New Cold War?

from antiwar.com

The Real Aggressor
Georgian invasion of South Ossetia sets the stage for a wider war
by Justin Raimondo
August 11, 2008

The anti-Russian bias of the Western media is really something to behold: "Russia Invades Georgia," "Russia Attacks Georgia," and variations thereof have been some of the choice headlines reporting events in the Caucasus, but the reality is not only quite different, but the exact opposite. Sometimes this comes out in the third or fourth paragraph of the reportage, in which it is admitted that the Georgians tried to "retake" the "breakaway province" of South Ossetia. The Georgian bombing campaign and the civilian casualties – if they are mentioned at all – are downplayed and presented as subject to dispute.

The Georgians have been openly engaging in a military buildup since last year, and President Mikhail Saakashvili and his party have been proclaiming from the rooftops their aim of re-conquering South Ossetia (and rebellious Abkhazia, while they're at it). Avid readers of Antiwar.com saw this coming. In a column entitled "Wars to Watch Out For," I wrote:
"As President Mikheil Saakashvili deflowers his own revolution and shuts down the opposition media, he could well try to divert attention away from his political problems by ginning up a fresh conflict with the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both of which are protected by Russian troops and regional militias."

That's what Western reporters aren't telling their readers: the South Ossetians (and the Abkhazians) have had de facto independence since 1991, when they rose up against their "democratic" central government, which had banned regional parties from participating in elections. They beat back the Georgian army, which, nonetheless, inflicted a lot of casualties and damage. A low-level war has been in progress ever since, with Saakashvili and his ultra-nationalist party using the rebels as a foil to divert attention from their repressive domestic policies and Georgia's sad status as an economic basket case. As I wrote way back at the beginning of this year:

"Saakashvili, the great 'democrat,' is busy charging anyone who opposes him with being a pawn of the Russians (and therefore guilty of treason), but the West is calling on him to restore civil liberties – and, in an apparent effort to propitiate his Western benefactors, he has lifted some restrictions and called new elections. Widespread and growing opposition to his strong-arm tactics, even among many of his former supporters, spells political trouble for Saakashvili and his corrupt cohorts, however – and an appeal to Georgian ultra-nationalism (which was always the real ideological motivation of the Rose Revolutionaries) would bolster him in the polls and provide a much-needed distraction, at least from the ruling party's point of view."

What's particularly disgusting is the spectacle of the fraudulent Saakashvili's smug mug all over Western television – the BBC and Bloomberg, for starters – invoking his great love of "democracy" and "freedom" and calling on the U.S. to intervene in the name of supposedly shared "values." What drivel! Up until very recently, Saakashvili has been busy rounding up his political opponents and charging them with espionage, as his police beat demonstrators in the streets. When this happened, even our somnolent media sat up and took notice, but they seem to have forgotten.

Saakashvili uses the Western media as a platform to broadcast his great love for "freedom" and make the case against the Russian "aggressors," comparing the present conflict with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s – and even the bloody 1956 repression of the Hungarians! This is nonsense. Russia is not the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain has long since been melted down for scrap metal, and, if anything, Saakashvili resembles the Hungarian satraps of the Kremlin rather than the heroic freedom-fighters, given his absolute fealty to his foreign masters in Washington, to whom he appeals for help in putting down an internal rebellion.

In any case, it wasn't too hard to have seen this coming a mile away, or to predict the American government's response. As I wrote in "Wars To Watch Out For":
"In the event of an outbreak of hostilities, expect the U.S. to do what they have done for the duration of Georgia's political crisis: proffer unconditional support to Saakashvili. With Russia aiding and giving political and diplomatic support to the Abkhazians and the Ossetians, and the Americans letting loose a flood of military aid to Tbilisi, this could be the first theater of actual conflict in the new cold war."

Which is precisely what has occurred. The United States is denouncing the Russians as aggressors in the UN Security Council and accusing the Kremlin of engaging in a policy of "regime change," in Ambassador Khalilzad's phrase. The Russian response: "regime change" is "an American invention," but, hey, in Saakashvili's case, it might not be such a bad idea.

They have a point. The Georgian strongman is a thug and an opportunist who does an excellent imitation of George W. Bush-times-10: whereas GWB merely implies his political opponents are traitors to the nation, Saakashvili comes right out and says it – then drags them into court on trumped up charges of high treason. GWB has presided over a regime that has legalized torture, but only for foreign "terrorists" (José Padilla excepted). Saakashvili, on the other hand, throws his domestic political opponents – whom he labels "terrorists" – in jail and tortures his own countrymen. Georgia's notorious prisons are chock full of political dissidents. GWB justifies his aggression by invoking "democracy" and the doctrine of "preemption," while Saakashvili doesn't bother with such theoretical niceties, denying his aggression against South Ossetia in defiance of the plain facts.

