Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry known for its simplicity and elegance. In English, haiku are written as three lines, with a syllable count of five, seven, and five on in the first, second, and third line.
In The Green Man's opinion nothing softens the blow of a systems failure better than an error message delivered in Haiku. Consider some examples:
Seeing my great fault
Through darkening blue windows
I begin again
-- Chris Walsh
I'm sorry, there's -- um --
insufficient -- what's-it-called?
The term eludes me ...
-- Owen Mathews
A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.
-- David J. Liszewski
and perhaps my favourite
Errors have occurred.
We won't tell you where or why.
Lazy programmers.
-- Charlie Gibbs
As anyone can see, this adds a sense of elegance to an otherwise exasperating experience. Now researchers at Kyoto have developed a computer program that can write Haiku on your behalf. It may be the dawning of a new era in error messages.
Existing Haiku courtesy of Salon 21
Courtesy of CDC here is a graph of youth firearm deaths by country. If you are a parent who lives in the USA it may be time to ask whether tightening gun laws might be a good idea.
Well Saddam is dead after experiencing the indignity of a kangaroo court. (The Green Man was intrigued to discover that this term was not limited to the Australian idiom.) Of course the injustice of his trial and the nature of his presumed torture and actual execution were so much less than that he inflicted on others that the general opinion seems to be that we should overlook it in the name of the greater good of humanity, which is, of course, what most people will do.
The outrage it seems is not that he failed to receive a fair trial or that he was killed by the state but that we were forced to confront the reality of what was going on via illicit videoing of his execution by some of the attending officials.
Michael Leunig has written and insightful piece in the Age on this very issue.
I believe we now have the unique modern cruelty of the refined and educated Western man; the respected gentleman in the fine suit who has never much dirtied his hands or killed a living creature, never meditated upon a rotting corpse and never had his consciousness infected with the messy organic substances of violent death - yet who can sign with an elegant golden pen the document that unleashes the cowardly invasion and who can then go out to dine on claret and lamb cutlets.
We have the situation where the general consensus was that Saddam should die but that we should be shielded from the sordid reality of the actual event. We choose not to confront the reality of the death of the cow when we pick up the packets of meat in the supermarket and we are outraged when we are confronted with the consequence of our collective belief that this man should die.
I speak from the Australian perspective of course. In America there appears to be much more censorship of what goes to air on television. Perhaps if you are in America you can continue to focus on the greater good and remain blissfully unaware of the fact that we lowered ourselves to his level with the sordidness and cruelty that we sanctioned against this man.
Here is a photo of a young Middle Eastern belly dancer serving at the bush tucker camp. Such a nice juxtaposition and a statement on the sort of images that we like to think typify Australia’s inclusiveness and tolerance.
The National Folk Festival is only 5 km from our national parliament building and a world away from the politicians that occupy it. Sadly our politicians are very selective on those that we are to include and be tolerant of.
The Green Man naively thought that the word “refugee” meant someone seeking refuge. In the eyes of our government it clearly means someone seeking refuge who comes from a country that we are currently vilifying. We just prefer to close our eyes to the human rights abuses by our neighbours and heaven forbid some “illegal immigrants” arrive speaking of such unspeakable things. It is best for all if we just ship them to a remote island where they have little access to the press.
Unlike most Australians, our Prime Miniature takes pride in knowing our national anthem word for word. It is amazing that he does not choke on the words of the second second verse.
For those who come across the sea
We've boundless plains to share
Perhaps he just mumbles that bit.
Oh I know what it is! The West Papuans came across a Straight, Torres Straight, not a Sea. That's why they don't qualify.
America prides itself on the liberty of its citizens however the liberty to choose to end your life several weeks or months before it would inevitably end anyway is one that that groups calling themselves "Right To Life" are trying to deny US citizens (it is one that Australia also denies). The option, known as Oregon's Death With Dignity Act, has been legal in Oregon since November 1997 and is taken primarily by terminally ill cancer patients.
The Green Man thinks that these groups should, perhaps be renamed "Obligation To Life" groups after all a "right" is something that you can choose to forego. In the the US for example, if you are over 21, you have a right to drink alcohol but you don't find many groups protesting over those who choose not to comsume it.
Recent studies have shown that people choosing to end their lives
- are not depressed
- seek assistance only after a deliberative and thoughtful process rather than on impulse
This has not detered those that The Green Man, somewhat unkindly, refers to as "those right wing fundamentalist loonies" from seeking to trapple on the rights of those of their fellow citizens who find themselves in a situation that, it is fair to say, we all dread. Weakened by cancer and chemotherapy, they are near death and with a life expectancy that is counted in days, it is entirely reasonable that these people want to have power over the one thing that is left for them, their death.
