Rhinocrisy

I am firmly convinced that before I shuffle off, biology will have unraveled the secret of what makes us age and die. Here is a NS article lending weight to that conviction. Rather startling to think that, instead of a hundred or so years of life, I might have to live two or three hundred. This is not a possibility I consider happily, really. Aside from the fact that I have historically been depressive (see sidebar), there is the not unrealistic possibility that the coming centuries are going to, ahem, suck the sweaty, dirty undersides of balls.

Everyone is always certain the apocalypse is coming very soon. But Jesus Christ, do we have the opportunity now, or what? I mean, thermonuclear war? We can actually DO that. We don’t even have to imagine invading armies of demons, or cataclysmic meteor strike, or another album by Good Charlotte. And what about global warming? Two weeks back GISS published a report saying the oceans are warming, and in coming decades this heat is going to rise up out of the depths like Cthulhu and stifle us. Bedouins in New England.*

This makes it all the more surprising to me that there are people who actively crave more lifespan, like the folks over at the Life Extension Foundation, or the much more serious and crazy Transhumanists over at Extropy. Especially since we already squander the considerable alotment of life we are given. What would they do with 200 more years of life? Answer: watch a whole lot more television.

So, if it were created, were I given the opportunity, would I consume boosterspice? Damn right I would. And you would, too, you liar.

“Now with amino-proteins!” my shampoo (Pantene Pro-V) told me this morning in the shower.

“Don’t be daft,” I said. “What the hell is an amino-protein?”

After perusing the back of the bottle, I was reassured that my shampoo “penetrates and helps replenish the amino-proteins that are naturally found in hair but are lost over time.”

Further down, I noted, in the list of ingredients, bold-faced, double-starred: Lysine HCL, Methyl Tyrosinate HCL, and Histidine. Pantene Amino-Protein Complex, the bottle declaimed proudly. “Oh!” I cried (in my mind), cottoning on. “You mean amino-acids!“

Clearly what had happened was that someone had, for whatever reason, decided that it was a good idea to include these revitalizing components in the shampoo. Hair is composed of two forms of keratin (alpha and beta), which form heterodimers and are quite strong, mostly because they are largely composed of the amino-acid cysteine, which contains a sulfide group that can be used to form strong, stable covalent bonds (disulfide bridges) between protein molecules. In other words, hair is composed of a fairly complex protein machinery, and “revitalizing” it with three simple amino-acids (the building blocks for proteins) makes about as much sense as doing auto repair by soaking your Honda in a warm bath of spark plugs and power steering fluid.

But let’s be honest: all the real advances in hair care happened fifty years ago, when some guy realized that you could synthesize all the sodium lauryl sulfate you wanted down at the Dow Chemical plant in Wilmington. It’s much harder for hair-care researchers these days to make breakthrough discoveries that would win them the Nobel Prize in Cosmetology. So you make shit up, so what?

And then, obviously some guy in marketing saw that some boob of a scientist had written “amino-acids” right on the front of the goddamn bottle. “Those crazy scientists!” he must have said, rolling his eyes and crossing out the word ‘acids’. “They may have all that book-knowledge, but they just don’t have common sense. No one is going to want to put acid in their hair! Come on!”

“Chee!” replied the bottle of shampoo, shining prettily.

In 2002 the U.S. gave Uzbekistan $220 million in aid, broken down as follows:

Although this is clearly money well-spent, some groups complained that we were giving money to (and generally being chummy with) a regime that had a fairly awful human rights record. So aid diminished to $86 million in 2003. In December 2003, Colin Powell decided that the human rights record of Uzbekistan simply didn’t meet the human rights standards the State Department had set for giving aid; the country was technically ineligible for aid. But, fear not – executive authority trumped these standards, and President Bush signed a waiver allowing Uzbekistan to continue receiving aid, despite the fact that it was just too damn horrible a place. It was vital security concerns that made him make that decision, you see.

However, in July of 2004, even that bulwark was steam-rolled by public shame, and the U.S. dramatically suspended aid to Uzbekistan completely, which by then had trickled down to a mere $18 million.

But wait!

Here’s the clever, clever part. Our budget is so vast and labyrinthine that SURELY we could find ways to sneak money to our friends, if we wanted to. And so, not surprisingly, we find that the U.S. augmented its budget to help Uzbekistan fight the spread of bio weapons by $21 million in August of 2004.

“What’s that?” you say. “We had a budget to help Uzbekistan fight the spread of bio-weapons?” Yes, that’s right. $39 million worth, before. “And it wasn’t suspended in July?” No, no. Why would it be? That was the State Department. Entirely different, don’t you see? “Well, what other hidden budget items sending money to Uzbekistan don’t we know about?” you might then ask. Well, who knows? That’s why they’re hidden, after all!

