Haifa, March 5, 2pm
Haifa suicide bomber kills 15, including 7 teenagers and one 12-year old. From the Jerusalem Post, the father of a boy lost in the bombing:

Yossi Mendelevitch described the news of his son's death as "an ink blot, spreading across the consciousness."

Called to the national forensic institute in Tel Aviv, he was warned to bring Yuval's dental x-rays so that he would not have to view what the bomb had left of his boy.

"I want to remember Yuval whole," he said. "In one piece."

In today's Washington Post, I read that Mr. Mendelevitch added this, reacting to deaths in the Gaza Strip following fighting there, in which an Israeli tank shell killed eight people putting out a fire:

"I'm not looking for revenge -- I'm not fulfilled when 11 innocent people get killed in Gaza," Yossi Mendelevich said just before leaving his Haifa apartment to bury his son. "If it's 11 militants, I would be happy. But this worthless killing will not solve anything."

Israeli blogger "Civax" is posting victims' portraits like Yuval's, above, and writes:

I'm sure the Palestinians will get the country they deserve, eventually. But every such attack just kicks it further away. I don't have any illusion that we'll manage to kill all the terrorists ever. But I sure hope we'll take care of as many of them as possible.

NAVAH

Terrorism doesn't end with the funerals. Its effect ripples for years -- sometimes for life. NAVAH was established to assure victims of terror that they are not alone, that there is a place in our heart that feels their pain, and shares their suffering. The volunteers of NAVAH spend hours visiting victims after each attack, sitting by their bedsides, listening to them and encouraging them. [...]

What sets NAVAH apart is that it is usually the first grant that victims of terror receive, enabling them to get the help they need during the first crucial weeks after an attack. In general, most of the victims of terror are ordinary Israelis, with few financial resources.

Donations start at $18. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:21:00 PM -- |  

 

Gotcha, you bastard (the series continues)
Osama running out of bridge partners? The Washington Post reports that it wasn't just Khalid Shaikh Mohammed who got nabbed in Rawalpindi. Mustafa Ahmed Hawsawi, alleged financial chief of Al Qaeda, was apparently caught napping as well. Hawsawi, a Saudi native (go figure), is said to have been the paymaster for the 9/11 terrorists. Some free advice: you guys should move around more ... unless, of course, it isn't safe, as Douglas Turnbull notes helpfully.

Sound familiar? That's right! "Ready.gov" for Al Qaeda: Stay indoors ... or move around! We just don't know what to tell you! Payback's a bitch, ain't it?

Other "Gotcha" posts: 1, 2, 3. Trade them with your friends! posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:31:00 AM -- |  

 

Gone workin', back at the end of the week
See you then. Meanwhile, check out the excellent blogs on the left, including two recent additions, "Dr. Frank's" Blogs of War (which is much better than that might sound), and Eve Tushnet's evetushnet.com.



Anticrepuscular spookiness
There's a fairly straightforward explanation for this phenomenon (click the image, via "Astronomy Picture of the Day," to find out).

I just wonder if I would have been inclined to consider a "natural" explanation (or even had the vocabulary for it) if I'd seen this in prehistoric times. Even with the clues like direct opposition to the sunrise or sunset, it might have taken quite an effort of will to not ascribe it to something supernatural or divine.

Plus, who's got the time with that panther chasing you? Aaeee! Gotta run!



Comic relief

Cannot find weapons of mass destruction

The Saddam and George show

French jokes, more French jokes, and yet another French joke. I disapprove! Yet I laugh!

Ready.gov spoofs 1, 2, 3, 4...

Richard Cohen muses, "My immersion in popular culture has left me saddened. I no longer can avoid concluding that there is something off about Michael Jackson."