In short: if you love GWB, you'll love President Saakashvili. Therefore it's no surprise John McCain is portraying the Georgians as the good guys and demanding that Russian troops leave "sovereign Georgian territory" without preconditions or delay. After all, when your chief foreign policy adviser has up until very recently been a paid shill for the Georgian government, what else could we expect? As I've pointed out on a few occasions in this space, Mad John has been spoiling for a fight with the Russians – in the Caucasus and elsewhere – for years, going so far as to travel to Georgia to proclaim his sympathy for Saakashvili's cause.

What's really interesting, however, is how Barack Obama has taken up this same cause, albeit with less vehemence than the GOP nominee. As Politico.com reported:
"When violence broke out in the Caucasus on Friday morning, John McCain quickly issued a statement that was far more strident toward the Russians than that of President Bush, Barack Obama, and much of the West. But, as Russian warplanes pounded Georgian targets far beyond South Ossetia this weekend, Bush, Obama, and others have moved closer to McCain's initial position."

While calling for mediation and international peacekeepers, Obama went with the War Party's line that Russia, not Georgia, is the aggressor, as the Times of London reports: "Obama accused Russia of escalating the crisis 'through it's clear and continued violation of Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity.'" While his first statement on the outbreak of hostilities was more along the lines of "Can't we all get along?", the New York Times notes:
"Mr. Obama did harden his rhetoric later on Friday, shortly before getting on a plane for a vacation in Hawaii. His initial statement, an adviser said, was released before there were confirmed reports of the Russian invasion. In his later statement, Mr. Obama said, 'What is clear is that Russia has invaded Georgia's sovereign – has encroached on Georgia's sovereignty, and it is very important for us to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.'"

This nonsense about Georgia's alleged "sovereignty" rides roughshod over the reality of the Ossetians' apparent determination to free themselves from Saakashvili's grip, and it's the buzzword that identifies a shill for the Georgians.

"I condemn Russia's aggressive actions," said Obama, "and reiterate my call for an immediate cease-fire." This cease-fire business is meant to feed directly into the Georgians' contention that they have offered to stop the conflict, even as they continue military operations in South Ossetia, which have already cost the lives of over a thousand of that country's inhabitants.

That didn't stop the McCainiacs from attacking Obama as a tool of the Kremlin. Sunday the news talk shows were abuzz with rumors of Democratic discontent over Obama's seeming inability to hit back at McCain's viciously negative campaign, yet it's much worse than that – it's not an unwillingness, but an inherent inability to do so. I hate to cite Andrew Sullivan favorably, but he was one of the first to note the convergence of the Obama camp and the McCain campaign on such central issues as Iran, and the process continues with this confluence of opinion on the Russian question. While the Obama people have dutifully pointed out that Randy Scheunemann, McCain's foreign policy guru, earned hundreds of thousands of dollars for his public relations firm as a paid lobbyist for the Georgians, their own candidate's position on the matter differs little from McCain's, except, as the New York Times notes, in terms of "style."

GWB recently assured Saakashvili that he would do his best to get the Georgians into NATO, but the Europeans – particularly the Germans – are balking, and this foray by the Georgian Napoleon into a direct conflict with the Russians seems to confirm their initial reluctance. The Euros are no dummies: they know Saakashvili's recklessness could plunge the entire region into an armed conflict that would resemble World War I in its utter stupidity.

I've written at length about the economic and political interests that stand to profit from a war in the Caucasus, and I won't repeat myself here except to note that the timing of this – with attacking Iran on the War Party's agenda – should alert us to the importance of what is happening. Russia has not only been opposed to Iran's victimization at the hands of the West, but Putin and his successor have taken up Tehran's cause, selling arms and technology to the Iranians and running diplomatic interference on their behalf. This is Washington's counterattack by proxy.

Please don't tell me Saakashvili just woke up one day and decided to attack Ossetia, and that the Americans weren't notified well in advance. Georgia depends on U.S. military and economic aid, and Saakashvili is a savvy operator: he is pulling a Lebanon, having learned from the Israeli example, and the Bush administration is more than glad to oblige him. Georgian tanks would never have rolled into South Ossetia without being given a green light by Washington.
Georgia has embarked on a very dangerous course, and it's important to realize it hasn't done so alone. Saakashvili has the implicit backing of Washington in his quest to re-conquer the "lost" provinces of Ossetia and Abkhazia (and don't forget Adjaria!) – or else what are 1,000 U.S. troops doing engaged in "joint military exercises" with the Georgian military, just as the crisis reaches a crescendo of violence? (The Brits, to their credit, have thought better of getting dragged into this one…)

It's too bad Obama is going along with the game plan, but then again, he was never good on the Russian question to begin with, so I can't say I'm disappointed. South Ossetia is not now a part of "sovereign Georgian territory," and it hasn't been for nearly two decades, no matter what McCain and Obama would have us believe. If they, along with GWB, are going to stand by Saakashvili's side as he mows down civilians and imposes martial law on a war-torn, dirt-poor, and much-abused people, then may they all be damned to hell – that is, if we can find a rung low enough for them.

