this is our one demand

It was a busy, irresponsible summer full of visiting and hiking and revisions. But not much in the way of blogging. I’m not apologizing, I’m bragging. Just to be clear. There may or may not be in increase in posting now that the weather may or may not be getting less cooperative. Then again, there’s hockey to play.

Today, however, I came across the following - a creative, subversive, beautiful, and heart-breaking response to media complaints that the Occupy Wall Street movement has not stated specific goals. That they are just protesting, willy-nilly and all, and don’t have enough direction to their dissent. How dare they not have a published set of reasons! How dare they not have made a list!

This is their response, as copied and pasted from wilderside.wordpress.com: 

This is the fifth communiqué from the 99 percent. We are occupying Wall Street.

wikileaks and the cult of personality

I thought I was done. I thought that I said everything I wanted to say about this subject on Tuesday, but I guess not. Maybe today I can finish exorcising it.

I gave a whole paragraph on Tuesday to the concept of the cult of personality dynamic that is interfering so effectively with the larger, international political story. It wasn’t enough. I was influenced by my wish that, in spite of the side shows, the only thing we’d should stay focused on was the leaks. Not so much the content, but the overarching theme extant within them. The big picture.

So I said what I wanted to, for the most part, about that big picture story, the one that includes revelations regarding our leaders in public office and the undue obligation they seem to feel to preserving their own power and serving corporate interests. But I mentioned the cult of personality concept and, when the dust settled, I felt there was more to say about that. More to say about the concept of cult of personality, and more to say about how it specifically affects this story, with all of its high ideals and low behavior, not to mention the possibility of rape and coercion.

It’s hard to do that, stay focused on the big picture, especially when there's just so much information to process. There’s some major information overload happening on this topic, and so many story threads that it’s difficult at best to keep anything straight.

I’ve tried very hard, with lesser and greater degrees of success at times, to keep Julian Assange separate from the Afghan/Iraq/Cable leaks because I don’t think I believe in heroes. Just in general, there aren’t many individual people that can both be truly marvelous and aspire to the kind of notoriety that Assange aspires to. So I’m distrustful as a default position.

I was still disappointed when the allegations against Assange were made public this summer. There’s always a hope that somebody will live up to their own hype, right? It was clear fairly early though that Assange was just a human. Divisions within Wikileaks, narcissistic statements to the press, and then the accusations and the ongoing investigation; Assange was definitely just human, and maybe worse. If you haven’t heard what the allegations specifically are, this is from The Swedish Wire:

“The court heard Assange is accused of using his body weight to hold her down in a sexual manner. The second charge alleged Assange "sexually molested" Miss A by having sex with her without a condom when it was her "express wish" one should be used. The third charge claimed Assange "deliberately molested" Miss A on August 18 "in a way designed to violate her sexual integrity". The fourth charge accused Assange of having sex with a second woman, Miss W, on August 17 without a condom while she was asleep at her Stockholm home.”

To be clear, in spite of the arrest warrant and Assange’s remand in the UK pending extradition hearings, these are still technically allegations only. No charges have been laid and Assange is wanted back in Sweden for questioning as part of the investigation. But they are really serious allegations.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, Assange and his lawyers suggest that the allegations are part of a smear campaign, and Assange has unequivocally denied any wrongdoing. And the specifics regarding how the investigation was started, then some charges dropped, the reinstated, and leaked to the press… it’s all very convoluted. And that’s only half of the story.

On the other side of the allegations are two women who brought the issue to the police. There are a endless theories drifting around the web regarding the reasons they spoke to the police. But they’re all theories, and theories and speculation in a rape case are just the wrong way to go.

It was not so long ago that not making criminals of victims, especially in a sexual abuse case, was held up as a pretty high ideal. Outside of this case, it still is (I hope). But inside it, suddenly it’s become okay to vilify the women who made the accusations and assume that they were either part of a giant intergovernmental conspiracy, or that their motives were purely personal and vengeful. Assuming that these women did anything but go to the police to express the perception that they were wronged and seek assistance in that regard is as unfair to them as it is to assume Assange’s guilt.

