Investors are hard to satisfy !!

EBay Profit Up, Shares Fall on Outlook
Wed Jul 21, 2004 08:43 PM ET

By Michael Kahn

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Online marketplace eBay Inc. on Wednesday posted a quarterly profit that more than doubled on growth in international operations, but offered a full-year forecast below bullish Wall Street expectations, sending its shares down 5 percent in after-hours trade.

Results for the June quarter slightly topped average analysts' estimates, but investors reacted instead to the cautious forecast and eBay's view that sales of merchandise on its Web site were settling into a seasonal pattern typical of mature retailers.

Lofty growth expectations have driven eBay's shares to a multiple of 65 times forecast 2004 earnings -- almost four times the average for the S&P 500 index -- leaving stock in the Internet bellwether vulnerable to a sell-off on any disappointment , analysts said.

"We thought the shares would trade down on an in-line quarter," said Mark Mahaney, an analyst with American Technology Research, who owns no eBay shares. "The aftermarket action doesn't surprise us.

Analysts also took note when eBay Chief Executive Meg Whitman underscored a seasonal factor in its quarterly results. "There is no question that seasonal trends are becoming more pronounced as eBay becomes more mainstream," Whitman told an investor conference call. "In light of this ... seasonal shift, our results were strong and consistent with our business."

For the quarter, the San Jose, California-based company posted net income of $190.4 million, or 28 cents per share, compared with $91.9 million, or 14 cents per share a year earlier.

Excluding items, eBay's profit rose to $197.7 million, or 29 cents per share. On that basis, Wall Street analysts had expected the company to post net income of 27 cents per share, on average, on revenue of $769.4 million, according to Reuters Estimates.

U.S. transaction revenues fell about 2 percent to $319.1 million from the first quarter even though they were up on a year-over-year basis.

VALUATION IN QUESTION

David Garrity, an analyst at Caris & Company, said investors may have been spooked by eBay's reference to seasonal factors. "If that is the language the company is using to describe itself, the subtext to that message is maybe the valuation should be lower, more in line with everyday companies," said Garrity, who owns no eBay shares.

EBay forecast full-year 2004 earnings, excluding certain items, as high as $1.17 per share, 4 cents higher than its most recent forecast, but just below the average per-share analyst forecast of $1.18. The company -- which tends to be conservative in its estimates -- also raised its 2004 revenue outlook by $35 million to $3.19 billion, shy of the average estimate of $3.21 billion.

Ebay is an online bazaar where sellers ranging from hobbyists to large retailers like Sears, Roebuck and Co. (S.N: Quote, Profile, Research) offer their wares via auctions or newer fixed-price sales. For the second quarter, eBay said total revenue rose to $773.4 million from $509.3 million while international transaction revenue increased 76 percent to $273.4 million. The total value of sold goods rose to $8 billion, eBay said.

Shares in eBay have fallen steadily since late June but are still up about 50 percent from the low of just under $51 in November last year. EBay shares dropped 5 percent to $72.80 in after-hours trading on INET from a close of $76.60

Note: Recapping: Goods Sold in Quarter = $8 Billion, Total Revenue in Quarter = $770 Million, Profit = $197 Million, or for every dollar sold on eBay their profit is 2.5%, but they took in revenue equal to 9.6% of every dollar sold. As a Seller on eBay, that echos my experience: ie, for every dollar I sell on eBay their direct fees to my account amount to roughly 10% of my sales. My question is: What did they do with the other almost $600 Million during the quarter? Legal representation? Acquisitions? Infrastructure?

For comparison, in a recent quarter Wal-Mart Stores had sales of $71 Billion, Revenue of $2.5 Billion, and Profit of $757 Million. Where eBay makes 2.5% profit on what they "sell", Wal-Mart makes 1.1% However, these are both chump-change to Microsoft's $2 Billion in Operating Income from $10 Billion in Revenue for the Quarter. Excluding litigation, fines, and expensed stock options, and applying the general format to eBay and Wal-Mart results, your friends at Microsoft make a profit of close to 30% on sales.

How much did each company pay in Federal Corporate Tax last year?
- posted by Richard @ 9:36 PM

 

The Continuing Absurdity !!

Remove Wall, Israel Is Told by the U.N.
By WARREN HOGE
NY Times
Published: July 21, 2004

UNITED NATIONS, July 20 - The General Assembly approved a resolution overwhelmingly on Tuesday evening demanding that Israel obey a World Court ruling that it abandon and dismantle its separation barrier on the West Bank and pay compensation to Palestinians affected by its construction.

