EDITORIAL : THE NATIONAL POST, CANADA

          

 

Running scared from safe nuclear power

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster seems to be having a bigger impact on energy policy in Europe than in Japan itself. While the Japanese say they are sticking with nuclear power, Switzerland and Germany both are moving to phase it out. But their decisions are based on fear, rather than sound science. And Canada would do well not to follow in their footsteps.

Germany has shut down eight of its 17 reactors, and voted last week to close the rest by 2022. Switzerland's lower house of parliament voted to phase out its five reactors by 2034. Both decisions were made in reaction to public campaigns -not on the basis of counsel supplied by scientific experts.

Nuclear plants have been operating since the 1950s, and have proven to be a safe and reliable source of power. The two examples that are often cited to make the case against nuclear energy are Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. The 1979 incident at Three Mile Island resulted in no loss of life and caused virtually no adverse effect on public health. The 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Soviet Union was considerably more devastating, but entirely preventable. It would never have occurred in any Western country, such as Canada, employing state-of-the-art safety protocols.

At Fukushima, moreover, the disaster was caused by a once-ina-century seismic event coupled with protection shortfalls. And even in this case, the total amount of released radiation was only about a fifth of that released at Chernobyl. Such a disaster could not occur in the seismically stable regions where nuclear plants are situated in Canada and other Western nations.

There have been far fewer deaths resulting from the production of nuclear power than other sources of energy. According to a study published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, "The risk to the average American from having all of our electricity generated from nuclear power is equal to the risk of a regular smoker smoking one extra cigarette every 15 years, or to the risk of an overweight person increasing his weight by 0.012 ounces."

The biggest problem with nuclear energy is not the health risks, it's the cost. A 2009 interdisciplinary MIT study found that the cost per kilowatt hour of producing nuclear energy is 29% more than energy produced from natural gas and 35% more than coal. And thanks to increasing construction costs, it keeps getting more expensive. Much like green energy, nuclear is simply not economical without large government subsidies for the massive upfront costs involved with construction.

This is what makes the German and Swiss decisions to mothball existing reactors so bone-headed: Nuclear power stations are incredibly costly to build, but relatively cheap to run. All the more reason to keep existing plants in operation, as long as they are deemed to be safe.

Nuclear power also is an environmentally friendly option: Unlike oil, gas or coal, nuclear reactors do not produce the man-made greenhouse gasses that are warming the planet (which is why many pragmatic environmentalists are so conflicted about enviro-purists' campaign against nukes). Switzerland currently gets 40% of its power from nuclear and the rest from hydro, meaning that the country produces very little CO2 in the production of its energy supplies. Phasing out nuclear will likely make the Swiss more dependent on fossil fuels.

Every energy source comes with its own set of risks. Wind and solar take up huge swathes of land, produce relatively little power and cost large sums of money. Carbon-based fuels not only warm the planet, they also pose the risk of direct, acute environmental disaster, as we saw in the Gulf of Mexico last summer. Even hydro power can have widespread negative impacts: Just look at the millions who have been displaced by the Three Gorges project in China. The minor risks associated with nuclear power must be seen in this wider context.

By basing public policy decisions on public fears stemming from the ongoing Fukushima crisis, Germany and Switzerland will likely be forced to use more costly, less environmentally friendly and possibly more dangerous energy supplies in the future.

Who is villain in Sino-Forest meltdown?

To say that the value of Sino-Forest Corp. shares are uncertain at the moment is not saying much. The company's market cap has gone from $4.5-billion to about $1-billion in one week, driven down by a report from a research firm that essentially portrays the China-based TSX-listed company as something of a fraud.

In return, Sino-Forest and its backers are essentially accusing research firm Muddy Waters of itself engaging in something of a fraud for having turned out a false report on Sino-Forest. All of which leaves the rest of us with a coin toss as to who is telling the truth. The Ontario Securities Commission, suddenly alert to a lot of muddy water lapping up against its regulatory system, has launched an investigation.

Regulators have to keep busy, of course, but this dispute looks like something that should be allowed to run its course in the market a bit. Either Sino-Forest is the solid, tree-rich company it claims to be or it is an overblown company that "massively exaggerates its assets" and "overstates" its timber resources.

As to whether Sino-Forest has the trees it says it has is impossible to know, and it's unlikely the bureaucrats at the OSC are in a better position to unravel the conflicts than, say, investors and lawyers with a vested interest in getting at the facts.

Among those facts is a "forest valuation" report by the Beijing office of an international consulting firm, Pöyry Consulting, which appears to back the company. It shows colour pictures of Chinese employees of Pöyry out in what looks to be the uninhabitable wilds of northern China, measuring the width of some very thin trees as part of a vast acreage owned by Sino-Forest. Pöyry sets the value of the forests at US$2.6-billion.

Those of us who lived through the Bre-X gold mine disaster recall similar pictures of experts standing knowledgeably over drill cores extracted from the Indonesian jungle. The drill cores, supposedly filled with indications of gold, proved to be just rock.

Adding to the uncertainty over the value of Chinese forests were comments from a leading regulator, the outgoing head of the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission. Martin Wheatley said China is "the new dot.com," an investment market marked by a "rush of Chinese companies" that are not being properly scrutinized by investors.

Is Sino-Forest part of dot.China? Or is it the victim of an aggressive short-seller who is perpetrating his own fraud by going after Sino-Forest, making the Chinese company the victim of a fraud?

Both story lines cannot be true at the same time, unless both are involved in creating an investor scam. Sino-Forest may not be the company it claimed to be, and Muddy Waters may be pulling its own scam by engaging in its own exaggerations and misrepresentations. Maybe they are both messing with investors.

What can the Ontario Securities Commission do about all this? It certainly had no capacity -legal or otherwise -to handle the Bre-X fiasco. It may still lack the wherewithall to get to the bottom of the Sino-Forest situation. China isn't exactly an open book. The Muddy Waters report on Sino-Forest contains pages of supporting documentation in Chinese that would take a forensic linguist to unravel.

What the OSC should avoid is a campaign against Muddy Waters on the grounds that it broke various disclosure rules or engaged in market manipulation. At this point, that's not at the heart of the Sino-Forest case. The main issue is who is right about Sino-Forest's valuations, accounting and financial reports. If Sino-Forest is a solid company smeared by Muddy Waters, then Muddy Waters rightly becomes the target of investigation.

On the other hand, if Muddy Waters' conclusions on Sino-Forest prove reasonably accurate and the company is a valuation scam, then Muddy Waters and its owner, Carson Block, should be hailed as the hero of the global investment community -no matter how much money they made short-selling Sino-Forest or allowing others to make money shorting the company.

The point is that before the OSC goes off on a hunt for alleged short-seller misbehaviour, it should first establish whether the allegations brought by Muddy Waters are valid. If they are, then Muddy Waters is exactly what market-based investment research is all about. They will have done what the securities regulators have not done.

Yet again, the PQ eats its own

the measure of longevity, the Parti Québécois has been a success: It will turn 43 in November. But revolutionary movements such as the PQ do not seek survival. They seek extinction through victory. As with religious millenarians whose rapture never comes, the continued survival of the PQ sect has become a source of awkwardness, even embarrassment, for the faithful.