It's funny – if you like your humor black – but when Slobodan Milosevic was supposedly doing to Kosovo what Saakashvili is now doing to South Ossetia, the U.S. launched bombing raids and "liberated" the Kosovars from what we were told was to be a gruesome fate. There are many reasons to doubt that this attempted "genocide" ever took place, but given that something very bad was going on in the former Yugoslavia, one has to ask: why don't the same standards apply to South Ossetia?

I'll tell you why: because the victims, this time, are Russians, Slavs who haven't achieved official victim status in the lexicon of Western "humanitarians."

Imagine if, say, Colombia invaded Panama, and rained bombs down on the many U.S. citizens currently living there. Would the U.S. act to ensure their safety? You betcha! So somebody please tell me why Russia hasn't the right to defend its own citizens, and even to deter and punish Georgian aggression.

The War Party has been running on some pretty low energy lately, and this revival of the Cold War will no doubt recharge its batteries. The warmongers need a new enemy, a fresh face in their rogues' gallery, to get the masses excited again, and Putin's Russia fits the bill. I've been warning of this possibility for what seems like years, and now the moment is upon us. What's interesting is how many left-liberal "peaceniks" are falling for the War Party's guff and lining up behind McCain, their hero Obama, and the neocons in the march to confrontation with the Kremlin.~ Justin Raimondo
Copyright Antiwar.com

Maureen on a roll...

from nytimes.com

August 10, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Keeping It Rielle
By MAUREEN DOWD
WASHINGTON

John Edwards’s confession was a little bit breathtaking.

Not the sex stuff. That happens here all the time.

And certainly not covering up the sex stuff. That happens here all the time, too. First people uncover; then they cover up. Nobody’s ever had sex with that woman until, suddenly, they have.

The stunning admission Edwards made to ABC’s Bob Woodruff, and in a written statement from Chapel Hill on Friday afternoon, was that he’s a narcissist.

He admitted that wallowing in “self-focus” out on the trail and thinking you’re “special” can result in a solipsism that “leads you to believe you can do whatever you want, you’re invincible and there’ll be no consequences.”

Auto-psychoanalysis by the perp. That’s really rich. When Bill Clinton acknowledged an affair, after equally adamant denials, he simply went into an old-fashioned spiral of penitence, his allegedly long, dark night of his alleged soul.

Even in confessing to preening, Edwards was preening. His diagnosis of narcissism was weirdly narcissistic, or was it self-narcissistic? Given his diagnosis, I’m sure his H.M.O. would pay.

The creepiest part of his creepy confession was when he stressed to Woodruff that he cheated on Elizabeth in 2006 when her cancer was in remission. His infidelity was oncologically correct.

So narcissist walks into a New York bar and meets a legendarily wacky former Gotham party girl — whose ’80s exploits were chronicled in a novel by her former boyfriend Jay McInerney because the behavior of her and her friends “intrigued and appalled me.” When you appall Jay McInerney, you know you’re in trouble.

The president manqué gives Rielle Hunter, formerly Lisa Druck, more than $114,000 to shoot vain little videos for his Web site (even though she’s a neophyte), one of which is scored with the song “True Reflections” about the Narcissus pool, which goes: “When you look into a mirror, do you like what’s looking at you? Now that you’ve seen your true reflections, what on earth are you gonna do?”

He has an affair with Hunter, while he’s honing his speech on the imperative to “live in a moral, honest, just America.” A married former aide says he’s the father when she gets pregnant, even though she’s telling people Edwards is the dad. And one of his campaign donors pays off Hunter to get her resettled with the baby out of North Carolina.

But the Breck Girl wants a gold star for the fact that he sent his marriage into remission when his wife was in remission. That’s special.

In his statement, he bleats: “You cannot beat me up more than I have already beaten up myself. I have been stripped bare.” Isn’t stripping bare how he got into this mess?

It isn’t like we didn’t know that the son of a millworker was a little enraptured by himself, radiating self-love from his smile and his man-in-a-hurry airs and the notorious $800 bill for a pair of haircuts and his two-minute YouTube hair primping to the tune of “I Feel Pretty.”

