The Rag Blog

Jan. 12 – A new report suggests the Bush administration, the medical industry and business lobbyists have distorted and exploited the medical-malpractice “crisis” in the name of profit.

In an analysis released Wednesday by Public Citizen, the consumer advocacy group says the real crisis is the lack of accountability for doctors who commit avoidable medical errors.

Public Citizen researchers analyzed fifteen years of data from the federal National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), which includes information on malpractice payouts made by doctors and disciplinary action against them. The Data Bank has known limitations, but Public Citizen says it is the best-available source on the subject.

The analysis found that the number of easily preventable medical errors, including operating on the incorrect body part or leaving a foreign object inside a patient’s body, jumped 40 percent between 2003 and 2005. The latter count – 705 cases – was the highest rate in eleven years.

The majority of malpractice payouts are also made by repeat offenders, according to Public Citizen’s analysis. About 6 percent of doctors were responsible for more than half of all malpractice payouts made between 1991 and 2005. The report noted that the overwhelming majority – 85 percent – of doctors have not been behind a single malpractice payout since the Data Bank was created.

While removing problematic practitioners from the field through license suspension or revocation could reduce the rate of medical liability, Public Citizen says doctors are infrequently disciplined beyond the monetary payment. The analysis of the Data Bank found that two-thirds of doctors responsible for ten or more malpractice payouts were not disciplined at all by their state boards of medicine.

The analysis of the Data Bank found that two-thirds of doctors responsible for ten or more malpractice payouts were not disciplined at all by their state boards of medicine.

Britons flying to America could have their credit card and email accounts inspected by the United States authorities following a deal struck by Brussels and Washington.

By using a credit card to book a flight, passengers face having other transactions on the card inspected by the American authorities. Providing an email address to an airline could also lead to scrutiny of other messages sent or received on that account.

The extent of the demands were disclosed in “undertakings” given by the US Department of Homeland Security to the European Union and published by the Department for Transport after a Freedom of Information request.

About four million Britons travel to America each year and the released document shows that the US has demanded access to far more data than previously realised.
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Not only will such material be available when combating terrorism but the Americans have asserted the right to the same information when dealing with other serious crimes.

Shami Chakrabarti, the director of the human rights group Liberty, expressed horror at the extent of the information made available. “It is a complete handover of the rights of people travelling to the United States,” she said.

As the Americans tightened security after the September 11 attacks, they demanded that airlines provide comprehensive information about passengers before allowing them to land.

But this triggered a dispute that came to a head last year in a Catch 22 situation. On one hand they were told they must provide the information, on the other they were threatened with heavy fines by EU governments for breaching European data protection legislation.

In October, Brussels agreed to sweep away the “bureaucratic hurdles” preventing airlines handing over this material after European carriers were threatened with exclusion from the US. The newly-released document sets out the rules underpinning that deal.

As a result the Americans are entitled to 34 separate pieces of Passenger Name Record (PNR) data — all of which must be provided by airlines from their computers.

There will be timetables, deadlines, benchmarks, goals for both America and its Iraqi satraps. But the war against terror can still be won. We shall prevail. Victory or death. And it shall be death.

President Bush’s announcement early this morning tolled every bell. A billion dollars of extra aid for Iraq, a diary of future success as the Shia powers of Iraq ­ still to be referred to as the “democratically elected government” ­ march in lockstep with America’s best men and women to restore order and strike fear into the hearts of al-Qa’ida. It will take time ­ oh, yes, it will take years, at least three in the words of Washington’s top commander in the field, General Raymond Odierno this week ­ but the mission will be accomplished.

Mission accomplished. Wasn’t that the refrain almost four years ago, on that lonely aircraft carrier off California, Bush striding the deck in his flying suit? And only a few months later, the President had a message for Osama bin Laden and the insurgents of Iraq. “Bring ’em on!” he shouted. And on they came. Few paid attention late last year when the Islamist leadership of this most ferocious of Arab rebellions proclaimed Bush a war criminal but asked him not to withdraw his troops. “We haven’t yet killed enough of them,” their videotaped statement announced.

Well, they will have their chance now. How ironic that it was the ghastly Saddam, dignified amid his lynch mob, who dared on the scaffold to tell the truth which Bush and Blair would not utter: that Iraq has become “hell” .

BAGHDAD, Iraq – Mahdi Army militia members have stopped wearing their black uniforms, hidden their weapons and abandoned their checkpoints in an apparent effort to lower their profile in Baghdad in advance of the arrival of U.S. reinforcements.

“We have explicit directions to keep a low profile . . . not to confront, not to be dragged into a fight and to calm things down,” said one official who received the orders from the anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

Al-Sadr heads the Mahdi Army, Iraq’s largest Shiite militia, headquartered in Najaf.

The official asked not to be named because he was not authorized to reveal the militia’s plans.

Militia members say al-Sadr ordered them to stand down shortly after President George Bush’s announcement that the U.S. would send 17,500 more American troops to Baghdad to work alongside the Iraqi security forces.

