The best political interviews knock the subjects off their chosen script, either by getting a rise out the guest or eliciting an unexpected answer. 

While the results may be of value in attracting attention, to what extent does it elicit the kind of information that voters would find of benefit?  Given that O'Reilly has clearly been opposed to Obama's candidacy, what was to be gained by Obama consenting to an interview?

Did you catch Dr Ben Goldacre’s programmes on Placebos on Radio 4 last Monday and the Monday before?   The messages were uncompromising; the evidence overwhelming.  People who suffer from a variety of illnesses can get better when they are given ‘placebo’ pills that contain an inert sugar or starch compound and no ‘active’ pharmacological agent.  Double the number of placebo pills and the effect increases.  Improve the packaging,  invent a brand name, alter the colour of the pill,  provide a rationale and there are further increments in efficacy.  In other words, it seems that people are not responding to the tablet, they are responding to the idea, the expectation, the belief they have in the treatment. 

Placebo controlled trials indicate that for many illnesses, expectation and belief can provide the bulk of the therapeutic effect.  In patients with unexplained illnesses such as the Irritable Bowel Syndrome, as many as 60% of patients respond to the placebo alone, only a few percent short of those who respond to the active drug.  Thousands of patients are required to prove statistically that this effect could not occur by chance alone.  So are drug companies spending billions of dollars to develop new drugs that are only marginally more effective than inert tablets?   And are we paying for the privilege?      

But it’s even worse than that.  Evidence-based medicine’s holy grail, the randomised, placebo-controlled trial (RCT) is fallible.  The outcomes of RCTs depend on  the patient being unaware of whether they are being given the active drug or the dummy, but this is rarely tested.  Instead, it is assumed that using capsules or tablets that are identical in shape, size and colour and concealing the true nature of the tablet from the prescribing doctor or nurse must make it impossible for the patient to detect the difference. 

That’s not true.  Drugs often taste bitter.  Placebos often taste sweet.  And haven’t we all been trained from childhood that the nasty tasting medicine makes you better?  Even if trial patients don’t detect differences in taste, they almost certainly detect differences in side effects.  Dry mouth, a change in bowel habit, a slight dizziness, drowsiness are all common side effects that would instantly alert the patient that they are taking the active drug. 

Ethical practice for therapeutic trials dictates that patients have to be told that they are taking part in an experiment and that although they may receive the active drug, they may equally well receive a pill that has no pharmacological action on the disease process.  Just imagine what that must be like.  You have suffered a painful disease for years and suddenly you get the chance to test a new drug that promises to solve all your problems, but then you are told that you may not get the new wonder drug, you stand just as much chance of getting the blank.  You would feel so worried that you  would just have to find out whether you were getting the active drug or not.  So you would chew the tablet, break open the capsule, become very sensitive to any tell tale side effects, and even to the complicit gleam in the doctor’s eye, but you wouldn't let on.   In the few studies where patients have been asked whether they could tell whether they were taking the drug or the placebo, most guessed correctly.  This simple fact must invalidate the results of any RCT at a stroke.

But there’s more.  Although I know of no study that has formally investigated whether the doctor actually knew the true nature of the medication he was administering,  I was involved in research for long enough to realise that such distortions do take place.   Reputations are fragile and ephemeral; medical researchers,  pharmaceutical research coordinators, even multinational executives will do almost anything to protect them.  Sealed codes can be broken, statistics fudged, inconvenient results omitted, negative studies not sent for publication,  studies left out of systematic reviews.     

I’m not intending to blow the whistle on pharmaceutical trials. Many of them, I feel sure, are  conducted meticulously, responsibly according the highest ethical standards.  There are numerous guidelines and safeguards to make sure this is so.  I’m not suggesting that pharmaceutical multinationals are necessarily evil empires that deliberately try to deceive the regulatory authorities.  I am just pointing out the obvious.  Human beings and the organisations they represent are all too – well – human.  And humanity is a broad church.  Politics is about concealment.  Error, distortion, omission and exaggeration all exist in the congregation gathered in the nave of the National Institute for Clinical Excellence.  Indeed, one might be forgiven for asking ‘Excellence in what;  The Arts of Deception?’  

What worries me is that health services now exist in such a state of mutual interdependence with the pharmaceutical industry that it is difficult to see how research can always be conducted and reported with absolute objectivity.    

Some of the drugs that have been developed are truly miraculous and have made enormous differences to our ability to withstand illness and our quality of life – antibiotics, insulin, diuretics, anti-arrhythmics, chemotherapy,  but so many others are probably little more than super-placebos?   

The examples, quoted in Dr Goldacre’s programmes are but a fraction of those that demonstrate the efficacy of placebos.  Human beings are not separated in the neck.  Whatever goes on in our minds has an enormous effect on the ways our bodies work.  Belief can get rid of pain, expectation can cure infections, friendship can cure depression, love can treat tiredness, peace and companionship can prolong life.  Cardiac failure can be treated by a pacemaker that is turned off, angina by an operation in which the skin of the chest wall is opened and closed up again, Parkinson’s disease by an injection of saline,  leprosy by the touch of a King,  epileptic seizures by healers that do little more than place their hands on the heads,  and almost any disease by sipping a solution that is so dilute that the active ingredient cannot possibly exist.    

Drugs are prescribed by serious, responsible and authoritative professionals, who have been trained for five years and apprenticed for a further seven years, who believe in the action of the medication and who understand the way the body works.  With that kind of endorsement, how could we ever doubt the efficacy of drugs.  Drugs are what doctors are about.  Indeed, remove drugs and what would doctors do?      

The idea of  modern drugs;  the notion that there is a pill that can relieve our pain, rectify the gut that has been wrenched out of kilter,  alleviate the burden of backache, make us breathe more freely,  quieten the troubled heart, bring us sleep, render us potent and make us happy, make us life forever, may be deeply reassuring.  We are not alone. There’s always another pill.  There is even a proposal to make Simvastatin available to everybody over the age of 50 so that we don’t die of heart attacks. But our dependence on drugs has stripped people of their self determination.  If we cannot look after our own health without recourse to drugs, how free can we be?  And if we can’t be free from health anxiety,  how healthy can we be?    

