The Drug War's Invisible Victims
There are also war tolls beyond the body counts. The homicide number
misses the disappeared, the thousands whose bodies – dead or alive – are never found, never counted. And it hides the mutilation of lives caused by “collateral damage”: the loss of loved ones, families forced from their homes, permanent injury, orphans and widows, sexual abuse, lives lived in fear.
These costs fall primarily on the shoulders of women–the mothers, daughters, and sisters who are left with the nearly impossible task of seeking answers and redress in a justice system outpaced by violence and overrun by corruption. They are often re-victimized by government agencies that ignore, reject, or stifle their pleas for justice.
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CIP Americas
North America
Pot-based Prescription Drugs Are On Their Way
A British company, GW Pharma, is in advanced clinical trials for the world's first pharmaceutical developed from raw marijuana instead of synthetic equivalents — a mouth spray it hopes to market in the U.S. as a treatment for cancer pain. It hopes to see FDA approval by the end of 2013.
Sativex contains marijuana's two best known components — delta 9-THC and cannabidiol — and already has been approved in Canada, New Zealand and eight European countries for relieving muscle spasms associated with multiple sclerosis.
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Seattle Times
Welfare Drug-testing Bill Passes Indiana House
Rep. McMillin
withdrew his bill on Friday, saying
Dvorak's amendment likely violated the Constitution. On Monday, he came back with a new version of the legislation that softened the lawmaker drug testing provision. Instead of blanket testing for every member of the General Assembly, the new version of the bill lets lawmakers opt in to a system of random screening similar to the one for families seeking cash assistance. (If they don't consent, they lose their parking spaces and other perks.)
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Huffington Post
Critics Counter County's Claim of Ecstasy Epidemic
If anything, Sibley says, it’s the drugs that aren’t MDMA or ecstasy that can do the most damage. MDMA, colloquially referred to as Molly, often comes in through black-market shipments of pills or capsules containing powder, Sibley says, which can lead to the drugs being cut with methamphetamine, ketamine, benzopiprozene (BZP), or dextromethorphan (DXM).
According to county figures, five people have died from taking drugs they thought were ecstasy since 2009.
“The frightening thing, when you look at it, is that so few of them actually contain [MDMA],” Sibley says. Of the tablets seized by law enforcement, Sibley estimates that as few as one in four may actually contain MDMA.
Read the full article at:
SanJose.com
Europe/UK
Is Banning Legal Highs Effective? Learning From the Hungarian Experience
This current epidemic of legal highs was partly caused by the collapse of the European Ecstasy (MDMA) market in 2008. That is, the (at least temporarily) successful efforts of our politicians to prevent the large scale production of MDMA led to the rise of new legal substitutes to fill the gap in the recreational stimulant market. So now, instead of one relatively less harmful substance (MDMA) dominating the night life we have many new substances with unknown risks and harms. Governments try to respond the crisis of prohibition with more prohibition: restrict drug legislation and prohibit new substances as fast as they can.
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European Drug Policy Initiative
Fixerum: The Mobile Injection Room in Copenhagen
Most injecting drug users has been using drugs in dark alleys where there is no access to sterile injection equipment and nobody helps if they overdose - but this situation is changing now. Harm reduction activists were tired of many years of debate so they went ahead and set up a new mobile injection room, Fixerum. This van aims to reach out people who use drugs on the streets and let them use drugs under medial supervision.
Read the full article accompanying the video at:
International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC)
Drugs Mule Terms Cut in New Sentencing Guidelines
Under the new guideline, which comes into force on 27 February, the starting point for sentencing drug mules guilty of carrying crack, heroin and cocaine will be six years, before judges take into account aggravating and mitigating factors.
Those found guilty of a much higher level of involvement in the drugs trade will face longer sentences.
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BBC News
Latin America
The State of Mexico's Major Cartels
Global intelligence organization STRATFOR released its annual analysis of the state of the Mexican drug cartels, and forecasts their activities in 2012. It's a comprehensive primer for anyone interested in the narco-war and its social and political implications for the violence-plagued country.
Read the full report at:
The Cutting Edge News
Organized Crime Sets Its Sights on Peaceful Uruguay
While the scale of drug trafficking in Uruguay is nowhere near that which exists in Mexico, its remote borders with Argentina and Brazil and its 600 kilometer-long coast make the country a significant transshipment point for foreign drug smugglers. A comparison could be drawn with
Ecuador, which is used by criminal groups of various nationalities
, drawn by its convenient location bordering Colombia and Peru.
Read the full article at:
InSight
Other News
The Neuroscience of Pot: Why Marijuana May Bring Serenity or Psychosis
In the
new study
, the researchers had 15 men who were relatively unseasoned pot users take capsules containing THC, CBD, and flour (placebo) on each of three occasions. The participants then took simple computer tests in which arrows, pointing either left or right, flashed on the screen; the men had to respond based on their direction. Occasionally, an “oddball” arrow was thrown in to the sequence, which was at a 23-degree angle. This setup allowed the researchers to compare the men’s reactions to usual vs. oddball stimuli, and to see how the various chemicals affected it.
Read the full article at:
Forbes
Jean Marlowe is known as the Godmother of Medical Cannabis in the State of North Carolina. In this wildly entertaining interview, the feisty Marlowe gives her irreverent take on the hypocrisy of cannabis prohibition, and gives moving testimony about the damage done to medical patients caught up in the criminal justice system.
The Exile Nation Project - Interview with Jean Marlowe from
Charles B Shaw on
Vimeo.
Newsletters and Weekly Features
“Heartburn pills taken by thousands of women ‘raise risk of hip fractures by up to 50 per cent’,” the Daily Mail reported today. The headline is based on a large new study of drugs called proton pump inhibitors (PPIs), which are commonly used to treat heartburn, acid reflux and ulcers.
The study found that post-menopausal women who regularly took PPIs for at least two years were 35% more likely to suffer hip fracture than non-users, a figure that increases to 50% for women who were current or former smokers. However, although this increase in risk is large, the overall risk of fractures remains small.
This was a large, well conducted study that suggests that long-term use of PPIs is associated with a small increase in risk of hip fracture, although the researchers point out that the risk seems to be confined to women with a history of smoking. Unlike previous research, this study took careful account of other factors that might affect risk such as body weight and calcium intake.
Women who are concerned about their use of PPIs are advised to consult their GP.
Where did the story come from?
The study was carried out by researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston University and Harvard Medical School and was funded by the US National Institutes of Health. The study was published in the
peer-reviewed British Medical Journal.