...via the tireless Gary Farber, "Idle words" ("Brevity is for the weak"), Jeff Jarvis, Gil Shterzer, my Metro readings, and ... somebody or other. Good night! Drive safely!

posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:05:00 PM -- |  

 

The Pianist
...by Roman Polanski, is a movie you should see. posted by Thomas Nephew at 8:10:00 PM -- |  

 

HIV, condoms, women, drugs, Africa: a New York Times teach-in
The New York Times published a terrific group of op-eds yesterday on the issue of HIV and infectious disease public health issues in the third world (and among minorities of the "first world"):

Protect Women, Stop a Disease, by Kati Marton

A Plan as Simple as ABC, by Edward Green

Waging a Global Battle More Efficiently, by Paul Zeitz

Race, Sex and Stigmas, by Tricia Rose

Generic Drugs Can Make the Money Last, by Mamphela Ramphele and Nicholas Stern

Don't Forget This Infectious Killer, by Ponsiamo Ocamo and William L. Lee

Kati Marton, in Protect Women, Stop a Disease points out that

If we are serious about combating this plague, women must be empowered so that they can defend themselves against the men who are infecting and abandoning them. The administration has failed to do anything significant in this critical area.

In much of sub-Saharan Africa, girls under 18 are four times to seven times more likely than boys the same age to become infected. Why? The answer is sexual coercion and violence against women, child marriage, polygamy and the widespread belief that having sex with a virgin will cure AIDS. Girls are frequently forced into sex with older men in exchange for food for their families or money for school -- or for nothing.

These cycles of abuse and exploitation will not disappear by making AIDS medication more readily available. A huge -- and forthright -- education campaign and the strengthening of public health programs in the developing world are also essential.

Yet, as Ms. Marton points out, the Bush administration is seeking to extend the so-called "Mexico City policy," barring US funding to organizations abroad that perform or even discuss abortions -- in other words, most family planning venues in the slums, shantytowns, and countrysides of the third world. As inconvenient as it may be for hard-core abortion foes, these are also the best places (and often enough the only places) to conduct HIV education programs.

The Bush administration also opposes the distributions of condoms in refugee camps, despite the high incidence of sexual abuse and casual sex in those camps. Most incredibly, perhaps, the US worked with Iran, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Iraq in a kind of "axis of ignorance" to

block a consensus at the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Children last year in support of better education on how to avoid sexually transmitted diseases. The countries stood together in asserting that sex education promotes promiscuity. Not surprisingly, the administration's new budget calls for a $33 million increase in financing programs whose version of sex education is "abstinence only until marriage."

In A Plan as Simple as ABC, Harvard medical anthropologist Edward Green takes up the famous Ugandan "ABC" success in fighting HIV/AIDS, arguing that it was indeed the abstinence ("A") and faithfulness ("_B_e faithful") components that led to the success Uganda has seen in reducing HIV infections:

What happened was that beginning in 1986, Uganda tried to bring about nothing less than fundamental change in sexual behavior. It developed a low-cost program whose message, delivered by everyone from President Yoweri Museveni on down, was this: Stop having multiple partners. Be faithful. Teenagers, wait until you are married before you begin sex.

Green is surely right in decrying the "fruitless battle between the abstinence and condom camps":

The ABC approach is not about that great conversation-stopper, "abstinence only." It is about providing people with more options for preventing AIDS. Some people cannot or will not change their behavior, and so of course they need to use condoms. But while condom use was one of the options Uganda has promoted, faithfulness to one partner is probably the major contributor to the country's success.

Possibly true, although it would be nice to know whether the 1995 changes Green mentions (decline in HIV infections among teenagers, 95% of Ugandans with no more than one sexual partner) were sustained within the cohorts surveyed and among ensuing cohorts.

But the Ugandan experience is also one that happened at a particular point in time during its HIV epidemic. The ABC program began in the late 1980s, when Uganda was at the raging Lake Victoria epicenter of HIV in Africa, and whole villages and countrysides were being decimated by the epidemic. An abstinence message (indeed, any message) at such a time might have a considerably higher impact than before the epidemic takes hold, or than later when the shock wears off, the epidemic infection rates begin to decline, and/or treatments become available. This is not to argue with an expert about the issue, just to agree with him that fighting HIV infections requires a range of options -- including condoms.

And, bearing Ms. Marton's observations in mind, it must be pointed out that it won't be Dr. Green allocating American AIDS dollars, it will be the Bush administration. They may well mutate Dr. Green's "ABC" program into an "ABD" (drugs) program, all the while citing Uganda studies and for all I know Bono to support what they're doing.

In Waging A Global Battle More Efficiently, Paul Zeitz of the Global AIDS Alliance points out what I alluded to in a footnote to my "Condom Sense" post a few days ago: of the $10 billion President Bush pledged to fight AIDS

[o]nly about 5 percent of the new spending is requested in the president's budget. Even more troubling, the president's budget cuts nearly in half the level of financing Congress authorized for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, a public-private partnership intended to expand effective programs. To finance the proposal, his budget also proposes cuts in children's health programs.