I feel sure that our descendants will look back on the millennium as a time when medicine was dominated by pharmaceuticals just as we look back on the ‘enlightenment’ as a time on quack remedies.  The annual UK drug budget is about 7.5 billion pounds.  We urgently need to put our dependany on drugs into perspective.  We must take back responsibility for our own health, realise what living a healthy life means. 

Most illnesses are reversible in their early stages.  The body has remarkable resilience. Rest, shelter, food, exercise, companionship and trust can rectify most illnesses.  It’s only when illnesses are truly life threatening or when the deterioration of bodily function has been compromised beyond repair than we need to turn to drugs. They have their place, but that place is not everywhere.        

It’s time to trust the body to heal itself and learn to give it the best conditions to do so.

Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is almost like character in a movie, a character almost to ‘good’ to be true. He appears to be a custom made adversary for the United States. Is he a creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)? Does the SCO seek to further entangle us in the Middle East? If it’s true that this is their goal, we seem to be ready and willing to take the bait.

The little known SCO, formed in 2001 as a successor of the Shanghai Five (created in 1996), is much like NATO and includes primarily our traditional adversaries, Russia and China, but other countries are members as well. Currently in addition to Russia and China, the SCO is made up of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. With observer nations being Pakistan, India, Iran and Mongolia. They conduct joint military operations and hold meetings to further their economic and social interests in the region and the world. Note that Iran is a member with observer status but has a strong desire to become a full member.

Russia has the goal of rebuilding the old Soviet Union and reviving the superpower status that it once had. China wants Taiwan back and by the appearance of the Olympic opening ceremonies, seems to be desperate to impress the world. The problem with these goals is the US and NATO. If the SCO is playing chess with the world, they may be using Iran as a diversion for us to focus our military resources in the Middle East, allowing them to implement their grand schemes of increasing or rebuilding their empires. The payback for Iran would be SCO membership and perhaps the role of dominant player in the Middle East.

If they are able to get us, the US, further entangled in the Middle East with Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, we will not be in a position to prevent any such moves. With the Olympics winding down, there is nothing left in the way of China’s goals in Taiwan, except the US and NATO of course. What are the next moves for Russia, China and the rest of the SCO?

Since the time of the formation of the SCO in 1996, China and Russia have been devoted to building and modernizing their military forces. These efforts have produced much success particularly in the areas of high tech assaults. Anyone who runs a website knows that the Chinese and Russian military mount an almost constant barrage of cyber-attacks against all computers around the world, searching for vulnerabilities. The Chinese are focusing much attention on building the capability of launching attacks on satellites as well. The capability of taking out satellite networks is of particular concern for the US. Our military has grown increasingly dependent on satellites in the battlefield.

The success of the military buildup in China is due mostly to the funding provided by consumers of Chinese goods in the United States. We have been more than willing consumers of Chinese goods even with the knowledge that the profits are going directly into the build-up of a strong military machine directed at the US. This funding continues, but at a slower pace now that the US economy has begun to fail, which may be part of the grand scheme as well. The military might of the US exists because of our once strong economy. It takes money to build a military machine as capable as ours and our adversaries know it. Any successful assault on us would require an attack on our economy as well.

In recent years China, Russia, and Iran have all taken steps that led up to the decreased value of the US dollar. Not that our own spending policies have not contributed as well. With our financial crisis in full bloom in the US, China and Russia appear to be experiencing booming economies. Is our defeat on the economic front already in progress?

Will World War III be the first way fought without any direct conflict? Will the SCO succeed in defeating the US without ever firing a shot directly at us? It’s possible, as our military might is spread thin and deteriorating, Russia and China are increasing their power and influence, militarily and economically. They are experiencing success with such ease due to our shortsightedness and possibly the willing participation of corporations and politicians that have sold us out.

If it does come down to a fighting war with SCO members, China and Russia, we will be in serious trouble. It won’t be a ‘walk in the park’ as we have experienced with Iraq and Afghanistan. If it happens, it may be the end of us (US) or possibly even the end of the entire world. It is in the best interest of SCO to take us down step-by-step one peg at a time, which is what they seem to be doing. Success for them seems inevitable as we seem to be powerless or unwilling to stop it. Will this be our future? Is this the New World Order? Only time will tell, but we may not have to wait long to find out.

Pentagon Says China Continues Military Build-up

Russia intensifies efforts to rebuild its military machine

China speeds pace of military buildup

The Real Iranian Threat: Undermining Dollar Hegemony

Russia to oust US dollar from nation’s financial policy

China Set To Reduce Exposure To Dollar

Shanghai summit: China and Russia strengthen bloc to counter the US in Asia

Iran’s Ahmadinejad, Russia’s Medvedev to hold talks

visit vorchester.com

The machine came to a quiet halt in front of Marjorie.  She hadn’t noticed.  She carried on turning the pages of her magazine.   ‘Good morning, Marjorie, it said, how are you feeling today?’

She looked up, stared, seem to give a start, then recognised her consultants face.  She relaxed, smiled knowingly, and replied a little self consciously,  ‘I feel better, thank you.’. 

The face on the monitor then proceeded to ask her specific questions about how much she was eating, her bowels, any soreness.   The machine then focussed in on the results of today’s tests, seemed satisfied,  ‘That’s fine, Marjorie, I’ll see you tomorrow.’  and swivelled round with a whirr and motored on down the ward. 

Asked what she thought of addressing a robot, she smiled and said, ‘Oh it’s just like talking to my husband.  He’s deaf, you know.’

Oh, so not much communication there then!    

But the consultant on the monitor was none other but Lord Darzi of Denham, KBE, perhaps the most eminent doctor in the country, the author of the government’s latest review on the health service and the advocate of a new constitution for the NHS, one that respects and empowers the patient. 

Yet, this same man conducts ward rounds using a Dalek! 