Although the Mail’s headline is technically correct, it gives the impression that these drugs carry a very large increase in the risk of hip fracture. In fact, the study found that, in absolute terms, the increase in risk for regular users was small. Researchers found that among the women in the study who regularly used PPIs, about 2 in every 1,000 fractured a hip each year. In non-users, this figure was about 1.5 in every 1,000. This is a increase of about 5 fractures a year in every 10,000 women taking PPIs.
The Mail did point out this “absolute difference” towards the end of its story. Both the Mail and the BBC included comments from independent experts.
What kind of research was this?
The researchers point out that PPIs are among the most commonly used drugs worldwide. In the US they are available over the counter, but in the UK are available only on prescription. They are used for symptoms of heartburn,
gastro-oesophageal reflux disease (GORD) and
stomach ulcers. PPIs are thought to work by reducing acid production in the stomach. Concern has grown over a potential association between long-term use of these drugs and bone fractures, although the researchers say that previous studies have had conflicting results and many did not take other factors (called
confounders) that might affect the risk of fracture into account.
In their
cohort study of nearly 80,000 post-menopausal women, the researchers set out to examine the association between long-term use of PPIs and the risk of hip fracture. Unlike a
randomised controlled trial, a cohort study cannot prove cause and effect. However, cohort studies enable researchers to follow large groups of people for long periods and they are useful for looking at potential long-term risks and benefits of treatments. The study was
prospective, which means it followed participants in time, rather than collecting information retrospectively. This makes it more reliable.
What did the research involve?
This study took its data from a large ongoing US study called the Nurses Health Study, which began in 1976 and which sent health questionnaires every two years to 121,700 female nurses aged 30-55.
From 1982 participants were asked to report all previous hip fractures and in each biennial questionnaire, women were asked if they had sustained a hip fracture over the previous two years. Those who reported a hip fracture were sent a follow-up questionnaire asking for more details. Fractures from bad accidents, such as falling down a flight of stairs, were excluded from the study. A review of medical records for 30 of the women validated all self-reported fractures.
From 2000 to 2006 the women were asked if they had regularly used a PPI in the previous two years. In earlier questionnaires (1994, 1996, 1998 and 2000), the women were also asked if they had regularly used other drugs for acid reflux, called H2 blockers.
The biennial questionnaires also included questions on other factors including menopausal status, body weight, leisure activities, smoking and alcohol use, use of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) and other medicines. Researchers used a validated food frequency questionnaire to calculate the women’s total intake of calcium and vitamin D.
They then analysed the data for any association between regular use of PPIs and hip fracture, adjusting their findings for key confounders such as body weight, physical activity, smoking, and alcohol and calcium intake. They also took into account whether the reasons for using a PPI might have affected the results.
Finally, they carried out a systematic review combining their results with 10 previous studies on the risk of hip fracture and the long-term use of PPIs.
What were the basic results?
The researchers documented 893 hip fractures during the period of the study. They also found that, in 2000, 6.7% of women regularly used a PPI – a figure that had risen to 18.9% by 2008.
- Amongst women who had regularly taken a PPI at any time, there were 2.02 hip fractures per 1,000 person years, compared with 1.51 fractures per 1,000 person years among non-users.
- Women who regularly used PPIs for at least two years had a 35% higher risk of hip fracture than non-users (age adjusted hazard ratio (HR) 1.35; 95%
confidence interval (CI) 1.13 to 1.62), with longer use associated with increasing risk. Adjustment for risk factors, including body mass index, physical activity and intake of calcium did not alter this association (HR 1.36; CI 1.13 to 1.63).
The increased risk did not change when researchers also took into account the reasons for PPI use:
- Current and former smokers who regularly used PPIs were 51% more likely to have a hip fracture than non-users (HR 1.51; (CI) 1.20 to 1.91).
- Among women who never smoked there was no association between PPI use and hip fracture (HR 1.06; (CI) 0.77 to 1.46).
- In a meta-analysis of these results with 10 previous studies, the risk of hip fracture in users of PPI was higher compared with non-users of PPIs (pooled odds ratio 1.30; CI 1.25 to 1.36).
The researchers also found that two years after women stopped taking PPIs, their risk of hip fracture returned to a similar level to that in women who had never taken them. Also, women taking H2 blockers had a “modest” increased risk of hip fracture but the risk was higher in women who took PPIs.
How did the researchers interpret the results?
The researchers conclude that their results provide “compelling evidence” of a risk between PPI use and hip fracture. They say the findings suggest that the need for long-term, continuous use of PPIs should be carefully evaluated, particularly among people who have smoked or are still smokers.
They suggest that PPIs may increase the risk of fracture by impairing the absorption of calcium, although in this study the risk of fracture was not affected by dietary calcium intake. The finding that the risk was confined to women with a history of smoking (an established risk factor for fracture) indicates that smoking and PPIs may act together (have a “synergistic effect”) on fracture risk.
Conclusion
This large study had several strengths. Unlike some previous studies, it collected information on and took into account other key risk factors for fracture, including body weight, smoking, alcohol use and physical activity. It also looked at the women’s use of PPIs every two years (rather than just asking them once) and took into account variations in use during this time in their analysis.
However, as the authors note, it also had some limitations:
- It did not ask about the brands of PPI used, nor the doses of PPI the women took, both of which could affect risk of fracture.
- The information about hip fracture was self-reported and not confirmed by medical records (although a smaller study has found self-reporting of hip fracture to be reliable).
- Also, the study did not record the women’s bone mineral density (BMD). Low BMD is an important risk factor for fracture and adding a measure of this could have strengthened the study.
Finally, because this was a cohort study, other factors both measured and unmeasured may have affected the results, even though researchers took many of these into account in their analysis. Socio-economic status and education, for example, were not established. Because this was a study of registered nurses, the applicability of the results to other socio-economic groups might be limited.
This study found that the long-term, regular use of these drugs is associated with a small increased risk in hip fracture among older women, a risk that seems to be confined to past or current smokers. Women who regularly take PPIs and who are concerned about these findings are advised to talk to their GP. Whether any change in use of this commonly prescribed drug is needed requires further study.
Links To The Headlines
Indigestion drugs taken by millions linked to hip fractures. The Daily Telegraph, February 1 2012
Heartburn pills taken by thousands of women 'raise risk of hip fractures by up to 50 per cent'. Daily Mail, February 1 2012
Ulcer drugs 'link to fractures'. BBC News, February 1 2012
Links To Science
Khalili H, Huang ES, Jacobson BC, et al.
