“The African-American vote could make all the difference in South Carolina. But given the way three local Democratic activists are feeling, the party might be in big trouble… The Democratic Party is the party that talks about the black vote and attaining it by any means necessary,” Aiken said. ”Now, that does not equate with ‘We value the black vote’ as much as ‘We have to attain it in order to get what we want.”’ The routine currency in this exchange is emotion — for white candidates a little soul power soaked up from a gospel choir and shed just as easily. Candidates parade through church, Aiken noted, but, she said: ”Has anyone done a follow-up visit after a campaign? You know, ‘I came to your church, asked for your vote, the preacher gave me the pat and we prayed. Now I’m in; I’m going to make one more trip back, at least to thank you.”'” —New York Times Magazine

Claims of the discovery of superheavy elements 113 and 115, opening intriguing vistas. “The discoveries fill a gap at the furthest edge of the periodic table and hint strongly at a weird landscape of undiscovered elements beyond…Rather than being round, nuclei in that region and beyond could contain bubbles and have strange doughnut-like shapes…” —New York Times

Mos Def as Ford Prefect in the Hitchhiker’s Guide feature film. —Reuters

Bowing to pressure from lawmakers, the White House reverses its opposition to an independent investigation of intelligence failures. —Washington Post. Right now, administration strategy is all about damage control; Bush’s team appears divided over whether it would be worse to acknowledge that the data on which it based its decision was wrong, or to remain ‘publicly agnostic’ about the quality of the intelligence. The thing to watch will be how the administration limits both the scope (will the inquiry address not only generation but administration consumption of intelligence data?) and duration of the investigation. Rather than making this go away quickly, an effort that the White House reversal seems to acknowledge has failed, they may try to draw this out so any damaging allegations do not come out until after November. Expect the White House to drag its feet mightily in cooperating with requests for crucial data from an independent commission.

“Monsanto, the world’s largest genetically modified seed company, has been awarded patents on the wheat used for making chapati – the flat bread staple of northern India.

The patents give the US multinational exclusive ownership over Nap Hal, a strain of wheat whose gene sequence makes it particularly suited to producing crisp breads.

Another patent, filed in Europe, gives Monsanto rights over the use of Nap Hal wheat to make chapatis, which consist of flour, water and salt.

Environmentalists say Nap Hal’s qualities are the result of generations of farmers in India who spent years crossbreeding crops and collective, not corporate, efforts should be recognised.” —Guardian.UK This would be like patenting the use of flour to make pizza dough in the US.

In examining the insidious marketing strategies Big Pharma uses to put profits ahead of people’s health, I have often noted the lack of a constituency for patients with the devastating disease on which I focus most, chronic schizophrenia. This article focuses on the challenges the drug companies face in marketing newly-developed (and monumentally expensive) antipsychotic drugs for this population.

Since the mid-1990’s, a group of drug companies, led by Johnson & Johnson, has campaigned to convince state officials that a new generation of drugs – with names like Risperdal, Zyprexa and Seroquel – is superior to older and much cheaper antipsychotics like Haldol. The campaign has led a dozen states to adopt guidelines for treating schizophrenia that make it hard for doctors to prescribe anything but the new drugs. That, in turn, has helped transform the new medicines into blockbusters.

Ten drug companies chipped in to help underwrite the initial effort by Texas state officials to develop the guidelines. Then, to spread the word, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and possibly other companies paid for meetings around the country at which officials from various states were urged to follow the lead of Texas, according to documents and interviews that are part of a lawsuit and an investigation in Pennsylvania. —New York Times

The marketing pressure the manufacturers exerted allegedly includes payoffs and other illegal or marginally legal practices. In comparative studies, these drugs have comparable efficacy to the older antipsychotics. Early claims that they are more effective have gone by the boards. Pitching them to prescribers has largely relied on claims that they are better tolerated and safer than the older drugs in terms of side effects. While this is true (patients on them develop the devastating neurological effects of the older drugs far less often), they turn out to have important metabolic complications (effects on glucose and lipid metabolism, weight gain and in some cases cardiac risks). Psychiatrists like myself and other physicians are the objects of a relentless full court press from the manufacturers to diffuse prescribers’ concerns about such liabilities to their patients. Suffice it to say that physicians should be collectively ashamed of how they have handed control over what they learn about prescribing new medications to the pharmaceutical companies that profit from those drugs.

This site keeps track of the dead and wounded among the occupying forces, slicing and dicing the statistics in various ways as well as keeping a running narrative account.

I share Josh Marshall’s take on the issue of administration stonewalling on calls for an independent investigaiton of claims of intelligence failures in the pre-invasion assessment of the Iraqi threat. While most commentators are content to explain administration resistance to an investigation in terms of a wish to get the issue off the minds of the voters sooner (for example, Daniel Schorr’s commentary this morning on NPR; do you share my sense that his acumen is fading?), it is more likely that inquiries would go beyond what intelligence was provided to examine how it was consumed by the White House, which is where I think the real intelligence failures and abuses lie. Testimony by representatives of the intelligence community to an independent inquiry board would reveal the profound and unprecedented breakdown in relations between their establishment and the administration, much along the lines that Seymour Hersh described several months ago in his important New Yorkerpiece on the uraniumgate scandal. Recall that Hersh suggested that the offices of the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense have virtually built their own parallel intelligence infrastructures because of the recalcitrance of the CIA to feed them exactly the interpretations their selection biases required.