The onset of middle age has caused the PQ to become divided into institutional and revolutionary constituencies. On one hand are the democratic-minded functionaries who want to build a big tent and win elections. On the other are the uncompromising, old-school "shouting sign painters" with still-vivid memories of René Lévesque and ongoing fantasies of the victorious referendum that's just around the corner. At times, these two camps go to war. And this week is one of those times.

The casus belli was purely pretextual: PQ leader Pauline Marois' jingoistic support for Quebec City's arena project (including her party's dubious scheme to insulate the city and its Quebecor corporate partners from legal claims arising from contracting-process favouritism). The real issue was sovereignty, and how hard the PQ should push it.

Ms. Marois has been true to the PQ's strategy since the 1995 referendum, soft-pedalling separatism until such time as "winning conditions" are achieved. Given the stunning rejection of the Bloc Québécois in last month's federal election, now would seem like an especially sensible time to implement this go-slow approach. But patience isn't good enough for Jean-Martin Aussant, one of four prominent PQ MNAs who quit the party this week, and now sit as independents. "I'm [in politics] to work on sovereignty," Mr. Aussant told a news conference. "And I don't think [Ms. Marois] is the one Quebecers will want to follow, at a very high rate, toward sovereignty."

The trio of other disaffected MNAs -Pierre Curzi, Lisette Lapointe and Louise Beaudoin -were more guarded in their commentary. But as former PQ premier Bernard Landry emphasized, it is clear that the separatism issue lies just below the sur-face of their complaints: "[Mr.] Lévesque did not found this party to govern the province of Quebec. [Our focus] should be public service -not taking power. It's better to take power later -but to take it with dignity."

Ms. Marois' position may become unsustainable in coming days (notwithstanding the 93% leadership approval she won at the PQ's recent convention), forcing her to step down. If so, she will be in good company: The PQ leader will not be the first hardheaded realist to be thrown overboard by the party's purists.

Scratch the surface of the PQ's left-wing, social-democratic cant, and you will find a party founded on two layers of tribalism. The first and most obvious is the creepy ethno-linguistic tribalism scandalously trumpeted by Jaccques Parizeau following the 1995 referendum. The second -which exists within the first, likes two nested Russian dolls -originates with the cultish in-group of lifelong PQ die-hards who regard the sovereignty-or-bust line as inviolate dogma.

Outsiders assume that the charismatic, workaholic Lucien Bouchard inhabited this inner circle. Far from it. He had worked with the federal government before coming to the PQ, and was therefore forever suspect as a man from outside the tribe. He was also a political and fiscal realist, and sounded the alarm about Quebec's irresponsible spending practices. This irked those elders who inhabit a dream palace where the act of independence makes all other problems disappear, including debt.

Mr. Bouchard nearly killed himself for the separatist cause -quite literally -and his efforts in the 1990s cost him his marriage. Yet in the end, he was mortified by the lacklustre support he received from within his own party. The final straw was the hostile reaction to his condemnation of perceived anti-Semitism from PQ hard-liner Yves Michaud. Like Ms. Marois, Mr. Bouchard had tried to present separatism as the creed of a tolerant and cosmopolitan people. Instead, he saw that the PQ elders were more fixated on circling the wagons around one of their own than admitting they had a problem with the acceptance of non-ethnic Quebecers.

Pauline Marois is more of an insider than Mr. Bouchard ever was. But she also is aware that separatism is a dead issue for most of the citizenry. She has tried to appease the base with contrived policies such as forcing French-language colleges on anglos, which she knows will never fly, all the while looking for ways to actually get elected. But as with her predecessors, the effort to square the circle has become impossible.

EDITORIAL : THE KOREA HERALD, SOUTH KOREA

Another card crisis?

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is not just an official U.S. policy on homosexuals serving in the military. It also refers to the business practice Korean credit card companies are accused of resorting to when issuing cards to applicants with questionable credit standings.

Now regulators are out to put an end to these ill-advised card issuances and other business practices. They say they will start weekly monitoring of card issuers to ensure that they strictly follow the guidelines for credit card operations with regard to the quality of assets, card issuances and marketing expenditures.

Those who fail to toe the line, the regulators say, will be severely disciplined. Sanctions include the suspension of card issuances and the reprimand of top managers.

The regulatory measures will not be limited to disciplining errant card companies and their managers. They will also include the tightening of credit.

Card issuers, together with other consumer financing companies without access to deposits, will be deprived of the special permission to issue debentures up to 10 times their capital. Instead, leverage will be restricted to a certain ratio of total assets to net assets, possibly the industry average of 5.2. This restriction will undoubtedly prove to be most painful to those card companies that are in pursuit of aggressive expansion.

But the regulatory measures that are being taken by the Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Services are long overdue, given that the average monthly issuance of 1 million new cards last year set the alarm bells ringing.

True, it is better late than never. A modicum of solace may be found, given that action is being taken before credit card debt distress spreads to the wider financial market and causes any disruption in the real economy. Still, none of the principal stakeholders ― the government, card companies and cardholders ― can escape the criticism that they failed to learn from the 2003 card debt crisis.

During the 1999-2002 period, the number of cards increased nearly threefold, from 39 million to 105 million. The volume of total credit card transactions expanded sixfold, contributing greatly to an increase of household debt as a percentage of disposable income, from 41 percent to 64 percent. But the government had not taken action until after the card bubble was burst in 2003. In mid-March alone, the Bank of Korea had to inject trillions of won into the financial system to keep the card industry from collapsing.

Currently, the number of cards stands at 120 million, with each economically active person holding 4.8 cards on average, compared with 4.6 in 2003. Still, card companies have 50,000 agents on their payrolls, who arrange the issuance of 1 million cards per month. They reportedly offer to issue cards to people with low credit standings, many of them juggling debt with multiple cards. No wonder the amount of money borrowed on cards soared to 23.9 trillion won in 2010, up 42 percent from the previous year.

The card industry’s trouble may not be as severe now as in 2003. But runaway competition for market share may result in a second card debt crisis. That is the reason why the regulators need to act resolutely against the illegal issuance of cards to persons with low credit standings.

Another problem with card debt is that it is growing faster than overall household loans. Outstanding card loans grew 19 percent to 27.9 trillion won in a year ending on Dec. 31 last year, compared with 6 percent for the total household debt.

Card debt cannot be allowed to increase at such a high rate when an average household already has 46.11 million won in debt, or nearly 150 percent of its disposable income. When awakened to this reality, card companies will have little reason to complain about the tightening of regulations on card issuances and cash advances.

 

 

 

Candlelight nightmare

 

Friday is the 24th anniversary of massive civil disobedience against a military-backed strongman. White-collar workers as well as student activists rose up against President Chun Doo-hwan, a former Army general, demanding that democracy be restored. Chun capitulated three weeks later, on June 29, promising a direct popular vote to elect the next president.

Students are set to stage another protest on Friday, this time demanding that university tuition fees be cut by half. Hard-pressed parents, advocacy groups and, of course, vote-besotted politicians are also expected to participate in a candlelight rally, one reminiscent of the huge 2008 nighttime gathering against beef imports from the United States ― undoubtedly a nightmare for President Lee Myung-bak’s administration.

