On Evictions, Nudism and Attention Deficit Disorder

This caused many things to happen.

Not so long ago I received a 3 page email from a cousin. Glanced through quickly. Vast expanse of words – most frequent word “eviction”. She lives in Israel, and had earlier emailed me some gossip about “Big Brother” coming to Israel.

As a person she is a fan of daytime television, particularly, garden-variety reality shows. An exhibitionist streak in her leads her to vacation in-the-nude, on beaches in Greece (from an earlier email: “I really feel an affinity for Africa. They are so close to nature. I so much want to come there”. A foreboding vision of her traipsing naked though the bush with painted masaai men carrying spears, flashed before my eyes. A hallucination sufficient to make me skip Yom Kippur)

And so my brain made a few connections. I drafted a quick reply expressing my anguish for her being evicted from “Big Brother House”, and that its “…just a TV show”.

After hitting send, remembered that she was a Jewish settler somewhere in the West Bank, and and it was a time when settlers there were being forcibly re-settled because of The Wall. That is why she has never spoken to me since.

Note: Pesach is almost upon us, may you all feast upon matzah.

Also Note:  From the Haaretz, meet Israel’s great crocodile hunter , duhh ??:

“In Africa, when night falls, everyone stays inside because it is reasonable to assume that there is a hippopotamus or a crocodile outside the village. At night they’re afraid to leave their huts. The members of the Masai tribe, who have amazing hunting abilities – even the lions are afraid of them – are a negligible minority in Africa. Most of the people are simple people, farmers and fishermen. Nighttime is taboo for them and so are crocodiles.”

Media pimping itself

Where exactly is the fine line between “news” and “advertisers announcement” ? The Business Daily in Nairobi has this story that raised my eyebrows :

Attack on Patents hurts the Poor

April 9, 2008: Activists have been trying for years to bring down the pharmaceutical industry. Their “patients not patents” campaign has a simplistic appeal but will only make things worse for the poor, as well as distracting attention from the real causes of ill health: poverty and corruption…….

The premise of the article, which tries to pass itself off as news, is simple but devious : “The fight against pharmaceutical patents is bad because it distracts attention from basic provision of medical care”.

The authors of the news item are listed as :

“Written by Alec van Gelder & Franklin Cudjoe….
…Franklin Cudjoe is director of Imani, an independent policy think-tank in Ghana.
Alec van Gelder is Network Director at International Policy Network, a development think-tank in London.“

What are these “independent” think-tanks ? Are they really independent ?

This think-tank : International Policy Network (IPN), is a corporate funded think-tank (with funding from the pharmaceutical industry) with a long rap-sheet involving the tobacco, nuclear energy, and anti-global-warming lobby

The other think-tank Imani-Ghana is a partner organization of IPN, and presumably motivated by the same interests.

Do papers like the Business Daily take money to publish what is clearly an advertisement, as news ? Or are they just stupid to print PR releases sent to them ?

Note:
More evidence that the Business Daily is pimping itself, note the theme of the following articles published in the newspaper, written by intrepid reporters from the “International Policy Network” :

• Alarmists wrong on Global Warming ( says, Global warming isn’t really true)
• Protectionism harms consumers (says, developing countries must also take on emission quotas )
• Warped policies plant hunger (rails against african govt. barriers and tariffs, and makes a case for GM seeds)

On Zimbabwe

Nothing can be more shameful than for a dictatorial, totalitarian government, where the leader even has mock Hitler moustache to claim that the opposition may have a hand in rigging an election***.

Whatever happened to good, old-fashioned, all dominating, no-nonsense tyranny ?

Note:
*** – there is a parallel here even with the Kenyan elections.

Note:
I still don’t get why the Tsvangirai guy is so desperate to become president. After all a tooth-brush costs millions. What kind of financial accounting system do they run anyway, it must support verrrry large numbers? I would run like hell if someone tried to make me president.

Case for a new, lethal, airbrorne Virus

A government of 1 president, 1 vice president, 1 prime minister, 2 deputies, 40 ministers, 40+ assistant ministers, all their wives and kids, fleet of land yachts, policemen, body guards, security dogs, and a few hookers thrown in for good measure == 30 million dollars annually.

Instead, the same money could be given to a pharmaceutical company to develop a new strain of virus, something air-borne and virulent -  a manic cross between H5N1 and Ug99. This special strain of virus, incorporating the miracles of modern technology, and the search capabilities of google will be designed to infect everybody meeting the following criteria:

people inside shiny cars weighing over 2 tonnes; people owning yellow suits; lovers of currency-note portraits; users of fairness cream; singers of “Jambo Bwana” etc.

The virus will invade the subjects, and in a few hours, turn them into free-range chickens for general human consumption. Thus solving the twin problems of stupidity and world hunger, forever.

Note: I have a yellow suit, and a 2 tonne car – which means I would yield 2 chickens. Corresponding math required for president, prime minister, first lady, george bush etc.

Traffic #2

Bizarre article about resolving the transport crisis. I know sometimes the media needs to extrapolate and forecast the future. But talking about 350 km/h French trains in the context of proposing a solution to the transport crisis  is like saying : “in the future its possible that Sarkozy could become the prime minister of Kenya”.

Though, I am sure some NGO will get funding to do a study of some sort about using TGVs to solve transport problems.

Why was the railway left to go to seed anyway?