And lest you point out that Kay said the misinformation was the CIA’s problem, Marshall concludes as I have that Kay was in no position to know whether the CIA was pressured to reach erroneous conclusions or its analysis distorted by the very selective attention of administration ideologues. ” ‘Tis a poor workman who blames his tools…”

Similarly, does administration stonewalling on the 9/11 commission suggest that the truth of what was known of the impending threat is more complicated than intelligence failure at Foggy Bottom?

I have been troubled by the transparency of the administration and its apologists falling back increasingly on the ‘humanitarian’ justifications for the invasion of Iraq as the justification of averting an imminent threat has evaporated. Here, Ken Roth of Human Rights Watch, which has the credibility of having documented and remonstrated about Saddam Hussein’s abuses for decades, writes in the Human Rights Watch World Report 2004 that the humanitarian argument does not bear up under examination. The human rights emergency in Iraq was no more dire than in many other parts of the world where we do not choose to intervenq; “the Iraq war was not mainly about saving the Iraqi people from mass slaughter, and …no such slaughter was then ongoing or imminent”. Why have standards? A lesser emergency is still an emergency, right? Roth points out that the capacity for military intervention is finite, and if it is used in lesser emergencies (even in cases, unlike Iraq, where the moral urgency is unambiguous) the capacity to face greater atrocities may be lacking. Undermining the international legal order by violating another soverign country’s borders, especially without the support fo the world community, further impairs international protection of human rights. In short, the intervention fails Human Rights Watch’s standards for a humanitarian response — it was not a last resort, was not intended or structured to be for the benefit of the Iraqi people, departed in multiple respects from interventions acknowledged by the world community as legitimately humanitarian, had no endorsement by multilateral aothorities, and was not structured effectively to prevent doing more harm than good. I share Roth’s concern that there be an international multilateral consensus on criteria (hopefully, similar to those he outlines in this manifesto) for humanitarian interventions, preferably with the force of treaty law. It is unlikey the U.S. under its present administration would be a party to such an accord, given our repeated insistence that we will brook no interference in our right to defend ourselves and the unreasoned fluidity among the various pretexts offered for our unilateral adventurism abroad. But it would make the US’s renegade status more unambiguous and serve as a legitimate basis for international penalties for our arrogance and defiance.

Despite the Hutton Report’s bringing down the leadership of the BBC and supposedly exonerating the Blair government of having distorted the evidence for invading Iraq, reports suggest that the British public retain more confidence in the BBC than in Her Majesty’s government. Here is Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke‘s take on it. Meanwhile, despair in the newsroom has turned to anger. A ‘bring back Dyke’ ad appeared today in the Daily Telegraph, funded and signed by hundreds of BBC staffers and stating, in part,

Greg Dyke stood for brave, independent and rigorous BBC journalism that was fearless in its search for the truth. We are resolute that the BBC should not step back from its determination to investigate the facts in pursuit of the truth. Through his passion and integrity, Greg Dyke inspired us to make programmes of the highest quality and creativity. We are dismayed by Greg’s departure, but we are determined to maintain his achievements and his vision for an independent organisation that serves the public above all else.

—Guardian.UK [with links at the bottom to dozens of articles they have run on aspects of the crisis].

I can’t tell you how often I am hearing critics ridicule the Democrats for wanting to elect someone ‘electable.’ Now it is David Brooks. It is fashionable for them to call this focus on “electability” postmodern too, “an election about itself, with voters voting on the basis of who could win votes later on. It’s the tautology, stupid.” Well, Brooks, the contempt of the contemptible is a compliment, IMHO. First of all, it is a well-known longstanding and, yes, perhaps pitiful, voting phenomenon that the electorate is pulled toward joining the winning team; nothing new there. But, in the current race, it is ludicrous to talk about the Democratic voters’ focus on electability without acknowledging how desperate they are at this juncture to find someone who can beat Bush (beat Bush again, that is). It is no accident that it is Republican handmaidens who lampoon the phenomenon now. You did not hear them derogating the intelligence of the electorate in 2000. Ridiculing “electability” is a testimony to the pundit’s lack of intelligence, not that of the electorate. But if you think this is ridiculous, you can bet this is just a preview of the battle for the hearts and, especially, the minds, of the voters you’ll see this fall in the general election campaign, as it will be scripted by Republican strategists. Of course, the President himself won’t use the ‘s-word’ for fear of alienating voters, but his machine will get its mouthpieces in the conservative press to insinuate how stupid those who do not back administration policy are. Conservatives like Kevin Phillips are turning against the Bush dynasty because of the extent to which it represents an elitist patrician sentiment very different from the Republican populism that propelled REagan, for better or worse, into captivating the nation int he ’80’s. Let us hope the populace sees the contempt in which Bush’s organization holds them.

