The DISH

Unbossed and unbought news and information you can use

Vol. 12 Issue 10…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…March 8, 2009

Venue for an Artist

Hunger

By Robert Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

I come among the peoples like a shadow.

I sit down by each man's side.

None sees me, but they look on one another,

And know that I am there.

My silence is like the silence of the tide

that buries the playground of children;

like the deepening of frost in the slow night,

when birds are dead in the morning.

Armies trample, invade, destroy,

with guns roaring from earth and air.

I am more terrible than armies,

I am more feared than the cannon.

Kings and chancellors give commands;

I give no command to any;

but I am listened to more than kings

and more than passionate orators.

I unswear words, and undo deeds.

Naked things know me.

I am first and last to be felt of the living.

I am hunger.

About Me: Born in Lancaster, England, Binyon's first volume of poetry, Lyric Poetry, was published in 1894. During WWI, he served with the Red Cross, visiting the Front in 1916. His "For the Fallen" (1914) contains some of the most famous poetic lines about war and remembrance.

Bit of History

Alexis Carrel (1873-1944)

Born on June 28, 1873 in Lyons, France, Marie Joseph Auguste was the son of Alexis Carrel Billiard and Anne-Marie Ricard. A member of devout Roman Catholic family, upon the death of his father, Marie dropped his baptismal names and took his name at the age five. Alexis attended Jesuit school before attending the University of Lyons. He earned two baccalaureate degrees, one in letters (1889) and one in science (1890).

On June 24, 1894, an Italian anarchist assassinated French President Mare-François-Sadi Carnot in Lyons. Carrel was appalled that Carnot died because surgeons could not repair his severed portal vein. Carrel showed great talent at dissection and surgery, obtaining his medical degree from the University of Lyons in 1901.

While teaching medicine and conducting research, he developed extraordinary skill using embroidery needles, thread and paper. Experimenting on animals with vessel anastomosis, he devised a method to unite cut vessels and revolutionized vascular surgery, making it possible to transplant organs and restore amputated limbs in 1902.

Despite Carrel's success as a surgeon, he was not given a faculty position. He was offered a teaching position at the University of Chicago in the Hull Laboratory and immigrated to the United States in September 1904. He authored papers on experiments involving anastomosis of blood vessels and transplantation of the kidney.

In 1906, Carrel moved to the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research laboratory in New York City. Carrel's progress in heart and blood vessel surgery and organ transplants laid the foundation for many advances. He demonstrated that blood vessels could be kept in cold storage for long periods of time before transplanting and was the first to cultivate tumor tissue in vitro in 1910. His work also made direct blood transfusions possible at a time when scientists did not know how to prevent blood from clotting. For his pioneering efforts, Carrel won the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1912.

On January 17, 1912, he began his legendary experiment of growing live tissue in vitro. Carrel removed a small piece of heart muscle from a chicken embryo and placed it in fresh nutrient medium in a closed Pyrex flask of his design. Repeating this process when the tissue grew too large for its container, Carrel kept the chicken heart alive for twenty years. This experiment laid the foundation for current efforts to grow meat in test-tubes.

Carrel returned to France in 1913 where he met and married Anne de la Motte de Meyrie. While there, World War I broke out. Still a French citizen, he was mobilized as a Major in the French Army Medical Corps. Carrel and his wife, a trained surgical nurse, were assigned to a field hospital, and along with Henry Drysdale Dakin, an American chemist, they developed a method of irrigating severely infected wounds and was awarded the Legion of Honour for this work.

Carrel returned to the US after the war and collaborated with aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. They designed a special sterilizing glass pump that was used to circulate nutrient fluid around large organs kept in the lab. This perfusion pump, a so-called artificial heart, successfully kept animal organs alive for several days. The apparatus laid the groundwork for future developments in heart-lung machines and other devices. Carrel and Lindbergh jointly published The Culture of Organs, which described the use of the perfusion pump (1938).

Carrel published Man, The Unknown in 1935. Carrel posed philosophical questions and theorized that selective breeding could produce an intellectual aristocracy. A worldwide best-seller, it was translated into nineteen languages. His admiration for Mussolini, concern for the "salvation of the white race," as well as his feeling nations should "develop the strong," rather than "protect the weak" disturbed and frightened many.