Students’ demand to cut tuition fees by half was first espoused by the main opposition Democratic Party, which included it in its policy on the promotion of general welfare in the areas of education, medical care and child care. It did not take long before the ruling Grand National Party followed suit apparently with voter support in mind ahead of the parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for next year.

But the problem with the rival political parties is that they have no concrete plan regarding how to finance the proposed across-the-board tuition cut. All that the opposition says is it can be done by saving from budget allocations, mending the tax system and improving welfare programs. No less disappointing is the ruling party, which has yet to decide which to propose: cutting tuition fees for all students or for students from needy families.

Given the nation’s limited budgetary resources, spending more on education means spending less on other areas. But can a greater subsidy for university education be justified just because student activists are better organized in their demands than physically disabled and other underprivileged people?

The Lee administration vows not to be swayed by the demand for a tuition cut and other populist general welfare programs. But it needs to build a public consensus on fiscal prudence if it wishes to hold fast in the face of mounting pressure from well-organized advocacy groups and the political community.

 

EDITORIAL : THE RFI english, FRANCE

 

 

French press review

 

Money preoccupies the French press this morning with criticism on the left of government plans to cut welfare benefits and tax on the rich. On the bright side, Europe's students are becoming more and more cosmopolitan.

The ruling party here in France, the UMP is debating how to pay less of the RSA, a benefit for the poor, while lowering the ISF weatlth tax.

Dossier: Eurozone in crisis

Some 1.2 million people in France receive the RSA to either make up for or complement their income. The UMP says, that it’s too expensive. The reason this is controversial is, that at the same time, the party wants to tax the rich less, losing income for the state.

“Sarkozy helps the rich,” says Libération.
The paper looks at:
1. Who is concerned?
RSA: 1.2 million people in France receive RSA;
ISF: 560,000 people have a personal fortune of more than 800,000 euros;
2. What will it cost the government?
RSA: The French government spent 1.3 billion euros on RSA in 2010;
ISF: The government currently earns four billion euros by taxing personal fortunes; it will only make 2.2 billion in the ISF is lowered;
Along the same lines, Catholic paper La Croix looks at “hidden poverty in rural areas”.
Most people receiving state aid don’t live in cities. The reason: there are less jobs in the countryside, especially for young people, and the agricultural sector has been hit hard recently.
Unfortunately, a lot of times that means children are kept at home to help on the farm or do other work. In turn, some 1,000 children have been taken from their families for financial or social reasons.
Communist paper l’Humanité calls the UMP the “anti-Robin Hood: taking from the poor and giving to the rich.” The story is the same, but the headline is too good not to mention.
And we end the press review with some good news. According to La Croix there are more and more Erasmus (exchange) students, especially in Europe.
Some 213,000 students studied abroad in 2009/2010; that’s a 7.4 per cent increase from the previous year.

For many, that will mean getting a better job. Few jobs today don’t require employees to speak a foreign language. France, along with Britain and Spain, are the top destinations for foreign students.

EDITORIAL : THE BANGKOK POST, THAILAND

 

 

Populist dream is a nightmare

Governor of the Bank of Thailand, Prasarn Trairatvorakul, has good reason to be anxious about all the populist policies being presented by most of the parties contesting the July 3 general election. He warns that such policies, if actually implemented, could drive up inflation and worsen public debt to the point of derailing Thailand's economic recovery. The central bank governor's dire warning about the negative consequences of populist policies on the state of the national economy, reinforces the serious concerns expressed earlier by a host of economists, academics and business operators.

Finance permanent secretary Areepong Phucha-um, for instance, is so nervous he has ordered his officials to keep a file on all the populist policies presented by all the parties. Whilst not criticising any particular party regarding its populist policies, he has made a valid point worthy of consideration by all voters - before they cast their votes simply because they are "attracted" to such policies. Mr Areepong says none of the parties, including the Democrats and Pheu Thai, has spoken a word about "economic restructuring" which would drive the country forward in a sustainable fashion.

Day in and day out, voters are being bombarded by campaign promises of handouts and freebies from all the contesting parties, be it a cut in the value-added tax from 7 to 5%, an income tax waiver for first-time employees for 5 years, a minimum wage increase to 300 baht a day or an increase by 25% within 2 years, or the 20-baht flat rate fare for all the 10 electric train lines to be built in the future. Not once have we heard from parties or politicians - each trying to outdo the other with their own brand of fanciful populism - just how and from where they are going to get the huge sums of money needed to fund all their dream projects. It is very likely that none of them have any answers yet.

Take the case of value-added tax. Professor Veerasak Kruathep of Chulalongkorn University has noted that a 2% cut would reduce revenues from VAT by 150 billion baht a year, from a total of 537 billion baht collected each year, representing a drop of 28% in VAT earnings.

As for the 10 new electric train projects proposed by a major party, which would charge a flat fee of 20 baht for the entire trip, the question is where will the huge sums required to implement the projects come from, and which creditor banks would be willing to lend in the full knowledge that a 20-baht fare rate is unrealistically low, and that there is no way the agency operating the services can survive without being subsidised by the government.

The Federation of Thai Industries conducted an opinion survey among 200 business operators last week, about the possible impact on their operations if the minimum wage was set at 300 baht a day as proposed by Pheu Thai Party, or increased by 25% within two years as proposed by the Democrats. The findings show that, in the case of a 300-baht minimum wage, 68.5% of the respondents admitted this would have a very serious impact on their business, with 16.9% of them expecting to shut down operations. And if the minimum wage were to go up by 25% over two years, 42.7% of the respondents said the increase would seriously affect their operations, with 6.7% of them admitting they might be forced to cease operations.

Despite the negative findings and dire warnings, none of the parties seems ready to tone down the populist promises. So voters must ask these politicians to specify how these dreams will be funded.

EDITORIAL : THE INDENDENT, IRELAND

 

Our elderly must not be put at risk

The allegations against the Rostrevor Nursing Home, if true, raise extremely serious questions about the care of the elderly in this country.

That such vulnerable, frail people, many of whom were wards of court, could be allegedly treated in such a cruel manner a mere two-and-a-half miles from our national parliament and seat of government beggars belief.

When the Leas Cross Nursing Home was shut down in 2005 for what the subsequent O'Neill report found was "institutional abuse", we were assured that this would never happen again. The supervision of nursing homes was transferred from the HSE to the Health Information and Quality Authority, whose motto is "safer better care".

But matters haven't worked out quite as expected. If the allegations made by HIQA against Rostrevor are accurate, then Leas Cross was a shining beacon of best practice. Yesterday we learned that, in an affidavit submitted to the District Court last Friday seeking to cancel the nursing home's registration, HIQA alleged that Rostrevor had covered up allegations of serious abuse of patients by some staff members. These allegations included a care assistant allegedly banging a male patient's head against a door jam, the same care assistant allegedly taking a female patient to the bathroom on his own and of a patient being kicked by a staff member while lying on the floor.

Regardless of the truth of these allegations, for anyone with elderly relatives, which is most of us, they are enough to make the flesh creep. It is important to stress that many, perhaps most, of the Rostrevor staff, were not involved in the alleged abuse.

So how could this have happened? How could Rostrevor have slipped through the post-Leas Cross HIQA net? After all it wasn't as if Rostrevor had a previously unblemished record. In 2004 the HSE made a previous, unsuccessful effort to shut the home. As a result of the HSE's efforts Rostrevor was fined €8,000 in 2005 after being found guilty of 10 offences including failures in nursing care, the keeping of medication and the nursing home environment.

