Wednesday, November 26, 2003

bad image? Posted here Wednesday, November 26, 2003 at 10:24:20 PM     we don't seem to be able to put forward ma reasonable image. PROFIT MARGINS AND MORTALITY RATES By Joanne Mariner FindLaw.com / AlterNet November 26, 2003   Here are some numbers to consider: 14 million, 35.9 billion, and 1. The first is an estimate of the number of people who will die of AIDS and other treatable diseases over the course of the coming year, most of them in the poor countries of the developing world. The second figure represents the combined 2002 profits, in dollars, of the 10 biggest pharmaceutical companies listed in Fortune magazine's annual review of America's largest businesses. The third figure corresponds to the number of countries that, last week, voted against a U.N. resolution on access to drugs in global epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. The resolution emphasized that the failure to deliver life-saving drugs to millions of people who are living with HIV/AIDS constitutes a global health emergency. One hundred sixty seven countries voted in favor of the resolution. The single vote against it was cast by the United States. ********

Reservists mobilized for Iraq, Afghanistan Posted here Wednesday, November 26, 2003 at 9:22:22 PM     The issue of reservist morale and recruitment will become an issue of real significance. Perhaps only the threat of a draft will keep recruitment up. CNN - WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Troops and their families and employers will soon find out if they will be affected by the Pentagon's latest approval of the mobilization of 17,000 National Guard and Reserve personnel for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.   ********

Coetzee on the lives of animals Posted here Wednesday, November 26, 2003 at 8:52:33 PM     and  When I first began working with baboons, my main problem was learning to keep up with them while remaining alert to poisonous snakes, irascible buffalo, aggressive bees, and leg-breaking pig-holes. Fortunately, these challenges eased over time, mainly because I was traveling in the company of expert guides—baboons who could spot a predator a mile away and seemed to possess a sixth sense for the proximity of snakes. Abandoning myself to their far superior knowledge, I moved as a humble disciple, learning from masters about being an African anthropoid. ********

Posted here Wednesday, November 26, 2003 at 8:45:58 PM     From Coetzee's lives of animals. “Sultan (Kohler's Chimpanzee)  is alone in his pen. He is hungry: the food that used to arrive regularly has unaccountably ceased coming. “The man who used to feed him and has now stopped feeding him stretches a wire over the pen three meters above ground level, and hangs a bunch of bananas from it. Into the pen he drags three wooden crates. Then he disappears, closing the gate behind him, though he is still somewhere in the vicinity, since one can smell him. “Sultan knows: Now one is supposed to think. That is what the bananas up there are about. The bananas are there to make one think, to spur one to the limits of one's thinking. But what must one think? One thinks: Why is he starving me? One thinks: What have I done? Why has he stopped liking me? One thinks: Why does he not want these crates any more? But none of these is the right thought. Even a more complicated thought—for instance: What is wrong with him, what misconception does he have of me, that leads him to believe it is easier for me to reach a banana hanging from a wire than to pick up a banana from the floor?—is wrong. The right thought to think is: How does one use the crates to reach the bananas? “Sultan drags the crates under the bananas, piles them one on top of the other, climbs the tower he has built, and pulls down the bananas. He thinks: Now will he stop punishing me? “The answer is: No. The next day the man hangs a fresh bunch of bananas from the wire but also fills the crates with stones so that they are too heavy to be dragged. One is not supposed to think: Why has he filled the crates with stones? One is supposed to think: How does one use the crates to get the bananas despite the fact that they are filled with stones? “One is beginning to see how the man's mind works. ********

Animals, Jews and the future of the United States Posted here Wednesday, November 26, 2003 at 6:29:09 PM     We need to pay attention. This picture is becoming more comonplace. “It is not because they waged an expansionist war, and lost it, that Germans of a particular generation are still regarded as standing a little outside humanity, as having to do or be something special before they can be readmitted to the human fold. They lost their humanity, in our eyes, because of a certain willed ignorance on their part. Under the circumstances of Hitler's kind of war, ignorance may have been a useful survival mechanism, but that is an excuse which, with admirable moral rigor, we refuse to accept. In Germany, we say, a certain line was crossed which took people beyond the ordinary murderousness and cruelty of warfare into a state that we can only call sin. The signing of the articles of capitulation and the payment of reparations did not put an end to that state of sin. On the contrary, we said, a sickness of the soul continued to mark that generation. It marked those citizens of the Reich who had committed evil actions, but also those who, for whatever reason, were in ignorance of those actions. It thus marked, for practical purposes, every citizen of the Reich. Only those in the camps were innocent. from The Lives of Animals. Contributors: J. M. Coetzee - author, Wendy Doniger - author, Marjorie Garber - author, Amy Gutmann - editor, Peter Singer - author, Barbara Smuts - author. Publisher: Princeton University Press. Place of Publication: Princeton, NJ. Publication Year: 1999. Page Number: 20. ********

Posted here Wednesday, November 26, 2003 at 4:28:36 PM     Christan Science Monitor tomorrow's edition   On a per-capita basis, Mississippi is the most generous state in the country when it comes to donating to charities, according to the Catalogue of Philanthropy. On average, Mississippians donate $3,500, compared to an annual income of $34,000. In fact, Southern states dominate the upper ranks of the annual "generosity index" compiled by the nonprofit, which is based in Needham, Mass. Northerly New Hampshire came in last for the third time in five years. The five states at the top and bottom of the index: Most generous: 1. Mississippi 2. Arkansas 3. South Dakota 4. Oklahoma 5. Alabama Least generous: 46. Minnesota 47. Massachusetts 48. New Jersey 49. Rhode Island 50. New Hampshire - Associated Press, The Oklahoma City Journal Record comment: well this does suggest an interesting culture difference. ********