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August 15, 2008

Blowback from Bear Baiting

By Patrick Buchanan

Mikheil Saakashvili’s decision to use the opening of the Olympic Games to cover Georgia’s invasion of its breakaway province of South Ossetia must rank in stupidity with Gamal Abdel-Nasser’s decision to close the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships.

Nasser’s blunder cost him the Sinai in the Six-Day War. Saakashvili’s blunder probably means permanent loss of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

After shelling and attacking what he claims is his own country, killing scores of his own Ossetian citizens and sending tens of thousands fleeing into Russia, Saakashvili’s army was whipped back into Georgia in 48 hours.

Vladimir Putin took the opportunity to kick the Georgian army out of Abkhazia, as well, to bomb Tbilisi and to seize Gori, birthplace of Stalin.

Reveling in his status as an intimate of George Bush, Dick Cheney and John McCain, and America’s lone democratic ally in the Caucasus, Saakashvili thought he could get away with a lightning coup and present the world with a fait accompli.

Mikheil did not reckon on the rage or resolve of the Bear.

American charges of Russian aggression ring hollow. Georgia started this fight — Russia finished it. People who start wars don’t get to decide how and when they end.

Russia’s response was “disproportionate” and “brutal,” wailed Bush.

True. But did we not authorize Israel to bomb Lebanon for 35 days in response to a border skirmish where several Israel soldiers were killed and two captured? Was that not many times more “disproportionate”?

Russia has invaded a sovereign country, railed Bush. But did not the United States bomb Serbia for 78 days and invade to force it to surrender a province, Kosovo, to which Serbia had a far greater historic claim than Georgia had to Abkhazia or South Ossetia, both of which prefer Moscow to Tbilisi?

Is not Western hypocrisy astonishing?

When the Soviet Union broke into 15 nations, we celebrated. When Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo broke from Serbia, we rejoiced. Why, then, the indignation when two provinces, whose peoples are ethnically separate from Georgians and who fought for their independence, should succeed in breaking away?

Are secessions and the dissolution of nations laudable only when they advance the agenda of the neocons, many of who viscerally detest Russia?

That Putin took the occasion of Saakashvili’s provocative and stupid stunt to administer an extra dose of punishment is undeniable. But is not Russian anger understandable? For years the West has rubbed Russia’s nose in her Cold War defeat and treated her like Weimar Germany.

When Moscow pulled the Red Army out of Europe, closed its bases in Cuba, dissolved the evil empire, let the Soviet Union break up into 15 states, and sought friendship and alliance with the United States, what did we do?

American carpetbaggers colluded with Muscovite Scalawags to loot the Russian nation. Breaking a pledge to Mikhail Gorbachev, we moved our military alliance into Eastern Europe, then onto Russia’s doorstep. Six Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union are now NATO members.

Bush, Cheney and McCain have pushed to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. This would require the United States to go to war with Russia over Stalin’s birthplace and who has sovereignty over the Crimean Peninsula and Sebastopol, traditional home of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

When did these become U.S. vital interests, justifying war with Russia?

The United States unilaterally abrogated the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty because our technology was superior, then planned to site anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend against Iranian missiles, though Iran has no ICBMs and no atomic bombs. A Russian counter-offer to have us together put an anti-missile system in Azerbaijan was rejected out of hand.

We built a Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey to cut Russia out. Then we helped dump over regimes friendly to Moscow with democratic “revolutions” in Ukraine and Georgia, and tried to repeat it in Belarus.

Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them.

Imagine a world that never knew Ronald Reagan, where Europe had opted out of the Cold War after Moscow installed those SS-20 missiles east of the Elbe. And Europe had abandoned NATO, told us to go home and become subservient to Moscow.

How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?

For a decade, some of us have warned about the folly of getting into Russia’s space and getting into Russia’s face. The chickens of democratic imperialism have now come home to roost — in Tbilisi.

Video: http://www.eyeblast.tv/public/video.aspx?RsrcID=34016

FCC Commissioner: Return of Fairness Doctrine Could Control Web Content
McDowell warns reinstated powers could play in net neutrality debate, lead to government requiring balance on Web sites.