Let me say that again: Assuming nefarious intent on the part of the accusers is as wrong as assuming that the accused is guilty.

Some of my online friends have been very right in pointing out that fact, and also that we’ve been working really hard and for a long time as a society to change the mentality that victimizes victims twice. The vilification of Assange's accusers is a step backwards. My friends also rightly point out that progressive journalists and writers have been too quick to vilify the accusers in this case in the rush to defend Assange. I think that, to some degree, I'm guilty of that too and I have to own that.

That doesn’t mean that there are still lots of questions that deserve to be answered. The first one, though, needs to be whether or not there’s enough evidence for charges to be laid. If there is there will be the question, to be decided in a court of law, regarding guilt or innocence. If there isn't there may be other questions regarding motives, but it’s way too early for that. And either way, I think that there are questions to be asked regarding the actions and decisions regarding how the case has been handled by Swedish prosecutors. 

Regardless, I have limited hope that many of them ever will be answered. That seems to be how our world works, and it’s part of why I think what Wikileaks is doing is important.

I need to be really specific on that subject too. I believe that what Wikileaks is doing is important. Not Wikileaks itself. What they’re doing. Wikileaks is an organization that has taken collating, vetting and clearing whistleblowers’ leaks to the next level, but they weren’t the first. They most definitely won’t be the last. But they’ve raised the bar and changed the landscape, I believe, for the better.

I don’t believe this because I think that government should be utterly transparent, that every last bit of state craft should be completed in the public eye, but rather that it should be more transparent than it is. I believe that there is so much secrecy in this War on Terror world that it has become difficult, if not near impossible to trust our governments. Many people, including me, are left with a giant vacuum of trust where our faith should be. We don’t trust that our politicians are making decisions with anything like good intentions in mind.

I think that this kind of peak behind the curtain has a purpose: It can make us aware of the selfish, arrogant hubris with which our leaders conduct their affairs, driving home the point that we have to be far more active in governing our governors. It also reminds those in power that they aren’t immune or inviolate; that they are in power by the grace of our votes and will, and that they govern as extensions of the body politic. They exist to serve us. They need to be humble, and nowadays that means that they often need to be humbled.

And that’s why what Wikileaks is doing is important, or at least part of it.

But Wikileaks itself will become an institution in time. Perhaps, in some ways, it already has. Institutions often come into being because of a valid and righteous need. Somebody, or some group, sees the need and meets it. And then, over time, that organization, that movement, begins to be as interested in growing or preserving its own existence as much as staying true to the values and need that brought about its existence. And then it’s an institution, just as susceptible to corruption and hubris as any other institution.

At that point, the institution becomes as much a part of the problem as it is or was part of any solution.

I worry that this has happened, or did happen, to Julian Assange at some point. I see signs that he began to think he was more important than the idea, or the group effort. I worry that he made an institution of himself. I worry that he felt himself above others and above the rules that others have to abide by. I think that, whether there are charges brought against him or not, whether charges result in a guilty verdict or not, he was too casual and disrespectful in the way he treated those women in the summer. I think he started to believe his own press.

Fame and celebrity is a dangerous thing in this day and age. We’re vain creatures, we humans. I remember reading that the brain waves of our pets change dramatically when we pet them, approaching an alpha state, they are so euphoric at that touch, that attention. Fame can do that to us, I think. It certainly appears that way when I watch the behavior of the famous, purring under the spotlight, oblivious to the consequences of their actions or robbed of all common sense.

Julian Assange strikes me as, potentially, such a person. I worry that he was so caught up in doing something good, for good reasons, and became so obsessive about it that he lost sight of who he was and started to believe the newspapers and the fans more than the mirror he looked at every morning. I worry that he thought he could be careless with the lives around him and that it was okay to do so.

