberal is a conservative who has -----.” How can we fill in the blank?

Craig Westover points us to the story of Ron Carey.

Ron Carey is the Chairman of the Republican Party of Minnesota. He is a fiscal conservative generally opposed to government spending. He became Chairman of the party, in part, because some Republicans feared that Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty was too free in spending government money.

Carey also has an eight year old autistic son. His son needed ABA services that were available at the Minnesota Autism Center. The Center receives the majority of its funding from the federal and state governments. Some of the kids serviced by the Center need intensive therapy. That therapy can cost upwards of $100,000 per year.

Despite Carey’s general attitude against government spending, he accepted the taxpayer support for the services his son needed and supported the taxpayer funding of services for other kids.

Some have argued that the two positions make Carey a hypocrite. I do not see it that way.

Carey makes the point that spending money on autistic kids saves money in the long run:

"There's research that shows this program is very effective," Carey said. "Kids are being helped to become indistinguishable from the rest of the society. These kids can grow up to be independent, tax-paying citizens. As a fiscal conservative, I can argue that a dollar spent on this saves $10 down the line."

Not only do I think that is right, but I think Carey’s position is inevitable:

But it may have been David Strom, who heads the Taxpayers League of Minnesota, the organization devoted to lowering taxes, who best cut through the contradictory lives we lead.

"I can't speak directly to his situation," Strom said of Carey. "But I think no parent, given a chance to do something for his child, would turn that chance down."

By virtue of having an autistic child, Carey has seen the benefit of publicly funded autism programs. He knows that ABA is the state of the art therapy for young autistics and sees the public benefit in providing such services. I do not see that as contradicting the position of being against ineffective government spending. As Carey says:

"Government by nature is not bad," Carey said. "It's abuse that's bad. It's waste that's bad."

Carey’s personal experience with an autistic child has demonstrated to him that public spending on the Minnesota Autism Center is good public policy.

There is nothing inherently contradictory about that even for a fiscal conservative. Indeed, the list of “conservatives” who support “liberal” programs based on personal experience with the issue is extensive.

Dick Cheney is a pretty conservative guy. During the 2000 Vice Presidential debate, the subject of gay marriage arose. The conservative position opposes any recognition by the state of gay couples. Indeed, the GOP is pushing a constitutional amendment to prevent individual states from making individual choices in the matter. What was Dick Cheney’s position?

The fact of the matter is we live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for everybody. We shouldn't be able to choose and say you get to live free and you don't. That means people should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It's no one's business in terms of regulating behavior in that regard. The next step then, of course, is the question you ask of whether or not there ought to be some kind of official sanction of the relationships or if they should be treated the same as a traditional marriage. That's a tougher problem. That's not a slam dunk. The fact of the matter is that matter is regulated by the states. I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that's appropriate. I don't think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area. I try to be open minded about it as much as I can and tolerant of those relationships. And like Joe, I'm also wrestling with the extent to which there ought to be legal sanction of those relationships. I think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into.

Mr. Cheney happens to have a lesbian daughter. It seems clear that his personal experience has shaped his views on the issue.

One current issue is whether the United States should ever engage in torture or abusive conduct towards detainees in the war on terror. The administration’s position is that such measures should not be specifically outlawed by statute. Conservative Republican Senator John McCain is leading the fight to pass legislation outlawing such treatment of detainees. Did John McCain’s personal experience animate his position on the issue? Of course it did:

Former combat pilot John McCain was often tortured during his five and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Because his father was an admiral, he was offered earlier release by his captors but refused to be freed before prisoners who had been held longer.

During the Senate debate on his amendment, McCain cited the letter he had received from Captain Ian Fishback (whom he later met), and also recalled his years in a North Vietnamese cell:

"Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them even unto death. But every one of us—every single one of us—knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies."

When the issue of University of Michigan's affirmative action case came to the Supreme Court, the conservative position was that such program was unconstitutional. Many groups filed amicus curiae with the Supreme Court. Among those asking that the Court uphold the Michigan affirmative action program were a number of organization that do not often take what are generally considered to be liberal positions. Those groups included retired military leaders and a whole host of Fortune 500 companies.

Neither big business nor the military are widely as hotbeds of liberalism. Among the administration leaders supporting affirmative action were Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.

New Mexico's Pete Domenici is a pretty conservative Senator with a 2004 American Conservative Union rating of 95.

On one issue, mental health, Domenici teamed up with the late Senator Paul Wellstone to push legislation that many would consider liberal. From Domenici’s web site:

It was not too long ago that society considered many mental illnesses untreatable. However, over the years, a strong commitment to addressing mental health issues has led to landmark breakthroughs in our understanding, diagnosis, and treatment of mental illnesses. During his years in the Senate, Senator Domenici has taken an active leadership role with issues relating to mental illness like: mental health parity, increased funding for cutting edge mental health research, erasing the stigma surrounding mental illness, and increasing funding for those in prison or homeless suffering from a mental illness…

Many insurance companies believe illnesses of the brain should receive less coverage than illnesses or injuries to the body. As such, Senator Domenici introduced the first ever Congressional legislation requiring insurance companies to provide parity between mental health benefits and medical and surgical benefits. The landmark "Mental Health Parity Act of 1996" passed Congress and was signed into law.

While this was a historic first step, more must be done and Senator Domenici is currently working to expand the 1996 law to provide full parity between all mental health benefits and medical and surgical benefits. Specifically, the "Senator Paul Wellstone Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act of 2003" seeks to prohibit a group health plan from imposing treatment limitations or financial requirements on mental health benefits unless comparable limitations are imposed on medical and surgical benefits.

Is it coincidence that a conservative like Domenici would take such seemingly liberal positions on mental health or could it be related to the fact that he has special expertise on ths issue bu virtue of the fact that he has a daughter who suffers from mental illness?

We now have our answers. A liberal is a conservative with an autistic son. A liberal is a conservative with a lesbian daughter. A liberal is a conservative who has been tortured. A liberal is a conservative who has felt the sting of racial discrimination. A liberal is a conservative with a mentally ill relative.

Perhaps, though, we should just listen to people whose personal experience provides them with particular insight on an issue and not worry about whether than makes them a liberal or a conservative.

Women are not a "special interest group"

As Duncan pointed out late last night (pointing to this TPMCafe post), Corzine won in New Jersey because he actually approached women as key voters, not as a special interest group. In particular, he framed his economic policies in terms of how they would effect families, including 387,000 households headed by women. This isn't just luck on his part. Corzine recognized what few Democratic politicians in the past few decades have continuously ignorned: Women are the driving force in the majority of "pocketbook" financial decisions within US households. According to a recent Oppenheimer poll, "women were more likely to say they pay the bills (60 percent), balance the checkbook (67 percent) and mind the family budget (54 percent)."

So why the lack of clue on behalf of the Democratic message-makers? I have some ideas, but they'll have to wait, as today is moving day.

Today's Cartoon

Today's Cartoon is from Mike Lester of the Rome (Ga.) News Tribune.

Ten minutes until the polls close in Maine...

We (well, I, as Eric is on a plane to Pittsburgh at the moment) sit here (in North Carolina) waiting for the polls to close on Election Day in our home state of Maine (yes, we voted absentee.) While there are a few bond measures on the ballot, all eyes, ears and hearts are pinned on the outcome of Question 1, which adds sexual orientation to the list of non-discriminatory language in the Maine Constitution.

Well, now it's seven minutes.

I'll update with the results. Many of my closest friends are staff on Maine Won't Discriminate, so I could pester them with first results. But, they are my dear friends, and as a campaign hack professional, I won't do such a thing.

Five minutes now.

Update 1: After the Press Herald site had nothing!, nothing!, I broke down and called Karin. She said only one precinct in, one vote "yes". Told me to forget the Press Herald, watch Bangor Daily News instead. According to BDN, three precincts have reported, all from Aroostook and Piscataquis counties (the latter went for Bush, the former almost did, in 2004).

Update 2 (9:14pm): 12% of precincts in, No: 57%, Yes: 43%

Update 3 (1:12am) 86% of precincts in, No: 55%, Yes 44%. Looks like we finally won.

The Meaning of Pervasive

Autism is a pervasive disorder. The National Institute of Mental Health writes:

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD), also known as Pervasive Developmental Disorders (PDDs), cause severe and pervasive impairment in thinking, feeling, language, and the ability to relate to others.

At Bobby’s place on the spectrum, autism does indeed become entangled with everything. It affects every single decision we make.

Hmm… those are the right lyrics but I do not think they provide you with the melody of pervasiveness and autism. Perhaps an example of how autism complicates even the simplest decisions will allow you to hear the music as well as see the words. I chose the following example because it was not a big thing. It is just an ordinary, everyday, almost trivial kind of decision. It is the type of thing we face daily in the hope of untangling a bit of our life from the pervasiveness of autism.

So, let’s talk about houseplants.

We moved into a new house this year. One feature of the house that we really like is that it has a large deck and a gazebo overlooking the backyard in general and Bobby’s trampoline in particular. The gazebo and deck area provides a pleasant place to be when Bobby bounces and on many other occasions. We use it a lot. Deb wanted that area to be nice and decided to decorate it with a large number of plants in pots.

We ended up with about a dozen healthy, thriving, potted plants. Now, though, it is starting to get cold, and we can not leave the plants on the deck. Thus, we are faced with the decision of what to do with the plants.

There are a number of options. We could, for instance, just leave the plants outside and hope for the best. We could also ask someone else to take them in for the winter. Finally, we could move them into the house.

That may seem like a pretty easy call. Our house has a large sun room on the back. With a bank of windows facing South, the plants should get enough light there and the room is easily large enough to accommodate ten to twelve plants without overcrowding.