According to an Bord Altranais, three nurses who worked at Rostrevor were struck off the Nursing Register for professional misconduct. One was Therese Lipsett, Rostrevor's proprietor. Yet despite this the nursing home was allowed to remain open. More incredible is the fact that Rostrevor apparently received a clean bill of health following a HIQA inspection in 2008.

One would have thought that following the events of 2004-5 HIQA would have been watching Rostrevor like the proverbial hawk. So had the nursing home so raised its game in the immediate aftermath of 2004-5 that it was able to pass the 2008 HIQA inspection with flying colours only for its standards to slip alarmingly once again, or did HIQA fail to spot the signs that all was not well at the nursing home?

Unfortunately the fact that the latest attempt to shut down Rostrevor only came after a number of staff members, rightly appalled at what was happening, turned whistle-blowers, must lead one to the latter conclusion.

Even on the basis of what we already know, the Rostrevor affair has revealed huge gaps and weaknesses in the system of supervising nursing homes. As the law stands, whistle-blowers who expose wrongdoing by their employers have no legal protection.

These failings have exposed the elderly to the unacceptable risk of neglect and abuse. Regardless of the eventual outcome of this particular incident Health Minister James Reilly must move immediately to remedy these dangerous deficiencies.

Educating for the future

Yesterday 56,000 students began their Leaving Certificate examinations. For these young people the next few weeks will be a nervous rite of passage as they seek the points necessary to pursue the career of their choice in these uncertain times.

With the economic downturn having decimated job opportunities it is vital that the highest possible number of the young people sitting this year's Leaving Certificate go on to study for a degree or other qualification.

When the economic downturn eventually comes to an end we will need as many highly skilled and qualified young workers as possible to take advantage of any recovery.

EDITORIAL : THE AUSTRALIAN, AUSTRALIA

Gove mining deal a landmark

BUT indigenous jobs and self-sufficiency will be the real test.
The Gove Peninsula has a very special place in the narrative of Aboriginal land rights. The people of this Arnhem Land community lost the first legal battle to establish native title rights. That was 40 years ago in the Milirrpum versus Nabalco case over land leased by the government for a bauxite mine. It was more than two decades later that native title rights were recognised across Australia as a result of the successful and now famous claim by Eddie Mabo in the Torres Strait islands.
But the agreement celebrated in Gove yesterday marks another significant development in the history of indigenous rights. The Gove Traditional Owners Agreement, between Rio Tinto and the Yolngu traditional owners, is a negotiated framework to turn land rights into a secure economic future for the indigenous community. The agreement is worth hundreds of millions of dollars over the next four decades but, importantly, it includes a focus on training and employment. The real test of its success will be the degree to which it fosters education, jobs and self-sufficiency for the indigenous community. Leaders such as Galarrwuy Yunigpingu deserve credit for negotiating the deal which is the culmination of a struggle that began in 1963 with a petition written on bark and taken to the federal parliament.


Health reform watered down

PATIENTS must wonder what happened to the takeover threat.
Almost four years after Kevin Rudd threatened a full federal takeover of hospitals if state governments failed to lift standards and cut waiting lists the desired improvements remain elusive. Despite a $300 million federal funding injection for elective surgery, the COAG Reform Council found that waiting times for surgery increased in 2009-10, with the median wait for a coronary artery bypass increasing from 14 to 15 days and the wait for knee surgery stretching from 156 to 180 days. On the positive side, the reduction in waiting times for emergency department care is welcome.
As opposition leader, Mr Rudd was right when he demanded an end to the "blame game" between Canberra and the states over health. But his promise that "the buck will stop with me" has faded into the mists of time, prompting concerns that Labor has watered down its reform plans too far. The glacial pace of the government's progress to date reflects the inefficiencies of federal-state relations, leaving much to be done until patients relying on the public hospital system begin to reap the benefits. While an administrative overhaul was essential to any major health reform, the weakness of what Labor has delivered so far is that it is largely "a win for bureaucrats" as Australian Medical Association president Steve Hambleton pointed out last week, with the number of beds per 1000 people "going down, not up" as hospitals failed to keep pace with population growth.
At least Labor's metrics-based approach promises to put patients' needs first, including the public naming of hospitals that under-perform. Such reform has taken a long time to materialise but is essential if the system is to be improved. Short of launching a full-scale takeover, Health Minister Nicola Roxon had no alternative but to be pragmatic and make major concessions to the states in order to establish a hospital watchdog. The proviso that the National Health Performance Authority will report underperforming hospitals to state health ministers and gives them 45 days to fix problems before hospitals are "named and shamed" might prove an incentive to drive improvements. It is a serious concern, however, that the AMA believes the new health watchdog is too weak and its data processes open to manipulation by states.
As the AMA suggests, the Auditor General should be given authority to audit the material provided by the states. Predictably, the states and public hospitals object to the power the Gillard government wants to hand to the Independent Pricing Authority that will set the efficient price the federal government will pay for hospital treatments and hold back 4 per cent of hospital funding if it is not satisfied with a state's implementation of health reforms. Such oversight, however, should promote efficiency and help secure better value for taxpayers' investment in healthcare. Nothing less will do at a time of budget stringencies, an ageing population and vast but costly advances in healthcare technology. As well as finalising hospital reforms, governments need to turn their attention to the nation's serious doctor shortage, which has left a quarter of Australians in remote and outer-regional areas waiting for longer than acceptable to see a GP, including people who need urgent appointments.
After four years of limited progress the performance of the hospital sector after Ms Roxon's reforms are enacted will prove their efficacy or otherwise.



Cruelty warnings ignored on live cattle export trade


EGYPT and Indonesia concerns should have alerted Minister.
On April Fool's Day this year, Federal Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig spoke to a gathering of Northern Territory cattlemen in Darwin. He reaffirmed the government's commitment to the $300 million-a-year live export industry, recounted his recent visit to Indonesia, shared the cattlemen's frustration that annual exports to Indonesia of half a million head of cattle might not be enough, and promised to keep an eye on the issue and lobby the Indonesian government for increased quotas. To his credit, the minister also spoke about animal welfare issues.
Crucially, he recognised that "more still needs to be done to achieve higher standards of animal welfare practices, particularly in importing countries". However, Senator Ludwig said he had asked the industry to review its progress on animal welfare issues in importing countries. In other words, he knew practices weren't good enough, but he handballed the matter to the industry to sort out.
So it is difficult to have sympathy for the minister now as he is caught, like a rabbit in the spotlight, trying to resolve this ugly mess. The public, rightly, has demanded action after the ABC Four Corners program broadcast sickening images of the cruel treatment of Australian cattle in Indonesia. First, Mr Ludwig introduced a moratorium on restraining boxes, then he imposed a ban on a dozen Indonesian abattoirs, including three that didn't process Australian cattle. Now he has slapped a blanket six-month ban on the Indonesian export trade while the government and the industry try to put a workable solution in place.
So the minister has cancelled up to $150m worth of exports to fix a problem he certainly knew about in April, and probably much earlier. The clear conclusion to be drawn here is that animals have suffered needlessly, and an export trade has been jeopardised, because both the industry and the government have failed adequately to tackle a problem they have known about for some time.
It is not as though this hasn't happened before. Live animal exports to Egypt were banned from 2006 to 2008 because of mistreatment. Just like this time, the cruelty was exposed through footage shot by animal rights activists and supplied to the media. Just like this time, the Howard government reacted to an understandable public outcry. The Egyptian trade resumed, under Mr Ludwig's Labor predecessor Tony Burke, only after the construction of new facilities and detailed government-to-government agreements. So you would think that people involved in every component of the live cattle trade would have been aware of the risks to livestock, and the onflowing risks to the industry, of sub-standard slaughterhouse practices in Indonesia. Mr Ludwig clearly should have done more to ensure standards were being improved.
It is true that Australia cannot control Indonesian abattoirs. But if we wanted to sustain a lucrative live cattle trade, the onus was on the industry, and the government, to put in place what Mr Ludwig now calls "supply chain assurances".
For now, the government has done the right thing stopping the trade altogether so that better practices can be put in place. But it should never have been allowed to come to this.

