LET'S TALK SHIT

Bob Geldof responds to those who think increased aid will mostly benefit Africa's corrupt power brokers:

"Those critics are just being stupid. They don't know what they are talking about. I do. I've been doing it for 20 years.

So, Geldof's an expert because he's been talking about something for 20 years. Since he mostly talks shit, that must make him a shit expert.

He should have kept his mouth shut but he was just getting started:

"Africa is not mired in corruption, it is mired in poverty. Corruption is a by-product of poverty just like dying of famine or Aids."

Hmm, I'm inclined to think he has it the wrong way around, Africans are poor because corruption is systemic. Regardless, if those in power behave, Bob's going to front with the goodies:

"When you live in a country that's got nothing and finally you make it to the top and you start grabbing what little there is you kill people below you."

He added: "They must be transparent, they must be accountable first to their own people then to rest of the world.

"If they do that we will come with the debt trade aid package. I'm not interested in critics."

It sounds like he's trying to start a cargo cult.

Update: Bjork, Live 8's opening act, isn't as optimistic as Geldof:

"I look at the news, I see people starving, I am crying. I'm a total mess," she told reporters after the gig.

"You try to think how you're going to break through this cobweb of problems and bureaucracy and how on Earth anybody is going to make any change."

Good point, Bjork, that thinking stuff isn't easy. If you ever master it, you can give Geldof a few pointers.

Update: More talking without thinking:

Coldplay's Chris Martin

This is the greatest thing that's ever been organised probably in the history of the world.

Can we take this opportunity on behalf of all the bands and on behalf of you people to say to Bob Geldof he is a hero of our time and he deserves all the credit he gets.

Sting

There is a groundswell for what we're doing here.

Those eight men in that room are going to have to position themselves to please these people. They have to address this.

We are a global village. We're connected to the problems of Africa and our brothers and sisters there.

Midge Ure

This event is huge, it's immense, it's amazing. I think it's fantastic that the UK is leading this entire thing.

Yep, it's a self-congratulatory bullshit festival, as expected.

Update II: As the organizer of Live 8, Geldof thinks there's a place for him in the history books:

"Mahatma Gandhi freed a continent, Martin Luther King freed a people, Nelson Mandela freed a country. It does work. They will listen."

It's too early to tell for sure but Live 8 probably won't achieve Sir Bob's lofty goals, or make him a historical figure. By the way, the North Koreans, Chinese and Vietnamese should really be told they've been freed, they don't seem to realise.

AUSTRIAN GREEN DEMANDS PRESIDENT'S ARREST

No, not Bush, new Iranian President Ahmadinejihad:

Austrian authorities have classified documents suggesting that Iran's president-elect may have played a key role in the 1989 execution-style slayings of an Iranian Kurdish leader and two associates in Vienna, a newspaper reported Saturday.

Austria's Interior Ministry and the public prosecutor's office are investigating alleged evidence pointing to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's possible involvement in the attack, the daily Der Standard reported.

The allegations against Ahmadinejad come as some of the Americans who were taken captive in Iran in 1979 implicate the newly elected leader in the hostage crisis. Radical Iranian students took over the U.S. Embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.

In Austria, Green Party leader Peter Pilz told the newspaper he wants a warrant issued for the arrest of Ahmadinejad, who he alleged "stands under strong suspicion of having been involved."

See what happen's when you're not nice to the people you meet on the way to the top. I mean, you take a few hostages and kill a few people and it seems like everyone's out to get you.

Update: Commenter CL notes that Ahmadinejihad is one creepy dude. Go here for more creepy dudes and dudettes.

OSCAR WINNING OPINION

James Nichols, brother of Oklahoma City bombing conspirator Terry Nichols, is suing Michael Moore for libel. Moore's lawyer, Herschel Fink, has asked that charges be dismissed:

"When you see a Michael Moore film, you know it's opinion," Fink said. "And it's protected."

Sure, everyone with even half a brain knows Moore's work, even though fact based, is not factual. So, it's just a bit odd he won an Oscar for best documentary when the rules specify:

An eligible documentary film is defined as a theatrically released non-fiction motion picture ...

Anyway, it's great to hear Moore's mouthpiece admit – in trying to worm his way out of a legal action – what we've known all along. That Hollywood's wall-to-wall with half-wits is a given.

ENIGMATIC STRANGENESS

Muriel Gray argues against ID cards for all:

Currently, you or I can open a bank account under any name we wish. We can procure a credit card under that name. We can have gas, electricity and telephone lines brought to our home and pay for them under that name. We can book into a hotel as Donald Duck or travel round our own country by air or train as Pocahontas, all of which will be rendered impossible when the commercial sector decides to exploit a scheme that ensures customers can hide nothing.

Never again will a couple book into that Cornish hotel as Mr and Mrs Smith and fail to show for breakfast. The staunch defenders of the ID scheme question why one would wish to fabricate such deceptions, but the reason is that the enigmatic stranger is a keystone of the British notion of freedom. The romantic ideal that anyone can be who they wish to be is so stitched into our mythology and literature - from strangers on trains to millionaire philanthropists posing as paupers and ambitious youngsters escaping class restraints by altering their identity - that its loss would be a tragedy.