So, to be clear, I’m not a fan of Julian Assange. I think his ego pollutes what he’s trying to do. I think that he let his own desire to be front and center get in the way of something remarkable, and now it’s harder and harder to remove the one story from the other. I think that his apparent rock star belief that he could or should use his celebrity to be player was horribly misguided and kind of pathetic.

I’m not a fan of Wikileaks either, in and of itself, but I appreciate what they are doing. I think it’s important for this time and place. I’m not assuming Assange’s guilt or innocence, but I question whether he, or any one person, should be the ‘face’ of anything as big as Wikileaks. Giant, potentially world-changing ideas deserve better than one, frail human face.

I believe that criminal investigations and charges of rape should be treated seriously, all involved given their due respect until the investigation is completed and, if required, courts can render a verdict. Until that happens, all involved should be given the benefit of the doubt, treated as innocent until proven guilty, including and especially the alleged victims of abuse.

I believe that, if possible, when accusations against a person blur the line between personal behavior and the political actions of a group, when they muddy the water, we should try our hardest to separate the two issues and not conflate one with the other.

And I believe that I really hope that’s all I feel the need to say about this. 

What makes experimenting on women okay?

A few days ago I promised to blog on this story. Well, actually, I said I had to in order to address my overwhelming sense of angst. I said I'd do it in a few days in the hopes that I could find a second source for the story to provide me some clarification and perspective.

In regards to the former, no such luck. Just multiple versions of the original AFP piece (seen here in Google news) edited more or less depending on where it was printed, which wasn't too many places. Which is to say that barely anybody paid any attention.

In regards to the latter, I might have a little more perspective, but still most of the angst. If anyone reads this that can make an argument in favor of this kind of testing, especially the ones I'm taking issue with, please chime in. This is definitely not an area of expertise for me, but the angst is undeniable right now. If I'm wrong, please educate me.

At first glance I was mortified by the numbers - 9000 participants and no statistical difference in results between those using the prototype gel on trial and those using the placebo after 52 weeks - and the apparent risk these women were exposed to. Then I got angrier at the word "placebo". Then angrier still at the phrase "coercive sex".

You can read the articles (see above and below) to get the blurry details of this particular study and the buzz in the HIV/AIDS activism community about the promise that this research holds, especially for women in the most heavily impacted parts of Africa where "coercive sex" is a disturbingly commonplace issue. My few days of distance and reading have given me some perspective, as I'd hoped, but I still have some serious questions that I need to ask.

First, while I'm still calm, I think I'll start with the reason/excuse these trials are somewhat common in southern Africa (as best as I can explain it anyway). As the article suggests, "coercive sex" occurs too frequently in some of the regions listed, regions that sadly also possess some of the highest rates of HIV infection on the planet. An explanation for why "coercive sex" is so frequent would take pages,or hundreds of pages, not sentences, but it is a bit more complicated than the way we think of it in more developed parts of the world, partially due to extreme poverty, and largely due to dramatically different cultural perspectives on gender equality.

I'm not making a judgement call on that idea yet. Let's assume that's the way it is for now and keep moving.

In that environment, if we pragmatically accept that it's happening and will continue to happen, then the very real dangers that these kind of trials present, dangers that would never be accepted as justifiable in the "developed world", suddenly seem like a better option than no trial at all. It is, they say, that desperate.

For example, phase 2b trials of a drug called Caprisa 004, a gel form of the AIDS drug Tenofovir, were concluded in South Africa this year. Among the participants who reported using the cream according to directions, there was a 54 percent prevention efficacy rate, and a 39 percent efficacy rate overall compared to regional trends. That is definitely better than nothing. As one advocate suggested, assume that without Caprisa 004 ten women will contract HIV. With it, only six will.

I have a hard time jumping up and down in triumph over those numbers, but I can understand how it's good news just the same.

HOWEVER, the drug mentioned in the first article, the PRO 2000 gel, was in phase 3 trial, the "widest and most exhaustive" stage of testing. Like I said, 9000 participants. There's no info on how effective the drug was in earlier phases, but an insignificant difference between the test group and the control group in this double blind test is very bad news indeed. Just ask the women who contracted HIV. The article does not include exact statistics, only that there was no difference between PRO 2000 and the placebo. I guess only percentages count in East Africa.

