Lingual Tremors

Better Than Nothing? Think "Sexual Rosary..."

Holy sexual rosary!  Okay, here's cultural complexity at its best.   What do you do if you can't take birth control pills, have religious objections to medical birth control, or don't have access to advanced birth control like pills or shots, or even condoms?  UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is supporting a program in West Africa that distributes "Cycle Beads," a visual way to keep track of fertile days in the menstrual cycle.

The deluxe beads come in aqua, mauve and copper.  The regular ones are brown and white.  You count the beads to keep track of your cycle.  Of course you recognize this as the rhythm method (and feminists everywhere scream danger! danger!).  However, it's been updated by researchers at Georgetown University's Institute for Reproductive Health.  (I will remind you that Georgetown is a Catholic, Jesuit institution, so their institute for reproductive health focuses on research that supports Catholic doctrine).

The article from UNFPA describes the program in Senegal and points to some of the advantages and disadvantages in using cycle beads (for example, a husband's willingness to cooperate).

Now, here's the thing:  on the one hand, I'd argue for full access to a range of birth control and family planning choices.   On the other hand, when contraception choices are limited, perhaps cycle beads are better than nothing.  In fact, I think they are better than nothing.  UNFPA is clearly invested in family planning and helping women to make choices about a healthy family size and about their own lives and energy as mothers.  So, even if a woman becomes pregnant while using the cycle beads, she is already more aware of the concept of family planning, which could then lead to social and political reform for greater choices.

However, the idea of cycle beads is also controversial and a stop gap measure, rather than a true move towards sexual equality.  And, of course, it doesn't sufficiently address the rampant HIV infection rates in Sub-Saharan Africa.  Senegal, where the article is focused, is a Muslim country with a low rate of HIV infection.  Senegal is a very interesting study in a social, cultural, political, and religious response to HIV and AIDS.  Muslim and Christian leaders have been incredibly proactive in spreading accurate information about HIV/AIDS prevention.  The government has worked hard to raise awareness, to monitor official prostitutes, and to provide medication and treatment to those who have HIV.  Youth peer educators walk the streets handing out information and condoms.  It's really quite a picture of progress.  However, that's not necessarily a full picture.  In 2006, in Dakar, rates of HIV infection among sex workers were at almost 21% and in Ziguinchor at almost 30%.  One needs only to look at the history of the spread of HIV infection to know that HIV will travel from the sex workers to the husbands to the wives... 

And, since the cycle beads depend on a husband's cooperation anyway, then perhaps condoms would be the best choice, especially given the fact that the government supports the use of them and they are accessible.
 

Science Debate 2008

Go to Science Debate 2008 to support a petition to have U.S. Presidential candidates discuss their views on science publicly.

Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy.

Hat tip to Pandagon (see Amanda's commentary on Science Debate 2008 here.)

Hidden AIDS Crisis: Rural America and HIV

I was a little taken aback by this one.  Just when you think we've come a long way comes this latest AIDSphobic incident.  I first saw this at Pandagon.  Here's the original news item at NBC 15:

A couple who checked into a recreational vehicle park with their 2-year-old foster son were told the boy couldn't use the showers, pool or other common areas because he has the HIV virus.

The couple said that in the future, they will not discuss their foster son's condition to avoid this kind of prejudice.  The owner of the RV park was concerned that the child might spread the disease by using the common areas or the pool.  In rural Alabama, it seems, there's still a lot of work to be done in HIV/AIDS education. 

"Most people know you can swim in the same pool or use the same bathroom without the danger of contracting the virus. Definitely, we still need education efforts out there, especially in rural areas," said David Little, executive director of Mobile-based South Alabama CARES, an AIDS education and outreach organization that serves 12 counties in south Alabama.

There are more than 8,252 AIDS cases in Alabama (those are AIDS cases, not HIV cases based on the 2005 CDC surveillance report).  Clearly HIV/AIDS is an issue in Alabama, but education efforts need to go a lot further.  We hear a lot about HIV/AIDS in urban areas;  the subways and billboards often carry educational messages about HIV/AIDS.  In rural areas, however, where car culture dominates, I'm not sure where people would get this education.  There may be some PSAs on the television or radio, but they don't dominate in the same way visual rhetoric speaks to urban culture.  Coupled with increasingly conservative abstinence-only sexual education programs and science curriculum dominated by creationist rhetoric, it seems like rural areas, particularly in the South, have some amazing challenges ahead because medically accurate information is hard to sell. 