Another problem with the arguments of Brooks and those of his ilk about the folly of going for an electable Democrat is that this is not necessarily what the Democrats are doing. The primary campaign is not yet over and conclusions about Kerry’s victory are greatly exaggerated, it appears to me. While many are whitewashing his flaws in flush of bandwagon effect, it is not lost on other Democrats what a mistake going with Kerry would be. (Jack Beatty: “Listening to him, I saw a long line of Democratic bores—Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Bradley, Gore—who lost because people could not bear listening to them. John Kerry belongs in their dreary company. I fear he could talk his way out of victory…” —The Atlantic)

Seeking intelligent life among the newsreaders, television producers and yoghurt advertisers who label things as ‘science’ : “…(H)ow… are we to save the world from scenes like the one I witnessed on TV the other night? A BBC science correspondent was reporting on the breakdown of communications with the Martian rover, which he described as ‘either a hardware problem or a software problem’. ‘Could you put that into terms that laymen like me would understand?’ asked the newsreader. I assume the look on the reporter’s face was meant to reflect sympathy rather than disgust, but what could he say to that? ‘Basically it’s fucked, mate.’ Who on earth would be interested in the fate of a planetary probe and yet not be able to cope with the idea that it’s either a hardware or a software problem? The world’s gone mad.” —Guardian.UK

“When 50 million red-blooded American men sit down to watch the Superbowl, they’ll see more than the Patriots and the Panthers facing off. This year’s game is also a showdown for dominance in the billion dollar battle among companies selling erectile dysfunction drugs.

But some are asking if these drugs are solely a cure for dysfunction, and whether they might not also be a new cause of sexual insecurity for couples.” NPR’s The Connection; listen to the show.

Thanks to Steve for sending me a pointer to this column by Jon Carroll in yesterday’s SF Chronicle. I am sure it is because Steve recognized that I would feel Carroll had nailed right on the head the big picture of what Bush and co. are up to. It is not that hard to follow, makes perfect sense and is, in fact, inarguable from my vantage point. As Carroll ends the piece, “A small speculative fantasy about an alternative universe. Nothing to see here, really. Move along.”

Pixar (left) is abandoning talks about continuing its partnership with Disney (right) and will seek a new studio to distribute its films.

“Dear Ralph,

According to the latest news reports, you’ve pushed up your self-imposed deadline for announcing your decision about an independent 2004 presidential campaign from the end of January to mid-February. We’re glad to hear that, because maybe it means you’re still not sure about the best path to follow. For the good of the country, the many causes you’ve championed and for your own good name–don’t run for President this year.”

Hostility grows over US stance: “If Europeans realize that American primacy is something they have to live with, the reality of Iraq is forcing the Bush administration to climb down from its disdain of the United Nations and international cooperation. Thus sending the administration’s archduke of anti-United Nations sentiment, Vice President Cheney, into the lions’ den of Davos was a bold move. He put his best foot forward, but little in his speech to the forum convinced doubters that the Bush administration’s doctrine of preemptive force would end anytime soon, even as the Bush administration begged for UN help with Iraqi elections.

Nor did Cheney leave much hope that the United States was going to step up its efforts to secure a settlement to the Israeli-Palestinian problem.” —H.D.S. Greenway, Boston Globe op-ed

“Postmodern literary theory is now transforming itself so rapidly that Marxist, feminist, deconstructionist, and psychoanalytic critics (and others) are flocking back to the drawing board in droves as they search for new approaches to writing and teaching.

Indeed, some academics say that postmodern theory is on the way out altogether and that the heady ideas that once changed the way literature is taught and read will soon be as extinct as the dodo and the buggy whip.” —Christian Science Monitor It is becoming fashionable to say that postmodernism has lost its relevancy outside the ivory tower. Ironically, that might be seen in some circles as a very postmodern thing to say. No, actually, old-school humanists who find plenty ‘there’ in literature have been ‘anti-theoretical’ for decades. How did literary theory gain sway, then?

Postmodern literary theory is rooted in mid-century European philosophy, though it didn’t begin to catch on in America until the late ’60s; the Johns Hopkins University conference on “The Language of Criticism and the Sciences of Man” which featured Jacques Derrida and other master theoreticians took place in 1966 and is generally regarded as the theoretical equivalent of the Pilgrims’ landing at Plymouth Rock.

These were, of course, revolutionary times: The initial phase of the civil rights struggle was peaking, and serious opposition to the Vietnam war was getting underway. College students were chucking out their parents’ ideas about race, class, patriotism, sex, music, and recreational drugs the way they might toss a faulty toaster oven out an open dorm window: If it doesn’t work, ditch it.

Theory played right into this mind- set; it challenged lazy notions about what’s right and what isn’t and brought fresh air into a classroom full of mildewed literary practices.

The problem is that by the time theory’s anticapitalist, antibourgeois assumptions became standard fare in colleges and universities, the consumer revolution was in high gear…

A second problem for theory is theorists themselves. Fundamentalism is always ugly, and many of the secondgeneration professors who followed famed theoreticians like Derrida merely applied their ideas dogmatically, thus guaranteeing that theory would became static and stale. Eventually, theory’s freewheeling skepticism became as one-dimensional as the celebrations of objective truth it sought to replace.

Perhaps it was inevitable, it strikes me, that literary theory itself would have to become an object of study and deconstruction by the theoreticians. Although this article bandies about the term, it does not own up to the central role that Marxist ideology had in laying the groundwork for ‘literary theory’, IMHO. It would seem to me that subsuming the products of culture to the conditions of production in a modern society, as a dialectical materialist analysis prescribes, was a necessary and perhaps sufficient precursor to challenging the idea of an unambiguous and unimpeachable truth in a literary work.