The Global Fund pools money and effort from donor nations besides the United States, providing a bigger "bang for the buck" in terms of saving lives -- if not in terms of maintaining a bright line between HIV prevention and abortion counseling. Prejudices about the UN nothwithstanding, the fund expends only 3% of its funds on administrative overhead, and it seeks to address some of the underlying public health problems, such as the lack of clean water, that can undermine programs focused on a single disease.

The other items in brief: Ramphele and Stern argue that since poor countries are a small market to begin with, making life-saving drugs available as clearly packaged, non-exportable generic drugs makes sense. I have strong reservations about generic drugs, and a counterproposal: buy the patents -- or commission new drugs and buy those patents. But Ramphele and Stern make good points, and the HIV epidemic is arguably too dire to wait on such an experiment in public health and drug policy.

Tricia Rose calls for an end to the stereotypes about black American women, from "welfare queen" to a certain two-letter word eschewed in favor of "young performers in popular music and film, [who] are portrayed as highly sexually available and valuable because of it." And Ocamo and Lee point out that it's not just AIDS, tuberculosis, or malaria: there are also about half a billion cases of hepatitis B and C worldwide.

And all you were worried about was a war in Iraq.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:55:00 PM -- |  

 

Gotcha, you bastard (an ongoing series)
Lovely news from Rawalpindi: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed apprehended. (I can't help mentioning: you've looked better, Khalid.) He's considered the chief planner of the September 11 attacks. Mr. Mohammed will be seeing Mr. Atta in hell, but not before a lengthy layover in Guantanamo Bay. Sayonara, s**thead.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:28:00 PM -- |  

 
Blogratic dialogue
Peter Praschl poses a lengthy list of questions about the looming war in Iraq war to the primarily German audience of "Le Sofa Blog," the blog he and Stefan Knecht maintain.

Praschl's title is "Selbstumzingelung," meaning "surrounding oneself," akin to painting oneself into a corner. The questions are well designed to make an average German anti-war proponent a bit uncomfortable.

Does your country have a more legitimate interest in the Iraq situation than do, for example, Tonga, Peru, New Zealand, or Luxembourg? [...]*
Are you against this war because it is wanted by the USA?
Are you against this war because it will be fought against Iraq?
Are Iraqi civilians really important to you? [...]
Is the war against Iraq more discomforting to you than the regime it will be fought against? [...]
Could you imagine that the war against Iraq might have good consequences?
If yes: Why is it hard for you to accept that power can bring about good consequences, even when the powers act out for reprehensible reasons and with reprehensible means?
Is it possibly mainly the self-righteous, arrogant, uncompromising, and bloodthirsty appearance of the American government that makes you oppose this war?
Would you be less against this war if it were carried forward by demoralized politicians, who were better at feigning concern, talking of human rights, and appearing more doubtful?

Obviously, many of these questions are also well designed to remind me of my own misgivings about the war. In the comments that ensued, Praschl writes

I want to constantly remind everyone (including myself) that this weblog and the arguments change nothing, and have no power. [...]

This weblog should ... construct and then tear down poses, constantly correct itself, criticize itself, betray, suspect itself, etc.

It's true that a list of questions implies some objectivity, which may or may not be a pose. But given the overwhelming anti-war stance in German media and the strong majority against it among the German public, I think Praschl's list of questions is more important than he does.

Arguments and discussions like the ones Praschl's list provoke are the fundamental atomic units of politics, or maybe better: they're the chemical reactions of politics. Questions like Praschl's, posed to a German readership that often appears to have made up its mind using bumpersticker slogans, may catalyze some new thinking among his readers. They may at least help readers qualify and refine the conclusions they're comfortable with. That isn't exactly power, but it ain't half bad.

UPDATE, 3/9/03: getcher English translation here!

=====
* I invite close scrutiny of this phrase by native (or fluent) German speakers; an alternative reading is that Praschl is comparing Germany's interest in Iraq with its interest in Tonga, etc. Either way, I think, the idea remains similar: does Germany have a direct interest. posted by Thomas Nephew at 4:52:00 PM -- |