The vote was 150 in favor and 6 against - including the United States, with 10 abstentions
Voting against the resolution with the United States and Israel were Australia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau. Abstaining were Cameroon, Canada, El Salvador, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Uganda, Uruguay and Vanuatu.

Last-minute amendments accepted by the measure's Arab sponsors during a hastily called two-hour recess succeeded in gaining the support of all 25 members of the European Union and more than 30 other nations that had abstained the last time the matter came before the assembly. In that vote - on Dec. 8, 2003, on a resolution that asked the international court to rule on the barrier's legality - there were 74 abstentions, with 90 votes in favor and 8 against.

"Thank God that the fate of Israel and of the Jewish people is not decided in this hall," Israel's ambassador, Dan Gillerman, told the delegates after Tuesday night's vote was posted on the electronic board next to the dais.

Nasser al-Kidwa, the Palestinian observer to the United Nations, hailed the outcome as "magnificent," saying: "The debate is completed. It is now time for implementation and compliance, and at a later stage for additional measures."

Resolutions from the 191-member General Assembly are nonbinding and largely symbolic, unlike those passed by the 15-member Security Council. Israel said in advance that the vote would not alter its resolve to continue building the barrier.

James B. Cunningham, the deputy American ambassador, said the United States voted against the measure because it was "unbalanced" and erred in assigning a problem to the courts that rightly should be solved through political negotiations.

"The resolution diverts attention from where it should be - on the practical efforts to move the parties towards realization of the ultimate goal of two states living side by side in peace and security," he said.

Mr. al-Kidwa said before the vote that he would now push for a binding Security Council resolution, even though such a move would draw an American veto. The United States vetoed a Security Council resolution last October condemning the barrier.

"The threat of veto will not thwart us, and all others who respect and uphold international law," Mr. al-Kidwa during the debate.

The vote had been postponed twice in an effort to give Arab and European Union diplomats time to reach agreement on language that would persuade European countries to change their stance of abstaining on such measures.

After the two-hour break this evening, two paragraphs were added to the resolution that satisfied European demands.

The first called on the Palestinian Authority "to undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks" and on the Israelis "to take no action undermining trust, including deputations and attacks on civilians and extra judicial killings."

The second reaffirmed "that all states have the right and duty to take action in conformity with international law and international humanitarian law to counter deadly acts of violence against the civilian population in order to protect the lives of their citizens."

Mr. Gillerman disparaged these phrases as "grudging references to terrorism" and "carefully crafted, often constructively ambiguous phrases." He said adopting the resolution was "pandering to an agenda that seeks to focus on the response to terrorism but to marginalize the gravity of terrorism itself."

Under the resolution, the assembly demanded that Israel act on the decision on July 9 by the International Court of Justice in the Hague that the barrier built on West Bank land to shield Israeli settlements was illegal and should be torn down. It also requested the secretary general to compile a register of damages to be used in calculating reparations.

The barrier includes electronic fencing, concrete and wire walls and trenches and guard towers, all of which Israel asserts is needed to ward off Palestinian attackers and suicide bombers. It is, Israel says, a necessary defensive response to the Palestinian leadership's failure to hold back the attackers.

In the debate on Friday, Mr. Gillerman called the barrier "the Arafat fence," saying it was made necessary by the intifada launched four years ago against Israel by the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat. In a news conference, Mr. Gillerman showed charts portraying a 90 percent decline in successful terror attacks, a 70 percent reduction in people killed and an 85 percent decline in people wounded in areas where the barrier has been completed.

In an earlier blow to the barrier, the Israeli Supreme Court ordered the army to change the route of the barrier in a 20-mile stretch near Jerusalem, saying it was causing too much hardship on the local Palestinian population.

The American ambassador, John C. Danforth, said the United States opposed both the resolution and the court's decision because they "point away from a political solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Saying that a solution must be balanced, Mr. Danforth said the resolution was "wholly one-sided."

"It does not mention the threat terrorists pose to Israel," he said. "It follows a long line of one-sided resolutions adopted by the General Assembly, none of which has made any contribution to peace in the Middle East."

Note: Mr. Danforth is being disingenious using that phrasing, since the representatives of over 90% of the world's population voted for the resolution demanding the dismantling of the separation wall. These same representatives have stated many times over the past years that one of the major reasons no progress has been made in the Israel - Palestinian conflict is due to America's dogmatic support for Israel, in spite of international law, up to an including wanton exercise of it's veto power in the Security Council every time meaningful action is proposed by the international community.

