AU - an acronym for FARCE

The AU meets currently in Sharm-el-Sheikh. Competent mostly at doing nothing, this remarkable organisation succeeds once again in doing nothing. While, based on its own statutes it should have expelled Robert Gabrielle Mugabe from its ranks and from his big leather chair, because he wasn't democratically elected, he has been welcomed. He was also asked to start negotiations with the elected President of Zimbabwe, Mr Morgan Tsvangirai. Sadly Bob Madhat has no interest in doing so, and that's the end. The end. Prospective dictators of the world, learn your lesson: you WILL get away with it, unless you're planning on kidnapping an oilrich country. If you do (see Kuwait and Iraq), the world suddenly is concerned about the country in question. So pick a reasonably poor place without major natural resources, and - really - you can do what you want.

Hey, while I'm at it, the AU is, of course, sponsored by Western taxpayers, courtesy of their governments. Why not stop sponsoring expensive luxury hotel stays for those comedians (pardon me, African leaders) altogether.

Thousands and a million spectators at Toronto Gay Pride

Hey, I had a great weekend! I went to join in the fun that's Toronto's gay pride party (and march) this last weekend. Great stuff, lots of stages with non-stop events, and security asking for my ID to check my age (trust me, when you are about to turn mid-40s you do appreciate that someone is kind enough to check whether you've reached maturity).

Well, the march was ... long, very long, something like 4 hours (my mid-40s feet started hurting eventually), and ... ummm ... somewhat boring. Compared to the in-your-face kinkiness that Sydney and Berlin tend to offer to the (very much suspecting) public, this was a sedate affair, all in all. The occasional naked marcher popped up, even some leather folks, as well as a naked pre-op transsexual. And that was that. In any case, it's been a great great show that these volunteers put on. I am truly grateful for the time people put in in order to make this a memorable gay pride. This being the mainstream event that it is, even my bank had its own little float, as had other banks, radio and TV stations, the armed forces, firefighters, huge contingents of the Liberal, NDP and Green parties (kindly the Conservatives decided not to show up - this should conserve its Western prairies votes quite nicely - well done Mr Harper!), as well as the police, nurses and the list goes on and on and on. Mind you, even the hotel where I was staying, the downtown Hilton had its own contingent in the march. Good on them! There were even gay Christians like Catholics, Anglicans and assorted other Christian sects (they should really have another look at their God's bible, my hunch is that they just might have missed something there...)

The guy leading the march was a Jamaican gay activist (probably looking for asylum in Canada, seeing how militantly homophobic that creepy little island state is). No doubt this has been a very smart choice as it keeps reminding people how terrible the situation for gay people in even reasonably close-by places is. You'd find in the local Toronto papers suggestions that Canadian tourists should boycott Caribbean tourist destinations that do not protect the human rights of their gay citizens. Great idea!

Of course, gay events and alcohol go well together, so the main sponsor of much of this seems to have been the producer of a drink called xyz ice or something. No idea what it is, but whoever they were, they certainly splashed out, trying to persuade the partying crowd to buy their 7$ a pop drink. No doubt there were hidden stickers saying 'drink responsibly'. And you know what, people even party responsibly in Canada. I saw very very few people who were seriously over their limit. All in all, it's been a family friendly event (and I don't necessarily mean gay families, but any kinds of families). Nice one!

Oh ye, about the heading of this blog entry, check out this link... CTV, the media sponsor of this year's pride kinda couldn't decide how many people lined the streets to cheer on the marchers. The title says 'thousands of spectators', in the articles it says 'a million spectators'. I do accept that many thousands eventually translate into a million (and potentially more than that), but it's odd nonetheless.

On that note, glad I went. I even bumped into a colleague from Toronto Uni. Small world.

South Africa's seemingly unstoppable march into oblivion

Na, I'm not going to rave again about Pres Thabo-the-man (Bob Madhat's significant other) or health prevention minister Whiskey-Manto-new-liver-for-me-ASAP, but here's a tell-tale sign as to how rapidly South Africa's heading south: Amazon has stopped delivering to the country, because theft of parcels has become so rampant that it's bad business to do business any longer with South Africans.

Thank you Paddy Ashdown!

At long last, someone is speaking sense in the 'international community'. While the slaughter in Zimbabwe continues unabated, and the delusional, syphilitic and somewhat deranged dictator running the show there declares that he can only be removed from office by God, Africans are once again paying the price for the useless leaders they elected to high office. The one country that could long have made a difference in Zim, South Africa, has been governed by Zanu-PF's (oops, the ANC's) Thabo Mbeki. Remember: Thabo-the-man hasn't seen anyone yet die on AIDS in the country that he has misgoverned for the last 8-10 years or so, and (while holding hands with Bob Madhat Gabrielle Mugabe) he declared that he doesn't think there's a major problem in Zimbabwe. So, the millions of illegal Zim refugees in South Africa are not really an indication that Bob Madhat Gabrielle Mugabe stuffed it up. Not at all, according to Thabo and his lover Robert Madhat Gabrielle Mugabe. That much is clear. Reassuringly the leadership void that is Thabo Mbeki has been filled by many African leaders who have condemned the rapidly escalating genocide in Zimbabwe.

Comes Paddy Ashdown. He suggests in today's TIMES that may be the time has come for a military intervention in Zimbabwe, to stop the thugs governing the country from destroying what's left of it, and to stop them from killing more brave Zimbabweans. Sadly, however, Zimbabwe has no oil to speak of, hence this almost certainly is not going to happen any time soon. All we've got is black-on-black violence, and as anyone knows, that doesn't really count. If there is no other reason than to preserve their lives, we can almost be certain that no truly international intervention will be forthcoming. To be fair, SADC or the AU could send their own troops, but they're probably equally unwilling to interfere with this Zim home-made problem.

Airlines taking us for a ride - oops, flight!

