South Korea is rife with rumors over the mysterious sinking of the Navy patrol craft Cheonan on March 26. While the Department of Defense struggles to cobble together answers, few people are hiding their anger and doubts about the department's clueless crisis management. One critic described the Defense Department's crisis standard operating procedure as a bureaucratic giant running around with his hair on fire -- but no system.'
Behind the debate over investigating the mysterious explosion will be a debate over who is to blame, since it is crucial to get the truth right. Not only the families of the victims but people in general need to understand what went wrong. If the military were grossly negligent, or intellectually lazy, or showed terrible judgment, then something should be done about it. The most important question is how to protect the country from a ghost enemy.
Certainly, given the lack of coordinated response from the military, the sinking of the Cheonan has given rise to some truly outlandish theories. South Korea's blogosphere is choked with bloggers who theorize that the defense department is involved in a risky secret war, fought in the dark by faceless and nameless military agents following commands unknown to the South Korean public. Lee Kang-rae, the floor leader of the opposition Democratic Party, said recently that Everyone believes the military is trying to cover something up,' suggesting that people do not believe the words spoken by the surviving soldiers at their first press conference two days ago. On cue one of the leading local newspapers floated the suggestion in its editorial and Op-Ed sections that the presidential office, should move to a war footing reflexively right now. Some conservative newspapers---the aforementioned included -- even portrayed the North's quiescence as a form of self-confession. They insist that the North should prove to the South and the world that they're innocent.
The problem is not a lack of urgency, but rather a big systemic and human management failure. It is inevitable that the president should hold the responsible officials at the Defense Department accountable and culpable, since the whole country is watching it with a growing sense of anger and disbelief. Truly, many people have been shocked by the amateurism of the military authorities' crisis management.
In reality, without being able to see satellite photos offered by the US, it is impossible to reach any solid or sound conclusions with regard to the whereabouts of alleged North Korean submarines, if any. In this regard, it is ridiculous to assert that the Lee government would retaliate' against the communist North. There has been much opinion about the seriousness of the problem, including whether there were forced confessions by the sailors who had barely escaped at the darkest moment of the tragedy. For the time being, it is hard to see if any are able to tell the truth over what happened that night, at least until any of them is officially discharged in due course.
Some can selectively interpret or misinterpret the cause and suggest an ulterior motive by claiming that the naval tragedy was associated with the Kim Jong-il regime in North Korea, even if they do not all want to go that route. And there is no known indication that the president is dissatisfied with what the clumsy Defense Department has ever done after the misfortunate incident, but it was a wise and right decision that with regard to the probe into the naval tragedy, the president reportedly ordered the Defense Department to yield the lead role to a civilian appointee, whose status would probably be equivalent to that of a three-star general in the Defense.
It is only realistic to think that Mr. Lee's decision reflected the public's mind, let alone that of the bereaved families. The command can be interpreted as an order to get far more balanced and considerate. That said, the military's progress report on the sunk frigate have been significantly discredited in terms of accuracy and credibility over time.
Lee Byong-Chul is a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul.
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Excellent comment to the original article: Forget about Peak Oil; we are stumbling into Peak Government, when overhead expenses finally overwhelm the Political Classs ability to tax & borrow.
A puzzle from Philosophy 101: If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? A puzzle from the prairie: If an earthquake occurs in Illinois and no one notices, is it really a seismic event?
Gov. Pat Quinn called it a "political earthquake" when the state's Legislature recently voted -- by margins of 92-17 in the House and 48-6 in the Senate -- to reform pensions for state employees. There is now a cap on the amount of earnings that can be used as the basis for calculating benefits. In some states, employees game the system by "spiking" their last year's earnings by accumulating vast amounts of overtime pay.
An even more important change -- a harbinger of America's future -- is that most new Illinois state government employees must work until age 67 in order to be eligible for full retirement benefits. Those already on the state payroll can still retire at 55 with full benefits.
The 1935 Social Security Act established 65 as the age of eligibility for payouts. But welfare state politics quickly becomes a bidding war, enriching the menu of benefits, so in 1956 Congress entitled women to collect benefits at 62, extending the entitlement to men in 1961. Today, nearly half of Social Security recipients choose to begin getting benefits at 62. This is a grotesque perversion of a program that was never intended to subsidize retirees for a third to a half of their adult lives.
