The future of the middle east

September 9th, 2014

The rise of ISIS seems to have caught the attention of hitherto oblivious segments of the US public. Cutting off the heads of western journalists seems to do that. What we are seeing is the total collapse of civilization in that part of the world.

That is what civilizational decline looks like in real time. The roots of the crisis were visible four years ago before the so-called Arab Spring beguiled the foreign policy wonks. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Syrian farmers already were living in tent camps around Syrian cities before the Syrian civil war began in April 2011. Israeli analysts knew this. In March 2011 Paul Rivlin of Tel Aviv University released a study of the collapse of Syrian agriculture, widely cited in Arab media but unmentioned in the English language press (except my essay on the topic).

The Syrian food crisis had a lot to do with the collapse of Syria.

In response to the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings, President Assad reduced taxes on oil and sugar, and cut import tariffs on basic foodstuffs. This action had unintended consequences. A blogger on the Syrian website sy-weather.com reports, “I spent fifteen days on formalities to reduce customs duties on some basic food items, but I have not seen a glimmer of hope on the horizon. This was supposed to reduce the prices of the targeted goods. On the contrary, a liter of oil that sold for 65 Syrian pounds [US$1.38] now sells for 85 pounds.” That’s an increase of 30% over the month. Other bloggers report that the prices of basic foodstuffs have risen by 25% to 30%.

This has resulted in the presence of 14 million refugees with no hope of relief.

When I wrote in 2011 that Islam was dying, this was precisely what I forecast. You can’t unscramble this egg. The international organizations, Bill Clinton, George Soros and other people of that ilk will draw up plans, propose funding, hold conferences and publish studies, to no avail. The raw despair of millions of people ripped out of the cocoon of traditional society, bereft of ties of kinship and custom, will feed the meatgrinder. Terrorist organizations that were hitherto less flamboyant (“moderate” is a misdesignation), e.g. the Muslim Brotherhood (and its Palestine branch Hamas), will compete with the caliphate for the loyalties of enraged young people. The delusion about Muslim democracy that afflicted utopians of both parties is now inoperative. War will end when the pool of prospective fighters has been exhausted.

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Maynard Brandsma

September 2nd, 2014

I was just thinking tonight about an amazing character I knew years ago. In 1972, I moved to Mission Viejo and began a surgical practice at Mission Hospital, now known as Mission Medical Center. When I arrived in December of 1972, I met an internist who had an amazing career and personal history. He was born in Holland and during World War II was supposedly a fighter pilot in the Dutch Air Force in what is now Indonesia. At the time it was the Dutch East Indies. He was also a physician at the time and was chief of staff at the hospital in Indonesia where another physician friend, Sergei Lockareff was born.

Maynard practiced as a physician in Santa Monica and was the personal physician for a number of movie stars, including Humphrey Bogart, Greer Garson and Carole Landis.

Life seemed very good indeed. But Bogie came home one day and told me that he’d run into an old co-star, Greer Garson.
Over lunch, she’d announced that she didn’t like the sound of his cough, and dragged him to see her doctor, Maynard Brandsma, at the Beverly Hills Clinic.

I was so used to Bogie’s cough that I never paid too much attention. He’d been off his food a little, but that wasn’t unusual. I should have realised at once that the mere fact that he’d consented to go with Greer to a doctor was indicative of something serious. Any time I’d ever mentioned a doctor to him, Bogie bristled.

Maynard discovered Bogart’s esophageal cancer and cared for him during that illness. Another physician friend, Burt Meyer, was the surgeon who operated on Bogart and who later said that the cancer was so small that he would never operate on another. If he couldn’t cure that one, there was none he could cure. Burt operated on John Wayne for his lung cancer with better luck.

Maynard was the physician who examined and treated the wife of David Niven for her fatal head injury, suffered when she fell down a flight of stairs in the dark at a Hollywood party.

When I came to Mission, Maynard had been there for several years. He had moved to Mission Viejo after marrying his second wife Mickie. He was active in practice and was kind of intimidating to a new surgeon. By that time, he was 65 years old but still very active. I remember that he tried to get me to join the Coto de Caza gun club, which was abruptly closed by the developer in 1991. At the time that Maynard was a member there was good quail shooting there but I couldn’t afford it.

He was quite the character. One night his telephone did not answer and the hospital asked the sheriffs to go to his house and let him know it was pout of order and they were trying to reach him. They knocked on his door at 3 AM and he came to the door with a .45 automatic held behind his back. Things were far less tense with the police in those days and they thought nothing of it.

