Friday, June 20, 2008
Without a Shot
Al-Mahdi Army militias routed without a shot fired
They came at dawn, thousands of Iraqi troops and US special forces on a mission to reclaim a lawless city from the militias who ran it. By the end of the day, al-Amarah was under Iraqi Government control - without a shot being fired.
Yesterday the city's streets were crawling with Iraqi security forces. Soldiers searched houses as police manned checkpoints and Soviet-era tanks guarded bridges over the Tigris River.
The flood of troops, who had moved into position outside the city a week ago, had encountered no resistance as they moved in yesterday. The leaders of the Shia militias that once ruled as crime bosses and warlords were either gone or in hiding. Even the police chief fled a week ago, fearing arrest for his affiliation to al-Mahdi Army, while the mayor, a member of the Sadrist movement, was arrested.
Locals said that militiamen had been spotted throwing their weapons into the Tigris or trying to hide them along the lush river banks. One man said that he saw two women digging up a stash hidden by a fighter and taking them into a weapons collection point...
[I'm won't say the war is won. Don't tell me it can't be. It's a matter of resolve]
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Survey: Americans Dissatisfied With War Coverage
It's not just President George W. Bush and Congress with low approval ratings these days. An online Zogby survey commissioned by The Poynter Institute should be a wake up call for the American news media. They found a "majority of readers, viewers and listeners say they are still far from satisfied with the coverage."
So what's missing from the war coverage? More information about the Iraqi government, stories about the Iraqi people, and chronicling soldiers returning home topped the list of the type of news the respondents said they would like to receive.
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Rockets, airstrikes come hours before Gaza truce
[HT:JD]
Jerusalem - Palestinian militants fired 50 rockets and mortars from Gaza toward Israel on Wednesday, just hours before a truce was to take effect.
(Snip) In Gaza, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said the truce would ease the lives of Gazans, but success or failure was in Israel's hands.
"The calm is going to bring stability to Israel if they commit themselves to it," he said.
[typical: Palestinians fire the rockets, but success or failure is all up to Israel.]
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Islamic cleric is released from jail
Abu Qatada, the radical Islamic cleric described as Osama bin Laden’s “right-hand man in Europe”, has been released from jail after a judge ruled that there were no grounds to keep him in prison.
The decision to allow him to return to his home in London – where he will receive around £1,000 per month in state benefits – made a mockery of the government’s promise to crack down on terror suspects, and embarrassed the Home Office, which had pledged to deport Qatada to Jordan to face terror charges...
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ElBaradei warns to resign if Iran threatened
TEHRAN – The head of the United Nations atomic watchdog has said he would offer his resignation if the major powers make serious threats against Iran over its nuclear program.
[this is the guy a few yearrs ago that the world would just need to adjust to a nuclear armed Iran. Threaten already!]
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THE MYTH OF VANISHING CO2 EMISSIONS
Environmental activists and some politicians are now promoting the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent or more by mid-century. CEO William O'Keefe and President Jeff Kueter, both of the George C. Marshall Institute, investigate whether this proposition is achievable and what this would cost Americans. Consider:
• In 2005, the United States emitted just below 6 gigatons of carbon dioxide (a gigaton is one billion metric tons, or 509,400,000,000 cubic meters).
• By 2030, U.S. emissions will rise to 7.9 gigatons; global CO2 emissions are projected to rise to 43 gigatons during this period, according to the U.S. Energy Administration.
• Analyses of various cap and trade proposals put the annual economic cost somewhere between $160 billion and $250 billion in 2015 and $800 billion to over $1 trillion by mid-century.
How efficient are cap-and-trade schemes?
• According to Yale economist William Nordhouse, they are highly inefficient because they imply carbon taxes rising to around $300 per ton in the next two decades; this would be the equivalent of adding 75 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline.
• The U.S. population is expected to increase from 296 million in 2005 to 325 million in 2020, and economic growth is projected to expand gross domestic product (GDP) to $16 trillion.
• There is no way to accommodate nearly 30 million more people and add $5 billion in economic growth without CO2 emissions growing, say O'Keefe and Kueter.
The bottom line is that a growing population and growing economy are not compatible with lower emissions, given the state of today's technology or the technologies that could be in the market in the next decade, say O'Keefe and Kueter.
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Global Warming Skepticism Shocks Chris Matthews
Towing the "Green is Universal," corporate line, MSNBC's Chris Matthews seemed shocked that anyone would dare question whether climate change was real. During a discussion about John McCain's eco-friendly rhetoric the "Hardball" host was dismayed when conservative radio talk show host Heidi Harris called it a move "to the left," as Matthews decried: "You think climate change is an ideological issue?!"