Use of proton pump inhibitors and risk of hip fracture in relation to dietary and lifestyle factors: a prospective cohort study. British Medical Journal. Published online January 31 2012
builds on previous work by French's laboratory that identified two cellular proteins that are important factors in hepatitis C virus infection. In that earlier research, French and his team set out to identify the cellular factors involved in hepatitis C replication. Using mass spectrometry, they found that heat-shock proteins (HSPs) 40 and 70 were important for viral infection. HSP 70 was previously known to be involved, but the study linked HSP 40 for the first time to hepatitis C infection. The researchers further showed that the natural compound quercetin, which inhibits the synthesis of these proteins, significantly inhibited viral infection in tissue culture. In the current study, published Jan. 30 in the peer-reviewed journal Hepatology, French and his team demonstrated that the viral, non-structural protein 5A (NS5A) directly binds to HSP 70, and they mapped the site of the NS5A–HSP 70 complex on NS5A. While HSP 70 was previously shown to bind to NS5A in cells, a direct NS5A–HSP70 interaction and complex formation was established in this study. In an effort to stop this interaction, the researchers tested peptides that might inhibit HSP 70. "This is important because we've developed a small peptide which binds to that site and blocks the interaction between the proteins that is important for viral replication," French said. "This is another, potentially highly efficacious way to block replication of hepatitis C." An estimated 160 million people worldwide are infected with hepatitis C, and the conventional treatments — interferon and ribavirin — can have significant side effects. A new drug targeting cellular proteins rather than viral proteins would be a valuable addition to the treatment arsenal, French said. "We were surprised that this peptide works this well," he said. "While its mechanism is different, the activity of this peptide is comparable to other newly developed antivirals." The study, done in tissue culture, shows that the peptide gains entry into the cell easily and blocks the cascade of cellular events that allows the virus to replicate, French said. Blocking the HSP 70 protein rather than a viral protein also reduces the chance of patients with the hepatitis C virus developing resistance to the peptide. "There's no direct pressure on the virus, so it is less likely to mutate and develop resistance," French said. "The goal is to achieve a sustained response, essentially a cure, meaning there is no more virus replication. There are a lot of drugs coming out now that are designed to stop hepatitis C replication, but resistance is still an issue. About 10 to 20 percent of patients on the new drugs become resistant. This new peptide may help combat resistance." Going forward, French and his team are testing variants of the newly discovered peptide to see if they can develop one with an even higher affinity and can decrease the size of the peptide to improve cellular penetration and liver targeting. The new and improved peptides will be tested in animal models. This peptide "may be a candidate for hepatitis C therapy," the study states. "Considering the potency of the peptide in suppressing viral translation levels, treatment with this peptide may significantly improve the efficacy of conventional treatments in patients who become resistant to conventional therapies." The study was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health and by the California Center for Antiviral Drug Discovery at the University of California.
UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has more than 240 researchers and clinicians engaged in disease research, prevention, detection, control, treatment and education. One of the nation's largest comprehensive cancer centers, the Jonsson Center is dedicated to promoting research and translating basic science into leading-edge clinical studies. In July 2011, the center was named among the top 10 cancer centers nationwide by U.S. News & World Report, a ranking it has held for 11 of the last 12 years.
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After many years of delays, the agency said in August it would complete the first part of the dioxin reassessment, which would have set a toxicological threshold for the first time, by January 31.
The draft reassessment has been sharply criticized by the food industry for being too restrictive and being based on shaky science. Health and environmental groups expressed outrage at the continued delay.
"Shame on EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson for denying parents the information they need to protect their children from the health impacts of dioxin," said Lois Marie Gibbs, executive director of the Center for Health, Environment & Justice, a group among dozens pressuring EPA on the issue. "This is America -- parents have the right to know."
Dioxins are released into the air during certain industrial processes, like cement production and are also naturally occurring. According to new government data, air releases of dioxin rose 10 percent between 2009 and 2010. Dioxins are ingested by food animals, via grazing and contaminated feed, and are bioaccumulated -- a reality that has concerned regulators and public health authorities because dioxins are linked to reproductive and developmental problems, immune system damage and cancer.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 90 percent of human exposure to dioxins is via food, particularly meat, dairy, fish and shellfish. The food industry worries that the EPA reassessment would have recommended an exposure threshold that is lower than the level of exposure many Americans already face through their daily diet.
In December, the Food Industry Dioxin Working Group (FIDWG) -- an ad hoc coalition made up of groups like United Egg Producers, the American Farm Bureau and the American Frozen Food Institute -- sent a letter to a senior White House policy adviser expressing "deep concern" over the effort. The letter was also sent to key officials at the EPA, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration, Health and Human Services, and the White House Office of Management and Budget.
The EPA's acceptable level for dioxin exposure, otherwise known as a reference oral dose (RfD), is expected to be .7 picograms per kilogram of body weight per day. Similar thresholds set by the World Health Organization and the European Union are between 1-4 picograms per kilogram of bodyweight per day.
If EPA finalized an RfD for dioxin it would not be a regulatory action, but it could be used as the basis for future regulation and would likely fuel some people to alter their dietary choices.
As the food industry pointed out recently in a letter to the Obama administration, some common food items could easily put someone over the draft RfD.
"Under EPA's proposal...nearly every American - particularly young children - could easily exceed the daily RfD after consuming a single meal or heavy snack," according to the industry groups. "The implications of this action are chilling. EPA is proposing to create a situation in which most U.S. agricultural products could arbitrarily be classified as unfit for consumption. The impact on agricultural production - conventional, organic, livestock/poultry/dairy, fruits, grains and vegetables - may be significant, as will be the loss of trade markets, all without evidence of additional health protection."
The American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical companies, says that EPA needs to take more time to ensure the reassessment is based on sound science, and claims that the agency is "ignoring the most recent peer-reviewed science." Many lawmakers and advocates say the reassessment is years overdue and that further delays are the result of undue influence of industry.
Just how long has this reassessment been in the works? EPA first began work on assessing the risks of dioxin exposure in the 1980s. The most recent human health reassessment was submitted by EPA to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2003, during the Bush administration. In 2006, NAS submitted recommendations to EPA on the reassessment. In May 2010, the agency released a draft reanalysis and the agency says it's working expeditiously to get a final guidance out, but major industry opposition remains.
"The American public has been waiting for the completion of this dioxin study since 1985 and cannot afford any further delays," Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) said a letter to EPA this month to urge the agency to meet its deadline. "Despite worldwide agreement about the toxicity of these chemicals and their persistence in the environment, EPA has yet to release its findings on how dangerous these chemicals are to public health."
According to CDC, dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have a similar toxicity.
"Human health effects from low environmental exposures are unclear," says CDC on its resource page. "People who have been unintentionally exposed to large amounts of these chemicals have developed a skin condition called chloracne, liver problems, and elevated blood lipids (fats). Laboratory animal studies have shown various effects, including cancer and reproductive problems."