Carrel and Lindbergh (1938) openly believed in "whiteness" and held public discussions to promote "improving the white race." These same racist views were raging unchecked in Germany's third Reich. "We must not forget that the most highly civilized race - the Scandinavian - is white. In France, the population of the north is far superior to that of the Mediterranean shores," Carrel wrote.

Carrel retired and left the US after the start of World War II. He arrived in Paris (1941) as the Vichy government, puppets of the German military, took control. Carrel directed the Foundation for the Study of Human Problems, a front to mask the Vichy and the German military's racism. Carrel advocated the use of gas chambers to rid humanity of "inferior stock."

His endorsement cannot be separated from the horrors of the Holocaust. Many argue that Carrel's advocacy of eugenics was responsible for the execution of thousands of mentally ill or impaired patients under the Vichy. When the Allies recaptured France in 1944, the French government accused Carrel of collaborating with the Germans.

Unfortunately, Carrel suffered a heart attack before he could be prosecuted. Carrel died of heart failure in Paris on November 5, 1944. Although, his achievements ushered in a new era in medical science and his pioneering techniques paved the way for successful organ transplants and modern heart surgery, Carrel's views on race speaks volumes about the man. He is like many who freely express racist views when talking about those who are defenseless, as well as economically and politically powerless, or sharing the company of those who feel similarly.

News You Use

A Glimpse of the Future

By John Burl Smith

A fan, who read my novel, Archangel: A Hip Hop Vision of Love and the Battle of Good Verses Evil published in 2007, sent an email with questions about the plot. She wanted to know if the plot was based on a fiction or did I develop it from current efforts to grow meat in test tubes? Her inquiry was prompted by PETA's offer of $1 million to the first researcher that produced commercially-viable in vitro chicken grown in a lab that could be sold to the public by June 30, 2012.

PETA's offer (4-2008) to underwrite "test-tube meat" has rekindled public interest in what seemed like science fiction in 2004 when I began writing Archangel. Like this reader, back then, I was totally unaware of any serious research effort to grow meat in labs. I desired to create a love story shrouded in mystery based on a storyline that would allow me to find my voice as a novelist. I imagined a unique surreal plot in which test-tube meat was a device that opened up aspects of history that the world should not forget. After Archangel was published, I was asked had I gotten my idea from Dr. Henk Haagsman's research. The question drew a total blank.

It turned out that Dr. Henk Haagsman was Professor of Meat Sciences at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands and a pioneer in test-tube meat production. Haagsman, who had already grown meat in vitro, had been given $5 million by the Dutch government to find a way to reduce the cost of turning his test-tube meat into hamburger, sausage, chicken nuggets and pizza topping inexpensively. Learning this was like a page straight out of Archangel.

Reviewing Dr. Haagsman's research was déjà vu. A scientist was getting paid real money for doing what I had dreamed up for a storyline. This was simply amazing, not only were people doing it, there were governments and private businesses willing to spend millions of dollars to make it happen. According to a new economic analysis presented at the In Vitro Meat Symposium in Ås, Norway, (4-2008) growing meat in giant tanks known as bioreactors is a technology now projected to produce enough meat to feed all the people on earth. A spin-off of technology for growing tissues like bone, skin, kidneys and hearts, vat-grown meat has moved from my novel's science fiction imaginings to consumer options.

Jason Matheny, a researcher at Johns Hopkins and co-founder of New Harvest, a nonprofit corporation that promotes research on test-tube meat, put it this way, "Growing muscle cells on an industrial scale is the next step. That's the goal and it's clear from this conference that it's achievable." According to Bob Dennis, a biomedical engineer at both North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina, who attended the conference, "An actual whole muscle organ is not technically impossible today but the general consensus is that minced or ground meat products -- sausage, chicken nuggets, hamburgers -- those are within technical reach. Matheny concluded, "The technology to make those things at scale exist, in this case, we are talking thousands of tons per year."

When Archangel hit the market, some readers felt the plot line was a little farfetched even for science fiction, but now with incentives like the PETA offer and the Dutch government's bankroll on the table, test-tube meat is headed to a store near you and to your dinner table. Now the question should be, if that part of my Archangel storyline is "life imitating art," what if the whole plot of Archangel unfolds as the reality? And so it has!