EDITORIAL : THE JAKARTA POST, INDONESIA

Local wisdom

True champions of the environment, such as the 11 individuals and groups that won Kalpataru awards on Tuesday, teach us many lessons — dedication and modesty in particular.

Take Soleman Ngongo, a sluice keeper from the East Nusa Tenggara village of Tematana, as an example. As an honorable state guest, Soleman opted to take off his footwear outside the State Palace to preserve the cleanliness of the dignified place.

And look at his response to the prestigious prize that his work earned him: “I work not for this award or because of an intention to meet with the President,” Soleman told the media.

The fact that he is happy enough to live on Rp 500,000 (US$59) per month is evidence of his commitment to the job, which he has been nurturing for 40 years.

Indeed, green heroes such as Soleman have nothing to prove, as the fruits of their hard work are real and benefit — financially — the communities around them. Soleman was the prime mover of upstream forestation to maintain water sources. Soleman planted two million trees with the help of local farmers, whose rice production has steadily increased thanks to the re-greening program.

Another winner, Sugiarto, a resident of the East Java village of Cowek in Pasuruan regency, was awarded for planting 474,390 trees on 475 hectares along the Welang River. Sugiarto’s work could supply water to 246 hectares of paddy fields, 1,098 hectares of fishery land and 7,251 residents in the village.

The winners’ list also includes the Nurul Hakim Islamic School in Kediri village, West Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara, which has successfully promoted green schools. It also built 50 nursery centers, distributed some 5 million seeds to be planted in the village and provided training to produce 100 kilograms of compost per day.

Local wisdom taught the environmental heroes to love the environment, and so they do whatever possible to protect it without fanfare or complaint. Without the much-vaunted global campaign against the adverse impacts of climate change, we believe the local wisdom would remain there to guide them to preserve the Earth.

Local wisdom is all that differentiates them from political elites who are good at rhetoric on environmental conservation but their actions and policies speak the other way around. They shout their promises to curb greenhouse gas emissions, calling out loud for a change in the business-as-usual policies, but continue endorsing subsidies for fossil fuels and doing only a little to develop clean energy.

Many political elites deem the environmental issues as opportunities that need to be explored to gain international fame, including for the coveted United Nations secretary-general post.

Through their simplicity, the Kalpataru award winners tell the government to get things done when it comes to saving the planet.

Reflecting on the green heroes, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono perhaps does not need to complain about foreign countries that continue receiving illegal timber from Indonesia, but exercise his power to ensure the supply of the smuggled logs ceases to exist.

So, where’s the beef?

Australia’s decision to halt the export of live cattle to Indonesia seems way over the top considering that it is hurting its own highly-profitable cattle industry more than Indonesian meat eaters.

Indonesia, which has been the largest market for live Australian cattle, can easily switch to other suppliers. Indonesians are not big meat consumers anyway and cutting back on the red meat for those who do indulge reduces the risk of heart disease, which is fast becoming one of the major killer diseases in this country. East Java cattle farmers also would welcome the ban, as they have complained that Australian beef was undercutting their prices.

But where is the beef, as far as Australia is concerned?

The export ban came in response to public opinion in Australia which was outraged by a recent TV documentary that portrayed cruelty against Australian cattle at some (not all) slaughter houses in Indonesia. In response to the documentary, the Indonesian government has since identified 11 such slaughter houses and is looking at disciplining them and improving overall supervision.

The debate in Australia, however, has typically gone beyond looking at mistreatment and has started to question the methods of killing an animal. If the issue is now raised by the Australian government, this is where Indonesia has to draw the line.

For religious and health considerations, animals for consumption should be slaughtered by cutting their throat to make sure that all the blood flows out of their body. This has been the acceptable practice for hundreds of years throughout most of the world — even in the West. It was not until a few decades ago that the West started introducing a supposedly more humane, if not bloodless way, of slaughtering animals, first by hitting them on the head and now to use a stun bolt. However, any act of slaughter is by definition inhumane, no matter how you do it.

If the Australian public can stomach it, they should demand from their TV networks a documentary that looks at the way the cattle industry is run — how it treats animals, the crowded conditions where they are raised, the fattening process, the separation of the young from their mothers and the way a stun bolt is used to kill them.

Their next steak or burger will not taste the same.

EDITORIAL : THE TEHRAN TIMES, IRAN

Persian Press Review

Tehran Times Political Desk

This column features excerpts from news articles, editorials, commentaries, and interviews of the leading Iranian newspapers and websites.

Wednesday’s headlines

KHORASAN: 30 million hectares of land have turned into desert, Department of Environment director says

HEMAYAT: Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi says air pollution cannot be reduced by halting people’s business activities

JAVAN: I have submitted a list of 312 economically corrupt persons to Judiciary, president says

HAMSHAHRI: Majlis expresses doubt over employment statistics presented by the administration

TEHRAN-E EMROOZ: Hassan Ghafouri-Fard says Ahmadinejad should decide about persons close to him

JAME JAM: Our response to charges is silence, Ahmadinejad says

KAYHAN: Venezuela cuts ties with U.S. over Iran

FARHIKHTEGAN: Larijani says U.S. behavior is double-standard

DONYA EGHTESAD: Iran opposes increase in OPEC oil production

TAFAHOM: 50 percent of total tea crops sold

SHARQ: 16 one-ton bronze statues disappear in Sari City

Leading articles

KHABAR ONLINE in a news report quotes Fazel Mousavi, chairman of the Majlis Article 90 Committee, as saying Majlis gave the first yellow card to the president for not appointing a caretaker oil minister. He said MPs’ likely vote to 50 law violations by the president which has been mentioned in the Article 90 would be the second yellow card to the president. Therefore, he said, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is only one yellow card away from facing impeachment. Mousavi added if Majlis recognizes the president or ministers have flouted law it will be a yellow card for them and if it is confirmed that any of them have committed three violations that person will be put on the path for impeachment.