The former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, wrote an article in the Guardian about the recent violence and why he feels the U.S. will never stop supporting Karimov. Refreshingly honest, which I guess is why they canned his ass.

People you should be reading instead of me for Uzbekistan news: Registan, Scraps of Moscow and Wanderlustress, who is actually blogging from Uzbekistan (Tashkent, I think).

The salient bits, for you lazy ones: the death toll is up to several hundreds (maybe). No one knows for sure how many, because journalists have been expelled from Andijan. People are fleeing into Kyrgyzstan, and are now being accepted as refugees; camps are being set up. Karimov says Islamists are to blame, and implausibly suggests that this was all a plot by Hizb-ut-Tahrir to reduplicate the coup in Kyrgyzstan which deposed Akayev.

It’s 1:30, and I’m still incensed at how our government responded to today’s violence in Uzbekistan.

The White House just put up their press briefs for the day. Here’s the choice McClellan quote:

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I know that the Department of State has been in touch with our embassy there, and so they probably will be talking more about this at their briefing, as well. We have had concerns about human rights in Uzbekistan, but we are concerned about the outbreak of violence, particularly by some members of a terrorist organization that were freed from prison. And we urge both the government and the demonstrators to exercise restraint at this time. The people of Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government, but that should come through peaceful means, not through violence. And that’s what our message is.

Now, granted, maybe it was early and he was talking out of his butt. But here’s the quote from Boucher, yacker for the State Department:

QUESTION: Uzbekistan and the EU seem to have blamed the Government of Uzbekistan for the violence. Would that be the view of the U.S. Government, too?

MR. BOUCHER: We have been looking at this situation. We have been following it closely. I would note that while we have been very consistently critical of the human rights situation in Uzbekistan, we are very concerned about the outbreak of violence in Adijan, in particularly the escape of prisoners, including possibly members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an organization we consider a terrorist organization.

I think at this point we’re looking to all the parties involved to exercise restraint, avoid any unnecessary loss of life. But we are continuing to follow the situation closely. Our primary concern has to be the situation of Americans. We have — our Embassy has checked on Peace Corps volunteer and — Peace Corps volunteers and some of the other Americans who are in that area, and they are safe. They’ve reached out through the Warden system to contact Americans and encourage all Americans to stay inside and avoid the protests. I’d note as well that Uzbekistan’s Government has provided increased protection for our diplomatic facilities.

So, at this moment when the Uzbek government has sent troops that opened fire on a crowd of unarmed people, the priority of the U.S. is shifting blame to the victims by calling them terrorists, wondering about the escape of “possible” members of the IMU, and back-patting the Uzbek government for how it’s protecting Americans.

This isn’t exactly rocket science, but let me make it especially clear for the idiots in charge of this great nation of ours:
Dictatorial strongmen who suppress secular and religious democratic opposition via arbitrary detention and violence only encourage the growth of Islamist militancy.

Grow a brain, jerks. Here‘s an article from the Heritage Foundation* saying the same.

signed,
pissed off

UPDATE: I missed the followup from the State Dept briefing, which is worth posting. Watch the way Boucher dances to avoid bad-mouthing Karimov. Despicable. Too bad Satan only has three mouths… there are legions in our government who would make worthy cud.

QUESTION: Sir, can I just follow up on that?

MR. BOUCHER: Yeah.

QUESTION: I mean, but the European Union is blaming the government for this violence and I just wanted –

MR. BOUCHER: I haven’t seen the European Union’s statement. Certainly the outbreak of violence at this point, I think, is something we all regret and we want to see both sides try to do what they can to calm things down.

QUESTION: Do you think you’ve been sufficiently critical of Uzbekistan on it’s — on rule of law –

MR. BOUCHER: We’ve been very — read our Human Rights Report. It came out two months ago. We’ve been very clear about the human rights situation there. We’ve been very factual about it. But, unfortunately, the facts are not pretty.

QUESTION: Regardless of what the European Union said about this, the reports are that Uzbek troops opened fire on a square in this town. Do you think that’s a good idea? Do you think that is excessive violence?

MR. BOUCHER: We don’t think anybody should be using violence. We think everybody should be using — whatever — that everybody should be using restraint and doing whatever they can to avoid violence in this kind of situation, but I’m not going to comment on the latest report. You know, the one before that had other people doing other things. The one before that had criminals being released from a prison, including possible terrorists. You know, this has been a whole series of violent events and both sides need to do what they can to tamp down the violence and deal with these problems peacefully.

QUESTION: Have you conveyed that view directly to President Karimov or to other members of the –

MR. BOUCHER: I don’t know who exactly I talked to, but certainly our Embassy is conveying that view, yes.