ID cards may not be a good idea but weak-arsed arguments like that above will discredit the whole anti-ID card campaign. I mean, it almost seems as if Gray regards criminal behaviour as romantic.

SCOTT AND BRIAN, BABY-FACED ANARCHISTS

Self-proclaimed anarchists Scott and Brian, both 18, made their contribution to saving America from Chimpy's evil influence by burning a few flags. The problem is, at the time the flags were torched they were flying from poles attached to houses. Both acknowledge they were aware that the houses could have burned with residents possibly inside. Arson being a serious crime these two morons will probably, fortunately, be locked away for some serious time.

TORTURE TOOL BAN SYMBOLIC BUT TOTAL

The EU has launched a preemptive bureaucratic strike:

The European Commission on Thursday (30 June) banned trade in instruments of torture.

The ban concerns "goods that have no use other than for capital punishment or torture", says a commission statement.

But strict controls will also be imposed on other goods, "which could be used to inflict torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment".

Banned goods include electric shock belts, electric chairs and guillotines. Leg irons and electric shock weapons are part of those items to be put under strict controls.

"Our assumption is that trade in this area, if it exists at all, is extremely minimal but the regulation is intended to bring our rules in line with our political principles", a commission spokesperson said, referring to the bloc's opposition to the use of torture and the death penalty.

But although the measures adopted are mainly symbolic, as trade of torture equipment hardly exists, they still constitute "a complete ban", she underlined.

But banning a trade that doesn't even exist isn't nearly good enough for Amnesty International:

According to Pascal Fenaux, the spokesperson for Amnesty's Belgian branch, the main problem is to define the word "torture".

"Unfortunately, human beings' imagination is such that anything could be cited as torture, the definition is very large", he told the EUobserver.

Menaces, humiliation, and moral torture in general are as grave as physical torture, Mr Fenaux said.

"I am afraid that this [commission decision] will not be sufficient to stop torture, and in that aspect I think the commission spokeswoman's lucidity was remarkable", he concluded, referring to her statement that the ban was mainly symbolic.

Sarcasm, what about sarcasm?

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE ...

Tim Lambert on 19 March 2005:

There are thousands of comments on my blog. My past behaviour clearly shows that I don’t tamper with comments.

A 1 July 2005 comment by Terry after the Lambert treatment:

n, CN’T Y RD? Ltt wrt, “vn mr ntrstng, th svn stts tht hv thr wn sslt wpns bns sw smllr drp n mrdrs thn th 43 stts wtht sch lws, sggstng tht dng wy wth th bn ctlly rdcd crm.”

D y knw wht “sggstng” mns? Y bvsly dn’t. Y r lr nd n gnrms. Th prf s n yr wn wrds. Y fl yrslf, nt thrs dp.

It's a super-brain thing. rrgnt cck-sckr.

MUGABE ACTUALLY AN OKAY GUY

The Guardian's Environment Editor, John Vidal, thinks Mugabe's slum clearance program isn't so bad:

The evictions - which are clearly happening on a wide scale - have been seized on by the west, and the former colonial power Britain in particular, as another reason to demonise President Mugabe and further humiliate long-suffering Zimbabwe. It's open season on the Harare regime and it appears that anyone can say anything they like without recourse to accuracy or reality. Whipped into a frenzy of hypocritical outrage, the EU, Britain and the US, as well as the World Bank - all of which have been responsible for millions of evictions in Africa and elsewhere as conditions of infrastructure projects - have rushed to condemn the "atrocities".

The vilification of Mugabe is now out of control. The UN security council and the G8 have been asked to debate the evictions, and Mugabe is being compared to Pol Pot in Cambodia. Meanwhile, the evictions are mentioned in the same breath as the genocide in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans - although perhaps only three people have so far accidentally died. Only at the very end of some reports is it said that the Harare city authority's stated reason for the evictions is to build better, legal houses for 150,000 people.

Hmm, maybe it would have been a good idea to build the alternative housing before turning thousands out onto the streets in winter. The pathetic apologetics continue:

Perspective is needed. The summary removal of people at gunpoint from their homes is indefensible, almost certainly unnecessary, and probably economically counter-productive, but it is not unusual in the developing world. Every year millions of poor people are evicted to make way for tourism, dams, roads and airports, for events like the Olympics, and for the gentrification and beautification of cities, national parks and urban redevelopments.

Oh, that makes Mugabe's actions Okay then. Tell us more:

So why are the Harare slum clearances so different? As international monster of the moment, Mugabe is unacceptable to Britain and the west mainly because he has chosen to evict whites and redistribute land grabbed in colonial times. The fact that the African Union and other African leaders are not prepared to condemn him for the Harare evictions reflects the fact that they, too, recognise the injustice of the colonial land ownership inheritance and do not want to see Africa bullied again by the west.

