#1
Many Saudis still approve of Islamic radicals killing "infidels" (non-Moslems), and don't care if al Qaeda is doing it. What remains unpopular is Islamic radicals attacking fellow Moslems
#2
The Saudi counter-terror effort has also benefitted from the thousands of young Saudis who went off to Iraq to join the fight, and get killed, or come back disillusioned. Very few came back as "hardened terrorists."
My impression, and this could be sheer ignorance, is that jihadis either quit in disappointment or go on to the next fashionable battlefield, rather than going to fight at home.
[Bangla Daily Star] After the French Revolution a large number of Bourbon loyalists migrated to other countries to escape the concessionary policies of Louis XVI and the violence of the republicans. When the Bourbons were restored in 1814, these émigrés returned to their country with exactly the same mentality they had left with 25 years earlier. The great statesman and diplomat of that era, Talleyrand, had said of them: "They learned nothing and forgot nothing." This statement was rephrased by an Italian professor recently as "Nothing learned, nothing forgotten" (N-L-N-F). The professor further elaborated N-L-N-F as a class of people who judge today's events with exactly the same criteria as those years ago.
Only six years ago the country was on the brink of a civil upheaval because of intransigence shown by the main political parties at that time in agreeing to a peaceful transition of power overseen by an interim neutral government. The party in power at that time had a grand view that the country had given it authority to rule it for infinity, and all it required was to secure the means to ensure it. So it went about putting in place the mechanisms and retrofitting the institutions that would facilitate a perpetual hold on power.
We are all aware of what happened then. We had intervention by the armed forces to foist on the country a long-enduring caretaker government, the ire of which was borne by the leaders of both the sides that are currently engaged in the political crisis.
Six years down the road we are back to where we started. It seems that two years of army-backed rule, months of detention behind bars of many of the current leaders who are at loggerheads with each other now, and public accusations of venality against many of them have disappeared from the memory of our politicians like water flowing under a bridge.
As they were six years ago, the political parties and their leaders are impervious to the damage to economy and the sufferings of the people that their actions are causing. They are unmoved and unaffected by the mayhem that their acolytes are launching on the streets; they are not concerned if their actions lead the country down the drain.
In fact, they are threatening that more of such bedlam and anarchy will happen if their demands are not met.
We have the classic group of N-L-N-F people all over again. They have not learned how a crisis created by intransigence of political opponents can bring the entire country to a halt. They never learned how such crisis is a stigma on our reputation in the international community. They also did not learn from the public humiliation a good number of them went through when they fell out favour and out of power. They also did not forget the taste of power as they did not forget what the purse and the privy power brought them.
The looming crisis in the country carries worse forebodings now than six years back as the major opposition party has gone on a warpath supporting issues that defy the spirit of the Liberation War of 1971. And the most ominous part of the looming crisis is the call by the leader of the party to turn the country into a wasteland if the demands of the party are not met.
One wonders if it is really the voice of a person who was twice at the helm of the country. One wonders if this is really the voice which can be won over by reason.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/27/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
"Nothing learned, nothing forgotten"
Kinda reminds me of the 75 years of New Deal politics by the Dems.
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
03/27/2013 10:21 Comments ||
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Posted because a number of our readers have experience in this area, which will affect all of us who are Americans, not to mention our ability to fight the War on Terror.
In response to my blogpost on how setting up the information technology for Obamacare is an "impossible endeavor," Reader John Capron of Modena, New York, whose LinkedIn profile shows 35 years of IT experience, has given me permission to quote the following, which I pass along without further comment:
"Wow, what can go wrong here? Let me assess this based on my years of experience in this industry. The federal government is going to build 50 exchanges, using a data hub that doesn't exist physically and in fact, the design hasn't been solidified, and must be accessible to a variety of data processing technologies that range from archaic to old.
Each of the 50 states have different eligibility rules, and with a significant number of states opting out, the federal government now has to learn the intricacies of each state's Medicaid eligibility models which then scale to different applicability rules for different members of a given family.
The thousands of pages of bureaucratic rules that will drive requirements haven't been completed yet, and those requirements are needed to drive design not only for the application programs, but for the entire processing architecture. The issue of network, processor, and storage performance has to be decided, modeled and tested.