Moving the plants top the sun room is an obvious solution, but you may not have yet considered the impact of autism. Autism changes an apparently simple decision into a delicate balancing act.

First, if we move the plants into the sun room, what happens if Bobby eats them? Bobby has a long history of eating non-food items. One of his primary methods of testing any new item is to taste it. Are any of the plants poisonous?

We need to know that before we decide to move our plants indoors, so we need to conduct some research to determine just what the risks actually are.

Google is your friend. I got the names of the plants from Deb and gave the Google monkeys their assignment.

The monkeys quickly report back with some cause for concern. Three of the plants are known as snake plants. They are sometimes called “mother-in-law’s tongue.” I must say that given my twenty years of experience, I do not understand the latter reference. The plants are somewhat hard, spiky and forbidding. Based on my experience, a plant known as mother-in-law’s tongue should be soft and sweet.

Despite its misnomer, snake plants are slightly poisonous. No, Bobby will not keel over dead the moment a part of the plant touches his tongue but all parts of the snake plant are poisonous and both touching the plant and eating it may cause some problems.

The geraniums are also mildly poisonous with a skin rash being the major risk. The elephant’s ear plant is more risky. If eaten, it can cause “burning and swelling of lips, mouth, tongue, and throat, difficulty of speech” resulting in “severe pain in the mouth.”

The other plants are not toxic. Heck, the hibiscus plant may aid in digestion and does not appear to be harful to humans (it can harm dogs).

Most likely, Bobby will end up with a skin rash or, if he eats the elephant’s ear, with mouth pain. A skin rash is not the end of the world, but the mouth pain is another story. We would not be able to explain to him why he hurts or that it will go away in time. If there is some medication to give him for the swelling, it will be very hard to administer. Handing Bobby a pill and saying “swallow this” is not likely to succeed.

It is not just the possible poison that causes us concern. Potted plants contain dirt. While Bobby may or may not decide to eat part of the plants, experience suggests that he will be attracted to the potting soil. He will like the look, texture, and taste of the dirt. The chances that large handfuls of potting soil will find their way onto the floor, Bobby’s clothes, the walls, and perhaps, the furniture are substantial (approaching certainty). The sun room floor is tiled, and the walls are windows, so clean up will not be as bad as it might be. Still, the combination of possible poisoning plus the added work of the expected clean ups is enough for me to carefully consider whether we want to do this.

We could, of course, move the plants into the house and teach Bobby not to touch houseplants. That would be the best outcome. We would get to keep the plants and Bobby would learn a new skill. There are trade offs. We have limited time and many skills to master. The time we spend teaching Bobby to avoid the plants will not be spent mastering some other skill. Still, not eating houseplants is a core kind of life skill. Bobby has to live for the next seventy years. At some point along the way, he needs to learn not to eat house plants. He is not likely to be invited to live in a group home without mastering that type of skill. Why not just commit to learning it now?

The problem, of course, is that I do not know how to teach Bobby not to eat houseplants. I know exactly how to teach him not to eat one specific plant. Watch him carefully. When he tries to eat the plant, stop him and withdraw something that he likes (computer time, access to the CD player, making him sit still in a chair, a timeout in his room etc.). When he nears the plant but does not touch, he gets rewarded (food, a treasured disk, hugs and tickles, verbal praise, etc). We have followed that pattern many times for many things over the years. I am very confident that we can teach him not to touch a specific plant.

Unfortunately, like many autistics, Bobby has trouble generalizing from specific examples. Just because he has learned not to touch one plant does not mean that he will generalize the skill to understand not to touch any house plants. We may well have to teach him not to touch each individual plant as a separate lesson. The effort to teach and learn becomes gradually less as we go down the line of plants. Bobby is smart and my teaching skills will improve as we go along.

At the end of that process, we will have expended a fair amount of effort and precious time. Bobby will learn not to touch those specific plants. He may or may not have been able to generalize that skill to leaving all house plants alone. We have no way to know whether he will make the connection. We can choose to make the effort or not. We decided to try.

We are a couple of weeks into the experiment. So far, Bobby has eaten no significant portion of the plants and almost all the dirt has stayed in the pots. So far, so good.

Of course, it has taken a bit of effort to make sure that he has left the plants alone. In the time that we have been working on houseplants, Bobby has broken a Steuben vase that we (foolishly) had on display, knocked a painting off the wall breaking the frame and damaging the wall, and ripped the thermostat out of the wall. We will get to those skills next.

As I said, we have limited time and lots of skills to learn. Each skill has to be learned separately. That is why autism is pervasive. Can you now hear the melody?

Assigning Blame

It is now clear that the administration drove us to war in Iraq based on a group of false claims. That was a huge mistake. We have paid for that mistake with thousand lives, more than ten thousand injuries, and hundreds of billions of dollars. When George W. Bush entered office in 2001, he ushered in what he termed the Era of Responsibility. Given that we are still in the Era of Responsibility, where must the blame be assigned for the disaster in Iraq?

Let’s ask John Fund of the Wall Street Journal:

FUND: The Bush administration can be faulted, but let‘s be clear.

The Bush administration did this two months before the mid-term elections. You had a Democratic opposition party that did not ask the right questions unlike the right questions they asked in the 1991 war.

Remember, Congress almost disapproved invading Iraq after the invasion of Kuwait…

In this case the opposition party fell down. It didn‘t do its job. The media didn‘t do its job. Where were the editors critiquing and asking the reporters, who were doing these stories if they had multiple sources or just one source in the administration?

So, there is a lot of fault going around here. Let‘s not just put it in the Bush administration.

The Bush administration can be faulted but the real blame goes to the Democrats and the media for permitting the administration to get away with its fraud.

Apparently, in Fund World, it the job of the administration to make horrible policy choices and it is the job of the Democrats and the media to stop them. If horrible policy gets implemented, the blame should be shared.

Perhaps we can apply that sort of logic to other situations. If someone commits arson to fraudulently obtain insurance proceeds, and gets away with it, where should we assigning the blame? There is plenty to go around. Sure the arsonist may be faulted but lets not forget that the fire happened when the arsonist was in financial difficulty. it is the job of the insurance company to refuse to pay fraudulent claims. It is the job of the police investigators to determine if a fire is arson. It is the job of the fire department to put the fire out before much damage is done. Those people didn't do their job so let's not just blame the arsonist.

Fund is a wanker.

Update: As much as I think Fund's argument is despicable, Chris Mathews may have topped it with his response to Fund:

MATTHEWS: OK. You know what you‘ve said it very well, I agree.

And the fact that they were able to play us as a pinball machine meant that we are a pinball machine. And that is not a nice thing to be...

55-385

La loi n° 55-385 du 3 janvier 1955 modifiée par la loi n° 551080 du 7 août 1955 et l'ordonnance n° 80-372 du 15 avril 1960 was put into effect yesterday evening. For those to young to recall, this is the law that enabled a declaration of a state of emergency -- in Algeria.

For those able to read Le Monde, I recommend this. It is the smartest thing I've read in the French press. Banlieues : des territoires abandonnés ?, L'intégralité du débat avec Eric Macé, chercheur au Centre d'analyse et d'intervention sociologique (EHESS - CNRS) et maître de conférences à l'université Paris-III et à l'IEP de Paris, lundi 7 novembre 2005. In four pages. [ 1 2 3 4 ] It will disapear behind a registration or pay barrier eventually, perhaps as early as today. It is important reading for US nationals opposed to, or simply disquieted by, the security postures of the Republican, and a majority of the Democratic party national office holders.

Apropos of torture in ... the national interests of the moment, I also suggest the ICRC's report (in English) here Torture in Algeria. The report that was to change everything. The bits about the PAMs is wicked familiar. Nov. 1st 1954 was the date the CRUA began military operations, inflicting casualties in the French military in Oranais, Algérois, Kabylie, Aurès and Batna.

Meme à Bruxelles / Brussel ... auch in Berlin und Bremen

I lived for most of three years in the Commune of Ixelles / Elsene. At least one Sunday a month I'd go to Gare Central / Centraalstation and catch a train one stop south to Gare du Midi / Zuidstation, to go to the Marché du Midi / Suidmarkt ... for the olives. I developed a severe olive dependency while living in the second largest city in Morocco.

Overnight five cars were burned there, rue de Rome, rue de Hollande et square Jacques Franck.

Some messages for the Marche des Jeunes pour l'Emploi from last March:

pour l’enseignement gratuit, contre le racisme et pour l’égalité [for free education, against raism, and for equality]

Il faut s’attaquer au chômage, pas aux chômeurs... [attack unemployment, not the unemployed]

That should give a sense of where young adult Bruxellois / Brusselears are coming from on the jobs issue.

Five vehicles were also fired in five different streets of the Moabit quarter of Berlin. Moabit is a poor area essentially populated by recent immigrants to Germany. Firing cars is a routine hard left May Day prep activity in Berlin since the '80s. Another six were fired in Bremen.

1 408 véhicules, 395 personnes interpellées et 36 policiers blessés

This shows the conflict in its social dimension. The cités (aka "HLM", trans. "the projects") are largely abandoned by the French state, anonymous and experienced as "other", not as French neighborhoods, and the CRS/GM/police, also anonymous and experienced as "other", not as a French institution. Fixing the lifts, restoring funding to the social associations, moving work from the favored core to the unfavored periphery, and community policing. The program of the Mayors. The UMP Mayors, the PS Mayors, and the PCF Mayors. Inventing Islamo-boogie-teens-and-twenties and going to war against that danger-to-the-state is Sarko's [Nicolas Sarkozy] program. The location is Corbeil-Essonnes, in the "banlieue parisienne".