You know, like most people who have to fly for work related reasons - I hate air travel sufficiently to not fly in order to get to a vacation destination - I have got used to the ongoing offensively lousy customer disservices that outfits like Air Canada inflict upon the traveling public. So I'm used to flights getting canceled for no good reason other than that it was an 'act of God' (hello, can't us humanists at least get a slightly more intelligible explanation?), or that on long-distance flights they offer a dry roll wrapped around one slice of cucumber in lieu of a vegetarian breakfast, stuff like that. Yes, I got to be honest: the more of them go bankrupt the better off both the environment and the remaining traveling public will be.

Here's one gripe I have, however, and I hope regulators will step in soon to stop their shenanigans in that regard. Melbourne's THE AGE newspaper reports today that JAL is planning to levy a 1000 A$ fuel surcharge on flights from Down Under to Europe. Truth be told, I don't care what they charge. My gripe is that in order to compare like for like, airlines should be forced to quote one price for the trip from A to B and that's that. What is all this gimmickry including fuel surcharges, taxes, looking at planes twice, toilet fees, utilisation of seats etc? It's ridiculous. Of course, if you want to fly an airplane from A to B you need - hint - fuel. So, buy it and include it in your price, but spare me the ridiculous surcharges. If you're too incompetent to budget properly, don't make that my problem, just get out of business! I mean, they also have other cost factors, like running their planes, salaries, etc etc. Surely there is nothing in principle different between these costa and fuel costs or 'taxes', hence all of that should be included in one final price, and that is what the airlines should be forced by regulators to quote.

Otherwise it's a bit like a baker charging me a gas surcharge on the baked cake she's selling me, or a doctor adding a heating surcharge for the time that I spent in her heated waiting room. It's plain bizarre. Nearly as bizarre as Northamerican mobile phone companies charging you 'long-distance' fees for calls on the continent. Like, hello, don't you people understand the concept of satellite based communications. There is no such a thing as a long-distance call in any meaningful way on a mobile phone, yet these arbitrary charges are SOP of mobile phone operators in Canada. Oh well, getting off my soap box for this weekend. Enjoy yours. And remember, use the bicycle if you can.

Bob Madhat Gabrielle Mugabe

Nuff said

5* Hotels and the Pharmaceutical Industry

You will probably know that pharmaceutical companies (despite quadrillions of ethics codes of conduct that were usually produced by bioethics consultants of sorts) try hard to persuade doctors to prescribe their medicines as opposed to equally effective cheaper products. So they go about this by means of giving doctors plastic pens, inviting them to fanciful dinners, and much much more. Anyway, one way of keeping selected medics on their side has been to invite them to 'educational' events, usually in a nice city like Paris, Sydney or Berlin. All expenses on those junket trips are naturally paid for by industry.

Well, there has been a bit of an outcry over this, seeing that many people are unable to afford the medicines their obliging doctors prescribe them, private health insurance fees have gone thru the roof, and public health care systems resort to ever more draconian resource allocation measures to deal with the rising prices. So, unsurprisingly perhaps, it has been suggested that luxury hotel accommodation like 5* outfits for such junket trips are kinda unacceptable. Pharmaceutical companies have, hence, become reluctant to book such venues in recent years. Clever hoteliers in Berlin have found a way to deal with this (and I am not joking!). 5* hotels like the Hilton, Steigenberger, Intercontinental, Swissotel, and the Esplanade are giving one of their stars back to keep the pharmaceutical industry bookings rolling in. The service levels remain the same, of course, and so do the prices. It's a scheme designed to permit freeloaders and their service providers to continue feeling comfy again without having to worry about how it will look like in the public eye.

Gay Marriage? - Whatever ...

I don't care much about the gay marriage activism, so the drama playing out in California kinda bores me to death. It's essentially a conservative agenda as most feminists have long realized. I also don't care much about the internal US politics on that issue as the country is stuffed so substantially that a small 'victory' on a by and large unimportant civil rights issue should not divert attention from how bad things really are over there.

Just to be clear, gay people as much as anyone else are perfectly entitled to see their relationships legally recognized (ie visitation rights in hospitals, retirement planning, access to partner's medical plans and so on and so forth). This, however, doesn't seem to be the activists' issue as they have claimed in many countries that civil partnerships that guarantee to same-sex couples the same legal rights and protections as to married couples (except the word 'marriage' won't be used to described those relationships) are insufficient and hugely discriminatory.

Well, here's my main problem with this: In my little universe, marriage as an institution has been an overwhelming failure. Roughly every second marriage today ends up in the divorce courts, and there is an even larger number of people who would get divorced but stick together in unhappy marriages due to religious or other cultural pressures. - And that's just for straight folks. Now, explain to me, why do gay folks clamor so hard for the 'right' of access to the same flawed institution? We do not seem - well, most of us anyway - to be hardwired to sustain marriages as the life-time type institutions that they're supposed to be.

To my mind, the state should not be in the business of sanctioning marriages. Leave it to religious organizations as a special membership benefit. So, queer churches such as the MCC - ignoring anything the bible ever said about homosexuality - can then offer to their gay flock marriages at a discount.

Beats me though, why there is this hysteria about marriage...

Ouch, the religious 'conscience' is at it again

In that never-ending saga of special rights for religious folks, here's the latest installment. The Washington Post reported yesterday that there is a growing number of pharmacies refusing to stock condoms, birth control pills, the morning-after pill and the like. 'Pro-life' pharmacies as they're misleadingly called have decided to pass moral judgment about patients' needs and have decided to meet only some patients' needs but not others.

Whatever medical needs they choose to meet is entirely based on their arbitrary conscience instead of something usually called professionalism. So, here we have people whose job it is to dispense prescription drugs (like the pill), and who have been given a monopoly by the state for the provision of prescription drugs. Pops God in and professional conduct goes out of the window. They decide to provide only some medicines but not others.