QUESTION: Do you think, Richard, those people, or anyone for that matter, in Uzbekistan has the right to call for the President’s resignation?

MR. BOUCHER: We believe that everywhere people have the right to express their grievances and that they should be able to do that, but that they should do that peacefully and that grievances should be perceived — pursued through a peaceful process.

QUESTION: And if I can try, sort of, the same question in another way, do you think that there is a response to –

MR. BOUCHER: I’ll give you the same answer.

(Laughter.)

QUESTION: Well, that’s — we’ll see. Do you think the government’s response to what has happened was appropriate?

MR. BOUCHER: Again, we think everybody should be doing everything they can to avoid violence, to calm down the situation and to deal with these differences peacefully.

In the 1997 movie “As Good As It Gets”, Helen Hunt’s character complains to her son’s doctor about the fucking HMO bastards restricting her son’s care. The scene hit a nerve, drawing spontaneous ovations around the country.

For me, the movie didn’t ring so true. Many people with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) have had their own run-ins with HMO bastards, but the doctor-patient relationship portrayed in this movie: thoughtful, caring, doctors, kindly imparting knowledge and useful recommendations on grateful patients, is just a Hollywood fantasy for most PWCs (People with CFS).

I have been through doctor’s appointments that were more cross-examinations than examinations. I have had doctors get angry with me for suggesting treatments I’d read about and I’ve had doctors get angry with me for refusing treatments I knew would be harmful because they had “a hunch” it might help. I’ve had a doctor lecture me about the importance of doing schoolwork while I was too sick to watch television and a doctor get visibly angry when my test results showed that she still didn’t know what was wrong with me. Like virtually every PWC, I have had multiple doctors tell me that I “NEED A PSYCH EVAL!!!”, as one wrote in my file. (FWIW, I’ve had numerous psych evals.) And compared to many people with CFS, I’ve gotten off easy. I can only imagine how the patients of people who read Psychology Today articles like Is It All in My Head? are treated.

Now, I have seen a handful of doctors who were very good and there are some brave doctors who have put their careers on the line to research treatments. Literally. One researcher at the American Association for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome conference I attended informed me that if your name appeared anywhere near the words “CFS” you would never get funded on anything, CFS-related or otherwise. That was 1999, perhaps times have changed. Interestingly, non-scientific surveys of doctors and researchers at the conference showed that most either have or had CFS themselves, had family members or spouses with CFS, or were the doctor present at a large outbreak.

If the personal is political and all that, then right now PWCs are still in the bewildered analysis stage. As in, what could we have possibly done to qualify us for such animus? There are theories, this from a woman on a mailing list I’m on:

[T]his is because there are 9 times more women than men with [Fibromyalgia, a related disease] and [CFS] sufferers are also overwhelmingly women. And this is just how women get treated, most of the time.

Get used to it, guys. Sorry, but you have a “woman’s condition.” So get prepared to be blamed, belittled and not believed.

And I think that’s part of it. But Gulf War vets who came down with a very CFS-like illness get virtually the same treatment, as did Multiple Schlerosis patients around the turn of the 20th century. So, my question to you and the entire blogosphere is this: why do doctors suck so much? What can be done about it?

Uzbekistan is blowing up. Since I was planning on going there sometime next year, this eenterests me greatly.

The New York Times is reporting from Moscow (with binoculars, I guess) the following:

MOSCOW, May 13 – Armed gunmen attacked police posts and stormed a prison in eastern Uzbekistan early this morning, unleashing a day of protest, chaos and violence that left at least 10 people dead and dozens more wounded, according to news reports, official accounts and one person who claimed to have joined an uprising against the government of President Islam Karimov.

I take from this that they were relying at least partly on Karimov’s propaganda. The short, short version, as far as I can figure it out:

Twenty-three Muslim businessmen were put on trial by Karimov, accused of being part of a relatively unknown group of Islamic extremists, Akramia, which the government claims has an association with Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a violent, bomb-throwing Islamic extremist outfit. Akramia is the group of supporters of jailed Uzbek dissident Akram Yuldashev (Yaldushov), who Karimov locked up in 1999 on charges of plotting to overthrow his government. Why anyone would want to do THAT, I can’t possibly imagine.

The Akramis don’t seem to be very good candidates for terrorists – they are completely above-board, forming a respected business community around the city of Andijan. They have implemented their own welfare/profit-sharing system. They are, indeed, devout Muslims, but they vehemently deny being part of any extremist network.

The arrest followed a recent bombing in Tashkent. The Akramis responded by threatening to… call for demonstrations in the streets.