The Bush Administration has tried to turn this right into an obligation in the past. John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, announced in November 2001 that the Administration had reversed the response to the Oregon law espoused by Janet Reno, the attorney general in the Clinton administration which stated that
The federal government's pursuit of adverse actions against Oregon physicians who fully comply with that state's Death With Dignity Act would be beyond the purpose of the C.S.A. (Controlled Substances Act)
In summary the Bush Administration went the doctors under this act because they claimed that suicide is not a "legitimate medical purpose" under regulations of the federal Controlled Substances Act. They failed.
It is now back on the agenda and once more terminally ill patients and those that care for them are faced with an onslaught from those who would deny them their liberty to choose to end their lives a month/week/day earlier than it might otherwise end.
When the patient is a child the emotion and the ethical dilemma is magnified immeasureably. St Judes, a hospital in the US that specialises in pediatric cancer and palliative care of children (how sad that we need such a facility), and Sydney Children's Hospital in Australia have found that child cancer patients as young as 10 years old who are aware that their disease is incurable have the ability to participate meaningfully in discussions of their own end-of-life care with family members and the health care team. They say
These children identified their deaths as an outcome of their decisions to end or limit treatment, understood that they were participating in decisions about the end of their own lives, and recognized the consequences of their decisions.
Staggeringly, faced with all of their troubles and their awareness of their own limited life expectancy, these children and adolescents were motivated more by their concern for others than by their own needs. Entering into a trial of a drug from which she would gain little or nothing one 14-year-old girls said
If I can help someone else, that's wonderful, I think
another said
If I don't take it, my family would support me, but they don't want me to quit. Grandpa said he would worry himself to death if I don't try it. My boyfriend wants me to take it for him. I don't want to do it but for my family.
A parent, of course, will do anything and everything they can to try an cure their child and it takes great courage to withdraw treatment to allow your child respite from the tortuous regime of chemo and radio therapy. A 15-year-old girl with acute lymphoblastic leukemia said
We decided not to go with chemo because I don't want to be sick the rest of my days, and it's not like it is going to cure me, so I just said, 'We'll go home and take it from there.'
These children know they are shortening their lives but they want to actually enjoy the few days that they have left as best they can. They will inevitably, and often quickly, reach a stage where they are in complete agony and are finished with life; they will wish to die. The situation is tragic and far more complex than the simplistic scenario that is painted by the "Right To Life" extremists.
Source New York Times and here St Judes Research here.
Here is a link to a story in Der Speigel. It makes harrowing reading but it is a must read if your are American, British or Australian. Read this and weep that we have become what we detested in Saddam Hussien.
Possibly the most telling comment in this article on the torture of innocent Iraqis is this one by an Iraqi tortured by Americans in Abu Graib
In the past, he says, he believed that forgiveness is always better than revenge, but now he is filled with a hatred that he cannot shake off. The worst thing about it, says Hajj Ali, is that he hates himself for hating others."How can it be," he asks, "that the victims are not being called as witnesses, that no one wants to hear their version of the story? How can it be that someone like Davis gets only half a year in prison?"
"Davis and the others," he says, "killed our souls."
It seems that it is not Islamists turning Iraqis into suicide bombers, it is the Americans.
I could include an image of a lynching here but I think we have been confronted by those images often enough. Some of us are deeply saddened and embarrased by these images of the way in which whites have treated others in the past. Others it seems do not experience similar feelings.
It took the government of America a long time to outlaw lynchings, over 300 bills before parliament. Never-the-less it is now banned but what do you do if you are a community that embraced lynchings. Well it seems you simply exploit the justice system to carry on the practice. Researchers at Ohio State university found that the number of death sentences for all criminals – Black and white – were higher in states with a history of lynchings. But the link was even stronger when only Black death sentences were analyzed.
David Jacobs, an author of the study says
Our results suggest that the death penalty has become a sort of legal replacement for the lynchings in the past. This hasn't been done overtly, and probably no one has consciously made such a decision. But the results show a clear connection.
Interestingly in states with a growing black population, the increase in the number of death sentences tracked the increasing black population. Of course the USA is very conscious that it is not seen as racist and this has resulted in a perverse situation where the number of whites sentenced to death also increases with the increase in the black population.
There is an upper limit on this trend. When the percentage of blacks reaches 20% the number of death sentences starts to decrease. Dr Dave suggests that this is because at this level blacks have enough votes and political influence within states to reduce the number of death sentences.