To complicate matters, the convoluted federal procurement rules for hardware and software have to be adhered to, which require mixing different hardware brands, software packages and service providers. Add to this compliance analysis to validate and revalidate trusted sources of data. All legal requirements at the local, state, and federal level have to be met by the design.
And last but not least, staffing up for customer support which requires hiring, training on applications not yet designed and real world tested, the creation of support documentation, building or retrofitting facilities for these folks, setting up backup sites for the required redundancies, plus hardening the sites for natural disaster power failures.
Additionally, the people hired must meet the Equal Opportunity criteria, and all GUIs must be handicapped usable, as well as the facilities themselves. I could be here all evening defining additional work to be done. Oh, did I mention this will be done by next year. Now I know why this has never been attempted. We are a country made up of 50 separate and distinct states, with all their own rules of governing, and to make things more unworkable are all the federal rules that have to be adhered to. I think we the people are going to be safe for quite awhile here."
#1
The rule of thumb is, if you double the size of a system, you half the chances of it being succesfully delivered. The Mythical Man Month explained this is because, as the number of people increases linearly, the amount of communication required increases exponentially.
Sounds like the chances of it being delivered are vanishingly small.
#2
He's spot on. And I know of what he speaks - almost 30 years IT experience and I currently work for a state government agency and am involved in designing, implementing, and maintaining databases and applications responsible for transmitting data to various local, state, federal, and international agencies in a number of different systems, all of which need to communicate flawlessly with a required up-time of better than 99%.
This is a morass of hundreds of different systems that have grown up over the past 40 years and are finally approaching what they want to do in a year with this thing.
The communications protocols, security protocols, interagency agreements, audit logs, audit process, auditor training, certifications, training documentation, maintenance agreements, etc are going to be a nightmare.
It took a year for our state to get 3 agencies to agree to submit one form of protected data - and a very, very minimal sub-set of that data, in fact. A YEAR. Just for the agreements.
#3
30+ years in the software business. Consulted at everything from local to federal gov't as well as medium to mega sized businesses.
All of the preceding is exactly correct and still misses one thing.
Laws change.
This abomination will change early and often. Each change will require full on testing. The life cycle of development will be overwhelmed by the life cycle of the laws constantly moving target.
#5
35+ years IT experience. This is going to be an Epic ClusterF*ck - by design.
As someone in the article commented: This is designed to fail - and bring down the IT industry with it so that there is no alternative but to go to single payor.
#6
Yes, the single payer scheme is the obvious intended outcome. The implied goal of single payer can be found in the 25,000 unread pages of the original legislation.
The on-going banking theft in Cyprus targets the larger investor. This version of gov't theft targets everyone!
#7
I work in fed IT; even if it were doable, it would take much longer than anticipated. But since it's not doable, it will fail - first it will be delayed, eventually abandoned. What replaces it is the question...
#8
You guys still don't get it, I'm surprised.
There is only ONE form, for all 50 states, that is really important here.
And you can get it from the IRS.
That's it and that's all, insurance for the proles is a messy side business. It's the tax/penalty that they will need to get up and running first, expect considerable lag time with the nuts and bolts.
#9
I think what you cynics are missing is the vast amount of intellectual firepower that has accumulated, sort of like lint, in the upper ranks of the federal government. Put Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray and Sheila Jackson Lee in a room for a couple of hours and they'll knock this problem right out. ("Is there an app for this I can get on my iphone?")
Posted by: Matt ||
03/27/2013 9:04 Comments ||
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#10
I've been in the Healthcare IT business for 43 years and have not seen the guvmint perform Medicare reimbursement. They have farmed it out to regional contractors such as Blue Shield and Palmetto GBA. In our jurisdiction we still use dial-up modems to connect to Palmetto for Medicare billing or we have to go through a third party to sort of connect through the internet.
Here's a example of a relatively small change:
In the recent past Physicians had a group of ID numbers for Insurance billing, Medicare, Medicaid, Blue Cross etc. A great idea was to just issue a single ID (NPI - National Provider Identification) for each Healthcare provider. The transition took years and was a mess. I had clients taking second mortgages on their houses to make payroll because their Medicare reimbursement was held up for months.