It also reflects the decadent dependence that the welfare state encourages: Because of the displacement of responsibility from the individual to government, 48 percent of workers over 55 have total savings and investments of less than $50,000.
Because most states' pension plans compute their present values -- and minimize required current contributions -- by assuming an unrealistic 8 percent annual return on investments, the cumulative funding gap of state pensions already may be $3 trillion, and certainly is rising. For example, last Wednesday's New York Times contained this attention-seizing bulletin: "An independent analysis of California's three big pension funds has found a hidden shortfall of more than half a trillion dollars, several times the amount reported by the funds and more than six times the value of the state's outstanding bonds." It is not news that California is America's home-grown Greece, but the condition of the three funds, which serve 2.6 million current and retired public employees, is going to exacerbate the state's decline by requiring significantly higher taxpayer contributions.
A recent debate on "Fox News Sunday" illustrated the differences between the few politicians who are, and the many who are not, willing to face facts. Marco Rubio, the former speaker of Florida's House of Representatives who is challenging Gov. Charles Crist for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination, made news by stating the obvious.
Asked how the nation might address the projected $17.5 trillion in unfunded Social Security liabilities, Rubio said we should consider two changes for people 10 or more years from retirement. One would raise the retirement age. The other would alter the calculation of benefits: Indexing them to inflation rather than wage increases would substantially reduce the system's unfunded liabilities.
Neither idea startles any serious person. But Crist, with the reflex of the unreflective, rejected both and said he would fix Social Security by eliminating "waste" and "fraud," of which there is little. The system's problems are the result not of incompetent administration but of improvident promises made by Congress.
Synthetic indignation being the first refuge of political featherweights, Crist's campaign announced that he believes Rubio's suggestions are "cruel, unusual and unfair to seniors living on a fixed income." They are indeed unusual, because flinching from the facts of the coming entitlements crisis is the default position of all but a responsible few, such as Wisconsin's Rep. Paul Ryan, who has endorsed Rubio. What is ultimately cruel is Crist's unserious pretense that America faces only palatable choices, and that improvident promises can be fully funded with money currently lost to waste and fraud.
By the time the baby boomers have retired in 2030, the median age of the American population will be close to that of today's population of Florida, the retirees' haven that is Heaven's antechamber. The 38-year-old Rubio's responsible answer to a serious question gives the nation a glimpse of a rarity -- a brave approach to the welfare state's inevitable politics of gerontocracy.
#4
Every administration since John Adams has been promising to eliminate the waste and fraud found in the preceding administrations. With all this emphasis on eliminating waste and fraud you have to wonder why any is still around.
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Have we ever, in the modern history of the US, dismantled a bureaucratic entity?
I don't know that we have a mechanism to do it.
A constitutional convention may be the only way to make any meaningful reduction of the govt.
Unfortunately, that would probably require a civil war at this point, and I don't know if it would be worth destroying the village to save it.
#7
The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands was created by Congress in March 1865 to assist for one year in the transition from slavery to freedom in the South. It was renewed for a few years, then terminated by Congress in 1872, the year the federal government washed its hands of freedmen's problems for a few decades.
#8
Have we ever, in the modern history of the US, dismantled a bureaucratic entity?
Yes. The Interstate Commerce Commission.
(1887 1995) First regulatory agency established in the U.S. and a prototype for independent government regulatory bodies. An agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation, it was responsible for the economic regulation of interstate surface transportation, including railroads, trucking companies, and buslines. It certified carriers, regulated rates, oversaw mergers, and approved railroad construction. The ICC was dissolved in 1995.
#1
the organisation has a noble history of action as well as sentiment, and it's recently been fiercely criticised in a Times leader. But we were right. In February, we noted the case of Gita Sahgal, an Amnesty employee. We said of Amnesty and its reputation for the disinterested defence of human rights:
"That reputation is irreplaceable. Yet through inexplicable insouciance, Amnesty is squandering it.
Amnesty was hijacked by leftwing activists who exploited its 'noble' reputation.