New Scientist: “A grassroots campaign to save the Hubble Space Telescope, started after NASA cancelled a crucial servicing mission, is gaining momentum.

NASA announced on 16 January that the space shuttle mission scheduled for 2006 would no longer take place. It would have extended Hubble’s life until about 2010 by installing replacement gyroscopes. These are needed to point and stabilise the telescope. At the moment only three of the original six are working well, and with three being the minimum number, Hubble’s life expectancy is just a few years at best.” —New Scientist An online petition is here.

“A newly discovered neurodegenerative disease could be affecting tens of thousands of men around the world, say researchers.

The disease closely resembles Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and senile dementia, but appears to be caused by a genetic defect linked to fragile X syndrome. Until now carrying the defect was not thought to be harmful.

Researchers believe the new disease, named FXTAS (fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome), may affect up to one in 3000 men, with most sufferers being over 50 years old.

‘FXTAS may be one of the most common causes of tremor and balance problems in the adult population and yet it is being misdiagnosed,’ says Paul Hagerman, a biochemist at the University of California, Davis and one of the research team. ‘Thankfully it can now be identified with a standard DNA test.'” —New Scientist One in my continuing “where-was-a-disease-before-it-was-found?” series of stories [which is similar to my “if-a-tree-falls-in-the-forest” series?].

“The catastrophic decline of griffon vultures in south Asia is being caused not by a mysterious disease, as had been thought, but a common painkiller given to sick cattle.

If the treated animal dies and is eaten by vultures, a single meal can be enough to kill the bird. The scientists who made the discovery now want the drug banned from veterinary use and are holding a meeting next week with officials from Nepal, India and Pakistan.” —New Scientist

“Hundreds of thousands of strokes could be prevented each year by a simple mesh cylinder that diverts blood clots away from the brain, claims the company that developed the device.

It was implanted in a patient for the first time late in 2003. Strokes are the second most common cause of death in the western world, and those who survive are often left disabled.” —New Scientist

“The findings of the first World Internet Project report present an image of the average net user that contrasts with the stereotype of loner ‘geeks’ who spends hours of free time on the internet and rarely engage with the real world.

Instead, the typical internet user is an avid reader of books and spends more time engaged in social activities than the nonuser, it says. And, television viewing is down among some internet users by as much as five hours per week compared with net abstainers, the study added.”

Joe Trippi, the iconic architect of Howard Dean’s Internet-driven campaign, is gone. And so are the millions of dollars that Dean raised from legions of grass-roots supporters over the last year. Pessimism is reportedly consuming Dean’s campaign volunteers, known for their idealism and infectious optimism until recently. Trippi was indeed inspirational, but a shakeup per se does not necessarily put the kiss of death on a campaign; it was only several weeks ago that Kerry changed campaign managers, with all sorts of pundits’ comments about how he couldn’t run a country if he couldn’t keep a campaign in order. What is more worrisome, and what comes as a surprise to me, are the reports that the Dean campaign’s coffers are empty. It must be a surprise to the media as well, since in the aftermath of his Iowa and New Hampshire defeats, considerations of Dean’s continued viability have usually involved citing the continuing size of his war chest. What will happen to Dean’s ability to raise additional campaign contributions is another matter. It could be argued that raising small contributions from the idealistic grassroots may make him less vulnerable to defections among funding sources.

And: The Death of the Doctor: “Dean is inevitably doomed. —Doug Ireland, TomPaine.com So what happens now to the ‘Democratic wing of the Democratic Party’?? Can Dean’s internet constituency become a permanent grassroots underbelly with any clout?

Sidney Blumenthal:

“For the first time the country is hearing sustained criticism of President Bush — and though the Democratic presidential primaries have been going less than two weeks, the effect has been immediate. Bush was already rattled and preoccupied with his suddenly full-throated opposition even before the Iowa vote. He scheduled his State of the Union address to follow it by a day. The speech was crafted as a sharply partisan, argumentative reply. Rather than projecting a vision of America as a radiant ‘city on a hill,’ he depicted a city in a bunker. It was as though he were countering Franklin Roosevelt’s appeal to confidence, ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself,’ with nothing but fear itself.

Bush’s State of the Union was the most poorly rated in modern times. By the weekend, his approval had fallen below 50 percent in a Newsweek poll and he was three points behind Sen. John Kerry, the new Democratic front-runner.

In New Hampshire, the turnout for the Democratic primary was the greatest in history, reflecting the party’s determination to oust Bush. Of especial importance was the enormous influx of independents, whose participation constituted 48 percent of all voters, showing the turn of the moderates. Intensity against Bush has combined with the felt need for an electable candidate.” —Salon

I am not sure I share Blumenthal’s ebullience nor his perception that the anti-Bush focus and coalescence that has been needed all along is finally in the offing. The temporary truce on negativity may be just that. Let’s see what the morning light shows after tonight’s next Democratic debate, for starters.