This is going to be really ugly. Before it's over Hogan's Goat is going to look like precision machinery. I can see two possible scenarios; reimbursement for ObamaCare patients will be held up or they will have to cut corners and the opportunity for fraud will be huge.
If I were a Physician I wouldn't go near a ObamaCare patient unless I considered it charity.
#14
Yeah, but I think some vendors are gonna get very, very wealthy from this. And it's a good bet that contributions to the right party will help in landing those extremely lucrative contracts. And if you happen to work for one of those vendors you'll have a job for the rest of your life, or at least as long as you can live with yourself for doing it, whichever comes first.
#17
Like other Government IT projects this is going to be estimated in 1-2 billion - and actually cost several-tens-of-billions and at the end there will be nothing to show for it except fat consultants and *very* rich spouses of Senators.
There will *never* be a final, agreed upon design of even the most basic elements. Everyone will want their little piece of the pie made in *their* district or state so that they can get some of the boodle.
#18
In the 1980s the company I was working for bid on a project to supply the VA Hospitals with a computerized Patient Management system. We had successfully installed our system in many private hospitals.
After answering the original Request for Proposal and numerous revised RFPs we along with other reputable companies pulled out of the bidding. It was hopeless and nothing came of it.
In the meantime the VA had purchased a boatload of brand new DEC Mini Computers to run the their Patient Management systems that never came. They were all stored in a warehouse in Chicago and as I understand it they were eventually sold as surplus for pennies on the dollar.
#19
To err is human,
To forgive, Divine,
to really screw things up requires a computer,
But to achieve complete and total chaos and destruction you need a government.
#21
Merge obamacare with the post office. It will save the post office and bring back house visits. Just put an ambulance light on the postal jeeps and America is good to go.
#22
30 years in IT myself...must be the magic number. my stint in healthcare was frightening enough at the state level...it will be billions spent and nobody gets a system but the consultant companies (Deliotte, PWC etc) get very rich on tax dollars
#23
I see a common understanding of the REAL purpose of Obamacare in regards to politicians these excerpts of comments on this thread...
"get very rich on tax dollars" - "nobody gets a system"
"they can get some of the boodle."
"contributions to the right party will help in landing those extremely lucrative contracts"
"fraud will be huge"
"This version of gov't theft targets everyone!"
and when things go start going crazy for all the people who are under Obamacare (that is everyone but 100 Senators and 400+ in the House of "Representatives", the Justice Department and IRS will make a pony show of the contractors but the contractors will strangely not be prosecuted as they file bankruptcy. And the beat goes on, unless it is stopped.
Posted by: George Clunk4883 ||
03/27/2013 22:25 Comments ||
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#24
Obamacare was conceived and scheduled in a manner oblivious to previous Healthcare IT law, namely HIPPA. Seems like it always takes two lawyers and a BAA (Business Associate Agreement) and several months just to let one company share medical data with another company. How this is going to be ironed out, made workable, etc. in the next 9 months, so information flows freely among all the new players is beyond me. I honestly don't even think the lawyers will be done this year ... let alone the engineers that have to make it work. Healthcare IT already moves slow. Now it will be moving slow as usual, with some paranoid on top given questions about what everyone is up to, and the final gift of a deadline to get it done.
[Dawn] THE suicide kaboom on a security check post in North Wazoo on Saturday that left nearly 20 dead may at first appear to be just another grim incident in a festering insurgency, but there is an emerging facet: the possible rise of new splinter groups. The bombing of the Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. judicial complex, the attack on the Jalozai IDP camp and now the attack in North Waziristan have not been claimed by the TTP, or even claimed at all. The Aafia Siddiqui ...American-educated Pak cognitive neuroscientist who was convicted of assault with intent to murder her U.S. interrogators in Afghanistan. In September 2010, she was sentenced to 86 years in jug after a three-ring trial. Siddiqui, using the alias Fahrem or Feriel Shahin, was one of six alleged al-Qaeda members who bought $19 million worth of blood diamonds in Liberia immediately prior to 9-11-01. Since her incarceration Paks have taken her to their heart and periodically erupt into demonstrations, while the government tries to find somebody to swap for her... Brigade's claim of responsibility for the Peshawar judicial complex bombing is also shrouded in mystery: is the group real, and who are its protagonists? What this could indicate is that the toxic brew of militancy in North Waziristan is undergoing changes again, with alliances breaking and forming anew, and when that happens the outcome is usually even more lethal than what came before.