It used to be Personnel when The Green Man started work, all those years ago. Then we experienced the pandemic that was Economic Rationalism, a phenonemon which was mistakenly thought to be a rational approach to Economics but proved to be an extremely economic approach to Rational thinking.
Personnel gave way to Human Resources and mass retrenchment took place of middle aged middle management professionals who knew how to run businesses to make way for the young go-getters who didn't. Many businesses failed because it takes more than green accountants versed in Kanesian economics to run most companies. Of course the "change consultants" who drove this devestating revolution that saw the economic crash of the late 1980's did not take moral or fiscal responsibility for the devastation that they caused.
They lay low for a while and now they are back with their next wave of new age, new fangle claptrap with which to seduce senior executives who are paid far too much to not fall for this modern snake oil. Their salaries are clearly unjustified because they are flocking to learn of the latest trend "Human Capital Management". Guess what? The employees who actually know what they are doing might actually be valuable to an organisation and who better to tell you this than some highly paid consultants. Yep for a mere $3848.90 you can spend 2 days being told that people with existing corporate knowledge are more valuable to you than new recruits. Well that is perhaps underselling the conference, you also get a cocktail party at the end of the second day but I have been to a few of these sorts of things and you never get cocktails only beer and wine. That sums up the whole experience I suppose, promise cocktails and deliver beer.
I know you are ready to sign up so click here.
Sixty years ago at this very time the Enola Gay dropped the worlds first atomic bomb to be exploded in anger over the city of Hiroshima, Japan killing 10's of thousands instantly and eventually 242,437 citizens of Hiroshima. Hiroshima had an estimated population of 350,000 at the time.
It was essentially an act of terror but we don't call it that because our side did it. It had the desired result with the surrender of Japan on August 15th, 1945 and endless debate has been entered into as to whether this rapid conclusion of the war justified the means. (It always comes back to that doesn't it; an argument over whether the ends justified the means.)
So what is the difference between killing 242,437 innocent civilians with an atomic bomb and killing approximately the same number with bayonet and bullet, as the Japanese army did in Nanking in 1937? Nothing of course except that the deaths of the 200,000 - 300,000 chinese killed by the Japanese are laid upon the consciences of a division or more of Japanese soldiers. The deaths of the 242,437 civilians who died from this single bomb rest upon the consciences of the 12 airmen who flew the Enola Gay on that fateful day.
Those amongst you who are of gung-ho inclination may well think that these airmen were fortunate to be able to serve their country in such a fashion and they may have thought exactly the same thing. Clearly however, one has to be a complete psychopath to not feel the weight of 242,437 innocent souls upon ones conscience regardless of how justified the cause. None of these airmen understood fully the power of the device they were carrying until it detonated. As the plane flew away it was hit by a shock wave from the explosion, Co-pilot Robert Lewis looked over his shoulder, he turned to the Pilot, Lieutenant-Colonel Paul Tibbets and said "Look at that! Look at that! Look at that!"
Then when the full realisation came upon him he said
"My god! What have we done? If I live for 100 years I will never get this out of my mind."
There were many casualities of this terrible war, and amongst them were the airmen of the Enola Gay.
(Suffix: As I was writing this piece one of my dogs set up a mournful howl in the back yard. It was picked up by some of the neighbouring dogs as well. It is not his normal behaviour, it was quite eerie. What an appropriate auditory backdrop while I was writing.)
In response to the bombings in London, US President George W Bush stated that the USA is firm in its resolve to prosecute the "war on terror". This is, of course, consistent with the position he has held since the aeroplanes crashed into the World Trade Centre in 2001.
As I have said before, this is new use of the word "war", which is defined as
A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties
Terror is a state of mind and not a Nation, State or Party of Individuals and, accordingly, it is an inaccurate use of the term "war".
If we however we accept this as a legitimate evolution of the word "war", then clearly the war is being won by the terrorists since, I believe it is fair to say, that people in the west are more scared now than they were in 2000 and possibly even more scared than they were in December 2001.
One could also raise legitimate questions over whether the west, in general, and the USA, in particular, have been guilty of terrorist acts themselves. If the definition of a terrorist act is one
the calculated use of violence (or threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimindation or coercion or instilling fear
Is the killing of innocent civilians in Iraq by means of a cluster bomb dropped from a US warplane any less of a terrorist act than the killing of innocent civilians via the detonation of a car bomb? I am not talking about the justification or otherwise for the act but merely whether it could be regarded as intimidating and instilling fear and it is difficult to understand how it could not.