By Jeff Poor
Business & Media Institute
8/12/2008 5:37:12 PM

There’s a huge concern among conservative talk radio hosts that reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine would all-but destroy the industry due to equal time constraints. But speech limits might not stop at radio. They could even be extended to include the Internet and “government dictating content policy.”

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell raised that as a possibility after talking with bloggers at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. McDowell spoke about a recent FCC vote to bar Comcast from engaging in certain Internet practices – expanding the federal agency’s oversight of Internet networks.

The commissioner, a 2006 President Bush appointee, told the Business & Media Institute the Fairness Doctrine could be intertwined with the net neutrality battle. The result might end with the government regulating content on the Web, he warned. McDowell, who was against reprimanding Comcast, said the net neutrality effort could win the support of “a few isolated conservatives” who may not fully realize the long-term effects of government regulation.

“I think the fear is that somehow large corporations will censor their content, their points of view, right,” McDowell said. “I think the bigger concern for them should be if you have government dictating content policy, which by the way would have a big First Amendment problem.”

“Then, whoever is in charge of government is going to determine what is fair, under a so-called ‘Fairness Doctrine,’ which won’t be called that – it’ll be called something else,” McDowell said. “So, will Web sites, will bloggers have to give equal time or equal space on their Web site to opposing views rather than letting the marketplace of ideas determine that?”

McDowell told BMI the Fairness Doctrine isn’t currently on the FCC’s radar. But a new administration and Congress elected in 2008 might renew Fairness Doctrine efforts, but under another name.

“The Fairness Doctrine has not been raised at the FCC, but the importance of this election is in part – has something to do with that,” McDowell said. “So you know, this election, if it goes one way, we could see a re-imposition of the Fairness Doctrine. There is a discussion of it in Congress. I think it won’t be called the Fairness Doctrine by folks who are promoting it. I think it will be called something else and I think it’ll be intertwined into the net neutrality debate.”

A recent study by the Media Research Center’s Culture & Media Institute argues that the three main points in support of the Fairness Doctrine – scarcity of the media, corporate censorship of liberal viewpoints, and public interest – are myths.

State Republicans are trying to thwart a move by Ron Paul supporters to take over the party in St. Johns County and the state.

This week, the Republicans sent warning letters to 10 state chapters of the Republican Liberty Caucus — an organization within the party that promotes an agenda much the same as Ron Paul libertarians. The letter warned the caucus the law doesn’t allow them to use the word “Republican” in its name without permission.

Some local Republicans see the caucus as seeking control of their party and then opposing Sen. John McCain, who they see as too liberal. This is similar to what is playing out on the national stage, as mainstream Republicans are losing western support for McCain to libertarians.

This week, the caucus here vowed a strong court fight to keep its name.

“We’re Republicans, too,” state caucus chairwoman Lisa Bullion said. “We’re Republican activists within the party. We feel we’re operating under the law.”

William Westmiller of Thousand Oaks, Calif., chairman of the national Republican Liberty Caucus, said no other caucus has this problem.

“To my knowledge, this type of law only exists in Florida. Our strategy has always been to work in a civil and cooperative fashion within the Republican Party,” he said.

St. Johns County libertarians joined the Republican Party after Paul, a Texas congressman and former Libertarian Party candidate, polled only single digit percentages in nearly all states. They say the mainstream party has lost its conservative base.

Northeast Florida’s Republican Liberty Caucus president, Will Pitts, a St. Johns County resident and Jacksonville businessman, said taking away their name is “un-American. We have every right to use that name.”

Bob Veit, president of St. Johns County Republican Club, said, “They’re generally nice people, but also are zealots. They would marginalize other Republicans, moderate and conservative. This augurs no good for the party in the long term.”

Two caucus members — John Charles Stevens and Wynona Mayer — are running Aug. 26 for state committeeman and state committeewoman, seeking to oust mainstream incumbents Jon Woodard and Becky Reichenberg.

Veit said Woodard and Reichenberg had “dedicated themselves to victory in November for the Republican slate.”

State committee seats make and change Republican strategy. The caucus leadership wants to inch ahead and get more members elected to such posts.

The libertarian agenda now assumed by the caucus seems plucked directly from an earlier Republican playbook.

