Dear scholar,

We noticed that you have published an article in the journal Crime media cultere, so we kindly invite you to submit an article to our journal "Cross-cultural Communication" (CCC), which is a peer-reviewed petroleum journal published quarterly by Academic Journals (http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org). All the manuscripts are required to be written in English, and they should be submitted as attachment to ccc@cscanada.org or caooc@hotmail.com . The preferred format for the manuscript is APA, although the MSWord format is also acceptable. Note that the submission deadline for the first issue is May 20, 2011. Our objective is to inform author s of the decision on their manuscript(s) within four weeks. Instruction for authors and other details are available on our website: http://www.cscanada.net/index.php/ccc .

Ha ha.   There is no journal Crime media cultere.  A petroleum journal?   Who wold pose APA and MSWord as  contrasting members in the category of format?   

But:  what is the purpose?  This isn't sophisticated enough to actually be doing a pay-journal scam, and the web page above isn't even in grammatical English. Cui bono?  Hm... are they targeting foreign academics trying to break into English language publications?

I finally read "I married a communist"

Away in Turkey while on maternity leave, every night before dropping off to sleep I'd read another half page.  Yes, the Philip Roth book.  It was really good.   The opening parts of the book describe the appeal of fighting against corporate domination and for a world free of wage slavery.   But a marriage is the centerpiece of the book, not communism, and it doesn't really matter whether communist Ira is fighting against unfair labor practices or whether he's active in some other up-hill social battle, because in the end, his quirky marriage to a film star both protected him initially from being blacklisted and later did him in.   It's a powerful story.

Although H is a Roth fan (once had to get up in the night and to go a 24 hour bookstore to get the next Roth novel on his list), he wasn't happy with the book -- felt that Roth had only the most basic understanding of what communists were trying to do in mid-20th century American.  "He doesn't really understand that era"  H said (contrary to the book's back page blurbs).

But now H is like Ira -- he's married and drawn into the demands of married life, including the total absorption required to help me take care of two little boys, now almost one year old, who never take the cute off.

No comments allowed unfortunately because of spam; you can always email me.

Two findings pertinent to evolutionary psychology

Finding 1

Male Abusers Often Sabotage Birth Control With Partners

The evolutionary psychologists must like this phenomenon, since they frequently claim that male partner violence is an extreme form of mate-guarding, and the goal of mate-guarding is to exploit the female's reproductive resources, and the goal of that is getting your genes into the next generation...

Finding 2

At this summer's meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (in Boston), the symposium on evolutionary psychology found that there are geographical areas of the world where men are more (slightly more) interested in monogamy and committed relationships than are women.  The primary area where reversal of the more common gender pattern happens currently is subsaharan Africa, mainly because women are relatively open to mon-monogamy and apparently more aware of the disadvantages of being tied to one partner.  This goes against all those evo psych people who say women must be more needy of pair bonding because they need male resources.  So what's different in Africa -- women are often economically self-sufficient; and males have few opportunities to be the sole provider for a family; or put differently, there isn't a large disparity in income/resource potential between genders.

What is out in that big world anyways?

  

The Aftermath of the Flotilla (comments by Anna Baltzer)

Anna Baltzer emailed her mailing list,  annas_peacework_palestine@yahoogroups.com :

The Aftermath of the Flotilla

 Last night marked one week since Israel's attack in international waters on the Mavi Marmara Turkish humanitarian ship bound for Gaza, killing nine. One by one, the hundreds of witnesses aboard the vessels have been returning home to tell their stories after being stripped of any and all footage. By confiscating all non-military evidence of the incident, Israel has been able to successfully dominate the narrative, at least in the US where news of the attack had begun to dwindle by the time witnesses were released. One wonders, if Israel is conveying the whole story of what happened that night, why eliminate every single other piece of documentation? What does Israel have to hide?

According to hundreds of eyewitnesses, the Navy shot at the boat and threw tear gas and sound bombs before boarding the ship, and then hit the ground shooting. The videos released by Israel show those aboard the ship attacking soldiers with sticks. Israel claims that the deaths were an accident, that the soldiers were startled by the sticks and thus forced to shoot people to defend themselves.

Now let's put things into perspective. In 2005, the Israeli Army removed 8,000 ideological settlers from Gaza, many of them kicking and screaming with sticks and rocks in hand. The Army managed not to kill or even shoot a single one of them. Do sticks from Turks hurt more, or is it not about the sticks at all?

As Dr. Norman Finkelstein pointed out, Israeli officials met for an entire week prior to the flotilla to plan precisely what they intended to do. The Israeli Ambassador to the US Michael Oren himself stated that the Mavi Marmara was simply "too large to stop with nonviolent means." It's hard to believe that this was an accident. 

While the world focuses on the flotilla and Gaza, Israel's restrictions on Palestinian rights in the rest of Palestine continue to tighten. On Friday, soldiers surrounded the Old City in Jerusalem to prevent Muslim men from praying at Al-Aqsa mosque. Only those younger than 15 or older than 40 were allowed through. Hundreds of men gathered outside the metal bars installed by the Army around the city gates. Frustrated, many men sat down to wait to pray on the sidewalk, but soldiers on horseback pushed through the crowd, forcing the men to scatter.

It's important to note that many Palestinians wait for years to receive a permit to visit Jerusalem for just one day. Sometimes the permits are valid only for a few hours. I saw a woman in Beit Sahour whom I'd met in Syracuse last Fall. She said it's easier for her to travel to New York than to go 10 miles away to Jerusalem. She said often permits are sent to the wrong village and families fall over themselves to get the permit to the right person in time, often failing. At the gates, some men argued with the soldiers, close to tears, not knowing if they would ever get another chance to realize a life-long dream of praying at their country's holiest site. 

