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  • Graceless Fall From Grace : Goodman and Good Sense # 5

    Once again a sordid story is unfolding in our capital involving people in power and their sexual foibles. Fortunately, this one is playing under the radar and has not (and hopefully, will not) assumed the proportions of an Anna Nicole Smith or American Idol size saga. What after all, is new about the powerful seeking extra-constitutional, extralegal or extramarital privileges for themselves?  So far all we know is that the D.C. Madam who claims to have served the high and mighty with her stable of sophisticated "escorts" has threatened to expose the contents of her rather hefty "little black book." Thankfully, the reaction to her lurid threat has been tepid at best although there has already been one high level casualty from the fun-filled frolic that the Madam provided.

    Randall Tobias, Deputy Secretary of State and Bush’s AIDS czar has resigned. He claims to have received only $300 dollar massages and no sexual contact with the "gals." Who cares, you say?  Well hundreds of thousands of current and potential AIDS victims around the world do. Not about what Tobias did in his own time with his own money but what he expected them to do in return for our money.  George Bush’s World AIDS prevention and emergency plan is among this administration’s few generous and compassionate enterprises. But like everything else the right wingers do, even good causes geared towards health and human services are inextricably tied to their own narrow sense of morality. Just as they have in the past tried to make teen pregnancy hostage to abstinence only education and abortion out of bounds in family planning services to poor countries, Bush’s AIDS funding too has been linked to victims living by the moral standards of their Christian donors.

    I completely and wholeheartedly agree that "health & disease conditions" like untimely pregnancies, AIDS and STDs, must have sane, persuasive and scientific "sex and social education" as part of the prevention program along with pharmaceutical cures and palliatives.  But education takes time – cultural mindsets do not change overnight. Also poverty often is the biggest impediment to morality. Overwhelming number of women in poor countries getting mired in unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases are not in a position to say "no" to their husbands and sexual partners or even to persuade them to exercise care and caution. To withhold or delay medical aid to these afflicted women based on our own prosperous morality is not just unreasonable but cruel. Especially, when the powerful donors themselves often cannot (and do not) live by those standards. As we have seen time and again, another mighty has fallen because the hiccup of hypocrisy scared the high horse he was riding.

    Ellen Goodman has the details:

    The deputy secretary of state resigned last Friday after admitting he was a client of the service described on the Web as "a high-end adult fantasy firm which offered legal sexual and erotic services." The 65-year-old married man did not admit to having sex with those women but said he had the $300-a-visit "gals come over to the condo to give me a massage." It was, he said, like calling for pizza.

    Well, Mr. Tobias was not just your everyday CEO-turned-bureaucrat. This is one time that "private life" and "public record" are as tightly wedded as a pizza and its toppings. As the first global AIDS czar, Mr. Tobias oversaw American public policy for foreign private lives. He was in charge of doling out sexual morality with the money.

    First a caveat. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is one of the good things that has come from this administration. Some $15 billion has been targeted for treatment and HIV prevention in the epidemic’s hot spots. But from the get-go, it’s been hampered by the same moral-first, faith-based tenets that are woven through our domestic policy.

    Any country that wants money from George Bush’s America has to follow the ABCs of our policy prescription: A for abstinence, B for be faithful, and C for condoms only if you belong to a high-risk group that flunks A and B. So far, a full third of the prevention money, more than $100 million, has been spent for abstinence-until-marriage programs.

    Mr. Tobias was often praised as a good manager. If he was not an ideologue, he sure played one on TV and in congressional hearings. When he was finally caught on the wrong list, it wasn’t the ABCs that made him resign. It was the H for hypocrisy.

  • What Price, Longevity?

    The amazing Dr. Atul Gawande who has elevated popular medical writing to the level of fine literary enterprise, has a very interesting and worthwhile article in the New Yorker about aging, death and geriatric care.  He asks many questions and presents the case for what constitutes compassionate and common sense medical care for the elderly. 

    From the biological / physiological angle, there is debate on whether our death is due to wear and tear or a genetically programmed event that would occur, no matter what our state of health. I am no expert but I suspect that some human events and abilities, like the child bearing age of women, diminishing of physical and mental faculties are for the most part, genetically dictated. It doesn’t change much across the diverse population of the world and probably hasn’t changed much over time. Even though human longevity is now way greater than it was even a fifty years ago, the trajectory of certain human events has not changed drastically. Death itself is probably more complex – programming, plus wear and tear. Gawande asks if enhanced human longevity is an unmixed blessing. It is surely a triumph of modern medicine but is it commensurate with the quality of life and the human spirit and longings?   

