December 2007
Monthly Archive
December 20, 2007
Rudy Giuliani seems to have fallen from his perch in the belfry. A New York Times poll indicates Rudy or “The Mayor” as much of the American media now calls him, has plummeted from numbers in the low 30’s down to Mitt Romney territory in the low 20’s. The Rude Man is sick at the moment. His aides say it’s a touch of the flu but I have it on reliable sources he got ill from drinking bad blood.
And the Mad Mormon Romney has been outed by the Daily Kos. For some time now Romney has been peddling the line how he’s down with civil rights issues. He’s reminded anyone within listening range how his daddy, George, marched with Martin Luther King.
In a speech he gave from the George (HW) Bush presidential library, entitled “Faith in America,” Romney threw out this line:
” I saw my father march with Martin Luther King. “
And, later, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Romney let out this one:
“You can see what I believed and what my family believed by looking at our lives. My dad marched with Martin Luther King. My mom was a tireless crusader for civil rights.”
Turns out that was plain old-fashioned, Mormon bullshit. Outed by David Bernstein of ThePhoenix.com, Mitt’s spinmeisters threw themselves into overdrive and claimed that George Romney and Martin Luther King did indeed march together in June. 1963 just not on the same day or in the same city.
Whew. That’s like Romney saying his kids didn’t go to Iraq but were serving America anyway by working on his campaign. This guy is almost as creepy as Count Rudy.
December 20, 2007
It’s not the pipeline itself that’s interesting but who owns it and who doesn’t.
Russia has struck a deal with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan for a pipeline to carry natural gas from the Caspian Sea to Russia. The deal puts an end to a Western bid intended to route the pipeline under the Caspian so that it wouldn’t have to go through Russia.
The pipeline agreement increases Europe’s dependence upon Russia for natural gas supplies, leaving the EU more vulnerable to potentially having a significant part of its fuel supply cut off at Russia’s whim. Russia has already shown its willingness to use its energy exports to political advantage with countries like the Ukraine.
December 20, 2007
When you gaze at the symphony on stage you probably don’t expect to be looking into the faces of a bunch of drug users but, guess again.
In the 60’s, it was all psychodelic drugs aimed at “expanding consciousness.” Today what are becoming in vogue are drugs to focus consciousness and, according to the LA Times, they becoming increasingly widespread among society’s movers and shakers:
Despite the potential side effects, academics, classical musicians, corporate executives, students and even professional poker players have embraced the drugs to clarify their minds, improve their concentration or control their emotions.
“There isn’t any question about it — they made me a much better player,” said Paul Phillips, 35, who credited the attention deficit drug Adderall and the narcolepsy pill Provigil with helping him earn more than $2.3 million as a poker player.
The medicine cabinet of so-called cognitive enhancers also includes Ritalin, commonly given to schoolchildren for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and beta blockers, such as the heart drug Inderal. Researchers have been investigating the drug Aricept, which is normally used to slow the decline of Alzheimer’s patients.
They are all just precursors to the blockbuster drug that labs are racing to develop.”Whatever company comes out with the first memory pill is going to put Viagra to shame,” said University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Paul Root Wolpe.
In the real world, there are no rules to prevent overachievers from using legally prescribed drugs to operate at peak mental performance. What patient wouldn’t want their surgeon to be completely focused during a life-or-death procedure? “If there were drugs for investment bankers, journalists, teachers and scientists that made them more successful, they would use them too,” said Charles E. Yesalis, a doping researcher and emeritus professor at Pennsylvania State University. “Why does anyone think this would be limited to an athlete?”
In the world of classical music, beta blockers such as Inderal have become nearly as commonplace as metronomes.
The drugs block adrenaline receptors in the heart and blood vessels, helping to control arrhythmias and high blood pressure. They also block adrenaline receptors in the brain. “You still have adrenaline flowing in your body, but you don’t feel that adrenaline rush so you’re not distracted by your own nervousness,” said Dr. Bernd F. Remler, a neurologist at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.
But cosmetic neurology, as some call it, has risks. Ritalin, Adderall and other ADHD drugs can cause headaches, insomnia and loss of appetite. Provigil can make users nervous or anxious and bring on headaches, while beta blockers can cause drowsiness, fatigue and wheezing.
In an article published today in the journal Nature, Morein-Zamir and University of Cambridge neuroscientist Barbara J. Sahakian say that clear guidelines are needed to decide what’s fair. It may be reasonable to ban the drugs in competitive situations, such as taking the SAT. But in other cases, they wrote, people such as airport screeners, air-traffic controllers or combat soldiers might be encouraged to take them.
With a slew of memory enhancers in development, the issues are not academic.