Eventually, hundreds of men began to gather next to the wall of the Old City and across the street. If they could not enter, they would pray as close as they could. As the call to prayer rang out (at least sound can overcome walls), a noticeable calm came over the space as they bowed down in unison. The soldiers stood over the group, some filming with cameras. In the middle of the group were an olive tree and a young child who stood by himself, watching.

When the prayers ended, those who hadn't brought prayer mats wiped the dirt off their foreheads and gathered with others across the street where an imam had started to speak. Lara, a Palestinian delegate in our group translated bits and pieces of what he said.

The sermon was about the importance of compassion and justice in Islam. There they were, being denied their religious freedom, and they were talking about compassion. The imam asked that their prayers be accepted even though they could not be in the house of God. At one point, he raised his finger and called out the following: "Someday, we will live in a place where it doesn't matter what color your skin is, or where you're from." With every sentence the group resounded in a collective "Amen."

After the prayers, hundreds of women and older men poured out, one of whom told me he'd seen a man beaten by the Army for calling out against Israel's attacks on the flotilla. This is likely precisely what the Army wanted to avoid by keeping Muslims from congregating at the mosque, and they had been largely successful, at least so they thought.

Just as I was turning to return to the hotel, I heard a chorus of women's voices coming from inside the city walls. Soon a large group of women emerged carrying a Turkish flag and singing out familiar calls for justice and praising those who gave their lives to free Gaza. The soldiers thought that keeping the men out would be enough, but they had underestimated the women.

Israel has also underestimated the international civilian community, which continues to speak out. Day and night, we watch protests around the world unfold one after another, seemingly stronger and larger by the day: Japan, Paris, India, Oslo, Australia, and beyond. This is being called "Israel's Kent State."

Far more significant than protests is the fact that worldwide disapproval has been transforming into concrete rejection of normalization with Israel, including major victories for the Palestinian movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) on Israel until it complies with international law.

This past week, the student body at Evergreen College voted to divest from "Israel's illegal occupation." Before she was run over by Israeli soldiers in a US-made Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza, Rachel Corrie had attended Evergreen. Along with divesting, students have voted for a "Caterpillar free" campus. You can support the students by clicking here.

A week before the flotilla, Italy's largest supermarkets COOP and Nordiconad announced a boycott of the Israeli produce company, Carmel Agrexco. Four days later, Deutsche Bank (Germany's largest bank, worth more than $1 trillion) announced divestment from Elbit Systems, an Israeli firm that supplies technology for Israel's military, settlements, and Wall (as well as the Wall between the US and Mexico). Deutsche Bank was one of the company's largest share-holders.

The next day, it was announced that Sweden's largest national pension funds were also divesting from Elbit. (Norway did the same more than one year ago.) Going a step further, the Swedish Port Workers Union announced last Wednesday that it would temporarily stop handling Israeli cargo in response to the attacks on the flotilla.

On the same day, Britain's largest union, Unite, passed a unanimous motion "to vigorously promote a policy of divestment from Israeli companies" and to boycott Israeli goods and services as in "the boycott of South African goods during the era of apartheid."

Then yesterday, the Pixies canceled their upcoming concert in Israel in response to Israel's attack on the flotilla. Musical artists Klaxons and Gorillaz canceled as well. This on the heels of cancelations by Santana, Gil Scott-Heron, Snoop Dog, Sting, and Elvis Costello.

These are but a few of the BDS victories that have happened just in the last month. The movement that officially began in 2005 crossed its first threshold in 2009 (having gained in four years the same momentum it took the BDS movement against South Africa 20 years to achieve), but 2010 has brought it to a new level.

Last month marked 62 years since 80% of the families in Gaza were displaced during Israel's creation, the Palestinian Nakba. And this week marks 43 years since Israel occupied the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The Occupation has been in place 70% of Israel's life-span so far. It is not temporary. And it is but one part of the problem. Along with Israel's discrimination against Palestinians within Israel's de-facto borders and outside historic Palestine, the Occupation will not be stopped voluntarily by Israel. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." I spoke with a member of Boycott from Within (Israelis supporting the Palestinian BDS Call) paraphrased a common phrase during the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa: We will bring them to their senses, or we will bring them to their knees. For Israel, as was the case for the South African Aparthe! id government, the former has simply never worked.

For photos, more reports, and info on Anna's book, DVD, and upcoming speaking tours, visit www.AnnaInTheMiddleEast.com

My gorgeous twins -- born April 8, 2010

So cute, so smart already.  We play imitation games; both babies are already trying to make human sounds.

I like this picture of the hands upraised...

It's worth reading to the end of Joseph Stack's suicide note

In It Can Happen Here: America On the Brink, self-proclaimed patriot, ardent capitalist and business school professor Bruce Judson (see his blog) begs all who will listen or read his book that the U.S. must rectify the last 30 years of income inequality or face the prospect of riots in the streets, political instability, terrorist acts from disenfranchised and impoverished Americans with nothing left to lose, and the end of America as we know it (see buzzflash book review here ).
Judson says we need universal health care and aggressive social works program (similar to the 1940's New Deal) in order to head off unrest.  Hm.  Bring on the unrest!  But do we have boots in the street yet?  Do we have desperate people with nothing left to lose committing acts of violence?

Well, as of today, we at least have flying your plane into an IRS building.