    (Do read the whole article if you have the time. It is multi-layered, informative and thought provoking for the young and the old alike.)

    Why we age is the subject of vigorous debate. The classical view is that aging happens because of random wear and tear. A newer view holds that aging is more orderly and genetically driven. Proponents of this view point out that animals of similar species and exposure to wear and tear have markedly different life spans. The Canada goose has a longevity of 23.5 years; the emperor goose only 6.3 years. Perhaps animals are like plants, with lives that are, to a large extent, internally governed. Certain species of bamboo, for instance, form a dense stand that grows and flourishes for a hundred years, flowers all at once, and then dies.

    The idea that living things shut down and not just wear down has received substantial support in the past decade. Researchers working with the now famous worm C. elegans (two of the last five Nobel Prizes in medicine went to scientists doing work on the little nematode) were able to produce worms that live more than twice as long and age more slowly by altering a single gene. Scientists have since come up with single-gene alterations that increase the life spans of Drosophila fruit flies, mice, and yeast.

    These findings notwithstanding, scientists do not believe that our life spans are actually programmed into us. After all, for most of our hundred-thousand-year existence—all but the past couple of hundred years—the average life span of human beings has been thirty years or less. (Research suggests that subjects of the Roman Empire had an average life expectancy of twenty-eight years.) Today, the average life span in developed countries is almost eighty years. If human life spans depend on our genetics, then medicine has got the upper hand. We are, in a way, freaks living well beyond our appointed time. So when we study aging what we are trying to understand is not so much a natural process as an unnatural one. Inheritance has surprisingly little influence on longevity.   ………

  • May Day : Up Close and Personal

    Most of you have by now seen news reports of the May Day rally at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles which turned violent when some demonstrators threw bottles and cans and the LAPD opened "fire" with rubber bullets and charged into the crowd with batons (the CNN report here). Although the incident is reported in the media as an "immigration rally," the afternoon event at the park was an International Workers’ Day gathering where undocumented workers too demonstrated for their rights.

    My daughter was present at the afternoon protest rally as an observer on behalf of the National Lawyers’ Guild along with other attorneys. She was caught in the middle of the melee when she tried to help move the back of the crowd away from the advancing police line. During her efforts, she was charged and beaten by a policeman. (full report on Indymedia here.) Some other attorneys, journalists, photographers and other non-protesting bystanders too were beaten and injured.

    LapdA National Lawyers’ Guild observer, Sanjukta Paul, (my daughter) was beaten repeatedly, including a blow to the kidneys, as she attempted to separate the police from the crowd. She had demanded that she had the right to be there as she tried to move people off the street, but a cop replied, "No, you don’t," then clubbed her with his baton.

    Another report from Tuesday’s Indymedia in L.A.

    Sanjukta  Paul, on duty with the NLG, says LAPD offers of allowing her to speak with a chief never materialized. She also says she never got word of the police order for protestors to disburse. Although there had been mention of an ‘unlawful assembly,’ there was never any order for protestors to leave or risk arrest.

    According to my daughter who reported Tuesday’s incident to her parents only on Wednesday (!!!), the Indymedia reports are a bit breathless and somewhat erroneous. She did not receive a blow to her kidneys. The policeman slugged her with his baton at least four times in the stomach. Oh, the report left out another detail.  My daughter was also shot in the back with a rubber bullet!  She is shaken, angry but otherwise okay and did not need to make a trip to the hospital.

    Sanjukta gave a detailed interview to Pacifica Radio (KPFK Los Angeles) about the day’s events. I cannot locate the link to the audio. The Indymedia links will have to suffice for now. I guess readers can imagine how my husband and I feel – utterly thankful that she is okay, terrified at what happened and knowing our daughter, not at all surprised that she was there.

    Update: "The FBI announced Thursday it will open a civil rights inquiry into the May Day melee at MacArthur Park, one of a growing number of investigations into the LAPD’s actions at the pro-immigration rally." [Link]

     

  • UK “Pakistanis” Not Welcome in the US

    Should a foreign government pick and choose what "kind" of people from another nation may or may not be allowed to enter a country?   Unofficially, we know that it happens all the time.  Visas are routinely refused to members of "suspect" ethnic / religious groups. Muslims (and even bearded, turbaned non-Muslims and olive skinned men) from the middle east and south Asia face much more scrutiny during travel to the rest of the world. Sri Lankan Tamils and Sikhs faced major problems in the 1980s and 90s at the height of the Tamil and Sikh separatist movements.  But most of the time the restrictions are imposed "unofficially" without the host nation coming right out and saying that a certain type of people are "unwelcome."