There is the little matter of famine, which Vidal chooses to ignore, caused by Mugabe's seizing of white farms that were then redistributed to his cronies.

Why do lefties love dictators?

DOUBLE STANDARD

The Guardian accuses the US of escalating tensions with Iran because the White House is willing to entertain the possibility Iran's new president is a thug:

The White House yesterday ratcheted up tensions with Iran by saying that it was taking seriously claims by Americans who were held hostage in the 1979 Tehran embassy siege that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president-elect, was one of their captors.

President George Bush said "many questions" had been raised by the allegations that Mr Ahmadinejad was one of the leaders of radical students who seized the embassy and held 52 hostages for more than year.

The claims were made yesterday by five former hostages who said the incoming Iranian president had been involved in interrogations during the embassy drama. "As soon as I saw his picture in the paper, I knew that was the bastard," Colonel Charles Scott, 73, told the Washington Times. "He was one of the top two or three leaders ... The new president of Iran is a terrorist."

On the other hand, the UN takes seriously rumours the US is holding terrorist suspects on secret prison ships:

The UN's special investigator on terrorism Manfred Nowak said in Vienna on Tuesday that although the accusations are rumours, the situation is sufficiently serious to merit an official inquiry.

Thugs everywhere deserve a pass but the US must be investigated. It's a funny old world.

FEAR FACTOR

Kofi Annan has asked the US to consider sending troops to Haiti. There's a very simple reason why:

[Annan] expressed hope that the United States would participate in a planned U.N. rapid reaction force, authorized by the Security Council earlier this month, that would have the firepower to intimidate armed gangs threatening the country's fragile political transition. Officials said that similar requests are being considered for other countries, including Canada and France. "We want scarier troops," one senior U.N. official said.

Surely the Canadians and French are scary enough. On second thought ...

SERIOUS RUMOURS

The UN has reacted to rumours the US is holding terrorist suspects on secret gulag ships:

The UN's special investigator on terrorism Manfred Nowak said in Vienna on Tuesday that although the accusations are rumours, the situation is sufficiently serious to merit an official inquiry.

Nowak must think there are bribes or kickbacks or the like to tap into.

INSANE PRICK QUESTIONS OTHER INSANE PRICK'S SANITY

There's political blood in the water and the sharks are attacking each other:

Former Victorian Liberal premier Jeff Kennett has apologised to former Labor leader Mark Latham for questioning his mental health.

Mr Kennett is the chairman of the Beyond Blue depression support group and yesterday he told the ABC he was concerned Mr Latham's biography showed signs of a person suffering a bi-polar illness.

Mr Kennett says Mr Latham has denied he is ill and has expressed hurt at his comments.

He says he withdraws the comments and did not intend to harm or embarrass Mr Latham or his family.

"Mark rang up and indicated that he was hurt by the comments I'd made and indicated that he'd like an apology and a retraction," Mr Kennett said.

"It is not a crime to be sick, it's not a crime to be ill and therefore we encourage people to seek help for anything that disturbs them," he said.

"That was the basis on which I made the comments in good faith, but he's taken exception and I'm happy to apologise and withdraw."

Maybe it's my imagination but Kennett doesn't seem sincere.

IT WOULD BE IF IT WASN'T

Here's some lateral scientific thinking:

Global warming looks set to be much worse than previously forecast, according to new research. Ironically, the crucial evidence is how little warming there has been so far.

Three top climate researchers claim that the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere should have warmed the world more than they have. The reason they have not, they say, is that the warming is being masked by sun-blocking smoke, dust and other polluting particles put into the air by human activity.

The next thing you know we'll be told that the particulates from coal fired power plants cancel out the carbon dioxide. Best not to think about it until the super-brains figure out what, if anything, is really going on with climate.

RHYMING GAME

James Wolcott predicted that David Frum and Cliff May would provide favourable reviews of Chimpy's recent address to the nation. After the speech Wolcott observed:

I was half-wrong. Frum, after marveling at Bush's vibrant rapport with the troops (rhymes with dupes) owned up that the speech was "neither very good nor very convincing."

That's a typical stab at humour for a guy like Wolcott (rhymes with runt).

SOMETHING NO EUROPEAN LEADER WOULD SAY

The Guardian's Timothy Garton Ash:

I don't want to overstate this. One is still gobsmacked by things American Republicans say. Take the glorification of the military, for example. In his speech, Bush insisted "there is no higher calling than service in our armed forces". What? No higher calling! How about being a doctor, a nurse, a teacher, an aid worker? Unimaginable that any European leader could say such a thing.

There is no higher calling than putting your life on the line for others. Anyway, soldiering is a higher calling than that recommended by Bubba:

"... I urge all Americans to rise to the highest calling in our land -- the calling of active citizenship," Clinton said in his weekly radio address.

So, an activist lefty is the equal of a soldier. I think I'm gonna vomit.