The media are generally spinning Joe Stack's suicide note as insane ramblings.  It's worth reading and making up your own mind,  here.  But if you don't have the time or inclination, at least check out his final two sentences:

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed

Not very rambling.  Pretty sane.

Yes, I am eccentric... I should live near like-minded others

Last fall H and I moved to Cambridge, MA, escaping the misery and noise of the Boston student ghetto where I had regrettably purchased a condo at the height of the housing bubble in 2003.


The joys of Cambridge are many, although in my "leave the house only for 20 hours a week on campus" third-trimester pregnancy state, a primary enjoyment  (after the blissful quiet) is the Cambridge City public access TV station, that airs shows like Democracy Now, Free SpeechTV, and quirky offerings were high school students explain why they chose a particular famous portrait as the inspiration for their self-portrait for their photography class.


Because Cambridge is so famously politically liberal, I was prepared to join neighborhood campaigns against corporate excesses, but thus far the only flyer in our mailbox asking us to join a neighborhood movement has been a campaign to prevent our elderly African American neighbor from raising chickens (now an illegal practice, but he was grandfathered due to his 40 year chicken raising history).  


They provided an email to "complain" and I thus wrote:


I live on [street] where my neighbor (who my husband and I chat with) raises chickens.  I have never been inconvenienced by the chickens and I object to the campaign to forbid my neighbor to raise them.

In my view, we need more gardening and raising of (manageable) animals, not less.  I grew up with chickens and roosters crowing next door in Los Angeles in the 1960s.  Raising one's own chickens is a healthy alternative to factory farming.  Children's exposure to farm animals in the first 3-5 years of life decreases their chances of acquiring allergies.   When my twins are born next month, I will certainly try to expose them to my neighbor's chickens (well, I mean, in a year or so).  I realize that very few urban dwellers want to raise chickens; given that raising chickens can be seen as a community service, the grandfathering clause is a sound one. 

A little too much time on my hands?  Maybe I should  find a way to put up barriers so the comment page of this poor blog isn't the dumping ground for marketing bots.

The summer of my medical tourism, Part III

There's a big topic looming for this blog.  "Is going overseas for egg donation -- some could call it fertility tourism -- something leftists do?"  

 

I've put off this topic for months now, given that H and I returned from Cyprus, pregnant, in late August 2009.  

 

I've felt compelled, all this time, to address this topic because this blog isn't just "All About Moi" or "Procrastination for writing a journal article" or  "My Pregnancy Journal" or "Yet another psychology professor's blog."  I choose the quirky name "I married a communist" for some kind of purpose, so from time to time there should be something about how being associated with the political far left influences one's daily life or at least internal monologues.  

 

H already had this discussion with one of his communist friends, a sometimes reader of this blog.  I hear they mused about the topic but didn't come to a conclusion.   

 

But I've come to some tentative conclusions, after conversations with friends, on two topics:  Is it okay to be the wealthy foreigner throwing money around in a less-developed country?  Did I exploit a woman from an under-developed country by purchasing a part of her body?  

 

Is it okay to be the wealthy foreigner? Yes: I have a choice where to spend my money -- why not spend it in a developing country?  

 

In the world I want to live in, disparities in wealth would be sufficiently small that there would be no economic motivation for anyone to build a hospital in poor country X with the hope of bringing in overseas clients from wealthy country Y.   Am I acting to continue global wealth inequalities by participating in fertility tourism?  I'd enjoy hearing comments from globalization experts, but here's what I've gleaned from some diverse readings:  Many experts are saying we need less *aid* and more *trade.*  When wealthy countries directly give money/resources to poor countries, it breeds corruption.  'Free' money incites competition to confiscate the give-away.    

 

Regular tourism isn't an ideal wealth-creating  industry because it can sequester locals in dead-end jobs of being maids and gardeners.  Medical tourism is hard work.  Yes, there may be a rich capitalist in Turkey who is making extra money off of his investment in Istanbul's Jinemed hospital, but Jinemed doesn't just serve rich tourists -- it's a vibrant city clinic.  Medical tourism has the advantage of training locals for the whole necessary panoply of medical professionals, doctors, nurses, technicians etc.   The prenatal/fertility clinic in Cyprus that  did my invitro sees several infertile foreign couples per day, but still most of their work is with Cyprus locals.  The day of my embryo transfer we waited while a dozen or more Cypriots gathered to attend/celebrate a birth, as my doctor was also their obstetrician.  So locals benefit from the presence of the expertise that was partially funded by the wealthy tourists.  

 

The feminist angle: Poor women's bodies have always been exploited -- by man and by wealthier women.   Did my action of buying a woman's eggs contribute to that?  

 

There are certainly some delicate issues here.  

 

In the realm of buying a piece of someone's body, egg donation seems to me to be on the more benign side, for the following reasons:  

 

Because women produce about 400 eggs in a life-time,  I bought a replaceable piece of a woman's body.  Not as benign as purchasing blood, but no where near as drastic or life-influencing as buying a kidney.  

 

Side-effects are rare (between 1 in 500 and 1 in 1,000), but span the spectrum from an easily-cured infection to infertility.  Because of the rare chance of an extreme negative outcome like infertility, in Cyprus, women are encouraged to be egg donors only if they have already had all of the children they want.  I was told my donor was married, 25 and already had the 3 children she desired (3 children is the average for Turkey/Cyprus).    

