Hipocrites

Reminds me of the scene in 'The Aviator' where they dragged Howard Hughes before the Senate. Even more priceless when it happens in real life. If only it happened more.

Dead Aid by Dambisa Moyo

Interview with Dambisa Moyo:

You argue in your book "Dead Aid" that Western aid to Africa has not only perpetuated poverty but also worsened it, and you are perhaps the first African to request in book form that all development aid be halted within five years.
Think about it this way — China has 1.3 billion people, only 300 million of whom live like us, if you will, with Western living standards. There are a billion Chinese who are living in substandard conditions. Do you know anybody who feels sorry for China? Nobody.

...

Forty years ago, China was poorer than many African countries. Yes, they have money today, but where did that money come from? They built that, they worked very hard to create a situation where they are not dependent on aid.

What do you think has held back Africans?
I believe it’s largely aid. You get the corruption — historically, leaders have stolen the money without penalty — and you get the dependency, which kills entrepreneurship. You also disenfranchise African citizens, because the government is beholden to foreign donors and not accountable to its people.

If people want to help out, what do you think they should do with their money if not make donations?
Microfinance. Give people jobs.

...Go to the Internet and type in Kiva.org, where you can make a loan to an African entrepreneur.

...

Why didn’t you get a bond issue going in your native Zambia or other African countries?
Many politicians seem to have a lazy muscle. Issuing a bond would require that the president and the cabinet ministers go out and market their country. Why would they do that when they can just call up the World Bank and say, “Can I please have some money?”
...

For all your belief in the potential of capitalism, the free market is now in free fall and everyone is questioning the supposed wonders of the unregulated market.
I wish we questioned the aid model as much as we are questioning the capitalism model. Sometimes the most generous thing you can do is just say no.

Protests with a Plan

How to organize and plan a protest:

1. Incoherent messages are fine from the Assembly, but the primary organizers have to be organized. Home-made signs can be all over the place. The more the better. That’s fine. The color and signage look good on TV.

2. Create a theme - like “We want Senator So-and-So to resign for voting for this bill.” Or, “We want the Bill Repealed!” etc. Have a definitive purpose to your Assembly. A central theme will also help public speakers to focus. And don’t be afraid to personalize this. Put it on your Senators, Congress people, and the President. That’s what they are doing to anyone who objects. Remember, they made it personal first.

3. Speakers have to be prepared for the media. If you are an organizer, or the “face” of the event - take an hour to prepare. You don’t need to know everything about your cause. Just find 2 or 3 things - hard facts - you can point to and credibly say - this is wrong, here's how to make it better. It is critical. Not only have a primary message against something, have a message FOR something. People like leaders with solutions.

4. Pass out talking points, just in case Joe or Jane Protestor gets buttonholed by a reporter.

5. This is all about image. If you don’t present the media with a professional, organized and, unfortunately, scripted image, they are going to make their own, and it won’t be favorable.

6. Recruit some help to pack the area around people being interviewed for background. God love the guy in the crazy Uncle Sam suit, and you certainly need some comic relief, but these folks will quickly become THE story because they are colorful or controversial i.e., Good TV. Welcome their support. Maybe give them a minute on the mic. However, mainstream folks have to be the majority. Boring looking, and diverse Americans around the camera. No offense to anyone. Anytime a TV camera comes out, a certain number and type of attention seeker will flock to it. Now is the time for Grandma and Grandpa, the Plumber, the Young Executive, and the Homeschooling Mom to flock to the camera as background. Don’t be shy. Remember, how do you want your cause to be presented by the media? As crazies? Or as Concerned Neighbors?

7. Have an Agenda and a Time. We’re going to Assemble at this Time. We’re going to have a Sign-In Table. We’re going to have a Sign-Making Area. We’re going to have speakers at 10:30. We’re going to March to the Senator’s Office at this time and demand she resign. We’re going to end with Chants, and a Call-to-Action for the next Protest. That, and Protestors want to know what’s going on. If they become unsure, they leave. Organization wins, and it also intimidates the opposition. And the opposition is going to start showing up.