It seeks more individual liberty, minimal government intrusion, fiscal responsibility, opposition to welfare and entitlements, no foreign aid, lower taxes, state sovereignty, elimination of federal agencies duplicated at the state level, less regulation and a strong national defense with fewer military bases abroad.

Many Republicans believe those aims are the heart of their party.

But Veit said he doesn’t like their tactics, and mainstream Republicans have filed grievances to Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer, reporting anti-Republican comments by caucus members.

Stevens reportedly said “bashing the (Republican) party did nothing to advance (our) agenda,” and added that “a chunk of ‘the base’ (of Republican voters) can be turned our way.”

He also discussed obstacles the caucus faced if it tried to take over the Democratic Party or third parties.

Veit said said Stevens and Mayer had sworn to support McCain.

“They obviously do not take their oath seriously because they both are actively trying to torpedo McCain’s candidacy as evidenced by their stated intentions to demonstrate against McCain at the National Convention in Minneapolis. I want Republicans to know what’s happening.”

Bullion said vocal dissenters like Stevens don’t speak for the caucus. Stevens later said many of the comments attributed to him were taken out of context.

“We’re a little more expressive and passionate (than other party members), kind of in your face,” Stevens said. “I don’t believe (the state party) has legal grounds (to prevail in a lawsuit).”

Still, some local Republicans don’t want a divided party. For example, Joe Moody of Ponte Vedra Beach, a lifelong Republican voter, doesn’t belong to the caucus and hadn’t met Veit.

“(But) if he’s a true conservative Republican, I will support him with vigor. If he is not, I won’t. If the Republican Party would move back to its base, it would be more cohesive and more effective getting Republicans out to vote.”

Another Republican voter, Robert Champion, president of the Ponte Vedra Beach Republican Club and a member of the St. Johns County Republican Executive Committee, said the caucus has good ideas, one being low taxes.

“(But) I think their approach is wrong,” Champion said. “They might get a victory for (themselves) at the cost of the election. John McCain is much more of a Republican than Barack Obama. They’d be better off getting behind McCain. They could be an election spoiler.”

Crusades Versus Caution

By Thomas Sowell

Autism is a devastating condition, both for those who have it and for their parents. At this point, its causes are unknown and if there is any cure for it, that is unknown as well.

There are many ways of coping with tragedies. One of the less promising, and often dangerous, ways is to launch a crusade.

Crusades may be emotionally satisfying, politically popular and welcomed by the media. But crusaders are not known for caution, for weighing evidence or for counting the costs, which may extend well beyond the cost in money.

There have already been many casualties in the crusade against autism, and there may be far more if recent recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics are carried out to have every child tested for autism twice by age two.

Think about it: How many people are qualified to diagnose autism? Enough to test every child in America? Not bloody likely.

Professor Stephen Camarata of Vanderbilt University has tested and treated children with autism for more than 20 years.

“While it is relatively easy to identify a five year old as autistic,” according to Professor Camarata, “it is much more difficult to reliably diagnose a preschooler or toddler.”

The word “reliably” is crucial. Anybody can unreliably diagnose autism, just as anybody can unreliably predict the weather or the stock market.

The consequences of unreliable diagnoses of autism can be traumatic for parents and children alike.

As a result of organizing a group of parents of late-talking children back in 1993, I encountered many stories of emotional devastation that these parents went through because their children were diagnosed as autistic — diagnoses which the passing years have shown to be false more often than not.

As a result of writing books about these parents and children — the most recent being “The Einstein Syndrome” — I have heard from more than a hundred other parents with very similar stories.

Professor Camarata at Vanderbilt has a far larger group of parents of late-talking children, since he specializes in studying and treating speech disorders, and he has likewise found numerous cases of false diagnoses of autism among children who are late in beginning to talk.

More is involved than the needless emotional stresses of the parents. Many of the treatments inflicted on children diagnosed as autistic would be called child abuse if they were not done as medical procedures, and they can set back or distort a child’s development.

Once the “autistic” label has been put on a child, it can follow him and her into schools and beyond, causing that child to be treated differently by teachers, nurses and others.

Too many people refuse to reconsider any evidence contrary to the label, however blatant that evidence becomes or however much that evidence increases over the years.