 

One reason I choose Turkey/Cyprus as the place for egg donation was that I had read some exploitative stories about Eastern Europe, where young women are drawn in from the country side to the supposedly glamourous, fast-paced cities, housed in dormitories, given little compensation, treated like egg-donation machines, and thrown aside when they had a negative outcome. In contrast, Cyprus is a small island that doesn't leave room for the phenomena of women leaving rural areas to go to the big city where bereft of family support they can be exploited by ruthless organ middle-men.    (But see this story about eggs of Eastern European women being sent to Cyprus.) 

 

An angle I know less about is the Islamic side.  Under Islam, egg and sperm donation are not permitted, being t is tantamount to adultery. For historical reasons including influence from Greece, Cyprus has never been as Islamic as Turkey (it takes work and locomotion to hear a call to prayer).  Still, because the citizenry is Islamic, egg donation is not something to openly discuss.  Women do it privately.   In order to continue to be allowed to legally provide egg/sperm donation,  the clinics have to be careful to avoid scandals,  and thus need to be scrupulous about medical care and treatment of their egg donors.  

 

Finally, the communist/internalist perspective.  Classically, communists are opposed to nation states  (the communist anthem is the "International").   Even in a utopian, egalitarian society, there will be infertile women who want the chance to become pregnant via egg donation, and there will be fertile women who don't mind being a donor, either for some extra cash or for just for the secret joy that they gave an infertile woman the gift of pregnancy.    

 

I think often of the "Cypriot Beauty."  Did my clinic (a Cyprus clinic, not run by overseas organizations) tell her that implantation worked, in my case? Will she wonder about the twin boys that are her genetic offspring, growing up half-way around the world?  I imagine that in the future we'll visit Cyprus as a family, and my sons may feel their Eastern Mediterranean roots.   Comrade, thank you.

Obama, controlled by aliens...

Like many ever hopeful reformists , last January I liked Obama.

But during his televised address about sending 30,000 troops to Afghanistan last night,  I had the sinking impression that he was being controlled by aliens.

What a capitalist tool, I thought, in horror.

I'll use this space to let a better writer, and more politically expert commentator, put my feelings into words.

December 1, 2009 The Obama Puppet -- The world's least powerful man

opednews.com    Paul Craig Roberts 

[Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal]

It didn't take the Israel Lobby very long to bring President Obama to heel regarding his prohibition against further illegal Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land. Obama discovered that a mere American president is powerless when confronted by the Israel Lobby and that the United States simply is not allowed a Middle East policy separate from Israel's.

Obama also found out that he cannot change anything else either, if he ever intended to do so. The military/security lobby has war and a domestic police state on its agenda, and a mere American president can't do anything about it.

President Obama can order the Guantanamo torture chamber closed and kidnapping and rendition and torture to be halted, but no one carries out the order. 

Essentially, Obama is irrelevant.

President Obama can promise that he is going to bring the troops home, and the military lobby says, “No, you are going to send them to Afghanistan, and in the meantime start a war in Pakistan and maneuver Iran into a position that will provide an excuse for a war there, too. Wars are too profitable for us to let you stop them.” And the mere president has to say, “Yes, Sir!”

Obama can promise health care to 50 million uninsured Americans, but he can't override the veto of the war lobby and the insurance lobby. The war lobby says its war profits are more important than health care and that the country can't afford both the “war on terror” and “socialized medicine.”

The insurance lobby says health care has to be provided by private health insurance; otherwise, we can't afford it. 

The war and insurance lobbies rattled their campaign contribution pocketbooks and quickly convinced Congress and the White House that the real purpose of the health care bill is to save money by cutting Medicare and Medicaid benefits, thereby “getting entitlements under control.”

Entitlements is a right-wing word used to cast aspersion on the few things that the government did, in the distant past, for citizens. Social Security and Medicare, for example, are denigrated as “entitlements.” The right-wing goes on endlessly about Social Security and Medicare as if they were welfare give-aways to shiftless people who refuse to look after themselves, whereas in actual fact citizens are vastly overcharged for the meager benefits with a 15% tax on their wages and salaries.

Indeed, for decades now the federal government has been funding its wars and military budgets with the surplus revenues collected by the Social Security tax on labor.

To claim, as the right-wing does, that we can't afford the only thing in the entire budget that has consistently produced a revenue surplus indicates that the real agenda is to drive the mere citizen into the ground.

The real entitlements are never mentioned. The “defense” budget is an entitlement for the military/security complex about which President Eisenhower warned us 50 years ago. A person has to be crazy to believe that the United States, “the world's only superpower,” protected by oceans on its East and West and by puppet states on its North and South, needs a “defense” budget larger than the military spending of the rest of the world combined.

The military budget is nothing but an entitlement for the military/security complex. To hide this fact, the entitlement is disguised as protection against “enemies” and passed through the Pentagon. 

I say cut out the middleman and simply allocate a percentage of the federal budget to the military/security complex. This way we won't have to concoct reasons for invading other countries and go to war in order for the military/security complex to get its entitlement. It would be a lot cheaper just to give them the money outright, and it would save a lot of lives and grief at home and abroad.

The US invasion of Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with American national interests. It had to do with armaments profits and with eliminating an obstacle to Israeli territorial expansion. The cost of the war, aside from the $3 trillion, was over 4,000 dead Americans, over 30,000 wounded and maimed Americans, tens of thousands of broken American marriages and lost careers, one million dead Iraqis, four million displaced Iraqis, and a destroyed country.

All of this was done for the profits of the military/security complex and to make paranoid Israel, armed with 200 nuclear weapons, feel “secure.”

My proposal would make the military/security complex even more wealthy as the companies would get the money without having to produce the weapons. Instead, all the money could go for multi-million dollar bonuses and dividend payouts to shareholders. No one, at home or abroad, would have to be killed, and the taxpayer would be better off.