Certain men assume that power confers sexual privilege. And in American politics, there is an eternal disjunction between character and achievement. Sinners do good things, saints do bad things.

Still, it’s bizarre the way these pols spend millions getting their faces plastered everywhere and then think they can do something in secret. “Yeah, I didn’t think anyone would ever know about it, I didn’t,” Edwards said.

In one of the Web films Hunter directed, he actually flirts with the blonde, laughingly telling her that his address on morality is “a great speech” and complaining, “Why don’t you hear me give it live?”

For some reason, super-strivers have a need to sell what is secretly weakest about themselves, as if they yearn for unmasking. Edwards’s decency and concern for the weak in society — except for his own wife. Bill Clinton’s intellect and love of community — except for his stupidity and destructiveness about Monica. Bush the Younger’s jocular, I’m-in-charge self-confidence — except for turning over his presidency, as no president ever has, to his Veep. Eliot Spitzer’s crusade for truth, justice and the American way — except at home.

In the Hunter video titled “Plane Truths,” Edwards is relaxing on his plane, telling the out-of-frame director: “I’ve come to the personal conclusion that I actually want the country to see who I am, who I really am, but I don’t know what the result of that will be. But for me personally, I’d rather be successful or unsuccessful based on who I really am, not based on some plastic Ken doll that you put up in front of audiences.” Ken couldn’t have said it better.

Back in 2002, Edwards sent me a Ken doll dressed in bathing trunks, Rio de Janeiro Ken, with a teasing note, because he didn’t like my reference to him as a Ken doll in a column.

In retrospect, the comparison was not fair — to Ken.

War breaks out - Russia and Georgia

from nytimes.com

August 9, 2008
Russia Sends Troops Into Rebel Enclave in Georgia
By ANNE BARNARD and ANDREW E. KRAMER

MOSCOW — Russia sent troops rolling into a breakaway region of Georgia on Friday after Georgian troops entered the capital of the pro-Russian enclave, in a sharp escalation of the conflict.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin declared that “war has started” and President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia accused Russia of a “well-planned invasion," saying he had mobilized Georgia’s military reserves.

Georgian forces declared they had won control of the capital of the rebel enclave, South Ossetia, though it was impossible to verify that claim. One unconfirmed report said Georgian forces had shot down two Russian planes, and Georgia said its aircraft had bombed a convoy of Russian tanks that moved into the area.

Russia’s Channel 1 television showed Russian tanks entering South Ossetia. It reported that two battalions reinforced by tanks and armored personnel carriers were approaching the capital, Tskhinvali.

Separatist leaders in Tskhinvali said casualties were at least in the hundreds but their claims were impossible to confirm independently. Eduard Kokoity, the president of South Ossetia, told the Russian news agency Interfax that hundreds of civilians had been killed.

Georgia is a strong American ally whose shift toward the West and pursuit of NATO membership has deeply angered Russia. Washington said Friday that it would send an envoy to the region to try to broker an end to the conflict.

The White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said the Bush administration had been talking to both sides to resolve the crisis.

“We urge restraint on all sides — that violence would be curtailed and that direct dialogue could ensue in order to help resolve their differences,” she said.

The European Union and NATO also called Friday for Russia and Georgia to end the hostilities.
South Ossetia and another breakaway region, Abkhazia, gained de facto independence from Georgia in the late 1990s, when the region settled into a tenuous peace monitored by Russian peacekeepers. But frictions with Georgia increased sharply in 2004, when Mr. Saakashvili came to power and made national unification a centerpiece of his agenda. Since then an uneasy truce has reigned, although fighting between South Ossetia and Georgian forces has erupted sporadically.

Earlier this year, Russia announced that it was broadly expanding support for the separatist region and that it would establish legal connections with the region’s de facto government.
The latest round of fighting between the Georgian military and separatist forces began last weekend. South Ossetia accused Georgians of firing mortars into the enclave after six Georgian policemen were killed in the border area by a roadside bomb. As tensions grew, South Ossetia began sending women and children out of the enclave.

The refugee crisis appeared to intensify Friday as relief groups said thousands of refugees, mostly women and children, were now streaming across the border into the North Caucasus city of Vladikavkaz in Russia in an attempt to escape the fierce fighting.

President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia promised to “punish” those responsible for what he called “a deep violation of international law” by Georgia that he said had led to the deaths of Russian citizens and Russian peacekeepers stationed in Tskhinvali.