Looking at it dispassionately, it is clear that it is difficult to understand how the tactic of terrorism can be eliminated when those seeking to eliminate it are practicing it themselves. Mike Spagat of Royal Holloway, University of London postulates that terrorist activity
might be the natural endpoint for all modern armed conflicts. Ongoing wars in Iraq and Colombia, which had quite different causes and began as very different kinds of conflict, are developing a characteristic signature of long-term terrorist activity.
Mary Kaldor, a political scientist at the London School of Economics and Political Science agrees. She says
US military action in Iraq has been predicated on the view that it is a war of the sort that was fought until the middle of the twentieth century, where two military states battle for control of a territory. The US failure to understand the reality in Iraq and the tendency to impose its own view of what war should be like is immensely dangerous.
If one is to understand how we have arrived at this point and where things are likely to proceed from here it is necessary to put aside our moral position and the fact that we are participants and view the Iraq conflict from the perspect of say a board game. The rise of insurgency in Iraq can be viewed as a direct result of the overwhelming force with which the war was initially prosecuted. Presumeably the intent of the "shock and awe" campaign was to rapidly instill a sense of defeat in the opposition in Iraq. Sadly, its real effect was the fragmentation of the opposition into small cells that are proving a highly effective resistance to the US occupation in Iraq.
"Why is this so effective?" The answer is disconcertingly simple. There appears to be a natural law that governs conflicts that was first enumerated by British mathematician Lewis Fry Richardson around fifty years ago from studying battles within the context of the second world war. Conflicts in Iraq, Colombia and even England, appear comply with this numerical model.
The big question of course is whether there is actually a war to be won. If there is then it will not be won using a 20th mindset on how wars at to be conducted. The Metropolitan Police in London have a different and possibly more constructive perspective on the events that occured in London, referring to them a criminal acts that will be investigated in the same manner as other criminal acts that occur in London and whose perpetrators will be prosecuted using the standard judicial processes that exist within the British justice system. Their mindset is that this is not so much a war as a group of anti-social individuals who must be identified and the risks that they pose eliminated through, most likely, imprisonment.
Whilst currently only authorized in the state of Oregon for terminally ill patients, the practice of doctors prescribing medications for patients to self administer to kill themselves is widespread and common throughout the USA. It is commonly recognised by most doctors that whilst it is illegal it is a part of their role neccessitated by compassion for their patients.
A fascinating study by Dr Robert Pearlman published in of General Internal Medicine provides some insight into the mindset of patients requesting such assistance from their doctor. The study shows some clear commonalities amongst these people:
- They are not depressed
- They seek assistance only after a deliberative and thoughtful process rather than on impulse
There were essentially three major reasons for seeking such assistance:
1. illness-related experience - pain, loss of function, fatigue
2. loss of sense of self or identity
3. fears about the future, particularly as they relate to their disease and loss of bodily function.
The underlying consideration in all of this is the quality of the dying experience. An issue that most of us find confronting to consider, not the least because it forces us to confront our own mortality at a level of detail most of us are not equiped for.
Six Navy SEALs and the wives of two commandos have filed a lawsuit accusing The Associated Press of invasion of privacy and endangering lives by distributing pictures of them with Iraqi prisoners.
It is hard to imagine how publishing the pictures could make these guys any more at risk than they already are, being an occupying force in a country racked with civil and military unrest.
It is also worthy of note that none of the Iraqi prisoners pictured are sueing. Presumeably a number of them are already dead from the torture that the Navy SEALs inflicted so the risk of future death is fairly low for them. For the rest they are probably safer having their photos in the press.
I'm sorry but the self-centred irony and ethical myopia of this law suit beggars belief.
Here is a photo of Sabrina Harman, she was a "specialist" with the US army at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "Specialist" is US Army speak for "torturer". She is having fun with the body of a dead Iraqi who most likely died of the abuses he suffered at the hands of Sabrina and the other torturers at Abu Ghraib.
If you ignore the dead body in the foreground this could be the photo of any happy young woman. In fact research shows that it could have been virtually any young woman, or man for that matter. Professor Susan Fiske of Princeton University says
Could any average 18-year-old have tortured these prisoners? I would have to answer, 'Yes, just about anyone could have -- unfortunately.'
I have written of earlier research by Stanley Milgrim that proved this point in a research lab with hypothetical victims, sadly Abu Ghraib gave us a brutal and real life example of the sadism that is a part of us all. What are you thinking right now? Perhaps you are thinking something like "I couldn't/wouldn't torture and murder other person."