Bush’s “surge” speech is a hoax, but members of Congress and media commentators are discussing the surge as if it were real.

I invite the reader to examine the speech. The “surge” content consists of nonsensical propagandistic statements. The real content of the speech is toward the end where Bush mentions Iran and Syria.

Bush makes it clear that success in Iraq does not depend on the surge. Rather, “Succeeding in Iraq . . . begins with addressing Iran and Syria.”

Bush asserts that “these two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops.”

Bush’s assertions are propagandistic lies.

The Iraq insurgency is Sunni. Iran is Shi’ite. If Iran is supporting anyone in Iraq it is the Shi’ites, who have not been part of the insurgency. Indeed, the Sunni and Shi’ites are engaged in a civil war within Iraq.

Does any intelligent person really believe that Iranian Shi’ites are going to arm Iraqi Sunnis who are killing Iraqi Shi’ites allied with Iran? Does anyone really believe that Iranian Shi’ites are going to provide sanctuary for Iraqi Sunnis?

Bush can tell blatant propagandistic lies, because Congress and the American people don’t know enough facts to realize the absurdity of Bush’s assertions.

Why is Bush telling these lies? Here is the answer: Bush says, “We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”

In those words, Bush states perfectly clearly that victory in Iraq requires US forces to attack Iran and Syria. Moreover, Bush says, “We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region.”

What do two US aircraft carrier attack groups in the Persian Gulf have to do with a guerilla ground war in Iraq?

Al-Hayat this morning says Iraqi politicians and officers have said there are secret clauses in the Bush “new strategy” that talk about cooperation [between the Bush and Maliki administrations] in attacks on “extremist leadership”, both Shiite and Sunni, and [these sources have also said that] this starts with lightening (khatifa) operations [that will have] media reveberations that will assist in giving impetus to the American administration in its “second battle” of the occupation of Baghdad.

By way of elaboration, this is followed by a quote from an AFP item, and then remarks on the Iranian-diplomats affair.

Here is the AFP quote:

[AFP quoted] a high American military official who said on Thursday evening that the American forces can target extremist leadership in Baghdad as part of the new plan which the Iraqi government has agreed to by lifting restrictions that have up to now prevented the Americans from attacking certain of the extremist leadership.

And the journalist continues: “Observers don’t rule out the idea that the American forces might use the attack on the Iranian consulate in Irbil as a a model for lightening (khatifa) operations against military leaders in the Mahdi Army or [against] certain of the former officers who are believed to be running armed operations from their homes in Sunni strongholds in Baghdad.”

A few years ago, David Brooks, New York Times columnist and media pundit extraordinaire, penned a love letter to the idea of meritocracy. It is “a way of life that emphasizes … perpetual improvement, and permanent exertion,” he effused, and is essential to America’s dynamism and character. Fellow glorifiers of meritocracy have noted that our society is superior to nepotistic backwaters like Krygystan or France because we assign the most important jobs based on excellence. This makes us less prone to stagnancy or, worse yet, hideous national clusterfucks like fighting unwinnable wars for reasons nobody understands.

At Radar we are devoted re-readers of the Brooks oeuvre and were struck by this particular column. It raised interesting questions. Noticing our nation is stuck in an unwinnable war (or two), we wondered if America hasn’t stumbled off the meritocratic path. More specifically, since political pundits like Brooks play such a central role in our national decision-making process, maybe something is amiss in the world of punditry. Are the incentives well-aligned? Surely those who warned us not to invade Iraq have been recognized and rewarded, and those who pushed for this disaster face tattered credibility and waning career prospects. Could it be any other way in America?

Noticing our nation is stuck in an unwinnable war, ‘Radar’ wondered: Is something amiss in the world of punditry? So we selected the four pundits who were in our judgment the most influentially and disturbingly misguided in their pro-war arguments and the four who were most prescient and forceful in their opposition. (Because conservative pundits generally acted as a well-coordinated bloc, more or less interchangeable, all four of our hawks are moderates or liberals who might have been important opponents of the war — so, sadly, we are not able to revisit Brooks’s eloquent and thoroughly meritless prognostications.)

A Surge of Bodies

On January 4th, the Pentagon “announced the identities” of six American soldiers who had died between December 28th and New Year’s Eve. It was just one of many such listings over these last years and, like similar announcements, this one had a just-the-facts quality to it — spare to the bone, barely more information than you would get from a POW: rank, age, place of birth, date of death, place of death, type of death, and the unit to which the dead soldier belonged.

These announcements, which blend seamlessly into one another, also blend the dead into a relatively uniform mass. You can, of course, learn nothing from such skeletal reports about the dreams of these young men (and sometimes women), their hopes or fears, their plans for the future or lack of them, their talents and skills, their problems, their stray thoughts or deepest convictions, their worlds, and those who cared about them.