For more information on dioxin exposure, see
FDA's resource guide here.
Russia’s growing nationalist movement has alarmed many liberal commentators, who wonder how the country that defeated Adolf Hitler could have given birth to so many young men overtly sympathetic to his ideas. Journalist Olesya Gerasimenko, who has covered several neo-Nazi trials, wondered where the defendants came from: how Russian boys could go out and kill foreigners in cold blood. She persuaded three of the convicted murderers’ parents to talk to her. I often observe them in court. They sigh and observe how their son – accused of 15 murders – has lost weight. They wink at him furtively. They beg the guard to loosen his handcuffs, oblivious to the voice of the prosecutor: ‘…demonstrating their own superiority over people of non-Slavic origin, they attacked the victim K., whose external appearance indicated Asian ethnicity, and struck him with a knife no less than 26 times in the head and other parts of the body, causing wounds to the chest, which penetrated the right and left pleural and abdominal cavities with damage to the right and left lungs, the left part of the diaphragm, the spleen, the third and ninth ribs on the left, and the chest, as a result of which the victim died from severe loss of blood’.
I want to ask: did you know, did you guess, did you support this? What were you thinking when they were arrested? Do you believe the judges? Have you come to terms with this? Are you proud, or are you ashamed?
Neo-nationalism in Russia is growing and becoming
more overt. Photo
Yury Goldenshteyn/Demotix.
All rights reserved.
But the parents of those nationalists convicted of violent crimes are rarely asked about these things, and they themselves are not keen to talk. Only a few agreed to meet me, and even they didn’t agree immediately. ‘And what views do you yourself hold?’ ‘You’re not interested in the documents.’ ‘You’re not going to actually print any of this!’ But after 15 minutes of face-to-face conversation it becomes clear that they do have something to say.
One has adopted the views of their only child and says that violence is necessary. One blames the politicians that have incited adolescents to street fighting. One cries, convinced of the innocence of his son. They are all different, but they have all asked themselves one and the same question: ‘am I to blame for what happened?’
Elena Krivets, academic, mother of Vasily Krivets
Vasily Krivets is a 23-year-old nationalist. He was sentenced in 2010 to life imprisonment for 15 murders. The victims were citizens of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Russia. He was arrested, but escaped police custody when taken to one of the crime scenes for a reconstruction and hid for almost a year. He did not confess to a single one of the crimes and refused to give evidence.
‘Vasya is a warrior. And everything follows from this. When he was a child all his little fingers were pistols, all of them shooting. Then he formed his toy soldiers into armies. Then we played together, conquering Constantinople.
Gradually he gained an education. He’s not the kind of warrior who just lashes out with his fists and feet, but a warrior who understands history and tradition. I myself have a degree in philosophy, and my husband was a political scientist.
Our family line is an old one, we’re Cossacks. So his love of history appeared by itself. He started with the American Indians and the Civil War. Straight away he wanted to go and save the American Indians. He investigated the Civil War himself, and the White Army immediately interested him. He’s now completely debunked the myth of some great victory by the Red Army. He came to venerate the Tsar, Nicholas II.
I had an aunt, a noblewoman, an aristocrat, she gave me a different understanding of history, which differed from what the communists taught about the Tsar, the Tsarina. She laid in me the foundations of religion. Vasily read children’s books about the Tsar. Somehow or other we were in St. Petersburg; we were called into the University and he, 12 years old, asked us to buy him Tikhomirov’s academic volume on Russian history. We, laughing, bought it. At home he leafed through it a bit and said – when I grow up, I’ll read it. He was already studying it in his first year of higher education.
There was a period when my husband and I were travelling in Egypt on business, and the whole time there Vasya kept saying it was ‘lost time’. I didn’t understand at all. I thought it would be interesting for a teenager to see another country, to travel. I understood only later that he felt a deep sense of his motherland, and he was homesick. Even in his young heart he felt that he had been cut off from the life of the country.
When he was studying in years nine and ten he went to a Cossack Sunday school. This was a club at his school. There were field expeditions, reconnaissance. I myself taught Orthodox catechism there, Cossack history. I went there specially. You should never let a child out of your sight, without knowing what and how he will be taught. Never. A mother must always know exactly what a teacher is telling her child. It is the parents, you see, not the teachers, who will answer before God for that child.
‘And it was then that I understood that there have always been individuals who went to battle like this; rather than cautiously, correctly, with their eye on the final outcome. Sometimes the outcome isn’t important. In order to raise the masses, you need a loud cry and a summons.’
When he finished school he said: ‘I’m a soldier, I need to enter a military institute of higher education’. But his intellectual inclination was more towards the humanities. And in a military college you need to pass algebra. I said to him: ‘well, into what sort of military institute?’ And he answered ‘for officers’. Well, he got in, and studied for about seven months. Then he ran away because, as he said himself, the uniform was 1944-style, and he got into the political science faculty instead. Our local church had a club for free style wrestling, hand-to-hand fighting and such like. Vasya carried on going on expeditions with them. They completed reconnaissance tasks there, you know, like we used to play ‘Summer Lightening’ (a ‘military-patriotic’ game played in the Soviet Union’s pioneer camps – editor).
With time he began to notice what was going on. In particular that Moscow was filling up with foreigners. And when he was around 16 years old he started to fight them. He of course didn’t say anything about it, but it was clear from the jeans he wore, and from his requests that we buy a certain type of boots. Once he mentioned that he had fought with black people over the drugs they were distributing in the metro. I didn’t see any fighting, but at home there was always discussion over whether violence was necessary or not. I was always against it. But he argued that it is right: that the Lord helps those who help themselves; that we need action as well as prayers. And action for him, as for a soldier, was to use his hands. It is only now that I agree with him. The court case has been and gone, the sentence too, so you see how long it took me to reach this position. And lots of people asked me why our lads went so openly, nakedly, unarmed, to battle. And it was then that I understood that there have always been individuals who went to battle like this; rather than cautiously, correctly, with their eye on the final outcome. Sometimes the outcome isn’t important. In order to raise the masses, you need a loud cry and a challenge.
Russian nationalism often has an extremely violent
side. In Moscow alone, there are hundreds of
racially-motivated murders each year. Photo CC:
Iliya Varlamov
The arrest wasn’t unexpected: we’d already had a similar experience with him. We have Cossack ancestry, and Don Cossacks always fought with Turks – and the first case we had was precisely with a Turk. That struck me. Then he had to be bought out of trouble – well, not exactly bought out, but this case had to be covered up by any means possible. It was a murder: there were three of them, two survived, one died. From that moment on Vasily’s views became clear. I understood that I wouldn’t change him. We didn’t row, no, that would have driven my son away from me. You must always protect your relationship with your child. I needed not to lose him. After the incident with the Turk I said: ‘Vas, first pay off the debt – we are in debt – I can’t do this myself, you help me. Study and work for now’. I thought I’d found a brilliant solution. For some time at least I could hold on to him.
