E pluribus unum penuriosus

That’s probably really ass Latin – but it gives my wife something for which to make fun of me.

The story?

A breakthrough agreement to deploy a United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur risks being undermined by a shortfall of up to $1bn (£504m) in US contributions to the costs of global peacekeeping, campaigners said yesterday.

…

former Colorado senator Timothy Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, warned Congress last week that the proposed Darfur deployment, and other current or future UN operations, were being jeopardised by mounting US debts. “As of June 2007 the US was $569m in permanent arrears to the UN for UN peacekeeping,” Mr Wirth said. “The administration’s budget request for the UN peacekeeping account for fiscal year 2008 [beginning in October this year] was found to be short by an additional estimated $500m.

“If this is left unaddressed, US arrears to the UN will exceed $1bn by the end of 2007 for peacekeeping alone,” Mr Wirth said.

Interestingly, Bush’s budget for 2005 included a USD1.2bn loan to the UN (at 5.5% p.a.) to ‘do up’ their New York headquarters. Presumably, then, the US contributes its 22% of the repayment (its share of the UN’s budget, after it got the maximum cap down from 25%) and the rest of the world picks up the remainder.

Neat trick, no? It would appear the Bush administration can lend the UN a billion dollars, but not pay USD1bn of its dues.

You can find out much about the UN’s budget here. Context-wise, the US’ obligation is USD1.42 per American citizen. The US’ public debt, meanwhile, is about USD29,145.73 per citizen. So…

I kept the faith and I kept voting/Not for the iron fist but for the helping hand/For theirs is a land with a wall around it/And mine is a faith in my fellow man

Newspapers in Australia sure are heating up over the as-yet-unannounced election.

Why? Beats me. The Broadband Issue is clearly firming up to be an election one. Kevin Rudd rather forced the hand of Team Howard/Costello on that point, announcing a plan to wire Australia with a Fibre-to-the-Node Network (and hence high-speed internet access, first-world technological awareness and competitiveness, etc.) – a plan that was not only reasonably well-received, but demonstrated that the Prime Minister had managed effectively bugger-all (apart from selling more of Telstra) during his Tenure of Opportunities Missed.

Which is not to say his plan is not also an Opportunity Missed, but we shall see. At its best, rural and regional Australia will be combo-wired in 2 years – a good deal after this election is held, and Howard has decided which of his promises to keep (hypothetically, because of course he will not win). Meanwhile, wiring urban and suburban areas is a venture as yet without a venturer.

Clearly we can look forward to Labor and Liberal throwing plans at one another, with the media going along as though they were expert in the issue all along, none of them realising that the majority of the country have no idea what in hell they’re talking about. I.e., an election campaign.

To another degree it could well be media boredom – what’s with all the polls, anyway? We all know Labor is ahead. Along came one poll giving a marginal turn-around to the government, and every body had a field-day for about a day, after which discussion of the flaws in the poll dribbled out (flaws including the question concerning who favoured whom).

Now we’re being told that most Australians have definitely, cross-their-heart-and-hope-to-die decided upon whom to vote, and will not change their minds:

More than half of voters have already locked in their choice for the federal election, a poll reveals.
…
A Newspoll in The Australian newspaper, shows 52 per cent of voters polled saying their current party of choice is the only one they would consider voting for on election day.

A further 33 per cent say there is a slight chance they will change their current choice come election day.

Was there a point to that? There’s only one poll of voters that can be used to describe all voters – it’s called the election. And I find it hard to believe those 52% are so certain about an election that is as yet not itself ‘locked in’ – will that 52% not change their minds, irrespective of the policies they see presented before them? Great. I’m so glad they will have a say in Who Governs Next According to Their Prejudices. Super.

I can’t complain too much. The media in general seems to have forgotten how journalism works. At least in Australia their making up for it with Newspoll’s to construct the slowest, strangest race ever seen. Here we have to put up with whether or not John Edwards is too pretty to be President, the cost of his haircuts, some idiot woman on youtube and how the Secret Service call Barak Obama ‘Renegade’. And that election is even farther away.

Good Copy Bad Copy

Watching Howl’s Moving Castle at the moment. I do love Studio Ghibli. Speaking of anime – if you’re presented with an opportunity to watch Paprika, I must insist that you do so. It really is spectacular.

On to other things …watchable? Good Copy Bad Copy is a documentary out of Denmark, looking at the state not only of copyright the legal principle, but the culture around it – copyright the concept.