    The US Homeland Security Office is considering making such discrimination official.  British citizens, like most western Europeans, do not require visas to enter the US. After the bombing of the London subway and subsequent terrorist plots uncovered in the UK in which young British Muslim men (mostly of Pakistani family origin) have been implicated and convicted, the US is considering imposing travel restrictions on Britons of Pakistani origin, requiring only this group among all British nationals, to have travel visas for entering the US.  But will this not be tantamount to a foreign government interfering in the internal affairs of another sovereign nation by creating a "second class" status for some of its  citizens?

    Omar Khyam, the ringleader of the thwarted London bomb plot who was sentenced to life imprisonment on Monday, showed the potential for disaffected young men to be lured as terrorists, a threat that British officials said they would have to contend with for a generation.

    But the 25-year-old Mr. Khyam, a Briton of Pakistani descent, also personifies a larger and more immediate concern: as a British citizen, he could have entered the United States without a visa, like many of an estimated 800,000 other Britons of Pakistani origin.

    American officials, citing the number of terror plots in Britain involving Britons with ties to Pakistan, expressed concern over the visa loophole. In recent months, the homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, has opened talks with the government here on how to curb the access of British citizens of Pakistani origin to the United States.

    At the moment, the British are resistant, fearing that restrictions on the group of Britons would incur a backlash from a population that has always sided with the Labor Party. The Americans say they are hesitant to push too hard and embarrass their staunch ally in the Iraq war, Prime Minister Tony Blair, as he prepares to step down from office.

    Among the options that have been put on the table, according to British officials, was the most onerous option to Britain, that of canceling the entire visa waiver program that allows all Britons entry to the United States without a visa. Another option, politically fraught as it is, would be to single out Britons of Pakistani origin, requiring them to make visa applications for the United States.

  • Fidel Spotting – A Healthy Sport or Stale Politics?

    May_2_4Today is May Day.  It means different things to different people – to celebrants of spring, labor organizations, political protesters and anarchists.  In communist countries it is a state holiday in honor of International Labor Day.  There is much speculation this year whether Cuban president Fidel Castro who is sick and has not been seen in public in many months, will make an appearance at the May Day parade in Havana. 

    Bolivian President Evo Morales has said he thinks Cuban leader Fidel Castro will return to the public eye on 1 May after a long recovery from illness.

    Mr Morales made the remarks ahead of a summit in Venezuela, adding that he had not spoken to him in person but heard the news from Cuban officials.

    "I am certain that, on May 1, comrade Fidel will resume his role leading Cuba and Latin America," Mr Morales said.

    Mr Castro has been out of the public eye for the last nine months.

    Some six million Cubans are expected to take part in 1 May celebrations across Cuba on Tuesday. The day marks International Labour Day.

    For most of the last 47 years of his rule, Mr Castro has marked the occasion with a lengthy speech in Havana’s revolution square.

    I don’t know how much it matters if he does or does not turn up at the parade. Castro is nearly eighty and surely not a force even in his own country.  But he remains a powerful symbol of unbending obduracy against a hugely powerful enemy who sought to destroy him politically and even physically for nearly five decades. His appearance, however fragile his constitution, surely means something to the people of Cuba and Latin America. What I cannot understand is why some of us in the in the US are so obsessed with Castro. Is it very dignified for the leadership of a nation like the United States to be on a vulture like death watch over an aged political enemy who is surely at the end of his political and earthly life?

    Miami – President George W Bush took fresh aim on Saturday at Cuba’s communist government, calling it a "cruel dictatorship" and predicting that democratic change was near.

    The US president’s comments came amid signs that Cuban leader Fidel Castro was recovering from an intestinal ailment that has kept him out of the public eye for the past nine months and may soon resume some government duties.

    Bush, who has tightened economic sanctions on Havana and boosted aid to dissidents with a goal of hastening the end of Castro’s grip on power, said in a commencement speech at Miami Dade College that many Cubans were dreaming of a better life.

    "Unfortunately, those dreams are stifled by a cruel dictatorship that denies all freedom in the name of a dark and discredited ideology," Bush said, noting that many people at the graduation had roots in Cuba, which is just 140km from Florida.

    "Some of you still have loved ones who live in Cuba and wait for the day when the light of liberty will shine upon them again," Bush said. "That day is nearing."