The initial evidence on which a diagnosis of autism was based may be nothing more than a checklist of characteristics of autistic children, often administered by someone with nothing more to go on than that checklist.

The fundamental problem is that many items on such a checklist can apply to many children who are not autistic. A study of gifted children, for example, found many of them showing the kinds of characteristics found on checklists for autism.

According to Professor Camarata, “because there are no reliable biomedical markers for autism, diagnosis must rely on subjective rating scales making it difficult if not impossible to conduct accurate screening in toddlers or preschoolers.”

But it is precisely the checklist approach that is being urged by those who are crusading for every child to be diagnosed for autism before age two.

Like most crusaders, they seem unwilling to consider the possibility of errors, much less the consequences of those errors.

The very definition of autism has been expanded in recent years to include what is called “the autism spectrum.” What this means, among other things, is that there is now far more wiggle room for those whose diagnoses have proved to be wrong, who refuse to admit it, and who are now even more unaccountable than ever.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/11/crusades_versus_caution.html

The recently launched crusade to have every child tested for autism before the age of two has as its reason an opportunity for “early intervention” to treat the condition.

Dr. Scott Myers, a pediatrician, has been quoted by Reuters news service as saying that autistic children who get earlier treatment “do better in the long run.”

That may be true if the children are genuinely autistic. But the dangers of false diagnoses of toddlers and preschoolers have been pointed out by Professor Stephen Camarata of Vanderbilt University, who has tested and treated children with autism for more than 20 years and has encountered many cases of inaccurate diagnoses.

A prudent trade-off, as distinguished from a crusade, would weigh the dangers of false diagnoses against the benefits of “early intervention.”

There is already considerable evidence of false diagnoses of preschool children as autistic, and the treatments inflicted on them can be abusive, with incalculable negative effects on their development.

What about the positive effects of “early intervention”?

According to Professor Camarata, those children “with true autism” are “very difficult to treat and may never say ‘mommy’ or learn to take care of themselves without Herculean efforts by their parents and teachers.”

The limitations of what can be achieved with even early intervention mean that there can be real heartbreak, whether a toddler or preschooler is either falsely or correctly diagnosed as being autistic.

Much has been made of statistics showing a sharp increase in diagnoses of autism in recent years.

What has gotten much less attention is the changing definition of autism, which raises the question whether there has been an actual change in the real world or simply a change in the way words are used when collecting statistics.

People today are often spoken of as being “on the autistic spectrum,” rather than as having autism.

While there are some conditions which are much like autism, there are other conditions, such as having a very high IQ or simply being late in talking, which often include characteristics listed on checklists for autism. These are open invitations to false diagnoses.

We would see the dangers immediately if people who wear glasses were included on “the blindness spectrum” or people with harmless moles were included on “the cancer spectrum.”

Blindness, cancer and autism are all too serious — indeed, catastrophic — to use loose definitions that fudge the difference between accurate and inaccurate diagnoses.

Loose definitions of autism produce bigger and more newsworthy statistics, which in turn can attract more children into existing programs and attract more money from the government, foundations and other sources to support those programs.

Many parents have told me that they have been urged to let their children be labeled autistic, or on the autistic spectrum, in order to get money for speech therapy or other conditions from grants that are available to deal with autism.

Professor Camarata points out that the “less precise ‘autism spectrum’” label “has had the unintended consequence of diluting resources, research and services to those children and families who most need the support” — that is, families whose children suffer from genuine autism.

Loose definitions also promote the illusion of “cures” for autism, since most late-talking children who were never autistic in the first place “will be miraculously ‘cured’ because most late talkers who are otherwise unimpaired learn to talk with little or no treatment,” according to Professor Camarata.

Parents whose children are late in talking or have other troubling problems would do well to seek diagnoses from the most highly qualified professionals they can find — but not rely on the facile checklists being promoted in the current crusade for universal diagnosis of infants and toddlers for autism, without facing the question whether or not there are enough people qualified to make such diagnoses.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/11/14/crusades_versus_caution_part_ii

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2007/11/14/crusades_versus_caution_part_ii?page=2

Oh, no big-Pharma isn’t poisoning you, keep taking all those drugs they say you need.