Some of the same actors who vilified previous American Administrations for their support of right-wing dictators, left-wing socialists, religious fundamentalists, and the actions of non-conformists seem to have no problem with unregulated support for Israel. They argue that Israel is a democracy which shares religious traditions with America and thus demands our support. But what do these same apologists say to the European Community, to India, and the NATO Alliance Countries, most of which are also democracies? Ah yes...they don't have that coveted religious connection do they.

In less than a hundred years, when the Middle East consists of several hundred million people of Non Judeo-Christian heritage whose leaders do not have oil money, or anything else of international value to barter with, may decide they might as well do a Regional "Jonestown" and take the 15 million Israelis with them. My bet is it will not take that long for some variation of this to occur due in part to the land needs of 2 billion Muslims, 3 billion Indians, or 3 billion Chinese who have no affinity with what they consider to be Judeo-Christian fictions.

Israel's confiscation of Palestinian land based on eminent domain, especially sans reimbursement, must be vigorously challenged. And make no mistake in this regard, the primary underpinnings of the Israeli - Palestinian conflict is about land. Would New Yorkers acquiese without a fight to the reclamation of all the land in their State by the Mohican, Senecan, Oneidan, or Tuscarora Indians with or without a modern day Lord Balfour?

In the words of the poet: "...and what rough beast it's hour come round at last slouches toward Bethlehem to be born."
- posted by Richard @ 9:30 PM

 

From Charles Pierce on Altercation

"There really is only one issue in this election. Since the Extended Florida Unpleasantness, this has been an Adminstration utterly unconcerned with any restraints, constitutional or otherwise, on its power. It has been contemptuous of the idea of self-government, and particularly of the notion that an informed populace is necessary to that idea.

It recognizes neither parliamentary rules nor constitutional barriers. (Just for fun, imagine that the Senate had not authorized force in Iraq. Do you think for one moment that C-Plus Augustus wouldn't have launched the war anyway, and on some pretext that we'd only now be discovering was counterfeit?) It does not accept the concept of principled opposition, either inside the administration or outside of it. It refuses to be bound by anything more than its political appetites.

It wants what it wants, and it does what it wants. It is, at its heart, and in the strictest definition of the word, lawless. It has the perfect front men: a president unable to admit a mistake because he's spent his entire life being insulated from even the most minor of consequences, and a vice-president who is viscerally furious at the notion that he is accountable to anyone at all. They are abetted by a congressional majority in which all of these un-American traits are amplified to an overwhelming din."
- posted by Richard @ 9:33 PM

 

Spin Zones, Flag Waving and Shouting to Catch a Fox
By A. O. SCOTT
NY Times
Published: July 20, 2004

In the soggy early evening hours on Sunday about 60 people gathered in Zebulon, a modest bar on a not yet completely chic block in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, to watch "Outfoxed," Robert Greenwald's new documentary about the Fox News Channel. The event was one of many "house parties" — dozens in New York City and around 3,500 nationwide — organized by MoveOn.Org, which helped produce the film, along with the Center for American Progress. (The film, which does not have a theatrical distributor, is also being sold on line as a DVD.) Zebulon, a recently opened establishment aiming for a lived-in, neighborhood feel, serves a smattering of reds and whites by the glass, as well as snacks including Camembert on toasted slices of baguette.

So you might say (or perhaps Fox News might say) that the crowd on Sunday — young, hip, and partisan — represented a bohemian, early-21st-century incarnation of a political archetype that flourished (at least in conservative imaginations) in the 1970's and 80's: the wine-and-cheese liberal. An unscientific glance around the room suggested that a plurality of those in attendance preferred beer to wine. The audience's frequent cheers and hisses suggested that they enjoyed the movie: which is to say that they were, as the filmmakers intended, outraged by it.

The partisan nature of "Outfoxed," a series of expository and analytical talking-head segments interspersed with the high-octane flag-draped shouting-head segments that have become Fox's trademark, is obvious. It is also, therefore, a little beside the point. In the American media, like it or not, the job of exposing bias is often taken up by people and organizations with a definite point of view. Fox News itself came into being with the intention of "balancing" the supposed leftward tilt of the print and broadcast mainstream, what Fox opinionators call the elite or secular media. The channel's "fair and balanced" slogan was, from its inception in 1996, meant as a provocation, a way of smearing the traditional networks with some of the mud Fox was happy to wallow in, and of implying a symmetry between Fox's outspoken (periodically denied) conservatism and the supposedly covert liberalism of CNN or CBS or The New York Times.