    So, when the light of liberty shines on Cuba, are the Miami Cubans going back to reclaim their long lost motherland? And wouldn’t removing sanctions and draconian punitive measures help that light to shine sooner and brighter?  But who knows what the real depth of hatred for Castro and Cuba is in the minds of our politicians. Whether this unseemly behavior is only public posturing for the benefit of the Miami Cubans who happen to be among the most unforgiving political constituency in this country. They have parlayed their hatred and vengeance against Castro for decades to hold regional US foreign policy hostage to their narrow and bitter agenda and to keep right wing politicians on a short leash in lieu of a dependable voting bloc.

    Anyway, a very happy May Day to all – whatever it means to you and even if you are like me, to whom it doesn’t mean much.    

  • The Rapture of the Bees (Sujatha)

    The mysterious disappearance of colonies of honeybees across several nations has alarmed commercial beekeepers who rent their services to a variety of large farming operations, due to what has been termed the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Entomologists and apiologists have been proposing and testing hypotheses ranging from radiation from cell phones (‘Turn off your cell phones and Save a Beehive’) to GM crops (courtesy the great Monsatan). We have purported quotes from the famed Einstein himself, credited with sobering utterances such as

    "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only
    have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no
    more plants, no more animals, no more man."

    (more…)

  • Walls of Futility

    "Riverbend," the young Iraqi woman whose blog Baghdad Burning gave us a glimpse into her first hand, personal, beyond the TV cameras view of Baghdad during its invasion and occupation, is moving out of her home.  She and her family will leave Baghdad for a new life elsewhere. She describes her feelings about leaving her home and what that home has become – not only in the past four years of devastation but what it is likely to become in the current and future efforts by outsiders to shape and redefine it. Americans are building walls and carving out Baghdad, a city which used to be integrated along ethnic / sectarian lines, into Shia and Sunni ghettos. Building walls to keep the enemy "in" or "out’ has been an age old exercise in futility by occupiers and invaders, as Riverband points out. It has rarely worked in the past and is unlikely to work in the future. (Her post has been also published in Salon.)

    The Great Wall of Segregation……Which is the wall the current Iraqi government is building (with the support and guidance of the Americans). It’s a wall that is intended to separate and isolate what is now considered the largest ‘Sunni’ area in Baghdad- let no one say the Americans are not building anything. According to plans the Iraqi puppets and Americans cooked up, it will ‘protect’ A’adhamiya, a residential/mercantile area that the current Iraqi government and their death squads couldn’t empty of Sunnis.

    The wall, of course, will protect no one. I sometimes wonder if this is how the concentration camps began in Europe. The Nazi government probably said, "Oh look- we’re just going to protect the Jews with this little wall here- it will be difficult for people to get into their special area to hurt them!" And yet, it will also be difficult to get out.

    The Wall is the latest effort to further break Iraqi society apart. Promoting and supporting civil war isn’t enough, apparently- Iraqis have generally proven to be more tenacious and tolerant than their mullahs, ayatollahs, and Vichy leaders. It’s time for America to physically divide and conquer- like Berlin before the wall came down or Palestine today. This way, they can continue chasing Sunnis out of "Shia areas" and Shia out of "Sunni areas".

  • Sujatha Gets Down and Dirty

    …. in her back yard and for a good cause, of course.  Sujatha and her daughter take stock of their garden and dream of tomatoes, peppers, beans, radish, spinach and other staples.

  • Good Luck, Joe!

    Wishing our co-blogger Joe (the only full time student among A.B. authors) all the best for his upcoming finals.  You go, Joe!

  • Weekend Links

    Links to some recent events – all a bit disturbing, none wholly surprising.

    Slam Dunk to Infamy: George Tenet, the former CIA chief who was one of Bush-Cheney’s chief enablers in the criminal invasion of Iraq, is attempting to clean up his own guilty legacy and like all other rats, moving to abandon the sinking ship of the Bush administration. He has written a book, "At the Center of the Storm" where he admits making the now infamous "slam dunk" comment about Saddam Hussein owning WMD (based on faulty intelligence). But he also insists that nothing he said or did not say would have stopped Bush-Cheney from attacking Iraq. Another war criminal trying to wash the blood off his hands.

    There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat," Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, "was there ever a significant discussion" about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.

    Tenet described with sarcasm watching an episode of "Meet the Press" last September in which Cheney twice referred to Tenet’s "slam dunk" remark as the basis for the decision to go to war.

    "I remember watching and thinking, ‘As if you needed me to say ‘slam dunk’ to convince you to go to war with Iraq,’ " Tenet writes.

