Month: February 2009

Well, Here Is a Vote of Confidence

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The Indian Army is refusing to induct the BrahMos missile into service without further tests.

My guess here is that the army is concerned that the 5000 lb supersonic missile won’t work reliably.

Considering the most recent failure, and the generally spotty record of India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), I’d want some real testing to verify this too.

There is also an element of bureaucratic infighting too, as Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor was at that test, where he was told that it was a success, but he visited the target area, and saw that it was a miss, and then DRDO criticized him for telling the press that it was a failure.

Oops.

Tactical Analysis of the Gaza Strip Combat

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First a disclaimer, this is not an essay on the rightness or the wrongness of the Gaza operation. It is an analysis of the tactics used with an eye toward tactical lessons learned from the Lebanon war, and toward lessons that should be learned by the US military.

Think of it as the War Nerd, without the good writing.

Aviation Week & Space Technology has an analysis of the combat in the Gaza Strip (paid subscription required), and it’s basic conclusion is rather unsurprising, though it’s rather controversial in some military circles, that air force operations must be completely subordinate to the ground forces authority.

Considering the debacle in Lebanon in 2006, where the Chief of Staff was the first, and likely the last, Air Force general, and worked on the USAF model, basically the assumption that precision guided munitions delivered from altitudes in excess of 8000 feet could win the war, this is not an unanticipated change in tactics.

One need only look at Afghanistan to see that the Taliban’s best recruiting tool is the USAF.

Some of the things that they did that worked on a tactical level:

  • Using retired/reserve air force officers physically in the ground units as liaison officers.
  • Each brigade had a specific helicopter squadron specifically assigned to them, and under their command.
  • One pilot from the helicopter squadron was physically assigned to the brigade’s communication cell, and he conducted all communications with the helicopter squadron.
  • A tightly integrated network to allow handoff from target identification to strike in less than 1 minute.
  • The brigade teams had significant autonomy from the high command in Tel Aviv.
  • Each brigade had its own dedicated artillery support.
  • Extensive operations at night, to take advantage of the Israeli superiority in night vision systems.

This does not make Gaza operations a victory, but these are lessons that the US military, and particularly the bomb happy boys in blue in the USAF, desperately need to learn for Afghanistan.

This is a Natural Result of Private Prisons

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We now know that hundreds, perhaps thousands of children were sent to private juvenile detention facilities because the judges got kickbacks, more than 2.6 million dollars, from the operator of two private facilities.

The judges in question, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan have pled guilty, with a recommendation from the prosecutors for a term of 87 months.

It should be 87 years.

The particulars are an indictment of our culture of privatization of government services:

With Judge Conahan serving as president judge in control of the budget and Judge Ciavarella overseeing the juvenile courts, they set the kickback scheme in motion in December 2002, the authorities said.

They shut down the county-run juvenile detention center, arguing that it was in poor condition, the authorities said, and maintained that the county had no choice but to send detained juveniles to the newly built private detention centers.

So, private players get into the system, pay off the right people, and these people shut down the government run facilities, and take kick-backs.

It’s worth noting that these kick-backs are called “consultancy fees” when the IMF and the World Bank do this in 3rd world nations, and have frequently involved basic human needs like a municipal water supply.

It should be noted that Robert J. Powell, the owner of the two facilities involved, PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care, is claiming that he did not bribe anyone, but rather that he was shaken down by the judges:

Robert J. Powell co-owned PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care until June. His attorney, Mark Sheppard, said his client was the victim of an extortion scheme.

“Bob Powell never solicited a nickel from these judges and really was a victim of their demands,” he said. “These judges made it very plain to Mr. Powell that he was going to be required to pay certain monies.”

Let’s see, you build jails for kids, and then suddenly they shut down the existing facility, because they think that you might bribe them?

I don’t think so.

BTW, these folks might never have been caught, but for the fact that they were doling out favors to friends in arbitration awards, and the insurance companies cried “foul,” and got an investigation.

In any case, they are now reviewing thousands of cases, and the federal prosecutors have petitioned the court to expedite notification to the victims.

Interestingly enough, the thing that seems to be bothering me the most involves a person who is not going to jail:

At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.

Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.

Why is anyone who would criminalize a satirical MySpace page allowed anywhere near children?