Kathy Hiers, CEO of AIDS Alabama says:

"Unfortunately the South has the top ten cities for STDs in the country, it's been that way for as long as I can remember. And by the same token the South is absolutely exploding with HIV disease. We are seeing the disease move along socio-economic lines into poor communities, rural communities, women and certainly minorities and young people.

Hiers is the CEO of AIDS Alabama. AIDS workers have known for years the virus was moving to rural areas. To try to stem the tide of infection Alabama launched a rural outreach program called the Alabama Rural AIDS Project. Hiers says launching the project was no easy thing.

Read the entire 2006 article on AIDS in Alabama.  It has some very interesting thoughts about HIV/AIDS and rural America.

Nailing Today's 95 Theses to the Hospital Door: Moore's Sicko!

Faithful readers of Lingual Tremors know that I was recently in PA visiting the parental units over the Fourth of July.  In deciding our plans for the 4th, my mom and I were debating patriotism.  In our conversation, she was discussing how she is proud of her American heritage and roots, but disgusted by the current government;  I was arguing that nationality by birth isn't enough for me.  And so she asked the question I always dread when we have this conversation:  "Where would you rather live?"  After seeing Sicko today, my answer is:  "France, the U.K. or Canada." 

I know I'm over a week late on this review--but Sicko wasn't playing in our part of Pennsylvania.  Much to my surprise upon returning to New York City, it isn't playing in many theaters here either.  I live in New York freakin' city, people!  How is it that Sicko is only playing in a handful of theaters?  How is it that only a week after its release, we saw the film in a theater not even 1/4 filled?

I think this has to do with American attitudes towards health care:  we all know the system is broken, but no one can see a clear way towards fixing it.  Current pinata-boy for the Democrats, Joe Biden, said in a town hall-style presentation in Iowa this weekend that you can't move the system from "this" to "this"  (Absent visual:  moving his fingers from the right to the left) immediately.  And so the "answer" is an apathetic, depressive, do nothing.  (Or, if you're a Democratic candidate, unveil a plan that isn't entirely clear or, if you're a Republican candidate, practice the phrase "health care?  What's the problem?").  So, Sicko isn't on top of people's agenda in quite the same way that Fahrenheit 9/11 was.  What a shame, because Sicko is a better film:  it's better researched, better argued, and better filmed.  All of the reliable Mooreisms are there--his wry and sardonic narrative, his outrageous stunts (taking 9/11 workers to Cuba for health care?), his real connection to the people he interviews, and his excellent researching of the stories we too often don't hear--but this film goes even farther by really delving into the problem.

In short, Moore has hit it on the head again.  Do whatever you need to do to see this film.  Convince others to see this film.  Early bad reviews have centered on Moore's one-sided presentation of HMOs and the for-profit insurance industry.  Early good reviews have focused on Moore's targeted critique of the problems in American health care.

Moore's film is, indeed, entirely one-sided.  In freshman composition, we call that an argument-driven thesis.  Moore's point?  The U.S. needs universal health care because the U.S. has become a country driven by greed where working hard and believing in the American dream is not enough to get by (my own argument-driven thesis would question whether this was ever truly the case).  Moore's point?  Health care is a right, not a privilege and other countries do it better;  so, why not do it better?

Moore debunks the most common myths about socialized or national health care by visiting France, the U.K. and Canada to see the facilities and interview patients and doctors.  Among the small audience we saw Sicko with, the cheers and groans were evident as Moore moved through what seemed like the luxuries of the health care systems in those countries.  Nannies that do laundry (state funded in France?), birthing clinics that are the size of my apartment in New York (England), inhalers that cost .5 cents (Cuba)...  [Full disclosure:  fully insured in the U.S., I am currently waiting over a month to see a breast surgeon for a biopsy... so I'm not particularly interested in critiques of the Canadian or British system where people wait (gasp!) over a month to see a specialist.]. 

