nursing home owners sue over katrina

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Two nursing home owners who were arrested after 34 of their patients died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are suing the government, saying federal, state and local officials failed to keep residents safe and evacuate vulnerable citizens as the storm approached. An attorney for Salvador and Mabel Mangano said Tuesday that the lawsuit was filed last week, just before the anniversary of the storm. The Manganos own St. Rita's nursing home in St. Bernard Parish, a coastal suburb of New Orleans badly flooded by Katrina. Louisiana's attorney general had them booked for negligent homicide last fall after investigating the 34 deaths there, but the couple wasn't formally charged by a grand jury. No grand jury has been convened because damage to St. Bernard Parish government buildings and the displacement of the parish's residents have hobbled the court system, the attorney general's office said. One is expected to be convened this month. Attorney James Cobb said any liability in the deaths should be shared by governing agencies that failed to make appropriate evacuation preparations before the storm. "Gov. (Kathleen) Blanco had an obligation to make sure the state was in compliance with its own emergency operations plan," Cobb said. The Manganos have argued that their hurricane plan _ to keep frail residents in place with food, water and generators rather than risk moving them _ was a responsible course of action, and if the levees had held, the tragedy would have been avoided. So far, more than 30 lawsuits have been filed against the couple by patients injured at the nursing home and the families of people who died there, Cobb said. The lawsuit filed by the Manganos on Aug. 28 also accused the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers of failing to build adequate flood protection, subjecting the nursing home to 13 feet of flood waters. The property sits 12 feet above sea level, higher than most of the parish downriver from New Orleans, Cobb said. Kris Wartelle, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Charles Foti, said the office hadn't yet seen the lawsuit and declined to comment on the case. A call for comment from the governor's office wasn't immediately returned Tuesday.

Bush's war on FEMA and his fundamental misunderstanding of disaster relief programs

Bush decided to enter Labor Day weekend, 1 year after Hurricane Katrina destroyed an entire city, displaced hundreds of thousands of Americans and (so far) has cost the US government more than $100 Billion, by "getting out in front" and issuing an Executive Order to "Improve Assistance for Disaster Victims". The most substantive action taken by the administration by virtue of this EO is the creation of another beaurocratic layer of government; a special Task Force on Disaster Assistance Coordination. So, what's the problem? FEMA HAS NO REPRESENTATION on this task force, despite the fact that FEMA (and ONLY FEMA) is responsible for administering disaster assistance programs for both victims and local and State governments. Following Katrina's landfall, the Federal government suffered from beaurocratic paralysis. FEMA Director Michael Brown, having to work through an incompetent surrogate in Michael Chertoff, was never given the authorities or the tools necessary to rapidly respond to the needs of those who were affected. Yet, the administration's most significant policy adjustment on the 1 year anniversary of Katrina manages only to further cripple the one agency capable of fixing what the Bush administration themselves broke. Mr. Bush has shown (again) that his administration would prefer to hackishly strengthen the amorphous nothingness otherwise known as DHS to the detriment of anyone who may suffer from a future disaster. Incompetence. There's no other word.

bing bong

c/o No Quarter... some choice excerpts:

From Melanie Sloan, Executive Director, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

Response to Wash Post Editorial of 9/1/06

Allegation: It is untrue that the WH orchestrated leak of Plame’s identity to ruin her career and punish Joe Wilson

• According to Washington Post article of 10/12/03: “two top White House officials disclosed Plame’s identity to at least six Washington journalists.” An administration source told the Post: “officials brought up Plame as part of their broader case against Wilson . . . It was unsolicited . . . They were pushing back. They used everything they had.”
• After Novak’s column appeared Rove called Chris Matthews and told him Mr. Wilson’s wife was “fair game” (Newsweek 7/11/05)
• Mr. Fitzgerald, who has long been aware of Mr. Armitage’s role, stated in court filing: “there is ample evidence that multiple officials in the White House discussed [Valerie Wilson’s] employment with reporters prior to (and after) July 14, “ and further that “it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to ‘punish’ [Mr.] Wilson.” (Washington Post 4/7/06)