Joe Conason warns Kerry of the dangers of frontrunner status. To remain “electable”, he might get insipid instead of continuing to appeal on the basis of a willingness to stand alone and fight for what he believes in. As the dreaded Northeastern liberal who is anathema to the South, he should not give in to the temptation, at which he has already hinted, to find the South irrelevant to the Democratic effort. Conason feels he can appeal as the decorated veteran, and that it is especially opportune now when the South (and the West) might be on the verge of disaffection with the Bush White House. In a similar vein, Conason counsels Kerry to ignore the centrist press’ disdain for populist themes, which have legs in the popularity polls. Finally, Kerry has to do some work on his speaking style. [But we already have a Northeastern liberal maverick outsider who is not afraid to say what he believes, espouses populist themes, and is indubitably a far less stiff pedantic speaker…]

“President Bush’s re-election campaign is quietly shifting gears, preparing for the possibility it will confront a war hero and current senator.

But the line of attack is the same: Whether Howard Dean or Kerry, the Democrats’ nominee would be a left-leaning New Englander who wants to ‘raise taxes’ and reverse course on Iraq, campaign officials and Bush advisers say.” — Salon

“If you have Caller ID you’ll now know when a telemarketer is trying to reach you.” New rules in effect today require them to send the name of the company making the pitch to you and a phone number you can call during regular business hours to request to be taken off their list. — Salon

New York Times: Some Big Films Ignored. I am rooting for the powerful Lost in Translation to win something for Sofia Coppola, and for young Keisha Castle-Hughes to be recognized for her magical role in the exquisite Whale Rider. Johnny Depp’s performance in Pirates ought not to go unnoticed either. It would be deserving if the Academy recognized Capturing the Friedmans, but its isssues, I fear, are not ready for prime time feelgood acclaim. Errol Morris’ Fog of War will probably get the documentary nod instead, although I think it should be recognized that MacNamara took Morris for a ride throughout.

“Can we now talk impeachment?

The rueful admission by the chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction or the means to create them raises the prospect that the Bush administration is complicit in the greatest scandal in U.S. history. Yet, we hear no calls for a broad-ranging investigation of the type that led to the discovery of Monica Lewinsky’s infamous blue dress.” — Robert Scheer

Please hand cancel this art: ‘The Post Office is generally not considered a federal agency to be trifled with. But Chicago artists Michael Thompson and Michael Hernandez de Luna just couldn’t resist, after reading about Doonesbury readers who had been trying to mail letters with fake stamps published in the famous comic strip attached, and frequently succeeding. Thompson began cranking out his own satirical stamps a decade ago, and his works have included such classics as a May Day stamp with a picture of an airline crash, and a portrait of Abraham Lincoln with a gun visible behind him. But the game turned serious two years ago, when Hernandez de Luna tried to use a stamp emblazoned with a skull and crossbones and a single word: “anthrax.” ‘ —Reason

Concerns about assassination attempts on President Musharraf’s life, the likelihood that bin Laden is in Pakistan and that resurgent Taliban and al Qaeda forces strike from across the border are the supposed pretexts for a secret U.S. plan for a spring invasion of Pakistan involving thousands of forces, many of them already in Afghanistan. US sources refuse to comment on the story and Musharraf’s government denied to Reuters that it would support such a plan, rejecting the need for US forces to cross into Pakistan to find bin Laden. Of course, this “spring offensive”, as it is reportedly called in internal Defense Dept. documents, is timed very conveniently for the spring Republican offensive against the Democratic Presidential aspirant, it goes without saying.

This follows the age-old pattern of the U.S. propping up an unpopular dictator who serves our strategic interests in the face of popular opposition. In so doing, as always, we will further inflame that opposition. (The irony is that, as the WMD argument in Iraq evaporated, the dysadministration fell back on the mroal righteousness of toppling a tyrannical dictator there.) The Pakistani fundamentalist oppositon, by all indications, have their finger on the trigger of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. This makes it likely that a U.S. invasion force would not be wise stopping short of seizing control of Pakistani A-bombs once these events are set in motion, either with covert commando action or an overwhelming commitment of conventional force, or both. It seems clear that the US would not even try to obtain any international support before launching such a bullheaded scenario, although it might easily grow to involve nternational forces. Would India be drawn into the armed conflict — for example, finally deciding to seize Kashmir on the excuse that it is an Islamist haven? Would other Islamist forces rush to Pakistan’s defense against the US incursion?

“From David Kay we now have an amazing image of two tough guys, Saddam Hussein and George Bush, both misled by their underlings.” —Maureen Dowd, New York Times

And: Will Dubya Dump Dick? “Moderate Republicans have started a secret campaign to take the vice president off the Republican ticket in 2004.” —Jim Lobe, Inter Press Service [via AlterNet]

Marriage is slowly dying in Scandinavia. “A majority of children in Sweden and Norway are born out of wedlock. Sixty percent of first-born children in Denmark have unmarried parents. Not coincidentally, these countries have had something close to full gay marriage for a decade or more. Same-sex marriage has locked in and reinforced an existing Scandinavian trend toward the separation of marriage and parenthood. The Nordic family pattern–including gay marriage–is spreading across Europe. And by looking closely at it we can answer the key empirical question underlying the gay marriage debate. Will same-sex marriage undermine the institution of marriage? It already has.