BTW, I was a member 30 years ago. These days I wouldn't spit on them. But its not the same Amnesty I joined.
A Channel 10 news crew, headed by correspondent Shlomi Eldar, was detained and later expelled by Palestinian Authority police in Ramallah last Wednesday. It had filmed the street where the PA's new presidential compound is being erected but irked the local constabulary when its cameramen focused on the street-sign bearing the name of arch-terrorist Yihye Ayash.
During the 1990s, Ayash gained notoriety as the engineer.' His professional specialty was rigging explosives designed to take as many lives as possible. Primarily Ayash was an anti-Oslo saboteur, a fact which ought to make it doubly strange that the present Ramallah regime would even consider honoring him. The basis upon which the Palestinian Authority under Mahmoud Abbas at all exists, and purportedly negotiates peace on occasion, is the 1993 Oslo Accords. Yet hot on the heels of the celebration of the Oslo deal on the White House lawn, Israel was rocked by one of the bloodiest spates of terrorism to date. During 1994, 1995 and 1996 hundreds of Israelis were murdered in explosions on buses and crowded locales in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Hadera and elsewhere. Many of these attacks were Ayash's handiwork.
That Ayash would be honored in any fashion is an affront to the very notion of coexistence and a gross violation of the Oslo premise. That he would be honored on so central a street housing so consequential an official edifice adds even more insult to injury. There is no way the PA can remotely wash its hands of this glorification of one of the worst of all perpetrators of terrorist atrocities. The commemorative plaque for Ayash openly notes his membership in the Izzadin el-Kassam brigades (the Hamas military wing) and claims Israel assassinated him due to allegations' of terror. Ayash died when his cellphone exploded in early 1996.
During his recent visit, US Vice President Joe Biden secured Abbas's solemn pledge to desist from such exaltation of terrorist icons. Planned to coincide with Biden's visit was a ceremony to name a central El Bireh square after Dalal Mughrabi, member of the gang which hijacked a bus on Israel's Coastal Road in 1978, murdering 37. Under pressure, Abbas cancelled the ceremony. However, to put it mildly, he was insincere. The ceremony did take place but under Fatah auspices instead of PA sponsorship. With Fatah being the key component of the PA regime, the difference is deceptive.
PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad recently paid condolence visits to family members mourning 2002's Church of the Nativity invader Abdallah Daud, the three murderers of Avshalom Meir Chai and a terrorist who attempted to stab a soldier. He extolled them all as martyrs.' This is no new twist of the plot but consistent policy. Back in 2008, Abbas handpicked five female recipients for the PLO's highest medal of heroism. Three had been foiled in their homicidal attempts. Not so the two stars.
Amana Mona lured 16-year-old Ofir Rahum via Internet chats to a cruel death on January 17, 2001. Ahlan Tamimi planned the August 9, 2001 attack on Jerusalem's Sbarro pizzeria and drove the suicide bomber to the destination where he killed 15 persons, including seven children and five members of a single family. The inescapable message is that such crimes are the PA's ideal. Hence it acclaims malevolence instead of denouncing it.
Since the PA derives its very legitimacy from Oslo, one would logically suppose that it would seek to eradicate any vestige of veneration for the terrorists who set out to violently undermine the very foundation of accommodation. That indeed would be the minimum we would expect of peace partners, as the symbolic prelude to a no-holds barred fight against terror and against incitement to terror. Yet not only is Abbas's PA not living up to this most minimal of expectations, it is actively and consistently engaged in promoting precisely the opposite. By actually locating the Fatah-led governmental hub on a street named for a Hamas mass-murderer, the PA seems to signal unequivocally where its heart is.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was right to urge last week that the international community forcefully condemn official Palestinian incitement for terrorism and against peace.' Our misfortune is that the world's outrage is very selective and very misplaced.
A new military order will take effect this week, enabling the army to deport tens of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank and prosecute them on infiltration charges, which carry long prison terms. The order, uncovered by Amira Hass in Haaretz yesterday, bears the signature of Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni in his previous capacity as commander of the Israel Defense Forces in Judea and Samaria.