EU OFFICAL HOPED TO POCKET RANSOM

Maybe it only seems like every single person associated with the EU is on the take:

A European Commission official responsible for development projects in Colombia is under suspicion of having staged his own kidnap in April.

Carlos Ayala-Saavedra, a 59 year old Bolivian turned Spanish national, is being investigated by the European Commission and the Colombian authorities for allegedly staging his own kidnap to extort a €10 million ransom from the EU's coffers.

No EU offical is worth €10 million.

GAUNTLET THROWN

Iran's new president threatens all non-Muslims everywhere:

“Thanks to the blood of the martyrs, a new Islamic revolution has arisen and the Islamic revolution of 1384 [the current Iranian year] will, if God wills, cut off the roots of injustice in the world,” he said. “The wave of the Islamic revolution will soon reach the entire world.”

World-wide revolution, eh? Sounds vaguely familiar.

ASS CLEAVAGE IS IN

Oh Jeez:

"Ass cleavage is really in right now," said Antonio Jeffery, a national denim specialist at Diesel Jeans in Union Square. Ass cleavage, like regular cleavage, used to be strictly for women. Even the least careful observers of fashion will recall that a few years back, the rises on women’s jeans plummeted with the stock market; at one point, pants got so low that Christine Aguilera was literally prancing in assless chaps. This summer, it’s the men who are artfully displaying the tops of their bottoms, as dudes, gay and straight, squeeze themselves into ever-lower-riding jeans from Paper, Prada and Levi’s.

The men-wearing-their-pants-too-low craze hasn't hit in Western Australia just yet – we're in a different time zone; think 1985. Living in the past has its advantages.

DEATH WISH

Muhammad Al-Sheikh in the Saudi daily Al-Jazirah:

"We must admit that our relations with America were the cornerstone for our development and progress. In return, we must ask what we have gained from our relations with the Arab world. Speaking frankly and unequivocally, all we got from them was trouble. Our brothers, as they call themselves, conspired against us, attacked us, and used all the means at their disposal to derail our plans for unity."

Al-Sheikh's either very brave or suicidal.

Via the always worth visiting Clear and Present.

WHAT GOES UP ...

Someone needs to market projectile-proof umbrellas:

Three people were killed by celebratory gunfire in Lebanon overnight after the re-election of pro-Syrian politician Nabih Berri as parliamentary speaker, police said.

Another seven people were injured when Berri supporters fired automatic weapons into the air in celebrations that ran through the night in Beirut's majority Shiite southern suburbs and the eastern Bekaa valley, they said.

SYSTEMIC INERTIA

The EU is investigating a number of apparently less than noble causes:

The European Union's anti-fraud office is investigating 32 charities, non-governmental organisations and aid companies from Britain and nine other states for suspected fraud on a mass scale.

Brussels refused to release the names of the groups under investigation but said the abuses involved "a lot of money".

The inquiry was launched in 2001 but has mushroomed into a "systematic" inquiry after anti-fraud offices from all the major donor states started pooling information last year.

The EU spends €7billion a year on foreign aid, including funds for long-term projects and emergency aid for disasters.

Gee, the EU hasn't exactly moved with lighting speed on this. Wonder if a statute of limitations applies?

FORGET OIL, IRAQ'S ABOUT KFC

James Wolcott loves him so you know Jim Kunstler's gotta be good:

The public indeed may be losing its appetite for the Iraq project, but not for Nascar racing, fried chicken buckets, car trips to Six Flags, and round-the-clock air conditioning. What shock of recognition will flash across the TV screens when the connection is finally made that keeping all these things going is why we're in Iraq? War is the answer.

With a surname like Kunstler Jim must have really copped it as a kid – you know, like what do you get when you cross a kunt with a rustler? ... Maybe that's why he seems to be consumed with the left disease: hate.

I'll have the 21 piece bucket of original, thanks, and don't spare the oil.

THE DICK DURBIN EFFECT

The left's relentless efforts to undermine the US military is affecting the troops on the ground:

Aged 20 to 25, the four friends are ambivalent about the war but upbeat about their role in it and have no regrets about volunteering. The feedback from home, however, is unsettling.

Later today, George Bush will address an increasingly sceptical nation about Iraq, where sentiments have changed since the invasion two years ago. In a recent Gallup poll 56% said the war "wasn't worth it". Enthusiasm for action that has already claimed 1,730 American lives has turned to disquiet, and this is trickling down to the troops.

Sgt Brad Wilson, the radio controller, shuddered at the latest batch of letters from well-meaning primary school pupils. "It's all, 'Please don't die in that place.' My God, it's so depressing."

It'll be party time if there are a few high profile fraggings.

ASIO POWERS UNDER ATTACK

ASIO's raids on suspected terrorists have some people very upset:

Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, Amnesty International and Liberty Victoria have criticised ASIO's increased terrorism powers after raids in Sydney and Melbourne yesterday.

Australian Federal Police (AFP) and ASIO officers conducted raids on properties in Melbourne and Sydney but no charges have been laid.