In the introduction to his review, Darzi writes,  ‘I have continued my clinical practice while leading the review nationally.  I have seen and treated patients every week.  Maintaining that personal connection with patients has helped me to understand the changes we still need to make.’   

Personal connection?  With a robot?   

The report continues with high sounding rhetoric. Patients should have control and influence on their own health care.  They should be able to choose which GP practice they attend, they should have access to the best drugs, and those with a chronic illness should have a personalised care plan. 

I suppose patients could also have a say on which colour robot they wanted – something to match their dressing gown, maybe! 

‘All patients want care that is personal to them.’ 

Personal care?  With a robot?   How does C3PO palpate the patient’s abdomen – conduct a rectal examination.  No milord, care by a robot, is hardly personal.  Perish  the thought that it even might be! 

‘High quality care should be as safe and effective as possible, with patients treated with compassion, dignity and respect.’

Compassion is something that can only be conveyed by personal contact.  The patient has to be sure that their doctor really cares.  Sending a robot along really doesn’t do it.   

Dignity?  How could you tell a Dalek about your most intimate symptoms, your deepest worries?  Who else might be listening?  Sending along a robot reduces the status of the patient to that of a machine.       

Respect?  I’m afraid that the use of robots to conduct ward visits conveys the message that their consultant is far too important and busy to see them.  This is hardly respectful.   

Darzi’s robot featured on the television programme, Superdoctors, which was broadcast on Thursday night.   So, to be fair, we don’t know whether the good Time-Lord uses his C3PO routinely or whether this was just for the programme.  Darzi commented that a robot would enable him to maintain continuity of care wherever he was – even from America.  That is true, up to a point.  C3PO might allow Darzi to keep control of his patients, but does it really allow him to administer care? 

Caring is a very human relationship, like loving.  Indeed, it is important that doctors love their patients – not in any romantic sense – but in a compassionate, human sense.  But some patients are difficult to love. I remember one of my teachers, a very wise professor, telling me how he once had to look after a tramp.  ‘He was filthy dirty, drunk, abusive and he smelt like a latrine that hadn’t been cleaned for a month.  He only had one tooth in his jaw, but that tooth seemed to sum up the tragedy of his life,  yet at the same time, his determination to live.  I focussed on that tooth and I began to love it and the more I loved the tooth the more I found I could feel a love for him that overcame my natural revulsion – the more I saw him as a vulnerable person in need of care.’ 

Caring is an essential component of healing, though sadly it seems that medical students are not encouraged to develop either of these essential arts.  The emphasis is on efficiency; diagnostic algorithms, personal care plans and evidence based management.  This has been a developing trend since the nineteen sixties – for as long as I have been in medicine. 

I once remember writing a piece for Northwing, the Sheffield medical student’s magazine, entitled ‘The White Coat Game’.  In it I observed how white coats were originally worn by doctors to protect their suits from the bodily fluids of the patients under their care, but spotless and buttoned up, they seemed to serve another purpose:  to defend the doctor from contamination from the messy emotions of their patients, who were depersonalised in hospital pyjamas and gowns.  The message, ‘Don’t get too close!’  And what did the doctor do when he needed to carry out some messy procedure such as sigmoidoscopy?   He took the white coat off and inspected the rectum in his shirt sleeves!       

Darzi’s robot made me wonder how much of the new NHS constitution is political – offering lip service to an increasingly powerful patient lobby.  Does the strapped-for-time lord not have a public relations assistant?  If he does, they deserve to be fired.  C3PO is appalling PR! 

Healing a patient is like bringing up a child.  It requires intimate personal contact and absolute trust.  95% of human interactions are non verbal.  Touch, eye contact, the flushing or blanching of the skin, involuntary body movements, smell – all of these are important.  They all help to create trust. 

How can you trust a robot?  It may be programmed for a kind of compassion.  The face on the monitor may say reassuring words.  But it is still a robot.  Like television, it is not real!   

And robots are fallible.  What would happen if somebody left a cloth on the floor in front of C3PO, or like ‘Q’s robot in those last few intimate sequences of ‘Live and Let Die’, somebody threw a towel over its head?  What would happen if it took a wrong turning and trundled off down the stairs?  Computers may be great at shopping on line, managing finances, buying theatre tickets, arranging travel, but they are just not  reliable enough to deliver health care.     

And one dreads to think what might happen if the treatments didn’t work and there was no hope.

‘Ex-term-inate! Ex-term-in-ate!

‘Which’ carried out its own research.  Four researchers, one with a serious peanut allergy, another with lactose intolerance and two more who had no symptoms of food intolerance assessed 4 different tests.  None of them was experiencing any symptoms of food intolerance at the time of testing.  

The tests used widely differing techniques.  They included analysis of hair samples for vibrational energy (Bionetics) or hair root DNA (Integral Health),  assessment the measurement of changes in muscle resistance caused the proximity of vials containing certain food extracts (kinaesthesiology),  measurement assessment of changes in body conductance when essences of foods are placed in the circuit (Vega),  and analysis of blood samples for circulating antibodies (IgG) to a range of different foods.  They are not cheap.  The cost varies between £45 for the cheapest session of kinaesthesiology to £275 for a full IgG food scan of 113 different substances.      

Each test was evaluated by two researchers, who compared results from two different laboratories or practitioners and in some cases sent duplicate samples under an assumed name.  The results were alarming.  Not only were the tests not replicated by the two different laboratories or practitioners, but analysis of duplicate hair and blood failed to achieve agreement.  None of the tests detected the researcher who had peanut allergy and only one detected the person who was intolerant to milk.  The tests did, however, pick up a whole range of other intolerances.  Kinaesthesiology even claimed evidence for a severe peanut allergy in one of the researchers who ate peanuts with impunity.  The diets recommended by the blood tests excluded up to 39 foods, creating the risk of nutritional deficiency.

The results for hair analysis, kinaesthesiology and body conductance are hardly surprising.  These are exercises in pseudo-science, they have no evidence base and their exponents deserve to be exposed as confidence tricksters, extorting money from vulnerable people under false pretences.  