Let me do a quick reality check here: Reportedly the Christian God isn't too keen on guys having sex with each other either. As it happens, sometimes while guys have sex with each other, condoms break and a quick visit to the pharmacy becomes necessary in order to order to access HIV post-exposure prophylaxis (the kinda cool acronym is PEP). Well, are the conscience pharmacies going to provide such medicines? How will their conscience based service provision lottery pan out on this one? Or, imagine a gay guy who's developed AIDS and needs to purchase AIDS drugs, will he get them or will the cross wielding pharmacists tell him to take a hike? What about pharmacists who belong to a white supremacist (aka aryan) church? Are they no longer obliged to serve minority ethnic folks because their good conscience tells them not to? What if the conscience pharmacy is the only one by a long stretch and people have no choice other than to go there, is it really acceptable for them to abuse their monopoly in such a manner as to force their bizarre views of the world on their clients?

The central issue here is that professional conduct, particularly from providers with a state guaranteed monopoly, can't reasonably be held hostage to arbitrary individual decisions, be they grounded in conscience or anything else. We have every right as a society to expect uniform services from pharmacists across the country and we have every right to refuse to accept an on-going opt-out lottery by people who hold strong views on some kinds of patients or others. If they do not wish to provide comprehensive health services their license should be revoked. End of story.

Oh well, conscience bizarristan in action - as ever in the USA near you.

Yay! Firefox 3 is on the go

Hey folks, Firefox 3 is ready for free download. If you don't have Firefox yet or you didn't know that Firefox 3 is on the go, check it out here. They're trying to set a new worldrecord for browser downloads, so check out the site and register with em.

Low IQ predictive of religious beliefs

Here's a cool piece of research to be published in the journal INTELLIGENCE. Richard Lynn, John Harvey and Helmuth Nyborg from universities in the UK and Denmark have tried to investigate whether there is a negative relationship between IQ (measured in psychometric terms) and religious belief. They cite existing evidence 'pointing to a negative relationship between intelligence and religious belief (coming) from four sources. These are (1) negative correlations between intelligence and religious belief; 2) lower percentages holding religious beliefs among intelligence elites compared with the general population; 3) a decline of religious belief with age among children and adolescents as their cognitive abilities increase; 4) a decline in religious belief during the course of the 20th century as the intelligence of the populations has increased.' There has been plenty of empirical research to establish that case from within nations, eg a representative study in the Netherlands found that non-believers scored in the average a statistically significantly higher IQ than the God squad.

Anyway, Lynn, Harvey and Nyborg decided to investigate the relationship between average IQ and religious belief between nations. They then compared the average IQs of most of the world's nations against the percentage of believers in those nations. Their finding is that 'the negative correlation between IQ and religious belief that has been found in numerous studies within nations is also present between nations.' Explaining the surprisingly high percentage of religious believers in the USA, they observe that 'religious belief has a significant heritability of around 0.4-0.5, so it could be that a number of religious emigrants from Europe had the genetic predisposition for religious belief and this has been transmitted to much of the present population.'

No surprise then that nations with an average IQ that's not overly high tend to be found among those countries with a particularly low percentage of non-believers. Check out the country-by-country statistics presented in the paper. Kinda fun reading if you're suitably prejudiced:).

Disclaimer: I am aware of the academic work highly critical of the concept(s) of IQ. Enjoyed the paper anyway. Here's the doi:10.1016/j.intell.2008.03.004

Thanks to my good friend Michael Ristow (now a medical prof in Germany, back in our student days a fellow leftwing activist) who kindly passed this reference on to me!

Why You and I Should be Vegetarians

Hey, going on for awhile longer with my Greenie theme (I'm even wearing those aptly named 'lesbian sandals' aka Birkenstock sandals currently), here's a green reason for why you and I should be vegetarians. It's all really very simple actually, and it doesn't take a lot of philosophical acrobatics to explain the matter. The truth of the matter is that very many people are going hungry today, and the reason for this is directly linked to our unreasonable demands on beef, chicken etc production.

Check this out, culled from wikipedia - without much further checking, so don't take my word for it and check the claims if you doubt their veracity -: 'the data we had indicated that a beef animal consumed 100 kg of hay and 4 kg of grain per 1 kg of beef produced. Using the basic rule that it takes about 1,000 liters of water to produce 1 kg of hay and grain, thus about 100,000 liters were required to produce the 1 kg of beef.' You can do the same exercise for energy consumption. The bottom line is that the production of beef - even if there were no other reasons against the breeding and killing of animals for food products - is so utterly wasteful and detrimental to our survival interests as a species, it is remarkable that we continue living as we do, and pretending that it's ok. We got away with this wastefulness for a long time, simply because most folks in Africa, Asia and Latin America just couldn't afford to eat the amounts of beef and chicken that the average Northamerican and the average European consumed. Thanks to their growing economies, however, many people have become much better off there. Beef is seen in many of the rapidly developing nations on our little planet as a sign of wealth, so the result is that many more people than ever eat ever more beef. It's highly unlikely that our environment can sustain that sort of thing. So, if you care about future generations of people like you, try to be as vegetarian as you can possibly be.

And, if this doesn't persuade you, here is another good reason for why we shouldn't eat animals anyway, regardless of the environmental impact issue.

Ooops, our oil reserves are finite - what a surprise

Quite funny, the Green movement has told us (well, at the time I was a very active part of it) some 20 years ago that we're running out of oil, and that - among other things - we need to reconsider our predominant modes of transport (a 1 ton vehicle to transport a 70kg body to the supermarket around the corner; academics like myself flying frequently to a far-flung corner of the world to give a 15-20 min presentation that could have been presented just as well by audio-videolink - but hey, what else do we have to feel good about ourselves :-).

It goes without saying we Greenies were variously called tree-huggers, stupid, romantic, naive or a combination of these things. Well, we were right, of course, our resources on this planet are very much finite (hence the idea that we need continuing economic growth to be happy is so remarkably and so obviously silly, yet it drives everything that we do).