So few paragraphs are almost bound to emphasize not the individuality of the dead, but their similarity in death. Five of these soldiers died due to roadside explosives (IEDs), one from small-arms fire. Two died in Baghdad; two in Baqubah; the embattled capital of Diyala Province, north of Baghdad, where civil war rages; one in Ramadi, the capital of al-Anbar Province, the heartland of the Sunni insurgency; and one in Taji, also in the “Sunni Triangle.” None had a rank higher than sergeant. The oldest was only 22; the youngest, 20. Another thing five of the six had in common was not coming from a major American city.

It’s no news that George W. Bush has been living in a bubble world created by his handlers, but it’s hard not to believe that his own personal “bubble” isn’t far more longstanding than that. The problem, of course, is that only Mr. Bush and a few neocon stragglers are left inside the theater still showing his Iraq War movie. The Iraqis aren’t there. The man who pushed the button to shoot that missile surely wasn’t; nor were Zarqawi’s Shiite victims; nor were the 120 or more Iraqis who died this Tuesday, including the 41 bodies found dumped throughout Baghdad and the five found scattered around Mosul; nor was Dustin Donica, the 3,000th American who died in the war; nor was Pfc. Alan R. Blohm from Kenai, Alaska. None of them could put up a “Wanted Dead or Alive” poster, cross-out the faces of the bad guys, land gloriously on an aircraft carrier, or dress up for war — and then go home “inspired.” They had the misfortune to be in a horrific reality into which a President, thoroughly in the dark, had sent them stumbling.

ANKARA, Jan 12 (Reuters) – Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan on Friday reaffirmed Turkey’s right to send troops into Iraq to crush Kurdish rebels there and chided U.S. officials for questioning it.

“The Turkish Republic will do whatever is necessary to combat the terrorists when the time comes, but it will not announce its plans in advance,” Erdogan told a news conference after a meeting of his ruling AK Party.

“We say we are ready to take concrete steps with the Iraqi government and we also say these steps must be taken now.”

In sharp language underscoring Turkish anxiety about the chaos in Iraq, Erdogan said it was wrong for Washington — “our supposed strategic ally” — to tell Turkey, with its historic and cultural ties in the region, to stay out of Iraq.

“We have a 350 km border with Iraq. We have historic relations … the United States is 10,000 km away from Iraq, and yet is it not intervening in Iraq’s internal affairs?” he said.

Turkish media say Erdogan has been irked by comments attributed to Washington’s envoy to Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, warning third countries not to interfere in Iraqi affairs.

On Jan. 4, eighteen families of the Woodlands complex in New Orleans assembled for a press conference to protest their eviction by Johnson Properties Group, LLC. Minutes before the conference was to convene, organizers received a call from Johnson Properties Group agreeing not to enforce the eviction until at least Jan. 8.

The conference continued as scheduled with tenants vocalizing their anger at being evicted from their homes at Woodlands. Although the tenants were relieved at the temporary stay in their eviction, their struggle is far from over. As Common Ground Legal Team member Soleil Rodrigue points out, there is still a real need to “make sure that everyone has a place to be and has a place to sleep with their families and their children and that no one will leave here and go into the streets”.

Once the evictions are finalized 16 families with close to 40 children will have nowhere to go unless alternative housing is secured for them. Two families were able to find housing prior to the Jan. 4 eviction date. Along with the loss of housing, families are also losing job-training and employment programs provided at the Woodlands, making it less likely that they will be able to afford housing once the evictions are finalized.

The Woodlands had been managed by Common Ground Collective as a community-based initiative to provide relief and training to those suffering following Hurricane Katrina. The complex, whose rents were the lowest in the city, was sold out from under Common Ground’s management to Johnson Properties Group, at which time the new owners aggressively pursued the eviction of current residents.

Katrina survivors face national housing crisis

The Woodlands tragedy is just a snapshot of the greater housing crisis facing the survivors of Katrina more than a year after the U.S. national and state governments stood by as they lost their homes and loved ones. Housing costs across New Orleans have escalated 70 to 300 percent over pre-Katrina rates.

Government promises of funding for housing aid and recovery have gone unfulfilled. A recent federal appeals court decision gave the Bush administration permission to shut down a post-Katrina program that provided housing payments to 4,200 survivors living in Texas.

Washington intelligence, military and foreign policy circles are abuzz today with speculation that the President, yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran.

The President may have started a new secret, informal war against Syria and Iran without the consent of Congress or any broad discussion with the country.

The bare outlines of that order may have appeared in President Bush’s Address to the Nation last night outlining his new course on Iraq:

Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenges. This begins with addressing Iran and Syria. These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops. We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We’ll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.

We’re also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region. We will expand intelligence-sharing and deploy Patriot air defense systems to reassure our friends and allies. We will work with the governments of Turkey and Iraq to help them resolve problems along their border. And we will work with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region.

Adding fuel to the speculation is that U.S. forces today raided an Iranian Consulate in Arbil, Iraq and detained five Iranian staff members. Given that Iran showed little deference to the political sanctity of the US Embassy in Tehran 29 years ago, it would be ironic for Iran to hyperventilate much about the raid.