No American national interest is served by the war in Afghanistan. As the former UK Ambassador Craig Murray disclosed, the purpose of the war is to protect Unocal's interest in the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline. The cost of the war is many times greater than Unocal's investment in the pipeline. The obvious solution is to buy out Unocal and give the pipeline to the Afghans as partial compensation for the destruction we have inflicted on that country and its population, and bring the troops home.

The reason my sensible solutions cannot be effected is that the lobbies think that their entitlements would not survive if they were made obvious. They think that if the American people knew that the wars were being fought to enrich the armaments and oil industries, the people would put a halt to the wars.

In actual fact, the American people have no say about what “their” government does. Polls of the public show that half or more of the American people do not support the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan and do not support President Obama's escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Yet, the occupations and wars continue. According to General Stanley McChrystal, the additional 40,000 troops are enough to stalemate the war, that is, to keep in going forever, the ideal situation for the armaments lobby.

The people want health care, but the government does not listen.

The people want jobs, but Wall Street wants higher priced stocks and forces American firms to offshore the jobs to countries where labor is cheaper.

The American people have no effect on anything. They can affect nothing. They have become irrelevant like Obama. And they will remain irrelevant as long as organized interest groups can purchase the US government. 

The inability of the American democracy to produce any results that the voters want is a demonstrated fact. The total unresponsiveness of government to the people is conservatism's contribution to American democracy. Some years ago there was an effort to put government back into the hands of the people by constraining the ability of organized interest groups to pour enormous amounts of money into political campaigns and, thus, obligate the elected official to those whose money elected him. Conservatives said that any restraints would be a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech. 

The same “protectors” of “free speech” had no objection to the Israel Lobby's passage of the “hate speech” bill, which has criminalized criticism of Israel's genocidal treatment of the Palestinians and continuing theft of their lands.

In less than one year, President Obama has betrayed all of his supporters and broken all of his promises. He is the total captive of the oligarchy of the ruling interest groups.Unless he is saved by an orchestrated 9/11-type event, Obama is a one-term president.Indeed, the collapsing economy will doom him regardless of a “terrorist event.”

The Republicans are grooming Palin. Our first female president, following our first black president, will complete the transition to an American police state by arresting critics and protesters of Washington's immoral foreign and domestic policies, and she will complete the destruction of America's reputation abroad. 

Russia's Putin has already compared the US to Nazi Germany, and the Chinese premier has likened the US to an irresponsible, profligate debtor. 

Increasingly the rest of the world sees the US as the sole source of all of its problems. Germany has lost the chief of its armed forces and its defense minister, because the US convinced or pressured, by hook or crook, the German government to violate its Constitution and to send troops to fight for Unocal's interest in Afghanistan. The Germans had pretended that their troops were not really fighting, but were were engaged in a “peace-keeping operation.” This more or less worked until the Germans called in an air strike that murdered 100 women and children lined up for a fuel allotment. 

The British are investigating their leading criminal, former prime minister Tony Blair, and his deception of his own cabinet in order to do Bush's bidding and provide some cover for Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq. The UK investigators have been denied the ability to bring criminal charges, but the issue of war based entirely on orchestrated deception and lies is getting a hearing. It will reverberate throughout the world, and the world will note that there is no corresponding investigation in the US, the country that originated the False War.

Meanwhile, the US investment banks, which have wrecked the financial stability of many governments, including that of the US, continue to control, as they have done since the Clinton administration, US economic and financial policy. The world has suffered terribly from the Wall Street gangsters, and now looks upon America with a

critical eye. 

The United States no longer commands the respect it enjoyed under President Ronald Reagan or President George Herbert Walker Bush. World polls show that the US and its puppet master are regarded as the two greatest threats to peace. Washington and Israel outrank on the most dangerous list the crazy regime in North Korea. 

The world is beginning to see America as a country that needs to go away. When the dollar is over-inflated by a Washington unable to pay its bills, will the world be motivated by greed and try to save us in order to save its investments, or will it say, thank God, good riddance.

Engrossing, stimulating Mad Men

One of my extended family members who enjoys Mad Men, a favorite show chez nous, wrote me:

I watched the DVD's special features Part 1 on the 2nd wave of feminism or "humanism" as Gloria Stein aptly puts it. The last point that is made by a California professor (forget name) she says that women need to support each others' choices, a philosophy I've always loved being a mostly "stay at home." Here's the thing that's sticking in my craw, literally everyone interviewed speaks as if current commercial advertising is any different. On commercial TV today do you ever see a guy doing laundry? The man is only viewed as a landscaper, SUV driver, beer drinker or a buyer of jewelry. For sure business women are included, but they're still shopping for mops on the weekends. Look at all the male cooking shows on the Food Network, yet you never see a man cooking on a commercial unless he's barbecuing. They only man who cleans up on TV is the Sham-Wow guy.

This email made me realize: Yes, social roles and gender customs have changed immensely; and the content of TV shows has changed also; but ads have changed less than has society -- why?

Back in the mid-90s my psych undergrads did a content analysis (for a course project) of ads shown during a prime-time TV show (Beverly Hils 90210). They documented with precise counts that ads depicted  women house cleaning and grooming, and almost never showed women in a traditionally male occupations. Ads for men were more career-related (the one grooming product for men concerned grey hair and balding).

