The U.S. Health Care Rip-Off

The United States spends much more than other countries on health care, yet many studies show the outcomes are less beneficial.

Russia’s Concerns About Afghanistan After NATO

As the United States winds down its combat mission in Afghanistan, Russia is looking on, not with Schadenfreude but with extreme concern.

Russia knows what it is like to leave a country that it could not bend to its political will.

When Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in 1979, the Kremlin had no inkling about how long, costly and unpopular this war would turn out to be.

By the time Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev decided to end the occupation in 1989, over 15,000 Soviet troops and over one million Afghans had died in the fighting.

Now it is President Barack Obama’s turn to bring home the remaining 68,000 troops by the end of 2014, the subject of my latest Letter from Europe.

Mr. Obama made clear in his State of the Union address that “America’s commitment to a unified and sovereign Afghanistan will endur, but the nature of our commitment will change.”

The American presence will be very small, perhaps not more than 10,000 troops. And that is what worries Russia.

Russia has no intentions of getting involved again in Afghanistan. Yet the Central Asian republics, especially Uzbekistan, now fear instability on their borders as NATO’s 100,000-strong presence ends.

“The rulers of the former Soviet republics neighboring on Afghanistan are really scared,” wrote Mikhail Rostovsky in a fascinating short analysis in Moskovsky Komsomolets, a Russian daily newspaper. “They want Russia to be beside them and hold their hands at the crucial movement.” They also want Russia to be more actively involved in Afghan affairs.

That is the last thing Russia wants. It is in no position to end the drug trade, the insurgency and the corruption, which NATO could not stop. It has no intention of putting its own footprint on the country again.

With the security vacuum left by NATO’s wit! hdrawal, Russia’s only hope, whether naïve or not, is a new and more stable Afghan government.

“The best that can be hoped for is the emergence of a new regime in Kabul, less committed to universal values but on the other hand, more firmly standing on its own feet,” Mr. Rostovsky wrote. What an irony of history that NATO now must be wishing the same.

How Not to Treat the Buddha

BEIJING â€" Would you be offended by a toilet seat cover sporting an image of Jesus Or Muhammad

Some Thai Buddhists are upset that Buddha’s image is being taken in vain by “foreigners” who, they say, see it as a philosophical and not a religious symbol and don’t give Buddha the respect he deserves.

These sentiments flared anew last week after reports of a hotel in France with a “Little Buddha” room that includes a toilet cover with Buddha’s image.

The hotel, Moulin de Broaille in the Burgundy region of central France, went a step too far when it used toilet covers bearing an image of the Buddha’s head, The Bangkok Post reported last week, citing “Thai Buddhists” in a story titled “Buddhists Enraged by Toilet in France.” (The hotel didn’t respond to an email requesting comment.)

“The Thais complaind through the Knowing Buddha website at www.knowingbuddha.org,” The Bangkok Post said. And the government is involved.

“These situations are becoming more frequent,” said Nopparat Benjawattananon, director of the National Office of Buddhism, according to the report. “We have to understand that foreigners often think that Buddhism is only a philosophy. We have to help them understand that the Buddha’s image is what Buddhists respect and it cannot be used inappropriately.”

Knowing Buddha opposes images of Buddha being used commercially and some supporters have demonstrated in Bangkok, including outside tattoo parlors where people may get it inked on their bodies. Below the waist is particularly offensive, they say.

The “Knowing Buddha” Web site tries to help people “understand how you (should) can treat Buddha’s images appropriately,” it says. “We often find that Buddha is not treated with respect. Many! people overlook the feelings of billions of Buddhists around the world,” it says.

It also has a Facebook site that can tell people the “Do and Don’t on Buddha.”

They include: don’t use Buddha as a decorative object, such as a statue in the middle of a table. Don’t wear his image on the pocket of your jeans, or on your shoes. Instead place him high up, in a “proper place.” And definitely don’t place a Buddha statue in a toilet, a bar or a restaurant.

How Not to Treat the Buddha

BEIJING â€" Would you be offended by a toilet seat cover sporting an image of Jesus Or Muhammad

Some Thai Buddhists are upset that Buddha’s image is being taken in vain by “foreigners” who, they say, see it as a philosophical and not a religious symbol and don’t give Buddha the respect he deserves.

These sentiments flared anew last week after reports of a hotel in France with a “Little Buddha” room that includes a toilet cover with Buddha’s image.