Why is this person still employed? Why are the police officers and prosecutors who did not laugh him off, or better still throw him in jail for harassment?

There is so much wrong here, that I’m beyond ranting.

Americans Want Accountability for Bush Torture

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Though, interestingly enough, USA Today runs with the lede of Most want inquiry into anti-terror tactics, while Gallup goes with No Mandate for Criminal Probes of Bush Administration.

38% want a criminal investigation, 24% want some sort of “truth and reconciliation” panel, and 34%, the “dead enders,” don’t want either.

Sounds like a mandate to me.

FWIW, the numbers for investigation Attorneygate and warrantless wiretapping are even more in favor of investigating the matters.

The EU Gets a Major Case of the Stupids

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The European parliament’s legal affairs committee just voted to extend copyright on music performances to 95 years. It was 50 years.

It has to go to the full parliament, but it’s likely to pass next month.

Stupid.

This won’t create any more performances, people don’t perform in the expectation of revenues on year 51, so it won’t create any more music, but what it will do is ensure that obscure works will be lost over time, because the difficulties of preserving and reproducing them will be too great.

Under the rules that they are proposing….Hell under the rules that they have now, Shakespeare’s works would have been forever lost to decay.

They would be gone, but we have to protect the f^%$ing mouse for another 45 f^%$ing years.

Economics Update

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Well, GDP in the Euro Zone fell by 1.5% in the 4rth quarter, and 1.2% from the 4th quarter of 2007.

The quarterly drop is the largest in 13 years, and the year over year drop is the first recorded ever…..One of the joys of integrating your economy is that you integrate your recessions.

It’s no wonder that OPEC’s predictions for world oil consumption have been slashed again, though interestingly enough, oil is up today, by the largest amount this year, largely on the expectation that the stimulus bill will pass.

In real estate, the New York Federal Reserve is continuing its aggressive policy of buying from the sh$% pile, purchasing another $23.2 billion in agency mortgage-backed securities this week, for a total of $114.96 billion.

There is an interesting bit here though, this quote, “The Fed has also said it may soon begin modifying mortgages it owns within the assets it owns.”

Somehow I figure that this is part of a much bigger story, only I don’t know what it is yet.

Also we have Citi and J.P. Morgan Chase Agreeing to a foreclosure moratorium, and I think that this might be a part of the rest of that story. Specifically, I think that they are worried about Geithner’s “Stress Test,” and they are doing this because they are hoping for goodwill from regulators.

Finally, the dollar is down today, for the same reason that oil is up. The stimulus package looks like a light at the end of the tunnel, and so the “flight to safety” moderated a bit.

OK, This Puts Some Context in the Gregg Withdrawal

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It appears that Judd Gregg’s intended replacement, Bonnie Newman, was facing strong opposition from the Taliban wing of the Republican Party, and was likely to withdraw, which would have given Democratic Governor John Lynch the cover to appoint a Democrat.

Gee, I wonder why the Taliban wing of the Republican Party would be freaking out about a life long Republican who just happens to be a 63 year old unmarried woman.

To be fair, I haven’t found anything online about her personal life, except in comments on stories that “the Google” brought up, but there is a rumor out there, which would get Dobson and his ilk upset.

This is Despicable

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It appears that big pharma and medical device manufacturers are gearing up to fight a provision in the stimulus bill which would compare outcomes for different treatments, so that healthcare professionals would know how they compare to each other, they are claiming that it’s, ” the first step to government rationing.”

The real reason that they are opposed to this is because selling people expensive s#@$ that does not work better than the cheap stuff is their business model.

NPR Ombud Sick of Fox News Juan Williams

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Well, the NPR Ombudsman has taken to completely disavowing anything Juan Williams says when he is on Fox News, and has notified her readers that, “NPR’s Vice President of News, Ellen Weiss, has asked Williams to ask that Fox remove his NPR identification whenever he is on O’Reilly.”

You see, when someone says that Michelle Obama has, “this Stokely Carmichael in a designer dress thing going,” people tend to think that he’s not a functioning journalist.

The truth is that he hasn’t been one for a long time, when he led the lynch mob against Anita Hill, and neglected to mention that he had repeated allegations of sexual harassment against him, he stopped being a journalist.