So why are ads behind-the-times? Why aren't ads keeping up with dynamically changing gender roles? It seems that advertising is inherently "conservative" in the sense of needing to uphold the values of a prior generation, but why? I've read or thought about two explanations:

1. When ads try something more socially progressive, they don't appeal to as large a percentage of the population, because they strongly turn off whatever segment is actually socially conservative (say 20%).  When socially conservative ads are aired, there are fewer negative responses to the ads, because these ads showing older social roles are at least familiar to the rest of the population. So pushing the progressive message is a larger net cost. The example of this that I've read is a somewhat distinct issue, but let me refer to it:  Mainstream magazines,  such as Cosmopolitan, have specific monetary concerns about featuring an African American woman on the cover. Supposedly, these covers lead to a drop in magazine purchases for that issue.   One analysis of this drop is that a cover model of the dominant ethnicity stands for all women, but a cover model of a minority ethnicity is understood (by everyone) as primarily referencing the minority ethnicity.  The analogy I'm making is:  an ad which incorporates traditional gender roles can be understood as applying to everyone (even those who embrace modern gender roles), but an add for contemporary gender roles only applies to the population subset who embrace the contemporary roles.

2. Displaying traditional gender roles creates more anxiety and feelings of low self-worth in viewers, and these feelings drive viewers to buy the advertised products to remediate anxiety about dirty houses, wrinkles, not keeping up with the Jones, owning low-status products, etc. Displaying progressive role models in non-gender stereotypical activities sgnals "I'm okay you're okay" and reduces the need to buy products.

Other ideas?

What goes through your head when you're 4 months pregnant but not the genetic mother of your child?

Conversations go through your head.
Well-meaning friend: So have you had your amnio?
me: No, the doctors don't recommend it.
WMF: But -- you're so old --?
me: (smugly) But my eggs aren't.

OR: conversations I imagine might happen but don't.
Doctors: You're beyond the normal child-bearing age and we just don't know how your body will respond to pregnancy.
But: Didn't happen. Not a hint of any message of that kind. Instead, just cheery, upbeat, professional attitude and compliments on my "good" (low) blood pressure and overall health.
(These imagining probably reflect my underlying fear: I put career before motherhood for two decades, shouldn't I pay the penalty of childlessness? Or at least, shouldn't others expect me to? I'm upsurping male privlege. Got married at 42 and had my first child at 47.)

OR: conversations between me and H:
Me: I didn't recognize that the black guy was Lightman's longtime FBI protector. I'm so glad our daugher won't inherit my prosopagnosia.
H: But I'm sad she won't inherit your genius brain.
Me: She'll have your genious brain. And she'll have my nurture.

OR: conversations between me and myself:
Me: You've got uneven cognitive profile. Sure, you have some wonderful itellectual strengths, but you're half-way to Aspergers. Do you really want to risk on your child an unhappy roll of the genetic dice?
Myself: No, I don't. This is the best thing. The eastern mediteranean beauty with H's 1/4 German Jew and 3/4 Anglo Saxon brit. What will she look like...?
Me: Merely 5 years ago you wanted to be the genetic mother. Now you don't care. Now you even say its better this way. What changed?
Myself: As the years go by you focus on what you really want given what is possible. I've always thought environment was more important than genes. I'm now living my intellectual commitments.

The Hyatt Regency Cambridge.... A really beautiful hotel...

I've loved the view of you across the river from where I work. You're lovely. But not lovable.

Dear Hyatt Regency Cambridge,

In the past, my University, Boston University, has used the Hyatt Hotel for the year-end party for the psychology dept, for several years in a row. I'm hoping BU will join Governor Patrick in boycotting the Hyatt over its firing of housekeepers when they protested working conditions.

I have written Boston University to ask them to join the boycott.



Background for readers:

start with:

WBUR story

or

Hotel workers' website

And when you're driving down Memorial Drive, give a honk and thumbs up to the women now jobless after 20 years.

Their replacements are being paid minimum wage. I guess they thought these deserved more than that.

What's the solution? Pay more for hotel rooms so that workers can earn a living wage? Or: what if hotels didn't have to make a profit? Imagine.

Game Theory -- best strategy for Prisoner's Dilemma used in advice column for real life situation

According to a science writer interviewed on NPR a few weeks ago, one of the few members of Congress who is also a scientist had to step into a heated battle with his fellow lawmakers who wanted to gut approved funding for research on "Game Theory" -- because those congressmen thought the government was being asked to fund a project on sports.

But game theory isn't that obscure. When responding to a blog item about how to deal with a roommate who reneged on a deal regarding who gets to keep the living room futon, the poster bah humbug cited lessons from the Prisoners' Dilemma and described "Tit-for-Tat", the strategy that beat out competitors, as described in Axelrod's Tit-for-Tat and Generous Tit-for-Tat.

Should we classic cooperators read about game theory to learn how to deal with classic defectors?

The dream of socialized medicine

One of my few commenters wrote:

"OMG. next you're going to say you're in favor of SOCIALIST medicine!"

Yes. I'm also a utopian dreamer.

One of my fantasies is that the U.S. would adopt some type of public health care system. I urge policy makers to draw on the last decades of ideas about health care that have been worked out in the other advanced democracies -- Canada, Japan, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Italy, Israel and and so on. (this wikipedia article has a good overview of the publically-funded health care systems in developed countries).

Socialized medicine typically means that "the government owns the means of providing medicine" as in the VA hospitals in the U.S. Rather than focusing on the definition of "government ownership" I focus on the idea that we the people own the government and thus we the people own the means of providing medicine. The VA and other publicly owned health care systems such as the UK system have many flaws, and these need to be worked on.