More precisely, it has further undermined the institution. The separation of marriage from parenthood was increasing; gay marriage has widened the separation. Out-of-wedlock birthrates were rising; gay marriage has added to the factors pushing those rates higher. Instead of encouraging a society-wide return to marriage, Scandinavian gay marriage has driven home the message that marriage itself is outdated, and that virtually any family form, including out-of-wedlock parenthood, is acceptable.” —The Weekly Standard

If you believe this story, an African grey parrot has a vocabulary of 950 words; the ability to coin phrases; use the past, present and future tenses appropriately; and express humorous concepts; and everything you ever heard about ‘bird communication being just ‘parroting’ is wrong. —BBC

“Britain is likely to be plunged into an ice age within our lifetime by global warming, new research suggests.

A study, which is being taken seriously by top government scientists, has uncovered a change ‘of remarkable amplitude’ in the circulation of the waters of the North Atlantic.” —Independent.UK

Kevin Phillips, turncoat. —Salon Books

“The reward mechanism involved in addiction appears to regulate lifelong social or pair bonds between monogamous mating animals, according to a Center for Behavioral Neuroscience (CBN) study of prairie voles published in the January 19 edition of the Journal of Comparative Neurology. The finding could have implications for understanding the basis of romantic love and disorders of the ability to form social attachments, such as autism and schizophrenia.” EurekAlerts!

The ‘skeptical inquirer’ of modern medicine, Dr. Jerome Groopman, investigates how much crisis counseling after a trauma helps… or hurts in The New Yorker. (As usual, I advise anyone interested in this article to read it soon, as it is my experience that New Yorker articles go into the bit bucket in relatively short order…) He gives a good overview and history of the prevailing paradigm, ‘critical incident stress debriefing (CISD),’ in which I am trained and have practiced. He rightly points out the ways in which the process was misused in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks — among them mandatory rather than voluntary debriefing, the inclusion of people with little or no direct traumatization, and corporate (public relations, do-goodism, preventing absenteeism and avoiding liability) rather than compassionate motives. Recently, the first systematic research has shown that rapid crisis interventions are ‘inert’ in terms of preventing the development of PTSD in those exposed to massive traumas. Indeed, by encouraging sufferers to open up instead of seal over, it may promote PTSD sxs. The question is whether, as the paramedic-turned–psychologist developer of CISD suggests, these botched results arise only from misapplication of his paradigm.

I personally think, and the data supports this notion, that most people exposed to trauma are resilient and recover over time with their own strengths, and that misguided attempts to keep their wounds open and raw can indeed do harm rather than good. A smaller percentage of people do not recover and will eventually need extended psychological support because they develop the post-traumatic stress syndrome. It is doubtful whether these people can be identified in advance and singled out for early intervention, and even more doubtful whether preemptive intervention works.

To understand this issue, one has to understand the current concept of ‘trauma’ and the psychiatric politics behind it. (Groopman does not, or chooses not to discuss any insights he may have in this area, perhaps because of their ‘political incorrectness’. Groopman is a hematologist/oncologist; I have considered writing to him suggesting that he collaborate with a well-versed psychiatrist if his medical musings turn to issues in mental health treatment in the future…) The modern notion of trauma is much obliged to the historical coalescence of the women’s movement and the exposure of the ugly secret of rampant sexual abuse with the interests of a small number of psychiatrists working with the mental health issues of returning Vietnam veterans. Because treatment and study of these two populations is of necessity retrospective (the trauma has long since passed by the time the suffer annoounces her/himself), a third stream of data was fused into this notion of trauma, the prospective study of the course of post-traumatic reactions in those exposed to overwhelming solitary traumatic events such as natural disasters, plane crashes and crimes ranging from rapes to genocide. (One of the most famous trauma researchers made her name by getting in only months after they were freed to study a group of 23 schoolchildren in Chowchilla, California, who had been the victims of a 1976 hijacking, kidnapping and imprisonment.) Although, by and large, the research has supported the notion that trauma symptoms and resiliency depend on one’s prior constitution and resources, this has been obscured by lumping so many heterogeneous types of experience together as trauma. It has further been obscured by the feminist-inspired political correctness of insisting that all inappropriate sexual contact is victimization and that victimization explains mental health symptoms in many women. The idea that sexual victimization is not the fault of the victim turns inexorably (and wrongly) into the notion that the sufferer’s personal characteristics are irrelevant to the development of the post-traumatic symptoms.

Thus, in some clinical circles, patients are diagnosed as trauma victims (or ‘survivors’) at the drop of a hat, all trauma victims are said to have PTSD (regardless of whether they demonstrate the symptoms which define the syndrome or not), and careers of victimhood and chronicity are rationalized and excused zealously. And this is without even even talking about the induction of ‘false memories’, in which so-called ‘suppressed memories of trauma’ which may never have happened are ‘uncovered’ enthusiastically by mental health practitioners on the trauma bandwagon, shaping and explaining everything.

So two of the covert, probably erroneous foundations on which the CISD gospel has rested is are a vague, imprecise notion of what constitutes traumatic exposure and the politically correct notion that all those exposed to trauma will go on to develop symptoms. Thus relatively little attention has been paid until very recently to the notion that it may only be the particularly vulnerable who will succumb to their traumatic stress.