As I researched Dr. Alexis Carrel this week, it was déjà vu once again. My bad guy Nazi in Archangel, Dr. Dasingburg, who develops "New Grub," the test-tube meat in my novel, is a double for Dr. Carrel. Though purely coincidental, having only discovered Carrel this week, the resemblance is uncanny. Only now do the possibilities of a fictionalized novel form a matrix of real life events of the past, present and possibly the future, make Archangel seem prophetic.

Against today's backdrop of world hunger and exploding populations, economic crisis and government instability, scarce resources and huge international demand, a growing list of political actors whose tactic of choice for those seeking power is terrorism, my Archangel scenario is more than possible. The world's conditions at the outbreak of World War II - fascist governments buttressed by racist policies and ideologies juxtaposed against a world of nonwhite people whose numbers grow daily - are not much different. One can easily envision a Rush Limbaugh as the megaphone of those whose goal is to dominate the world's natural resources, food, water and transportation through population control.

The elements are in place, all that is needed is some megalomaniac with the will of an Adolf Hitler to step forward as the savior. Archangel simply raises the alarm as one possible reality. I simply point out our choices; what we do will determine the outcome. (Archangel is available at www.archangelworld.com.)

Politics Y2K9

Greatest Threats to World Stability: Food, Population and Poverty

By John Burl Smith

According to Dennis C. Blair, US director of national intelligence, the global economic crisis poses the greatest threat to world security. This reality is not a surprise in developing nations that are perched on the brink of "food insecurity." However, for countries in Europe and the former Soviet Union now undergoing low-level instability, a deep prolonged recession could lead to revolution. Poverty amid plenty, shrinking birthrates and swelling populations, more rice and more hunger are dichotomies fueling the worldwide threats Mr. Blair envisions.

Thomas Robert Malthus' (1766-1834) Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) made the point that while the food supply increases in a arithmetical progression, populations can increase geometrically; therefore population can inevitably outgrows its food supply, resulting in famine. Malthus' reasoning, as it relates to environmental sustainability and economic viability, continues to generate controversy. Colonial expansion, opening up the Americas, Australia and Africa to agriculture seemed to have delayed Malthus' analysis, but the growing numbers of nonwhite people in the developing world and food insecurity put population control into play.

Recent World Bank population figures show 1.3 billion people still live in poverty, 840 million suffer from hunger, and 2 billion are malnourished. Asia has 70% of the hungry and 1/2 the developing world's poor live in South Asia. A billion more hungry mouths will be born by 2020. Most Asian countries are growing at an astounding 1.5 to 2.8 percent a year. Its population is projected to increase to 4.8 billion and South Asia will add another 732 million by 2025.

Ethiopia is typical of Africa's population woos. Currently, its population, 72 million, is growing at 3% annually; with 44 million, age 24, entering their most reproductive years, there will be 100 million Ethiopians in 15 years. Figures indicate 44% of the people live in poverty.

Consider, more than four billion people-- half the world's population-- depend on rice. Rice is the question in Asia. Will there be enough rice? Demand for rice during the next 25 years is expected to increase by 65 percent in the Philippines, 51 percent in Bangladesh, 46 percent in India, 45 percent in Vietnam, and 38 percent in Indonesia. In one generation, for example, the Philippines' population will grow from 75 million to 115 million. But in the future they will have even less land for growing rice as factories, roads, houses, skyscrapers, and parking lots devour fields. In Java alone, 30,000 hectares of agricultural land vanish each year.

Not only will land be critical, but the battle over water is fierce as population balloons and economic development intensifies. Governments are likely to continue diverting water from agriculture, giving priority to drinking, sanitation, and industry. Will water for lawns and golf courses trump water for fields?

Since the implementation of the Uruguay Round of the WTO Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the inability to protect domestic rice industries has opened up developing countries to the fate of Haiti. As Haiti's domestic market was opened, cheap imported rice flooded the country, driving down prices; farmers abandoned their rice fields seeking employment in urban factories, which destroyed the nation's rice industry.