One of Fox's great successes, apart from an impressive ability to attract viewers and infuriate liberals, has been the promotion of the idea that what it does cancels out the unacknowledged propaganda coming from the other side. Mr. Greenwald's film challenges this notion and methodically works to disarm the ready-made accusation that it is outfoxing Fox by stooping to its methods.

These methods are analyzed by an array of media critics and activists, and also exposed by former employees of Fox News Channel and its parent, the News Corporation, some of them speaking anonymously, with their voices disguised. The story they tell is of the systematic and deliberate dismantling of journalistic norms, and of an outfit that has become not merely a voice of conservatism but a cheerleader for the Republican Party. Sean Hannity, co-host of a popular public-affairs yelling match, uses part of each broadcast to count off the days until "the re-election of George Bush," and daily memos from headquarters set an agenda of slanted priorities.

Some clever editing shows how the newscasters use repetition to hammer home their positions: joining the name of Senator John Kerry to variations on the word "flip-flop" as if it were his very own Homeric epithet; floating the disconcerting idea that the likely Democratic nominee is, somehow, "French"; and implying that he is the favored candidate of North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong Il. There is also an amusing, appalling dissection of the way Fox uses the phrase "some say," as in "some say Senator Kerry has a tendency to flip-flop," not to cloak a source but to camouflage a statement of opinion.

Mr. Greenwald addresses all of this and a good deal more — or rather, his subjects do, since the director himself is unseen and all but unheard — with methodical sobriety. "Outfoxed" will inevitably be discussed in the same breath (or with the same hyperventilating rage) as Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11," but it lacks both the showmanship and the scope of that incendiary film. Toward the end "Outfoxed" briefly veers away from being an exposé of Fox News toward a more wide-ranging critique of the corporate media and the consolidation of ownership, but this attempt at a more general frame of reference risks weakening the specific force of the movie's argument, which has to do with the behavior of a particular corporation.

Some will say that the argument is unfair and unbalanced. Fox's critics — the most famous are Walter Cronkite and the inevitable Al Franken — appear relaxed, reasonable and good-humored, sitting in front of shelves of books and making their points in measured tones of voice. The on-air Fox personalities, on the other hand, appear to be a prize collection of blowhards and hyenas, with little regard for either journalistic niceties or basic good manners.

But whose fault is it, really, if they come off badly? They are, after all, on television. What we see must be what they — and Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch — want us to see. It must also be what we — or at least the millions who watch Fox News Channel, including some who shut out virtually every other source of news — want to see. Which is, according to "Outfoxed," cause for alarm, and for action.

Watching Bill O'Reilly's belligerent, boorish "interview" with Jeremy Glick, whose father died in the attack on the World Trade Center and who came to oppose the administration's military response to 9/11, is enough to make you wish that the ghost of Joseph Welch would enter the studio and inquire, at long last, after Mr. O'Reilly's sense of decency. But those days — when Welch undid Senator Joseph R. McCarthy on live television, and when that medium was new enough to bring a promise of transparency and truth-telling into the public consciousness — are long past.

Mr. O'Reilly's fans are about as likely to watch "Outfoxed" as the patrons of that bar in Williamsburg are to tune in to "Fox & Friends." For the foreseeable future, there will be more shouting, finger-pointing and tuning out, as each side accuses the other of bias, distortion and dishonesty.

Somehow, though, in these confusing circumstances you can catch a glimpse of the truth, even in a bar in Brooklyn on a muggy Sunday evening in July.

OUTFOXED

Produced and directed by Robert Greenwald; directors of photography, James Curry, Will Miller, Glen Pearcy, Richard Pérez, Luke Riffle, Bob Sullivan and Eugene Thompson; edited by Jane Abramowitz, Douglas Cheek and Chris Gordon; music by Nicholas O'Toole; released by the Members of MoveOn.Org and the Center for American Progress. Running time: 77 minutes. This film is not rated.
- posted by Richard @ 9:16 PM

 

Chances Are You'll Likely Have It Too...

Toenail Infections: Not Pretty, Sometimes Painful
By MARY DUENWALD
NY Times
Published: July 20, 2004

Like ring around the collar or iron-poor blood, toenail fungus is one of those problems that hardly anyone noticed until Madison Avenue brought it to public attention.

But television commercials for Lamisil, a toenail cure, now feature yellow fungus monsters yucking it up under the nail of a big toe, and larger-than-life pictures of rotting toenails appear in magazine advertisements for Penlac, another treatment. For the most part, toenail fungus is repugnant but not medically alarming; doctors say most people who seek treatment for the problem do so out of disgust. Yet for some, especially the elderly or those with diabetes, it may lead to other infections. And even in healthy people, the condition can be painful.