Allegation: Mr. Wilson’s charge that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger is false

• The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Assessment of Iraq describes Mr. Wilson’s role:
  • The CIA’s decision to send Mr. Wilson to Niger was part of an effort to obtain responses to questions from the Vice President’s Office and State and Defense on “the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal” (p. 39)
  • Two CIA staffers debriefed Mr. Wilson upon his return from Niger and wrote a draft intelligence report that was sent to the CIA Director of Operations (“DO”) reports officer. (p. 43)
  • The intelligence report based on Mr. Wilson’s trip was disseminated on March 8, 2002, and was “widely distributed.” It did not identify Mr. Wilson by name to protect him as a source, which the CIA had promised Mr. Wilson. (p. 43)
    • According to the report, the CIA’s DO gave Mr. Wilson’s information a grade of “good” “which means it added to the IC’s body of understanding on the issue.” (p. 46)

• After Mr. Wilson’s July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed, the Administration acted as if he had made a major revelation:
  • The day after a spokesman for the President told The Washington Post: “the sixteen words [“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa”] did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union.” (NY Times 7/8/03)
  • On July 11, 2003, CIA Director George Tenet said “These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president.” (LA Times 7/12/03).

• According to a Washington Post article, the National Intelligence Council stated in a January 2003 memo that “the Niger story [that Iraq had been caught trying to buy uranium from Niger] was baseless and should be laid to rest.” (Washington Post 4/9/06)
• According to a Vanity Fair article of July 2006, there was a last-minute decision before the President’s State of the Union Address to attribute the Niger uranium deal to British intelligence even though “the CIA had told the White House again and again that it didn’t trust the British reports.”
• On March 7, 2003, Mohamed ElBaradei, the Director General of the IAEA, publicly disclosed that the Niger documents which formed the basis for reports of a Iraq-Niger uranium transaction were false. He stated that “the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded.”

Allegation: Mr. Wilson “ought to have expected . . . that the answer [to why he was sent to Niger] would point to his wife.”

• A July 22, 2003 Newsday article cites a senior intelligence officer who confirmed that “she [Valerie Plame] did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment.”
• Joe Wilson’s July 15, 2005 letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence explains that Valerie Wilson was not at the meeting at which the subject of him traveling to Niger was raised for the first time and then only after a discussion of what the participants at the meeting did not know about Niger. This is confirmed by SSCI report at p. 40.

CSM on Israel's internal struggle

JERUSALEM – Soon after Israel's war with Hizbullah came to a halt with a tenuous cease-fire, Israel's internal war began.

Now, amid widespread disappointment over how the war was waged, the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is under pressure to set up a state commission of inquiry on various aspects of a war in which Israelis see innumerable mishaps.

Sixty-four percent of Israelis, according to an Israeli Radio poll released Thursday, want an independent inquiry into the war - not unlike the 9/11 Commission in Washington. Such high figures serve an embarrassing blow to Mr. Olmert, who has tried to downsize the issue by appointing two lower-level committees Monday to investigate the handling of the war.

The possibility of a wider probe evinces the degree of disillusionment with the war, but also the extent to which Israelis are now willing to put the decisions of a sitting government and even the country's near-omnipotent military under a critical microscope.

Internal critique over the war appears to be making its impact on both sides of the border: Olmert has acknowledged that there were shortcomings, while Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah said in an interview this week that had he known how Israel would retaliate, he would not have ordered the kidnapping attack.

Commissions of inquiry have only been held at grave moments in Israeli history, such as the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War and after the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

"The public impact of a commission of inquiry is much greater than any other. The public confidence in officials who direct a commission of inquiry is huge," says Prof. Stuart Cohen, a political scientist at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar Ilan University, near Tel Aviv.

"They also have judicial powers which no internal committee possesses," he explains, meaning that the commission has the power to hold officials personally responsible for civil or criminal offenses, order them dismissed from their positions, and ban them from holding similar positions in the future.

The crux of the controversy focuses on how the war was conducted, and not whether it should have been waged at all. But even those questions have the potential to sway policy, and an inquiry could have a lasting impact on the military options Israel exercises in the future.