Record high grain prices have put millions of the world's poorest people at risk of starvation. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), as a result of the surge in prices, 80 million Pakistanis suffer food insecurity, while strikes in Argentina, riots in Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Morocco and the Ivory Coast raise the question, will the world turn to fascism and an Adolf Hitler as it did during the 1930s?

The Club of Rome -- a premiere think tank of 100 leading scientists, philosophers, political advisors, former politicians and many other influential bureaucrats and technocrats -- issued a report calling for a World Food Authority (WFA) to control world food supply. Spurred by exaggerated fears of environmental collapse and the elitist obsession with population control, the report was a series of articles that described the major conclusions of the 1976 book RIO: Reshaping the International Order: A Report to the Club of Rome.

Coordinated by Nobel Laureate Jan Tinbergen, Part 1 opens with "humanistic socialism," which calls for collective neighborhood armies, a fully planned world economy, global free trade, international taxation, a World Treasury, World Central Bank and World Currency. Other goals are the redefinition of sovereignty from "territorial sovereignty" to "functional sovereignty" as well as the concept of "common heritage of mankind" to gain international control of not just the oceans, atmosphere and outer space but also all material and non-material resources.

Food as a weapon is seen as "one of the principal tools in our negotiating kit." "Further centralization of food stocks under a single international World Food Authority would liberate the world from the continual nightmares of hunger and malnutrition. Again this all seems right out of Archangel. This line of thinking was considered outrageous when it was proposed by The Club of Rome in 1976. But like the Contract With America introduced by Republicans (1994) and Project for A New American Century (1998) proposed by neo-cons, no one took them serious.

Growing populations and growing hunger on the one side and economic crisis and diminishing resources on the other, while weak governments hang in the balance, Director Blair's analysis makes Archangel seem like a prophetic heads up.

Hood Notes

Blacks and Hollywood

By John Burl Smith

A DISH reader, Carmen Van Kerckhove, President at www.newdemographic.com, took exception to an "Anderson Cooper 360 Blog at CNN.com guest commentary on Slumdog: A lesson for Hollywood?" The question, posed after "Slumdog Millionare" won eight Oscars on Sunday night, including Best Picture, in addition to the four Golden Globes won earlier this year, "Does its commercial and critical success contradict the long-held conventional wisdom about what does and doesn't sell at the box office." Carmen went on to state and I agree, "The powers-that-be in Hollywood have historically presumed that people of color will happily flock to watch movies featuring white characters, but that "mainstream" -- read "white" -- audiences won't relate to stories about people of color."

She followed with this caveat, "Actor Will Smith offered a rare glimpse into the American world of casting a few years ago. While promoting the romantic comedy "Hitch," he told The Birmingham Post, that the decision to cast Latin actress Eva Mendes as his love interest was a deliberate racial calculation on behalf of the studio: 'There's sort of an accepted myth that if you have two black actors, a male and a female, in the lead of a romantic comedy, people around the world don't want to see it. We spent $50-something million making this movie and the studio would think that was tough on their investment. So, the idea of a black actor and a white actress comes up -- that'll work around the world, but it's a problem in the U.S."

Another egregious example of this phenomenon she offered was the film "21, based on the non-fiction book Bringing Down the House, a true story about a blackjack team from MIT that bilked casinos of millions of dollars. The actual team was led by Asian-American students, but the film cast almost all of the students as white characters, leading to criticism from the book's author."

To put this all in perspective, one must examine the success of Tyler Perry. No film maker today faced greater obstacles than he. Hollywood refused to accept his products as viable, artistically or commercially because of his insistence on using black actors and crews. Perry has posted phenomenal box office success, yet Hollywood still refuses to change it racist bent on making movies staring blacks and using screenplays by black writers unless the material is "whitewashed."

Carman's point is well taken about "Slumdog;" however, I say this is an American attitude that extends to all levels of artistic endeavors. The problem begins with control and white people guard the gates. People of color, white Americans can accept; it is slave descendants that whites reject. It is the old Jackie Robinson story, "If we let them in, they will take over." This has been white people's greatest fear since slavery supposedly ended. That is why they cannot acknowledge Tyler Perry's resounding success. "IT'S TOO BLACK!"