Yet treating the infection takes many weeks and is not always successful. A complete cure, when it is achieved, takes a year, the amount of time required for the infected nail to grow out completely. And the process is expensive. Fungus medications can cost up to several hundred dollars for a single course of treatment, and many health insurers do not cover them.

The medical term for toenail fungus is onychomycosis (on-ee-ko-me-KO-sis). The infection is caused by the same types of fungi that cause athlete's foot, and the two often occur together.

"It starts in the sole of the feet when you're a child and grows from the sole to the nail bed," said Dr. Nardo Zaias, director of dermatology at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach. "In teenagers, it goes into the groin and causes jock itch and sometimes to the body, causing ringworm.

"But the toenail is a savings bank," Dr. Zaias said. "The fungus goes into the toenail and stays there for life."

About 20 percent of people have toenail fungus, researchers have found, and the likelihood of getting it increases with age, rising to about 40 percent by age 70. The fungi themselves are everywhere - not only in locker rooms, hotel rooms and other public places but also in most people's homes.

Toe fungus tends to run in families, because people inherit a vulnerability to it, Dr. Zaias has found. Onychomycosis can occur under the fingernails, but it is far more common in toes, doctors say, because the feet are more often subject to the dark, warm, moist conditions that fungi favor.

Smoking raises the risk of toenail infection, by restricting circulation to the feet. So does diabetes, which also impairs circulation. Using polish on the nails does not invite or intensify the infection, experts say.

The symptoms of toenail fungus are easy to see - thickened or brittle nails, often a dull color with spots of white or yellow or, in advanced cases, brown or black. But psoriasis can cause similar symptoms. To be certain, some doctors scrape debris from beneath the nail and examine it under a microscope or culture it to see if fungus grows.

Over-the-counter antifungal creams are safe and help some people with mild infections, said Dr. Lloyd S. Smith, a podiatrist in Newton, Mass. Some treatments contain tea tree oil, an antifungal substance derived from an Australian plant. But in most cases, nonprescription treatments are not powerful enough.

One prescription medication, ciclopirox, a topical treatment marketed by Aventis as Penlac, is painted on like nail polish. Patients are instructed to apply it to infected nails each evening before bed. Once a week, they are to take off the accumulated layers with rubbing alcohol.

But treatment with Penlac takes 48 weeks, and a month's supply costs more than $100. In addition, studies suggest that ciclopirox is effective in combating the infection in less than half of all cases, and results in a total cure in fewer than 10 percent.

Terbinafine, marketed by Novartis as Lamisil, may be the best-known prescription treatment for toenail fungus, thanks to the company's monster-filled commercials. Patients take one 250-milligram tablet a day for 12 weeks. After that, the medicine continues to work for a few months.

Terbinafine helps about 2 out of 3 people who take it, doctors say, but it cures the infection in only 38 percent of cases, according to the package insert. Lamisil costs more than $8 per pill, and a complete course of treatment can cost about $700.

In rare cases, the drug has been linked to liver failure and death, and so the Food and Drug Administration has advised doctors to monitor liver function in patients taking it.

People with liver problems should not take Lamisil. Studies have not been done to determine whether the drug is safe for children and pregnant women. Nursing mothers are also advised to avoid it.

Dr. Zaias has experimented with having patients use terbinafine for only one week out of every three months. This approach allows patients to use less of the drug, and it works in more than 90 percent of cases, according to a small study Dr. Zaias conducted and reported last month in the journal Archives of Dermatology.

Another treatment in pill form is itraconazole, marketed by Janssen as Sporanox. It is typically taken twice a day for one week out of four. This cycle is repeated three or four times. A one-week supply costs about $100. Itraconazole is somewhat less effective than terbinafine. It, too, has been linked in rare cases with liver failure, as well as with congestive heart failure.

In the most difficult and painful cases, doctors remove the toenail to help kill the infection. But given the cost, the risks and the time involved in treatment, experts say it is better to try to avoid infection in the first place - by treating athlete's foot infections as soon as they arise, for example, and by keeping the toes ventilated and clean.

"I recommend sandals," said Dr. Lynn A. Drake, a dermatologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "But

- posted by Richard @ 9:10 PM

 

Lose Weight, Stay Active, Prevent Alzheimer's-Studies
Mon Jul 19, 2004 03:42 PM ET

By Jon Hurdle
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Losing weight, eating more fruits and vegetables and exercising your brain and body sounds like a formula to prevent heart disease, but it is also a way to prevent Alzheimer's, researchers said on Monday.