JAVAN in a report entitled “Why Police Have Secured City for Muscled Arms” says thugs are disturbing the peace and calm of citizens and police are not dealing with them seriously. The report refers to an event that happened on Tuesday, in which the thugs had a plan to abduct a girl but were confronted by a passerby who was a cleric. The hooligans attacked the cleric and his right eyelid was torn, and his cornea was badly damaged

 

EDITORIAL : THE DAILY TRIBUNE, THE PHILIPPINES

 

 

Questions of independence and impartiality

 
While there may be many candidates for the position of chief Ombudsman, it is almost certain that Noynoy’s choice would zero in on retiring Supreme Court (SC) Associate Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales.
For one, Noynoy personally offered her the position, even before the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) met to set the date for the public’s endorsement of candidates for the position of chief Ombudsman, to which Carpio-Morales reportedly replied that she would do so, as long as former SC Chief Justice Arturo Panganiban, a Yellow and supporter of Noynoy, would endorse her.
He did so, obviously when he was asked to do so by Noynoy. That was already the strong message that Noynoy wants Carpio-Morales as Merceditas Gutierrez’s successor.
While it is the JBC that prepares the list of at least three candidates from which Noynoy will have to choose, it is also almost certain that Carpio-Morales’ name will definitely be included on the JBC list.
For one, the JBC today is peppered with Noynoy’s appointees, along with two members of Congress who are Noynoy’s allies: Sen. Francis Escudero and Rep. Niel Tupas.
For another, having served in the high court, and having the qualifications, Carpio-Morales may be deemed fit for the job.
Maybe. But not quite, if independence and impartiality get into the picture.
It is no secret that Carpio-Morales, cousin to another SC Justice Antonio-Carpio, both of whom are identified with the famous law firm that once served as the Arroyos’ personal lawyers, had a falling out with then President Arroyo. It was only then that the two high court justices, who, when they were still linked to the Arroyos, that their votes always favored the then Malacañang tenant, but who, after the fallout, always voted against Malacañang.
Their voting records can prove this statement. If they are regarded by the Yellows as independent, that is mainly because of the anti-Gloria sentiment that erupted in July 2006.
Does this stance prove that much vaunted independence of the justice and, for that matter, the new appointees to the high court of Noynoy?
This so-called quality of independence needed by the Ombudsman is now under question by former President and current Pampanga Rep. Gloria Arroyo.
On the sixth of June, Arroyo wrote the JBC, asking the body to block the application of Carpio-Morales as Ombudsman.
Arroyo pointed out that she will be the likely principal target of complaints before the Office of the Ombudsman, citing the campaign pledge of Noynoy to go after her and her family.
Arroyo expressed doubts that Carpio-Morales would be fair, when it comes to complaints against her.
Said she in her letter: “If appointed Ombudsman, I sincerely believe that Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales would not have the required independence and impartiality in resolving cases involving me and my family,” she wrote, noting that while Carpio-Morales was a member of the high court, the mentioned justice consistently voted to validate efforts to investigate graft and corruption cases committed during the Arroyo administration.
As Ombudsman, Arroyo pointed out that while the high court is a collegial body, and her vote only counted as one, as Ombudsman, Carpio-Morales would be the sole judge in investigating corruption complaints against her and other government officials.
That’s just the problem with new administrations and their allies. Noynoy wanted Gutierrez impeached because he wanted to appoint a new Ombudsman who would be going after his political foes. Noynoy never made any bones about going after Gloria and her family.
It was the same during Gloria’s time. She went after ousted President Joseph Estrada, and having political influence over both the Ombudsman’s office and the Sandiganbayan justices, he was convicted — even when there was clearly no evidence of plunder.
Noynoy is doing the same time and because of that, there will always be questions of independence and impartiality of the appointed Ombudsman and even appointed justices since their focus would be on the current government’s political foes.
And what happens when Noynoy leaves office and a new Ombudsman is appointed by his successor, if not the same thing all over again?

EDITORIAL : THE NEW STRAITS TIMES, MALAYSIA

 

 

Bond breakers

MINISTER in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz said legal action would be taken against both scholars and guarantors in the event that Public Service Department (PSD) scholarship holders fail to return from overseas to serve in the civil service. Unlike study loans, scholarships, of course, do not have to be paid back. But in the case of the PSD awards, the scholarship still has to be discharged through serving a bond. Even when scholarships come with no strings attached, there is invariably an academic obligation to maintain a certain grade point average throughout the course of study.
In the case of the PSD scholars, when they inked the scholarship contract, they agreed to work for the government for a stipulated number of years and acknowledged the penalty involved in breaking the bond. To be sure, this bond is more of a social obligation to meet the country's human capital agenda. Still, as this is the contract they have signed, scholarship recipients should be prepared to repay the money expended. All the more so as it is a fair assumption that scholars break the bond to work in other countries that bring them higher financial rewards as well as greater personal satisfaction. Should they fail to come back and repay the amount, their guarantors should certainly be held liable as the scholars had accepted the clauses that gave the government due compensation with their full knowledge, consent and approval. All the more when the sureties are related to the scholars through family ties.

Moreover, though it is beyond the powers of the government or the courts to compel scholarship recipients to serve the bond and work for the government, as the scholarship agreement is a binding document, this is a legally enforceable contract. As such, it would be unacceptable for the government to be lax about holding scholars and their guarantors to their promises. All the more as taxpayers have to foot the bill for their expensive education abroad. As the bond breakers are driven by powerful personal and pecuniary reasons to stay overseas, legal action may not serve as an adequate deterrent or a sufficient incentive to lure them home. Nevertheless, they should not be allowed to use public funds to serve private ends. Above all, a contract is a contract, and those who fail to honour their contractual obligations should face the full legal consequences. In addition to becoming more assertive with its scholars when it comes to returning home, PSD should be more enterprising in promptly finding them a job when they do.

EDITORIAL : THE GUARDIAN, ENGLAND

       

 

Prisons: Reaction resurgent

Balancing the proclaimed newly muscular liberalism with a new muscularity of reaction is not a recipe for coalitional harmony

In so far as there is a serious liberal case for the coalition, it is that this administration has drawn a line under the dismal authoritarianism of the past 20 years. For a moment last year, it really did feel as if an entire agenda that had seamlessly passed from home secretary Howard in the Tory 90s to home secretaries Blunkett and Reid in the Labour noughties had finally been laid to rest. Mass-produced new offences, restrictions on defendants' rights and bone-headed terror laws: these things were simply not on the to-do list of a proclaimed small-L liberal Conservative prime minister who governed with a big-L Liberal support. The cleanest break of the lot concerned prison, whose use in England and Wales had doubled since the Howard era. Justice secretary Kenneth Clarke did not merely mouth warm words about alternatives to custody, as his predecessors intermittently did while squandering their budget on building more cells. He published a quantified plan to arrest the growth, and thereby free up resources for imaginative rehabilitative work.

Yesterday's news that Downing Street may rip one major plank out of that plan will – if it happens – effectively sink the whole thing. Well over half of the 6,000 prison places that Mr Clarke had wanted to free up were to be found by his pragmatic proposal to extend the discount on sentencing for a guilty plea from up to a third to up to a half, a policy with the important auxiliary advantage of encouraging offenders to ease the workload of a creaking court system. True, some judges had grumbled about the details, as Mr Howard relished pointing out yesterday. But the truth is that the country can no longer afford the race towards mass incarceration. If Mr Clarke's specific proposals are not to be pursued, meaty alternatives must be found. There are other options – such as decriminalising drugs – but these will not appeal to authoritarians such as Philip Hollobone, the Tory MP who called on Mr Clarke to retire in the Commons yesterday. All is not (quite) lost, since it is still unclear whether the guilty-pleas change is being abandoned outright or merely ditched for the most heinous crimes, but the mood music is hardly encouraging.