As the author of a book and screenplay, both of which are based on black characters, I have experienced the same problem, lack of access to the market. Nonetheless, I will persevere.

Disgruntled wants to know: This week the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant on Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Darfur region, where thousands have been murdered, maimed, raped and displaced. The three-judge panel did not include genocide among the charges against Bashir due to "insufficient evidence." However, if tried and found guilty of the array of charges against him, Bashir could face life in prison. It should be noted that Sudan, like the United States, does not recognize the ICC's jurisdiction and is unlikely to arrest its sitting head of state. Yet, there is something to be said for the ICC initiative and recognition that heads of government should not be above the law. In the US, we know the government under George W. Bush committed war crimes. So the question is, why hasn't any legal body, domestic or foreign, issued criminal charges against the Bush administration, which was responsible for killing and displacing millions of people in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Disgruntled says: The US, indeed the world, is in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the 1980s, maybe even the Great Depression. Rather than getting behind the new administration, which has been in office less than three months, and try to end this economic morass, the GOP and party faithful that cheered on the domestic and foreign policies of the previous administration that brought us to this impasse are now publicly saying they want President Barack Obama to fail. This lack of patriotism is stunning. Clearly, if President Obama fails, so does the country. Had this level of naysaying and badmouthing of the commander-in-chief occurred during the Bush administration, there would have been witch hunts by mainstream media and those unpatriotic louts would have been blacklisted. Instead, they are receiving non-critical media coverage, even applause in certain quarters. The current economic crisis did not develop overnight. It is ridiculous to blame the Obama administration for the failures that happened on Bush's watch and to pretend more neo-classical economic prescriptions will get us out of this mess is even more ludicrous. We should be shouting down idiots that advance tax cuts for the rich and spending cuts for programs that aid the poor, middle class and unemployed.

Disgruntled feels: Genuflected! Rush Limbaugh, a doctor-shopping former hillbilly cocaine addict and illegal Viagra pill popper, has become the voice of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. In fact, since the party's newly elected chairman, Michael Steele, recently genuflected to Rush, we can probably crown the radio talk show host King GOP!

Mailbox: E-mails, Faxes and Phone Calls

Email mary57whalen@yahoo.ca ...Bilderberger Plot to Control U.S. Food Supply (Infowars)..Obama recently nominated Kansas governor Katherine Sebelius to head up HHS. Sebelius is a Bilderberg member. Recall top-drawer Bilderberg member Henry Kissinger's call for "depopulation," another word for eugenics. National Security Study Memorandum 200, dated April 24, 1974, and entitled "Implications of world wide population growth for U.S. security and overseas interests," calls for world depopulation, specifically in "developing countries." Thomas Ferguson, the Latin American case officer for the State Department's Office of Population Affairs under Kissinger, was speaking bluntly yet honestly when he said: "Population is a political problem. Once population is out of control it requires authoritarian government, even fascism, to reduce it." Now the Bilderbergers and the Rockefellers have a minion heading up HHS and twin bills in Congress essentially eliminating the FDA and proposing a draconian "food protection plan" of bureaucratic rules and regulations that will drive small farmers and food producers, most notably organic food producers out of business under the guise of protecting the public from salmonella and E. coli.

Email ngt33@webtv.net ...Dear Dot: Here's some information about that nutritional supplement I wrote you and the Haitian ladies about. I haven't heard back from them, but I believe this "Plumpy' nut" has potential for Haitian children and the cost is about $20 a month. This is the brainchild of a French scientist and has already saved the lives of many children in Niger. There must be a way to explore the possibilities of plumpy' nut for the Haitian children who now are tragically trying to assuage their hunger with mud pies. Perhaps the Haitian community in Florida has already learned about this amazing supplement. I would be happy to help in any way I can (despite my disability) by raising funds, etc. Alerting The Dish readership might be a way to get the ball rolling if the Haitian ladies are interested. There are so many ways we could help the disaster that Haiti has become. Alternate fuel instead of chopping down all the trees for charcoal--planting as many trees as possible (a campaign similar to planting trees in Israel). Hungry children everywhere should weigh heavily on our consciences. There must be a way to get at least a modest program started for the starving children of our neighbor, Haiti. That is the very least we owe them.