In my view, the health care system should be a non-profit organization supported by taxes. We need more preventative medicine, which is neglected in fee-for-service programs, but could be a big part of a health care system which is like public education -- free for all.

Health care should not be a for-profit business, because the profit motive is incompatible with caring about people's well-being. Two exceptions to this statement:

1. In the immediate future, I do accept that elective medicine, like lasik surgery and in vitro fertilisation, can be run on a pay-for-service model, such as what I purchased in Turkey this last August 2009.

2. In the far future, I dream of a society in which working for financial profit has diminished or disappeared for most people. People will work for intellectual and social rewards, as do many people in creative endeavours (bloggers, writers, artists, poets) and in fields like education.

I would also be in favor, as a good starting point, of Obama's initial plan that the same health care system that currently provides for congressman and senators be available to all Americans.

Even some non-advanced countries and non-democracies have free for all medical systems. I was very impressed by my experience with walk-in health care in Beijing in spring 2008: no appt necessary, no waiting. I walked in and saw a doctor after a 5 wait, and paid nothing for what was essentially an emergency room visit (I did pay for pharmceuticals needed to treat a rapidly worsening staph infection). Free, even though I was a foreigner. I marveled.

Are young people today angry about being handed a despoiled planet?

According to "Power Shift O9" they are, as in this quote from Power Shift:

Thousands of young people will rally across the United States this Fall for the Power Shift '09 Regional Summits: 11 massive gatherings to exercise the political power of young voters and ask President Obama and Congress to pass a clean energy jobs plan by December to rebuild our economy, end our dependence on dirty energy, and bring America lasting security.

It's a wonderful image...

In the devastated world of 2055, watch 'archive' footage from 2008.... and ask why?

When the Yes Men tell me to jump, I ask, How High? They told me to spread the word about their new movie.

Here's a video clip...

Boston has the best fertility centers in the world -- why go to Turkey and Cyprus?

The summer of my medical tourism, Part II

In discussing the book and film Money Driven Medicine, Bill Moyers put it this way: America excels at rescue medicine, but it it not clear it if does more standard care as well as other countries.

Agreed. If I was in a near-fatal accident or developed an unknown form of cancer or a puzzling disease, yes, I want Dr. Gregory House's cutting-edge innovation to save me. Sure, I'd want to benefit all the high technology the richest country on earth can buy.

But if I need a procedure that takes less than 10 minutes of operating room time and no anesthesia AND is labor intensive in terms of doctor visits and monitoring AND is expensive because its elective and still relatively new -- like IVF with egg donation -- America medicine has only the following to recommend it:


Three weeks to get an appointment

Waits of 15 minutes to 2 hours to see your doctor

Huge amounts of paper work, dozens of required tests that are not actually necessary for your procedure but are there because of over-regulation and because hospitals/doctors get paid per procedure they perform.

What about costs?

The financial consideration can't be ignored: IVF with egg donation top out at $30,000 for everything, and includes me doing the hard work of finding a donor (at least for the clinics I contacted). In Turkey, they find the donor for you, and the whole thing is $10,000.

$30,000 and hours waiting to see your doctor, vs. $10,000, and you call and chat with your doctor any time, same-day appts...? Its not a hard decision.

I wrote the following to a friend who couldn't understand why I would voluntarily travel to what he considers a third-world country for a medical procedure.

Dear W,

My experience with the hospital in Istanbul and Cyprus was very positive. The treatment is *better* here than in the U.S. In the U.S., they don't want you as a patient. They are too busy and to concerned with making a profit. To make a profit, they have to keep patient volume high and minimize labor costs, meaning minimize time customers spend with medical personnel. It took me 4 days and 4 messages left at Boston IVF for them to finally call me when I was at home. Why? They refused to answer their phone because that is too costly. Their operating procedure is that they only call you, so you have to be at home or by your cell phone when they call. Would you voluntarily opt for that treatment if there was something better around?

In the U.S. hospitals, each hospital visit is many hours because you can wait 2 hours to see your doctor. Doctors in the U.S. use psychological propaganda to convince US consumers to expect this. I was so used to this treatment that I was shocked to get to Jinemed and our doctor met with us at exactly the appointed time. I wondered, why bother to haul books to read in the waiting room if they meet with you right away?

Whenever I had a question about what I was going thru, my Turkish friend would say, just call Munip, and she'd bring out her cell phone to call him on his cell phone. She would actually have a conversation with him right then! I was shocked. You can't call your doctor in the U.S. and expect to get him/her on the phone.

The day after my transplant treatment, I was obsessed by finding all the web pages I could to compare what I went through for the prior two weeks and what the best practices are at the leading medical fertility centers in the U.S. My doctors did everything that the U.S. centers brag that the do. Except one thing -- at Chicago Advanced Fertility center, they require that you rest on your back for 1 hour after transplantation so that eggs are not dislodged. In Cyprus, they made me not move for 3 hours, and gave me and H our private recovery room.

Question for readers: Why does Chicago Advanced Fertility allow/require women to vacate after 1 hour of bed rest?

The transplant itself is very simple. They only have to do a few things: grade the embryos, pick the best ones, and deposit them under ultrasound guidance in the uterus. Skill is required to know how to do this, but the Cyprus and Istanbul doctors may do this several times a day for a decade. If they make a mistake, no pregnancy. That is the worse that can happen.

[I wrote this last sentence to W because one of his concerns was: in a foreign country, what if they "mess you up" -- how could you sue and expect compensation?]