Later he came to me himself and said: ‘Mum, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s time to take action’. I looked sadly at him and remained silent. And what could I say?
Confrontation has increased: the town is full of foreigners from other races with completely different mentalities, with whom we do not want to live. As a result white parents will now go anywhere, even to the outskirts of Moscow, just so to make sure there are only children like theirs in the classroom. Well, this is now happening all over the world. And genetic research has shown that when a person encounters someone of a different race, you see, he expends a huge amount of inner energy in order to suppress his inner opposition to them. Even these gay parades have started here. He also went to them, bashed the queers – well, these people’s mentalities are so alien… He asked: ‘where will be the place for my children?’ And it’s true, it’s already impossible to raise children in purity.
The government has a system in place to destroy our nation. Some people are imprisoned for drugs, others for drunkenness, others again for screwing around. Some people are stuffed full of money; this younger generation earns a good wage. And only a few remain who can understand what is happening. And how does the government find them? They need to provoke them, for example, to attack foreigners. There were an awful lot of provocateurs in the movement. Parents wrote to Putin saying that their children were being zombified, were being got at through the Internet. If someone is by nature a nationalist, simply loves his motherland, and he sees everything that is going on, then they stir him up.
‘The political system is built like that: they blame lads for not liking non-Russians.’
He understands now that he went against these blacks for nothing, that this process is being controlled by the government and bureaucrats. And what’s the point of fighting these ordinary people? There’s another million on their way here. Confronting them has helped a little bit though. Everything counts.
We held out hope until the very last moment during the court case. We prayed to St. Nicholas in the corridors, because they wouldn’t let us into the courtroom. But Judge Olikhver (chief justice in the case of Vasilii Krivets Natalia Olikhver - editor) is possessed by demons, she felt the spirit. In the recesses she would run out into the corridor and throw us out the door.
Despite the fact that they jail our children, we parents are united and think about what is wrong in our lives, and where the truth lies. The government has done us a favour by introducing us to each other. There are parents who take the side of their children. And there are also parents who refuse to accept their children’s views, who won’t accept the struggle. Some manage to deflect their children. Some don’t manage to. To begin with I didn’t agree with Vasily, but I could hardly do nothing: freedom must take priority.
I work in the Academy of Sciences, researching a doctorate in history; I write academic articles and teach. Vasily has been good for me, he’s given me a lot. He’s cleverer than me. He digs something up and shares it with me. And I with him.
What would I say to him, if he were to come out now and say that he was going to carry on killing, fighting the system? Well, what can one say to a person whose soul aches for the motherland and who is ready to give up his life for it? A mother can only bless. And know, that she blesses unto death.’
Andrei Appolonov, engineer, father of Victor Appolonov
Victor Appolonov is a 22-year-old member of the National-Socialist Society North (NSO-Sever) and was sentenced to life imprisonment for five murders. On the day the sentence was announced he entered the courtroom shouting ‘Yids, prepare to die!’ and ‘Baburova croaked, and you’ll croak too!’ (for further detail see ‘
The case of the thirteen’ in issue no. 29, 25 July).
‘We immediately refused a lawyer, because they are useless. I think that’s it’s useless to go to the Supreme Court too. This is a case that’s been politically ordered, so it’s difficult to contest. The investigator told me himself that he sits there like the Tsarist secret police: whoever needs to be sent down, he sends down.
I’ve worked all my life as an engineer in a factory, politics never interested me and I never subscribed to any party. But now, if you don’t get interested in politics, then sooner or later, politics will take an interest in you. I started to look at what was happening only when they took my son, arrested him. And I understood that power is simply being divided up between the clans on high, and up there our children are expendable material. So there is politics here, which came about because Putin is in office. Because of him, hundreds of lads are sitting in prison. If it were only my son accused of murder or something else. But it’s impacting on so many people! In our group almost everyone is unacquainted; they even lived in different towns – Sergiev Posad, Mytishchi, Novgorod. And who’s guilty here? Did their parents give them knives and say: ‘go out and kill’?
"Let's give Russia back to the Russians" - a troubling
slogan given the large number of ethinicities and
nationalities that form the Russian state.
The political system is built like that: they blame lads for not liking non-Russians – because of the colour of their skin or the slant of their eyes, and there are articles in the newspapers that Russia’s economy will rot without immigrant labour. So it happens that someone is using their political power in order to bring a cheap labour force over here. It’s profitable for someone. That same Tel’man, who built Cherkizon (a huge market in Moscow - editor), he needed cheap labour. All this is robbing Russia of money.
Basically the territory of Russia is like a welcome mat. A representative of another nationality can get Russian citizenship, but when he goes to Armenia then he’s an Armenian. All these people have their own countries, and Russians don’t. Putin, when he met with the youth after the protest on Manezh Square, said that in the Caucasus – which is a part of the Russian Federation – they have their own traditions, and he doesn’t care who infringes them there. So the former guarantor of the Constitution doesn’t care about someone who is on the territory of the Russian Federation. This is double standards.
We need to resolve the nationality question in Russia; to declare that Russia is a Russian country; to write people’s ethnicity in their passports again. You cannot tell a Tajik or an Uzbek to serve Russia. But a Russian will understand if you tell him he has to serve his country. In our country, Jews are holding top positions, but I would never claim high office in someone else’s country.
‘We need to resolve the nationality question in Russia; to declare that Russia is a Russian country; to write people’s ethnicity in their passports again. You cannot tell a Tajik or an Uzbek to serve Russia.’
Victor’s views weren’t unexpected, but what he was accused of was. He wasn’t a difficult child: he worked as a consultant in a bookshop, was at home in the evenings, was interested in history. He wanted to go to an institute to study history. He wasn’t particularly sociable. He lived a fairly solitary life, read loads of books, that’s why he liked the bookshop too. The following year he was due to be conscripted into the army. I didn’t take any interest in whether or not he wanted to go. Everyone goes usually.
Friends of the family were amazed when they found out about his arrest. They all asked what on earth was going on. He didn’t drink, didn’t smoke. Of course he was withdrawn sometimes, thinking about something or other. Not long before his arrest he mentioned a sports club, but I thought, sport – that’s a good thing.
I don’t know where he got interested in all that, I don’t know whether he came to these opinions himself or not, because at 18 years old – as far as I remember – interests change quickly. He is not an experienced person, naturally, and politicians exploit the young.