The hospital was quite small at the time and Maynard was seeking a second career and life with his new wife. His career at St John’s Hospital in Santa Monica was spectacular in that he had been chief of staff and had a Hollywood practice, as well. One of his patients was John Ford and he made the diagnosis of Ford’s colon cancer that ultimately killed him.

Maynard was a good physician and continued to practice for a number of years after my arrival. Eventually, he and Mickie moved away and they are buried in Montana. He was a very colorful character and I remember him fondly.

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Is Britain beginning the revolution we need ?

August 30th, 2014

A “Seismic Shock is coming to the British political system.

Douglas Carswell, a prominent Conservative MP has announced he is switching to UKIP. a new political party that has been attacked as “racist” and has been attracting a larger constituency from the British traditional voters.

A new political party has appeared in Britain called UK Independent Party. It has been called racist and a number of other things that might sound familiar to Tea Party members here.

For example:

News reports about the rising primary school population in England fail to mention the ‘elephant in the room’, said MEP Paul Nuttall.

“It is accepted that primary schools have increasing numbers of pupils, which causes all manner of problems, but what is frequently not referred to is why we have such a boom in numbers.

“And the answer is unlimited immigration into this country. It hits some areas harder than others but there cannot be many primary schools in the country which have not been affected at all,” said Mr Nuttall, UKIP Education spokesman.

Why is this controversial ? In the 1990s, the Labour Party opened the floodgates of immigration from Pakistan. The Conservatives have mentioned reducing this but have done little about it.

Steven Woolfe, UKIP Migration spokesman, attacks Conservatives for ‘lying to electorate’ on promises to cut migration, adding that ‘it is no wonder their own MPs are losing faith in them and they are haemorrhaging support to UKIP.’

“These shocking figures today show that the Government does not have a handle on immigration. The Conservative Party promised to cut net migration to tens of thousands and yet it has shot up by a staggering 68,000 in just one year. It is quite simple. They lie to the electorate. They lie to try to keep votes. Well they are being found out.

This is one reason why UKIP is hated. For example, of the 1400 young girls made sex slaves by “Asian” men, several were taken from foster parents because they had voted for UKIP.

A couple had their three foster children taken away by a council on the grounds that their membership of the UK Independence Party meant that they supported “racist” policies. The husband and wife, who have been fostering for nearly seven years, said they were made to feel like criminals when a social worker told them that their views on immigration made them unsuitable carers.

Sounds like the Tea Party to me.

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Now we know why Foley wasn’t rescued.

August 25th, 2014

The Delta Force raid on the Syrian ISIS camp failed to rescue any hostages. They had been moved. Now we know why.

Anthony Shaffer, a former lieutenant-colonel in US military intelligence who worked on covert operations, said: “I’m told it was almost a 30-day delay from when they said they wanted to go to when he finally gave the green light. They were ready to go in June to grab the guy [Foley] and they weren’t permitted.”

This is a reflex reaction of Obama to any call for action. He delays and thinks and worries about the politics. It has been reported that Obama delayed the bin Laden raid three times.

President Barack Obama — at the urging of senior adviser Valerie Jarrett — canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden three times before finally approving the May 2, 2011, Navy SEAL mission, according to a book scheduled to be released next month.

In “Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors who Decide for Him,” Richard Miniter writes that Obama canceled the mission in January 2011, again in February, and a third time in March, The Daily Caller reports

It isn’t just the conservative press but Hillary Clinton even says so.

Through weeks of sometimes heated White House debate in 2011, Clinton was alone among the president’s topmost cabinet officers to back it. Vice President Biden, a potential political rival for Clinton in 2016, opposed it. So did then-Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

The optics and the political fallout were most of his concerns. In the case of Captain Phillips of the ship hijacked by Somali pirates, reports have circulated that Obama delayed the SEALS raid several times as he agonized over the decision.

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Ferguson MO plus one week.

August 20th, 2014

We are starting to see a pattern emerging in the Missouri town of Ferguson. First, it is a suburb of St Louis which has seen a shift in racial makeup of residents the past ten years. The pattern has changed rapidly.

You can see in the map at the top that this was not specific to Ferguson. The entire area northwest of the city of St. Louis became more heavily black; Ferguson was simply part of that.

Which brings us to the police. As many outlets have noted, there has been a consistent discrepancy between the extent to which whites and blacks have been arrested by the Ferguson Police Department.

Why did the town change more rapidly than the police in racial composition ?

One possible explanation.