“I am obligated to defend the lives and dignity of Russian citizens, wherever they are located,” he said in an address carried on Russian state television. “We will not allow the unpunished killing of our fellow citizens. Those who are guilty will suffer the punishment they deserve.”
The fighting presented the most dangerous crisis in years in the Caucasus region, a key conduit for the flow of oil from the Caspian sea to world markets and an area where violent conflict has flared along the Russia’s outskirts for centuries, most recently in Chechnya.

At midday Friday, Georgian army units were trying to seize Tskhinvali using heavy machine guns and mortars in firefights with separatist paramilitary fighters, Shota Utiashvili, an official at the Interior Ministry of Georgia, said in an interview.

“Now, the army will have to take the capital,” he said, citing “massive fire” aimed at Georgian troops by fighters inside the city.

The head of a Russian peacekeeping force in the city, Marat M. Kulakhmetov, said in a telephone interview that the city had come under “massive attack” by the Georgians and that civilians had been wounded. As he spoke, shooting could be heard in the background.

Mr. Utiashvili, the Georgian official, said Georgians had seen Russian forces, including “hundreds of soldiers and dozens of armored vehicles, including tanks,” move up the military highway into the Caucasus Mountains that ties the separatist enclave to Russia.

By morning, they had passed through a mountain tunnel into the northern portion of the enclave, he said. “They are on Georgian territory now.”

“We don’t know whether they are militias or regular Russian forces,” he said. “As they carry heavy equipment, we think they must be regulars. We don’t know. We just know they are coming to attack us.”

He said Georgian Su-25 ground attack airplanes had struck the convoy and that the Georgians believed they had caused casualties and destroyed Russian armored vehicles.

But a spokesman for Teimuraz Mamsurov, the president of the semiautonomous Russian republic of North Ossetia, which borders the disputed territory, said the Georgian planes had struck an automobile convoy shipping humanitarian aid from Vladikavkaz to South Ossetia.
He said he had no information about the sighting of Russian tanks.

The Georgian military fired on Russian fighter jets that bombed Georgian territory and strafed Georgian positions at about 11 a.m. Moscow time, Mr. Utiashvili said.

Analysts said that Georgia could be trying to seize an opportune moment — with world leaders focused on the start of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing this week — to reclaim the territory.

Russia also may be seeking to draw attention away from another breakaway Georgian region, Abkhazia, where it has been under pressure to allow a settlement between pro-Russian and pro-Georgian factions, analysts said.

Meanwhile, Russian citizens in South Ossetia called on Russia to intervene, “We are being killed by Georgian aggressors,” they said in a letter posted on an official Web site maintained jointly by South Ossetia and North Ossetia, an adjacent territory on Russian territory that wants to unite with the southern region.

“We, hiding in the basement of a house, showered by bombs, are not feeling now that we are citizens of a great country. We hear Russia has a great air force and excellent planes. Protect your citizens. You are our last hope.”

The Russian Defense Ministry said Friday afternoon that it would protect Russian citizens in the territory and Russian peacekeepers who came under fire in Tskhinvali.

“The Georgian leadership has unleashed a dirty adventure,” the ministry said in a statement, posted on its Web site. “The blood shed in South Ossetia will remain on the conscience of these people and their entourage. We will not allow anyone to do harm to our peacekeepers and citizens of the Russian Federation.”

Mr. Utiashvili, the Georgian Interior Ministry official, said that about 10 Russian jets dropped seven or eight bombs on Georgian territory outside South Ossetia. The jets struck a police station in Kareli and a radar station in Gori — hitting two cities near the Georgian capital of Tblisi — and wounded several people, he said.

Nikolai Khalip and Ellen Barry contributed reporting from Moscow.

Why should stay in good health over the next 30 years...

Cancer Cures Find Biology-Physics Convergence With MIT `Genius'
By Brian Kladko and John Taddei

Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Angela Belcher, a materials engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, didn't plan on joining the war on cancer. That is, until she was drafted to work alongside the school's biologists.

Belcher, 40, a 2004 winner of a MacArthur Foundation genius award, tailors viruses that build microscopic electronic parts such as transistors. She was recruited by MIT's cancer scientists to uncover new ways to detect tumors early and deliver drugs more safely.

Biologists at MIT, in Cambridge, helped discover the genes that have led to a new generation of so-called targeted cancer medicines. MIT -- like Stanford University in California and Emory University in Atlanta -- now is deploying engineers for the first time to build on those successes. The approach is spurring interest from biotechnology company backers, said Terry McGuire, co-founder of Polaris Venture Partners, an investment company in nearby Waltham, Massachusetts.

``Investors are realizing that a combination of engineering and biology is going to yield greater products,'' McGuire said a telephone interview on July 28.