So, fast forward to mid 2008. The oil price has reached breathtaking heights, and while we should be mostly concerned about the impact this will have on the affordability of food products, if you watch TV (presumably on your giant flat screen TV, which happens to have replaced ovens in many homes because they're emanating so much heat) you will be forgiven for thinking that the oil price issue is really about airline survival and the Hummer (the ridiculous GM car still produced for the Homer Simpson types of the real world - reportedly men with really really small penises). There is some good news, though, airlines shut down plenty of planes; here is hoping that Air Canada might fall by the wayside altogether, but things are not looking promising because the airline has long since begun to treat its customers particularly badly, so it might survive longer than some of its better behaved competitors.

There's also some huha about GM shutting down car factories in various countries. The truth is, of course, that this is a small reason for celebrations as it will bring us closer to keeping much-needed energy reserves for longer. Of course, for some bizarre reason, those in power (let's call them our 'representatives') do not seem to bother about putting efficient public transport systems in place. I live currently a lot of the time in Kingston, a medium-sized city in Ontario. The public transport system does arguably not even deserve the name system. The bus stops don't display information as to the route of the buses that happen to stop there on the odd occasion, indeed, even information about when buses can be expected to stop there (it's called a timetable in Europe) is not on display. Surely it can't surprise then that people take their giant American car out for a ride to the supermarket. So, decades after we knew we couldn't go on like we did, we chose collectively to stick our head in the sand and voted for GM's Hummer, Chrysler's 300C (incidentally a car driven by Barack Obama the supposedly so clever US Senator trying to become the next President of the USA), and my all-time favourite car, the Maserati Sedan.

Ok, I'm getting off my soap box now. Guess all I'm saying is, ask yourself more often what the impact of your action on the environment and future generations is. If your action is incompatible with a high-quality environment and existing future generations of people, don't do it unless you really have no choice (slight inconvenience isn't the same as saying that you really have no choice).

Conflict of interest declaration: I can't drive, so decent public transport would make a big difference to my life.

AIDS vaccine research - Time to call it a day?

AIDS prevention research has hit a major road block. More than 150 recent prevention trials including vaccine and microbicide candidates failed to protect trial participants against HIV infection. It is inevitable that the question is asked: Is there ever a point in time where we should concede defeat and abandon any further HIV vaccine and HIV microbicide trials?

With the death toll standing at 25 million lives lost prematurely to AIDS, and 33 million people worldwide currently living with HIV, the unpleasant truth is we have no choice other than to press ahead with further trials. I am not a great fan of Winston Churchill, but his famous remark, ‘Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never’ seems to be the only appropriate response to the vaccine/microbicide trial question in the age of AIDS.

AIDS drugs have become more sophisticated, and no one knows for sure how long people will be able to cope with the side effects of such powerful agents. Truth be told, while new drugs are being developed continuously, we are barely ahead of the ever-mutating virus. Are we ahead at all, or are we falling further behind? For every one person bring treated in the developing world, roughly five new people become infected. It is far from clear that we can win the numbers game.

Even though significant inroads have been made, it remains that the vast majority of people in developing countries who could clinically benefit from AIDS drugs have no access to the life preserving medications that continue to be brought to the market.

While AIDS vaccine trials continue unabated, so do the equally unsuccessful microbicide trials. Microbicide trials are described by some as the politically correct brother of the better funded AIDS vaccine trials. Their scientific rationale seems as shaky, if not shakier than those of vaccine candidates, yet they continue because they are seen as the last best hope for women in developing countries to protect themselves against infection. The trouble is that so far all these trials have achieved so far is an increase in the number of women who have become more susceptible to an HIV infection as a result of their trial participation.

Proponents of the defeatist stance, including Homayoon Khanlou and Michael Weinstein of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, the largest provider of HIV/AIDS medical care in the USA, argue that instead of continuing to squander hundreds of millions of dollars on a futile quest for an HIV vaccine, the focus should shift to spending on the prevention, testing and treatment of AIDS.

But we will only ever know after a trial whether or not it has been futile. At this point in time there is no real reason to assume such trials will necessarily fail. What we should be focusing on instead are other ethical concerns such as the provision of care to people who seroconvert during trials, or people who become more susceptible to an infection due to their trial participation. We have to ensure that no trial participant is left without adequate clinical care at the very minimum. The talk about pulling the plug on HIV vaccine and microbicide trials needs to end sooner rather than later.

Universities too lenient with plagiarising students

A remarkable piece of research was reported by the BBC. The target of the investigation were some 80 plus UK universities. It seems as if of 9200 students caught plagiarising only 143 students were expelled. That's possibly fair enough, because without further information about the severity of the cheating it's difficult to ascertain whether expelling the students would have been more appropriate in the majority of cases found. Still, it is hugely worrisome that the reason given for why penalties have not been harsher is that academics felt they would likely not be backed up by their institution and/or worries that high-powered student lawyers would destroy the case in court. Check out the original reporting and read the commnens made by university teachers as well as cheating students. It's frightening!

Enhancing my grey cells

There's no doubt among those 'in the know' that in the foreseeable future we will be able to access new drugs that will permit us to boost our brain functions. Drugs designed to halt or prevent the deterioration of Alzheimer's patients will likely equally be able to enhance the memory of people with brains like mine. My friends and colleagues know all too well that my memory has always been absolutely atrocious, and it is remarkably selective, too. I manage to remember most stuff to do with my work (most, but by no means all important things), yet on the odd occasion I forgot even my own birthday, not to talk about my long-suffering parents' birthdays. In fact, my dear sister has a habit of sending me little reminders that my Mom's or my Dad's birthday are about to come up. Yes, I know, I could, of course, simply set up a reminder in my on-line diary.

But, wouldn't it be nice, if I could simply pop a pill and manage to boost my memory to the point where my sister wouldn't have to remind me, and I wouldn't have to put every little appointment into my diary (incl a detailed description about what it's for etc). Such a drug would clearly enhance my cognitive functions. Now, it's a short step from there, of course, to boosting our regular brain function, too. There is no in principle reason, it seems, why the brain functions of people with lower intelligence could not also be improved over time. Other such drugs might permit people with bad memories (say a traumatic accident) to eliminate such memories altogether.