The hotel, Moulin de Broaille in the Burgundy region of central France, went a step too far when it used toilet covers bearing an image of the Buddha’s head, The Bangkok Post reported last week, citing “Thai Buddhists” in a story titled “Buddhists Enraged by Toilet in France.” (The hotel didn’t respond to an email requesting comment.)

“The Thais complaind through the Knowing Buddha website at www.knowingbuddha.org,” The Bangkok Post said. And the government is involved.

“These situations are becoming more frequent,” said Nopparat Benjawattananon, director of the National Office of Buddhism, according to the report. “We have to understand that foreigners often think that Buddhism is only a philosophy. We have to help them understand that the Buddha’s image is what Buddhists respect and it cannot be used inappropriately.”

Knowing Buddha opposes images of Buddha being used commercially and some supporters have demonstrated in Bangkok, including outside tattoo parlors where people may get it inked on their bodies. Below the waist is particularly offensive, they say.

The “Knowing Buddha” Web site tries to help people “understand how you (should) can treat Buddha’s images appropriately,” it says. “We often find that Buddha is not treated with respect. Many! people overlook the feelings of billions of Buddhists around the world,” it says.

It also has a Facebook site that can tell people the “Do and Don’t on Buddha.”

They include: don’t use Buddha as a decorative object, such as a statue in the middle of a table. Don’t wear his image on the pocket of your jeans, or on your shoes. Instead place him high up, in a “proper place.” And definitely don’t place a Buddha statue in a toilet, a bar or a restaurant.

Green Groups Decry Sequester’s Effects

Weeks after President Obama promised to develop sustainable energy and green jobs and to fight climate change â€" first in his second Inaugural Address, and then in his State of the Union Message â€" the realities of American politics have set in.

The first $85.3 billion in automatic federal budget cuts known as the sequester started taking effect on Friday.

Republicans accuse the president and his supporters of needlessly trying to scare the public by overstating the possible impacts of the budget cuts. And my colleague Michael Shear reports that so far, three days in, their impact has not been immediately felt. Environmentalists say that will not last.

President Obama has ought to highlight how the cuts could endanger thousands of defense-industry jobs, but others are warning that the reduced budget will take funds from renewable-energy programs, environmental protection, disaster relief, food and water inspections and scientific research.

Last month, Steven Chu, the secretary of energy, warned a U.S. Senate committee that sequestration would affect the push toward renewable energy (a pdf of the letter is on the Senate site).

“Under sequestration, funding reductions would decelerate the nation’s transition into a clean energy economy, and could weaken efforts to become more energy independent and energy secure,” he wrote.

He also ! warned that cuts to the Department of Energy’s Office of Science would affect the work of 25,000 researchers and staff working in 10 laboratories across the country.

At the Environmental Protection Agency, some staffers will temporarily lose their job, as job furloughs lasting to the end of September are handed down.

Reuters reported on an email from the acting E.P.A. head, Bob Perciasepe, who told his employees that despite preparing for the sequester cuts,“ furloughs are inevitable.”

Among its other roles, the agency is to release new rules governing greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants.

The E.P.A. also warned that it would have to reduce the number of environmental inspections, enforcement of rules at Superfund sites (sites contaminated by hazardous subsances), ground water cleanup actions and much more.

“The cuts we will mean fewer inspectors to keep toxins out of our food, fewer watchdogs to keep toxins out of the air we breathe and the water we drink, and more tax breaks for the billion-dollar companies that prefer to pollute with impunity to protect every penny of their record profits,” said Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, the American environmental group, in a statement.

Federal disaster relief will also see cuts under the sequester, with more than $900 million being cut from Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA. The agency has been instrumental in the federal response to increasingly extreme weather events that are the result of a changing climate.

There’s currently some debate on weather the sequester will slow the current rebuilding efforts in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

The National ! Park syst! em stands to loose some $110 million of federal funding.

“From Yellowstone to Cape Cod, the Grand Canyon and Great Smoky Mountains, our national heritage and local economies are at risk,” wrote Tom Kiernan, president of the National Parks Conservation Association.

Hours will be reduced, visitors’ centers will close and some rangers, educators, and personnel will lose their job, according to leaked documents obtained by the group.

“Make no mistake: The arbitrary, across-the-board cuts that will reduce our food inspections, lock gates at our national parks, dirty our drinking water and throw hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work are not because of Washington gridlock,” said Franz Matzner, associate director of government affairs for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “They are the product of GOP obstructionists protecting lopholes for millionaires and subsidies for oil companies.”