McGuire is an adviser to MIT's David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, funded partly with $100 million from Koch, a 68-year-old billionaire who has been under treatment for prostate cancer for 16 years. The Koch Institute is constructing an over-$200 million building, with 25 laboratories, scheduled to open in December 2010.

Cancer Survivor
``One only has to experience cancer personally to become a crusader for curing the disease,'' Koch, from the founding family at Wichita, Kansas-based Koch Industries Inc., said in a telephone interview on July 22. The partnership between biologists and engineers, he said, ``is incredibly powerful.''

Each of the seven floors will have biologists and engineers, ``equal partners in the battle against this disease,'' MIT President Susan Hockfield, a 57-year-old neuroscientist, told a gathering at the school in June. ``The building is explicitly designed to help people bump into each other --intellectually, that is.''

Biologist-engineer collaborations against cancer have also been initiated at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, Washington University in St. Louis, the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and the University of California, San Diego.

Billions for Research
The U.S. government will spend $4.8 billion on cancer studies in the year ending Sept. 30, almost twice the $2.5 billion a decade earlier, according to the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. About 75 percent of the Koch Institute's $50 million annual science budget comes from federal grants, said the center's director, Tyler Jacks, in a July 15 interview.

MIT biologists were involved in the original gene discoveries that led to the cancer drug Herceptin, made by South San Francisco-based Genentech Inc., and Gleevec, from Novartis AG in Basel, Switzerland. Herceptin, for breast cancer, generated $4.6 billion in revenue, according to Roche Holding AG, the Basel-based drugmaker that also markets the medicine.

The Koch Institute has an even split of biologists and engineers among the 24 faculty members. By comparison, no more than 5 percent of the 28,000 members of the American Association for Cancer Research, based in Philadelphia, specialize in the physical sciences, said Margaret A. Foti, the group's chief executive officer, in a telephone interview.

`Ahead of the Curve'
``We desperately need both physicists and engineers in the field of cancer research right now because of all the new delivery systems,'' Foti said. ``Centers like the one at MIT are really ahead of the curve.''

Belcher, a Texas native who won a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago, was recruited by MIT's Robert Langer, the drug-delivery pioneer who runs the world's largest academic biomedical-engineering lab.

``She's one of the most imaginative, creative researchers I've ever seen, and really one of the young superstars at MIT,'' said Langer, 59, who formerly headed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Science Board, in an interview on July 14.

Belcher's goal is to create viruses that when injected into the body can hone in on tumors, she said in a June 3 interview. The viruses can act like freight delivery agents, carrying chemicals that can make otherwise unseen tumors more visible to imaging scans, or conveying chemotherapy directly to malignant cells.

Earlier Detection
The idea is to create diagnostics that detect cancer early enough for treatment to be more effective, Belcher said. The viruses' drug-delivery would be more accurately targeted than standard chemotherapy, which releases toxins throughout the body, harming healthy tissue in addition to the tumor.

She is also investigating how fluorescent tags called quantum dots might piggyback on viruses, highlighting the size, shape and location of a malignancy. While quantum dots are currently made from cadmium, which is toxic to humans, Belcher is trying to make a safe version from gallium nitride.

Belcher, who earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has genetically engineered viruses that assemble microscopic electrode wires by combining molecules of cobalt oxide. The wires, which are one ten-thousandth the width of a human hair, could provide power for implantable medical devices or for tiny, unmanned flying vehicles that measure air quality, she said.

`Check Your Ego'
Now Belcher devotes about 20 percent of her time to the viruses' cancer-related applications, an area where she said she hadn't thought she had anything to contribute.

``Part of it was just out of ignorance -- not knowing the field, not knowing the people, and what was happening,'' she said. ``So I didn't run to it, I got pulled into it.''
The experience can be humbling.

``You have to check your ego at the door,'' she said. ``You have to walk in and say, `What does that mean? Back up.' I have no problem admitting that I don't know anything, and learning.''

To contact the reporters on this story: John Taddei in New York at jtaddei3@bloomberg.net Last Updated: August 7, 2008 00:01 EDT

I have previously posted on the future of medicine. I truly believe that if you can keep yourself healthy over the next 30 years... the future holds enormous promise to extend your life with quality. And a lot of credit will go to people like Angela Belcher and Mr. David Koch

Coffee, oh Coffee...

nytimes.com

August 5, 2008
Personal Health
Sorting Out Coffee’s Contradictions
By JANE E. BRODY

When Howard D. Schultz in 1985 founded the company that would become the wildly successful Starbucks chain, no financial adviser had to tell him that coffee was America’s leading beverage and caffeine its most widely used drug. The millions of customers who flock to Starbucks to order a double espresso, latte or coffee grande attest daily to his assessment of American passions.