But at least the tests concluded that it's safe for the women to use... Useless, but safe. Okay, the angst is back.

The people that run these trials will tell you that the women would have contracted HIV anyway: They were sexually active in a "coercive sex" environment in which they do not get time or the option of insisting on condoms (I really promise I'm coming back to that "coercive sex" concept), so they weren't put in any greater danger than they would have been anyway. Part of that might be true, and when the drugs being tested are like Caprisa 004 and show real potential then perhaps... perhaps there is a justification for levels of danger that we would consider unjustifiable by our privileged western standards.

But how does a drug get to stage 3 without some expectation that it's going to actually do something? And if and when it does, even with drugs like Caprisa 004, how is a double blind study justified when the scientists know that a control group will be given a placebo cream they are told will help prevent infection and then sent out to expose themselves to HIV? And that's not even including the two tests I read about where they encouraged women to either use a spermicide alone, or encouraged them to use a diaphragm with lubricant, neither of which have ever shown any reason to encourage hopes of efficacy! That makes about as much sense to me as, respectively, testing to see if Pledge is an effective protection against battery acid, or using a swim cap and sunscreen as protection from gunfire.

This is where my sense of dissonance starts to kick in.

I know that people with cancer and Huntington's and Alzheimer's participate in drug trails all the time. And I know that when they do they are told they might get the real thing and they might have a placebo. And I know that the participants weigh those risks and take the chance anyway, for a myriad of reasons.

But it's one thing to roll the dice when you're already sick and have no other hope, and quite another to be asked to do so when you aren't sick and the trial expects and requires that you expose yourself to an incurable and fatal disease. And it's a whole extra level to think that these women are being sent out with a diaphragm or spermicide to act as guinea pigs for western big pharma to effectively provide baseline data.

And that's the crux of it. We get a nice PR spin most of the time regarding these large drug tests occurring in the "developing world", but the truth of the matter is that large pharmaceutical companies go to these areas because there is a desperate population extant, uneducated in their corporate ways, and scared enough to buy the snake oil they're pedaling. And, to be clear, that population is female and deprived of power.

The pharma companies say that they are looking for new drugs to help treat the HIV/AIDS crisis, and they are, but when they find effective drugs and get approval in Europe and NA those drugs will not end up back in Africa any time soon. Just like the drugs that make up the effective HIV treatment cocktails now (which were also tested extensively on Africans), they'll be priced as high as possible and marketed like crazy to the developed world. It will take years and massive amounts of UN/NGO/activist pressure to get those drugs back to Africa where they'll actually be useful to women in desperate need.

That's the truth. Southern Africa is the incubator and petri dish of the large pharmaceutical companies right now. The companies' litigation exposure is minimal, the crisis desperate enough to make untenable practices seem reasonable, and the costs far lower than they would be in a developed nation.

These women are being used. Spin it however you like, but ultimately they are being treated like AS disposable lab animals.

The disconnect that must be present to treat people as lab fodder in this way astounds me, baffles me, makes me queasy. It makes me want to burn myself with cigarettes and play with sharp objects. It also makes me wish there were still a few Jonas Salks in the world of pharmaceutical research. (And if there are, please let me know - I could use the lift right now.)

And finally, before I let go of this: "Coercive sex"? Really? Isn't this just a denialist way of saying rape? Does it make it easier for researchers to call it "coercive" so they can sleep at night? Are they trying to distinguish between rape by a stranger and rape by a husband? And if they are, why?

A rape by any other name is still rape, and trying to blur over it with soft language does nothing except enable the rapists. Yes, there are cultural issues that might explain why rape occurs in some places and some situations more often than in others, but these reasons aren't excuses. Not fucking ever or anyplace. They stop being valid as explanations as soon as we know they exist and then do nothing to change it. I find the phrase offensive in the extreme. For the press to use it is tantamount to tacit conspiracy. Call a rape a rape, god-dammit, and quit making excuses.