The data  from the Yorktest and Cambridge Nutritional Services are, however, more worrying.  They measure circulating antibodies to a variety of food substances, their metholodology (ELISA) is scientifically valid, the technicians are trained and, as far is the Yorktest is concerned,  qualified nutritionists are available to offer advice on dietary modification.  The rationale and methods look good, but if they are that good, why is IgG testing not available on the NHS? 

Antibodies did not evolve to protect us against food – they are essential components in our cell wars system against invasion by microorganisms.  Food intolerance is like injury by ‘friendly fire’.    

Antibodies come in various classes.  IgA is secreted into the gut and acts like a fire blanket to immobilize and destroy bacteria before they have a chance to invade.  They are not directly implicated in allergies. 

IgG antibodies circulate in the blood stream.  They recognize and combine with the foreign organism,  tagging it, immobilizing it and rendering it  vulnerable to destruction by the body’s white cells.  They work quietly away all the time, ridding our body of invaders that could take over and damage it.  They, too, for the most part are not implicated in allergies.

IgE exists in the gut wall and attaches itself to highly reactive white cells called mast cells.  Mast cells function like grenades.  The combination of the IgE with a foreign organism pulls the pin on the grenade and the mast cell explodes releasing a cocktail of powerful chemicals, which causes spasms, secretion, inflammation, diarrhea and vomiting – an immediate reaction, which can make the subject feel very ill.  The battle itself is highly destructive, rather like the destruction of Gori in the recent  conflict in the Caucasus.  It is this damaging reaction – the immediate hypersensitivity - that can cause severe allergies.  NHS allergy clinics and immunological laboratories test for immediate hypersensitivity either by injecting small amounts of the food protein under the skin, where, if positive, it causes a wheal and flare or by examining the blood for specific IgE antibodies. 

IgE reactions are highly dangerous and are not deployed often.  Over a lifetime, the body develops a tolerance to most of the foreign substances that it encounters and can deal with these using a quiet combination of IgA and IgG.   The more extreme IgE response is only deployed when the body encounters some rare organism (or protein), that has caused damage before and it has not become tolerant to – like meeting somebody who has previously abused you.  IgE  elicits a rapid protective response that evicts the invader forthwith.  But the body, like a nation state with experience of dealing with other potentially threatening states, usually tends to quieter and more diplomatic means of dealing with the problem. 

Allergies might therefore be regarded as failure of tolerance – the persistent activation of an attack response (in immunological terms a Th2 response), even to food proteins that carry no threat to the body.  Allergy is like an extreme or dysfunctional attitude.  The hygiene hypothesis suggests allergies may be becoming more common because in our sanitized environment, we are less likely to encounter and develop tolerance to the whole range of parasites, bacteria and viruses early in life.  In other words we lack experience, see everything as a threat and over-react – even to the food we eat.   Recent research has shown that worms and helminthes turn the IgE system off.  This allows them to exist in symbiosis with us in our guts, but at the same time, they protect us against allergy.  This has led some to advocate administering worms as a treatment for food allergies.     

But hospital testing reveals that less than 2% of people with symptoms of food intolerance,  have evidence of immunological hypersensitivity – IgE activation.  So there must be something else going on.  So the focus has again swung to IgG. 

The rationale for IgG testing is as follows.  If, for any reason, in a normally tolerant person,  too many proteins get into the body, because – say – the gut has become inflamed and too permeable or the IgA system is defective,  then a  massive IgG response may join with the proteins to produce large clumps which may lodge in the tissues of the joints, the guts, the lungs or the skin causing local inflammation.  An elevation of IgG antibodies to specific foods, therefore, might indicate that enough food proteins are getting across to elicit this type of allergic response.

For the most part, however, raised IgG levels probably indicate quite the reverse – that the body is dealing with the invading protein with normal ‘tolerance’.  This would explain why the York and Cambridge tests detect so many ‘intolerances’ to foods that their subjects can eat without any risk at all.  It would also explain why the most common intolerances are to foods that are most commonly eaten  - there’s just more of them about – and why the results vary according to how much has been consumed.  Finally it would explain why subjects with no symptoms of food intolerance have elevated IgG.           

Several recent studies have shown that raised IgG levels are associated with the development of tolerance to flour in Baker’s asthma,  eggs in egg allergy and foods reintroduced after an exclusion diet. 

The dreadful paradox of all this is that Yorktest and Cambridge Nutritional Services may actually have a test for food tolerance rather than food intolerance.  If that is the case then dietary restriction based on the advice of this test would not only deprive people of what they like to eat but also may risk nutritional deficiency.

Read tomorrow's blog for a discussion of what food allergies mean.

A decade ago, Prince Charles accused GM scientists of meddling in ‘realms that belong to God and God alone’.  This week, in an interview to The Daily Telegraph, he asserts that ‘Gigantic corporations’  are conducting a ‘gigantic experiment with nature and the whole of humanity, which has gone seriously wrong. Why else’, he adds, warming to his cause, ‘do you think we are facing all these challenges, climate change and everything?’ 

‘This new technology is driving small farmers off their land into ‘unsustainable , unmanageable, degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unimagineable awfulness’.    

‘And if they think that it’s somehow going to work because they are going to have one form of clever genetic engineering after another, then count me out, because that will be guaranteed to cause the biggest environmental disaster of all time.  It will destroy our environment.  It will cause hunger throughout the world.’  

Wow, sir - that’s telling them!  But, just one little point – is it all true?   Can we really blame genetic modification for all the ills associated with modernity?    

The fact is that genetic modification has been with us for centuries, ever since men discovered that they could enrich the productivity of food crops by selective breeding and hybridisation. Wheat, legumes, barley, potatoes, maize, beetroot, grasses – they are all products of genetic engineering.   GM just takes it one stage further by making direct modifications to the genes. 