Lionel Jospin, the former PM (1997 - 2002), on France Culture:

"gouvernement qui s'était tant vanté de son savoir faire en matière de sécurité ... [government that vaunts its know-how in security (acerbic reference to the crypto-facism of the Sarko wing of the UMP)]

L'autorité doit être affirmée mais elle doit être calme, je dirais presque froide (...) Les mots violents n'effacent pas la violence des actes, parfois ils la provoquent. [Public authority must affirmed, but it must be done calmly, even dispasionately. Violent words do not prevent acts of violence, sometimes they provoke them.]

Nous ne nous sommes pas mis en situation de défi, de confrontation, de provocation. ... une politique globale: face aux actes délictueux, elle doit être répressive, pour les éviter, elle doit être préventive, et elle doit s'accompagner d'une action plus large, sociale". [We were never in a position of defiance, of confrontation, of provocation ... a global policy, in the face of acts of delict (small offences which are punished by a small fine or a short imprisonment) [authority] must be repressive, to end them, it must be preventative, and it must be accompanied by a larger social program.

There's been some talk of Jospin as a candidate in '07 also. Le Monde ran an editiorial on (against) the return to politics of two of the older figures of past elections recently, but not in the past 11 days.

Photo from Toulouse. I want to point out that burning trashcans, dumpsters (no longer even counted), cars and (very few) buses and trams is a lot of small offenses and a lot of small insurance claims. I've no idea how many "totaled" vehicle collision claims there are per reference period in France, but this is economic "noise" and a climate of nighttime sirens. The protests mock the pretention of control by authority, but do not contest authority. Serious opposition would take form as operations against targets other than trash and abandoned cars.

Le Soir (Bruxelles) has this rather interesting note: Il y a une compétition entre les cités, à qui brûlera le plus, expliquait dimanche Amine, 21 ans, qui habite un quartier déshérité d'Epinay-sur-Seine, près de Paris. Les jeunes agissent par petits groupes très mobiles, communiquant notamment par SMS. [There is a competition between the projects, who can burn the most, explained Amine, age 21, who lives in the slum Epinay-sur-Seine, close to Paris. The youths operate in small, highly mobile groups, communicating with each other using SMS.]

Oblig geek note: The youth mobile ops with SMS meme is common to the reform GOTV during the Iranian presidential election earlier this year, Iraqi resistance (not the faked up "foreign jihadis"), and other flash crowds. The technique seems oblig to master. The most politically important recent flash crowd in North America was Tom Delay's, which successfully intimidated the Miami-Dade canvassing board from performing a manual recount using threats of violence and physical intimidation on November 22nd, 2000. That FC was actually run out of a mobile home by Roger Stone, a former Reagan operative, using voice over cell tech for command and control, over a set of 200 paid operatives, some of whom were Congressional Staffers. End Oblig geek note.

The distribution of reported nuisance fires is as follows: Paris and the region: 426 vehicles, only18 actually in Paris (741 the preceeding night, 36 actually in Paris). Rest of France: 982 vehicles (554 the preceeding night).

The commune count is as follows: 274 last night (211 the preceeding night). The most affected were Marseille, Saint-Etienne, Toulouse and Lille, and in a smaller measure, Strasbourg and Nantes (some buildings and 200 vehicles in "la grande est"). Smaller communes also reported nuisance fires.

Thirty four officers are reported wounded by bird shot, two seriously, this evening at Grigny (Essonne). Another officer was wounded with bird shot at Draveil. Also, two pre-schools were burned. A dozen arrests are reported.
In Orléans there are more injuries and fires. The combats are between groups of twenty, police and protesters, with gas, flash grenades and battons used by one side, molotov cocktails, rocks and bats by the other. In Havre a car was used as a ram to breach the perimeter of a police station, similar to the use of a ram car to breach (and burn) a fast food outlet 24 hours ago.

A fire in Asnières-sur-Seine (Hauts-de-Seine) has 90 firefighters and 25 engines on a fire in a production facility just under 30,000 sq. feet. This is presumptively not part of the protests, as the fire in the furnature wherehouse was not part of the protests.

Update: A man died in hospital from injuries sustained by persons unknown. The victim's name, age or his attacker were not disclosed. The police spokesperson attributed the injuries to an assault upon the deceedant subsequent to a fire in a trashcan.

Final, though there may be corrections.

Round the Blog-o-Hexagon

Riots in France by Adrien Wing, November 3, in blackprof.com. Thoughtful and under two pages.

The problem with France by Steve Gilliard, November 6th, in stevegilliard.blogspot.com, both a piece from the Euro version of Boonews and some background pieces (and the link to the Vlaams Blok is correctly labeled too).

http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/11/why_is_france_b.html WHY IS FRANCE BURNING? by Doug Ireland, also November 6th, in direland.typepad.com is a long and valuable background piece. html anchor removed because of typepad trackback overhead.

Riots: Not Just For France Anymore by Matt Yglesias isn't about France, which is probably just as well.

If Google is to be trusted, Wampum isn't blogging about Seine-Saint-Denis or Nicolas Sarkozy or Dominic de Villepin or ... France.

If you know of more blogs that aren't either derivative or just plain stupid, stuff the URL in comments.

"Ces individus semblent chercher le contact avec la police et nous agressent, à la différence des autres soirées"

That's the word early this evening from Toulouse where a group of 30+ civilians and an undisclosed number of police were engaged in an exchange of gas grenades and diverse projectiles. For the first time the police are being engaged by, rather than engaging, the protesters.

Things are getting worse. Thirty CRS in combat dress, directed by the Departmental Director of Public Security, are deployed to provide cover for the fire crews. That's the Nicolas Sarkozy means, fire suppression supported by units trained with an emphasis on crowd control, non-lethal operations and Military Operation Urban Terrain Operations, tending towards ... MOUT Ops.

Next week will also see the obvious consequence of last week's decision by a court to rule a strike by communal transport workers in Marseilles illegal. The metallos will be out in force, and as the PCF has already called for the firing of Nicolas Sarkozy, the metal workers won't be taking the first opportunity to yeild to Sarkozy's troops in the streets. For the cheminots (transport workers), privitizations, harsher work rules, and the declining value of wages are the issues.

I think la crise des banlieues is a revolt of class, not race. Things are pretty grim in the bidonvilles that are France's 700+ ghettos, and its the recent residents, as well as the young and old of indifferent lengths of residence, who live there. Established "non-French" don't live with the poor, French and non-French, and these, Middle East/Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africans, are not the first line of des banlieueaires against a state that is contracting social welfare, and social justice.

Next week could be even warmer, and the 19th is the date the CGT plans to ... invest Paris.

Riverbend post

Mandatory reading. I learned something from it. Click on her book's gif on the right sidebar.

Chirac weighs in ...

Fifty minutes ago Chriac staged a "Conseil de sécurité intérieure sur les violences dans les banlieues" at the Elysée. Le Monde reports that throughout the afternoon a steady stream of police, gendarmes and teachers from the "zones urbaines sensibles" has been passing through Matignon, with "réponses concrètes" to de Villepin's call for solutions.

I'm hoping for Nicolas Sarkozy's resignation in the evening news.

Wrong number

I made a mistake mid-last-week. I took a phone call.

When the call got started I started flinching. First the CONVENER. Every other sentence included the word "America" or "Americans", obviously capitalized. The sentences between these patriotic bon mottes were adorned with the words "Blogs" or "Bloggers", also capitalized. I started filtering after the 4th sentence, and promised myself I'd never be hungry enough¹ to repeat this mistake, even if we don't sell a single ad during the Koufax period.

It was a mind-numbing con-cat-a-babble of {BigPhilanthroMedia, "America", Millionaire, "Blog", BigPhilanthroPharma, "American", Pathos, BigPhilanthroMedia, "American", President, "Blogs", BigPhilanthroChurch, Give$$} [ :: repeat :: ], repeated as each VOICE was replaced by the next VOICE. Finally the set of VOICES was exhausted. One VOICE was "in route", so the CONVENER asked "Would anyone of the (absurdly large list of blogs) invited bloggers care to comment? [Operator to muted lines: press " * 1 " to comment.]

I waited. No one pressed " * 1 ", the operater announced the sad news to the CONVENER and the VOICES, so I mashed the buttons. The first question went to someone who wanted to know how a couple of bucks from her blog's readers would make a bit of difference. The response was a fully enumerated tour of the gazillions of "Americans" in "America" and the consumers of BigPhilanthroMedia and the fullness of BigPhilanthroPharma and BigMPhilanthroillionaires and finally ... tip jars on blogs. Then it was my turn ... I could ask about ... but the Missing VOICE turned up, so next up was an even worse mind-numbing con-cat-a-babble of {BigChurch, "American", MillionChurches, CuteAnectdote1, BigPhilanthroPharma, "American", Pathos, BigChurch, "American", BigPreacher, CuteAnectdote2, BigChurch, Give$$} [ :: repeat :: ].

I was so close to starting my question with the statement "I'm an athiest and my question is about brain damage, scientific fraud and belief systems, and confidence schemes", but I deided not to give unnecessary offense. After all, all bloggers are churched, believers, and of course, Protestant.

I asked about monitoring pediatric mercury loading and the vaccines dumped in Africa. The point of this absurdly difficult call was to discuss public health policy in, and towards, Africa. One of the VOICES responded with "I'll give you a challenge ..." I've no idea what the VOICE intended to challenge, the neurotoxcicity of ethylmercury, the loading associated with diagnostic characterization of symptoms, or the relative merits of neurotoxcins in multi-dose packaged vaccine delivery streams, versus say mortality and morbidity associated with non-vaccination. I've no idea because I cut off the VOICE and said "I'm not interested in your challenge, I'm interested in monitoring pediatric mercury loading and generalizing the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund". There was silence after that, then the con-cata-babble started cycling again. After a few more minutes I hung up.