Although the company might have overestimated consumer willingness to spend up to $4 for a cup of coffee — it recently announced that it would close hundreds of underperforming stores — scores of imitators that now sell coffee, tea and other products laced with caffeine reflect a society determined to run hard on as little sleep as possible.

But as with any product used to excess, consumers often wonder about the health consequences. And researchers readily oblige. Hardly a month goes by without a report that hails coffee, tea or caffeine as healthful or damns them as potential killers.

Can all these often contradictory reports be right? Yes. Coffee and tea, after all, are complex mixtures of chemicals, several of which may independently affect health.
Caffeine Myths

Through the years, the public has been buffeted by much misguided information about caffeine and its most common source, coffee. In March the Center for Science in the Public Interest published a comprehensive appraisal of scientific reports in its Nutrition Action Healthletter. Its findings and those of other research reports follow.

Hydration.
It was long thought that caffeinated beverages were diuretics, but studies reviewed last year found that people who consumed drinks with up to 550 milligrams of caffeine produced no more urine than when drinking fluids free of caffeine. Above 575 milligrams, the drug was a diuretic.

So even a Starbucks grande, with 330 milligrams of caffeine, will not send you to a bathroom any sooner than if you drank 16 ounces of pure water. Drinks containing usual doses of caffeine are hydrating and, like water, contribute to the body’s daily water needs.

Heart disease.
Heart patients, especially those with high blood pressure, are often told to avoid caffeine, a known stimulant. But an analysis of 10 studies of more than 400,000 people found no increase in heart disease among daily coffee drinkers, whether their coffee came with caffeine or not.
“Contrary to common belief,” concluded cardiologists at the University of California, San Francisco, there is “little evidence that coffee and/or caffeine in typical dosages increases the risk” of heart attack, sudden death or abnormal heart rhythms.

In fact, among 27,000 women followed for 15 years in the Iowa Women’s Health Study, those who drank one to three cups a day reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease by 24 percent, although this benefit diminished as the quantity of coffee rose.

Hypertension.
Caffeine induces a small, temporary rise in blood pressure. But in a study of 155,000 nurses, women who drank coffee with or without caffeine for a decade were no more likely to develop hypertension than noncoffee drinkers. However, a higher risk of hypertension was found from drinking colas. A Johns Hopkins study that followed more than 1,000 men for 33 years found that coffee drinking played little overall role in the development of hypertension.

Cancer.
Panic swept this coffee-dependent nation in 1981 when a Harvard study tied the drink to a higher risk of pancreatic cancer. Coffee consumption temporarily plummeted, and the researchers later concluded that perhaps smoking, not coffee, was the culprit.
In an international review of 66 studies last year, scientists found coffee drinking had little if any effect on the risk of developing pancreatic or kidney cancer. In fact, another review suggested that compared with people who do not drink coffee, those who do have half the risk of developing liver cancer.

And a study of 59,000 women in Sweden found no connection between coffee, tea or caffeine consumption and breast cancer.

Bone loss.
Though some observational studies have linked caffeinated beverages to bone loss and fractures, human physiological studies have found only a slight reduction in calcium absorption and no effect on calcium excretion, suggesting the observations may reflect a diminished intake of milk-based beverages among coffee and tea drinkers.

Dr. Robert Heaney of Creighton University says that caffeine’s negative effect on calcium can be offset by as little as one or two tablespoons of milk. He advised that coffee and tea drinkers who consume the currently recommended amount of calcium need not worry about caffeine’s effect on their bones.

Weight loss.
Here’s a bummer. Although caffeine speeds up metabolism, with 100 milligrams burning an extra 75 to 100 calories a day, no long-term benefit to weight control has been demonstrated. In fact, in a study of more than 58,000 health professionals followed for 12 years, both men and women who increased their caffeine consumption gained more weight than those who didn’t.

Health Benefits
Probably the most important effects of caffeine are its ability to enhance mood and mental and physical performance. At consumption levels up to 200 milligrams (the amount in about 16 ounces of ordinary brewed coffee), consumers report an improved sense of well-being, happiness, energy, alertness and sociability, Roland Griffiths of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine reported, although higher amounts sometimes cause anxiety and stomach upset.

Millions of sleep-deprived Americans depend on caffeine to help them make it through their day and drive safely. The drug improves alertness and reaction time. In the sleep-deprived, it improves memory and the ability to perform complex tasks.

For the active, caffeine enhances endurance in aerobic activities and performance in anaerobic ones, perhaps because it blunts the perception of pain and aids the ability to burn fat for fuel instead of its carbohydrates.

Recent disease-related findings can only add to coffee’s popularity. A review of 13 studies found that people who drank caffeinated coffee, but not decaf, had a 30 percent lower risk of Parkinson’s disease.