The wastebasket notion of trauma is so maddeningly imprecise that it obscures many clinically crucial distinctions among ‘trauma sufferers’. Let me highlight just a few:

• There are probably profound physiological as well as cognitive differences between the reactions to sudden, acute trauma and chronic or repetitive traumatization; think of a single rape by a stranger vs. being kept imprisoned and regularly sexually abused. This is related as well to whether it is expectable or unexpected.
  
• Human-perpetrated abuses cause a disturbance in ability for basic trust in others that exposure to an accident or natural disaster does not.
  
• Different ‘traumas’ are perceived as more or less avoidable or inevitable. How escapable a trauma seems in retrospect has effects on one’s sense of responsibility for one’s victimhood and sense of efficacy for the future.
  
• Socially-shaped expectations of what is within the realm of expectable human experience vs. outside cultural norms of human experience have an effect. Think about the impact different attitudes about the acceptability of warfare and combat will have on shaping combat trauma or ‘shellshock’.
  
• Sexual abuse, physical brutality, and psychological/emotional abuse cause different reactions. Likewise undergoing victimization as opposed to merely observing it, even at close range.
  

Despite the influx of counselors into New York after Sept. 11th (from personal experience, I know that many of them were employed ministering to so-called “secondary victimization” suffered by the first wave of helping professionals!), most New Yorkers received no psychological attention. And, contrary to predictions, there really was no phenomenon of massive psychological distress, Groopman observes and, as I have above, concludes “that the debriefing industry is predicated on a false notion: that we are all at high risk for P.T.S.D. after exposure to a traumatic event.” More useful is immediate “psychological first aid”, Groopman says. A number of my CISD-trained colleagues, in fact, went to New York as part of the ‘post-trauma industry’. Those who found themselves most useful, according to discussions I have had with them, did not however do CISD, but rather other kinds of mental health intervention such as grief counseling for those who had lost family members, and assisting and empowering those entitled to relief benefits to navigate through the red tape of securing these entitlements. Similarly, Groopman cites examples of proponents of CISD who, in the wake of their experiences after Sept. 11th, have turned away from that paradigm.

The psychotherapy of those who have complicated PTSD in earnest (with a legitimate traumatic antecedent, usually a protracted period of exposure to inescapable brutalization by others; and the scientifically described symptom complex) is painstaking, complicated and protracted. An early stage is giving the sufferer a name and a description for what they are undergoing. I do believe that counseling those exposed, truly exposed (and participating of their own accord), to traumatic events to recognize the symptoms of PTSD they might develop or may already have developed — by which time they would have declared their vulnerability, and it would be too late to depend on preemption — is a more useful model for early intervention, predicated neither on the notion that we are all vulnerable nor on the mistaken belief in its preventive efficacy.

Groopman turns later in the article to the very important and often-neglected topic of the neuroscience of the trauma reaction. In vulnerable individuals, evidence suggests that the physiology of their stress causes the memories of the trauma to actually be encoded differently in the brain, so that they are both less accessible and cause more enduring distress. Classical ‘talking therapy’, especially long after the fact, is not very useful in undoing these neurally encoded trauma residues. Groopman describes work being done in very different, promising, neuroscientifically informed trauma treatment.

“After Howard Dean’s unexpected defeat last week in Iowa, public attention

has focused on his temper, his character, and that guttural Tyrannosaurus

bellow of his not-quite-a-concession speech. But Dean’s views on Americans’

privacy rights may be a superior test of his fitness to be president.” —Declan McCullagh, CNET News

A very small part, to be sure, but an encouraging step: “A federal judge has declared unconstitutional a portion of the USA Patriot Act that bars giving expert advice or assistance to groups designated foreign terrorist organizations.

The ruling marks the first court decision to declare a part of the post-Sept. 11 anti-terrorism statute unconstitutional, said David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor who argued the case on behalf of the Humanitarian Law Project.” —My Way News

“John Kerry has surged into first place here, proving his oft-repeated contention that he is a “good closer.” Kerry has long said that he is a great fighter. If he completes his miraculous comeback to win the Democratic nomination, he will indeed have the fight of his life on his hands — against his own legislative record.” Everyone talks about his flip-flop on the invasion of Iraq but it goes much deeper than that.

Today’s Kerry excoriates Attorney General John Ashcroft for violating American civil liberties with his evil tool, the Patriot Act. “We are a nation of laws and liberties, not of a knock in the night,” Kerry huffs. “So it is time to end the era of John Ashcroft. That starts with replacing the Patriot Act with a new law that protects our people and our liberties at the same time.” Maybe Kerry should have thought about that before voting for the Patriot Act in 2001 — since laws and liberties are pretty important and all.

Back before he had to worry about competing with one Howard Brush Dean, Kerry was positively delighted by the Patriot Act. “It reflects,” he said on the Senate floor, “an enormous amount of hard work by the members of the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. I congratulate them and thank them for that work.” While supportive of “sunset” provisions in the bill, Kerry pronounced himself “pleased at the compromise we have reached on the anti-terrorism legislation.” These are not the words of a man about to help inaugurate an era of brown-shirt law enforcement. —Rich Lowry, National Review

Since we are so obsessed with “electability”, let us recall that Kerry as Democratic Presidential candidate would be going up against the most ruthless and deep-pocketed Republican election machine (otherwise know as “the administration”) of the last century. Bush, at least, is a consistent liar.