Now, the question is, of course, whether we should permit people who experience mental states not defined as an illness access to such drugs. Is it acceptable for someone who hasn't Alzheimer's to be given access to a drug that enhances her memory? I can't see why that should not be the case to be honest, because at the end of the day our definition of any given illness fundamentally look toward improving the human condition of someone who is suffering from that condition. Bad memory, traumatic experiences and lower intelligence, to name just a few, all contribute - all other things being equal - to a lower quality of life of those affected by them. There is no good reason to declare them 'not ill' and prevent them from access to such drugs. It is as simple as that, to my mind.

Crackpotism - not only a US phenomenon -

Most interested observers are forgiven for thinking that crackpots in government seem a more recent invention of the USA. However, the USA isn't the only country the brain of the leader of which seems to have taken permanent leave of absence. Africa quite traditionally is a similarly successful breeding ground for nuttish leaders. Yahya Jammeh, devout Muslim leader of that most urbane of all African countries, Gambia, has made news headlines last year when he announced to the world that he (yes, he, presumably after consulting his God) had found a cure for AIDS. His cure, in line with that unsavioury African nationalism that has been destroying sensible AIDS policies in South Africa (where fellow crackpot Thabo Mbeki declared that there are no problems in Zimbabwe, after explaining to the world that he hasn't seen a single person with AIDS in his country), consists of local herbs. It goes without saying that his cure hasn't really cured anyone or preserved the life of even one person with AIDS.

Well, my bud Yahya has since disappeared from the world headlines, so he made a concerted public relations effort last week to redeem himself. Traveling the country for the last fortnight he declared that gay people are not wanted in Gambia, and that they must leave immediately. He promised stricter laws than Iran on homosexuality (they're only stoning people to death there, I wonder what Yahya has got in store). The Pres promised to cut off the heads of homosexual people found in the country. Quite appropriately, Gambia hosts the African Commission on Human and People's Rights. Guess the AU is to Gambia what Asean is to Burma. - Anyway, if we are honest, we know, deep in our hearts that gay people are not real people, they are ... ummm ... kinda aliens. See, that was not too difficult to swallow. So, now let's get on with that unpleasant business of chopping off Gambian gay peoples' heads, before they manage to sneak into Iran where they'd be stoned to death. Goodness, Allah annd the countries run by his followers are truly great.

Come to think of it, it is kinda sad that my fellow Aussies have decided not to permit a Muslim school in a rural town. Shows you how lily-white that bunch of rednecks really is.

Letter from jailed Queen's University Lecturer to Ontario Legislature

I am replicating Bob Lovelace's Letter to the members of the Ontario Legislature as a matter of public record:

Letter to the Legislators of Ontario

May 11, 2008

I am writing this letter to you from the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay, Ontario. I have been imprisoned here during the last three months for contempt of court because I said I cannot obey an njunction which conflicts with my duty under Algonquin law to protect our land.

I am writing because I believe you are honest men and women who work in the best interests of your constituents and for the betterment of Ontario. Is it to your intelligence and compassion that this letter is addressed. What I write may shock and anger you. It will certainly cause embarrassment. My hope is that what you read here will engender in you the same commitment to justice that I have felt within these prison walls and throughout my life.

On February 15th of this year, I was sentenced to six months in prison and fined $25,000. Co-Chief Paula Sherman was also fined $15,000. She is a single mother and a grandmother and the sole supporter for three dependents. She cannot and will not pay the fine and will have to report to jail on May 15 to serve a 90 day prison sentence. Our offence was declaring our intention to peacefully protect our homeland after 30,000 acres had been staked for uranium exploration. The staking had been done without our knowledge or consent and the claims were registered by Ontario's Ministry of Mines without notification. Extensive deep core drilling was planned for last summer without consultation or accommodation.

In June of last year, the Council of the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation requested the exploration company remove their personnel and equipment. When they complied, we secured the area with the help of our non-Algonquin neighbours. In July, the company, Frontenac Ventures Corporation, sued us for $77 million, and in August obtained an injunction ordering unfettered access to our lands. Since their still had not been any consultation, as required by Supreme Court decisions, we refused to remove the security barrier, and found ourselves convicted of "contempt" by your court.

Although the context behind my imprisonment is useful, this letter is not about mining or the out-dated Ontario Mining Act. There is already much public discussion now going on about toxic mining and the need to protect citizens' rights. This letter as well is not about Aboriginal rights or the protection of our homeland, although our Indigenous rights and responsibilities contribute to the discourse. This letter is a case against colonialism, the dysfunctional heritage that we share; the colonialism that informs every aspect of our current relationship and will undo our security and undermine the future for all citizens in this province. Democracy and colonialism can not walk hand-in-hand for long before the disparity in justice, economic opportunities and morality so sickens human spirits that we will all live without hope of becoming the nations we wish to be.

For many years in my intellectual life I tried to understand why, as Indigenous people, we were destined to suffer under the oppression of colonialism. I wanted to know if some natural law at the beginning of time had proclaimed it so, or if it were an accident of conditioning, or if it were essential to social order that made such suffering a necessity. I believed that if I could only know how it had come to be then I would be satisfied with the justification, or understand how you fix the mechanics.

As the years have carved away my curiosity, I have at last concluded that it does not matter how colonialism came to be or who is at fault. I do not care if I ever know how colonialism took root in this world. Now, I just want to be free of it. I want to know that succeeding generations of First Nations children will not be looked upon as inferior, that their birthright and home will not be stolen, that they will have the advantage of dreaming their own dreams and following their own visions. And as much as I want my own children to be free, I want your children not to suffer the moral uncertainty that comes with living well because others are oppressed.

You are legislators. You have the responsibility for writing the laws and policies that frame colonialism and give it social and political structure in Ontario. Unwriting colonialism is not a political process. One party or coalition can not do it alone. Ending legal colonialism is not for partisans. It requires a consensus among law makers who regard justice and humanity above competition for popularity. Those of you who will work for just change will believe in the rightness of your laws as strongly as I believe in the rightness of Algonquin law. When you decide to erase colonialism from your laws you will be risking your future as much as I have risked mine. They are your laws that embody colonial oppression of Aboriginal people and although we can offer guidance, it will be you as legislators who will choose to be, or choose not to be, the burden of innocent generations of come.