So what’s happening here? The answer, after digging into some census data, seems to be massive demographic change. In 1990, the city of Ferguson had 5,589 black citizens and 16,454 white citizens, making it about three-quarters white. By 2000, blacks were a slim majority of the population. And as of 2010, they made up 69 percent of the city, and it seems likely that trajectory has continued over the last four years. This may be part of the “Great Inversion” that seems to be taking place in St. Louis; as the white population begins to reverse its 1950s-era migration to the suburbs, the black population is migrating out toward the suburbs.

There may also be a role for the police union, which seems to be ignored.

The Missouri state Fraternal Order of Police also did not respond.

They are there but they are not talking. Probably wise.

The Missouri governor, a Democrat, has now called for “Vigorous Prosecution” of the officer.

The facts don’t matter, let’s get on with the hanging. The governor was MIA the first week after the shooting but now must be determined to get in front and lead the black voters in their lynch mob.

There may be a few problems with the facts of the case.

Now comes a tweet from Christine Byers of the St. Louis Post Dispatch that “more than a dozen witnesses have corroborated cop’s version of events in shooting.”

Oh Oh.

if more than a dozen witnesses back Wilson’s version, will Eric Holder and his team of federal investigators (more than 50 of them, according to Megyn Kelly) accept that version and conclude that Wilson committed no crime? Or will they try to hector witnesses into changing their story and/or try to find a way charge Wilson in spite of what these witnesses say?

The LAPD officers accused of “violating Rodney King’s Civil Rights” had just such a double jeopardy trial and conviction. I was convinced at the time and have not changed my opinion that Stacey Koon saved Rodney King from being shot and killed by CHP officer Melanie Singer who had chased King’s car and pulled him over after which he taunted her and refused to obey commends.

When Sergeant Koon and his officers arrived, Singer had her gun out and was ready to shoot King. At the trial, she actually testified against the other officers.

After the trial and conviction (at the second trial) Koon served time in prison and then was harassed after his release.

In November 1995, a gunman entered the halfway house and demanded to know where Koon was. Koon was on a holiday pass at the time. The gunman took three hostages, one of whom he later shot and killed before he was shot and killed himself.[6]

Singer retired on stress disability after the second trial. Some further discussion here.

I don’t see this ending well and suspect we may see another railroad job by the feds, just as Bill Clinton’s DoJ railroaded the Rodney King cops into prison.

As for the rioting, I don’t care if the blacks burn down the entire town. Someday they might begin to see that they need to take care of their own lives if they want to improve them.

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Medicine is coming to be a government benefit.

August 3rd, 2014

Obamacare is having serious trouble as I have discussed. The success stories, like California, are an example of what I have called Medicaid for All.

“It’s a total contradiction in terms to spend your public time castigating Medicaid as something that never should have been expanded for poor people and as a broken, problem-riddled system, and then turn around and complain about the length of time to enroll people,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a member of the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, which advises Congress.

Most of the new enrollees are Medicaid members and those enrolled in “private insurance” learn that they have severely restricted choice of doctor or hospital.

Now we have a new development.

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What next for health reform?

July 26th, 2014

It looks to me that the Supreme Court will have little justification for continuing the Obamacare program as it exists. The Halbig decision should kill it off. It is clear that the IRS subsidies to federal exchange subscribers are illegal.

The only statement anyone has found in the legislative history that addresses this point comes from the Act’s lead author, who affirmed that Congress did intend to withhold tax credits in federal Exchanges. During a September 23, 2009, mark-up of his bill, which ultimately became the PPACA, Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) refused to consider a Republican amendment regarding medical malpractice on the grounds it fell outside the Committee’s jurisdiction. Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) protested, asking how Baucus’ bill could do other things that lie outside the Committee’s jurisdiction, like direct states to create Exchanges. Baucus responded the bill creates tax credits, which are within its jurisdiction, and makes eligibility for those tax credits conditional on states creating Exchanges. Conditional necessarily means that Baucus intended to withhold tax credits in states that did not create their own Exchanges.

I just don’t see how the Court can ignore that history. The political left has been on a rant about Congressional intent since the decision was announced.

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An Update on Medical Reform

July 21st, 2014

Cash medical practice or, in the phrase favored by leftists critics, “Concierge Medicine,” seems to be growing.

Becker is shifting to a new style of practice, sometimes called concierge or retainer medicine. With the help of a company that has been helping physicians make such shifts for over 13 years, he will cease caring for a total of 2,500 patients and instead cut back to about 600. These patients will pay an annual fee of $1,650. In exchange, they will receive a two-hour annual visit with a complete physical exam, same-day appointments, 24-hour physician phone access, and personalized, web-based resources to promote wellness.