Well, they were convicted, following a highly-polarizing trial. After the recent upheaval in Kyrgyzstan, people are no doubt feeling their oats. So they demonstrated in Andijan, probably tried to free their jailed comrades. Karimov responded by sending in troops who opened fire on the crowd, killing maybe a dozen or so. NYT gives us this:

By nightfall, troops loyal to Mr. Karimov’s government gained control of the central square, dispersing the protesters, according to news reports from the city, citing government officials. The government also claimed to have retaken the mayor’s office, which the armed gunmen seized in the hours after storming the prison, but it was not immediately clear what happened to at least a dozen hostages they had captured. Gunfire was reported in the city for hours afterward.

Mr. Karimov’s government announced earlier today that nine people died and 34 were wounded in the initial violence. It said that “an armed group of criminals” attacked the city’s police and military posts and stormed its prison shortly after midnight today, freeing hundreds of prisoners. The gunmen and freed prisoners were then joined in the central square by hundreds of protests in what appeared to be a spontaneous demonstration of support.

As always, keep this FOREMOST IN YOUR MIND. The Uzbeks are our allies in the “War on Terror”. (Holy fuck.) We send people to Karimov to be tortured, who has them boiled alive for us.

The White House responded, thankfully. They said this:

“The people of Uzbekistan want to see a more representative and democratic government, but that should come through peaceful means, not through violence,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan added.

“While we have been very consistently critical of the human rights situation in Uzbekistan, we are very concerned about the outbreak of violence in Andizhan,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Washington was particularly concerned about “the escape of prisoners, including possibly members of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, an organization we consider a terrorist organization,” Boucher said.

Lovely, lovely people, our goddamn motherfucking cocksuckers. I mean, government.

Another conversation I had in my kung fu class produced this idea:

Consider the possibility that Paris Hilton does not exist. There never was any such person, nor is there a younger sister Nicky Hilton. There IS an actress who plays Paris Hilton. Her name is Claudia Farraday, and she is employed by a small and obscure production studio. A few years ago this studio paid a large and undisclosed amount of money to the Hilton family to make use of their family name. They would create a character, a true-to-life character around whom they would build a brand. Television shows, videos, clothing lines, makeup – you name it. All built up with far more verisimilitude than any screen creation could offer, because this one would actually BE real – as far as anyone knew.

They engineered their creation perfectly: she would start quietly, appearing as a model here and there – to establish credibility. Then she would blow up big, with instant notoriety that would fuel the growth of her prime-time television show. If it went well, they could move on from there… maybe maneuver for a book deal. Pepper her life with curious and scandalous incidents that would attract the attention of the appropriate consumer brackets. Quoi? Paris Hilton’s private phone book was hacked and published on the Internet? How salacious! (“Yes – Danger paid quite a bit for that little piece of promotional theater.”)

It was the perfect mechanism, for a public jaded by threadbare, aging forms of entertainment. Those old dog-and-pony shows wouldn’t work on this tough, calloused public. But a sucker-punch, a fake – a dose of concocted reality. Ah. That would catch them unawares.

The first reflex for failing managers is not to resign, ask their critics for advice, nor question whether their goals are reasonable. No, for a beaurocratic manager, the first thing to do is reorganize. Which is why it shouldn’t be a surprise to see, in an obscure Beltway publication, that former managers of the Department of Homeland Security are calling for reorganization.

I’m not sure what kind of reorganization can turn 19 disparate agencies into a lean mean national-security machine. It may not be possible. It seems like every time one of these agencies is forced to focus more on ideological or religious terrorism, they pay less attention to real security threats. Farmers have complained that the new unified border guards could be letting in all sorts of agricultural threats. People living near chemical plants worry that the department relies entirely on private plant security plans, with no oversight or regulation. And the stricter rules for college students are reducing the US’ influence in the world by “causing delays and potentially deterring students from pursuing degrees in the United States.”

Even if it is possible to get perfect security against immigrants, illnesses, corporate raiders, currency speculators, and terrorists, I’m not sure I want to live in such a state.

I wish the agency would think about what security really means. I wish that instead of trying to build an iron wall against the world, they should teach people how to deal with threats as individuals and communities. Physical and institutional self-defense. If someone is trying to mess with you — be it a mugger, a political terrorist, or a boss — here is how you can organize and fight back. This kind of active, rather than passive, self-defense is more like bicycling, less like driving a tank.

But the Transportation “Security” Administration is directed to buy machinery to detect every possible threat, from matches to bad thoughts, before they reach the plane. And they can’t even do that — they spend money instead on silk flowers. Should I hold my breath as I wait for them to teach passengers how to disarm a terrorist?

At the nexus of several different threads from this blog is this article in the Independent, where British citizens give their views on the Independent’s call for electoral reform, including a lot of discussion of PR.