Cash crops have also been with us for a long time. They offer employment and a more affluent lifestyle for the local population, but they do expose them to competition and the downturns of a global economy while discouraging the subsistence farming that might provide a buffer against starvation.  But is it really GM that is driving small farmers off their land or just the fact that irrespective of the underlying technology, food supply is big business and large industrial style farms are here to stay?    

And what is the evidence that GM technology causes climate change?  Climate change had been occurring for decades before the first GM foods were grown commercially in 1996.   Moreover, it seems that genetic modification could help to withstand climate change by developing new crop varieties that could withstand warmer temperatures and drought.  GM might even produce plants that consume more carbon and yield more food.   And since many GM crops need no tilling, their growth  releases less CO2 into the atmosphere from both the soil and from tractors.   

It is of concern that genetic modification might reduce biodiversity, but then surely any food crop discourages biodiversity.  Fields of oil seed rape, maize, wheat or barley are ecological deserts with only the hedgerows and coppices providing  corridors and islands of biodiversity.  But GM, by reducing the use of herbicides and pesticides, might well encourage biodiversity. 

Will GM encourage widespread hunger?  The 1970s Green Revolution in India was based on the conventional propagation of hybrid dwarf crops, allowing more energy to be diverted into the seed heads.  This brought spectacular gains in agricultural yields and all but abolished the famines in that country.  Genetic engineering now offers the possibility of further increased yields for a rapidly expanding population through the development of crops that can that resist viruses and pests, and tolerate hot, saline, or otherwise inhospitable conditions. 

So the evidence suggests that GM technology might well benefit human societies.   GM foods have been grown commercially for 12 years now and there is little evidence to suggest that it is responsible for global hunger, climate change or any kind of environmental disaster – yet.  

But Prince Charles, as self appointed social conscience for the nation, gives voice to our fears of innovation.  In 1830, the 'Captain Swing' rioters in Dorset expressed their fears by direct action and began smashing the new agricultural machinery.  They were transported for it.  Charles can express similar reactionary views but people respect his unique, albeit somewhat isolated perspective.  HRH is a champion of the nostalgic, the vernacular, the romantic view of English heritage.  It relates to a time when the King was in his palace and all was well with the world.  His perspective is one of privilege.   The ghost town of Poundisbury on the outskirts of Dorchester,  and the range of Duchy originals suit a particular life style,  affluent, country, sophisticated – certainly not the inhabitants of ‘the degraded and dysfunctional conurbations of unimagineable awfulness’.  We could therefore be forgiven for thinking that he is perhaps just a bit out of touch.  

But aren’t we all a little in thrall with his world?  Don’t we enjoy visiting stately homes and country houses?  Isn’t the National Trust one of our richest charities?  Don’t we all feel some sense of ownership with a view of country living that is forever England?   Isn’t it part of our collective identity, like William Shakespeare,  John Betjman and Bath buns.  In his passion to conserve his family’s heritage, doesn’t The Prince speak for all of us?   So when he condemns the Sainsbury wing of the National Gallery as a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a well loved friend, don’t we all secretly applaud?  And when he describes modern medical practice as like the Tower of Pisa, leaning too much in one direction, don’t we nod wisely?    

I once met Prince Charles.  It was at a reception given for his Foundation for Integrated Medicine at Highgrove – not the house, but the barn at the rear – a new build in the style of baronial hall with kitchens and a minstrels gallery and, if I remember correctly, tapestries on the wall.  I was impressed by HRH’s ability to engage with each of his 70 guests and then disengage, leaving them feeling heard and special.  His speech was amusing – charmingly self effacing with a touch of goonery about it. 

‘Oh, I know the experts get annoyed with me,’ he told us, ‘But it’s very strange that when I talk to medics they all agree with my views on architecture and when I talk to the architects, they all applaud my views on medicine. So perhaps I should talk to you about organic farming.  

It’s as if Charles doesn’t expect to be taken seriously.  It’s all a bit of a surprise.  That may be the problem, because as a prominent public figure and our future King, he has a responsibility to check his sources and present a reflective and balanced argument. 

Don’t misunderstand me.  I think Prince Charles does a tremendous job.  He works tirelessly for the good of the nation.  His various trusts are a major force for good.  I applaud his work.  I also support his right to say what he believes.  But he should choose his advisers more carefully.  As moral philosopher for the nation by Royal appointment, he would be better advised to present a more responsible view. An ill considered rant on GM foods brings the institution of the monarchy into disrepute because it doesn’t recognise either how GM might help to alleviate poverty and suffering throughout the world or the dedication of the scientists who are working on it.  It doesn’t exhibit Kingship. 

Charles has an opportunity to be both a social conscience and a moral leader, but he needs to demonstrate a scrupulous disinterest.  If he can rein in his passion and take himself seriously as a voice of reason, he will ensure the monarchy’s continued relevance as a moral lynchpin for a changing and unstable society.    

If I don’t post any more blogs for some time, you will know that I am banged up in The Tower.         

It is already being proclaimed as the most expensive election in history.  For this is not about electing a competent administrator, a clever economic investor or even a skillful personel manager;   it’s about the installation of a God. 

The positions, Barack Obama is in contention for, are the paramount leader of the richest country in the world, a diverse and complex nation of 225 million people, the  commander in chief of the world’s most powerful and well equipped army,  and the de facto guiding force for the western world.  If elected, he would be the most powerful influence on the stability of a planet in crisis.  He has to be a God.    

He has to be a God because, to be President of the United States of America, he must appear to embody superhuman strength, the wisdom of Solomon, steely authority, unflinching resolve and unquestioning dedication.  He must show himself willing and strong enough to accept absolute responsibility.  Yet he must also possess a humility that goes with understanding, a charisma that inspires loyalty, and a basic humanity that guarantees trust.  He has to be all things to all men.  Only a God can do that, because Gods, as our own creations, are the virtual embodiment of all of our projections.  Obama is not a God, but he has to create the illusion that he is. 