Here is the sad reality, given the right circumstances you would and what is more you would enjoy it. Not a comfortable thought is it. Professor Susan says
Ordinary people can engage in incredibly destructive behavior if so ordered by legitimate authority. Subordinates not only do what they are ordered to do, but what they think their superiors would order them to do, given their understanding of the authority's overall goals
No doubt Sabrina is back in the USA now and probably is, or will be, one of the sacrificial lambs who will be prosecuted to ease the collective conscience of the US public. Is she a bad person? Reflect on Professor Susans research before you rush into judging Sabrina. If you have an 18 year old son or daughter it could have been them in that photo, or it could have been you!
I have switched comments back on because I would particularly welcome discussion on this entry.
Read about Professor Susan Fiskes research here.
Here is a excellent link to Stanley Milgrims original work on Compliance kindly contributed by Carol Maltby.
The genie was let out of the bottle when "Dolly" the sheep was cloned in 1997. It was the first time that a mammal had been successfully cloned. Dolly was created from a cell from another sheeps udder.
Now reproductive biologist Gerald Schatten of the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has announced at the annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in Philadelphia that his research team has created cloned monkey embryos. It is the first documented case of a primate being cloned. At this stage none of the implanted embryos survived to the end of pregnancy but it is a significant step forward in cloning technology.
It is only a matter of time until the technology is advanced enough to successfully clone humans. Then it will not be a question of "can we" but "should we". Amongst the vast world-wide academic community there will undoubtedly some who answer "yes".
you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'
All right, I know a lot of you have already jumped to a conclusion about what I am going to talk about here and are wondering why I am still harping on about it. But I am not talking about the myth that Saddam was behind 9/11, I am talking about the myth that GWB promolgated the Saddam myth.
New research by Scott Althaus, a professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Devon Largio, a law student at Vanderbilt University shows that, whilst the Bush Administration was happy to leverage of the myth, they did not in fact create it.
At the time of 9/11 they point to the fact that there was a high level of predisposition by the American public to believe that Saddam was behind most of the dasterdly deeds that were arising at the time. Also analysis of the questions asked in the polls conducted at the time indicated that the wording of the questions overstated the involvement of Saddam reflecting, one presumes, the bias of the organisations conducting the polls. Neither of these two aspects were under the control of the Bush Administration.
There is no doubt however that the climate and the poll results were seized upon by the Bush Administration to bolster the case for launch a preemptive strike against Iraq. Devon Largio identified 27 different rationales the Bush Administration used during the lead up to the war to justify it's desire to launch the war. These changed during the prewar period. She looked at three distinct periods.
1 - 12 Sept 2001 - Dec 2001
2 - State of the Union Address - Apr 2002
3 - 12 Sept 2002 - Oct 2002
In the first period talk of Iraq and their potential involvement in 9/11 was almost exclusively raised by reporters in the form of questions to the Administration. Senator John McCain was the only congressman to actively initiate consideration of Iraq during this period. It is in the second period when Bush does an almost complete change of focus from bin Laden to Hussein. This occured in January 2002 and was adopted by the media in February 2002.
By phase three the Bush Administration was wholeheartedly pushing the line that launching a war on Iraq was the right and appropriate thing to do.
Through the campaign five of the 27 rationales were consistently used
-War on Terror
-WMD
-Lack of Inspections
-Removal of Hussein Regime
-Saddam was not a nice person.
She claims that analysis shows that new rationales were being thought up and introduced through the campaign. The rationale that Tony Blair hung his hat upon, that there was an "imminent threat" emerged in phase 3 in Bush's address to the UN. Rapidly this rationale was adopted by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Lott, Dashle, the Congressional Record and, of course Tony Blair.
Read more of Devons research here. It is quite well written, unlike so many academic papers.
Read more on the bias of Americans against Saddam here.
There is much in the world that is bad and The Green Man often chooses to turn away rather than confront the manner in which certain human beings treat other human beings, however there are instances when this is simply not possible.
This is the photo of a mother at the funeral of her two daughters, aged 11 and 12. They were deliberately machine gunned in the back by terrorists in the Russian town of Beslan. They are dressed in their most special frocks for their funeral.
This was no accident. They were not accidently caught in the crossfire. As they fled the school in which they had been held hostage a gunman took them in his sights and cold-bloodedly pulled the trigger on his automatic weapon. Each sustained multiple gun shot wounds to the back and died as a consequence.
What sort of adult human being does that to two innocent school girls?
I am wracked with grief. Amongst all the horrific things in the world this stands out. We are all lessened by sharing our humanity with such barbarism.
We do not know the full details of incident yet but if, as has been suggested, this is the work of Islamic militants then the religion has a lot to answer for. A climate has been created where individuals, in the name of their religion, think it is acceptable to cause the deaths of 350 human beings, many of them children. Nothing justifies the cold blooded slaughter of innocent children. NOTHING!