Currently he’s a freelancer, as the ombud made abundantly clear:

His “Stokely Carmichael” comment got the attention of NPR’s top managers. They are in a bind because Williams is no longer a staff employee but an independent contractor. As a contract news analyst, NPR doesn’t exercise control over what Williams says outside of NPR.

When he wasn’t, he was for a brief period on Talk of the Nation, but proved too damn stupid to handle the interviews….The show is on today, and it can still be lame, but he was painful to listen to.

The problem here is not that he’s on Fox News, so is Mara Liasson, it’s that he’s on O’Reilly, and he’s stupid, and he’s very eager to please, you could use Dr. Boyce Watkins term to describe him, but that brings in race, and I think to Fox and O’Reilly, it’s more important that he’s “NPR” than that he’s black.

Truth Hits the Autism-Vaccine Wacko Community

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Well, a couple of days ago, it was revealed that doctor Andrew Wakefield’s data on autism and vaccines were completely fraudulent, and now the federal vaccine court, which was largely created on the back of Wakefield’s myth, has ruled that there is no credible connections between vaccines and autism.

As to the court case:

The decision by three independent special masters is especially telling because the special court’s rules did not require plaintiffs to prove their cases with scientific certainty — all the parents needed to show was that a preponderance of the evidence, or “50 percent and a hair,” supported their claims. The vaccine court effectively said today that the thousands of pending claims represented by the three test cases are on extremely shaky ground.

In his ruling on one case, special master George Hastings said the parents of Michelle Cedillo — who had charged that a measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine caused their child to develop autism — had “been misled by physicians who are guilty, in my view, of gross medical misjudgment.”

Hastings said that he was deeply moved by the suffering autism imposed on families such as the Cedillos, but that “the evidence advanced by the petitioners has fallen far short of demonstrating . . . a link.”

As to the despicable Andrew Wakefield and his 1997 article in the Lancet, this is more than just bad science.

Wakefield, in the employ of vaccine litigation specialists, simply made up data:

The research was published in February 1998 in an article in The Lancet medical journal. It claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab. The team also claimed to have discovered a new inflammatory bowel disease underlying the children’s conditions.

However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal.

You can see my earlier posts on this here.

A Breath of Fresh Air for Drug Czar

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Obama has selected Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske as the new drug czar and it appears that while he is 100% cop, and a heavy duty law enforcement guy, unlike previous heads of the ONDCP, he’s not an insane drug warrior.

People who are looking at a more humane policy in dealing with drugs are pleasantly surprised by his appointment, as are legalization groups.

Specifically, during his tenure as police chief, he actually followed a law, initiative 75, which specifically deprioritized marijuana enforcement,* and kept the police from harassing needle exchange programs, which helps reduce AIDS transmission.

He’s never going to be NORML’s man of the year, and he’s not going to call for legalizing weed, but he is remarkable improvement over the ‘war on drugs’ crowd that has done nothing but fill prisons with non-violent offenders.

*I-75 saw a decline in drug use as well.

Is “Stress Testing” Spooking the Banks?

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This is interesting. It seems that Timothy Geithner’s announcement of a bank rescue plan sent big name banks into full panic mode, because it looks like Goldman Sachs held an emergency meeting, which included, “20 of the firm’s biggest hedge fund and private equity clients from around the country,” as well as, “representatives of KKR, Fortress Investment Group , Bain Capital, Perry Capital, Capital Research, Putnam and Citadel.”

While Goldman claims that it was a regular meeting, CNBC’s report seems to indicate that this was not the case:

Goldman sachs says the meeting was planned well in advance. But people who attended tell CNBC that they received the invitation after the speech and decided to attend because of the speech. Goldman Sachs initially denied that the meeting, hosted by co-presidents John Winkelried and Gary Cohn, took place.

(emphasis mine)

Where I think the reporter did not go deep enough is to accept the line from the participants that this meeting was primarily about concerns that the plan is not coming together quickly enough.

That isn’t the sort of thing that has you call an emergency meeting. Something has them spooked.

My guess is that they are afraid that Geithner’s “stress testing”, which is a deep accounting analysis of their balance sheets, will show one, or more of the major banks (probably most of them) to be insolvent, and then the government will have no choice but to seize them.

I have this image of something resembling a meeting of Bond villains.