Bush Administration Joins Industry to Block Anti-Terror Regulation of Chemical Plants

Found at the Huffington Post. This is related more than somewhat to my previous griping about how your (Americans) nuclear power plants are racing terrorists to blow themselves up first.

For nearly seven years, the chemical, oil and gas industries have successfully fought proposals to require stringent anti-terror security measures at facilities storing poisonous materials such as chlorine and methyl mercaptan.

These industries have been especially opposed to legislation requiring “inherently safer technology,” a policy industry officials and the Bush administration view as both setting an excessively high standard and as leaving companies more vulnerable to lawsuits for failing to comply.

The chemical, oil and gas lobbies have successfully fended off regulation even under a Democratic Congress. A provision adamantly resisted by the industry was included in the first Iraq supplemental appropriation, which was vetoed by President Bush. The House added it again to the second Iraq supplemental appropriation, but it was quietly removed during final negotiations between top officials of the House and Senate at the request of Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, whose staff said he was acting at the behest of the White House.

Note that especially nasty anti-democratic bit at the end. No taxation without representation, you say?

So now we can add Bhopal to Chenobyl and the list of other disasters that may soon have an American skyline behind them.

In 1994, the oil and gas industry contributed a total of $17.5 million to Congressional candidates, with two thirds of it, $11 million, going to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. By 2002, the industry gave a total of $25 million, with 80 percent, $19.9 million, going to Republicans. From 1990 to 2006, the chemical industry contributed $3 to Republicans for every $1 to Democrats, or $46 million to $14.2 million.

Similarly, at least 85 of Bush’s major fundraisers – “Pioneers” who collected at least $100,000 and “Rangers” who collected $200,000 or more – were corporate officials in oil, gas, chemical and fertilizer companies.

Although industry forces with the backing of the administration were able to fend off the Corzine bill, pressure to require new security measures at facilities housing dangerous chemicals continued. In 2006, the Republican Congress authorized the Department of Homeland Security to oversee this sector.

That legislation and the regulations growing out of it, issued two months ago, met with the approval of the industry.

And pile all those history books, but don’t throw them away/They just might have a clue about what it really means/To be an Anglo hyphen Saxon in England.co.uk

Bloody interesting article by Rafael Behr in Today’s Guardian.

In it he discusses the nature of identity – specifically the fact that, in the anglo majority, the culture is your identity. Unlike an immigrant, for whom private and public personae are likely the norm and where the private identity, based upon your origin, functions existentially as a security blanket. We (the anglo majority; I’m not joining up with O’Reilly and Mad Man McCain or anything) do not have this. We are supposed to be, within our homes, that which we are outside our homes.

I would say I’m among the exceptions to this. Being Australian in the US, vegan, Buddhist (opinions differ), etc. adds me up to not-the-norm (I’m told often enough that I also hate America). Certainly in terms of the obesity question, which is that at which Behr is getting:

The result is a sort of cultural insecurity among the majority, non-immigrant British. If you are an immigrant and also a UK citizen, the chances are you have dual identity. Let’s say for the sake of argument you are Muslim and British. The split in your identity probably coincides with a split between public and private personae. At work, in the shops, in the street you are British. At home, around the dining table, you are Muslim. When the world outside your front door is a bewildering, insecure, chaotic global marketplace, your private cultural identity isn’t a luxury, it is an existential necessity. It keeps you sane.

If, however, you are part of the overwhelming majority of white, non-devout Christians, no such cultural safety net exists. Your culture is the mass culture, which is global consumer culture, which is no culture at all.

That matters in the fight against obesity. A cultureless society eats primitively, consuming the worst kind of foods, high in saturated fats, refined carbohydrates, sugar, salt. There is a reason mankind likes this sort of food. It is a legacy from our troglodyte ancestors for whom energy-yielding foods could guarantee survival in a hostile environment
…
The development of more sophisticated tastes is part of the process of civilisation. Millions of Britons now have an uncivilised approach to food. Go to any high street and count the people shovelling cakes in their mouths with feral urgency. We eat like cavemen.