Moore also includes his signature vignettes.  As always, I love how he gets people to open up to him about difficult, embarrassing, and heart-breaking stuff.  However, in Sicko, in some ways, this was both the most interesting and most disappointing part of the film.  Moore doesn't focus on Americans without health care;  he focuses on those with health care that is sub-standard because the insurance industry is profit-driven.  The stories are heart-breaking and awful.  Each one is more horrific than the next.  The one that was most affective to me:  hospitals dumping patients without insurance in front of a free clinic in L.A. 

Part of Moore's iconic approach to film-making relies on making abstract ideas like "health care" real.  I'm sure that I wasn't alone in wanting to send money to the people Moore highlighted in his film.  But, just like giving money to the homeless on the NYC subway won't end homelessness or hunger, giving money to people facing medical debt won't solve the medical crisis in this country.  Moreover, these stories don't address the true iniquities in the U.S. system.  How typical are they of medical-insurance nightmares faced in the U.S.?  What about those without any health care?  In some ways, I think Moore's comparison on national health care systems versus private industry insurance would have been even more effective if it had focused on how those without health care would receive health care in other countries.  Moreover, I think it would have made a better argument to show how "typical" the stories he presented were.  It's too easy for Moore-critics to say that the stories he presented were "atypical."  So, his argument could have been strengthened by showing how typical these stories are.

Moore also begins his campaign for the 2008 Presidential election.  Hillary Clinton takes it on the chin for taking money from the health care industry.  Moore does an excellent job of identifying the ways in which governmental intervention in health care has been compromised.  See a complete list of candidates and contributions from the health care industry/Big Pharma here.

Another great part of the film is his interview with Tony Benn, a former member of Britain's Parliament.  Benn provides insight after insight about both the kind of responsibility the government should have to its people--"if we have the money to kill, we've got the money to help people"--and his ideas about how democracy should work.  Benn believes that in the U.K. (and in Europe), "the politicians are afraid of the people" and so the people get what they want.  He suggests that the dismantling of the National Health System in the U.K. would cause a revolution.

Which brings me back to the point I began with.  Sicko should be enough to start a revolution in the U.S.  People should be outraged;  this isn't about political affiliation:  this isn't about political rhetoric;  this is about human lives.  This is about social justice.  This is about living in a country that truly believes all of its citizens are equal and showing that by the way it treats its people.  Don't we all have the right to expect good health care?  Why should insurance companies profit from your illness or death?  Where do you want to live?  What dream do you want to fight for?  A system where people are treated equally or a system where the least and last are dumped on a dirty L.A. street in hospital gowns without a hope in the world? 

As always, Moore goes beyond the critique.  Here's his plan for fixing health care in the U.S.:

I couldn't agree more.  Let's start a revolution.

Read On:

• Moore's site
• Margaret's Wanderings
• Thomas Paine's Corner
• Fire Dog Lake
• The Mahablog
• The Health Care Blog
• Green LA Girl
• Philadelphia Health Care Blog
• New York Times review
• News Item on Lauren Turner, Google employee & capitalist jerk

Action Steps:

• Sign the petition for Congress to pass H.R. 676
• Physicians for National Health Care

You're not going to believe this...

The Quixotic Tremor sent me this article last night, following up on yesterday's global warming post:

From Diane E. Dees at Mother Jones:

The Union of Concerned Scientists has announced that ExxonMobil Corp. paid $16 million to forty-three oganizations over a seven-year period in order to mislead the public about global warming. "ExxonMobil has manufactured uncertainty about the human causes of global warming just as tobacco companies denied their product caused lung cancer," said Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' Director of Strategy & Policy. "A modest but effective investment has allowed the oil giant to fuel doubt about global warming to delay government action just as Big Tobacco did for over 40 years.

Sallie Baliunas, an astro-physicist affiliated with at least nine of the forty-three advocacy groups, raised eyebrows in 2003 when she presented a paper arguing that there had been no significant climate change in the last millennia. Thirteen scientists came forward to say that Baliunas had misrepresented their work, but ExxonMobil continued to promote the paper as factual.

In its report, "Smoke, Mirrors & Hot Air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco's Tactics to 'Manufacture Uncertainty' on Climate Change," UCS accuses ExxonMobil Corp. of the following:

• raised doubts about even the most indisputable scientific
  evidence
• funded an array of front organizations to create the appearance
  of a broad platform for a tight-knit group of vocal climate change
  contrarians who misrepresent peer-reviewed scientific findings
• attempted to portray its opposition to action as a positive quest for "sound science" rather than business self-interest
• used its access to the Bush administration to block federal policies and shape government communications on global warming.