We don’t really know Barack the man – only what his public relations team choose to tell us,  but he starts with the advantage of not having a political history.  Unlike Clinton, he doesn’t have shadows to air brush out.  Unlike Bush, he doesn’t have relatives.  Unlike McCain, he is not tarnished by an unpopular war and the failure of a  previous republican nomination.  His is a blank canvas – an opportunity to create a public relations masterpiece, a dazzling image that will propel him to apotheosis.   

So everything is strategy,  a PR opportunity;  a visit to a factory in Detroit,  a school in Texas, a film set in Los Angeles,  a tour of European cities,  a speech in Berlin reminiscent of JFK,  a meeting with Sarkozy, a photograph with Gordon Brown – a useful contrast!  He doesn’t have to say that much.  In fact the less he says the better – every utterance will be picked over by the media vultures.  He just has to look the part. And so far, he has done it very well. 

It should be a foregone conclusion.  Obama looks like a God – McCain looks like grandpa.  But public opinion is so fickle.  Would-be Gods can be destroyed by one unfortunate error.  Maybe the timing of his European visit was presumptuous,  but the biggest area of risk concerns his attitude to The Middle East.  Hilary Clinton wanted to bomb Iran,  Obama wants to talk.  Obama got the nomination, but did he really capture the mood of his country?  The difficulty is that whatever Gods-elect say will be used by their detractors to undermine the image.  The cartoon in The New Yorker brilliantly captured brilliantly the fears of the waverers.  It showed Obama in the Oval Office, dressed in an Arab robe and turban, exchanging a fist bump with Michelle, who is dressed in the battle fatigues of The Black Power movement.  The stars and stripes are burning in the grate. 

Obama sounds awfully like Osama – just change one letter.  It anything stalls his campaign, that will.  It is so unfair.  Obama has been so measured in his comments about The Middle East. The man has shown the qualities of a statesman.  But this isn’t about the real man.  The election of Gods is all about image. 

We confer so much power on our leaders, they cannot appear anything other than Gods if they are to retain support.  They may well be elected on a wave of adoration, but it is so difficult to maintain that level once the reality of everyday politics sets in.  How can you appear like a God, when you trying to broker a deal between the unions and the public sector, or when you are having to make concessions with China on carbon emissions, or when you feel forced for diplomatic reasons to ignore violations of human rights in Chile? 

It is easier if there is a crisis.  JFK exhibited God-like invincibility s in his dangerous but successful brinkmanship over the delivery of nuclear missiles to Cuba.    Margaret Thatcher had her great symbolic victory in The Falkland Islands.  ‘Rejoice, rejoice!’, the warrior goddess cried at the moment of victory.  And then she faced down the miners, whose leader, King Arthur was overburdened with the clay of hubris.  Her success was in choosing who to pick a fight with.  Gods and Goddesses must appear invincible if they are to last.  Their God-like reputation is but a veneer.  Scratch it and the image is lost forever. 

Remember the broken statue of Saddam after the last Iraq war.   It was shock to see that it was …. H O L L O W !    I first heard of Saddam when I was invited to my then research fellow to attend a reception organised by the Iraqi students.  It was an elaborate PR exercise.  A film depicted smiling images of a be-whiskered, beneficent leader holding babies, talking to farmers, visiting a power station, greeting other Arab leaders. Yet just months before, he had committed genocide against the Kurds in the far north of his country – though of course we didn’t know that then. 

I fear that in the excitement to get him elected,  Obama is being built up too high.  How can he possibly hold all the hopes, aspirations and projections that people are heaping on him?  With America about to lose its status as the sole world superpower,  Obama is seen as its saviour.  But if he is elected, sooner or hopefully later, people will see Barack Obama for what he is, a clever young lawyer of mixed race and underprivileged background, who has worked hard, showed a degree of political cunning and knows how to present himself.  And they will feel deceived and hate him for his humanity.  Even one as gifted as Barack Obama will not be able to solve the credit crunch or prevent terrorism and with every apparent failure, some of the gold leaf will flake off his image.  He will begin to look – well ordinary.   

The election of a political leader is like falling in love. It is a state of idealisation. We imbue our leaders with all our hopes and aspirations. We make of them everything we have ever desired.  They are the one. But after we have committed to them, we gradually come to realise that they are not perfect; they are perhaps a touch too arrogant.  We begin to notice a few disagreeable habits.  They might not even be as scrupulous and honest as we thought they were.  And they seem to care more for remaining in power than they do for our concerns. 

We demand absolute standards from our Gods.  If they are too human and they let us down, we hate them. And so, column inch by column inch, they have, as Gods, to be destroyed.  

So Obama must fail.  They all do.  It is inevitable.  One can only hope that his fall of grace, when it happens, is a long decline into boredom and inconsequence – with the machinery of state being competently managed by the administrators.  It is unlikely that American democracy would permit their leaders to act out the myth of their own omnipotence and become tyrants, but there is a danger is that the edifice that is Obama may be so high and excite so much fear among his more reactionary opponents, that when it falls to earth, the damage will extend far and wide.   

Despite that,  I do hope he gets elected.  The inauguration of America’s first non pure white president will send a powerful message of racial integration thoughout the world, affirming the United States as a dominant moral force for peace and stability throughout the world.  My wish is that he won't be forced to compromise his basic humanity and will prove a great leader.   

She is clearly not well.  Her spaced out gaze, skeletal figure, pock marked skin and indiscriminate tattoos indicate a body falling apart, a mind out of control.  She resembles a disturbed inmate who is terminally ill.  Her lungs are said to be shot by emphysema through smoking crack cocaine – a critical handicap for a singer, even one who is more at home jamming in smoky bars. 

Amy has reached crisis point, where her disintegrated personality has collided with her professional success and both are falling to earth. Her career is on hold.  She has cancelled too many engagements, given too many embarrassing performances for it too last much longer.  That her celebrity survives at all now depends more on our collective morbid fascination in witnessing somebody slowly self immolate than the fading memory of her unique words and voice.  The attention of the public is brief.     What is now shocking will soon seem boring. 