I didn’t read the case notes. Could he kill? I wanted to investigate this independently, but the judges and investigators took this mission upon themselves. This didn’t suit me at all. And if only this was an isolated example! But as I attended the court sittings I understood that this is a whole system: one little group passing through after another, you see. And what, am I supposed to say to my own son that he’s guilty, when there’s a whole system?
I honestly didn’t expect a life sentence. I think this is revenge for the fact that he openly says what he thinks. He sat in a pre-trial detention centre for three years, then went to court, and I could see immediately that he’d become more vicious. Moreover he was in a cell with all different ethnicities, people arrested for drugs, robbery, theft. He got some experience there, began to answer back to the judges and prosecutors in court. So because he began to answer them like that, they used their authority and gave him a life sentence.
During a visit I asked him what he did with his time in the cell. He said he played chess. ‘With whom?’ I asked. ‘With an Uzbek’.’
Pavel Golubev, Retired Colonel, father of Sergei Golubev
Sergei Golubev was the youngest convicted murderer in the case of NSO-Sever. He was 16 when he was arrested in 2007. He pleaded guilty to the murder of one person and attempted murder motivated by racial hatred. He was sentenced to ten years in a penal colony.
‘Basically Sergei had nothing to do with this. Well, he went to a demonstration against illegal immigration. And is there anyone who does support breaking the law? On 1 May 2008 he was at that demonstration at VDNKh. ‘Peace, Labour, May! Guest-workers away!’ And after the demonstration participants beat up some Tajik or other – right in front of the local police station. Sergei was also there. He said that he wanted to stop them, that they were starting a fight five metres from the window of the police. He got detained, and they checked whether he belonged to a youth organisation. And in the report they wrote that: ‘he is not a member of a gang, but shares the view that the Russian people and the Russian Orthodox faith must flourish on the territory of the Russian Federation’. And this was recorded as a nationalist viewpoint. No one told President Medvedev it was a nationalist viewpoint when he said the same thing at a meeting of the State Council in February 2011. And Sergei, of course, wasn’t a member of the NSO. He had some knowledge about that organisation, but even I’ve heard of it.
Nationalists at the oppostion protest on Bolotnaya Square on 11 December 2011, which took place one year after the infamous
Manezhnaya Square race riots.
Maria Pleshkova/Demotix. All rights reserved.
He is a very capable boy generally. He got into an economics grammar school sponsored by the Academy of Finance. But he didn’t have the self-regard to become a top pupil. It is an elite school with elite children, who are driven there by their chauffeurs. Basically they try to force out any children who don’t give the teachers money. He had a high temperature one day, and for some reason the class teacher kept him at school and wouldn’t let him go home. He ran away, jumped over the fence, ran across Prospect Mira in winter with no coat on. Something snapped in him then. He lost interest in school completely. He sat in lessons, looking out of the window, thinking his own thoughts. We took him out of that school after that, and sent him to be examined at the psychiatric hospital. The doctor said to me’ ‘you know, I see so many like him, the most important thing is that he doesn’t get sent to prison before he reaches 18. After that everything will pass, he’ll get distracted by work and love. But many don’t make it that far’.
Sergei rarely went out. He sat at his computer. I used to tell him to go out and have a wander. He would take me to the window and ask if I really wanted him to go out there. ‘Do you see them sitting there, already pouring out drinks on the bench? What’s more, when evening comes, the darkies will bring weed. Do you want me to join them?’ I said that of course I didn’t.
It scared me that he was going off into a virtual world. That’s why I was even glad when he decided to go out to a girl’s birthday celebrations. (On 6 May 2008 at the Butyrka cafe on Dmitrovsky highway Vasilisa Kovaleva celebrated her 21st with her then-boyfriend Mikhailov, with Appolionov and with Golubev. That same evening the group killed two Uzbeks - editor.) He got to know Kovaleva via the Iyupnternet. He liked older girls. She was a student in the faculty of journalism, and he could talk to her about all sorts of things. I couldn’t have imagined how it would all end. He went out to her birthday.
He was a witness at that murder incident, the one they prosecuted him for. He saw the struggle, the cries. He said that he felt sick. When they hit the woman in the neck and she started bleeding, he didn’t even see what happened to her, he was pulled away. The investigators asked whether he tried to help the victim. No? Well then, that means you’re an accomplice.
Sergei said: ‘as far as I’m concerned, be they blacks, Chinese, Tatars – it makes no difference to me. I respect them all. They’re all human beings’. When he went to prison he was a Christian. He’s now lost his faith. He said that if God existed, He would not have allowed this to happen to him.
‘I used to tell him to go out and have a wander. He would take me to the window and ask if I really wanted him to go out there. ‘Do you see them sitting there, already pouring out drinks on the bench? What’s more, when evening comes, the darkies will bring weed. Do you want me to join them?’
They didn’t let us meet for a year and a half. They tortured him twice. They told him to write what they wanted him to write about the other lads, but he refused. ‘I don’t know them, or what sort of people they are. If you know that they are murderers, then you write that.’ They promised to make life difficult in the cells for him for that. They put some sort of lads in with him. They burnt him with matches, beat him up, his shoulders, stomach, the small of his back were all covered in bruises. I saw all of this at the court hearing about the extension of his arrest. Sergei looked at me from behind the bars and asked’ ‘what should I do? I can’t last much longer’. Do you understand – he looked me in the eye and asked: ‘what should I do? You’re stronger than me, but they string you up by the hands to see how long you last. Should I cut my own throat? Either way, the judge has guaranteed that I won’t get more than ten years. Maybe I should stab one of them at night? Tell me what would be better?’ And he looked me in the eye. I said: ‘better to cut them than yourself’. It ended with him taking a sharpened implement and preparing to drive it into the eye or neck of this lad, who noticed and left. The lawyer and I complained to whoever we could, and they held an investigation in the pre-trial detention centre, and they stopped bothering him.
And after a year his cellmates were ordered to beat him up again so badly that they wouldn’t even let us go to court. I asked him later whether he had managed to get them back a bit, so it didn’t feel quite so bad.
Even the detectives passed on their approval to me. Everyone thought that since he was the youngest, he’d sign everything, but he wouldn’t budge and said that no one would persuade him to. His steadfastness amazed them. ‘What a good lad we have here’. Well, thanks, I thought, I’m glad.
How did he end up there? As the investigators said to me after his first year in pre-trial detention centre: ‘if we’d known from the start what evidence there would be, we wouldn’t even have arrested him. But now, you understand, how can we let him out? He’s underage, and responsibility would have to be taken for this. So, you see, we’ll treat him like the others, and he might get around five years’. And then they explained further that I’d angered them by complaining to the Moscow City Court that they hadn’t allowed us to meet. Why, they asked, did you behave like that? In a fit of anger they included five unnecessary years in the indictment.