The present and accepted course of de-colonization has failed. It has failed both in letter and in spirit. We are living an illusion that Canada and the Provinces no longer oppress First Nations. Nothing in this lie could be further from the truth. If it was so, when did this reversal take place? Was it withConfederation? No - Confederation marked the transition from an ambivalent British Crown to a purposefulextermination of everything Indian. Was it during the Canadian centre of repressive laws that alienated Aboriginal people from their lands and customs? No. Did revisions of the federal Indian Act reverse the national strategy of "taking the Indian out of the Indian child" or save thousands of Indian children from the "sixties scoop"? No. Have decisions of the Supreme Course recognized original jurisdiction or simply redefined domination in more tolerable terms? Did the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People and hundreds of other studies inform the Nation and change public attitudes? No. Did patriating the Constitution in 1982 succeed in defining the rights and jurisdiction of Aboriginal Nations as it did for the Federal and Provincial governments? No! Please, honestly, ask yourselves, when such a historical turn around occurred and when substantial changes in legislation were written which would have allowed the transition to take place.

Freedom does not come in increments. Colonialism will not give way through wishful thinking or half-measures. In the past, politicians, clergy and intellectuals argued that Aboriginal people were not ready for "civilization" and needed the guiding hand of the colonizer. This ideology is nothing more than self-serving paternalism. Freedom is not something that Aboriginal people should have to earn. If freedom were to be bought, then we have paid for it a thousand fold. Freedom comes when the gate is opened wide or broken down. If there is anyone who has not been ready for Aboriginal people to take their rightful place in Canada, it is you, the colonizer. Until you actively and explicitly make colonialism illegal then it will always be you who are not ready.

The forces that guard colonialism are large. The federal and provincial governments employ hundreds of lawyers, bureaucrats and academics to discredit Aboriginal claims and put Aboriginal people in their place. They work on land claims, court cases and public policy in an effort to limit the Crown's obligations and liability to Aboriginal people. When have Ontario lawyers defended an Aboriginal right or vigorously advanced Aboriginal claims? They just don't do that.

Colonialism will remain firmly entrenched as long as we work in an adversarial system in which communities that have been undermined socially, economically and politically for over two centuries must play by their opponents' rules on a field with a precipitous incline. I have watched as a generation of great minds have been squandered on both sides of this rivalry because intransigent bureaucrats and partisan politicians have been afraid to let "the thin edge of the wedge" change public policy and institutionalize just treatment of Aboriginal citizens. It is not for want of informed and competent negotiators that Canada and Ontario have a slew of unsettled claims and associated conflicts; rather it is the law makers' lack of political will, fairness and honesty in putting an end to the immoral advantage of colonialism.

Let me give you a clear and recent example of how Aboriginal people experience negotiations. In October of last year, Judge Cunningham of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, who presides in the suit brought by Frontenac Ventures against my community, suspended the hearing for twelve weeks in an effort to get all the parties talking. Ontario, Frontenac Ventures and the two First Nations agreed to a prioritized list of issues and to jointly choose a mediator. At that point, we removed our security barrier and permitted Frontenac Ventures to carry out unobtrusive survey work.When the discussions began, the corporation did not attend or send a representative. Instead they installed security guards at the site. Ontario's representatives consistently refused to discuss the issues outlined in the predetermined agenda which included as the first item, Ontario's legal responsibility to consult with First Nations communities before development of a resource begins. Ontario negotiators rejected out of hand three comprehensive settlement proposals put forward by Ardoch. Ontario negotiators demanded that we inventory our "values" for the staked land, but refused to accept the description of these "values" when expressed in cultural context or with their meanings in Anishnabemowin, our language. When it was apparent that time was running out in the 12 week process, the lead Ontario negotiator, who had been a former Deputy Minister of Northern Development and Mines, conceded that Ontario's duty to consult should be met. He agreed with Ardoch that a broad range of possible outcomes should be considered. He also agreed that the consultation process could conclude with an end to uranium exploration. Ardoch had favoured such an open consultation from the beginning of negotiations. Having arrived at an agreement that a plan of "appropriate consultation" would be submitted to Judge Cunningham we proceeded to discuss the framework for the consultation process. A week later, after substantial collaboration on the framework, Ontario's lead negotiator advised us that there had never been an intention to halt exploration and that exploratory drilling would be taking place during the proposed consultation process. We could either agree or face the court and charges of contempt.

This experience seems to be universal across the country. It has not changed much since the starvation tactics used by Sir John A. Macdonald in negotiating the early numbered treaties. While Aboriginal people cling to the hope that the Crown administrators will be merciful and accept some limited fashion of constitutionally protected rights, bureaucrats and their Ministerial masters do everything in their power to extinguish those rights and uphold the colonial state. Legislators and governments are not solely responsible for maintaining the immoral practice of colonialism. Even the Supreme Court of Canada, often praised for its progressive decisions on Aboriginal rights, is a principle defender of the sovereign privilege of domination. Supreme Court decisions, while recognizing the historical and legal validity of Aboriginal rights, limit the scope and practice of those rights in favour of "larger" Canadian interests. An analogy of the dilemma is listening to the stories of an abused child in an Indian residential school, patting her on the head and then telling her not to disobey the priest. Such is the sanctimonious hypocrisy of your highest court. These same courts permit Canada's governments to ponder for years on the policy implications reflecting these half-hearted concessions, rendering the entire legal process of protecting Aboriginal rights an exercise in "too little, too late".