There were some serious moments and some serious people on the call, The chloroquin to sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine to artemisinins trajectory was, is, serious, and a million preventable African children dead from Plasmodium falciparum (malaria) each year, at a cost of about $1/life is serious. Unfortunately, Patriots and Xtians were the overwhelming majority of the VOICES, and they are serious only about their ... frauds and belief systems.

The guy capitalizing on this figures he can sell "churches" as an alternative to "clinics", and that nothing material is needed in Africa, which must come as a relief to the pious wealthy, just faith. If there is a god, Rick Warren would have been in the ground path of 300KV visitation. He even allowed as how he knew about the Asian Tsunami "before most people" because of his network of churches and email, and so he saved thousands of lives by sending out email to churches ... maybe his computer wakes him up when he gets priority flash email. Those of you using Microsoft's operating system and email products can let me know how you get the recipient mail user agent to turn on the alarm clock and start the coffee maker. If that isn't enough to inspire the Thrill of Hell, there were the other VOICES that tried to motivate public health investment in Africa by Americans because of ... fear of contagation. It was Unreconstructed Dutch Reform Church Afrikaaners, with a few Afrikaans present, just for color.

So I'm not taking any more calls from Joe Trippi. He's got a business to run, selling "netroots" as a product to buyers, and he's following the money from the impoverished left to the land of the Pious and Patriotic.

We came pretty close to starting a consistent African coverage about a year ago. We will, but it won't be via Time or Trippi or some Mega-Church Loudmouth. A recent post is Public health is always politics. Clean water, education, economic development, warfare, and neo-colonialism were mentioned zero times.

Trippi's call is a gift that keeps on giving. He managed to include all the addresses of a huge number of bloggers in the To: header field of his announcement of glad tidings and joy, so now its become a spam vector as well. Why I just learned all there is to know about the Paris-Rodney-King-Riots yesterday from someone who ... doesn't appear to even be following the US press coverage, and blogs about it.

---

CuteAnectdote1: Two people, one the rep for TB drug manufacturers, the other the rep for a TB diagnostic kit, exchange contact information, as if by random chance, made possible only by the
con-cat-a-jumble of this mega-event. A modern miracle of meetings. Braize Jeebus!

CuteAnectdote2: One person recounts how "nominal" birthing fees make debtor's prisions out of the post-partum wards at Hospital X in Country Y, and when she became Minister-of-Health-without-Wealth, she introduced a bill in the legislature of Country Y to end the collection of "nominal" birthing fees. Bill not passed and people die on the steps of "nominal" fee clinics throughout Africa, not just in maternity hospitals.

¹ "As God is my witness, as God is my witness they're not going to lick me! I'm going to live through this and when it's all over, I'll never be hungry again! No, nor any of my folk. If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill! As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again!" when Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hare digs up a turnip in Gone with the Wind, 1939. The retching was performed by Olivia de Havilland.

The Parents of Zyed and Bouna

The parents of the two boys who died October 27th asked for calm Saterday.

Nous appelons à l'apaisement et au retour au calme, à l'arrêt de toute violence et au sens civique de chacun car la France ne mérite pas cela,

They are, unsurprisingly, more civic minded than the neo-facist UMP Minister of the Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is messaging force as the solution, the social container, for the 700+ ghettos that exist in France, rather than improved social integration and a commitment to France's vision of cosmopolitianism.

The American Blog-o-Wrong is momentarily enamored with "French Socialism" as the reason for the riots. The causation offered by the electorate-facing retail-level politicians in Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-d'Oise and Yvelines, ground zero of the ... whatever this is ... is the cuts in social spending by the conservative UMP (Dominique de Villepin) government. The gas poured on the flames by a law-and-order pyromaniac (Nicolas Sarkozy) is causal for the spread of the conflagration, not its ignition.

That's about as rational as blaming the Iraq War on anti-militarism in the United States and the UK, since ... uh ... we must have egged a chicken to cross a road. Fortunately, others read the American Blog-o-Wrong, leaving me time to ... program in SNOBOL.

1 295 véhicules ont brûlé cette nuit, 312 interpellations

The bus depot at Trappes, yesterday. Twenty seven buses up in smoke.

The total for the night is 1,295 cars, buses and trucks fired, and 312 arrests. The total for the previous night was 897 cars, buses and trucks fired, and 253 arrests.

Outside of Ile-de-France, 554 vehicles were fired, double the previous night's reckoning. The departments with the highest counts are Nord, Eure, Eure-et-Loir, Haute-Garonne and Loire-Atlantique. In the Paris region, 741 vehicles were fired. The running count is now about 3,500 vehicles destroyed and about 800 arrests.

The commercial center of the quarter de La Madeleine of Evreux was damaged and there were injuries to both police and protesters. Two schools and a fast food outlet (the one with a clown that Jonah is particlarly fond of, or at least the chicken nuggets, fries, and whatever is in my glass, which isn't beer because that's not served by the franchises of that chain in the Puritanical bits of North America) were also burned.

Eight companies of CRS, six squadrons of gendarmes mobiles, a total of 1,400 officers, and 700 fire and rescue workers, have been deployed, in addition to the resources of the various municipalities, in just the Paris region.

Revised overnight.

J'aime voir ça

Le Soir (Bruxelles) reports that over 900 vehicles were burned overnight in France. According to the French police, 897 vehicles burned overnight in the Parisian region and elsewhere -- Toulouse, Pau, Bordeaux (south), Lille (north) and Rennes (west). The arrest count is now 253.

I think this is a cumulative total, at least for arrests. About half that many cars, buses and trucks have been burned in the first 8 nights of the ... uprising against, or demand for a responsible, government, so the 897 number could just as easily be the overnight double of the prior night's incendiary event counts, as the overnight double of the cumulative total of incendiary events. When I find out, I'll update this.

One serious fire related injury has been reported, an elderly handicapped person was severely burned when a bus was burned.

Nicolas Sarkozy is running amok, he's quoted with this gem -- J'aime voir ça. -- upon being shown the steady growth in arrests.

Return of the ... One True King (NS) V

Three months have passed since the Majlis rejected four of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nominations for ministerial portfolios -- Oil, Education, Cooperatives and Welfare. and Social Security. Having used 70 days of the three months allowed to come up with replacements, and apparently having made at least one last minute substitution (replacing Aliasghar Zarei, an academic with Sadiq Mahsouli), Mr. Ahmadinejad's letter read in Wednesday's open session of the Majlis contained his new nominees. They are:

Oil -- Kazem Vaziri Hamaneh, currently caretaker after Ali Saeedlou failed to obtain the required vote of confidence of parliament, to be replaced by Sadiq Mahsouli. Mr. Mahsouli has no oil industry experience. He used to be governor of the western city of Orumiyeh and his highest office was deputy defence minister in charge of planning. Institutionally he is associated with the Revolutionary Guards.

Education -- Ali-Asghar Fani, caretaker (Ali Akbar Ash'ari rejected nominee), to be replaced by Mahmoud Farshidi. I've read one of his essays (in translation), it was unremarkable conformism.

Cooperatives -- Mohammad Nazemi Ardakan, caretaker (Alireza Ali-Ahmadi rejected nominee), to be made Minister.

Welfare and Social Security -- Davoud Madadi, caretaker, (Mehdi Hashemi rejected nominee) to be replaced by Parviz Kazemi. Kazemi's currently head of a company making truck suspensions.

The last minute switch for Oil is interesting. As recently as 10.31 Kamal Daneshyar, who heads the Majlis' energy commission told Reuters that Zarei was the nominee. Rigzone reported the same from a senior official, with this interesting tidbit: Ahmadinejad intended to also nominate Ali Beheshtian for the same post, and whoever fails to be appointed as oil minister will take over the position as head of Iran's National Oil Company. Zarie is currently vice-chancellor of Imam Hossein University in Tehran. Beheshtian is on the board of the oil industry's investment corporation and a former deputy oil minister for onshore affairs.

Ahmadinejad later appointed Saeedlou vice-president in charge of executive affairs.

What to take away from this? First, that Ahmadinejad is unable to nominate outside of the ideological wing of the conservative coalition that settled on him in the the second round of the presidential election. Second, that no members of the Khatami government will join the Ahmadinejad government, both because the conservatives will not allow it, and because the reformers will also not allow it. Third, that the four Ahmadinejad nominees the Majlis rejected previously were rejected, by some conservatives and all reformers, for lack of experience, so these four are not all likely to get votes of confidence by the Majlis on Wednesday, and as Oil is 80% of the foreign exchange generator, handing it to a pseudo-academic who did some time in an oil school, and had a job in the oil patch, before finding his career elsewhere, seems really unlikely to get confirmation.

Interestingly, Ahmadinejad just sent out a circular telling government at all levels not to waste money putting up pictures of himself, or sending him letters of congradulations. It goes with his simple and asture persona.

MB's new motto for the remainder of Bush II

"interdum verum est instituo in plumbum album lamnia"

A door prize to the first who translates it properly.

[and, yes, I was a National Latin Scholar, eons ago.]

Update: I forgot the most critical word. Fixed.

Announcing ...

[go ahead ... you know you want to ... click 'em]

More from Seine-Saint-Denis

Overnight the Prefecture in Seine-Saint-Denis reports 52 burned and 31 more arrests.