The procedure is as easy for the woman as an examination of the uterus with ultrasound. I was not given any anesthetic because it is uncomfortable, not painful. It is barely more complicated than a pap smear.

Final reason to go overseas: Its just easier. Here's how easy: I got a next-day appt. at Jinemed for my first consultation.

July 20 -- first consultation at Jinemed August 4 -- H gives sperm and they mix it up with the Cypriot Beauty August 7 -- embryo transfer August 8 -- I'm free to fly home or do whatever

Length of entire process: 20 days

What about payment? There was no 30 minute consultation with a finance officer. I began taking medicine and had 3 doctor visits before I ever paid a penny (via wire transfer from the U.S.). I never showed a single piece of identification, not a passport, nothing. I never filled out a single form until I signed a consent form for the transplant 5 minutes before the transplant.

During the 2 weeks before the transfer while my doctor was monitoring me with ultrasound every 4 days for the thickness of the edometrial lining, my Turkish friend wanted me and H to go sight-seeing with her in Didem, a 10-hour bus ride from Istanbul. My doctor said we could go for 5 days and I could be checked by his doctor in near-by Izmir! Amazing.

Bill Maher gets it right

"… over the last 30-odd years, the Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital. So what we have is one perfectly good party for hedge-fund managers, credit-card companies, banks, defence contractors, big agriculture and the pharmaceutical lobby - that’s the Democrats. And they sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat earthers and Civil War re-enactors … who actually worry that Obama is a socialist. Socialist! He’s not even a liberal! ... Democrats are the new Republicans” (Real time with Bill Maher June 19).

Yeah, if only. If only Obama all along had been a closet socialist and when he won election in November 2009, stripped off capitalist lackey covering and showed his true colors, to govern for 4 years implementing a program of reform the likes of which this country hasn't seen since, say, the Nixon era.

Its amusing... how did socialism get to be a bad word? I understand how communism became loaded with negative imagery because of 1950s-70s cold war rhetoric, and because of the authoritarian policies of the governments in Eastern Europe; but socialist? The socialists made Europe the relatively benign place to live that it is today (see this book).

The summer of my medical tourism

Can a communist and his wife go overseas as medical tourists? Part 1.

I didn't actually feel that I was a medical tourist until the day after my procedure. After a week in Cyprus, H and I returned to Istanbul, with me carrying 5 creatures inside me.

H: "They're not really creatures, are they?"

me: "Okay. They're developing organisms."

Our dear Turkish friend Y met us at the airport to ferry us back to her apt where we would spend another two weeks before my return to my teaching semester in the U.S.

Y: "All my friends are calling me about the procedure, it will be illegal in Cyprus now, tomorrow, any day now, I was worried you didn't get it. They say it must be controlled, it's not right to have it different in Turkey and Cyprus."

Egg and sperm donation are illegal in Turkey like other predominantly Moslem countries. But it is illegal because the egg and sperm are not married to each other. In vitro fertilization with one's own eggs and one's husband's sperm is legal.

But I'd gotten it -- or *them*. My team in the operating room had been ebullient during the 10 minute transfer, no hint of any dawning regulation dimming their light bulbs. The energy was crackling in that room of vaguely glimpsed hospital equipment, an incubator pushed to the side, green walls. The young doctors and nurses under the guidance of their sage, Dr. S., were on a medical high. In these 10 minutes with my legs spread and all eyes on the ultrasound image, they were reaping the rewards of their years of studying, the privations of their family to send them to school, the hard work to build this clinic and make Cyprus and egg donation a top Google hit -- it was all coming to fruition as they reveled in the chance to create life.

Dr. S. normally speaks through a translator, but because of the importance of the moment he gave me some of his English. Full-five fingered palm spread, his eyes were black with glee: "Five embryos!" He exclaimed. And then he was down to business with the goop on my belly and wand (or whatever?) inside me, checking out the blastocyst landing zone: "çuk guzell!"

That's what he'd said 4 days before when before when the 4 estrogen patches on my ass had pumped my endometrial lining up to a young woman's 10 mm (from my old lady's starting place of less than 4).

çuk guzelle, what you say when the food is delicious. Güzelleme is a beauty parlor.

My mind was still reeling. Nurse A. has asked how many embryos we wanted transferred -- 3 or 4? Some couples only want 2, some only 1. If more than 2 embryos develop, embryo reduction is medically advised. Singleton births are the safest.

"I trust the doctor to decide," I'd said. Like the other egg donor recipients, I didn't want twins, but I didn't want another childless year. And whoa, he decided.

But even now I don't know for sure: Did he *transfer* 5 embryos, or had the petri dish *revealed 5 good embryos*? H would be happy, his sperm mixed well with the ova of the Cypriot beauty (as we called her).

A young doctor of the team appeared on my left to explain with his good medical school English, "It is very important for us now that you are relaxed." I relaxed as best as I could with the fullest bladder of my life (per Nurse A's instructions).

The team exhorted and exclaimed in Turkish the whole time and sooner even than I had imagined, those sweet words came from the buxom nurse who comforted/steadied me on my right side, "All finished now."

Climax over. The team was climbing down departing amidst their goodby's of "good luck" and "bon chance."

They got me onto the moving bed. Dr. S. himself joined the others to help roll me out of the operating room. His black eyes above his surgical mask bored deeply into mine for the 5 seconds before I was safely in the hallway. His final phrase: "12 days, blood test, every day same medication!" He may even have mimed 10 + 2 fingers for me, I can't remember, I just remember those black eyes, staring through the rims of my glasses, gleeful and triumphant, communicating something powerful and wordless to me or to something in me; high on life.