Her self destruction is not some kind publicity stunt.  Amy Winehouse is much too talented to need to seek celebrity through sleaze.  No, this girl is seriously ill.  She needs help.  So what has gone wrong? 

There has been so much written about her; no less than two books, thousands of articles.  Her personality has been diced, dissected and analysed almost to extinction. The comments are all true  She is a drama queen.  She craves attention.  She has no impulse control.  She is addicted to excitement.  She is a risk taker.  She is obsessive, compulsive, addictive.  She is spoilt.  She is crazy.  She has a narcissistic personality disorder.  She is out of control. 

Yes, yes and yes.  She is all of these things.  But if that was all, she would be assigned to a mental institution and we would not care.  It is not all!  Amy Winehouse has a unique talent.  Her voice is (or was) quite amazing, so rich and mature – it rivals the jazz greats like Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan.  But it’s not just the quality of her voice, it’s what she sings about.  Her poetry communicates so clearly the pain of her life – the pain of the age.  Amy has become an icon.  If Diana expressed the narcissism of the nineties, then Amy represents the nihilism of the noughties.  Amy has gone past narcissism; she has lost all sense of meaning in life. So she sings about reckless desire, anonymous sex, drugs, booze and all the fucking shit of just staying alive, trying to make sense of it all.  She is like people who cut themselves.  The shock of the bleeding helps them focus. The pain gives them meaning for a moment.           

From what her father, Mitch, has written,  Amy has always been a bit of a pain.   When she was toddler, she would have choking fits to gain attention.  She used to deliberately get lost on school trips.  ‘Amy seemed to want people to worry about her.’  So Amy needs to be noticed.  It is her life’s blood.  Otherwise she will disappear, she will die.  There was a time in Amy’s life when she worked so hard to get her unique voice across.  The vocal training, the lessons, learning how to express her feelings in poetry, gave her the focus, the ambition, the meaning to her life. 

But the journey is more important than the destination. Oscar Wilde once commented that it may be sad never to realise one’s ambitions, but it is nothing less that a tragedy to achieve one’s hearts desire.  Amy’s tragedy is that she has achieved what millions of young girls dream of.  She has become a celebrity. 

Overnight, she no longer needs to work for attention. It is there in spades.  She is famous.  She just has to be.  And so robbed of its purpose, her life has lost its meaning. 

Imagine how dreadful it must be to be adored whatever you do.  It’s as bad as being  ignored.  There is no need to try, nothing to hope for, no battles to fight, no resentment, no meaning.  If a child acts out their selfishness and misbehaves, they alienate their parents and soon learn to adjust their behaviour in order to feel loved. The sanction sets a limit, conveys a meaning.  But celebrities, like special children, get rewarded for misbehaving.  It sells newpapers.  There are no brakes any more, no notion of what is healthy or damaging, good or bad.

As a celebrity, Amy is loved, not for herself, but what she represents – what people project into her. She is owned, possessed, robbed of any sense of  identity.  She has become a commodity, and as such she is consumed in the same way as cancer consumes.     

So what can she do?  To survive as herself, she has to smash the magic mirror, destroy the celebrity image.  Seven years bad luck!  What the hell!  ‘No, no, no,  You’re wrong.  I’m not that great. I’m crap.  See how crap I am!  Now will you leave me alone.’ Her celebrity status  gives her the entitlement to be outrageous.  The drugs and alcohol remove any inhibition.    Her life has become an erotic vortex of graphic sex, violence, and alarming self harm.  But in her quest to destroy the image the media have made of her,  she has excited a feeding frenzy.  This trajectory can only end in disintegration.  Either she will lose her mind completely or she will die.  Lets make no bones about it.  Amy Winehouse is being killed by the attention she has worked so hard for. 

It has not helped that her beloved grandmother Cynthia, the one person whom she respected, the voice of reason she would listen to, died as Amy’s career had gone ‘critical’.  It has not helped that the love of her life, Blake, ‘the most handsome man God made’,  is a drug dealer and can match her extravagant needs for excitement and for violence.

Amy once commented that she has to create a tragedy of her life.  Otherwise what would she have to write or sing about?   But what Amy has created is a vortex of self destruction.  She is whirling down to annihilation. But this very process of self destruction is giving her a voice, a perverse, desperate sense of meaning.  The awful conclusion is that Amy Winehouse can only discover the meaning in her life by killing herself.

Her outrageous behaviour, her risk taking, her addiction, her failure to foresee the consequences of her behaviour, her lack of empathy – these are all features of a narcissistic personality that has gone critical.  But such features are a reaction; they both stem from and conceal a catastrophic despair.  Alcoholics often say they have to reach rock bottom before they can stop drinking.  Amy has not quite reached rock bottom but she is close.  I fear that it will get worse – perhaps terminally worse.  She urgently needs rescuing from herself. 

Amy needs more than to get off alcohol and drugs.  She needs to restore some meaning in her life.  She has to be free of the destructive influences; Blake, the media, the avaricious hangers on who trade on her celebrity.  She needs resources, friends she can trust.  She needs an environment that will contain her.  She needs a goal, a purpose, a framework.  She has her music, her voice, her poetry. Those may be her salvation, even yet. They are unique, wonderful, but still not fully developed. They need to be matured. If she could develop her talent quietly in peace and privacy,  gain confidence and satisfaction and respect from her mentors, she could survive.  But would she ever want to?        

Now, looking down at the global economic chessboard, during the last couple of decades the U.S. has been wearing the crown. However, this time around Paul Kasriel at Northern Trust, believes that he might be checkmate. He writes:

Our base case economic scenario is that the U.S. economy entered a recession in early 2008, will remain in a mild recession throughout 2008 and will begin to experience an anemic recovery in the first half of 2009. The base case includes a sharp deceleration in inflation in the not-too-distant future as energy prices stabilize and then retreat due to a slowdown in the growth of global demand for energy. The Federal Reserve will maintain the federal funds rate at 2% through the first half of 2009. In the second half of 2009, when economic growth picks up enough to stop the upward trend in the unemployment rate, the Fed will start raising the funds rate.  