It's Not "Pleasant" Weather! It's Global Warming!

An ancient ice shelf breaks free in the Arctic, polar bears are drowning, and cherry blossoms are blooming from Brooklyn to D.C., but aren't you happy that, if you live in the Northeast, you don't have to wear a coat?

A few days before Christmas, I was walking (in shorts!) down the street and a woman hurried up to me.  As a good New Yorker, I eschew all forms of contact with others--who knows what they want!  However, the woman approached me on the empty street and demanded "What do you think about this weather?"  I replied, "I miss the snow."  She said, "It's that goddamned global warming."  And then she got in her car and drove away.  This is exactly the kind of random conversation we New Yorkers often have.  But, she had a point.  Her observations were a little bit like saying a hockey puck is very important in hockey.  Exactly.  Global Warming.

I am going to smack the next newscaster who says "you can enjoy unseasonably warm temperatures today."  It's not pleasant--it's global warming.  Do not smile at me and say that.  Instead, purse your lips, furrow your eyebrows and say "clearly these unusually warm temperatures are something we should be very, very concerned about.  And now, here's a special report on how you can help prevent global warming."  But no, the local idiot box "speakers of the house" want me to ENJOY! the nice weather.  I'd rather have snow anyday.

I've written very long posts about global warming before (An Inconvenient Truth and It's Getting Hotter Than Hell Here), but yet again I find myself in that odd dichotomy between people's rhetoric and their understanding of what they actually say.  There seems to be a disconnect between "global warming" and "catastrophe the likes of which you really, really can't imagine."  People are comfortable with the explanation "It's El Nino," without ever considering how El Nino might relate to global warming.

Here is tomorrow's weather forecast for New York City from weather.com:

Tomorrow: Rain showers early with some sunshine later in the day. Record high temperatures expected. High 67F. Winds SW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 60%.

But instead of spending the day researching global warming, writing to Congressional representatives, learning how to green their houses, or something of that ilk, people will go out and "enjoy the weather."  At what point do people actually understand their future as directly linked to our actions?

The Union of Concerned Scientists, in their analysis of the Northeast Climate Changes, report:

• By the end of this century, winters could warm by 8 to 12°F and summers by 6 to 14°F.
• Historically, major cities in the Northeast experience 10 to 15 days per year when temperatures exceed 90oF. By mid-century, cities such as Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston could experience 30 to 60 days of temperatures over 90°F each summer. By late in the century, most cities in the region are likely to experience more than 60 days with temperatures over 90oF, including 14 to 28 days with temperatures over 100°F (compared with one or two days per year historically).
• As winter temperatures rise, more precipitation will fall as rain and less as snow. By the end of the century, the length of the winter snow season could be cut in half.
• The frequency of late summer and fall droughts is projected to increase significantly, with shortterm droughts (lasting one to three months) becoming as frequent as once per year over much of the Northeast by the end of the century.
• The character of the seasons will change significantly, with spring arriving three weeks earlier by the end of the century, summer lengthening by about three weeks at both its beginning and end, fall becoming warmer and drier, and winter becoming shorter and milder.
• Sea-level rise will continue, reaching anywhere from a few inches to more than one foot by midcentury. By the end of the century, global sea level could rise from eight inches up to nearly three feet, increasing the risk of coastal flooding and damage from storm surges.
• Higher global temperatures also imply a greater risk of destabilizing the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. It is possible, particularly under the higher-emissions scenario, that warming could reach a level during this century beyond which it would no longer be possible to avoid rapid ice sheet melting and a sea-level rise of more than 20 feet over the next few centuries.

Sigh.  I have to go dig out my summer clothes to get dressed for work today.  More later.

Some of the best, most accessible web resources include:

Global Warming:  Early Warning Signs

a joint project of:  Environmental Defense, World Wildlife Fund, National Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, the Union of Concerned Scientists, World Resources Institute, and the U.S. Public Research Interest Group

Climate Choices
Union of Concerned Scientists:  Global Warming Overview
The New York Times archive of articles on Global Warming
Climate Change/Global Warming (The Guardian)

Pervasive and Dangerous Political Influence: Bush's FDA

While researching links for my An Inconvenient Truth post, I found this little nugget.  The Union of Concerned Scientists has (gasp!) published results of a survey of scientists engaged with the FDA that reveal many scientists believe the Bush administration isn't interested in scientific research.