Memory Pharmaceuticals of Montvale, N.J., for example, is eyeing drugs to combat those pesky “senior moments” that are considered a normal part of aging.”If there were drugs that actually made you smarter, good Lord, I have no doubt that their use would become epidemic,” Yesalis said. “Just think what it would do to anybody’s career in about any area. There are not too many occupations where it’s really good to be dumb.”
One thing is obvious. If “cosmetic neurology” becomes accepted it will, in reality, become all but mandatory. It will reach the point where not to use the products brings sharp, and potentially career diminishing, consequences.
December 19, 2007
The Dutch government has announced that it will pull the Netherland’s 1,600 soldier contingent out of Afghanistan’s Oruzgan province in July, 2010. The force has been in Oruzgan, alongside the Australian contingent, since 2006. Holland originally agreed to a 2-year committment but that was recently extended for a further two years.
It seems the Dutch are intent on leaving Afghanistan in 2010 regardless of whether NATO can find another nation to send troops to replace them. 12-Dutch soldiers have died while serving on this mission.
December 19, 2007
December 19, 2007
I just finished viewing a panel featuring Hitchens and Dawkins discussing why there is no God and what should be done to spread the word. Very interesting, intensely intellectual discussion.
In case you haven’t noticed, their message is spreading. A lot of people are going down the path to hard atheism.
Since you asked, I’ll tell you what I think. I don’t know, I really don’t.
Listening to the views expressed by these leading atheists I was struck by one fatal flaw that has plagued mankind since the beginning of civilization – the firm belief that we’re at the centre of everything. It’s a powerful urge, given that the religious and the atheists both lapse into it at every turn.
Remember when we had to believe that the planets, including our sun, rotated around the earth? We just had to be the centre of everything. Most of the monotheistic faiths have an idea of their God looking just like – why, me! Oh, c’mon Buddha sure does.
What if we’re really way too dumb to get it? We don’t expect humans in a vegetative state to be able to intellectualize very much. But what if, in the greater scheme of things, our greatest minds are just a tiny notch above that? What if we’re all severely mentally challenged on some galactic scale and are just too damn dumb to know it?
We’re still puzzling a lot of things out. Get into quantum physics and the string theory and some of the experts predict there are eleven dimensions, seven more than the mere four that we humans are capable of recognizing. If they’re right, you inevitably have to ask what’s behind Doors 5 through 11, eh?
We’ve learned so much over the past century and we’re still just scratching the surface of the body of universal knowledge. So, my question is, what’s the rush? Do we really have some, make that any legitimate need to resolve this God v. no god question now? Maybe we should just put it all on the back burner for another millennium or so until we get answers to all those questions that we’re just now discovering that we didn’t even know existed a decade ago and that aren’t mentioned anywhere in anyone’s holy book.
Now we’ve used religion as a crutch to try to deal with some of the great, unanswerable questions that have plagued man since he first looked up at the starry night sky. Maybe we were taking unfair advantage of religion, sort of like the dad who says “because” when the kid asks “why.” But that would just be another typical human failure, not proof that there is no God.
Religion is curious. Everybody belongs to the right one and all the others are wrong. Look at Judaism, Christianity and Islam. We all share the same, Old Testament God, we just use different prophets to persecute the innocent. Neat trick, eh?
So I think that, for now, I’m going to remain firmly agnostic. But I’m always willing to change my vote just as soon as you can tell me where it all began, I mean really began, and what’s behind those seven doors.
And a very merry Christmas to you all.
December 19, 2007
Canada’s army says it would have to pack up and go home if it had to stop handing over its detainees to Afghan prison authorities. What a load of utter nonsense!
From the Globe & Mail:
Listing a long series of possible embarrassments and defeats, Brigadier-General André Deschamps outlined what he says would be the dire consequences, including losing the war, should a Federal Court judge rule in favour of a request by human-rights groups to issue an injunction banning the transfer of detainees to Afghan prisons because of the risk of torture or abuse.
Gen. Deschamps sketches a variety scenarios. Taliban fighters might surrender in droves, he warns, if they knew Canada would release them because it could not either hold them or transfer them. “The insurgents could attack us with impunity knowing that if they fail to win an engagement they would simply have to surrender and wait for release to resume operations,” he said in a sworn affidavit.
Gen. Deschamps, the chief of staff of Canada’s Expeditionary Force Command that runs combat operations in Afghanistan, goes so far as to suggest the Taliban might win the war, at least in Kandahar, if the court were to grant the injunction.
Come on, Deschamps, get real. There’s absolutely no reason NATO can’t organize a compound for all ISAF detainees. Secretary general de Hoop Scheffer has a lot of alliance member countries that don’t want to fight but could be cajoled into running a detention facility.