[Calm down Chris, everybody knows it's undisputed fact. Kool Aid?]
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Nationalize This
"We can't drill our way out of the problem," goes the Democratic mantra on oil. So what would Democrats do? Some in the party have the worst possible answer: "Nationalize the oil industry."
This week, responding to President Bush's call for more drilling, Democrat Maurice Hinchey said "We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets into the market."
This is what it's about: "control." And it's extremely dangerous for our democracy because once government controls the economy, it controls you, too. Then the Constitution, which guarantees your rights as a citizen of our republic, becomes a dead letter.
What's especially shocking is these two extremists no longer seem out of step with what used to be a centrist Party.
Don't take our word for it. A Rasmussen Poll released Tuesday showed that 37% of Democrats think nationalizing the oil companies is a good idea. Only 32% disagreed with that.
Which makes us wonder: Do they even know that socialism — state ownership of the means of production — has been completely discredited by history?
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THE LAW POOR
According to a new report from the United Nations:
• Two in every three people on the planet -- a total of 4 billion -- are excluded from the rule of law.
• Around 40 percent of the developing world's five-year-old children are not registered as even existing.
• India only has 11 judges for every 1 million people.
Later, people will find that the home they live in, the land they farm, or the business that they start, is not protected by legally enforceable property rights.
[The Point: the Rule of Law , and its incalculable benefits, is not a universal given: is was earned, it must be protected, by being followed or changed - never set aside {yes, there's a reason this appears in the immigration section of the Brief}]
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Media Ignore Minimum Wage Hike's Impact on May Unemployment Rise
It certainly wasn't surprising how press outlets desperately trying to depict the economy as depression-like were practically giddy following the dour jobs report released by the Labor Department last Friday.
What was shocking given the portion of May's unemployment rate rise attributed to high school and college students looking for summer jobs was that virtually no press outlets considered the impact last year's minimum wage hike might have had on young Americans finding temporary positions between school years.
Consider this op-ed published in Monday's Washington Examiner authored by Kristen Lopez Eastlick, the senior economic analyst at the Employment Policies Institute:
According to economist David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine, for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, employment for high school dropouts and young black adults and teenagers falls by 8.5 percent. In the past 11 months alone, the United States' minimum wage has increased by more than twice that amount.Interesting, wouldn't you agree? And, certainly newsworthy.
Yet, from what I can tell, results of Google News and LexisNexis searches didn't find one major mainstream news outlet that offered such analysis in its reporting of Friday's unemployment rise...
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NEW YORK'S NOVEL WAY TO KILL CHARTER SCHOOLS
Ten years ago, New York joined the charter school revolution by passing a law to allow these innovative public schools to open; but now, thanks to the state's Department of Labor and a labor-friendly state judge, building a new charter school just got a lot harder and a lot more expensive.
- Last fall, as a sop to labor unions, Labor Commissioner M. Patricia Smith ordered charter schools to adhere to state "prevailing wage" requirements, which mandate paying union wages for construction projects and which typically add 30 percent or more to the cost of a project.
- Although charter schools have always been exempt from this state law, state trial judge Michael Lynch erroneously applied labor law to charter schools, contrary to anything intended by the legislature or precedent.
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'Overheated and Amplified'
[HT:SJ]
Fortune magazine reports that Barack Obama is publicly backing away from his stated opposition to Nafta, confirming the private assurances he reportedly offered Canadians that he didn't really mean it...
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INNOVATION NATION
Americans like to think they live in the most innovative country in the world. But how do other countries compare?
One measure is the European Innovation Scoreboard (EIS), a survey of "innovation indicators and trend analyses," put together by the European Commission. According to the 2007 EIS, the gap between the United States and the European Union (EU) has declined in recent years, but America still leads in most categories. For example:
- Of the 15 possible indicators measured by the EIS, the United States performs better than the European Union in 11 indicators, while the European Union scores above the United States in 4 indicators.
- Although the United States leads the EU in 11 indicators, on 9 of those indicators the United States is outperformed by at least one European country.
- The only two indictors on which the United States outperforms all other European countries are tertiary education and U.S. Patent and Trademark Office patents.
- Sweden is the single most innovative country, as a result of its strength in innovation inputs.
- The gross domestic product (GDP) share of early-stage venture capital is more than 50 percent higher in the United States than the European Union.
- There is a large gap between the United States and the European Union in business R&D expenditures, 1.17 percent of EU GDP as compared to 1.87 percent in the United States, which has not decreased; in fact, the United States is expanding its lead in public R&D expenditures and high-tech exports.
- America also leads the rest of the world in patent applications, a key measure of intellectual property.
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