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) today released survey results that demonstrate pervasive and dangerous political influence of science at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Of the 997 FDA scientists who responded to the survey, nearly one-fifth (18.4 percent) said that they "have been asked, for non-scientific reasons, to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information or their conclusions in a FDA scientific document." This is the third survey UCS has conducted to examine inappropriate interference with science at federal agencies.   

For those of us who follow science and health related news, this is no surprise from the administration that brought you Jerry Thacker, John Roberts, and the like, but it is a well-documented survey that provides numbers for the assertions many of us make about the administration.  Read the whole survey here.

An Inconvenient Truth: GO SEE IT.

Forget The Descent.  Truly the film that will make you sleepless for weeks on end is Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.

I was not an Al Gore enthusiast in 2000.  I was among the reluctant voters who voted for him, rather than for Bush, on principle, rather than out of a sense of passion that Al Gore could change the world.

I wish that he had run that campaign with the enthusiasm, passion, intellectualism, and amazing dedication I saw in An Inconvenient Truth.  I'm about a month behind here;  I know that many people have already seen the film.  I saw it today and read the book earlier this summer. 

An Inconvenient Truth paints a stark picture of a global future full of depleted resources, population explosion, searing heat, and the utter decimation of our natural resources (plus once again convincing me that I probably shouldn't buy that apartment I keep thinking about in lower Manhattan...).  The entire story of global warming is meticulously researched and referenced.  More importantly, An Inconvenient Truth is the story of an issue that has haunted Al Gore's free time;  it has been the shadow that has followed him through all of the rest of the parts of his career.  An Inconvenient Truth reveals what it means to be an activist for an issue. 

I left the theater with an amazing respect for Al Gore, wishing any or all of this had come out in the 2000 election.

Random Thoughts on IVF

Liza Mundy's article in the newest Mother Jones, "Souls on Ice" is a must read for anyone interested in the recent stem cell debate (news!  news!).  Among other things, many parents report that the conceptus--the frozen embryo--is a "pre-child," adding to the previous pre-pregnancy debate from earlier this spring.  I also think this greatly complicates any conversations we have around issues of pregnancy, choice, and abortion.  Many parents also report naming the "conceptus."  As is understandable, they are in love with the idea of a child before the child arrives.

I think the idea of the embryo is a complicated, deeply personal, and emotional issue and, like many other emotional issues, it's difficult to discuss.   At the same time, however, when I read about Germany's policy to only allow the harvesting of eggs that will be implanted (that is to say, not "over harvesting,"), I wonder about the American approach to IVF and the ways in which it is symptomatic of the larger American greed.  Why, in short, do we really need to have so many "souls on ice."  And, how do feminists engage in this debate in a way that informs our discourse about abortion rights  but also responds sensitively to issues of infertility and the desire to parent?

This article raised a lot of questions for me, and didn't point towards many answers.  It did, as all good writing should, ask me to settle in for a good, hard think.

Not an Idea I'm Crazy About...

Huggable Urns.  That's right.  Huggable.  Urns.

Check out the "products," but especially the TESTIMONIALS.  I will trust you to draw your own conclusions...

Reverse Cyborg

And from today's "why I wish I were a scientist" news...  The Guardian today reported that Klaus-Peter Zauner:

has invented a robot that is controlled by living cells.

The cells in question are a specially grown type of "slime mould" that naturally shies away from light.

Dr Zauner grew a star-shaped sample of the slime mould and attached it to a six-legged robot (with each point of the star attached to a leg) to control its movements.

Shining white light on to a section of the single cell organism made it vibrate, changing its thickness. These vibrations were fed into a computer, which then sent signals to move the leg in question. Pointing beams of light at different parts of the slime mould means that different legs move. Do it in an ordered way and the robot will walk.

The work came out of a collaboration with scientists at Kobe University in Japan, who had been studying ways of using biological cells in robots. Dr Zauner himself had been trying to use individual molecules - rather than instructions from computer programs - to control the functions and movements of robots.

