Stephen Ellis, a scholar at the Free University Amsterdam, has a very good article on Open Democracy about what extremists are up to in the Sahara.
"It is not often that the words "cocaine" and "al-Qaida" are plausibly linked. But these two forces are turning the western half of the Sahara - approximately from southern Libya to the Atlantic coast - into a locus of illicit money-making and radical politics. The development, quite a feat for a sparsely populated region, presents a challenge that the rich states to the north cannot afford to ignore."
I spent some time in Mali not so long ago and thought it was one of those places that could suddenly become a "hot spot". At which point everyone would sit around scratching their heads saying, "Wow, we didn't know. That came from no-where". Well, it has been building and some of that has been reported. Stephen's article will give you a good round up on what's happened so far and what the situation is at the moment.
If suddenly something horrible were to happen and all attention turned to the Sahel, I'm pretty sure that we will hear the usual thing about how all Muslims - whether in the Middle East, Asia or Africa - are all violent mental cases who follow a religion that tells them to kill and dance in blood etc etc. That will be pretty annoying. So, I'm also posting an article I wrote while out there about the spread of extremism in the region and the reaction of local communities.
"In the market next to the grand mosque in the centre of town, Muslim women with their hair covered but their shoulders and arms bare barter for T-shirts emblazoned with photos of US President Barack Obama. In another part of the market, a young man in the austere Saudi-inspired dress of trousers hitched up at the ankle and long beard berates a bookstall owner for not carrying the "right sort of works". Yemen, Somalia, and those in the Maghreb that have been pushed across the borders to Morocco and Libya are of Strategic intelligence concern. CNAS is a daily check.
Reads kind of like an infomercial, but he's got a good point. When I was a kid my parents used to take us to our local GP. Mom paid $10 a visit, if I can remember that far back. I think she switched docs when the price went up to $20. When one of my brothers and one of my sisters was born in a hospital -- the rest of us were born at home -- the hospital billed her and she paid it off at so much per month.
Dr. Silberman was rumored to make better than $10,000 a year. As evidence there was his black '55 Cadillac that he drove when he made house calls.
You could buy Blue Cross and Blue Shield in those days but they weren't cost effective for the lower half of the income curve.
HMOs were originally sold as a way to keep health care prices down. Particularly appealing was the emphasis they put on preventive medicine. Go to the doctor for your routine checkups and you'd get sick less often.
Prices kept going up and PPOs were supposed to do what HMOs weren't doing. Particularly appealing was the emphasis they put on preventive medicine. Go to the doctor for your routine checkups and you'd get sick less often.
The insurance companies, medical billing companies, claims processing companies, utilization managers, and what have you add a layer of costs that wasn't there before. Adding in malpractice insurance costs makes things even more gruesome. I went to routine physical therapy appointments for the past few weeks. I'm fully covered, with Tricare Prime. I had a $20 copay with each visit. The physical therapy office had stacks of "Iron Mountain" records boxes, chock full of documentation.
Now we're gifted with B.O.Care. But not to worry. Despite the number of digits in the price tag it's gonna save us money. Particularly appealing is the emphasis they put on preventive medicine. Go to the doctor for your routine checkups and you'll get sick less often.
#1
A trend whose time has come. This will accelerate as more and more docs realize that the intention behind Obamacare is to shift them from private practictioner/LPs into unionized hospital employees a la the SEIU.
#3
Great article. That's how it still works in Mexico, and I have found the quality of GP care to be good there, don't know about hospitals, knock on wood.
Doctors should also remember that most of those $20 payments are going to be CASH.
#4
Eliminating the billing office + the insurance vultures' take would eliminate maybe 25% of medical costs. Add in tort reform and you could cut another 8%.
Bottom line, this is a viable and attractive model for many docs and their patients. Bring it on.
#5
most people seem to gloss over the fact that most if not all MD's are way frickin smarter than Joe the Plumber, WAY SMARTER!
And so are licensed nurses. Look at the body of medical knowledge that a doc had in 1920 or 1940 and look at the body of medical knowledge a licensed nurse has today. Why is one a doctor and the other a nurse? Why is one only allowed to perform medical protocols within that body of knowledge and another is not? Because the medical community has operated a guild and has through the politicians imposed requirements to maintain their economic position.
Back in the late 60s, DoD was establishing a military medical college to produce doctors for the war. The AMA went to Congress and got it killed because they didn't want the system to be flooded with 'competition' and to control the number of doctors turned out into the system. Doctors didn't have those grand salaries in the 30s and 40s. Then the baby boom hit. Demand soared and the law of supply and demand hit. Doctors got 'comfortable' in the 60s and weren't about to allow their economic fortune and position decline.
When we talk about tort reform somehow the responsibility of cleaning their own house, which is usually associated with a 'profession', doesn't really get discussed. The guild (ie associations) makes sure it doesn't happen. They're looking after their own interests. We all are.
There are no innocent parties in this game. The system isn't broke because it never was whole. There's a difference between broke and sub-optimal. No one wants to trade back to care level and abilities of 1990, 1970, or 1950. However, the expectation that each is entitled to rob their neighbor blind to stay alive just a little longer hoping for immortality is going to destroy what we do have.