And then, of course, maybe there's something we can do about it. For ideas on what to do and whom to support check the links below. I'm not saying "these are the ones!", just that it's a place to start. If you know of more, please link to them in the comments. Thanks...

Human Rights Watch
Solidarity for African Women's Rights
Equality Now
UN Women Watch

Switzerland - Women rule!

Switzerland has some issues, not the least of which is a rampaging far-right Swiss People's Party (SVP) that has successfully spearheaded a recent Islamophobic law to prevent the prolific spread of mosque minarets (because the four - yes, four - that existed in the whole country are apparently already a threat).

I also mentioned them in my Blogger's Unite - Women's Equality Day post, pointing out that they were a dramatically late bandwagon hopper in the suffrage movement, not providing women the vote until 1971.

Well, they have apparently made some headway in those 39 years since women got the right to vote (even if it doesn't include religious freedom and tolerance), and have joined a select, small number of governments whose executive political cabinets are now dominated by females.

Good for them. Hopefully that makes a difference.

Bloggers Unite -- September 8 -- International Literacy Day

I was three-going-on-four when my father, the high school English teacher, started reading “The Hobbit” to me before I went to bed. I’d apparently already started to show some reading potential and he used Tolkien to help foster it. I was completely hooked in no time at all. To be fair, I don’t remember too much of the boring song and poetry part in the middle, but the dwarves, spiders, elves and dragons sucked me in big time. By the time we’d made it half way through the book my sneaky dad had me swapping reading duties with him.

When we finished “The Hobbit”, we moved on to Hemmingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” and, at the end of that, he emancipated me with the LOTR trilogy and told me I was on my own. I subsequently missed children’s lit altogether, a gross omission which I rectified in second year university by taking a whole semester on the topic, but that’s beside the point. The point is, I was taught to read at an early age, and then pointed at some really good stories to fuel my growing addiction.

My dad and I have had our differences over the years, but I’ve never been anything but monumentally appreciative for that gift. How could I not be?

Words and language unlock what might be, provide pathways into which we can drag our generation and usher the next, paths that lead to opportunity and revelation, to wisdom and discovery and empathy.

Literacy is the key to all of that. A world that can read and write is a world that can learn. In a world where literacy was ubiquitous everyone could learn. Ignorance could be banished to a minority opinion. Those who use ignorance to manipulate and control would be threatened unto extinction.

Can you imagine that? And to start, all we need to do is make it a priority to teach everyone to read. Compared to world peace, or sending people to the moon, or so may other projects that are important, this one seems relatively easy. We have, as they say, the means to slam dunk this one.

And yet we don’t.

Give a man a fish, they say, and feed him for a day. Teach a man to read, though, and he can find a book to teach him how to fish, and he’ll be fed for life. Hand him a computer and he can Google a helluva lot more than that.

And that’s probably the reason that the governments of the world don’t want us all to be able to read. An ignorant populace is a complacent one.

I will never, ever be able to thank my dad enough for the gift he gave me back when I was too small to appreciate it. He planted a seed and let it grow.

It would be wonderful if we could give that gift to everyone and see what would grow out of it.

September 8 is World Literacy Day. Give the gift, or support someone else who is.

“Everybody's scared for their ass. There aren't too many people ready to die for racism. They'll kill for racism but they won't die for racism.” Florynce R. Kennedy

I’m having a really hard time editing the novel today, and I absolutely have to be getting that shit done, so I thought I’d just rant a bit and get what’s on my mind off of it.

…no jokes about how little there is on my mind on the best of days. You’d be preaching to the converted right now anyway.

Why am I distracted and pissed? The news. I know - huge fucking surprise. This time though I’m not even at my mother’s, and I’m not paying attention to CNN or Fox. Yes, Virginia, there really is a dearth of objectivity in media even in alternative, independent land.