From an abstract about the project:

To gain an understanding of how the nimble behaviour of organisms can b e duplicated in made-for-purpose devices we are exploring the use of biological cells in robot control. This paper describes an experimental setup that interfaces an amoeboid plasmodium of Physarum polycephalum with an omnidirectional hexapod robot to realise an interaction loop between environment and plasticity in control. Through this bio-electronic hybrid architecture the continuous negotiation processbetween local intracellular reconfiguration on the micro-physical scale andglobal behaviour of the cell in a macroscale environment can be studied in a device setting.

Full article:  Tsuda, S., Zauner, K. P. and Gunji, Y. P. (2006) Robot Control: From Silicon Circuitry to Cells, in Ijspeert, A. J., Masuzawa, T. and Kusumoto, S., Eds. Biologically Inspired Approaches to Advanced Information Technology, Second International Workshop, BioADIT 2006, Osaka, Japan, January 26-27, 2006, Proceedings, pp. 20-32. Springer.

 

Live State of the Union Blogging 8

Daddy Bush says for your own good:

• you'll define democracy the way he defines democracy, and you'll like it,
• you'll submit to wire taps,
• you'll be surveilled and you'll like it,
• we'll deny funds to world organizations like UNAIDS, but call our work "progress",
• you can't have Social Security,
• "it's the economy, stupid"--spend more or China will overtake us,
• you can't have Medicare or Medicaide,
• you'll have to decide between "good" immigrants and "bad" immigrants,
• you're losing health care--but you get to pay more for the lousy coverage you will get,
• you are getting more nuclear power plants (because that's not a terrorist target),
• you can't have an abortion,
• you'll embrace any and all wars in the name of terrorism,
• you'll reject any science that isn't religiously based (no cloning, no stem cells),
• you'll submit to the Patriot Act,
• you'll be quiet and not second guess his leadership,
• you will be governed by Alito and Roberts,
• you will be part of a narrowly defined religious hegemony,
• you will be "rich," but who knows how since you have to pay for lots of things you never had to before (and women, you'll be pregnant)

And to conclude:  "In recent years America has become a more hopeful nation." Yes, George, hopeful that your presidency will end soon.

Notable Quotables:

Terrorism:  16
Freedom:  15
History:  10

More Notables:  democracy, future, economy, hope, peace, honor, isolationism

Technorati Tags:  State of the Union

Roberts v. Clinton: AIDS Leadership

What kind of leadership do we want?

I want to revisit David Webber's Nation article, "Roberts's Queer Reasoning on AIDS" from this fall.  In September, Webber reported that Roberts, as an attorney in the White House, recommended the following course of action to then President Ronald Reagan:

Five days before the press conference, he [Roberts] reviewed the presidential briefing materials and recommended deletion of a sentence encapsulating the CDC's conclusion: "As far as our best scientists have been able to determine, AIDS virus is not transmitted through casual or routine contact." In a memorandum, the Assistant Counsel to the President explained, "I do not think we should have the President taking a position on a disputed scientific issue of this sort. There is much to commend the view that we should assume AIDS can be transmitted through casual or routine contact, as is true with many viruses, until it is demonstrated that it cannot be, and no scientist has said AIDS definitely cannot be so transmitted."

In this memo, Roberts relied on the popular, culturally compelling fear of HIV/AIDS, perpetuating serious ignorance.  During his confirmation hearing testimony, Roberts did not disavow, or locate his 1985 decision, historically.  Instead, he relied on the fact that science wasn't 100% sure about modes of transmission attempting to defend his earlier decision as a correct choice, despite its ramifications for children living with HIV at the time.

To extend Roberts' own argument, then, we should not allow agricultural companies to use pesticides or genetically modified food to enter our homes, supermarkets, and restaurants, until we are 100% sure about modes of cancer transmission (as the European Union currently does).

Contrast this HIV/AIDS message, at the highest levels of our government, to Bill Clinton's recent announcement that his foundation has cut a deal with several small drug companies to offer AIDS tests and antiretroviral drugs at a cheaper rate.

Nomadism

Like many others in my "Gen X" grouping, I am essentially a nomad.  While I have a full-time job in New York, in many ways, I have yet to set down roots.  Add to this my history as the daughter of a United Methodist Minister;  we moved every 4-6 years.  I am generally from New York and Pennsylvania, but I don't have real roots anywhere yet.  Home is where mom & dad are and where Lingual Y is. 