Midlife obesity, high cholesterol and high blood pressure appear to affect the brain as well as the heart, they said.

"There are a variety of lifestyle factors that people can engage in that will reduce their risk of cognitive decline," said Dr. Marilyn Albert, chair of the Alzheimer's Association's medical and scientific council. "The brain is much more plastic than we thought," Albert added in an interview.

"It has more capacity to renew and regenerate. ... We have to tell people that they need to think about their cognitive health in a way that they typically thought about their physical health." Early is better, she added. "The pathology of Alzheimer's disease develops over 10 years, possibly longer. People should start as early in life as possible."

Several studies presented to a meeting sponsored by the Alzheimer's Association in Philadelphia this week support the contention.

A study in Finland of 1,500 elderly people found that those who were obese in middle age were twice as likely to develop dementia when they got old as those who were of normal weight. For those who also had high cholesterol and high blood pressure in middle age, the risk of dementia was six times higher than those who were not affected.

Another study, of 13,000 women, found that those who ate vegetables such as iceberg lettuce, spinach, broccoli and Brussels sprouts in middle age preserved more of their cognitive abilities as they entered their 70s than women who ate few vegetables.

"Women with the highest average intake of those vegetables appear to experience less cognitive decline," Dr. Jae Hee Kang of Harvard Medical School, told a news conference.

Another study suggested that leisure activities that combine social, mental and physical activity are the most likely to prevent dementia. Each activity is less important than all of them together, said Laura Fratiglioni of Sweden's Karolinska Institute.

Mental activities such as reading books, doing crossword puzzles or playing bingo can help to prevent mental decline, Albert said. "It should be anything that will push people to encounter something that isn't routine."

An estimated 4.5 million Americans currently have Alzheimer's, and that number is expected to balloon as high as 16 million by 2050 as the baby boom generation ages.
- posted by Richard @ 8:58 PM

 

UN Vote on Israeli Barrier Put Off One More Day
Mon Jul 19, 2004 04:40 PM ET

By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Arab diplomats on Monday delayed for a second time a U.N. vote on a resolution demanding that Israel tear down its West Bank barrier, in hopes of winning support from the 25-nation European Union.

While the measure already has enough votes to win passage in the 191-nation General Assembly, the EU is seen by many at the United Nations as a moral compass, able to bring along with it as many as 25 other nations, U.N. diplomats said.

Under the resolution drafted by Palestinian U.N. observer Nasser al-Kidwa, the assembly would pressure Israel to comply with a recent World Court ruling that the barrier was illegal and should be dismantled.

A vote initially had been set for last Friday and would have capped a day-long emergency session of the General Assembly convened at the request of Arab and nonaligned nations.

But voting was postponed until Monday, and then to Tuesday, to give Arab and European Union diplomats more time to try to reach a deal on changes sought by the EU to win its support.

Diplomats said support from the EU and other nations that often vote with the Europeans would bolster a case for sanctions against Israel should it fulfill a vow to ignore the court ruling.

"We had conversations with Mr. al-Kidwa and other Arab diplomats over the weekend. For the EU, we thought it would be very welcome to have another day," said one EU diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Negotiations were taking place on two levels: between EU and Arab diplomats and also among EU states themselves, as the European bloc had yet to agree on a common stand among its own members, European diplomats acknowledged.

U.S. Ambassador John Danforth has said repeatedly that Washington opposes the resolution because it was "unbalanced" and would further undermine the already moribund Middle East peace process.

The assembly agreed to take up the measure after the World Court ruled July 9 that the barrier was illegal because it cuts deep into West Bank land dotted with Israeli settlements since the 1967 Middle East War.

The court, formally known as the International Court of Justice and based in The Hague, is the top U.N. legal body.
Palestinians see the 370-mile project, which sweeps deep into West Bank land to shield Israeli settlements, as a land grab that would thwart their dream of statehood.

Israel argues the combination of razor-tipped fencing and concrete is needed to keep out suicide bombers and insists it is only temporary.

The Palestinian draft would affirm "the illegality of any territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force" and would demand that Israel dismantle the barrier and pay reparations for any damages caused by its construction.

But while the Palestinian draft would "accept" the World Court ruling, some European states including Britain insist it only "take note" of the opinion while others want it to "welcome" the judgment.

European states are also divided over whether the text should express concern about a section of the court ruling suggesting that under the U.N. Charter, a state had the right to defend itself only against an attack from another state, and not, for example, from a suicide bomber.