What is especially dismaying is that the panic on Downing Street appears to have been whipped up by a media storm that has already passed. Mr Clarke's words about rape a few weeks ago were desperately ill-chosen, and betrayed a crass if unwitting insensitivity. But after a foolish delay, he made his apologies, and explained he was merely attempting to convey the reality that there are some particularly violent rapes that quite rightly attract particularly harsh sentences. He even persuaded one victim who had previously broken down on the radio that his early-pleas policy may spare people who have suffered terrible attacks from a second ordeal in court. He did not, however, succeed in persuading those Fleet Street purveyors of fear and loathing who never tire of demanding the throwing away of every last key to every cell door. The praise the Sun poured on Ed Miliband after his kneejerk demand for Mr Clarke's head may have particularly spooked Mr Cameron if he discerned that his allies at News International were revealing themselves to be fair-weather friends.

The other sense weighing on the prime ministerial mind may be a need to throw a bone to Tory backbenchers. They are getting restive about concessions to the Liberal Democrats, particularly over health. But balancing the proclaimed newly muscular liberalism with a new muscularity of reaction is not a recipe for coalitional harmony, but a recipe for incoherence. If Mr Cameron gains a reputation for being blown hither and thither by every passing gale, while leaving colleagues to swing in these winds, he will pay a high price in the end. Far better to stick up for the liberal principles which he once proclaimed, and hack a way through the detail that salvages the thrust of the Clarke plan.

Peru: Revolution, the Brazilian way

Peru's elite swooned at the electoral choice that confronted the nation, but the country needs a role model

Peru has just held the sort of election that can give democracy a bad name: a choice between Aids and cancer, according to the country's revered novelist Mario Vargas Llosa. In the first round of the presidential contest the centrist vote split, allowing a runoff between Ollanta Humala, a former army officer promoting a leftist brand of Andean nationalism, and Keiko Fujimori, whose claim to the job rested on the fact that her father was Peru's controversial president for most of the 1990s. Reluctantly, Mr Vargas Llosa, along with a narrow majority of his fellow citizens, decided Mr Humala was the better candidate, and he won at the weekend.

The striking thing is how he did it. When Mr Humala last ran for the job, in 2006, he adopted the language, policies and dress of the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez. Back then, Chávez's Bolivarian revolution seemed to many to offer a decent hope of dragging South Americans out of poverty – flamboyantly anti-capitalist and anti-US, and apparently effective and popular. But Chávez has gone out of fashion, especially in Peru, as the reality of his rule has soured. A poll last year by Latinobarómetro found only 18% of Peruvians held a positive view of Chávez and only 23% thought Venezuela played a positive role in Latin America.

As a result, this time round, Mr Humala distanced himself from his old ally and promoted himself as a second Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former Brazilian president and icon of the South American resurgence. Lula cut poverty dramatically by promoting economic growth and responsible spending. So, in a lesser and more unequal manner, did Peru's outgoing president Alan García. Lima is full of new restaurants and shopping centres, and its population demonstrably richer. President Humala's task will be to spread the benefits to the Peruvian highlands, where things have changed less. He will be constrained (to the relief of some Peruvians) by the constitutional requirement to serve only a single term, by congress and by a hostile media, mostly in the hands of business and – as elsewhere in South America – determinedly opposed to everything, good and bad, about Chávez.

Despite valid scepticism, there is a chance Humala could succeed. Latin America is already richer than outsiders think, its total economic output a third bigger than India's. Democracy is established; military dictators in mirrored sunglasses have been swept aside by leaders attempting to appeal to a common hunger for education and a middle-class lifestyle. Peru's elite swooned at the electoral choice that confronted the nation, but the country needs a role model and it has found an effective one in Brazil.

In praise of … camels down under

Australia's population of wild camels may soon be shot in order to earn carbon credits in an emissions trading scheme

It's enough to make an even-toed ungulate weep. Australia's population of wild camels, the Financial Times reveals, may soon be shot in order to earn carbon credits under the country's forthcoming emissions trading scheme. Each one of the creatures is estimated to produce a tonne of carbon dioxide a year – about the same as a 7,000km flight – not to mention the environmental havoc they cause in a fragile desert landscape more suited to amiable marsupials. Outback Australia, argue the promoters of the scheme, is being terrorised by up to a million feral camels, the unwanted descendants of beasts brought to the country a century ago to carry loads in the desert, and let loose once trucks took over their role. These unloved burping, grunting ships of the desert now face mass slaughter as a token of Australia's slow-off-the-mark battle against climate change. By some measures, Australians are the biggest per capita emitter of carbon dioxide on the planet, ahead of even the United States. Yet some might think it odd that camels are being singled out, when that other invasive species, the human, is really the cause of the problem, and ask whether climate change is more an excuse than a justification for the cull. The country certainly has too many camels, and animal rights campaigners may be oveoptimistic when they suggest feeding the animals birth-control tablets. But the camels didn't ask to be sent to Australia in the first place. They are just doing what camels naturally do.

EDITORIAL : THE NEW YORK TIMES, USA

Internet Piracy and How to Stop It

Online piracy is a huge business. A recent study found that Web sites offering pirated digital content or counterfeit goods, like illicit movie downloads or bootleg software, record 53 billion hits per year. That robs the industries that create and sell intellectual products of hundreds of billions of dollars.

The problem is particularly hard to crack because the villains are often in faraway countries. Bad apples can be difficult to pin down in the sea of Web sites, and pirates can evade countervailing measures as easily as tweaking the name of a Web site.

Commendably, the Senate Judiciary Committee is trying to bolster the government’s power to enforce intellectual property protections. Last month, the committee approved the Protect IP Act,  which creates new tools to disrupt illegal online commerce.

The bill is not perfect. Its definition of wrongdoing is broad and could be abused by companies seeking to use the law to quickly hinder Web sites. Some proposed remedies could also unintentionally reduce the safety of the Internet. Senator Ron Wyden put a hold on the bill over these issues, which, he argued, could infringe on the right to free speech. The legislation is, therefore, in limbo, but it should be fixed, not discarded.

The bill defines infringing Web sites as those that have “no significant use other than engaging in, enabling, or facilitating” the illegal copying or distribution of copyrighted material in “substantially complete form” — entire movies or songs, not just snippets.

If the offender can’t be found to answer the accusation (a likely occurrence given that most Web sites targeted will be overseas), the government or a private party can seek an injunction from a judge to compel advertising networks and payment systems like MasterCard or PayPal to stop doing business with the site.

The government — but not private parties — can use the injunction to compel Internet service providers to redirect traffic by not translating a Web address into the numerical language that computers understand. And they could force search engines to stop linking to them.

The broadness of the definition is particularly worrisome because private companies are given a right to take action under the bill. In one notorious case, a record label demanded that YouTube take down a home video of a toddler jiggling in the kitchen to a tune by Prince, claiming it violated copyright law. Allowing firms to go after a Web site that “facilitates” intellectual property theft might encourage that kind of overreaching — and allow the government to black out a site.