So today, I was thinking about nomadism and its effect on the environment.  Reuters reported today:

An infectious fungus aggravated by global warming has killed entire populations of frogs in Central and South America and driven some species to extinction, scientists said on Wednesday.

In research that showed the effects of rising temperatures on delicate ecosystems, a team of researchers found that a warming atmosphere encouraged the spread of a fungus that has wiped out species of harlequin frogs and golden toads.

"This is the first clear evidence that widespread extinction is taking place because of global warming," Dr Alan Pounds, an ecologist of the Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve in Costa Rica, said in an interview.

John Kerry: Working Hard AFTER the Election

Governmental decisions based on SCIENCE?  The Democratic Daily Blog reported today that John Kerry wants to reclaim science in an advanced posting of Kerry's forthcoming speech to the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, “Restoring American Leadership In Science; Time to Take Back Anti-Science Washington”:

With this example in mind, I certainly don’t want to suggest that even the greatest scientists or innovators make choices for the rest of us. But I do think their role is to help define the reasonable choices available to us as a society.

To fulfill that role, they need the support to dotheir work and the freedom to seek truth wherever that pursuit leads them. And in all my years of public service, I have never seen the integrity of science and scientists so fundamentally and actively undermined at the highest levels of government. Everything possible is being done to undercut respect for the truths research can reveal for us – and worse yet – respect for the very idea that truth can be found by the scientific method, rather than imposed by ideology.

It's Getting Hotter Than Hell Here: Katrina and Global Warming

In the wake of the Bush administration's continued stance, "screw science," everyone seems to be going back to their high school environmental science courses to start thinking about global climate change again.  (This post also harkens back to my rant on the Bush administration's love of "fictional science" in From  People Who Thought Jerry Thacker Was a Good Idea...)

Everyone from Time to The Boston Globe to The New Yorker is talking about Katrina and global warming & NOAA has been invoked more often in the past month than it has in the past 6 years.  Global Warming:  Early Signs says:

Global temperature in 1998 was the hottest in the historical record, and the temperature increase over the 20th century is likely to be the highest of the past millennium. Global average temperatures have warmed about one degree Fahrenheit (0.6�C) since 1900. The ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1987, seven of them since 1994.

Over at Global Warming:  Early Signs, the global warming map tracks "fingerprints" and "harbingers" of events linked to global warming (produced by:  Environmental Defense
Natural Resources Defense Council
Sierra Club
Union of Concerned Scientists     U.S. Public Interest Research Group
World Resources Institute
World Wildlife Fund).  For educators:  you can also get a print copy of the map for use in the classroom.  Plus, they've created a wonderful curriculum guide for use in the classroom!

So, are Katrina and Rita harbingers of things to come?  It seems so.

Nuclear Bush: Exploding History

I will write 'peace' on your wings and you will fly all over the world
- Sadako Sasaki

As a little girl, I used to watch war movies with my dad on Friday nights.  Our local PBS station used to run a weekend movie marathon of nostalgic films about World War II.  I've seen most of the classics and my first understandings about war and the devastation it creates in the world came from those romanticized interpretations of American intervention on foreign soil. 

Yet, even as I would cheer the accomplishments of American forces, my father would temper my enthusiasm, asking me to question what the violence meant, what it meant to be part of a global community, what it must have been like to be a victim of war. 

When I was 8 years old, I was allowed to stay up and watch the television version of The Winds of War.  I became hysterical as I watched the desecration of lives as Jewish prisoners were shot and their bodies fell into a ditch.  It was one of the most horrible acts of violence I had witnessed in my young life.  My parents couldn't comfort me--what words did they have that could explain to a privileged and innocent American 8 year old what war meant?

The Winds of War, and 30 Seconds Over Tokyo are my two most vivid memories of a cinematic childhood.  I remember, as vividly as I remember the Hitlerian destruction of human life, having my father explain to me what the mushroom clouds meant.  I thought they were pretty.  I didn't have any way to understand what they meant. 

As an adult, and as a student of the 20th century "history of war," I understand all too well--if only from the linguistic distance of historical records--what war, and what those mushroom clouds meant.