Diplomats said most EU states, however, were united in wanting the text to recognize Israeli security concerns and refer to the obligations of both sides under the road map to peace set out by the quartet of Middle East mediators -- the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia.

- posted by Richard @ 8:53 PM

 

CBS Head Says Would Fight Fines Over Janet Jackson
Sun Jul 18, 2004 07:23 PM ET

By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Viacom Inc. co-president and CBS chairman Leslie Moonves vowed on Sunday to fight any fines levied against CBS-owned TV stations for airing Janet Jackson's breast-baring Super Bowl performance in February.

In defiant remarks to television critics at their annual summer meeting, Moonves said the government's crackdown on indecency on the airwaves since Jackson's notorious flash of nudity on his network is "coming dangerously close to infringing" on free speech.

He said the notion of fining stations for airing the live Super Bowl halftime telecast on Feb. 1 is "patently ridiculous, and we're not going to stand for it." "We're going to take it up to the courts if that happens," Moonves said, when asked about media reports that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission staff has proposed fines totaling $550,000 against 20 CBS-owned stations over the Super Bowl telecast.

Sources said the 227 affiliate stations that aired the show but are not owned by Viacom would be spared fines under the FCC recommendations. The National Football League championship, one of the year's most watched TV broadcasts, drew nearly 90 million viewers.

Jackson's costume was ripped away by duet partner Justin Timberlake, briefly exposing her breast, at the end of a provocative halftime dance number that concluded with the lyric: "I gotta have you naked by the end of this song."

The incident ignited a public outcry that led to an FCC probe, congressional action to stiffen fines for broadcast indecency and industry-wide moves to curtail sexually explicit material on TV and radio.

CBS and its sister cable music network MTV, which produced the halftime show, have insisted they did not know in advance about what Timberlake later called the "wardrobe malfunction." CBS has since instituted a five-second delay on most of its live events. A coalition of U.S. broadcasters, artist groups and media organizations filed a joint FCC petition in April warning federal regulators that harsher policies on indecency were having a chilling effect on free speech in the industry.

- posted by Richard @ 9:09 PM

 

Medical Class Warfare
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times Op-Ed
Published: July 16, 2004

If past patterns are any guide, about one in three Americans will go without health insurance for some part of the next two years. They won't, for the most part, be the persistently poor, who are usually covered by Medicaid. They will be members of working families with breadwinners who have jobs without medical benefits or who have been laid off.

Many Americans fear the loss of health insurance. Last week I described John Kerry's health plan. What's the Bush administration's plan?

First, it offers a tax credit for low- and middle-income families who don't have health coverage through employers. That credit helps them purchase health insurance. The credit would be $3,000 for a family of four with an income of $25,000; for an income of $40,000, it would fall to $1,714. Last year the average premium for families of four covered by employers was more than $9,000.

A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that the tax credit would reduce the number of uninsured, 44 million people in 2002, by 1.8 million. So it wouldn't help a great majority of families unable to afford insurance. For comparison, an independent assessment of the Kerry plan by Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University says that it would reduce the number of uninsured by 26.7 million.

The other main component of the Bush plan involves "health savings accounts." The prescription drug bill the Bush administration pushed through Congress last year had a number of provisions unrelated to Medicare. One of them allowed people who purchase insurance policies with high deductibles, generally at least $2,000 per family, to shelter income from taxes by setting up special accounts for medical expenses. This year, the administration proposed making the premiums linked to these accounts fully tax-deductible.

Although the 2005 budget presents that new deduction under the heading "Helping the uninsured," health savings accounts don't seem to have much to do with the needs of the families likely to find themselves without health insurance. For one thing, such families need more protection than a plan with a $2,000 deductible provides. Furthermore, the tax advantages of health savings accounts would be small for those families most at risk of losing health insurance, who are overwhelmingly in low tax brackets.

But for people whose income puts them in high tax brackets, these accounts are a very good deal; making the premiums deductible turns them into a great deal. In other words, health savings accounts will offer the already affluent, who don't have problems getting health insurance, yet another tax shelter. Meanwhile, health savings accounts, in the view of many experts, will actually increase the number of uninsured.

This perverse effect shouldn't be too surprising: unless they are carefully designed, medical policies often have side consequences that worsen the problems they supposedly address. For example, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that one-third of the retirees who now have drug coverage through their former employers will lose that coverage as a result of the Bush prescription drug bill and will be forced to accept inferior coverage from Medicare.

In the case of health savings accounts, the key side consequence is a reduced incentive for companies to insure their workers. When companies provide group health insurance, healthier employees implicitly subsidize their sicker colleagues. They're willing to do this largely because the employer's contributions to health insurance are a tax-free form of compensation, but only if the same plan is offered to all employees.