The Federal Government's anti-terrorism legislation is under review, though the Government has indicated it wants to retain the broader powers introduced in the wake of the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Mr Fraser says he is concerned Australia is losing its democratic values.

"You can be arrested because ASIO thinks you know something which you don't know and then your defence is to prove you don't know it," he said.

"Well, how do you prove a negative? And how do you prove you don't know something if you don't know something in the first place?"

Fraser makes a very good point about proving a negative: it would be impossible for him and his fellow moaners to prove their not idiots.

DDT TROLL

Hopefully, this will be my last post on DDT – see earlier posts here, here and here, but that's pretty much up to Tim Lambert and John Quiggin.

Quiggin and Lambert – what a name for a comedy team, eh? – refuse to acknowledge the role of environmentalists in the de facto banning of DDT in the fight against malaria. Quiggin, probably beginning to realise he has his money on the wrong horse, posted the following in his comments section:

Note that the article cited by JF Beck correctly says that the primary reason for the decline of DDT was the rise of resistance.

DDT was falling out of favor even before the 1962 publication of ‘’Silent Spring,’’ ... DDT had not been sold as a way to control malaria but to eradicate it, so the world would never have to think about malaria again. But eradication failed—it is now considered biologically impossible—and because DDT had not lived up to its billing, disillusion set in. At the same time, DDT’s indiscriminate use was provoking the development of resistance among mosquitoes, and many countries were shifting to decentralized health systems, which meant they were no longer able to organize nationwide house spraying.

Undoubtedly, there have been instances where misguided opposition to DDT led to its abandonment in situations where it would have been useful. Equally, there have been many cases where overenthusiastic use of DDT did more long-run harm than good. None of this justifies the kind of hyperbolic claims made by promoters of the DDT blood libel.

Sure resistance was a problem in general use, which is what the extract above relates to, but for house spraying it's the repellency effect that's important. This has been realised since way back:

The consequences of resistance in terms of malaria and other diseases are indicated by reports from many parts of the world. An outbreak of yellow fever in Trinidad in 1954 followed failure to control the vector mosquito because of resistance. There has been a flare-up of malaria in Indonesia and Iran. …

Some malaria mosquitoes have a habit that so reduces their exposure to DDT as to make them virtually immune. Irritated by the spray, they leave the huts and survive outside. …

Thus, very small amounts of DDT can be sprayed on house walls, not to kill mosquitoes, but to keep them outside away from the people inside.

Anyway, Tim Lambert reckons I'm nothing more than an attention seeking fool that should disappear simply because I post comments at his blog that he doesn't like:

Tim Lambert Says:
June 26th, 2005 at 11:24 pm

JF Troll, it is dishonest for you to claim that there is a de facto ban on DDT when it is used in countries containing billions of people.

and

Tim Lambert Says:
June 28th, 2005 at 1:28 am

Beck, you are a troll because you have repeatedly posted the same specious argument. DDT is not banned. Your intent is not to persuade but just to get attention. Go away.

Fact-check boy Lambert is looking a lot like in-need-of-anger-management boy. Lambert makes no effort whatever to address the substance of my posts. This despite Lambert taking Rafe Champion to task for not posting the correction Lambert thinks warranted, but isn't:

Attempts to get some of those responsible for spreading the false claims about environmentalists and DDT to correct them have proved largely unsuccessful.

Rafe Champion did not make even a token correction.

A correction from Champion isn't warranted because the role of environmentalists, both inside and outside governments, is widely perceived. Further assorted examples of these perceptions follow – see earlier posts linked above for other examples :

Balancing risks on the backs of the poor

Amir Attaran (2), Donald R. Roberts (1), Chris F. Curtis (3) & Wenceslaus L. Kilama (4)

1 Department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Bethesda, Maryland 20814, USA
droberts@usuhs.mil

2 Center for International Development Kennedy School of Government Harvard University Cambridge Massachussetts 02138, USA
amir_attaran@harvard.edu

3 London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine London WC1E 7HT, UK

4 Chairman, Malaria Foundation International; also Chairman-Coordinator, African Malaria Vaccine Testing Network C26/27 Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology Building, Ali Hassan Mwinyi Road, P.O. Box 33207 Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

Above all, rich countries must allow, and even facilitate, poor tropical countries to make choices about DDT freely, and with informed consent. African countries in particular lack the resources to dispatch health experts to the treaty negotiations, and although it provides financial assistance, the United Nations Environment Programme has declined to assist with this, or even to provide a translator when French- and English-speaking diplomats meet to discuss DDT. The resulting lack of knowledge suffocates debate. At worst, threats are used, as Belize learned when the US Agency for International Development demanded that it stop using DDT.

Such arm-twisting is as lamentable as it is effective. Highly indebted poor countries must of necessity rank poverty reduction over environmental orthodoxy, and stimulating growth and foreign investment will require nearly eliminating malaria from economically productive zones. This is essential for development in sub-Saharan Africa, where malaria subtracts more than one percentage point off the gross domestic product growth rate, for a compounded loss (since 1965) now reaching up to $100 billion a year in foregone income32.