Israelis also want an investigation into the government shortcomings in protecting civilians during the war. Volunteer organizations and not government officials, critics say, did most of the aid work. A decision to evacuate bombarded northern towns did not come until a month into the war.

"The rights and wrongs are not the issue - nobody here disputes the justice of the use of force," says Dr. Cohen. Israel began bombing Lebanon soon after Hizbullah staged a cross-border attack on July 12, killing eight soldiers and kidnapping two. The men are still being held.

"People are upset but they're not saying, 'My son died for no reason.' He died because somebody made a mistake," he adds. "The mistake was not to have gone to war, but not to have conducted the war properly." [more here]

heh

so true... Steve from No More Mister Nice Blog:

Shorter Michelle Malkin: I no longer believe that San Francisco hit-and-run driver was a jihadist terrorist, but at least I had the courage to jump to conclusions -- not like those liars in the MSM who got the story right.

this administration's jig is up

the divisive up-is-downism has become entirely transparent:

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Rumsfeld betrays his own cynicism and moral confusion when he attacks the patriotism, courage and moral fiber of millions of his fellow Americans, then bewails those who try to divide this country ~ It is not patriotism to sit in silent submission to those who have led this country into the most serious foreign policy blunder in our history. It is not moral confusion to point out that with its embrace of torture as a legitimate weapon, and with its refusal to abide by the Geneva Conventions, it is the Bush administration that has undercut the moral standing of the United States in a struggle in which moral standing is of utmost importance. And it is neither appeasement nor surrender to search for a better way, because it is clear to many that the road we have taken so far does not lead to victory.

Wake the hell up America.

US healthcare... a National disgrace

an editorial in yesterday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The long goodbye

08/31/2006

The number of Americans without health insurance grew by nearly 1.3 million in 2005, the sixth straight year it has increased. Nearly 46.6 million people are now uninsured, the U.S. Census Bureau reported this week. If that doesn't push health care into the center ring of the 2008 election circus, it is hard to know what will. What this means is that about 16 percent of Americans had no health coverage in 2005. From 2000 to 2005, the number of Americans without health insurance grew by nearly 7 million. It is now inescapably clear that a structural change is underway in how Americans pay for health care:Employers want out from under the costs, and government can't afford them, either. That change will not be eased by an improving economy, it leaves increasing numbers of working people either without access to care or impoverished by its costs. In the absence of a national plan, these changes could sink the health care system we all depend upon. That's because the cost of caring for people without insurance is covered either by tax dollars (through Medicaid, which makes payments to hospitals based on their number of uninsured patients), or by "cost-shifting." That's a long-standing practice by hospitals of charging people with insurance slightly more than what to costs to care for them; the extra money covers care to those who can't pay. The fewer Americans without health insurance, the smaller the cost shift; conversely, the more Americans without health insurance, the greater the cost shift. Some experts estimate that the cost shift adds $900 a year to the premiums of those with health insurance. And as premiums increase, more individuals and employers can't afford them, feeding the vicious cycle. At some point -- no one knows exactly where -- the cost shift becomes unsustainable and hospitals can't stay in business. Most Americans still have access to health care, and most still get health insurance through their jobs. But that's changing rapidly. In 2000, 64 percent of Americans had employer-provided health coverage; last year, only 59.5 percent did. Demographers say the drop in employer-provided coverage accounts for most of the increase in the number of uninsured. As always, low-income, low-skill workers and their children are the hardest hit. About one child in five living in poverty has no health insurance. About one adult in four earning less than $25,000 a year has no health insurance. A study prepared for the Missouri Foundation For Health found that 178,000 Missourians, including 16,000 children, lost health insurance coverage between 2000 and 2004. That was before the big Medicaid cuts passed by the Legislature, which slashed 100,000 people from the Medicaid rolls. From 2000 to 2004, the same study found, the number of people making twice the federal poverty level or less in Missouri increased by 330,000. That's significant, because poor people are more likely to be uninsured since low-wage jobs often don't include health benefits. Meanwhile, Congress has voted to cut billions of dollars from Medicaid, which will further increase the ranks of the uninsured. It's long past the time for Congress, employers, insurance companies, workers and health care providers to come together and hammer out a viable, long-range health care strategy for all of America -- those with good benefits, those with dwindling benefits and those with none at all -- that spreads risk, pools resources and contains costs. The conversation should start now, while we still have a health care system to save.