There is nothing to say or do except grieve.
Physician Assisted Suicide is the provision by a doctor of a prescription for a lethal combination of drugs that will allow you to end your life at the time of your choosing. In Oregon this is a perfectly legal practice and one that is considered by approximately 17% of people in Oregon who have the misfortune of having a terminal illnes. Ultimately 2% of these individuals formally request the prescription and 1% take advantage of it.
Oregon provides a legally sanctioned option that is illegal in most other places but it is still utilised elsewhere. In most places a person can obtain a satisfactory mixture of drugs to acheive the desired result. So would you recon that legalising the practice in Oregon has lead to a rush in suicides amongst the terminally ill in that state? Paradoxically it has had the reverse effect. PAS is lower in Oregon than in states where it is illegal. Legalising the practice means that various options that are available to the dying person can be explored frankly and openly. Many who consider PAS choose improved medication for pain and depression, others utilise palliative care. Additionally the researchers observe
Another explanation is that Oregon's Death With Dignity Act has significant hurdles and many patients simply can't make it over them.
So who uses PAS? The profile of a utiliser of this facility is younger, white, not very religious and battling cancer. Also those who are already in pallative care and have tried the other options are far more likely to take advantage of PAS.
Sadly many of you reading this will find yourself in the situation of knowing someone in this unfortunate position in the future. The challenge for you is to put aside your own values, beliefs and prejudices and support the person in ways that are meaningful to the person dying. These people are often too sick to fight for what they want for their final days and it is your responsibility to help them make choices that are meaningful and valid for them. It behoves any caring person to assist them in this task and not burden the dying person with their own grief and expectations.
Do you recognise this statement.
I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing.
A doctor would because it it part of the Hippocratic Oath that each doctor takes.
I wrote some time ago on the conflict that exists for US military medical practitioners between their duties as military personnel and their responsibilities as doctors under the Hippocratic Oath.
Sadly and predictably The New England Journal of Medicine reports
There is increasing evidence that U.S. doctors, nurses, and medics have been complicit in torture and other illegal procedures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. Such medical complicity suggests still another disturbing dimension of this broadening scandal.We know that medical personnel have failed to report to higher authorities wounds that were clearly caused by torture and that they have neglected to take steps to interrupt this torture. In addition, they have turned over prisoners' medical records to interrogators who could use them to exploit the prisoners' weaknesses or vulnerabilities.
How low has the US military sunk, this sort of behaviour is terrorism. It is no wonder that the US is loosing the "War On Terror" when they are one of its enthusiastic exponents.
The Green Man encourages you to visit The New England Journal of Medicine and read the depressing facts for yourself. He prefers to try and maintain the illusion that we are actually the good guys without too many of the facts to cloud that view.
In Australia we often marvel at the political correctness that appears to burden America, like the guy who got the sack for referring to someone as "niggardly", which is a word that, other than phonetically, is completely unrelated to the word "nigger" and means "Grudging and petty in giving or spending."
Or the long standing computing jargon of a "master/slave" configuration being banned in certain computer installations in California because it might offend black Americans. It is tedious and expensive to remove these references but bowing before the god of political correctness is essentially harmless is, in this case.
Now let us turn our attention to a drug called BiDil that was produced by a Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical company NitroMed. It was first trialed in 1980s but was abandoned when it failed to live up to expectations in the treatment of heart failure. The problem is that it is phenonemally efficacious in Black Americans and almost completely useless in White Americans. Sadly the American taboo on suggesting that there are any physiological racial differences between blacks and whites precluded any specific racial testing of the drug, although there were hints from the statistical analysis that these differences did exist.
Anne Taylor of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis has stepped into line of the flame-thrower of public opinion and retested the drug. Testing on 1,000 black heart-failure patients has been shown the drug to be so successful that testing was suspended well ahead of time. With luck the drug will be receive FDA approval in 2005.
This is a case of science bending to the political sensitivities of the community at large and as a consequence a valuable heart treatment has gone unused for 20 years. The pressure on the testers not to distinguish, or factor in, race when testing this drug has cost countless black lives over the last 20 years.
Science must be constrained by ethics but it must be constrained by true ethical practice not by pressure by people and special interest groups with their own agendas to promote.
It is interesting to look at why species become extinct. There are two basic reasons, firstly a key component necessary to their survival is removed, such as warmth, as in the asteroid created global winter that probably lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs. The other reason is the introduction of a predator to the environment and man is probably the most pervasive predator of all. The introduction of man to New Zealand saw the extinction of the giant moa. In Australia a range of megafauna went extinct with the arrival of the first Australian Aboriginals.