Then I gave further evidence in court. I told them about the torture, about the false documents in the criminal case, about how no one had interrogated him for a year. And that made the prosecutor angry with me. But of course I didn’t expect them to give him ten years. I thought that even a military court, a troika, is not allowed to settle personal scores; all the more so that this was based on the admission that they should have basically let him go. I was a professional soldier myself, a colonel. I worked for a long time at a research institute. Of course, when I became Sergei’s legal representative I couldn’t work anywhere.
It has, of course, made him angrier. He’s continually in the punishment block. He says they have sworn an oath. ‘Don’t they know what to do with me? Haven’t they read the case notes?’ After the sentence he said that he would never go and fight for this country, like his grandfather who held a machine gun in his hands and shouted that he was fighting for this motherland. He was patriotic before. ‘If I get a call up for the army I’m not going to evade it. If they send me to Chechnya – I’ll go, I won’t hide behind anyone’s back’. And now he says that it was the Russian Federation that passed this sentence on him. It found me guilty, he says, of being a fascist, a murderer. That makes Russia my stepmother, not my real motherland, and I’m not going to fight for her. ‘Let the prosecutor’s children go and serve her.’ That’s what he says.’
A version of this article was first published in Russian on Kommersant. Vlast’
here
Two of the country's most respected hospitals: Which one has mastered the art -- and science -- of great website design?
In this week's Website Smackdown, I’m taking a look at the websites for two of the biggest hospital complexes in the world, the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic.
You may be asking yourself, what can a small business learn from looking at the websites of two behemoth hospitals? Actually… plenty. One site understands its target audience and serves that audience’s needs extremely well, and the other just doesn’t get it.
The Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic rank neck and neck (third and fourth respectively) on US News & World Report’s Honor Roll of Best Hospitals, but there’s a huge difference in the quality of their websites.
Let’s Take a Look
Most people coming to the website for a major hospital have health-related questions, require immediate need for a doctor, or need information about visiting (directions, visiting hours, etc.). Just as hospitals are in the business of patient care, their websites should reflect that same level of care for site visitors.
A hospital website should provide key information to site visitors and make it simple and intuitive to find that information. It should also reflect a level of care, professionalism, and respect upon which the hospital has built its reputation.
Take a look at the homepage for the
Mayo Clinic website.
As you can see from the Mayo Clinic’s homepage, the central images are of former patients who have found their “Answers” at the Mayo Clinic. To get to those “Answers,” you have to read the tiny print to the right and click on the case study.
There is virtually nothing on the homepage that is designed to help patients, families of patients, or people looking for assistance from the hospital. After much searching, you can find (in a tiny font and in a sub-navigation) “Request an Appointment” and “Find a Doctor.” What you won’t find is a phone number, directions, or anything else that might be of real use.
By way of contrast, take a look at the
Cleveland Clinic’s homepage.
The Cleveland Clinic keeps the homepage very simple. The main image rotates, showing research, technology, and patient care as the three central messages. Much more importantly, the primary navigation clearly leads you to “Locations and Directions,” “Find a Doctor,” “Patient & Visitor” information, and bold tabs for “Contact Us” and “Appointments.”
Now take a look how each site handles the critical area of “Health Information.”
The Mayo Clinic Health Information page isn’t particularly user friendly. It offers a solid A to Z search and also has searches for symptoms, drugs, tests, and healthy living. While this is all helpful, it is also (forgive the pun) very clinical. People who are looking for health information are often in crisis and the role of the healthcare provider should be to provide as much support as possible.
The
Cleveland Clinic "Health Information" page offers all of the same search functions, but also provides useful tools as a phone number to contact them and even the ability to “Chat Online with a Health Information Search Specialist.” This is far more consumer friendly and much more helpful for a person with real health-related questions.
Finally, let’s look at one more service provided by both websites: Find a Doctor.
The
Mayo Clinic "Find a Doctor" page (again clinical and unfriendly) features an alphabetical search by doctors and departments and nothing else. The page also features videos of three doctors telling us how wonderful the Mayo Clinic is a wonderful place.
The
Cleveland Clinic’s “Find a Doctor” page not only clearly lays out five useful searches, it includes a video that actually walks you through the search process. Rather than extol the virtues of the Cleveland Clinic, it provides a real service to site visitors.
So what can you learn from these hospital websites?
- Know your target audience and know why they are coming to your site.
- Prioritize your navigation to serve the biggest needs of your visitors.
- Make sure you have powerful calls to action and prominent contact information.
- Emphasize customer service!
- Your online messaging should reflect the messaging of your business. If you are a service provider then make sure your site is designed with your potential clients/customers in mind.
Remember, creating a great website for your business isn’t brain surgery. It’s just a matter of understanding, appreciating, and serving your target audience.
Via
Think Progress, here's Alabama State Sen. Shadrack McGill (a Republican, of course) talking about why raising pay for schoolteachers would not just be a bad idea, it would be
against the Bible:
"It's a Biblical principle. If you double a teacher's pay scale, you'll attract people who aren't called to teach.
"To go in and raise someone's child for eight hours a day, or many people's children for eight hours a day, requires a calling. It better be a calling in your life. I know I wouldn't want to do it, OK?
"And these teachers that are called to teach, regardless of the pay scale, they would teach. It's just in them to do. It's the ability that God give 'em. And there are also some teachers, it wouldn't matter how much you would pay them, they would still perform to the same capacity.
"If you don't keep that in balance, you're going to attract people who are not called, who don't need to be teaching our children. So, everything has a balance."
Now that's an impressive level of Bible-thumping bullshit, right there. Among all professions everywhere, somehow teaching children is the one that always gets singled out as deserving rotten pay because that's how Jesus would have wanted it. Teaching is a
calling
, you see, and you wouldn't want to taint that with filthy, filthy money so that teachers could pay their rent or buy gas for their cars or something. So why do we pay doctors, then—isn't that a calling? What about lawyers? Heaven knows defending people's freedom ought to be a
calling
, not a
job
. And don't even get me started on politicians.
What's that? You're going to get me started on politicians? Oh, Lord. Here's Bible-citer Shadrack McGill defending his support for raising legislator salaries from about $30k a year to nearly $50k—in the very same damn meeting:
"That [previous salary] played into the corruption, guys, big time," he said. "You had your higher-ranking legislators that were connected with the lobbyists making up in the millions of dollars. They weren't worried about that $30,000 paid salary they were getting," McGill said, adding that lawmakers have to pay for their expenses out of pocket.