#3
The section on the Teachers Union's antics look so much like the Washington (State) 'Education' association (-the Teachers Union of Washington State).
#4
Astounding thuggery. Too many at the public trough. The trough is about empty.
There are only about 15 million union members in all of the U.S. Twenty percent of the country is in the Tea Party and many, many, more sympatico with the Tea Party. Many, many, many more just pissed off with the constant corruption and being bled dry. Election Day, November, 2010 is maybe the most important voter day in history.
#2
As has been stated many times before ... where were these clowns (Matthews, Klein, Dowd, et al) when the left was advocating the assassination of a sitting president (G.W. Bush)??? What a bunch of maroons.
#3
So,
now it's sedition to campaign AGAINST OBama?
Thus our nation slides into dictatorship.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
04/19/2010 11:26 Comments ||
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#4
More important, Palin and Beck are commiting blasphemy, since we all know The One is infallible.
Al
Posted by: Frozen Al ||
04/19/2010 11:31 Comments ||
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#5
Boy, how times have changed! I'm old enough to remember back when dissent was patriotic,
Posted by: Mike ||
04/19/2010 12:12 Comments ||
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#6
Chris Matthews and his Small Circle Jerk of Friends. Who are they trying to convince here? Each other?
So take your evidence to Holder, Joe, and have him put them on trial. See how that works out for you.
Fuckin buffoon...
#8
I have been wondering if the Oblahblah administration is really that tone-deaf, and their followers in the MSM are merely playing defense with the talking-points memos giving a strategy of the big lie (O cut taxes, only the rich are getting soaked, and the latest NYT poll that the tea parties are comprised of old, white, Repub men who are the haves and don't want to share), or is there is a more insidious attempt at provocation.
Seeing their Mar*ist agenda's p-rogress meeting intense public opposition from the 50% of the country that pays for it, are they expanding a confrontationist campaign to further anger the right, demonize us as marginal wingnuts, and then either provoke violence and civil unrest, or worse, use SEIU-thugs to commit violence and unrest. It might lead to backlash in opinion, and might also allow for "Emergency Powers" like we saw in the Civil War. Still far fetched in my opinion, BUT, not as obscure as it would have seemed a year ago.
#2
Uh-oh. Might be time to get Sam Waterston in there to do one of those righteous commercials for them to keep the rubes sending in those checks.
Because, if you can't trust Sam Waterston, who can you trust?
Were it not for Israel's presence between the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Fatah and Hamas would most likely be dispatching suicide bombers and rockets at each other.
And they would perhaps still be throwing each other's supporters from the fifteenth and sixteenth floors of tall buildings had not Israel, in the summer of 2007, helped Fatah members and their families run away from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.
This is not a conflict over which side will bring democracy and good government to the Palestinians so much as it is a power struggle over money and power.
The fight between Hamas and Fatah is not a power struggle between good guys and bad guys: it is a rivalry between bad guys and bad guys. [Khaled Abu Toameh gives some sound advise to Bibi also]
Posted by: lord garth ||
04/19/2010 10:49 ||
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Link ||
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LA Times Opinion (not the Onion)
You're likely to hear a chorus of dire warnings as we approach Earth Day, but there's a serious shortage few pundits are talking about: air pollution. That's right, the world is running short on air pollution, and if we continue to cut back on smoke pouring forth from industrial smokestacks, the increase in global warming could be profound.
*snicker* The pollution shades the earth like an umbrella of clouds, I s'pose.
Posted by: lord garth ||
04/19/2010 10:53 ||
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[2 views]
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#1
Not to worry, LA Slimes - Iceland's fixing that right up. ;-p
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
04/19/2010 19:49 Comments ||
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#2
The main effect of particulate pollution (smoke) is to limit the amount of sunshine that reaches the Earth's surface early morning and late afternoon, when sunlight travels obliquely through the atmosphere.
And surprise, surprise, most of the warming is found in the early morning when daily minimum temps occur. Which BTW is exactly opposite to what greenhouse gas warming would cause.
#3
It's not as bad as this article makes out. Sure, we don't produce as much air pollution as before, but we now import it from China.
Posted by: ed ||
04/19/2010 21:45 Comments ||
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#4
I remember as a kid 50 years ago in the UK, the morning ritual of lighting the coal fire. Huge amounts of smoke were produce for 5 to 20 minutes until the coal lit properly.
Now multiply that by a couple of hundred million households across Europe to get the scale of the smoke blanket that 50 years later has almost entirely disapeared.
So the article is wrong (and merely propagates popular prejudice). Industrial smoke pollution was small compared to domestic smoke pollution.
#5
"Running short/low on air pollution"???> Why not?
To wit,
COASTTOCOAST AM > IIRC MAIL.UK ARTIC > Apparently, Perts are now claiming that, as per the ICELAND VOLCANO ERUPTION, KEEPING MAJOR AIRLINE PLANES ON THE GROUND ADDS TO GLOBAL WARMING???
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.