It’s what we did in Korea. Back then we knew better than to hand over North Korean or Chinese prisoners to the South Koreans. Unless he’s an idiot, this guy Deschamps knows there are several alternatives to handing detainees over to the Afghans. His over the top approach of “our way or Armageddon” reflects a deeply politicized armed forces.
December 19, 2007
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Harper
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It’s Christmas, a notoriously bad time for the Grinch. Canadians have just handed our Furious Leader Stevie his lump of coal. The
Globe & Mail reports that, after opening what appeared to be a real lead in the polls, Harper has once again let it tumble through his oily fingers.
“The Canadian Press Harris-Decima survey puts the Tories at 30-per-cent support, in a statistical tie with the Liberals, who are up four points to 32 per cent.
Support for the Tories dropped across all regions and demographic groups.
The striking shift comes in the wake of several controversies which may be taking a toll on the governing party:
• Former Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney’s admission that he accepted cash-stuffed envelopes from arms lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber.
• Heavy criticism of Canada’s position at the climate-change summit in Bali.
• The political fallout from a critical shortage of medical isotopes due to the shutdown of the Chalk River nuclear reactor.
The telephone poll of just over 1,000 Canadians was conducted Thursday through Monday and has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points 19 times in 20.”
Once again the Canadian public tells the CPC that Harpo and his ways are really, really creepy. The guy just doesn’t get it. If they had a real leader, one whom Canadians could accept, they would have a majority government by now. That leader, however, would have to be a progressive conservative and stop trying to shove and kick our country out to the far right. Steve, only you and the other nutjobs live out there. Look, you blew $31-million on polling. You oughta know better.
Then again, if the Libs had a popular leader, we’d be in a majority now.
December 19, 2007
Afghan boys are being pressed into service with the Afghan National Police, various militias and, of course, the Taliban.
A report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs states that these young boys routinely suffer physical and sexual abuse.
Abdul Qader Noorzai, head of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) in Kandahar Province said, “Children are used for different purposes. The majority of them experience sexual abuse, others do all kinds of jobs such as cooking, cleaning, day patrols and even fighting.”
In Kandahar Province, Canada’s bailiwick, it’s estimated that some 200 boys under 18 are serving with the Afghan National Police and the police auxiliary.
Under-age males have also been seen working for private security companies, particularly in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, said a senior government official who insisted on anonymity.
“The auxiliary police and private security contractors widely use child soldiers while the government and the AIHRC do not have the capacity to monitor, investigate and stop them,” the official said.
Afghan officials also accuse the Taliban and other anti-government elements of deliberately using children for various military and illegitimate purposes. The Taliban use boys as foot soldiers and force children to engage in violent acts, they say.
Over 7,500 child soldiers went through Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes between April 2003 and June 2006 under Afghanistan’s post-Taliban peace building arrangements, according to the UN.
December 18, 2007
China may be poised to become the world’s biggest economy but it’s being hammered by environmental threats along the way. Combined, these threats may well be enough to derail China’s economic miracle.
Well known by now are China’s severe problems with water supply and quality, it’s horribly polluted air, and all the problems detected in its exports. Now, according to Spiegel Online, word is getting out about China’s poisonous food supply:
Chinese journalist Zhou Qing, a critic of the regime, unearthed political dynamite in his two-year investigation of China’s food industry. He interviewed grocers, restaurant owners, farmers and food factory managers for an exposé for which he won a prize as part of the German “Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage” in 2006.
His book is a dark account of a ruthless food mafia that stops at nothing to maximize its profits, for example by using contraceptives to accelerate the growth of fish stocks, lengthening the shelf-life of cucumbers with highly toxic pesticide DDT, using hormones and poisoned salt in food production and putting absurd amounts of antibiotics in meat.
Zhou said uncontrolled greed had caused a food disaster of unimaginable proportions. “I can only warn you never to go in a restaurant.” The danger of food producers being taken to task for their actions is slight. Everything disappears in China’s endless bureaucracy, he said.
Zhou’s claims may sound exaggerated, but they’re borne out by recent developments. In early December the Shanghai city council slapped an export ban on products made by the Shanghai Mellin Food Company after cancer-causing substances were found in its pork products.
In July the former director of the state food and drug supervisory authority, Zheng Xiaoyu, was executed after being convicted of taking bribes to award licences for forged drugs, some of which had lethal side effects.
The children are the biggest sufferers, said Zhou. Poisoned baby food has led to severe diseases and physical deformities. Zhou writes that 200,000 to 400,000 people fall victim to poisoned food each year. A third of cancer cases, which are increasing at double-digit rates, can be attributed to food, he writes.
“Ordinary people don’t know about it. If the people knew about it there would be a revolution. The wrath of the people would be unstoppable.”
For thousands of years the power of China’s rulers hinged on their ability to feed the people. “Revolutions aren’t caused by political differences, they’re caused by a lack of bread.”
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