bill arkin nails Rumsfeld

ouch Either Rumsfeld has delivered one of the most important speeches of the modern era, or he's gone crazy. I think the latter, not just because I think the secretary is wrong on his intellectual characterization of terrorism, and not just because he is wrong about the media and its intentions, and not because he is so pugnacious, or because he has been wrong so many times before. Rumsfeld is so wrong about America. His use of World War I history and the specter of fascism and appeasement, and his argument about moral weakness or even treason in any who oppose him, is not only polarizing but ineffective in provoking debate and discussion about the proper course this country must take to "fight" terrorism. This is not the first time that Rumsfeld has shown himself to be so out of touch, so contemptuous of America. Rumsfeld as secretary of defense has displayed a contempt from long before 9/11 for anyone who disagrees with him, particularly in his initial wars against those in the uniformed military. Moreover, Rumsfeld's declaration of war yesterday follows from his basic view that the Defense Department has to do it all: He has created an intelligence bureaucracy because he is distrustful and contemptuous of the CIA and all others. He has built up a secret army and covert capabilities in special operations forces because he wants to control and to rely only upon his own warriors. He has created a homeland security apparatus that looks over the shoulder of the Department of Homeland Security and is the ultimate arbiter of security. He has created his own FBI in the Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), and fought to ensure that the NSA stays under Pentagon control. He has created his own law and his own human rights policy. He has subverted Congress through unexamined supplemental budgets and super-secret programs. Even as a military strategist, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld pushed a losing strategy in Afghanistan. This is not just because he went to war with an initially small force. After all, the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda began just weeks after 9/11 and that was what could be mobilized in that short period. The tragic error was that Rumsfeld continued to think that the terrorist threat existed in the form of a small army to be routed by his fabulous "transformed" warriors. It is Rumsfeld who declared "mission accomplished" long before President Bush stepped on to the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. Rumsfeld has been wrong in fighting and too quick to declare victory thereafter. Rumsfeld declared victory in Afghanistan, in addition, because he was twitching to move on to the next enemy, and the next and the next. But even when the weaknesses and problems became apparent about how the Afghanistan war had been fought, Rumsfeld still pushed an identical military strategy in Iraq, brushing aside any criticism as naïve and appeasing and out of touch with the new gathering storm of weapons of mass destruction. And even as Iraq has become one of the biggest hornets' nests in history, the secretary has convinced himself over and over that progress is being made and victory is just around the corner. America, Rumsfeld says, is not to blame, conflating a just war with a preemptive American strike. America is not to blame and therefore Rumsfeld is not to blame: no missteps, no errors of judgment. The secretary just wants his soldiers to believe now that he anticipated all along that the enemy was totalitarian and fascist and that Iraq was part of the big plan. If I were the conspiratorial type, I'd say Rumsfeld was a particular menace to America because in his view of a monolithic and totalitarian terrorist enemy, and in his analysis of the weakness of American society, he can only come to the messianic conclusion that he indeed needs to takeover the country in order to save it.