McGill said that by paying legislators more, they're less susceptible to taking bribes.
Got that? Teachers should be paid as little as possible so that we can be sure they're doing it for the children. Politicians, on the other hand, should be paid substantially
more
because otherwise they'll turn corrupt and take bribes and stuff. Hey, you know politicians: They do that sort of thing
all the freaking time.
There's a level of cognitive dissonance here that can't be explained by mere ideology. If teaching children is a calling, then so is serving citizens as one of their leaders. If paying legislators like crap would result in shoddy, corrupt legislators, then it does not follow how paying teachers
more
would result in them turning shoddy and corrupt. I suppose if you base your premise on politicians being naturally shitty people, sure, but it still doesn't explain why all the other non-shitty people out there should have to suffer.
Then we've got the whole push among Mitt Romney and the One Percenters (Worst. Band. Ever.) telling us that we can't possibly tax hedge fund managers or other captains of finance at the same percentage rates as the little people, otherwise the hedge fund managers and other captains of finance will Go Galt and not bless us with their vast, sometimes-apocalyptic wisdom. You see, if these people have to pay a few thousand dollars more on each million dollars they make, they won't
want
to make any more millions of dollars! Think of the chaos! At the same time, the same candidates and pundits tell us that we need to make sure even the poorest of the poor pay
some
tax, so they have a little skin in the game.
The common theme is that the rich and powerful need to be rewarded more greatly, less they instead turn to corrupt or apathetic behaviors, and that the poor need to be squeezed more tightly in order to prevent those same moral hazards of corruption or laziness. Apparently, the rich and poor no longer even share the same brain structure, given that the social prescriptions for the two groups are entirely contradictory.
Yes, the
only
common theme, from powerful conservatives, is that whatever they happen to propose in any given moment will be entirely self-serving. Conservative legislators need to pay themselves more money, because they deserve to be rewarded. Conservative rich people need to pay less taxes, because they goddamn feel like paying less taxes. Conservative corporations (I'm not sure I know of a liberal one—something about dedicating your existence to raw profit seems to fit right in with conservatism) need fewer regulations, because regulations are hard to deal with. Conservatives want everyone else to get paid less, have fewer rights, have fewer legal protections, and so on and so forth because those other people are (1) immoral, (2) benefiting too much from the tax dollars of good conservatives, or (3) because suck it, that's why.
A lack of empathy explains a lot of it. A nearly sociopathic lack of empathy or concern for others would explain a great deal of it indeed, especially among many conservative leaders. As supposed ideology, however, I have no patience for it anymore. I used to at least respect the notion of
conservatism
as philosophy, and at least recognize some raw pragmatic value behind the premise, but this version of conservatism is overtly regressive, not conservative. It lacks any coherent point other than the self-centeredness of the practitioner.
But then I hear people like Alabama State Sen. Shadrack McGill talking about how paying teachers a living wage would be violating a "Biblical principle," while paying legislators a living wage is a damn fine idea, and the far simpler explanation rears its head. Most of these people aren't
ideological
about anything. They're just profoundly stupid people. They're not conservative, they're just self-indulgent scolds or self-interested collectors of public power. They're only "conservative" because that's the ideology that will best support stringing together random words to accomplish those goals.
Could we use their own arguments against them, and would those arguments gain leverage? Let's tell Mr. McGill that if we do not raise the pay of our teachers, our teachers will be reduced to selling drugs to our children. Or will be more prone to passing children in exchange for cash bribes from parents. Or, what the hell, will be more likely to sell our children into slavery during the lunch break. If we don't pay teachers the same wages we pay our legislators, our teachers might act as corrupt as legislators do!
Would it work? Of course not. It would make their little heads explode with outrage, as they contemplated all these new conspiracy theories, but
of course
they would not embrace the same basic economic principles for schoolteachers as they do for politicians, or hedge fund managers, or the entire oil industry. Again, there is nothing close to consistency in the minds of people like Sen. McGill. Doesn't enter his foggy head. Do what you want, cite the Bible a few times, and call it done, but large swaths of America has attempted to win arguments with conservatism by citing
facts
or
science
or
logical conclusions
, and it never does a damn thing. Climate change can't be happening because (insert Jesus reason here), or last decade's Bush and Republican policies didn't balloon the deficit because (magical timespace distortion putting Obama in charge eight years before he was elected president). There's no winning when your opponents pride themselves on
not
being consistent from one issue to the next, or on
not
listening to knowledgeable opinions of people who might have studied the matter more than they have.
Sometimes I get people scolding me for being mean to conservatives. Frankly, I just don't care anymore. I'm just too tired of it. Many of us were called traitors for not believing that yellowcake uranium meant we had to go to war with Iraq because also al Qaeda and/or freedom fries and/or strategery or whatever the hell the eventual argument was. Not a day seems to go by now where some prominent, high-level Republican isn't accusing Obama of wanting to "destroy America" or "hurt the economy" or whatever else the scary black man is supposedly doing
now
that was all perfectly reasonable, banal stuff back
then
. There's no ideological core there. Perhaps there once was, but at present, among the power brokers of policy, of punditry, and of the wider base, it doesn't exist. The calls for smaller government end up with a larger government, the calls for reducing the deficit get replaced with
massive
deficits, the calls for individual freedoms or states' rights or whatever other crap is being peddled one moment gets just as easily discarded the next.
The one remaining consistent principle—tax cuts for rich people, and screw everything else—is not an ideology. At least, it's not one that deserves to be taken seriously.
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2009:
In the wake of this week's House vote on the Obama economic recovery package, we learn that our brave new post-partisan world, as mcjoan wrote this afternoon, sure looks awfully similar to the old bitterly partisan world we've always lived in. And, as ever, we have the Republican Party to thank for this.
Let’s not pretend that the House bill, which passed 244-188 with precisely zero Republican votes, was exactly a shining moment for the party (although the fact that it has passed at all is certainly something of a victory for the administration). House Republicans see this as their own victory, and for the short term, they may be right.
They've managed to exact major concessions from the administration and House leadership on the $819 billion stimulus package, including the excision of family planning, of funding for public works projects on the National Mall, and the addition of major tax cuts for businesses...and proceeded to vote unanimously against the package anyway. Furthermore, they managed to turn the stimulus into a political wedge issue, even after winning on the oh-so-sacred tax cuts for big business (apparently the only issue of any consequence to today's Republican Party). It's an impressive, if cynical, example of political gamesmanship. It does not, however, have to be yet another case of the Democratic Charlie Brown trying once again to kick Lucy’s football. In fact, there’s no reason the administration and party leadership can’t use the stimulus vote as an opportunity.
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