Seen in this way, the insistence to do without DDT is 'eco-colonialism' that can impoverish no less than the imperial colonialism of the past did.

Greens vs. the World's Poor

Limited use of DDT could save millions from malaria. So why are environmentalists and the U.N. hellbent on ending its production?

By Ronald Bailey, Reason Science Correspondent

Imagine that an international governing body got together with a cadre of special interests to deny millions of poor people access to a cheap substance capable of saving hundreds of thousands of lives annually. You'd think such an effort would be considered highly immoral, right? Probably even cause street demonstrations, boycotts, and other signs of public outrage.

Well, just such a campaign was launched three years ago by the United Nations Environmental Program, acting in conjunction with several major environmentalist organizations. There have been no demonstrations, no boycotts, and sadly, few signs of outrage.
…..

Why this relentless pursuit of DDT down to the last molecule? Vice-President Albert Gore suggests one answer in his introduction to the 1994 reissue of Silent Spring, a book often cited as the founding text of contemporary environmentalism. Before Carson's book, he writes, "There was virtually no public dialogue about the growing, invisible dangers of DDT and other pesticides and chemicals." The fears that have come down the decades from Rachel Carson are summarized in the WWF Core Issues Statement, which claims that "even small quantities of …POPs can wreak havoc in human and animal tissue, causing nervous system damage, disease of the immune system, reproductive and developmental disorders, and cancers." Eliminating POPs generally, and DDT specifically, are at the very heart of the modern environmentalist movement.

Doing so may be a noble cause to greens, but the cost of success will be measured in human lives. Setting aside health concerns about other POPs, and accepting that using DDT in agriculture harmed wildlife, it simply isn't true that using DDT to control malaria is a health risk.

"The scientific literature does not contain even one peer-reviewed, independently replicated study linking DDT exposures to any adverse health outcome" in humans, says Amir Attaran. "No study in the scientific literature has shown DDT to be the cause of any human health problem," concludes Richard Tren and Roger Bate in When Politics Kill: Malaria and the DDT Story, a new study from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Such facts have failed to undermine environmentalist dogma. "Because Carson’s work led to the ban on DDT," Al Gore concluded in his commemorative introduction to Silent Spring, "It may be that the human species…or at least countless human lives, will be saved because of the words she wrote."

Sadly, it's more likely that, because a blinkered orthodoxy cannot accept the heretical notion that DDT has some beneficial purposes, countless human lives will be lost.

DDT From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

In 1962 Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring was published. The book argued that pesticides, and especially DDT, were poisoning both wildlife and the environment and also endangering human health. The public reaction to Silent Spring launched the modern environmental movement in the United States, and DDT became a prime target of the growing anti-chemical and anti-pesticide movements during the 1960s. Charles Wurster, the chief scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, was quoted in the Seattle Times of 5 October 1969, as saying: "If the environmentalists win on DDT, they will achieve a level of authority they have never had before. In a sense, much more is at stake than DDT." (Tren & Bate, 2004). However, many of the claims made in Silent Spring were scientifically inaccurate. A 2004 study in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons concludes

"Public pressure was generated by one popular book and sustained by faulty or fraudulent research. Widely believed claims of carcinogenicity, toxicity to birds, anti-androgenic properties, and prolonged environmental persistence are false or grossly exaggerated."

…..

Donor organizations have often refused to fund public health DDT programs[5]. Many countries have been coming under pressure from international health and environment agencies to give up DDT or face losing aid grants: Belize and Bolivia are on record admitting they gave in to pressure on this issue from the US. Agency for International Development. [6]. In 1977 environmental groups sued to ban exports of DDT, after which many countries could no longer obtain any. The World Bank extended $165 million dollars to India's malaria sufferers, but specified that no DDT could be used. Dozens of other countries, where massive numbers of malaria deaths continue to occur, also cannot receive financial aid unless they agree to control mosquitoes by not using DDT. In 1986 Secretary of State George Schultz telegraphed orders to all embassies stating that "The U. S. cannot, repeat cannot, participate in programs using any of the following: (1) lindane, (2) BHC, (3) DDT, or (4) ieldrin." [7]

June, 2002
Journal of Vector Ecology
63

Role of residual spraying for malaria control in Belize

Donald R. Roberts 1,6, Erol Vanzie 2, Michael J. Bangs 3 , John P. Grieco 1, Hilbert Lenares 2, Paul Hshieh 1, Eliska Rejmankova 4, Sylvie Manguin 5 , Richard G. Andre 1 and Jorge Polanco 2

1 Department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences,
Bethesda, MD 20814-4799

2 Ministry of Health, Belize City, Belize, Central America

3 U.S. Naval Medical Research Unit No. 2, Box 3, APO AP 96520-8132

4 Department of Environmental Science and Policy, University of California, Davis, CA 95616

5 Centre de Biologie et Gestion des Populations (CBGP), Campus International de Baillarguet, CS 30 016, 34988 Montferrier sur Lez.cedex, France

6 Corresponding Author

Received 27 May 1999; Accepted 4 September 2001

Belize was pressured to stop using DDT by the United States Agency for International Development. Opposition to public health use of DDT also came from environmental and agricultural advocacy groups.