I suppose that the Beck/Palin revival in Washington had something to do with it. The Park51/Cordoba House/Ground Zero Mosque bullshit also added to my angst. So did all of the alternative responses to both. Seems to me like everything just keeps getting more and more polarized, and the people that, according to my bias, should be enlightened and know better just, apparently, aren’t and don’t. I have seen the enemy…, and all that. And so the voices get louder, screaming across the growing divide. There aren’t any solutions out there, in that place where we yell epithets at each other. It’s tempting to give in sometimes and contribute to the erudite insult combat, but the results are generally discouraging, and I always feel a little dirty afterwards.

Wars of words aren’t really any better than wars with weapons. The body count appears lower, but we just don’t count it right if we think so. If we counted in terms of wasted brain cells and lost time and the new barriers of ill-intent we erect the attrition rate would be horrific.

This is not, of course, to say that debate and disagreement, even passionate disagreement, are bad things. But when we lose grasp of reason and self-control there is no upside. We’re supposed to be aspiring to something better, aren’t we?

All this openly racist banter that’s going on makes me wonder what it is our elders and parents fought for back in the not-so-long-ago. We won some new laws, but apparently didn’t win that many hearts or minds. MLK (oh man, you are so missed) must be rolling over like a motherfucker.

I openly pondered on FB the other day that this might all be a sign that the military/industrial/political complex has just figured out that a domestic conflict might be more profitable – put the war closer to the combat, so to speak, and save all that expensive shipping costs.

I know; how dark and depressing a thought is that, only because it seems to fit with a profitability mindset. It’s almost believable.

I also found myself wondering whether all the craziness was just the final frantic gasps of organized fanaticism, er, I mean religion as it kicked and spasmed its way into the grave.

See? I am an optimist sometimes!

Okay, I feel better. Back to making my make-believe world marketable.

Bloggers Unite - Women's Equality Day

It was about ten years ago that I had a sudden and, in hindsight, long-overdue realization: The world I lived in as a white, middle-classed male was dramatically different than the world my female friends lived in.

A friend described to me what it was like to walk in a parking lot at night; how she had to be careful to park in the light and as close to a door as possible; how every van parked beside her car made the world seem a less secure place; how she walked with her keys protruding from her fists just in case.

It was such a simple description of how our worlds were different. I never thought about cars or vans or where I parked my car, never considered where the lights were or how far I was from a door. Once the blinders were lifted by grace of her gentle clarification I found myself in a different reality.

It was a profound moment of empathy, and one I am ashamed to say I had to be led to. I've never looked at a parking lot, among many other things, the same way again.

Bloggers Unite recognizes this day, August 26, as Women's Equality Day, in honour of the United States of America's adoption of its 19th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1920. It was in that year that the US provided their female citizens the right to vote, 57 years after Sweden started the ball rolling, 51 after England, 27 after New Zealand provided full voting rights to all women. The domino affect would require most of the twentieth century to work itself out. Switzerland, for the record, was a notable hold out, waiting until 1971 to grant women full voting rights under their law.

To me, the timeline and my friend's story both highlight how great a gulf there is between the laws we make and the ethics and morality we practice. In Canada, where I live, women have been considered full 'persons' and equal under the law since 1950 when full sufferage was granted.

Only sixty years ago... My mother was ten when her mother finally became a full person under the law.

I find that fact hard to process.

The international recognition of suffrage is a great accomplishment, without a doubt. But the equality our laws provide is not always mirrored in the real world. Suffrage, as huge a step as it was, is only one part of creating any real equality.

Women, on average, are still paid less than men, are still threatened and abused, are still mistreated or ignored by courts.

Women still have to be aware of vans parked beside their cars where men probably don't even notice them.

We've come a long way, but the road is only half traveled. We're nowhere near 'there' yet.

So, by all means, we should take a moment and recognize where we've come from and how much has been accomplished. But when we've caught our breath and shared a toast, perhaps remembered the brave women who have paid enormous prices to get us this far, when we've done these things it will be time to make sure our boots are tied tightly so we can start the walk again.

There's a long way to go yet.

August 26th is Bloggers Unite's Women's Equality Day.