Tax-free health savings accounts and premiums would provide healthier and wealthier employees an incentive to opt out, accepting higher paychecks instead, and would lead to higher insurance premiums for those who remain in traditional plans. This would cause some companies to stop providing health insurance, or raise employee contributions to a level some workers can't afford.

The difference couldn't be starker. Mr. Kerry offers a health care plan that would extend coverage to most of those now uninsured, paid for by rolling back tax cuts for those with incomes over $200,000. President Bush offers a tax credit that would extend coverage to fewer than 5 percent of the uninsured, plus a new tax break for the affluent that would actually increase the number of uninsured. As I said last week, I don't see how Mr. Bush can win this debate.

- posted by Richard @ 9:03 PM

 

All Together Now
By BARBARA EHRENREICH
NY Times Guest Columnist
Published: July 15, 2004

Their faces long with disapproval, the anchors announced that the reason for the war had finally been uncovered by the Senate Intelligence Committee, and it was "groupthink," not to mention "collective groupthink." It sounds so kinky and un-American, like something that might go on in a North Korean stadium or in one of those sex clubs that Jack Ryan, the former Illinois Senate candidate, is accused of dragging his wife to. But supposedly intelligent, morally upstanding people had been indulging in it right in Langley, Va.

This is a surprise? Groupthink has become as American as apple pie and prisoner abuse; in fact, it's hard to find any thinking these days that doesn't qualify for the prefix "group." Our standardized-test-driven schools reward the right answer, not the unsettling question. Our corporate culture prides itself on individualism, but it's the "team player" with the fixed smile who gets to be employee of the month. In our political culture, the most crushing rebuke is to call someone "out of step with the American people." Zip your lips, is the universal message, and get with the program.

This summer's remake of the "Stepford Wives" doesn't have anything coherent to say about gender politics: Men are the oppressors? Women are the oppressors? Or maybe just Glenn Close? But it does play to the fantasy, more widespread than I'd realized, that if you were to rip off the face of the person sitting in the next cubicle, you'd find nothing but circuit boards underneath.

I trace the current outbreak of droidlike conformity to the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when groupthink became the official substitute for patriotism, and we began to run out of surfaces for affixing American flags. Bill Maher lost his job for pointing out that, whatever else they were, the 9/11 terrorists weren't cowards, prompting Ari Fleischer to warn (though he has since backed down) that Americans "need to watch what they say." Never mind that Sun Tzu says, somewhere in his oeuvre, that while it's soothing to underestimate the enemy, it's often fatal, too.

And what was that group thinking in Abu Ghraib? Yes, the accused guards seem to have been encouraged to soften up their charges for interrogation, just as the operatives at Langley were pelted with White House demands for some plausible casus belli. But the alarming thing is how few soldiers demurred, and how many got caught up in the fun of it.

Societies throughout history have recognized the hazards of groupthink and made arrangements to guard against it. The shaman, the wise woman and similar figures all represent institutionalized outlets for alternative points of view. In the European carnival tradition, a "king of fools" was permitted to mock the authorities, at least for a day or two. In some cultures, people resorted to vision quests or hallucinogens — anything to get out of the box. Because, while the capacity for groupthink is an endearing part of our legacy as social animals, it's also a common precondition for self-destruction. One thousand coalition soldiers have died because the C.I.A. was so eager to go along with the emperor's delusion that he was actually wearing clothes.

Instead of honoring groupthink resisters, we subject them to insult and abuse. Sgt. Samuel Provance III has been shunned by fellow soldiers since speaking out against the torture at Abu Ghraib, in addition to losing his security clearance and being faced with a possible court-martial. A fellow Abu Ghraib whistle-blower, Specialist Joseph Darby, was praised by the brass, but has had to move to an undisclosed location to avoid grass-roots retaliation.

The list goes on. Sibel Edmonds lost her job at the F.B.I. for complaining about mistranslations of terror-related documents from the Arabic. Jesselyn Radack was driven out of her post at the Justice Department for objecting to the treatment of John Walker Lindh, then harassed by John Ashcroft's enforcers at her next job. As Fred Alford, a political scientist who studies the fate of whistle-blowers, puts it: "We need to understand in this `land of the free and home of the brave' that most people are scared to death. About 50 percent of all whistle-blowers lose their jobs, about half of those lose their homes, and half of those people lose their families."

This nation was not founded by habitual groupthinkers. But it stands a fair chance of being destroyed by them.

- posted by Richard @ 8:54 PM