Broadcast Chief Misused Office, Inquiry Reports

By STEPHEN LABATON WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 — State Department investigators have found that the head of the agency overseeing most government broadcasts to foreign countries has used his office to run a “horse racing operation” and that he improperly put a friend on the payroll, according to a summary of a report made public on Tuesday by a Democratic lawmaker. The report said that the official, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, had repeatedly used government employees to perform personal errands and that he billed the government for more days of work than the rules permit. The summary of the report, prepared by the State Department inspector general, said the United States attorney’s office here had been given the report and decided not to conduct a criminal inquiry. The summary said the Justice Department was pursuing a civil inquiry focusing on the contract for Mr. Tomlinson’s friend. Through his lawyer, James Hamilton, Mr. Tomlinson issued a statement denying that he had done anything improper. The office of the State Department inspector general presented the findings from its yearlong inquiry last week to the White House and on Monday to some members of Congress. Three Democratic lawmakers, Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Representatives Howard L. Berman and Tom Lantos of California, requested the inquiry after a whistle-blower from the agency had approached them about the possible misuse of federal money by Mr. Tomlinson and the possible hiring of phantom or unqualified employees. Mr. Tomlinson, a Republican with close ties to the White House, was ousted last year from another post, at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, after another inquiry found evidence that he had violated rules meant to insulate public television and radio from political influence. His renomination to a new term as chairman of the State Department office that oversees foreign broadcasts, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, is pending before the Senate. Mr. Tomlinson’s position at the broadcasting board makes him one of the administration’s top officials overseeing public diplomacy and puts him in charge of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. The State Department report noted his use of his office to oversee a stable of thoroughbreds but did not mention one specific way in which his professional responsibilities and personal interests appear to have intersected. The horses, according to track records, include Karzai, as in Hamid Karzai, and Massoud, from the late Ahmed Shah Massoud) references to Afghan leaders who have fought against the Taliban and the Russians, as well as Panjshair, the valley that was the base used by forces to overthrow the Taliban. In providing the report to the members of Congress, the State Department warned that making it public could violate federal law, people who have seen the report said. On Tuesday, Mr. Berman released the summary. The lawmakers who requested the inquiry sent a letter to the president on Tuesday urging him to remove Mr. Tomlinson from his position immediately “and take all necessary steps to restore the integrity of the Broadcasting Board of Governors.” A spokeswoman for the White House, Emily Lawrimore, said President Bush continued to support Mr. Tomlinson’s renomination. Ms. Lawrimore declined to comment on the State Department report. In the statement issued through his lawyer, Mr. Tomlinson said that he was “proud of what I have accomplished for U.S. international broadcasting’’ and that the investigation “was inspired by partisan divisions inside the Broadcasting Board of Governors.’’ He implied that it was more efficient for him to work for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting at his office at the broadcasting board. About his horse racing work, he said the inspector general had concluded that it amounted to “an average of one e-mail and two and a half minutes a day’’ at the office. He also said he spent more time on broadcasting responsibilities at his farm and residences than he spent on his horses at the office. “In retrospect, I should have been more careful in this regard,’’ he said. Mr. Tomlinson, 62, is a former editor of Reader’s Digest who has close ties to Karl Rove, Mr. Bush’s political strategist and senior adviser. Mr. Rove and Mr. Tomlinson were on the board of the predecessor to the broadcasting board in the 90’s. Mr. Tomlinson has been chairman of the broadcasting board since 2002. The board, whose members include the secretary of state, has a central role in public diplomacy. It supervises the government’s foreign broadcasting operations, including Radio Martí, Radio Sawa and Al Hurra; transmits programs in 61 languages; and says it has more than 100 million listeners a week. Mr. Tomlinson’s ouster in November from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was prompted by a separate investigation by that inspector general at the corporation. That inquiry found evidence that Mr. Tomlinson had violated rules as he sought more conservative programs and that he had improperly intervened to help the staff of the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal win a $4.1 million contract, one of the corporation’s largest programming contracts, to finance a weekly public television program. The heavily edited State Department report on Mr. Tomlinson’s activities at the Broadcasting Board of Governors did not identify the friend who received the improper employment contract. The report said that there was no competitive bidding to hire him, that he was retired and on a government pension when Mr. Tomlinson hired him and that he never filed the required paperwork with the board. In his statement, Mr. Tomlinson identified the man as Les Daniels and said he had worked for 35 years at the Voice of America. Mr. Tomlinson said, Mr. Daniels did important work as a liaison aide with the public and working on significant projects. Mr. Daniels was paid nearly $250,000 over two and a half years, ending last year. Mr. Tomlinson was rebuked in the earlier report at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for improperly hiring an acquaintance from a journalism center founded by the American Conservative Union. The corporation paid the person more than $20,000 to monitor public radio and television programs for bias, including “Now,” with Bill Moyers as host. The State Department report said that from 2003 through 2005 Mr. Tomlinson had requested compensation in excess of the 130 days permitted by law for his post. The report said that he had requested and received pay from the broadcasting board and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the same days worked on 14 occasions but that investigators were unable to substantiate whether they were for the same hours worked on the same days. Investigators who seized Mr. Tomlinson’s e-mail, telephone and office records found that he had improperly and extensively used his office at the broadcasting board for nongovernmental work, including work for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the horse racing and breeding ventures. The material seized included racing forms and evidence that he used the office to buy and sell thoroughbreds. Mr. Tomlinson owns Sandy Bayou Stables near Middleburg, Va., Records show that most of the horses have not been in the money, although Massoud appears to have been quite successful, earning purses of more than $140,000 over the last two years. People who have seen the report said it noted that Mr. Tomlinson, on his lawyer’s advice, ended an interview with investigators early. One person familiar with the inquiry said Mr. Hamilton ended the interview as the investigators began to ask about using the office for horse racing business. Mr. Hamilton would not comment about the interview. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company