The PCF (Go Reds!) have denounced "la politique irresponsable de provocation du [Sarkozy], inspirée par des raisons politiciennes [UMP being a party of the right] et d'ambition personnelle [Sarkozy running for Chirac's seat in 2007]"

The Greens (Go Greens!), spokesperson Noël Mamère, député, hold [Sarkozy] largely responsible for the "l'explosion des banlieues" who behaves "comme un véritable pyromane".

Both the Reds and Greens are now calling for Sarkozy's head.

François Hollande, first Secretary of the PS, finished the day by writing a letter to Dominique de Villepin calling for "transparence totale"of de Villepin's government due to "des violences d'une gravité sans précédent" in the suburbs.

I'll post the night's bilan tomorrow morning (EST) when the overnight police reporters at Le Monde, Le Fig, and L'Humana have gone to bed.

Dr. Cole was correct

Although he was a tad off on the timing. From AP just a few minutes ago (I've been sending out the monkeys all day looking for it):

Chalabi Returns to Court Washington Elite
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 4:10 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Face-to-face meetings with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and probably other senior Bush administration officials await Ahmed Chalabi as the Iraqi deputy prime minister pursues political rehabilitation in Washington.

While some Senate Democrats want to probe the role of the Iraq National Congress, an exile group headed by Chalabi, in drumming up support for the war that deposed Saddam Hussein, he is about to receive high-profile attention from the Bush administration.

Chalabi, who begins his eight-day visit on Tuesday, is due to see Rice on Wednesday and make a speech that day at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that provides personnel and considerable support to the administration.

He expects to see other senior U.S. officials as well, but he has not yet nailed down a meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney, another goal as Chalabi maneuvers to become Iraq's next prime minister after elections in December.

This Administration has absolutely no shame whatsoever.

Paging Muller... Paging Scully...

I'm working on other aspects of this story for a different post, but I wanted to separately highlight this bit of news buried in the larger NYTimes story on the source of the Niger documents:

Italy's top spymaster on Thursday identified an occasional spy for Italy named Rocco Martino as the source of forged documents stating that Iraq was buying tons of uranium ore from Niger that could be used in a nuclear weapons program, two Italian lawmakers said. General Nicolò Pollari, the director of the Italian military intelligence agency known as Sismi, made his remarks in exceptional closed-door testimony to a parliamentary commission that oversees secret services, the lawmakers said. The revelation came on a day when the Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that it had shut down its two-year investigation into the origin of the forged documents that described Iraq's efforts to buy a uranium concentrate known as yellowcake.

The F.B.I. reasons for closing the investigation?

Committee members said they were shown documents defending General Pollari, including a copy of a classified letter from Robert S. Muller III, the director of the F.B.I., dated July 20, which praised Italy's cooperation with the bureau.

In Washington, an official at the bureau confirmed the substance of the letter, whose contents were first reported Tuesday in the leftist newspaper L'Unità. The letter stated that Italy's cooperation proved the bureau's theory that the false documents were produced and disseminated by one or more people for personal profit, and ruled out the possibility that the Italian service had intended to influence American policy, the newspaper said.

As a result, the letter said, according to both the F.B.I. official and L'Unità, the bureau had closed its investigation into the origin of the documents.

There are so many things wrong with this, I don't even know where to start, so I'll leave the analysis for my larger post on the subject. But it appears there are problems abound at the Bureau.

I will add, however, that it's ironic that, according to Juan Cole, Amad Chalabi, who even the NYTimes speculated might be involved in the production of the false documents, is meeting today in Washington with Condi Rice and Stephen Hadley.

Update: As I was putting this up as a diary at Kos, I came across this tidbit in an AP report on the same story:

Bianco said the officials denied that SISMI, Italy's secret service, ''ever had a role in the dossier that was supposed to have demonstrated that Iraq was in an advanced phase of possession of enriched uranium."

The United States and Britain used the claim that Hussein was seeking uranium in Africa to bolster their case for war. The intelligence supporting the claim was later deemed unreliable.

Commission member Senator Massimo Brutti told reporters after the closed-door session that the commission was told that the Italian secret services warned the United States in January 2003 that the dossier was fake.

But later, the senator called the Associated Press to retract that statement. He said that the commission was not told that the Italians had warned the Americans.

Brutti said he was confused by the barrage of reporters' questions when the lawmakers emerged from the briefing.

Brutti said what he meant to say was that the commission was told that a SISMI official, contacted by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna about the dossier, told the UN agency that ''those documents didn't come from SISMI, they weren't produced nor supplied by SISMI."

Update 2: Yay, Josh is talking about it as well.

Canibalized Mechanics

The Press Herald is running coverage of John Libby's presser. Maj. Gen. Libby was a battery commander (redleg) in Vietnam, and Director of the Maine Emergency Management Agency in 1998, the Winter of our Bitterest Discontent. He's just back from the base just north of Baghdad International Airport where the 152nd Maintenance Company is now deployed in towers, doing perimeter defense, and was previously deployed in gun trucks doing convoy defense. The one thing the 152nd Maintenance Company is not doing is working as mechanics on vehicles. He called this "inexcusable".

I concur. In fact, I've been beyond uncomfortable with the exposure of the logistical tail and the assoiated defensive tasking since Tommy Franks obeyed the unlawful order of Donald H. Rumsfeld via Richard B. Myers via Peter Pace to surge Marines and the 3rd ID into Baghdad on 4/3/2003, and invert the battlefield from convergence maneuver from safe rear areas towards a battle area foci, with an intact oppfor C3I structure, capable of entering into an effective armistice, to an afocal, no safe rear, C3I structure-free oppfors, incapable of entering into an effective armistice, and locked into a war of attrition.

Inverting the situation transfered control of all reserve materials, e.g., the bunkers at the al Qa'qa Governmental Enterprise facilities, from US forces, which abandoned them in situ, to the oppfors. It also transfered the lines of support, MSR Tampa in particular, from the rear to the front.

Orders to prevent Congress from accepting the surrender of a state which Congress has declared war against, or declared the existance of a state of war with, or has authorized specific war powers to the Executive, or to interfere with the exercise of the War Powers of Congress, are not presumptively lawful, even when issued directly by the Commander in Chief.

Instead we got parades, speaches, promotions, medals, Bremer's dismissal of the Iraqi Army, and ... what looks like 1916, without the trenches. Time for some Mainiac to run on a "Return the Guard" platform, since John Baldacci (D-Iffy) won't. Its more likely that Peter Mills (R-Sane) would, and I've no idea who the Greens will run -- and I get the SC minutes.

Un petit Mai-68 des banlieues

La nuit du jeudi 3 au vendredi 4 novembre -- More that 500 cars were burned in the Paris region (Ile-de-France), but also outside of the capital region, 7 in Dijon, 9 in Seine-Maritime and 8 in Bouches-du-Rhône. A total of 78 persons were arrested overnight.

Dominique de Villepin, premier ministre and candidat à l'élection présidentielle (UMP) in 2007, is making a show of being open to dialog. The Mayors of the suburbs, from both UMP and PS (right and left, resp.), aren't happy with happy talk about quick fixes. They want more money for education, associations, and community policing rather than flying squads of CRS.

Nicolas Sarkozy, ministre de l'intérieur and candidat à l'élection présidentielle (UMP) in 2007, has called the protesters "racaille" [scum] that need to be "nettoyer au Kärcher". Karcher is a manufacturer of pressure washer. The translation to American is "time for dogs and firehoses". In the lexicon of French politics "nettoyage" belongs to the extreme right, it resonates to the "nettoyage" practiced by les parachutistes français in the Battle of Algiers. And of course that has the immediate effect of reminding everyone that they too can hum the "tic toc" sound track to that film, and that the extreme right of 40 years ago is the extreme right of today.

Its all rather American at the moment. You've got de Villepin doing the vacant Bush Katerina Week of happy talk, and Sarkozy demoting every Parisian of North African or Sub-Saharan African origin or descent under the age of 30 from citizen of the Republic to looting, sniping, arabo-muslo-afro colored, non-French hooligans.

With the added bonus that de Villepin and Sarkozy are already competing for the UMP's spot in the 2007 presidential race.

Update: The 3/4 number is now over 600, with 500 in Ile-de-France, up from 315 the night of 2/3, with 150 in Seine-Saint-Denis. The effect outside of Ile-de-France is now 80 vehicles burned, mostly at Côte-d'Or (Bouches-du-Rhône) and also Seine-Maritime. In addition to the private vehicles burned, 27 buses burned at the Trappes depot, and there were fires at several public buildings (schools, town halls, police stations) and some commercial sites. There was a major fire overnight in Paris which is unconnected to the conflict, so a restatement of damages excluding a furniture factory/warehouse is pending.

I've changed the title, this one is more nuanced to the root causes, and Le Monde is (finally) running this as a political story, played out in part within the UMP's who's-after-Chirac context, and in part in the modalities-of-policing-is-always-political and state-vs-abandoned-by-state contexts.

Paul Bremer's Boots

The Times of India is reporting that the "Iraqi government" today made an open invitation to broad classes of former officers to rejoin the armed forces. All officers up to the rank of Major ("Junior Officers") are eligible.

Since the organization of the Iraqi Army was along Corp lines, which consisted of several divisions and support units, with each infantry diviison consisting of three infantry brigades and a tank battalion, the ranking officers are two removes from Iraqi corporate memory on the basics of maneuver and co-ordination. Where they are going to get senior officers from is ... and none will have had staff experiece.

In "Smoke Signals" Adam Beach's character sings this:

John Wayne's teeth ya ho, ya ho.
John Wayne's teeth ya ho, ya ho.

Paul Bremer's boots ya ho, ya ho. Paul Bremer's boots ya hey, ho!