Some of the remedies are problematic. A group of Internet safety experts cautioned that the procedure to redirect Internet traffic from offending Web sites would mimic what hackers do when they take over a domain. If it occurred on a large enough scale it could impair efforts to enhance the safety of the domain name system.

This kind of blocking is unlikely to be very effective. Users could reach offending Web sites simply by writing the numerical I.P. address in the navigator box, rather than the URL. The Web sites could distribute free plug-ins to translate addresses into numbers automatically.

The bill before the Senate is an important step toward making piracy less profitable. But it shouldn’t pass as is. If protecting intellectual property is important, so is protecting the Internet from overzealous enforcement.

Housing for the Wounded

The federal government should not have to be sued into giving veterans with mental illnesses and brain injuries the care they need so they don’t end up living in the street. But it has come to that.

A lawsuit filed on Wednesday in Federal District Court in California seeks to force the Veterans Affairs Department to carry out a long-stalled plan to build permanent housing for disabled veterans on property it owns in Los Angeles, which is thought to have the nation’s largest concentration of homeless veterans.

The class-action suit, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California on behalf of disabled homeless veterans, makes a powerful claim of discrimination and dereliction of responsibility by the government.

It notes that the land, nearly 400 acres in a prime section of West Los Angeles, was deeded to the federal government in 1888 expressly for use as a home for disabled soldiers and sailors. Yet no such housing exists there now, though a large veterans hospital with short-term treatment beds occupies part of that land. A wide array of other features, like athletic fields, theater stages, hotel laundries, rental-car and bus storage, even oil wells and a dog park, has also been built on the sprawling campus — but no home for veterans with mental health problems.

The plaintiffs argue that the lack of housing discriminates against these veterans. The government is legally obliged to give them the same access to care as other sick veterans, the plaintiffs say, but effective care is impossible when the veterans have no homes.

Their argument is based on a well-established view among medical and social-service providers that the only sure way to give these vulnerable patients effective, consistent access to care is to house them first. Only later, with stability in their turbulent lives, can they benefit from mental health and addiction treatment, and job training and education to help them regain their independence.

No politician has ever failed to profess his or her allegiance to wounded warriors, and that includes President Obama; the veterans affairs secretary, Eric Shinseki; and California politicians like Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Henry Waxman. But there is a yawning gap between their earnest pledges and their continuing failure to provide a roof and beds for homeless veterans. This housing plan, long a cause of Bobby Shriver, a City Council member and former mayor of Santa Monica, would respond to a great need with an obvious solution.

The Los Angeles area has more than 8,000 homeless veterans, about 8 percent of the 107,000 or so across the country. It also has a huge government-owned property waiting to be built upon. It’s simple, really.

Citizens United’s Outrageous Offspring

Judge James Cacheris gave the impression last week that he was considering putting right what he got wrong when he ruled in May that corporations are free to make direct donations to federal candidates. That first judgment directly contravened last year’s Citizens United case and the Supreme Court’s earlier decision in Federal Election Commission v. Beaumont, which upholds a ban on corporate donations to candidates.

In reaffirming his ruling this week, Judge Cacheris appears not to have reconsidered his stance at all. He pays lip service to his duty as a lower court judge to apply Supreme Court precedent, but his reasoning and result brazenly flout it. The Justice Department must appeal this latest ruling.

Judge Cacheris fails to reckon with the Supreme Court’s explicit language in Citizens United, when it said that “Citizens United has not made direct contributions to candidates, and it has not suggested that the court” should overturn the ban on campaign contributions, as it did not.

Likewise, he rejects the precedent set by the Beaumont case, claiming that it doesn’t control his ruling either because it involves political spending by a nonprofit corporation. While Judge Cacheris extends the substantive holding of Citizens United, even more dangerously he mimics its model of extreme judicial activism. The conservative justices used and endorsed a dramatically unrestrained approach there. Refusing to be bound by precedent while pretending to respect it, this judge has outdone them.

Shadowing the Reclusive Painter of Light

Trackers of the artist Edward Hopper tirelessly pursue the true settings of his city tableaux, so tinged with Gotham loneliness. Was the night-shrouded “Drug Store” modeled from the Waverly Place shop in Greenwich Village currently occupied by a corner bookstore? The artist offered them little help. “What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house,” was his typically terse clue about his work.

City searchers would be wise to go 20 miles up the Hudson River to Nyack, a rustic backwater when Hopper grew up there in the 1880s. His home on North Broadway has been preserved as the Edward Hopper House Art Center.

Its current exhibit about his earliest roots provides hype-free relief from Manhattan galleries and a prophetic glimpse through the young artist’s eye. A simple sketch by the 9-year-old Hopper on a penny postcard shows the back view of a boy, alone and staring from a beach at an empty expanse of water. It is a calling card for all those loners who will come to haunt Hopper’s paintings, from midnight diners to dark movie palaces and wispy Cape Cod evenings.

A few years after Hopper’s death in 1967, I did my own searching at his Washington Square studio, where he painted alongside his wife, the artist Jo Nivison. It was special to stand under the skylight by his easel, amid sharp angles of shade and light that washed his paintings to near abstraction. It was rewarding to find a dusky staircase to the roof, where he painted sun-slashed cityscapes.

The stair runners had been covered with bright yellow paint. It turned out that his wife had eyesight problems late in life, and Hopper used brush and palette to shepherd her. Here was no new masterpiece, just a graphic detail from a quiet life — the sort that finds Hopper searchers wondering about that bookstore on Waverly Place.

EDITORIAL : THE GLOBAL TIMES, CHINA

Keep threats out of the South China Sea

The Philippines has joined in the recent bickering over the South China Sea.

Voltaire Gazmin, the Filipino Defense Secretary, openly suggested Tuesday that a US military presence in the region could help protect the rights of smaller countries. China is clearly the target he was warning.

Trying to balance China and increase their bargaining chips in territorial claims are issues shared by several countries in the region. Last month, Vietnam's foreign affairs spokesman stated that the Vietnamese navy would "use every methods" to protect the country's interest.

However, confrontation might not be a smart choice at a time when economic integrity and cooperation are crucial to the region's competitiveness.

For each country involved, there is a public opinion that supports an aggressive approach to territorial disputes. For example, China's Internet is abuzz with hawkish stances against Vietnam, attempting to pressure Chinese diplomacy. If similar words were uttered by Chinese diplomats, the region would have become a simmering pot. Is this what the countries want to see?

The territorial dispute in the South China Sea is too complicated. It is self-denying for any country to think their claim can be fully realized. Responsible governments should not mislead their citizens into believing this. Without compromise, the dispute has no hope of being resolved.

The realistic way, at the moment when chances of full resolution are slim, is for countries involved, including China, to live with the conflict. Clashes might be inevitable. For instance, several countries have built facilities on the islands they have grabbed, oil exploration has taken place in disputed waters, and fishing vessels have sailed into waters under the control of another country. These clashes must not turn into a military confrontation.

The Vietnam foreign ministry later removed its hardline approach regarding the Vietnamese navy from its website. The Filipino defense secretary may consider doing the same.

The Chinese public hopes its government can walk a fine line between promoting peace over South China Sea and safeguarding its territorial claims. We hope other countries will take the same approach, not letting radical claims overshadow diplomacy.