DDT, Global Strategies, and a Malaria Control Crisis in South America

Donald R. Roberts, Larry L. Laughlin, Paul Hsheih, and Llewellyn J. Legters

Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, Maryland, USA

Countries are banning or reducing the use of DDT because of continuous international and national pressures against DDT (e.g., the International Pesticide Action Network is "...working to stop the production, sale, and use..." of DDT [14]) and aggressive marketing tactics of producers of more expensive alternative insecticides. It has become easier for political pressures to succeed given the global strategy to deemphasize use of the house-spray approach to malaria control. A recent agreement of the North American Commission on Environmental Cooperation for eliminating the production and use of DDT in Mexico within the next 10 years3 is the latest development in the campaign to eliminate DDT.

Resistance has little to do with reduced use of DDT. It was pressure from environmentalists that produced a de facto ban. There's no getting around it.

Quiggin and Lambert are both welcome to comment but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for them to visit me here at the dark side.

US RIGHTS GROUPS UP IN ARMS OVER DETENTIONS

Human Rights Watch and the ACLU – what a lovely couple – are upset that 70 people were held as "witnesses" after the 9/11 attacks:

The United States detained dozens of US-based Muslim men without charge following the September 11, 2001 attacks, on baseless accusations of terrorist links, said US rights groups.

The US Justice Department held the men under a federal law allowing the arrest and detention of witnesses thought to have important information and considered to be flight risks, said Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union.

In a 101-page report, the groups said only a "handful" of the men were later charged with terrorism-related charges, with about half of the detainees never brought to testify.

It was a hefty handful, as you'll discover if you read through to the 14th, and last, paragraph:

Only 28 people were charged with offences and just seven charged with providing material support to terrorist bodies, according to the groups.

Seems like a pretty decent haul to me.

SOFTWARE BLAMED FOR EICHMANNS SLUR

Leftist pretend native American Ward Churchill blames his computer's grammar checker for the little Eichmann's slur:

He did not intend to suggest the 9-11 victims were "little Eichmanns" he claims now. Instead, he blamed the grammar checker for changing what he says he actually wrote: "little Entenmanns" -- referring to the brand of pastries.

"My metaphorical use of food in the essay is, of course, complex to the layman, but surely you've all heard the expression 'as American as apple pie,'" he said. "Well, I'd meant to relate the 'Americanness' and 'lovability' of those poor people who died on 9-11 to the well-known popularity of Entenmann's glazed donuts."

Gee, a layman like me does find that hard to understand, much less believe. Here's my low-brow food based response: eat shit, moron.

"SILENT SPRING" KILLING RAMPAGE

John Quiggin posts the following after a spirited but civil exchange of comments:

To sum up, as I said right at the beginning, there has never been a global ban on the anti-malarial use of DDT, mainly in the form of hut spraying. Widespread spraying of DDT has been abandoned, mainly because the development of resistance made it ineffective, and no-one serious is advocating resumption of this practice.

There is general agreement that where possible, DDT should be phased out and replaced by less damaging alternatives, the sticking point being the fact that these are more expensive. Within this general agreement, there has been dispute over target dates, protocols and similar.

Would any reader of Devine’s and similar pieces have drawn these conclusions?

Not even close. Let's see what conclusions can be drawn from this article by Tina Rosenberg in the New York Times on environmentalists and DDT:

In her 297 pages,Rachel Carson never mentioned the fact that by the time she was writing, DDT was responsible for saving tens of millions of lives, perhaps hundreds of millions.

DDT killed bald eagles because of its persistence in the environment. ''Silent Spring'' is now killing African children because of its persistence in the public mind. Public opinion is so firm on DDT that even officials who know it can be employed safely dare not recommend its use. ''The significant issue is whether or not it can be used even in ways that are probably not causing environmental, animal or human damage when there is a general feeling by the public and environmental community that this is a nasty product,'' said David Brandling-Bennett, the former deputy director of P.A.H.O. Anne Peterson, the Usaid official, explained that part of the reason her agency doesn't finance DDT is that doing so would require a battle for public opinion. ''You'd have to explain to everybody why this is really O.K. and safe every time you do it,'' she said -- so you go with the alternative that everyone is
comfortable with.

DDT resistance is mentioned only in passing but it is noted that DDT repels even resistant mosquitoes.

Quiggin should do the right thing and admit the damage done by environmentalists promoting a de facto ban on the responsible use of DDT.

And, isn't it politically incorrect, to the say the least, for Quiggin to use the term "hut" to describe the best home a bread-winner can provide for his family?

IRAN'S GLOWING FUTURE

Iran's election was a victory for the hard-liners:

Iran's conservative press hailed president-elect Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday as a man who could take on the United States and uphold the moral principles of the Islamic revolution.