    Execution at the Border:  A very disturbing incident caught on tape showing a US Border Security Agent shooting a Mexican national attempting to cross into US territory, at point blank range. The agent is back at work and the office of the Border Security Patrol  is more interested in finding out who leaked the video to the San Diego Union Tribune than investigating the shooting by the agent.

    Limbaugh Blames Liberalism for VT Carnage:  After any killing rampage by a crazed killer with a gun(s), the NRA and the right wing admonish us that any criticism of easy gun ownership is specious and a violation of the Second Amendment. Yet, after every nerve rattling disaster that befalls us, the right wing attack dogs never fail to lay the blame at the doorstep of liberalism – specifically, un- Christian values like secularism, feminism, homosexuality  and even the teaching of the theory of evolution.  So it doesn’t come as a surprise at all that Rush Limbaugh has declared with authority what was ailing the severely disturbed Seung-hui Cho, the deranged killer who struck terror at Virginia Tech on the 16th of March.  He was a liberal!  Of course.

    On the April 19th broadcast of Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, the conservative radio host seemed to blame the deadly shooting rampage of Virginia Tech killer Seung-hui Cho on liberals, reports ABC News’ Political Punch blog.

    "If this Virginia Tech shooter had an ideology, what do you think it was? " Limbaugh queried. "This guy had to be a liberal. You start railing against the rich and all this other — this guy’s a liberal. He was turned into a liberal somewhere along the line. So it’s a liberal that committed this act."

    Limbaugh said that he was not "attacking liberalism" but was merely "pointing out a fact."   

  • A Place Like Home?

    Scientists may have found the first habitable planet outside the solar system.  The earthlike planet orbits a red dwarf star in the constellation, Libra.  Although much closer to the star which it orbits (in thirteen days), it appears to have a temperate climate – red dwarf stars are much cooler than our own sun. The estimated temperature zone of 32 – 104 degrees fahrenheit (0 -40 degrees celsius) puts the planet in the Goldilocks Zone  – not too hot, not too cold. This raises the possibility of the existence of water on the planet and could make it hospitable to the presence of life as we know it.  Want to relocate to the new location?  You could. It would take 20.5 years of travel time at the speed of light.  Not in the realm of possibility yet, but certainly within the grasp of fevered imagination.

    070424newplanet_big The first known planet beyond the solar system that could harbor life as we know it has been discovered, scientists report. The most Earthlike planet yet found, it orbits a red dwarf star and discovery.

    The planet is estimated to be only 50 percent larger than Earth, making it the smallest planet yet found outside the solar system, according to a team led by Stephane Udry of the Geneva Observatory in Switzerland.

    Known as Gliese 581 c, the newfound world is located in the constellation Libra, some 20.5 light-years away. The planet is named after the red dwarf star it orbits, Gliese 581, which is among the hundred closest stars to Earth.

    Because the planet is 14 times nearer to its star than Earth is to the sun, a year there lasts just 13 days. Gravity on the planet’s surface, though, may be twice as strong as Earth’s gravity.

    Despite the close proximity to its parent star, however, Gliese 581 c lies within the relatively cool habitable zone of its solar system. That’s because red dwarfs are relatively small and dim, and are cooler than our sun, the team explained. The scientists estimated the planet’s surface temperature at between 32 and 104 degrees Fahrenheit (0 and 40 degrees Celsius).

    "This means water can exist in liquid form," Udry said. "If you want life like our own, then you need water."

    The team reports its findings in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

  • Spring Time in Texas

    During a few short weeks between the last frost and the first hot days of summer, the Texas country side is aflame in a riot of colors. A whole host of wild flowers paint the grassy patches in the fields and on the sides of roads in the most gorgeous shades of red, pink, yellow, ochre, blue and violet. The Texas Hill Country (a region between Houston and Austin) is especially resplendant with  wild blooms at this time. Tours, picnics and sightseeing are planned in the spring in the rolling hill country.  When my son was in college in Austin, I used to enjoy this lovely sight every year on our way to and back from visiting him. I haven’t gone out that way in several years. But the breathtaking sight of miles and miles of hill side and open meadows covered in bright flowers is etched in my mind. In the midst of this rich carpet of petals, the brightly hued state flower, the Texas Bluebonnet dominates the landscape with its deep, eye catching purple – blue presence.

    My good friend Linda recently sent me two unusual photos taken around Easter time this year, in two different parts of Texas – one where there was snow among the Bluebonnets and another where there was … well, see for yourself!   

    Bluebonnets Snake11 (click to enlarge)

  • Books as Art

    Book_sculpture Book loving artists twist, turn, slash and slice books to create art.

    (link via 3 Quarks Daily)