Anytime Esquire writes extensively about politicians, it’s going to be pretty icky, and this Tom Junod piece which compares Obama’s governing style to “positive discipline” parenting (this makes us a bunch of bratty children) is pretty super-icky. (Esquire can never quite get it through its head that what politicians do, mostly, is order around mass murder, mass theft, and the spinning of resources and power to their buddies. They certainly aren’t alone in missing this point, though. But they really, really, really miss it. Politicians to them are always noble guardians of the best in the American spirit or some such sententious bullshit.)
Brian Doherty, “Jazz and Modern Liberalism: The Eerie Parallels”, Hit and Run, 2010-01-26
January 26, 2010
A message from Transport Canada
From the Rick Mercer Report.
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Charities to avoid when donating to help in Haiti
Ezra Levant warns about two particular charities that probably don’t deserve to get your donation for Haiti relief:
I’ve spotted two Haiti-oriented NGOs that readers should stay away from, for reasons of corruption. Simply put, not enough money given to these NGOs actually winds up helping Haitians — too much is spent on lavish luxuries for NGO staff and managers.
[. . .]
I love Wyclef Jean’s sound, but I wouldn’t give a cent to his charity. Jean has been ubiquitous these past weeks raising money for Haiti, and no doubt his tears are real. But financial records from Yele Haiti show that Jean has made sure the first person to get paid from Yele Haiti events was himself — including a staggering $100,000 fee for him to perform at one of his own events (that benefit was cancelled because of his demands) and other gigs that poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into companies he controlled. Here’s one where he took nearly $100,000 out of $150,000 raised. Even if Jean’s fading star could still fetch that on the open market (he can’t — here’s a contract showing he performs for a fraction of that), it’s still outrageous that people donating to Yele Haiti are told the money is going to help Haitians, when the poor Haitian benefiting the most is Wyclef himself.
Best to take Jean for who he is — a talented musician who has helped spread the Haitian creole sound around the world — but put your trust (and money) into accredited charities that take only a modest sum for administration and overhead. The Red Cross is probably your best bet.
I came to the same conclusion, and my donation went to the Canadian Red Cross.
Another corrupt NGO that donors should stay away from is Rights and Democracy (R&D), the ironically-named Canadian government-funded NGO that has recently been rocked by scandal for donating money to a Palestinian terrorist.
R&D has a Haiti program, but like Yele Haiti, an inordinate amount of money received by R&D is spent on their own jet-setting staff. Here’s a 22-page internal audit memo from just two years ago, for example, that looks into a raft of corruption allegations — and unfortunately finds many of them to be true. The review, conducted by the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Foreign Affairs found “weak internal controls” over money.
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When politicians get too close to the sharp end, militarily speaking
This is a good example of why it’s a bad idea to allow politicians to get too deeply involved in military acquisition and logistics:
The U.S. Army wants to use more precision “smart” weapons. To that end they have replaced unguided MLRS (227mm) rockets with a GPS guided one. There is now a very popular GPS guided 155mm artillery shell in use. Laser guided Hellfire missiles are widely used by helicopter gunships. But there’s still one unguided “dumb” weapon that the army just can’t seem to get away from; their unguided 70mm (2.75 inch) rockets. Back in 2003, the army planned to begin phasing out these rockets. But, instead, during the last five years, the army has purchased nearly a billion dollars worth of 70mm rockets. Not because they wanted to, but because the politicians from Vermont, where the rocket is manufactured, had enough clout to force the army buy over 100,000 70mm rockets they don’t want, won’t use, and will eventually have to dispose of. That last step will cost more money, unless they can find some foreign country that wants to buy them, cheap.
I guess the plant that produces them is in a district represented by a member of a powerful committee in Washington.
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CF improve medical evacuation by adding medical technicians to crews
Strategy Page reports on a change in crew composition for Canadian Forces medical evacuation helicopters:
Canadian forces have added a medical technician to the crews of their medical evacuation helicopters, joining a trend that has played a part in saving the lives of many troops wounded in combat, or injured in a combat zone. Previously, Canadian troops had relied on American, or other NATO, air evacuation services. But now Canada has suitable helicopters (CH-146s) for that work, and established an air ambulance service. Following a four year old recommendation by their own military planners, Canada trained medical technicians to work on the medevac choppers, and thus increase the chances that badly wounded soldiers would survive. Canada has also upgraded all of its combat medical care during its years of operations in Afghanistan. This is part of a trend that has been going on since World War II. It’s all about having more medical care available sooner.
The fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan has brought about a major change in how the United States deals with combat casualties. The result is that over 90 percent of the troops wounded, survive their wounds. That’s the highest rate in history. There are several reasons for this. The main one is that medics, and the troops themselves, are being trained to deliver more complex, and effective first aid more quickly. Military doctors now talk of the “platinum 10 minutes,” meaning that if you can keep the wounded soldier, especially the ones who are hurt real bad, alive for ten minutes, their chances of survival go way up. Medics have been equipped and trained to perform procedures previously done only by physicians, while troops are trained to do some procedures previously handled only by medics.
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“Involvement in counter-espionage cases induces in some a form of paranoia”
Gordon Corera briefly looks at the KGB penetration of Britain’s intelligence agencies:
For 30 years Stephen De Mowbray has maintained a self-imposed silence on a career that once took him to the heart of one of British intelligence’s most controversial episodes.
In 1979 he quit his job with the Secret Service (MI5) because he believed officials had failed to take seriously the claim that British intelligence had been further penetrated by its enemy — the Soviet Union’s KGB.
A number of spies had been discovered in the 1960s but De Mowbray believed there were more. But he found no-one at the top willing to listen.
“People thought I was either mad or bad because I was trying to do something,” he says of that time.
Three decades later, De Mowbray decided to tell his side of the story after reading the authorised history of the Security Service, published last October.
I’m currently reading Christopher Andrew’s Defence of the Realm and just got to the start of the relevant section the other night. Between De Mowbray’s concerns and the careful concealment of “The Laundry”1 in the coverage so far, it’s a wonder they managed to find enough that was considered safe to release to the public.
If you’re interested, MI5 discusses their policies on information disclosure here.
1 I kid, I kid. “The Laundry” is the fictional department of British intelligence in The Atrocity Archive and The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross.