great job Bushie!

letters

The Roots of FEMA's Problems

Thursday, August 31, 2006; A24

R. David Paulison, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, offers a good guide for what needs to be done before the next natural disaster strikes ["Weathering the Next Storm," op-ed, Aug. 27].

But improving the federal government's responsiveness may be more difficult than he indicates. FEMA's management problems did not start with Michael Brown; they were initiated by Joe Allbaugh, whose management style and interpersonal skills motivated many competent and experienced professionals to leave FEMA.

In addition, the formation of the Department of Homeland Security reduced FEMA's authority and eliminated effective programs, such as Project Impact, that provided planning expertise and technical assistance to help communities take steps to lessen the impact of and repair the damage from disasters. Other programs were transferred to DHS. These actions resulted in a further exodus of experienced FEMA employees to other federal agencies and the business sector.

Transitions between administrations need not be so traumatic. The transition at FEMA from the first Bush administration, when FEMA was deemed to be less competent, to the Clinton administration resulted in fewer than 20 new political appointees. James Lee Witt, President Bill Clinton's FEMA director, brought leadership to the career employees and insisted that political appointees be experienced emergency managers.

Mr. Paulison wrote, "I have invested heavily in hiring the right leaders with emergency management experience to coordinate federal response efforts." I hope that he is successful.

OLLIE DAVIDSON

Chevy Chase

misc.

Levey: Iran 'Central Banker of Terror' 'Britain poses greater terror threat to US than Iraq and Iran' Homegrown terror suspects raise concern

Katrina's unclaimed souls

Will and Strength to be buried in Gulfport

Iraq: are you safer?

re: Details on the British Terrorist Arrest

• There was some serious cash flow from someone, presumably someone abroad.
• There was no imminent threat.
• However, the threat was real. And it seems pretty clear that it would have bypassed all existing airport security systems.
• The conspirators were radicalized by the war in Iraq, although it is impossible to say whether they would have been otherwise radicalized without it.
• They were caught through police work, not through any broad surveillance, and were under surveillance for more than a year.

c/o Bruce Schneier

too funny

from RP Online: The British have reacted to the recent terrorism alerts by raising their security level from "Miffed" to "Peeved." Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to "Irritated" or even "A Bit Cross." Londoners have not been "A Bit Cross" since the blitz in 1940, when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been recategorized from "Tiresome" to a "Bloody Nuisance". The last time the British issued a "Bloody Nuisance" warning level was during the great fire of 1666. Also, the French Government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from "Run" to "Hide". The only two higher levels in France are "Surrender" and "Collaborate." The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France's white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country's military capability. It's not only the English and French that are on a heightened level of alert. Italy has increased the alert level from "Shout Loudly and Excitedly" to "Elaborate Military Posturing." Two more levels remain: "Ineffective Combat Operations" and "Change Sides." The Germans also increased their alert state from "Disdainful Arrogance" to "Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs." They also have two higher levels: "Invade a Neighbour" and "Lose." Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday, as is customary, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.