Rhinocrisy

After my post following Katrina in which I slammed the Red Cross, I feel I should point people to respectable grassroots organizations raising money for the lastest, ever more catastrophic, catastrophe. Now I realize that I am not the guy around here with subcontinental cred, and this group might have political connections that other rhinocrats might abhor. All I know is that I got this message from someone whose politics I trust, my friend and colleague Gosia Wozniacka, who also assures us that the wonderful Muzamil Jaleel, in Indian Kashmir, is ok and reporting like mad.

From: farjad nabi ,

dear everyone,

as the scale of the disaster in the north of pakistan is sinking in, there is a massive outpouring of support from all over the world. we in Lahore got jolted pretty badly and since then there have been aftershocks everyday.

my phone is constantly ringing and i’m getting an email and SMS an hour, as it seems the whole city is raising funds for the earthquake victims. people are frantically doing wholesale purchases of blankets, tents, dried milk, flour and warm clothes, packing them up in individual packs and sending them off on trucks.

however the current situation is that most of the effected areas are still inaccessible by vehicles and what’s more, the govenment/army have still not gotten their act together and coordination of relief efforts is inefficient to say the least. so there’s a huge question mark over whether the goodwill of those who want to help will ever reach those who need it in time ?

in Pakistan there is the trusted name of Edhi Foundation which can be relied upon to deliver and people are generously donating to them. from what i gather, Edhi is working mainly in Muzaffarabad and the surrounding areas in Kashmir.

but for the hardest hit areas of Balakot, Mansehra and the adjoining villages, the best organisation to support is Sungi / Omar Asghar Khan Development Foundation (OAKDF). These people have been working in that area for the last 20 years and their head offices are in Abottabad, which has become the nervecentre for relief efforts.

Most importantly, they have knowledge of the local geography, conditions and routes which anyone from the outside would be unaware of. They have a loose network of grassroot workers spread over remote villages, so they are best situated to know what is needed and where.

If you’d like more info you can call

Ali Asghar Khan of OAKDF : 00-92-300-8565279

or if you’d like to make a direct donation, then
the relevant information is as follows:

for those outside pakistan:

Omar Asghar Khan Development Foundation

MCB Bank Ltd.

Abbottabad

Pakistan

US Dollar A/C No: 0585-12-02-542-2

Swift Code: MUCBPKKAA

and for donations in Pak Rs.

PAK RS A/C: 0585-01-01-6019-3

thank you and please forward this email to those
who might be interested,

farjad

… You promise to veto a bill because it contains provisions condemning the use of torture against detainees and sets up comissions to investigate the possibility of torture. You do that despite the fact that it passed the Senate 90 to 9.^*

Time to give the military another mission for which it is untrained and ill-equipped. I see some Medals of Honor on the way, if they can find anyone still alive to give them to.

WASHINGTON – President Bush, stirring debate on the worrisome possibility of a bird flu pandemic, suggested dispatching American troops to enforce quarantines in any areas with outbreaks of the killer virus.

Bush asserted aggressive action could be needed to prevent a potentially crippling U.S. outbreak of a bird flu strain that is sweeping through Asian poultry and causing experts to fear it could become the next deadly pandemic. Citing concern that state and local authorities might be unable to contain and deal with such an outbreak, Bush asked Congress to give him the authority to call in the military.

Before any new product, idea, or war can grow in the physical world, soil must be tilled and fertilized in the minds of the public. This is the process that Jacques Ellul called “pre-propaganda.” Modern governments have learned from the marketing world how to engage in pre-propaganda in obvious but effective ways. Like this transparent attempt to make English people hate Iran.

I hope those leftover Iraqis like the taste of dead Iranians!

Oh and did I mention that Get Your War On has a new page or two published, along with this plaintive request?

NOTE: I apologize for not keeping the web site updated. From now on, the easiest way to read GYWO comics in a timely manner is probably to convince the editor of your local alternative weekly to publish them. Thanks.

Do you want to know more about my health than you ever wanted to know? No, of course not, that’s impossible! But wait, you can! at a competing blog service, read my almost-daily, half-baked thoughts on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.

I had dinner with an old pal of mine last night, who is a vegan. As I often do,^* I began to probe him about the limits of his veganism and why he chose to abide by his particular set of standards. He was remarkably good-natured about it and readily admitted that, of course, like all philosophies veganism invariably breaks down around the edges.

My particular test case was oysters. I had recent experience with these myself, watching some friends drip raw oyster over the tongue and into the back of the throat, and I was left wondering why exactly such a tantalizing experience must be taboo for me.

Another example that came up today: ciona, also known as the sea squirt. This little bugger is actually a chordate, so more closely related to us than a mere mollusk. But it amounts to little more than a stomach with attached mouth and heart. It (like the oyster) lives an almost purely vegetative lifestyle, breathing in sea water and filtering out whatever nutrients it can.

Compare this to the mustard plant, or a corn stalk. Not even the most susceptible of vegans feels a twinge when their teeth cut into an ear of corn. But in point of fact, the differences amount to mere biochemistry; one lacks a chloroplast and cell walls, the other produces no hemoglobin, etc. This, I very much doubt, is what motivates most vegans. (“No heme molecules shall pass these lips! Except the ones from kissing my girlfriend when her lips are chapped! Those are okay!”)

Of course, most vegans these days are hardly strict, and not surprisingly their patterns of consumption are frayed around the edges. But it seems a difficult thing for us, with our dichotomizing minds, to live in a frayed world. Is that something we can escape? Or must we learn to live at odds with the knottiness of reality?

Over the weekend, some evil spammers seem to have discovered this blog and its abundant readership, which as of now measures in the full dozens (!). To thwart their nefarious schemes (which include going so far afield as posting an actual blog full of news articles with links in its sidebar to spamvertising-blogs), I have enabled the by-now ubiquitous image-verification schema for posting comments and modified the comments hack so it appears inline. Apologies for any inconvenience to you and yours.