I predict Iran will boom but that things will be much quieter when the dust settles.

KARL, THE FIFTH MARX BROTHER

Leszek Kolakowski's three volume Main Currents of Marxism will soon be rereleased as a single volume. Roger Kimbal takes a look at Kolakowski, his work, and communism in an article at The New Criterion. It's well worth reading, not least for this little tidbit:

Finally, Kolakowski’s new preface contains an arresting aside about the book’s publication history. Written in Polish between 1968 and 1976 “when their publication in Poland could only be dreamed of,” the three volumes of Main Currents were first published in Paris by the Institut Littéraire from 1976–78 and were circulated underground in Poland. They were not published legally in Poland until 2000. In the intervening years the book has been translated into many languages, including Chinese. In French, however, only the first two volumes, which take the story of Marxism through the death of Lenin, have been published. The third volume, which deals with Stalinism and its allotropes—including New Left thinkers like Louis Althusser and Sartre—is still waiting for a French translation. Why? Perhaps, Kolakowski, speculates, because its publication “would provoke such an outrage among French leftists that the publishers were afraid to risk it.” I wish that some public-spirited soul would publish a French version so that we could make the experiment.

The philosopher David Stove once observed, “As an item on the intellectual agenda, Marxism is scarcely even a joke… . Marxism is a fearful social—and police—problem, but so is the drug trade. It is a fearsome political problem, but so is Islamic fundamentalism. But an intellectual problem Marxism is not, any more than the drug trade or Islamic fundamentalism.”

Outraged French leftists? Go figure.

Some just refuse to get it through their thick heads that communism is a cruel joke, except for those pulling the levers. If you'd like to help out the Poms (British), go here and vote for one of the truly great philosophers. (How Karl Marx got into a great philosophers contest in the first place is beyond me. Could it be a leftist MSM thing?)

THE UNION THAT RUNS THE UK

It's hard to believe a single union can thwart the government:

Controversial government plans to introduce identity cards for every Briton were dealt a severe blow last night after the union representing the officials charged with implementing the scheme dramatically came out against it.

Unison, Britain's biggest union with 1.3 million members, used its annual conference to attack the proposals in a move likely to set alarm bells ringing in government.

The scheme cannot work without the full backing of the public sector workers who will administer and maintain the system. The union plans to outline members' concerns to the group of almost 100 Labour MPs who are affiliated to it.

I don't know that identity cards are a good idea but I do know that a union cannot be allowed to preempt legislation.

EYEBALL UPDATE

Here's the latest on my son's surfing injury. Early Friday afternoon he rang the hospital as instructed by a detailed hand-written note provided by hospital staff. He was told that he would have surgery on Saturday morning and that he was wanted in hospital immediately. As it's impractical to get there by bus and it's an hour by car, he told them he couldn't possibly get there before late afternoon, after I got off work. Whoever he spoke to wasn't happy about the travel arrangements but said he should come on in. I dropped him off.

Brad home late Saturday morning. No surgery for him today – the swelling needed to go down more. He was ... annoyed. Nobody seemed to know what was going on. His bed-side phone didn't work and the promised technician had failed to show. He couldn't even watch TV – at $7 a day – because he didn't have his wallet with him. He was a bit surprised to be told that his two front teeth might be knocked out during intubation. It was also news to him that the surgery wasn't minor by any means: a piece would be removed from the back of his skull and used to repair his damaged eye-socket. Oh well, tomorrow it would be done and in a few days he could go home. As if.

Brad rang at 9:30 Sunday morning. This time he was angry. He had been told surgery had been put off again due to swelling. He was desperate to be picked up. I was on my way. Only a few minutes down the road my mobile rang. It was a somewhat panicy hospital staffer wanting to know if I knew where Brad was. I said he was probably in the lobby waiting to be picked up. She said she couldn't understand this as Brad was due in surgery. I said that he had told me surgery had been cancelled. She said no, that's not right, surgery is still on. I headed home.

God-dammit, what the hell is going on here. I couldn't figure out what to do. There was no point ringing the hospital: Brad was in the hospital and he didn't know what was going on. After waiting at home for about 30 minutes I got back in the car and headed to the hospital, determined to sort things out. A few minutes later Brad rang my mobile. Surgery had definitely been postponed until Tuesday. He was now told there had been an emergency case that preempted him. Hospital staff couldn't find him because he was in the smoking area listening to heroin addicts' tales of woe. It was better than watching the TV he couldn't watch.

Obviously the public hospital system is having problems. (For those of you outside Australia, we have parallel public and private hospital systems: those who can afford it take out private cover and use the private system.) Brad's surgery is considered urgent and he's still being messed around. Just imagine what public patients waiting for elective surgery have to put up with.

Update: The Tuesday surgery thing was poorly explained to Brad. This came to light when I asked him what time he had to be back at hospital on Tuesday. He gave me a card given to him at hospital. It shows he has an appointment Tuesday morning at a different hospital. His problem has been hand-balled. Updates will follow.