Cole and Billmon are drinking together. I'm pleased to see that the idea that the Opfors are ... the Opfors and not some exotic bunch of inscruitable fanatics is catching on. If the RMA theologians were right, after the targeteers worked down the fixed and mobile assets list, the survivors of the attrited Iraqi Army would have the sense to self-liquidate or take up farming or rug weaving, not burn almost a half-billion dollars a day in continuation of war by other, non-targetable means.

Yesterday's AH-1W Super Cobra shootdown is now reported to have been engaged with an SA-7 GRAIL (Strela-2) man-portable, shoulder-fired, passive infrared guidance, low-altitude SAM. Wicked difficult to target, even with the Revolution in Military Affairs raga running full-auto.

An hour of Blind Justice on CBS

A new installment of 48 Hours this Saturday, November 5th, at 10 PM EST, will be an hour-long program called BLIND JUSTICE about Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald's case - his murder conviction being one of the most controversial (and publicized) of the 20th century. The question of whether or not Dr. MacDonald is factually guilty has been heatedly debated ever since he was charged and into the continuing decades after his federal conviction.

Three well-known books have been written about the case:

1. Fatal Vision, a novelistic non-fiction account by Joe McGinnis,
2. The Journalist and the Murderer, by Janet Malcolm, which examines whether or not Joe McGinnis, by writing his best-selling book, betrayed the confidences of Dr. MacDonald, and
3. Fatal Justice by Jerry Allen Potter, which argues that the evidence strongly suggests that Dr. MacDonald is factually innocent.

Dr. MacDonald, his criminal defense attorneys, and his wife and others participated in the program. The MacDonalds are hoping for a fair and accurate representation of the case.

If you are inclined, you can express your opinion to CBS by emailing 48Hours@cbsnews.com soon after the broadcast.For more information about the case, you can visit the MacDonalds' website at http://www.themacdonaldcase.org

Click through the covers above to Powells', which has the best prices I could find. Yes, we'll get a commission on any sales. Original text from William M. Palmer, Esq., who I've worked with, and who represented Dr. MacDonald and his wife in a civil matter.

Big Win For Merck

Merck got a big win today when a New Jersey jury found Merck not liable for causing plaintiff's heart attack in the second Vioxx trial to reach a jury.

That does not come as a shock, as I called the top of the Vioxx litigation market some time ago and as the plaintiff had some issues that may have hurt his chances.

More after I read some juror comments. In the meantime, congratulation to the Merck lawyers. It was a really big win for them.

La Seine-Saint-Denis s'enflamme (Update)

Le Soir (Bruxelles) reports: Neuf personnes ont été blessées, près de 180 véhicules ont été incendiés et quatre balles tirées -sans faire de victimes- lors de la septième nuit d'affrontements avec des jeunes dans la banlieue nord-est de Paris. Ce bilan de la nuit ne concerne que le département de la Seine-Saint-Denis, l'un des plus pauvres de France où vivent de nombreuses familles originaires du Maghreb ou d'Afrique. Le Monde (Paris) quotes PM Dominique de Villepin (UMP) as follows: "Des voitures incendiées, une école maternelle brûlée, un poste de police détruit, voilà ce qui s'est passé la nuit dernière et je ne parle pas des manifestants qui tirent à balles réelles."

---

Jeudi 27 octobre, Clichy-sous-Bois (Seine-Saint-Denis) -- Three teens are electrocuted when they attempt to hide from police in a electrical power sub-station. Two die. The police were responding to a break-in by a dozen youths at a work site, and claim they didn't pursue the youths. That night some 15 cars are set afire and the "troubles urbains" response plan is activate.

Vendredi 28 octobre 2005, Chêne-Pointu, overnight between 250 and 300 police and gendarmes are deployed under the "troubles urbains" plan, and engage in suffles with some 400 civilians.
The CRS (riot police) claim that a shot was fired in the direction of one of their transport vehicles. The claim is not independently substantiated. Seven police officers are reported lightly injured. Thirteen civilans, including one minor, are taken into custody. None are reported to be injured, lightly or otherwise. Some 30 vehicles and 10 bumpsters are set afire.

Samdi, 29 octobre, Clichy-sous-Bois, over 500 civilians hold a silent march in memory of the two boys, one 15, the other 17, who died of electrocution. At the head of the march are elected officials of the munipality, the parents of the boys and over a dozen people wearing tee-shirts which read "Mort pour rien" (dead for nothing) on one side, and the name of the boys on the other. The police are "très discrets".

The night of samdi/dimanche 29/30 octobre is calmer. 17 dumpsters and cars are set afire but there are no reports of violence, committed by, or against, either police or civilians. A dozen arrests are reported, all are reported as persons in possession of marteaux (hammers) or gasoline in containers.

Dimanche 30 octobre, A tear gas grenade is dischagred within a mosque in Clichy, which is 80% moslem. The CRS deny they were the source of the grenade. Witnesses to the attack contradict the government. Overnight protests generalize in the suburbs in the Seine-Saint-Denis area. Six officers are reported lightly injured and 11 civilians are taken into custody. No injuries to civilians are officially reported.

Lundi, 31 octobre, Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister, confirms that the gas grenade is a model used by the CRS.

The night of lundi 31 octobre / mardi 1er novembre, news of the sentencing of the first three persons arrested the night of the 27/28 becomes known -- eight months in prision, two "ferme". The three convicted are between the ages of 20 and 27, one is a French national, one a Moroccan "en situation irrégulière", and one is a politial refugee from the Ivory Coast. All three contested the charges that they threw stones or bottles towards police. The Interior Minister is characterized as a "provocateur" in interviews published in Le Monde. There are 12 arrests in Clichy-sous-Bois, and the protesters, now characterized as "émeutiers" (rioters) by the police, operate in the adacent suburbs of Sevran, Neuilly-sur-Marne and Bondy. Azouz Begag recommends an end to discrimination against North African and Afrian originated inhabitants of La Seine-Saint-Denis as the way to end the confrontations. Sarkozy is advised to fire Begag.

Mardi, 1 Novembre, The attorney for the families of the two dead boys announces that he will file a suit contre X... pour non-assistance à personne en danger, the following day. The logs show that the police left the area at 17:50, and power was not cut to allow rescue workers to enter the sub-station until 18:12. EDF clarifies the physics of sub-station electrocution. Physical contact with live wires is not necessary to produce electrocution, current will pass through the air when a ground path is sufficiently close. Death by lightning. Prolonged lightning. Protests generalize into three adjacent departments: Seine-et-Marne, Yvelines and Val-d'Oise.

Mercridi, 2 Novembre, protests continue in Seine-Saint-Denis, with a commercial center and a police station sacked and several structural fires (see photo above). The maternelle mentioned by de Villepin (école primaire d'Aulnay) lost two classrooms, due to the fire that completely engulfed a Renault dealership. Over 100 vehicles burned overnight, over 40 in Bobigny, Bondy, Aulnay-sous-Bois, Le Bourget, Villepinte, Le Blanc-Mesnil, La Courneuve, Clichy-sous-Bois and Sevran, as well as two buses (location not disclosed). A gymnasium also burned in Blanc-Mesnil, and injuries were reported among the fire suppression workers.

---

The daily count of burned vehicles, which I recall had 240 destroyed yesterday, I can no longer find. The whole tone in Le Monde is different today from yesterday. Less alarmist.

Le Monde is running a poll.
Face aux violences urbaines, estimez-vous que le gouvernement…
… gère du mieux qu'il peut une situation très délicate [manages as best as it can a delicate situation] 27.9 %
… ou semble complètement dépassé par la situation [appears to be completely overwhemed by events] 68.7 %

Update: Fourty one vehicles burned this evening in Seine-Saint-Denis, the CRS is again claiming to have been fired upon, more buses and trucks burned also in neighboring suburbs. Over 300 police and 1,000 CRS and mobile gendarmes are deployed in Seine-Saint-Denis. Twenty two arrests.

Non-scary Non-scholarship

MB sent me a link to a paper John Hannah wrote in 1989. Here's the link: At Arm's Length: Soviet-Syrian Relations in the Gorbachev Era. Commenting on a 58pp monograph from just reading the author-and-publisher negotiated 1,000 word blurb is foolish, but I am a fool, so here goes.

Zeroth, the Union itself:

Cash payments in hard currencies were relatively rare for arms exports . Far more common were credit arrangements stretching over long periods, with repayment through a mixture of barter and currency. In the case of national-liberation movements, arms were often provided without payment. Policy about recipients, categories of weapons to be provided, and broad terms of payment was made at the level of the Politburo, which, inter alia, included Marshal Ogarkov during the Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko premierships.

This changed in ... 1987. From 1987 to 1993 arms exports from the Union/CIS dropped from US$ 22 billion to 2 billion and continued to fall in the following years. Arms deliveries from the former Union in 1991 were down 65 percent from 1989 levels.

First, Iran. A hard-currency country.

Mid-1989 Imam Khomeni died and then-President Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani visited Moscow,
and negotiated a major arms deal and agreements on trade, economic, and scientific-technical cooperation (including the "peaceful use of atomic energy"). The wish list included 100-200 combat aircraft, 1,000-2,000 armored vehicles, several submarines, and as many as a dozen missile boats. Major weapons systems transferred in the decade following the 1989 arms deal included 422 T-72 tanks, 413 BMP-2 infantry fighting vehicles, and self-propelled artillery; SA-5 and SA-6 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs); 12 Su-24 and 24 MiG-29 fighters; and three Kilo-class submarines, along with advanced torpedoes and mines.

Source: Igor Korotenko's article "Russia and Iran Renew Collaboration; Tehran May Take Third Place in Volume of Russian Arms Purchases" in Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, January 12, 2001. He lists four contracts between 1989 and 1991 that were the basis for nearly all conventional arms transfers during the 1990s. The first and second place buyers were China and India.

