Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Artist spotlight: 'She creates'

Mumbai: The world will watch as She Creates ...

SHEIn the spirit of Gandhi Jayanti, please join us for the first screening of the 5 films made by 25 girls from Dharavi slums to private schools who came together to make a difference through films. What started as an experiment, resulted in heartfelt short films on girl child issues.

On 2nd October MAM Movies invite you all to witness their little dreams taking shape in the big screen.

The girls attended workshops in film making, so that they could create these stories. Some are about themselves, some are about their family, their neighbours, their nightmares, and their dreams to rise above these...


"Transplant tourism" and offshore organ transplants

Organ transplants move offshore as patients pursue "transplant tourism"

Wednesday, September 19, 2007 by: David Gutierrez
(NewsTarget) The United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed concern over a dramatic rise in the incidence of "transplant tourism," in which wealthier medical patients -- usually from First World countries -- travel to poor countries for transplants from people who have been persuaded to trade their organs for money.

According to Luc Noel of the WHO's health technology and pharmaceuticals unit, the prevalence of transplant tourism has increased over the past 10 years to the point where it accounted for five to 10 percent of worldwide kidney transplants in 2005.

Poor people in countries such as Egypt, Pakistan and the Philippines are commonly convinced by organ brokers to sell their body parts.

"There are villages that are in the poorer parts of Pakistan where as many as 40 to 50 percent of the population of the village we know only has one kidney," said Farhat Moazam of the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation in Karachi, Pakistan. While organ donors may be promised as much is 150,000 rupees ($2,500), she said, the amount they see may be drastically lower once brokers' fees and medical costs are deducted.

In addition, many such donors do not receive the needed follow-up care after their major surgery, which often leads to serious health complications.

According to Jeremy Chapman, a doctor at Westmead Hospital in Sydney, Australia, advances in surgical techniques have led to an explosion in the demand for organ transplants. This, in turn, has led to a shortage of organs, most of which are donated by people only after their deaths. If a living relative is not available to donate the needed organ, many people are now turning to other countries to find what they want.

"The wealthy, in search of their own survival, will sometimes seek organs from the poor," Chapman said, summing up the troubling dynamic.

In response to this trend, the WHO has recommended stricter international rules on organ donation and transplantation.

Open Letters to George W. Bush

Letters to the president from his ardent admirer Belacqua Jones


Dear George,


Two words explain why victory is ours in Iraq: pathological rationalism. This dynamic allows us to pursue a linear course of action driven by a series of if/then constructions that move us forward regardless of the consequences of these actions. Translation: staying the course no matter how deep the shit is.


Take Iraq. The logic of it all sings. Controlling oil in the Middle East is a matter of national security. We lost a client state when the Iranian revolution swept the shah out of office. So when the Neocons came to power, it seemed only logical to replace Iran with Iraq, especially since between the first gulf war and our draconian sanctions, the regime was too weak to stand. A cakewalk, as one sage put it.


And, what the hell, while we were at it, why not democratize and secularize the whole region, another cakewalk for the world’s sole surviving superpower.


It is a basic precept of pathological rationalism that once an action is initiated, it continues even if all the premises upon which the action was based turn out to be wrong. And when it came to Iraq, they were about as dead wrong as you could get. 


But, that doesn’t matter. It is far better to bleed slowly to death than to lose face by admitting a mistake. 


Besides, as a western democracy we are entitled to take whatever we want because the purity of our motives are always above reproach regardless of our actions. Columbus established this precedence when he Christianized the natives by enslaving them. 


It’s only right. We are rational; they are irrational. We practice the serene violence of the civilized; they practice the savage violence of the barbarian. We practice policy while they practice passion.


Policy is the sand we spread to absorb and conceal the pools of blood we leave in our wake. Madness poured into the mold of policy is no longer madness. As policy, madness becomes clarity of vision as seen through the opaque lens of ideology.


The reason you have christened this The Long War is because we will plod on and on until we have shed so much blood that we finally see a return on our success, no matter how small or insignificant that success is. 


To the pathologically rational mind, whatever is posited is. A policy promulgated defines reality and in doing so transcends the grim, unpredictable concreteness of fire, earth, water and air as it orbits in the ethereal realm of fantasy where all is well that ends well.


Your admirer,

Belacqua Jones


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