Of course a new predator does not usually drive a species to extinction, the typical outcome is that initially population numbers plunge as the species adapts to the presence of the predator. Over time the population recovers as it evolves strategies for coping with the predator's presence, although often they do not recover to what they originally were because of the changed dynamics of the environment.
It is easy to overlook the fact that these fundamental laws of nature apply equally to humans as to any other species. For humans, however, predators are not now large carnivores, we have long since developed ways to manage our interaction with these animals. The predators that we have never fully conquered are microscopic, bacteria and viruses. A great predator facing the human species at the moment is AIDS, although interestingly malaria rivals AIDS in deaths and infections, causing more than 300 million acute illnesses and at least one million deaths annually.
Next week, over 15,000 delegates will converge on Bangkok for the XV International AIDS conference. Taking a dispassionate view of this pandemic it is interesting to speculate why there is no similar body for malaria. The answer is probably that we understand and have a cure for malaria. In other words we can control it in areas where people are wealthy enough to do so. AIDS is the bogey man because we do not know how to control it. Even the wealthy are susceptible to this virus and no amount of money can cure it at this stage. When the wealthy feel their mortality, that is when there is some real action.
We can overlook the poor starving to death or dying of a curable disease. On the other hand their death by a disease that could also strike us is completely unacceptable because it reminds us that we are a vulnerable and mortal animal that is at the mercy of nature, the same as all the rest.
If you are interested in following the AIDs conference visit Nature who is covering it.
If you would like to find out more about malaria and its impact on the human population then visit The World Health Organisation.
The western system of justice, which the USA and others are attempting to install in Iraq, contains the concept of a presumption of innocence. It also contains a concept of a fair and impartial trial. These are two significant impediments to him ever actually being found guilty. As Ewen MacAskill observes in The Guardian
The problem is in tying Saddam and Milosevic to actual crimes. Both established the climate in which these crimes took place but legally it is difficult to establish guilt. The law becomes confused with the politics of the time.
The other problem is finding a jury who you could legitimately claim would approach the trial with an open mind. In most western judicial systems he would never go to trial for exactly this reason.
Here is a gigantic challenge for the USA. If, in a USA style of justice, Saddam should be released would the USA support such an action. The Green Man seriously doubts it and as such their claim to want justice for the people of Iraq, including Saddam, is mere window dressing.
Following World War II work was undertaken by a number of psychologists in a bid to understand how the horrors of Nazi Germany came to happen. How was it that such a large percentage of the German population participated in these horrors so willingly? Was it a flaw in the collective German psyche? Could it happen again in a different context?
One of the key players in this research was an American psychologist called Stanley Milgrim. In summary he found that, rather than a flaw in the Germans, it is part of the psychological makeup of all of us. Given the right circumstances most of us could be perpetrators of almost unspeakable horrors. These torturers and murderers were ordinary people like you and me who picked up their brown paper bag lunch, kissed their wife and children good-bye in the morning and took the bus to work. A night they came home, had dinner and enjoyed a happy family life.
Many people find this a very uncomfortable mental image; it is so much easier to imagine them as monsters. The hard fact is that though that, placed in an appropriate situation, most of us are capable of these horrific acts. Think of the ordinary Americans perpetrating torture in Iraq at the moment. They are just ordinary folks doing what they were told to do.
The sorts of experiments that Stanley Milgrim undertook would probably not be allowed to be undertaken today, at least, not in the form that he conducted them. If you feel a little uncomfortable about me suggesting that you might be capable of torture imagine how the participants in the experiments felt. They had it proved that they were capable of these appalling acts. That is a difficult thing to reconcile and some were undoubtedly scarred by the experience of participating.
The fact that we could not/would not conduct the experiments today does not mean, however, that we cannot benefit from the research. This research sheds a valuable light on the human psyche. It is a dilemma that faces German reproductive researchers to this day. Part of atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis during WW II was a scientific program called 'Rassenhygiene', known today as eugenics, or the breeding of a master race. Today we view this as completely unacceptable yet that does not mean that there was not valuable information that arose from this form of research. It is, however, a brave researcher that delves into this source of data. No matter how valuable and valid the information is, it is so tainted with the Nazi stain that it risks discrediting any research that is based upon its findings.
This is reflected in the almost complete lack of research in reproductive science that took place in post-war Germany until the early 1980s. It is the topic of a paper by Professor Rolf Winau, director of the centre for humanities and health sciences at the Charite medical school in Berlin to European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. It has also given rise to Germany having some of the most draconian reproductive legislation in the developed world, including the banning of many common reproductive practices including the freezing of embryos, use of surrogate eggs or sperm, and screening for genetic diseases. Perhaps it is time to move on, we should not forget the past but we should not allow it to unnecessarily cripple future science either.