So, that is the shape of Union/CIS arms transfers to Iran pending at the moment of John Hannah's scholarly moment. Incidently, it was Al Gore who headed up the negociations with Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin in June 1995, that ended Russian arms sales to Iran on this scale. The Putin government abrogated the Gore-Chernomydin agreement after November 7th, 2000.

On to Syria. A soft-currency country.

From 1980 to 1991, the Union supplied Syria with military equipment worth over $26 billion, including 65 launchers for tactical and sub-strategic missile systems, about 5,000 tanks, 1,200 aircraft, 4,200 artillery pieces and mortars and 70 warships.

Source: Vadim Kozyulin's "Russia and Syria: Military-Technical Bargaining", Yadernyi Kontrol Digest (Volume 5, No 3(15), Summer 2000).

The Union also assisted Syria with the construction of over 100 military facilities. During the same period more then 9600 Syrian officers were trained in Soviet military schools.

Source: Yuri Morozov's "Strategiya Rossii v oblasti voenno-technicheskogo sotrudnichestva so stranami blizhnego vostoka (Russia's Strategies for military-technical cooperation with the Middle East", Arms Export Journal (Russia's AST Centre, No 3, 2000).

This all changed when the Union started demanding hard currency payment for its supplies. Between 1990 and 1991, Soviet arms transfers to Syria dropped by a third, from $1.47 billion to $1.05 billion, and since 1991 military supplies were frozen with the exception of a contract for T-72A tanks in 1992-1993 at a total cost of $270 million. In 1997, Russia only supplied Syria with spare parts worth $1 million.

As of 2000, over 90% of all Syrian military equipment is Soviet-made though much of it -- more then 500 aircraft and 4000 tanks -- required modernization.

So, with all that baseline, Iran and Syria data, before and after 1989, but with all of that then obvious, there was nothing hidden about the collaps of the Warsaw Treaty Organization's soft-currency arms exports programs, or inobvious about the consequences of conversion of arms exports programs from soft-currency to hard-currency, particularly for oil-free Syria, at one point also the third largest recipient of Union arms transfers.

Now what did John Hannah make from those self-evident curves of divergent demand and converging (towards zero) hard currency earnings by the Union's military-industrial complex?

Attribute the absolute decline in arms transfers to "new thinking", and characterize the change as change in the Soviet-Syrian military relationship. In a nutshell, re-contextualize the manifestation of the collapse of the Union's military-industrial complex and its exports as Israel-centric policy choices made by a "new thinking" Gorbachev, and promote Syria from a historic ally/proxy to an independent actor, even more dangerous, in spite of being disarmed by obvious attrition, to Israel. He re-invented himself, moving his seat of expertise (without moving his butt, he's still in 41's State Department in '89) from NATO/WTO to Jerusulem/Damascus.

But he left something of his original self, a signature. It is this:

Moscow has still delivered or agreed to deliver to Damascus (and several other radical Arab states) some of its most advanced military systems. Rather than promoting a peaceful settlement of the conflict with Israel, such transfers bolster the rejectionism of these states and their belief that a military solution remains a viable long-term option.

There, the belief that military affairs (in which he knows there is a revolution) is, by its technological evolution (according to dialectical materialists in the Soviet General Staff), a viable solution in a theater that is rich in weaponized fission-fusion packages with abundant proximal and distal transport inventories and doctrinal indica of defensive, even offensive capabilities by the nuclear state actors. Note the plural. Israel is just salad dressing.

Of course Hannah went on to run the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in the '90s, so as a hire-me-baby-I'm-yours paper it wasn't ineffective.

Others writing about Hannah: MB (of course) and juan cole, the empty wheel , susie madrake, world o' crap, and lots of others.

The thing that struck me after reading and rereading and rereading the 1,000 word blurb is what the paper isn't. It isn't a work of military scholarship, a work that documents capabilities and intentions, one that I'd expect from a student at the Combined Arms College. That would be a serious work, of real utility to military planners. What there is appears to have been written by a generic undergraduate "Friend of Israel" in the hope of publication in Foreign Affairs, but actually published, and forgotten, as a term paper.

But I didn't spend the $8.00, so I could be a fool.

Synchronizing Neuronal Networks

Ginger at Adventures in Autism is attending an autism conference sponsored by the fine folks at Defeat Autism Now. In particular, she attended the DAN session entitled “Synchronizing Neuronal Networks: How improved Methylation Helps Autism” presented by Dr. Richard Deth of Northeastern University. Understandably, Ginger does not report the ins and outs of the biology. Here, though is her take on the session:

Heavy metals interrupt the process of methylation, preventing the body from producing glutathione, which leads to impaired to Neuronal Synchronization, which we describe as Autism. Some people have genetic risk factors (like MTHFR, Transcobalmin II, MS Reductaise, COMT, and UBE3A), which causes this methylation interruption to happen at much lower levels of metal exposure. And oh, by the way, Thimerosal is one of those substances that interrupt methylation, and for some people with these severe genetic predispositions it does so at VERY small amounts, even a few nano-molars.

What is neuronal synchronization? Nerves firing in synchrony. If you are looking at a pen, and one neuron is transmitting the color of the pen and another neuron is transmitting the shape of the pen, we see a black pen. If these two neurons are transmitting the information at different rates, and each of these pieces of information arrive at different times, will the brain be able to build a coherent picture of what is being observed? If not, how will the individual be able recognize that picture in their head as a pen?

“This seems to be the recurring theme at most of the sessions. You will hear a long presentation on vitamins and minerals, sulferation, GI dysbiosis, methylation, whatever… Then the presenter will say, and by the way, make sure your child stays away from toxins, especially mercury, as it will screw up the healing pathway and here’s how…”

Both bench science and epidemiology are important in discovering causes and cures for autism. Those who focus on one to the exclusion of the other in trying to determine those causes do a disservice to the science and the inquiry.

There is more and I highly recommend reading it all.

Why Punitive Damages Are Hard To Get

Tort reformers like to pretend that it is easy to get millions and millions of dollars in punitive damages from juries. The data does not support that notion. In addition, there are a number of very real, very practical reasons why juries do not often make large awards of punitive damages. This post will relate just one such reason. It is called bifurcation.

The New Jersey Vioxx trial has gone to the jury. ABC News reports the procedure:

If the jury awards compensatory damages, there would be a separate trial to determine a punitive damage award. New Jersey has no cap on compensatory damages, but punitive damages are capped at five times compensatory damages. Lawyers from both sides said such a trial would be very short and would begin soon, but the judge has not announced specific plans.

I am not familiar with New Jersey law but in Georgia, the liability and punitive damages phases of the trail are similarly bifurcated.

In Georgia, at the end of the presentation of evidence and closing arguments, the jury deliberates and makes a decision on whether or not liability has been proved, and, if so, the amount compensatory damages. At the end of the verdict form will be a question for the jury as to whether or not punitive damages should be awarded. If the jury decides to award punitive damages, they check that box, and return their verdict form. After a while, they are summoned back to the courtroom where each side has an opportunity to present evidence on the punitive damage issue. At the close of that evidence and closing arguments, and another charge by the court, the jury retires to consider the punitive damage question.

If the jury decides against punitive damages, they get to go home. If they decide to make a punitive damage award, they are made to wait around a while and then are hauled back into the courtroom to listen to lawyers talk some more.

The Vioxx jury in New Jersey has been hearing testimony for about seven weeks. The jurors probably believe that they have had enough lawyer talk for a lifetime. Do you really think that jurors would voluntarily choose to listen to more lawyer talk unless they felt a compelling need to do so?

It is true that the actual length of the punitive damages portion of the trial will very likely be quite short. I know that mine have always been measured in minutes. Nonetheless, the jury can not be sure of that when making the decision. Sure, the judge and the plaintiff’s lawyer may have promised the jury that further proceedings will be short but, after a seven week trial, protestations of brevity by counsel and the court may lack a certain credibility. Jurors would prefer that cases be wrapped up in a pretty bow within 60 minutes, less about 10 for commercials. Real life suffers by comparison.

If the jury decides to endure more presentation of evidence, it will be because the jurors feel that they have a message than needs sending. The jury may be right or wrong, depending on one’s perspective, but it is very unlikely that the jury will act frivolously. They will only award punitive damages if they feel compelled by the evidence to do so.

As an aside, if the New Jersey case reaches the point of a punitive damage trial, Merck faces an awkward dilemma. If the jury decides that Merck is liable and is considering punitive damages, they are going to want an apology from Merck.

The failure to apologize may offend jurors who, by their lights, have just spoken a truth that they would like Merck to hear.

If Merck fails to apologize, some jurors may get the impression that Merck did not hear the verdict and, perhaps, that a way needs to be found to attract Merck’s attention. Large numbers will get Merck’s attention, or so a juror might reason. Such reasoning may lead to a larger award than would otherwise be made.

On the other hand, Merck can, perhaps, limit the size of any punitive damage award by apologizing. An apology lets the jury know that the original message was heard loud and clear and does not need to be re-sent.

Any apology, however, would have to be carefully worded so that it will not be read back to the next Vioxx jury. That is a tight rope to walk. Of course, Merck does not face that dilemma unless and until the jury has found it liable in the underlying liability/compensatory damage case.

I will let you know when I read of a verdict.