Our risk case scenario is that the U.S. dollar begins to fall precipitously coinciding with a rise in Treasury bond yields. U.S. inflation does not moderate because of the depreciation in the dollar. As a result, the Federal Reserve is forced to raise the funds rate even in the face of a rising U.S. unemployment rate. This would be “checkmate” for the U.S. economy, turning a relatively mild recession into a severe one. Why might the dollar dive? Because the U.S. Treasury is forced to issue more debt in order to recapitalize either Fannie/Freddie/ the Federal Home Loan Bank System/FDIC, and the rest of the world balks at being the buyer of last resort for U.S. government debt. As this is being written on Friday, July 11, a hint of this is happening. Rumors are swirling that the U.S. Treasury will have to recapitalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Rather than resulting in the usual flight-to-quality bid for U.S. Treasury securities, yields on Treasury coupon securities are rising and the dollar is falling. Another factor that could precipitate a further sharp decline in the dollar might be the severing of the pegs that foreign monetary authorities have maintained between their currencies and the U.S. dollar. The byproduct of these pegs has been upward pressure on the inflation rates in these foreign economies. If these monetary authorities can no longer tolerate this imported inflation and sever their currency pegs to the dollar, the dollar would likely go into a tailspin. 

 

Also, recently, Relative Strength for stocks over bonds, measured by S&P 500 and Dow Jones Corporate Bond Index, have turned south for stocks, signaling weakness ahead.

Masalahnya di sini ialah, mahasiswa (baca: BEM) yang notabene merupakan bagian dari masyarakat intelek juga ikut-ikutan berunjuk rasa meminta pemerintah menurunkan harga BBM yang sudah menjadi ketetapan. Dipikir lagi lah, harga minyak dunia yang memang lagi naik, sekitar US $130 per barel, memang menuntut konsekuensi kenaikan harga BBM untuk menyelamatkan APBN dan aspek-aspek pembangunan yang lain (kecuali pembangunan gedung pribadi pejabat tentunya). Realistis donk, bagaimanapun kenaikan harga BBM menjadi salah satu solusi menghindari dampak negatif yang lebih luas. Bertambahnya hutang dan penyelundupan BBM ke luar negeri karena kesenjangan harga minyak kita dengan negara tetangga misalnya..

Seharusnya mahasiswa yang ikut lembaga eksekutif itu, yang bau-baunya bakalan menggantikan para wakil rakyat di Senayan sana, lebih perlu menyoroti cara bagaimana menaikkan daya beli masyarakat terhadap barang-barang kebutuhan. Jika harga mahal tapi kita mampu beli, mana ada masalah? Malahan jatuhnya 44 BUMN ke tangan investor asing tak disoroti seramai kenaikan harga BBM. Padahal jatuhnya BUMN tersebut, seperti halnya hutang, berdampak besar pada stabilitas ekonomi nasional secara luas. Jatuhnya aset negara yang menguasai hajat hidup orang banyak, yang tentu bertentangan dengan pengamalan UUD '45, mengakibatkan ketergantungan kita terhadap pihak asing sementara secara perlahan namun pasti kita kehilangan kekayaan alam kita sendiri. Perampokan besar-besaran! Legalisasi kapitalisme gaya baru! Menyediakan diri untuk dijajah.. Rasanya seperti negara ini dijual terpisah..

Heran, knapa segitu banyak mahasiswa yang demo cuman koar-koar tanpa hasil. Sementara, sebenarnya mereka bisa melakukan hal yang lebih berguna. Mencoba menemukan sumber energi alternatif misalnya.. Atau membuat perangkat baru yang dapat berfungsi dengan bahan bakar alternatif.. Atau, membuat suatu alat yang dapat memaksimalkan penggunaan bahan bakar, menaikkan nilai oktan bahan bakar kendaraan sehingga dapat menghemat penggunaan BBM.. Menggalang modal lalu menciptakan lapangan pekerjaan baru, kecil namun mewadahi.. Mengajak mandiri lalu bangun dan berdiri..

Jangan-jangan mahasiswa yang demo itu memang cuma bisa koar-koar.. Kalau sudah jadi petinggi ya diam saja. Bukannya yang sekarang duduk di kursi itu dulu juga ada di barisan depan demonstrasi mahasiswa ya?

Ah, siapa yang bodoh? Mungkin juga aku yang sampai saat ini belum melakukan apa-apa?

What started as a natural catastrophe quickly turned into a humanitarian crisis. 

David Milliband – a ‘natural disaster’ is turning into a ‘humanitarian catastrophe of epic proportions’.

If small steps had been taken – and if the Burmese government were a bit more flexible – then this crisis could have been stemmed.  If:

• The Burmese government had made it easier for aid workers and US military to enter the country
• The Burmese army had targeted their support to the worst hit areas – instead of just around the capital
• The government had speeded up aid processes once it became clear how the crisis was escalating and how many people were dying in the aftermath – due to lack of water and food

And now the government could be doing more to help adequately manage the dead bodies – to prevent spread of infection among other things.

When will they learn?

(1) Euro/Dollar traded for the first time in history above the 1.60 level. We are now starting to see additional signs of a European economic slowdown. According to the Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) released by the NTC Economics, manufacturing weakened in April. The strong euro affected New Export Orders as they contracted for the first time in almost three years, from 51.1 to 49.8.

Some countries and sectors in the Euro Zone will likely cope better than others, as the euro strengthen against the dollar. Strong Chinese demand will primarily benefit the exporting sector related to capital goods and high tech consumer goods, mentioned here.

(2) Chinese foreign exchange reserves recorded a record increase in the first quarter. China added $153,92bn to their current reserve, compared to $94,63bn in the forth quarter of last year, making it a total of $1682,18bn.

So far in 2008, the renminbi has appreciated 4.5 % to the U.S. dollar. If Chinese policy makers continue their present currency interventionist program, domestic inflation will get an additional shot of adrenalin, as foreign capital continues to flow into China.