In 2003, Bush approved "nuclear response" in the advent of another attack on American soil.  A coded terminology for dropping nuclear bombs on foreign soil, a "nuclear response" suggests a major break with industrialized nations' foreign and defense policies.  As a conscientious American citizen, I believe we all have a duty to perform in protesting the government's intention to use nuclear weapons as a possible response to aggression against the United States.  Bush's academic record is poor;  his record as a student of history is abysmal.  Nuclear weapons simply cannot be a choice that the American public allows.  We bear the conscience of history as it is;  those nightly explosions in Iraq aren't abstract red and orange fireworks;  they represent the destruction of a nation and its people.  Nuclear weapons suggest the absolute dissolution of any American integrity.

 

From the People Who Thought Jerry Thacker Was a Good Idea...Comes Your Daily News!

As a kid, I didn’t grow up in a home where the television news dominated. Instead, my sister and I used to joke that the “lyrics” to the opening notes of NPR’s All Things Considered were “Time for Dinner, Time for Dinner...”   My sister and I were taught that we needed to be "up" on the news and prepared to discuss current events at our dining room table.  Dinner time was a time (and still is, when we're all home) to debate, discuss, and consider new ideas.

So, let’s talk about wave-ja-vous. Increasingly, the mainstream news is a cookie-cutter replication of a master script (come on—you only privilege certain news shows because you like the intonation of a particular voice or the “soft on the eyes” haircut of your favorite blonde spokesperson for the American Way—there’s no real difference here).  Our current administration is not to blame for this, exactly.   

The current trouble, however, is the public’s acquiescence to a sweeping conservative ideology.  They accept news-truths without question.  In print or on screen has come to equal universal truth.  I'm thinking about Mary Poppins and her "spoonful of sugar to make the medicine to down."  What's troubling about the current administration (and previous ones as well) is the way it uses the media to obfuscate basic truths.

THERE WERE NO WMDs.  And yet?  The American public either believes there were or doesn't care that there weren't.  I could go on and on with other salient examples, but forget WMDs. I want to talk about HIV/AIDS. The Bush administration nominated Jerry Thacker to head up its Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS in 2003.  This man publicly said that AIDS was a "gay plague."

The "Condom Fact Sheet" and "Programs that Work" were both removed from the CDC's website.  "Safe sex" in the schools has been virtually removed from the curriculum and replaced with abstinence-only education.  The CDC's highly successful education and prevention programs, created over 2 decades of struggle are being decimated.  The Nation reports: 

The new CDC regulations, published in the Federal Register, are mandatory for any AIDS-fighting organization that receives federal money for HIV prevention, and they finish the job of gutting effective, disease-preventing safe-sex education that has been a goal of the Bush Administration since it took office. Far from trying to "learn" from the Ugandans, the regs demand that any sex-ed "content" include information on the "lack of effectiveness of condom use." In other words, the Bush Administration wants AIDS-fighting organizations to tell people: Condoms don't work. At the same time, the regs mandate the teaching of the failed policy of abstinence from sex until (heterosexual) marriage.

Bush Administration officials, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary, have claimed that condoms are ineffective in the fight against AIDS.  This is a lie.  A 2001 NIH panel "concluded that consistent and correct condom use prevents (in addition, of course, to pregnancy) transmission of HIV between women and men and gonorrhea transmission from women to men."  (See

the Guttmacher Report on Public Policy here.)

New To Alternative Media?  Check These Tried and True Resources:
Accuracy in Media
Adbusters
AlterNet
CounterPunch
Feminist Majority Foundation (especially Court Watch)
Independent Media Center
In These Times
Lip Magazine
Media Awareness Project
The Nation
The Progressive
Project Censored
The Propaganda Remix Project
Utne
Z Magazine

This is PBU13 in association with the Progressive Blogger Union.

One thing I think we can do is to rely on sources that know particular topics well.  I can't wade through all of the material on WMDs here.  However, I can, having spent the last 15 years of my life researching HIV/AIDS, say a lot about the ways that the Bush policies are wrong and a new form of propaganda.  I think we should all seek out alternative sources of information and promote them early and often.  And, I think we have to make ourselves experts on the experts.

My point here is that in a culture that gets its news from Fox and the Daily News (oh, I dread the morning commute and seeing those scandalous headlines!), how do you begin to distill any sense of "truth" or "fact"?