The Roots of the RMA

Throughout my pre-teen and teen years, where Calle de los Helechos ended in forest, and Monterey, Bill Mandel's show on KPFA was a must-listen. Bill knew the Union inside and out, and that was worth the time to listen in on. All the intracacies of the Show Trials, the Purges, and also the Five Year Plans and the military affairs -- the NATO facing Soviet ORBAT, the Fleets surface and subsurface combatants, and the Strategic Missile Forces throw-weights and device yeilds. Seperating the real from the surreal was ... not optional. Not everyone lived inside the Navy School however, and eventually, pursuit of the youth-demographic by Pacifica pushed Bill, and a lot of good listening time -- the stuff that's become blogs -- off of Pacifica, to be replaced by ... easier listening.

Res Publica's piece …and “trendy” “buzzwords” in “quotes”! mid-October left me tipsy from giggles, but the past comes back to bite. Read it. Then come back. Please.

John Hannah has just moved up from principal deputy assistant, to assistant to the Vice President for national security affairs. He used to ride tandem with Capt. William J. Luti, Ret., now Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Special Plans and Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs. Luti in turn came into the real world via Albert Wohlstetter, then mentor to Paul Wolfowitz, and Richard N. Perle, among others.

It is a rediculously small world. And in the Navy, making Captain is the big jump, as the manpower cut is at Commander. Having made Captain, why didn't Luti make Flag?

Albert Wohlstetter was at Rand when my mom was at Rand. He even flirted with one area I thought the Soviet schools were well ahead of the American - mathematical modelling techniques in military planning. My sample set was my Mom's students, who on average were given a "mercy pass" in Operations Research and then sent back, slightly improved and mostly unharmed, to the Fleet. She gave me their thesii to read and critique. That was 1965 - 1972. The NPGS had a wonderful library. (So does Ft. Leavenworth.) My card ran through the late '80s, when I switched to Le Monde Diplo's occasional coverage of doctrine, and whatever else I could get my hands on.

Aside. Google for +mathematical-modeling +military-planning still gets the ORD at the NPGS. Nothing changes.

Wohlstetter co-chared with Fred Iklé the Commission on on Integrated Long-Term Strategy. That lead to the Future Security Environment (FSE) working group, which lead to the Office of Net Assessment within the Office of the Secretary of Defense and its 1989 reassessment of the military-technical revolution, the MTR, and that lead to the big bang, or at least, the pseudo-intellectual defense everyone from Ollie North to Donald Rumsfeld find comfortable.

Wohlstetter mined the Soviet mil-lit for the shape of things to come -- the military-technical revolution, the MTR, now the Revolution in Military Affairs. Really he was cribbing from the works of N.V. Ogarkov, Directorate for Strategic Deception, and later chief of the Soviet General Staff. It is all there in Vsegda v Gotovnosti k Zachtchite Otetchestva, Voenizdat, 1982, which has been translated into French, as well as plagerized into American, and earlier papers that made it into various Red Army pubs, that were translated. Pre-google. Mom and I could never agree on whether Ogarkov ment revolution tending towards special ops, the North/Rumsfeld vision, or revolution at the theater-and-above level. Now we talk about Chinese medicine and family tribal histories.

Chernenko fired Marshal Ogarkov, an advocate of less spending on consumer goods and more spending on weapons research and development. Guns over butter was not something the Union could afford in Chernenko's year, nor did it need to.

From Ogarkov to Wohlstetter to Luti to Hannah. Promoted today. These aren't rhetorical NeoCons. These are targeteers. These are believers in part (but not all) of the RMA, and it is important to remember that Chernenko fired his for ... failing to put butter ahead of guns, and being too fond of mobility and swiftness.

It is also important to remember what Lenoid Brezhnev said at the XXVI Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR in 1982, that the equilibrium between the USSR and the US, between NATO and the Warsaw Pact, objectively served to maintain peace on the planet.

It is just as important to remember what George Bush said in September, 1999

“This opportunity is created by a revolution in the technology of war. Power is increasingly defined, not by mass or size, but by mobility and swiftness. Influence is measured in information, safety is gained in stealth, and force is projected on the long arc of precision-guided weapons. . . . The best way to keep the peace is to redefine war on our terms.”

The Wars in Afganistan, and Iraq, and Syria or Iran or both, and the yellow cake boogie men simply wouldn't be the same if Bush had to pick up the red courtesy phone. Because it is ringing. And there is no equilibrium.

Note to self: +Voenizdat +Ogarkov fr/ru/en

Screw the Blue States...

The very last paragraph, actually one single sentence in this WaPo article entitled, "Commission Recommends Overhaul of Federal Income Tax", by uber-cough-liberal business writer, Jeffrey Birnbaum, read,

In addition, the panel would terminate the deduction for state and local taxes.

The rest of the article discussed ATM, mortgage and health care deductions in quite a bit of detail. But, frankly, let's just screw those NY, MA and CA residents who pay not only federal, but significant state and local taxes (which they can currently then partially write off) because they're from those God-forsaken Blue States which no one actually cares about.

ADL == MEK

The Anti-Defamation League appears to be buying previously used copy from the PR outfit that the PMOI/MEK has been using. Either that or they've independently invented the wheels coming off the cart on down-hill curves. Enjoy, I'll meet you on the other side of the briar patch.

To: hostadmin@xxxxxxxx.xxx
From: Anti-Defamation League
Subject: Join ADL in combating the Iranian threat

It Is Time to Act and ADL Needs Your Help Now!

Any doubts about the true intentions of Iran's fanatical leaders can now be cast aside. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has issued a bloodcurdling demand for Israel to be, "wiped off the map."

It was Qods Day (Jerusuleum Day) and the line has been in every President's Qods Day address since ... 1979. Or 1793. Or when ever solidarity with Palestine entered the Anti-Colonialist and Non-Alligned vocabularies, along with "End Apartheid!" and "Yankee Go Home!" The audience was kids and cartoonists.

This isn't the first time that an Iranian leader has called for Israel's elimination. Iran has supported the terrorists of Hamas and Hezbollah for years.

That sort of contradicts the "Any doubts about ..." para, but the meat on this bone is Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran does support organizations that engage in armed struggle against Israel. So what? Complaining about PRC's material support for the NVA missed the point that the NVA wasn't an Chinese armo-tourism operator, and the French, and eventually the Americans, were defeated by ... Nationalists and Nationalism.

Now we are faced with the terrifying prospect of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons. A nuclear Iran is a threat to the entire world . . . and Israel is its first target.

Israel has hundreds of weaponized fission-fusion devices, and delivery capabilities that allow targeters to inventory Iran's military assets at least as far east as Tehran. Iran has ... some yellowcake and some centrifuges and some modest sub-orbital missiles.

We must urge world leaders to stop this global threat before it's too late. With your help, the ADL will carry out an action plan that will include:

* Pressuring Ahmadinejad to retract his incendiary statements

* Urging world leaders to sever all diplomatic ties with Iran if he does not comply

* Having the UN Security Council immediately investigate Iran's UN Charter violation if the Iranian regime doesn't cooperate

Now how they are going to get Ahmadinejad to repudiate the language of Imam Khomeni is left to ... the Messiah. How they are going to get Russia, and China, to reverse their positions of record on Iran's IAEA dossier, is another exerise left to ... the Messiah.

The easy bit in this para is sending anguished letters to heads of state. It takes only a stamp, or a keyboard, and a faith in ... the Messiah comperable to the run-of-the-mill televangilists.

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Join ADL in combating the Iranian threat!
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We have prepared a series of ads to immediately bring this message to leaders around the world and demand that Iran be held accountable for its aggression. We need your help to run these ads in media outlets across the globe. Help ADL get the message out by donating today!

I think they want money. Like Tammy Baker wants money.

Once again, a tyrant has threatened the Jewish people with genocide. This time, the world has reacted with horror and condemnation. But it is not enough to merely condemn Iran. We need to ensure unrelenting pressure on the Iranian regime for its blatant UN violation. The time to act is now!

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How anyone can run this crap in a slightly poli-literate climate escapes me. This is right up there with the 16 words and Saddam hearts Osama.

I expect the ADL will be running ops out of Camp Ashraf, if they ever get around to running ops with guns instead of just running ops with gums.

The MEK is the 4,000+ perpetual loosers and status (and real) terrorists that have been guests of the Iraqi state for a long time, and by now have gotten back their armor they lost when the US Army re-bagged them at Camp Ashraf, and are now running ops (again) into the Iraq-Iran boarder. File under Branch-Davidians-with-artillery. Oh. and under SPAM. The hostadmin account at some ISP isn't for sob letters from neo-Nigerians running a 419 variation.

Koufax Pledge Drive Update

As most of our readers know, October was our Koufax Awards Pledge Drive month. Our goal was to raise $2,400, which we estimate, given last year's requirements, will be the minimum we will need to purchase the dedicated bandwidth and server space to run this year's awards. As of today, we've raised $1,255. We extend our heartfelt thanks to the 49 contributors who have gotten us this far, as well as the dozens of our colleagues in the blogosphere who have championed our fundraising efforts on the front pages of their own blogs.

We still, however, have almost half of the necessary costs left outstanding. Thus, we will continue our pledge drive throughout November. To contribute, please click the links on the top of the main page for Paypal or Amazon. Our snail mail address can be found here.

In addition, we are beginning to take reservations for a limited number of ads on Wampum's sidebar during the Koufax Awards. We are planning on four traditional ads at very reasonable rates, as well as six text only ads, available at a reduced cost of $25 per 200 characters for one week. (For those kind souls who have already contributed this amount or more, please contact us if you would like to use that contribution to reserve that one of those spaces for your own use.)

If you have a favorite political or social cause you would like tens of thousands of caring, Progressive eyes to view from mid-December through mid-March, please let them know of the opportunity to advertise during the 2005 Koufax Awards. (As a general disclaimer, we here at Wampum do reserve the right to refuse ads for what we deem non-Progressive causes or candidates.)

Please email us for more information.