Ontario has been consistently guilty of regarding Aboriginal rights as an inconvenient demand on the moral character of a tolerant society. But Aboriginal rights are your laws, not ours. They originate in English law as the doctrine of "continuity" and find substance in such documents as the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Section 35 rights in the Canadian Constitution are an attempt to address the fundamental denial of the existing laws of Aboriginal Nations and to bring into sovereign Canada a sense of Aboriginal belonging. But we have had our own laws and governance and the Crown, through the doctrine of "continuity" has never had the right to overrule them. Our laws do not involve a concept of "rights". In our cultures, mutual respect and benefit are understood as imperatives for survival. Aboriginal cultures regard law as a complex set of responsibilities to the land and in human relations. The emphasis is on protecting sustainability and avoiding conflict. When Europeans first came to settle in the Ottawa valley in 1800, this is what our ancestors asked of them: to share the land and get along. Through 150 years of French and 100 years of English contact, the doctrine of "continuity" was practiced. We must be clear that recent constitutional commitments in section 35 to "recognize and affirm" Aboriginal and treaty rights are Canadian law. Our leaders at the time asked for much more.

The disparity between your laws and ours' represents the gap between lip service and Aboriginal peoples' ambition to restore our homelands and cultures. Without a sense of moral clarity and comprehensive entitlements, section 35 of your Constitution is almost meaningless. It gives you as legislators no standard or instruction upon which to write anti-colonial legislation. As such, it gives Canadian courts nothing with which to reconcile the past and even less with which to arbitrate the future. Courts will continue to define Aboriginal rights as subservient and Aboriginal title as third class.

As a colonized people we must accept a share of the responsibility for our condition. Like you,we have internalized colonialism. We have allowed it to inform the way we see the world and ourselves. Too often we have turned to the colonizing governments for support. Too often we expect you to solve our problems or blame you for our inadequacies. Too often we are satisfied with handouts rather than partnerships or ownership. We have come to accept colonial labels such as "status" and "non-status" as definitions of who we are. We let these labels divide our families and communities. Our leaders have accepted foreign forms of governance which undermine our unity and foster corruption. We have come to accept that blood quantum, shades of skin colour and even levels of education determine our Indianess. Far too often we have given up, given in to self-hate, self-abuse and the abuse of others. Like you, we have to confront colonialism on our own terms, for it is just as immoral to accept victimization as it is to benefit from oppression.

Ontario's education system is a primary instrument in ensuring that colonialism remains unchallenged. Many Ontarians know nothing of how generations of Aboriginal children were victimized by church and state. Ontarians posses only a vague understanding of how land was overrun by settlement in the 19th century and Aboriginal people were forced to sign unconscionable treaties and land sales in return for modest protection. As far as understanding the evolution of colonial laws, almost all citizens are ignorant. Even the real suffering of their own immigrant ancestors as slaves, indentured servants, child labour and cannon fodder have been sanitized for the popular glorification of Ontario's history. Many of these immigrants were escaping colonialism in their own homelands, just as refugees today come to Canada to find a better life. But they acquire no real history about themselves and at best only an "honourable mention" of Aboriginal realities. Without an honest and fully informed education system, your job of challenging and changing colonial laws is as difficult as ours in changing the attitudes of ignorant neighbours.

Almost all of you have either publicly or privately condemned the Aboriginal people who protest and obstruct economic and civic activity. At best you have expressed complacent tolerance and an admission that Aboriginal dissatisfaction may have some merit. Ontario's civility rests on its affluence, not on its moral intelligence or character. It is this artificial civility that Aboriginal protestors challenge. Each time a road is blocked, exploration for minerals is halted, or forestry is interrupted, Aboriginal activists are raising the prickly question of Ontario's morality. Each time a protest forces a political "spin" to be re-spun, law makers are confronted with the ineptitude of their own professional history. You may not like the politics of confrontation but I would rather see Shawn Brant block the 401 than Ovide Mercredi begging at the gates of Meech Lake, or Phil Fontaine writing Steven Harper's apology for the abuse of residential schools.

The affluence of Ontario has been acquired from the sacrifice of our ancestors' health and the wealth of our homelands. If immobilizing the power of that affluence is the only way to expose the evil of colonization then you need to brace yourselves. Aboriginal people and our thoughtful neighbours are sick and tired of colonialism. People of all races who hunger for justice, who understand the sacredness of creation and the folly of greed will find expression in tearing down colonialism. Aboriginal protests are not so much about past grievances. They are about the effects of present dispossession. Aboriginal activism is about changing the course of the future. During the last week of May, Aboriginal people across Canada will be preparing for the National Day of Action on May 29th. Many people will come to Queen's Park. They are coming to talk to you. Throughout that week you will have the opportunity to listen to Aboriginal people and their friends express their fears and aspirations for the future. You will also hear their complaints. If you are wise you will listen. If you are as courageous as they are, you will allow what you hear to inspire your actions. If you are thankful for the Creator's gift of life, you will extend your hands in peace and friendship. It is up to you if you choose a partnership with Aboriginal Nations to begin the arduous task of rewriting Ontario's laws to exclude colonial principles. But if you choose to do nothing, or to condemn us, then please do not make excuses or false promises. In the days leading up to May 29th, the media will extol the Canadian virtue of tolerance. In the days following, the media will sensationalize the "criminality" of Aboriginal defiance. You will see large pictures of masked warriors but little honest context. As you look with trepidation into the masked faces remember that those of us who wear no masks have been faceless as well, all of our lives. The real news will be in the conversations that you will have in the midst of demonstrations and at the edge of the barricades.

As much as I would like to be with you and my brothers and sisters at Queen's Park at the end
of May, I will be here in prison. Throughout my life, I have advocated the path of non-violence
as the only means of restoring our cultural integrity and our belonging within creation. Freedom, at last, is a state of spirit. Even within the walls of this cell, my spirit can heal and grow and under the burden of oppression, all of our spirits can rise up. My spirit, like a seed, can wait throughout the long winter and come to life again when there is room to grow. Non-violence does not mean timidity. Those of us who have chosen a life of non-violence vigorously fight against the oppression and injustice that is sustained by violence. Colonialism, the laws that uphold it, the police actions that take down barricades and disrupt peaceful protests, are violence. Freedom flows around violence like water in a stream flows around a fallen log. Freedom is beautiful like the colours of the earth. Violence is ugly. My spirit will be with all of you at the end of May in peace and friendship.