The article suggest that all these doctors choosing to drop insurance and Medicare are primary care. Many are but I know orthopedists and even general surgeons who are dropping all insurance.

The concierge model of practice is growing, and it is estimated that more than 4,000 U.S. physicians have adopted some variation of it. Most are general internists, with family practitioners second. It is attractive to physicians because they are relieved of much of the pressure to move patients through quickly, and they can devote more time to prevention and wellness.

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Is Israel winning the Global War on Terror for us ?

July 12th, 2014

Update: From Instapundit

UPDATE: Question: Come a real confrontation with Obama — which seems possible — could the Israelis flip and ally with Putin? The Soviets backed the Israelis pre-1967, and right now Putin’s siding with Assad against the Islamists. Israel would be a game-changing ally for Russia in the Middle East, especially with all the traditional Arab powers looking shaky — not only in terms of military assets, but more significantly in terms of intelligence assets.

Interesting as a game changing gambit although unlikely. Not even Obama is that stupid.

Hamas has attacked Israel, first with the kidnapping of three teenagers, now with rockets aimed, for example, at Tel Aviv and its airport.

GAZA: Islamist Hamas’ armed wing has warned airlines that it intends to target Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport with its rockets from Gaza and has told them not to fly there, a statement by the group said Friday.

So far, Israel’s Iron Dome antimissile system has been successful in intercepting those that are a risk to populated places.

Israel’s astonishingly effective Iron Dome air defense has prevented Hamas from killing Israeli Jews and spreading terror in the civilian population. Ironically, though, the better Iron Dome works, the less sympathy the rest of the world has for a nation that remains under rocket attack.

That sentiment is to be expected as even the Presbyterian Church is anti-Isreal.

David Goldman, who has been writing as “Spengler” for years, reports on the situation in Israel.

the thumbnail version is that Hamas is making a demonstration out of weakness. Money is tight, 44,000 Gaza civil servants haven’t been paid for weeks, and the IDF did significant damage to its infrastructure on the West Bank after the kidnapping-murder of the three yeshiva boys. Netanyahu will look indecisive and confused, because he has to deal with an openly hostile U.S. administration on one side and his nationalist camp on the other. Time, though, is on Israel’s side: economically, demographically, strategically. The proportion of Jewish births continues to soar. The fruits of a decade of venture capital investing are ripening into high-valuation companies. And the Arab world is disintegrating all around Israel’s borders.

Israel has been in mortal danger for 50 years. They have survived and thrived. The Arab countries are collapsing into chaos. Iran is still a threat but its demographic future is grim.

There will be no Intifada on the West Bank: the Palestinian Arabs are older, more resigned and less inclined to destroy their livelihoods than in 2000. Syria and Iraq continue to disintegrate, Lebanon is inundated with Syrian Sunni refugees (weakening Hezbollah’s relative position), and Jordan is looking to Israel to protect it against ISIS. Egypt is busy trying to survive economically.

Israel is becoming a huge economic success under Netanyahu. Just think of our future had we elected his friend, Mitt Romney.

Obama promised a “pivot to Asia” but Israel may in fact be the one doing the pivot, leaving us in the dreary Socialist past.

Richard Fernandez notes that in the view of the world press and elites being rich makes you “white.” Everybody knows that white people, even if they are Asian like John Derbyshire’s Eurasian children, are the root of all evil.

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New developments at the hospital where I used to practice.

June 27th, 2014

When I moved to Orange County in 1972, I joined a friend from my surgery residency in practice at a new hospital that had opened a year before. It was called “Mission Community Hospital,” and was owned by a group of doctors with one of the partners an owner of the new development of Mission Viejo. His name was Richard O’Neill and his family had developed Mission Viejo from part of their huge ranch.

The hospital was small with 110 beds total and the staff was made up of young doctors who had recently finished their training like me. The owners were mostly older doctors and practiced in another area of the county. Some of them we would not have allowed on the staff if they had applied. They largely left us alone and over a period of a few years we developed what we thought was the best hospital in Orange County.

Mission Hospital in 1975.

Mission Hospital in 1975.

This is what the hospital looked like in 1975. The swallows used to nest in that entry area. To the right of the entry, there was a doctors’ parking lot and, for a while, the hospital paid a kid to wash our cars. Tom and I always tipped him extra. The food in the doctors’ dining room was free and good and I got a bit pudgy. The hospital went to considerable trouble to make it friendly to doctors and we responded.

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