I see this through a US lens – just yesterday I was impressed with the number of vendors hawking Father’s Day (that was yesterday in US – crazy, isn’t it? Everyone knows God made Father’s Day the 1st Sunday in September). This included wine-sellers (celebrate Father’s Day with wine-tasting? I just don’t see it). America loves a holiday, and every year I see not only Establishment Holidays (for want of a better word) getting bigger, but smaller holidays. Like Halloween in Britain, which Behr discusses, there is very obvious market interest in expanding holidays, particular ones with special consumer-behaviour attached (Halloweeen makes an excellent case in point. July 4th is a ‘day’ here, now a holiday, and one that seems to be evolving into a proper establishment holiday. I already hear “Happy July 4th”, and I expect cards and gifts can’t be far off?).

I don’t know what it’s like in Australia – we have so many public holidays there is probably overkill keeping the festival-ness of them down. Plus you get a day off, you stick an international cricket match in it. Everybody knows that’s the natural order of things. Our Australia Day is not and probably will never be celebrated like July 4th – it’s more like Columbus day, which Universities only call a ‘pacing break’, rather than offend.

Behr’s point about food and the manner in which we eat it is a good one, although I suspect he’s premature in the rescue of immigrant Britain. Non-immigrant Britain has fallen victim to the move of production from households to Tescos, but why it should stop there cannot be adequately presented. As sure as they work long hours, watch TV and want convenient food, so shall it be made for them, whoever ‘they’ are. If the pattern breaks because of greater awareness, all the better, but health-economic research in enough countries suggests it might not be enough.

Meanwhile, Brits, you will be pleased to know that your deep-fried pizzas are nothing.

Wealthy Nations Should Increase Global HIV/AIDS Spending, Editorial Says

I thought I’d return to that AIDS story from India. From the Kaiser Network:

“Now that the Group of Eight industrialized nations has pledged to commit $60 billion to combat AIDS and other diseases around the world in coming years,” Congress and “other national legislatures ought to look hard for additional funds to close a looming gap between the funds committed and the needs of desperate patients,” a New York Times editorial says. Donor nations have “greatly increased their funding for AIDS programs in recent years in belated recognition that the epidemic threatens to destroy not just its victims but also the social and economic fabric of many countries in sub-Saharan Africa,” the editorial says.

Although President Bush’s recent proposal for a $30 billion, five-year extension of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is a positive move, the funding request “represents only a modest increase from the spending trajectory” the U.S. already was on, according to the Times. The U.S. has been “by far the largest AIDS donor in recent years, providing almost half of the funding commitments made by donor governments,” the editorial says, adding, “But when measured against the size of the national economy, the American donations rank only fifth. There is room to do more.”

The G8 pledge and Bush’s PEPFAR proposal will not be “enough to keep up with the devastating epidemics” of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, the editorial says, adding that tens of “billions of dollars more will be needed to provide treatment, care and preventive services for AIDS alone over the next five years.” As Congress this year “wrestles” with the fiscal year 2008 appropriations bills, it should “provide the full $1.3 billion being sought by congressional health advocates” for the U.S. contribution to the Global Fund To Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the editorial says, concluding that Congress also should “set the nation – and by its example, the world – on course toward universal access to AIDS treatment by 2010″ (New York Times, 6/18).

We know that AIDS funding is ever-increasing:

and putting that into some sort of context, from the same report:

The question is, is it making any difference? Talking to a friend (who reminded me that I wanted to revisit this), whose work is kind of related to this sort of thing, his perspective was that AIDS funding had gone a little IMF – in that it was used to impose “good governance” (caveat: he did say he thought this in his more paranoid moments). One can see pieces of this for themselves – the Bush administration’s horrid little gag rule a splendid case in point. Even above, the New York Times editorial tells us that Congress also should “set the nation – and by its example, the world – on course toward universal access to AIDS treatment by 2010.” What does that mean, on course toward universal access to treatment? Who defines what is ‘on’ or ‘off’ course.

The holders of the purse strings, ‘of’ course (bad pun. Sorry. I’m Australian, we can’t help ourselves).

If you go searching for longitudinal studies of HIV/AIDS, you’ll find a lot of first-world work, looking almost entirely at first-world concerns. Not so much incidence (or structure), or response to funding. We’re all more or less familiar with the pandemic,

but only in that static sense. Personally I don’t think my friend is as far off as he thinks he is: look at the response to the Indian story:

Millions of dollars have poured in from international donors, NGOs and the government for prevention and awareness programmes.

But today, this flow of funds could dry up. New estimates reveal that the number of people living with HIV could be much smaller than believed and ironically, activists fear the first casualty would be aid.

”Funding would be affected at their level. Small NGOs would be at the receiving end,” said Kaushalya, Positive Women’s Network.