My immediate thoughts are with my community and the threat of extensive deep core drilling. There is also the humiliation that Ontario is unwilling to allow our community into the decision-making process before further encroachment occurs. And there is the constant anxiety of what an open pit uranium mine will do to our land, our health and the health of our neighbours down stream. My heart aches in the memories of fishing along that river; the blueberry picking on the ridges and the winter solitudes of Arty's trapline. For two hundred years, colonists have been taking out land. I wonder every day when it will stop.Because I do not have that answer I will begin a fast on May 16 and I will fast until I have an answer. I will not be fasting as a political statement or to extricate some concession from Ontario. In our culture we fast to purify our bodies and free our spirits. We fast in anticipation of a vision of things to come and to prepare ourselves to accept a great challenge. If my fast over the next few weeks brings attention to the defense of our community I will welcome the growing interest. I will also be praying hard for the protection of Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug and all of the communities struggling to survive. If in some small way my fast contributes to the non-violent struggle against Canadian colonialism, then all the better. I have no expectation of the Premier or his Ministers. The gun is to our head not his. I will pray that their hearts and minds become clear and that we will meet soon to work together to find solutions to the mess we are in. When I began this letter I wrote that you might be shocked, angered and certainly embarrassed. If reading my thoughts made you uncomfortable, I am not sorry. It was my intent to shake you out of your complacency and indifference. Aboriginal people do not want your platitudes. We want change. We want an end to colonialism. We want legislation that protects our rights and recognizes our original jurisdiction. What you did yesterday in the name of justice for Aboriginal people is not enough. No matter what happens now, we will walk tomorrow's road together; you must ask yourself how you have that journey to be.

In the spirit of Peace and Friendship, mutual respect and benefit, I wish you to be well in your work, your play and your dreams.

Migwetch,

Robert Lovelace
Retired Chief
Ardoch Algonquin First Nation

Humanist Bioethics Event in New York

There's an interesting humanist bioethics event to be held in New York this Friday. In case you're around town, check it out.

National Bioethics Commissions and Partisan Politics

No doubt most academics working in bioethics recall with some disappointment (quite a few of us might well be inclined to choose stronger words) the reign of Leo Kass as chairman of US President Bush’s National Council on Bioethics. Dr Kass managed to discredit the Council within a few years because of his partisan political use of the taxpayer funded advisory body. Many breathed a sigh of relief when one of the elder statesmen (and women) of US bioethics, Edmund Pellegrino, was appointed to replace Dr Kass. However, the partisan political manipulation of the supposed National Council on Bioethics seems to continue under Dr Pellegrino’s leadership. A new book produced by the Council gives testimony to this. Human Dignity and Bioethics aims to defend the fundamentally religious notion against its secular critics. This almost certainly would be fair game if Georgetown University Press had published such a book, but it is far from clear that such a volume is called for from a taxpayer funded, supposedly national bioethics commission. The views expressed in the volume do represent arguably those of a minority of scholars within bioethics. The Bush administration has consistently shown itself to be anti-science, be it in its manipulation and censorship of scientific data on global warming or its activities aimed at preventing the utilization of tax monies for therapeutic cloning research.1 It was worrisome when the US President decided to appoint another Christian bioethicist to head the National Council on Bioethics. Unlike Dr Kass, however, Dr Pellegrino can look back on a long and very distinguished record in bioethics. It is unfortunate, that he has chosen, much like his predecessor, to use the national commission for partisan political purposes yet again. One of the questions this raises – not for the first time – is that of the proper role of national bioethics commissions. There can be no doubt, however, whatever one’s answer to this question is, that John Rawls was correct when he argued that national commissions in pluralistic societies should not take substantive positions on ethical rights and wrongs. Arguably the proper function of such commissions is to inform public debate and government, but not to provide a biased view toward one position or another. Dr Pellegrino and his fellow council members seem to beg to differ. However, moving away for a moment from the US situation, and thinking about Iran, makes more obvious the professional concerns one should have with Dr Pellegrino and the current US national bioethics commission. Think how the bioethics community would respond if Mr Ahmedinejad constituted an Iranian bioethics commission. He would carefully choose a fellow conservative Muslim scholar. That conservative Muslim scholar and his fellow national bioethics commissioners would subsequently produce many booklets pronouncing on controversial issues in bioethics. Not a single one of the publications ever produced by the Iranian national bioethics commission would reflect in any meaningful way the bioethics discussion either in his country or elsewhere in the world, but the commission would certainly succeed in pleasing Mr Ahmedinejad. No doubt most professional bioethicists would find it all rather farcical. The US National Council on Bioethics under its two most recent leaders has well succeeded in reducing what has once been an influential voice in bioethics to pretty much that, a partisan political loud speaker that is more or less ignored by bioethicists and ridiculed in mainstream mass media. The reason is that the obvious abuse of tax monies and public institutions by partisan political operators has not gone unnoticed.

An interesting exchange of views at Stanford University exemplifies professional concerns with partisan bioethics politics. Dr Pellegrino went to give a talk at the university, reportedly to defend the content of the book, and to argue that dignity not utility should govern bioethics. This is a reasonable position to hold, and many continental European bioethicists will agree with Pellegrino, but equally very many bioethicists (the writer of this Editorial included) would disagree. In response to Pellegrino Stanford Law Professor Hank Greely argued that ,” I don’t see why the human species as a whole is inherently entitled to dignity. If it turns out we encounter non-human persons, either biological, mechanical or computational, earthly or alien, I think dignity should apply to them as well. Furthermore, the idea that the species as a whole has some essence that shouldn’t be violated strikes me as way too abstract.”

The take-home message here is not that Pellegrino is ‘wrong’ and Greely is ‘right’, but that it is difficult to accept that a national bioethics commission should take or propagate a substantive position on such issues. I urge Dr Pellegrino to reconsider how he continues the work of the US national bioethics commission. There is still time to restore its prestige to what it once has been – as it happens Human Dignity and Bioethics is not the right way to go about this.