I am sorry, I am trying really hard not to post on the abuse and torture of prisoners by the USA, it is getting so much coverage elsewhere and it so depressing. Here is one small slip in my resolve.
The Smoking Gun has posted a copy of a memo to Donald Rumsfeld requesting authority to use certain techniques on the inmates of Guantanamo that the ICRC has defined as torture including
removal of clothing, using dogs to intimidate inmates, and the use of stress-positions (like standing), for a maximum of four hours.
Donald Rumsfeld did give his approval reluctantly. He was reluctant because he did not feel they were harsh enough. One could give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he did not appreciate the full reality of what he was approving but how likely is that?
There was a big cufuffle a week or so ago because of some words uttered by a child on PlaySchool, which is a superb preschool childrens program on the Australian federal broadcaster, ABC. The little girl was telling about a trip
I’m Brenna, that’s me in the blue. My mums are taking me and my friend Merrin to an amusement park. Lots of different rides to go on. Here’s the merry-go-round. This is one of my favourite rides. I love riding the merry-go-round
In a staggering display of a collective Freudian slip the conservative side of politics expressed outrage at the introduction of a lesbian theme to the preschoolers program. I say "Freudian slip" because nowhere in the program did it indicate that it was, in fact, a lesbian relationship. Brenna could have been referring to her adoptive mother and her biological mother or to her biological mother and her biological father's new wife or a number of other family configurations that have nothing to do with a lesbian relationship. In spite of this there is a reasonable chance that her biological mother was in a lesbian relationship and that the other woman was her mothers partner.
In a blow to those who were living under the delusion that the ALP were any less socially conservative that the Libs, their current leader Mark Latham was similarly outraged.
It is important to understand exactly what the outrage is about and it is not about the exposure to the existence of lesbian relationships since children are increasingly exposed to this in their real life kindergarten experience. Noone in their real mind would suggest that children growing up in a lesbian household should be denied access to preschool learning at a kindergarten and, as such, other children will know and talk to children with two mums. The outrage is presumably that including it in a television program somehow legitimises it in a way that experiencing it in real life at kindergarten does not. A bit of a tenuous argument in The Green Man's opinion.
It seems that many people in Australia cling to the myth that all Australians are blonde haired and blue eyed and grow up in a heterosexual family with two loving biological parents. Your children know that this is not the case. They experience the diversity of the Australian family experience at kinder and at school.
It makes The Green Man pleased that he lives in such an enlightened and free society. There are repressive regimes where freedom is restricted in these things and parents have their children taken away from them pursuing a relationship with another of the same sex. Sadly, once again, the bastion of the free world, USA, falls into this category. Liz Ditz of I Speak Of Dreams reports on the fate of a resident of the State of Idaho who is allowed access to his two children only if “...the defendant does not reside in the same house as his homosexual male partner.” Read his story here.
Following that logic he is presumably allowed to engage in homosexual acts in private to his hearts content but live alone and he can have access to his children. On the other hand he could be perfectly celebate but share a house with another man and he is not allowed access to his children. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It seems in Idaho you can emotionally abuse and/or neglect your children to your hearts content if you are heterosexual but you are not allowed to love them if you are homosexual. How sad!
The Green Man sits firmly in the heterosexual camp and yet he does not feel threatened by the existence of homosexuals nor does he feel the need to pretend that they don't exist. Further he cannot understand why other heterosexuals do.
The New York Times reports on Lea Fastow, former assistant treasurer of the Enron Corporation, who has been sentenced to 12 months in the Federal Detention Center in Houston for fraud. She will be sharing the facility with approximately 1,100 other inmates. It may not be your regular sort of community but it is a community never the less. The main distinguishing features of this high security community are
- the violent nature of many of its members
- the racist, hardline and sexist views that predominate
- that whites, like Lea, are a minority group and she can expect to suffer accordingly.
This will undoubtedly be a very difficult time for her and one wonders what she will draw from it. It is an opportunity for a woman from the ruling class, who is used to living in a luxury mansion with servants and all mod cons, to gain an insight into what life is like for the poor and disenfranchised of her community. It will be a difficult trial for her but, as The Green Man has observed on other occasions, great jewels of wisdom are only confered by way of great trials. She has an opportunity to have her life transformed and enriched by the experience if she has the strength of character for it. The Green Man hopes she has because she has the capacity and resources to do great good in her community when she is released from prison.