8. Share the Day’s Agenda with the Media. You have to create your own press. Sell it to them. They love good stories.

That’s it. Get a Message. And Get It Out.

UPDATED:

Be sure to have a signup sheet where people can put their emails and other contact information for future events.

Also, consider printing up some postcards addressed to your local Representative and Senators. They should say that they’re from the protest, and carry an organized, standard message. Get people to sign them, and solicit donations for postage, then mail them. Local mail from real constituents makes an impression.

Also, encourage them to contact local media after the event, and either compliment them on their coverage, or politely criticize it, as appropriate.

Adult Stem Cells Help AIDS / Leukemia Patient

Via Bloomberg:

A German AIDS patient was able to stop drugs he had been taking for 10 years after getting a transplant of stem cells from a donor with a rare gene variant known to resist the deadly disease. The transplant also cured his leukemia, researchers reported.

The stem cell donor was among the 1 percent of Caucasians who have the variant gene that lacks a section known as CCR5 that helps the AIDS virus enter a cell, according to a report today in the New England Journal of Medicine. Doctors in Berlin hoped that putting the donor’s stem cells in the patient would rebuild his immune system and blood cells so they would lack the CCR5 piece.

The results of the experiment may point researchers to a new way of controlling the AIDS virus HIV that doesn’t force patients to take drugs for the rest of their lives.

Roman History

Cicero said...

When politicians, enthusiastic to pose as the people's friends, bring forward bills providing for the distribution of property, they intend that the existing owners shall be driven from their homes. Or they propose to excuse borrowers from paying back their debts.

Men with those views undermine the very foundations on which our commonwealth depends. In the first place, they are shattering the harmony between one element in the State and another, a relationship which cannot possibly survive if debtors are excused from paying their creditor back the sums of money he is entitled to. Furthermore, all politicians who harbour such intentions are aiming a fatal blow at the whole principle of justice; for once rights of property are infringed, this principle is totally undermined.
...

The real answer to the problem is that we must make absolutely certain that private debts do not ever reach proportions which will constitute a national peril. There are various ways of ensuring this. But just to take the money away from the rich creditors and give the debtors something that does not belong to them is no solution at all. For the firmest possible guarantee of a country's security is sound credit...

So the men in charge of our national interests will do well to steer clear of the kind of liberality which involves robbing one man to give to another.

To bad the Roman Senate didn't listen to him.

First Malaria Vaccine on the Way

From PopSci:

A vaccine with a 53 percent success rate doesn’t normally call for a celebration. But when that means protecting one in every two African children from a disease that kills a kid every 30 seconds, those odds start looking better. “The impact is tremendous,” says Joe Cohen, inventor of the first malaria vaccine. “We could save hundreds of thousands of kids every year.”

This spring, pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline will enroll 16,000 infants and toddlers, the groups most at risk, in what could be the largest malaria-vaccine trial to date in Africa, setting up labs in 11 hospitals in Kenya, Burkina Faso, Malawi and four other countries. The test follows on the success of recent small-scale studies in Kenya and Tanzania that reduced infection by 65 percent in infants.

Congratulations to GSK. I hope this pans out successfully.

Perspective

From blogger davefoulk.net:

Each bill of United States Currency weighs one gram... Let’s say we had a pile of one dollar bills….787 billion of them- same as the Stimulus Package. How much would that cash weigh?

86,759 TONS

That’s more than an Iowa class battleship.

Or put another way, according to Senator Lamar Alexander, (much better at numbers than me), if you spent a million dollars a week, starting the day Jesus Christ was born. You would still have money left over. And you could spend it on a new calculator because the old one just died of shock.

Actually, to correct my former Governor, if you spent EIGHT million dollars a week for 2009 years, you'd be around $8.35 billion. And we're not counting the interest on this debt that will most certainly send this bill's cost over a trillion dollars.