At this point the choice is between getting lost in the minutiae of sub-groups within the Taliban and why they are possibly in a state of flux again, and zooming out and asking what the state is doing about the overall problem: the fact that North Waziristan is the single greatest immediate threat to Pakistain's internal security. The American demand to 'do more' and go after the Haqqanis in North Waziristan has receded into the background. The US Ambassador to Pakistain recently said in Peshawar that North Waziristan is a domestic security issue, not an international one as the US insisted for many years. If the ultimate fear was that going after the 'bad Taliban' in North Waziristan would also suck the state into fighting the favoured Haqqanis because of American pressure, then that pressure is no more -- and yet North Waziristan's sprawling bad turban complex remains unmolested.
With an election on the way and no government in place, the optics of a military operation in North Waziristan at this moment would certainly look bad. Additionally, going after the Taliban in their greatest stronghold with elections to be held could lead to unmanageable blowback. Then again, the Taliban have made clear that they consider democracy un-Islamic and that several parties are in their cross hairs, meaning that violence can be expected anyway. Ultimately, there is no ideal time to deal with the greatest internal security threat the country has seen since the break-up of Pakistain. More than the threat itself, then, the paralysis among those who are supposed to fight it is terrifyingly worrying.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/27/2013 00:00 ||
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#1
The Pakis wont attack their assets.Isnt there Pak army based there who let the Taliban do what they want?
Posted by: Paul D ||
03/27/2013 5:59 Comments ||
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Three weeks ago we gave Egypts Muslim Brotherhood government a $250 million economic stimulus package, and this week we decided to double-down in our national support for anti-Semites by giving the Palestinian Authority its own $500 million bonus. Never mind that this is the same Palestinian Authority that late last year directly defied the U.S. and violated the Oslo Agreements by pursuing non-member observer state status at the U.N. Never mind that this is the same Palestinian Authority that as recently as last month continued its unity talks with Hamas. Never mind that this is the same Palestinian Authority that pays millions to imprisoned terrorists and honors suicide bombers.
It is beyond strange how a Western elite so carefully attuned to racism or even racial insensitivity allows itself to not just turn a blind eye to the avalanche of anti-Semitic hate pouring out of the Muslim world, but then denigrates its critics as Islamophobes and subsidizes some of the worst offenders.
The frenzy of hatred against Jews has to be seen to be believed, but it passes with only the most perfunctory of Western critiques. Im reminded of the scene from the movie adaptation of The Two Towers when King Theoden observes the approaching army of Saruman and asks, What can men do against such reckless hate?
Apparently the American answer is, Give it lots of money.
#1
It is beyond strange how a Western elite so carefully attuned to racism or even racial insensitivity
And here is the problem. These western elites are attuned to one thing only and that is power.
They will find, manipulate and exploit anything that can be used to increase their power.
If that means tarring good men & women with the racist brush they do so gladly. It it means ignoring the vile, hateful Paleos to gain more leverage against Israel they do THAT gladly.
It's not strange at all when you realize the cynical game this slime is playing.
#1
Bullshit, when they're dead, they can't fight or be anything else, It's the end.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
03/27/2013 12:35 Comments ||
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#2
Perhaps it is true, but only if the leaders being killed were just about to surrender, and their replacements don't have the juice to make it happen. I see no signs of such, and so, killing them is beneficial (well, not to them...)
#6
"I suspect the terrorists fall into this pattern and thus have to reinvent the wheel from time to time after drone strikes."
Increase the drone strikes!
Posted by: Barbara ||
03/27/2013 15:01 Comments ||
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#7
One thing the article recommends is something I suspect happens already - when you find a guy you want to zap you wait and watch for a while, and find/follow who he interacts with, then hit the network in a swarm of attacks. I've noticed the drone attacks do seem to come in clusters, especially when a Mr. (kind of) Big is involved.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Aafia Siddiqui
