Month: November 2010

Iraq’s Endless Political Morass

Joel Wing updates us:

Iraq’s politicians have already taken eight months to just reach a power sharing agreement, and can be expected to take several more before a cabinet is finally formed. In total, it could be almost a year before Maliki has a new government put together. The whole ordeal has taken so long because of the many divisions amongst Iraq’s parties. There were disagreements amongst the Shiite lists over Maliki’s return to power. Allawi remains bitter that he was not named to form a new coalition, and still may walk away while other members of his National Movement take up new jobs. In the end though, the new regime will look and act a lot like the old one. The most important positions will be divided along ethnosectarian lines, and because so many parties are involved there will be little consensus to do much of anything about the major problems the country faces.

Apart from that, freedom is on the march!

Quote For The Day V

"There's no subject on which Richard Cohen is not completely inessential. The looming debt crisis? Caused by kids today and their tattoos and hippety-hop music! The financial collapse? Did you know that Richard Cohen went to high school with Ruth Madoff? 'Cause that's all he's got. Richard Cohen is the worst hack in the country," – Alex Pareene, making more friends in high places, and finishing off his hackiest hack list.

Greenwald rubs it in, with this classic quote from Cohen from 2003:

This is where Colin Powell brought us all yesterday. The evidence he presented to the United Nations — some of it circumstantial, some of it absolutely bone-chilling in its detail — had to prove to anyone that Iraq not only hasn't accounted for its weapons of mass destruction but without a doubt still retains them. Only a fool — or possibly a Frenchman — could conclude otherwise.

On this, I should add, I have not a leg to stand on.

That’s So Gay, Ctd

A reader writes:

I understand the point Mark Peters is trying to make, but in doing so he compares "gay" to "lame." Does he realize that the supposedly neutral word he's trying to compare "gay" to is a pejorative for people with disabilities?

Instinctively, we want to defend the incumbent pejoratives we grew up with and that don't affect us ("it's not about people with disabilities; horses can be lame too!"), but is there any qualitative difference between calling something "lame" or calling it "retarded" or "gay?" Do you think people with mobility impairments like the word "lame" in that sense any more than gay people like "gay?"

Another writes:

While helping my grandmother clean out some old boxes, I came across an old booklet called "How to improve your vocabulary" made by the Home Service Newark Star-Eagle, which went out of business in 1939. I would love to share with you the section "Objectionable Slang Expressions"

And how!
kid for a child or to tease
for crying out loud
nutty and nerts
invite for invitation
inside dope
bamboozle
gink
guy
pinched by the cop
bird for man
all wet
ain't it fierce?
nix on the rough stuff
applesauce
bean for head
scram
boy friend
nifty or snappy dresser
dago
dump for house
cussed
guts
gutter rat
tux for tuxedo or dinner-jacket
soup-and-fish for a man's formal dress
skirt and dame for girl or woman
gent

And my favorite sentence from the section: "The application of swell to anything from a ham sandwich to a symphony concert, though countenanced by many, is a practice to be discouraged."

A Massive HIV Breakthrough, Ctd

Elizabeth Pisani reacts to the news. She notes that the test subjects weren’t very good at taking pills:

[Taking the pill is] a smaller protective effect than using a condom all the time, of course. The thing is, we know that people aren’t good at using condoms all the time. And what these study results show us is that people aren’t very good at taking a pill every day, either, though they are keen to tell researchers that they do. One of the most striking things about the results was the mismatch between self-reported pill taking and measured levels of active drugs in people´s bodies.

Her second fear:

10 people who tested negative at the start of the study were actually in the very early stages of HIV infection. Both of the 2 who happened to be assigned to the Truvada group developed resistant forms of the virus, suggesting that giving these drugs in the early stages of infection when the virus is replicating very rapidly may fertilise resistant strains.

Her bigger point on the politics of the breakthrough:

Worries about resistance aside, the news seems pretty good. So why do I say it’s a political nightmare? Because antiretroviral drugs are expensive; a lot of people who need them to prolong their lives can’t get them. Now we’re talking about giving them to gay guys so that they can go out and screw around as much as they like without having to think about using the cheaper and potentially more effective (but generally more bothersome) option of condoms. I’ve been a bit sniffy about this myself in the past, though I did spend about 15 years taking a pill every day so that I could have as much sex as I liked without contracting that long-term, life-changing sexually transmitted condition called pregnancy. But in many countries it is still very hard to give out condoms because it is seen to promote promiscuity.

If we could figure out a way to improve adherance, putting ARVs on the public tab will probably save money overall. It’s certainly something we should be trying out in all sorts of different ways. That includes the possibility of “disco dosing” — taking pills only on the days when one has a pretty good idea that one’s going to end up barebacking. But as condoms have taught us, the fact that things work technically doesn’t necessarily mean they work in real life, let alone in politics. Even if we can find a better way to deliver pre exposure prophylaxis (implants? it’s what I do instead of pills these days against that other STD, and I love it) I think it is going to be a hard sell in many countries.