The order's vague language will allow army officers to exploit it arbitrarily to carry out mass expulsions, in accordance with military orders which were issued under unclear circumstances. The first candidates for expulsion will be people whose ID cards bear addresses in the Gaza Strip, including children born in the West Bank and Palestinians living in the West Bank who have lost their residency status for various reasons. Likely won't be used for that, but it gives the Israelis a tool to toss trouble-makers, which is the point ...
Gee whiz, what would a Palestinian have to do to lose his residency status?
This would be a grave and dangerous move, unprecedented during the Israeli occupation. For years, Israel has used a heavy hand against the Palestinian population registry, trampling basic human rights such as the freedom to move one's residence within the occupied territories. Many Palestinians' lives have thus been made very difficult because they have been cut off from their previous places of residence without being able to return or legally register their new addresses.
The right of all Palestinians to choose where to live in the West Bank or Gaza marks a very low threshold for defining their human rights. Israel, which justifiably prevents Palestinians from returning to where they lived before 1948 and does not offer them fair compensation for their property (while enabling Jews to recover property from the same period, as has happened in Sheikh Jarrah), cannot expel Palestinians from the occupied territories on the basis of dubious bureaucratic claims.
Implementing this new military order is not only likely to spark a new conflagration in the territories, it is liable to give the world clear-cut proof that Israel's aim is a mass deportation of Palestinians from the West Bank. While all Jews can settle wherever they wish, in Israel or in the territories, Israel is trying to deprive the Palestinians of even the minimal right to choose where to live in the West Bank or Gaza. The prime minister and defense minister should immediately shelve this military order before the IDF feels free to begin carrying out expulsions.
Ms Hass has long taken a definite position on Israeli-Palestinian affairs, according to Wikipedia. With regard to another story she wrote, Hass noted that she had brought forward sourced information, and said that it was the responsibility of newspaper editors to cross-reference it with other information from other sources. Therefore one must ask, whether the Ha'aretz editors have confirmed this reported order with the IDF, or once again ran with the exciting headline.
Posted by: Steve White ||
04/12/2010 00:00 ||
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Implementing this new military order is not only likely to spark a new conflagration in the territories
What on earth would we do without self-righteous pundits dumping their delusional perceptions on us?
Meanwhile in the real world people are just getting on with their lives. When we hear the West-Bankians screaming, then perhaps we may know we have a problem. In the meantime Amira Hass should just get a life. It is difficult to turn on a TV or radio or pick up a newspaper these days, without finding some pundit or other deploring the dismal prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace or the dreadful living conditions of the Palestinians. Even supposedly neutral news reporters regularly repeat this sad tale. Very little is changing for the Palestinian people on the ground, I heard BBC World Service Cairo correspondent Christian Fraser tell listeners three times in a 45 minute period the other evening.
In fact nothing could be further from the truth. I had spent that day in the West Banks largest city, Nablus. The city is bursting with energy, life and signs of prosperity, in a way I have not previously seen in many years of covering the region.
As I sat in the plush office of Ahmad Aweidah, the suave British-educated banker who heads the Palestinian Securities Exchange, he told me that the Nablus stock market was the second best-performing in the world so far in 2009, after Shanghai. (Aweidahs office looks directly across from the palatial residence of Palestinian billionaire Munib al-Masri, the wealthiest man in the West Bank.)
Later I met Bashir al-Shakah, director of Nabluss gleaming new cinema, where four of the latest Hollywood hits were playing that day. Most movies were sold out, he noted, proudly adding that the venue had already hosted a film festival since it opened in June.
FRED ARMISEN AS BARACK OBAMA: Question number six: Have any individuals residing in this household on April 1, 2010 criticized President Obama's healthcare reform plan? And what are their names? Now, what's this question about? Obviously, should the healthcare reform recently passed by Congress eventually involve rationing medical, and it might, no one really knows, we need to make sure medical care doesn't go to anyone who opposed the plan.
Interesting mock of ObamaCare wouldn't you agree? But it got better:
A related question: If some member of this household had to die, so that others might live, who should that be? [a link to the skit is at the site]
Posted by: lord garth ||
04/12/2010 00:00 ||
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The link goes to a page about scientific urban legends. I found out that Galileo didn't do the drop-the-balls-from-the-Leaning-Tower experiment, but no SNL skit.
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.