“Sometime in the next few days or weeks, one of the world’s most comprehensive online reference sites will publish its 200,000th article. More accurately, one of the site’s contributors will publish the article.

Wikipedia, an encyclopedia created and operated by volunteers, is one of the most fascinating developments of the Digital Age. In just over three years of existence, it has become a valuable resource and an example of how the grass roots in today’s interconnected world can do extraordinary things.” —Dan Gillmor

That Gibberish in Your In-Box May Be Good News: “If you could sit back with Zen-like detachment and observe the dross piling up in your electronic mailbox, the spam wars might come to seem like a fascinating electronic game. Like creatures running through a maze with constantly shifting walls, spammers dart and weave to sneak their solicitations past ever wilier junk mail filters. They are organisms, or maybe genomes, grinding out one random mutation after another, desperately trying to elude the Grim Reaper…

Dispiriting as it is to start the morning with a hundred of these orthographic monsters crouching in your in-box, there is reason to take heart. Measured in bits and bytes, the sheer volume of spam may not have diminished. But advanced filtering software, which learns to recognize the mercurial traits of junk e-mail, is having an effect. The spammers’ messages are becoming harder and harder to decipher. Sense is inevitably degenerating into nonsense, like a pileup of random mutations in an endangered species gasping its last breaths.

Earlier this month, when Internet experts met in Cambridge, Mass., for the 2004 Spam Conference (available as a Web broadcast at spamconference.org), they showed just how far the science of spam fighting has come. For all the recent talk of suing spammers and compiling a national do-not-spam list, most speakers were putting their hopes in technological, not legal solutions. The federal government’s new junk e-mail law, the Can Spam Act, barely rated a mention.” —New York Times

“Does a Rembrandt portrait or a van Gogh still life press some special buttons in every human being’s brain? Will a red painting speak to us in ways a blue one never could? Are we wired in ways that make every one of us enjoy a smiling bust and shiver at a frowning one?

And if our brains determine how art works on us, what does that tell us about art, or us — could studying the way we’re wired determine crisply that the ‘Mona Lisa’ is truly great, or do we need some history to tell us how a complex painting speaks, or not, to all its different viewers?

The Third International Conference on Neuroesthetics, subtitled ‘Emotions in Art and the Brain,’ was held earlier this month at the Berkeley Art Museum and tried to get a start at least on answering such questions. It was a showcase for the progress that’s been made in figuring out what goes on in the brain when art is seen or made.” —Washington Post

More on the neurology of creativity, with the complementary (and at least as interesting) question of that is happening when one has an aesthetic experience. However, the article ends with the same question I have — why assume there is just one sort of aesthetic experience and any uniformity to the neurology behind it?

“His Dark Materials, which began as a trilogy of young-adult novels with extravagant themes but humble commercial expectations, has turned into a serious international phenomenon and bestowed on its author the sort of celebrity that prompted him to move to a house with an unlisted address. The books, luminous adventures that address life after death, religious faith and the complicated intermingling of good and evil, have been translated into 37 languages and sold more than 7 million copies in Britain and the United States alone.” —New York Times

“Low-budget thriller Primer and music documentary Dig! have won the two top prizes at the Sundance Film Festival.” —BBC

Hollywood gives awards voters star treatment:

“What is the Hollywood Foreign Press Association? Though the group claims to represent the world media that connect Hollywood to its vast international audience, few of the world’s most prominent publications are members. Correspondents for Le Monde, The Times of London and Yomiuri Shimbun are not members.

Some major publications, including the Italian newspaper La Repubblica and the German newspaper Stern, are represented, but the association has repeatedly rejected applications from prominent foreign publications while accepting freelancers for small publications in Bangladesh and South Korea. Members need write only four articles a year to maintain active membership. The group accepts a maximum of five new members a year, and each member must be accepted unanimously. Last year, three members of the association died, but it accepted only one new member, Margaret Gardiner, who writes for South African publications.

There is little question that members of the association would get little attention if they did not have the Golden Globes.” —Chicago Tribune

Not that critics for the ‘major publications’ are the only ones entitled to their opinions…

It’s gibberish: “t is covered with drawings of fantastic plants, strange symbols and naked women.

Its language is unknown and unreadable, though some believe it bears a message from extraterrestrials. Others say it carries knowledge of a civilisation that is thousands of years old.

But now a British academic believes he has uncovered the secret of the Voynich manuscript, an Elizabethan volume of more than 200 pages that is filled with weird figures, symbols and writing that has defied the efforts of the twentieth century’s best codebreakers and most distinguished medieval scholars.” —Observer.UK

The ‘blood libel’: “For hundreds of years, it’s been said that Jews kill Christian children and drain their blood for ritual purposes. Why has this myth persisted for so long?” —BBC News Magazine

“Bob Keeshan, who delighted millions of children and their parents for three decades as television’s gentle, patient Captain Kangaroo and before that as the original Clarabell the Clown on the old ‘Howdy Doody Show,’ died yesterday in Vermont, his family said in a statement to The Associated Press. He was 76.” —New York Times