That ’small NGOs’ comment is telling. A UNAIDS’ Report on the global AIDS epidemic 2006 included the lines:

More leadership and more money are still urgently needed, and thus these two areas of focus remain essential, but now there is widespread recognition that a third focus is also vital: making the money work more effectively.

Why is this necessary? As more money has become available, more government,international, civil society and other organizations have been responding to AIDS in many of the low- and middle-income countries most heavily burdened by the epidemic. Often, there have been no mutually agreed-upon strategies or mechanisms guiding, coordinating, monitoring and evaluating their efforts. The result has been duplication, waste and serious gaps in the national AIDS response in many countries.

Often, for example, there has been insufficient surveillance to identify the people whose behaviour places them most at risk of infection and consequent failure to reach these people with prevention, treatment, care and support services.

This is the beginning of chapter 11, Getting the Best Out of National Responses. It continues into stake-holder, guiding principles, action framework speak (not my bag).

I’m not suggesting funding be cut. I do get as annoyed as any other healthy-in-a-rich-country welfarist at the popularity of one illness over another, and Bono really does send me spare. Returning to the India story Anjali Gopalan, Executive Director of the Naz Foundation, said

”I see this as a very political disease. This kind of response has not come from communities in cancer and malaria, even if studies show that numbers are lesser. Donors can’t pull back now. It’s opened a Pandora’s box because we are also looking at opportunist infections. For the first time because of HIV there are health initiatives that have gone down to the district level.”

I mean, good, but that’s a fine demonstration of the problem – funding for AIDS has increased as though it is funding for aid. Little is known about the impact of this funding, but little enough even seems to be known about the implementation of it. With the bodies involved it is not surprising: governments and the strings that they attach to their funding, the UN, WHO and down through all of the NGOs at work in various countries.

It strikes me though that, in an age when the NHS won’t consider a treatment without some idea of its cost-effectiveness, we could do with some of that waste-not-want-not attitude in our response to the AIDS/HIV pandemic. Again, thank God, I don’t have it and I don’t need access to treatment while having no running water. Which is why I’m not suggesting funding simply be cut when a country’s numbers go down – because as I said the other day, numbers are remarkable fungible, to the point of being meaningless, things. I just think we’re spending some rather inefficient dollars on the problem.

There are no mandates in politics

It was bad enough when every newspaper went along with the Bush administration’s claims of a mandate with the narrowest  of majorities managable (and the constitutional enshrinement of the two-party system, and the Undemocracy of the Electoral College, and).  Now The Europeans are at it.

From the BBC:

Sarkozy wins ‘mandate for reform’

French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP party says it will press ahead with wide-ranging reforms, after winning a majority in parliamentary elections.

Mr Sarkozy has a smaller majority than anticipated. Although the centre-right UMP failed to secure a predicted landslide, it said it had a mandate to implement change.

So now we’ve reached a point where someone can talk about their mandate at the same time as talking about how their non-unanimous majority is smaller than they’d expected. This is a bad sign, because it builds directly into the sort of thing I was complaining about yesterday when listening to Lindsay Graham, Cultural Bloody Warrior.

If you ran on a single issue, and your opponent ran on the same issue, with a different position, and you secured an overwhelming majority, then I would concede you had earned a mandate to pursue your policy on that issue alone. No other circumstance qualifies.

One is not in ‘power’, one is in ‘government’. One does not have a ‘mandate’, one has a ‘majority’. Neither of which are true unless ordinary citizens and readers of newspapers remember that it is true. Because the Editors of the world are most certainly not on the side of speaking truth to power, if they ever were.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.

mandate

SYLLABICATION: man·date

NOUN:

1. An authoritative command or instruction.
2. A command or an authorization given by a political electorate to its representative.
3a. A commission from the League of Nations authorizing a member nation to administer a territory.
b. A region under such administration.
4. Law a. An order issued by a superior court or an official to a lower court.
b. A contract by which one party agrees to perform services for another without payment.

TRANSITIVE VERB: Inflected forms: man·dat·ed, man·dat·ing, man·dates

1. To assign (a colony or territory) to a specified nation under a mandate.
2. To make mandatory, as by law; decree or require: mandated desegregation of public schools.

ETYMOLOGY: Latin mandtum, from neuter past participle of mandre, to order. See man-2 in Appendix I.

OTHER FORMS: mandator —NOUN