Another review found that compared with noncoffee drinkers, people who drank four to six cups of coffee a day, with or without caffeine, had a 28 percent lower risk of Type 2 diabetes. This benefit probably comes from coffee’s antioxidants and chlorogenic acid.

Damn that shephard who first found the plant and damn the sheep who ate it. Because of them, I am now addicted. For those who're curious read how coffee was first discovered.

The Sojourner

from nytimes.com

August 5, 2008
Op-Ed Columnist
Where’s the Landslide?
By DAVID BROOKS

Why isn’t Barack Obama doing better? Why, after all that has happened, does he have only a slim two- or three-point lead over John McCain, according to an average of the recent polls? Why is he basically tied with his opponent when his party is so far ahead?

His age probably has something to do with it. So does his race. But the polls and focus groups suggest that people aren’t dismissive of Obama or hostile to him. Instead, they’re wary and uncertain.

And the root of it is probably this: Obama has been a sojourner. He opened his book “Dreams From My Father” with a quotation from Chronicles: “For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers.”

There is a sense that because of his unique background and temperament, Obama lives apart. He put one foot in the institutions he rose through on his journey but never fully engaged. As a result, voters have trouble placing him in his context, understanding the roots and values in which he is ineluctably embedded.

Last week Jodi Kantor of The Times described Obama’s 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School. “The young law professor stood apart in too many ways to count,” Kantor wrote.
He was a popular and charismatic professor, but he rarely took part in faculty conversations or discussions about the future of the institution. He had a supple grasp of legal ideas, but he never committed those ideas to paper by publishing a piece of scholarship.

He was in the law school, but not of it.

This has been a consistent pattern throughout his odyssey. His childhood was a peripatetic journey through Kansas, Indonesia, Hawaii and beyond. He absorbed things from those diverse places but was not fully of them.

His college years were spent on both coasts. He was a community organizer for three years but left before he could be truly effective. He became a state legislator, but he was in the Legislature, not of it. He had some accomplishments, but as Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker wrote, he was famously bored by the institution and used it as a stepping stone to higher things.

He was in Trinity United Church of Christ, but not of it, not sharing the liberation theology that energized Jeremiah Wright Jr. He is in the United States Senate, but not of it. He has not had the time nor the inclination to throw himself into Senate mores, or really get to know more than a handful of his colleagues. His Democratic supporters there speak of him fondly, but vaguely.
And so it goes. He is a liberal, but not fully liberal. He has sometimes opposed the Chicago political establishment, but is also part of it. He spoke at a rally against the Iraq war, while distancing himself from many antiwar activists.

This ability to stand apart accounts for his fantastic powers of observation, and his skills as a writer and thinker. It means that people on almost all sides of any issue can see parts of themselves reflected in Obama’s eyes. But it does make him hard to place.

When we’re judging candidates (or friends), we don’t just judge the individuals but the milieus that produced them. We judge them by the connections that exist beyond choice and the ground where they will go home to be laid to rest. Andrew Jackson was a backwoodsman. John Kennedy had his clan. Ronald Reagan was forever associated with the small-town virtues of Dixon and Jimmy Carter with Plains.

It is hard to plant Obama. Both he and his opponent have written coming-of-age tales about their fathers, but they are different in important ways. McCain’s “Faith of My Fathers” is a story of a prodigal son. It is about an immature boy who suffers and discovers his place in the long line of warriors that produced him. Obama’s “Dreams From My Father” is a journey forward, about a man who took the disparate parts of his past and constructed an identity of his own.
If you grew up in the 1950s, you were inclined to regard your identity as something you were born with. If you grew up in the 1970s, you were more likely to regard your identity as something you created.

If Obama is fully a member of any club — and perhaps he isn’t — it is the club of smart post-boomer meritocrats. We now have a cohort of rising leaders, Obama’s age and younger, who climbed quickly through elite schools and now ascend from job to job. They are conscientious and idealistic while also being coldly clever and self-aware. It’s not clear what the rest of America makes of them.

So, cautiously, the country watches. This should be a Democratic wipeout. But voters seem to be slow to trust a sojourner they cannot place.

from merriam-webster.com
sojourner
One entry found.
sojourn[2,intransitive verb]
Main Entry:
to sojourn
Function:
intransitive verb
Etymology:
Middle English, from Anglo-French sujurner, sejurner, from Vulgar Latin *subdiurnare, from Latin sub under, during + Late Latin diurnum day — more at up, journey
Date:
14th century
: to stay as a temporary resident

The "Dubya" Effect

from nytimes.com

August 5, 2008
G.O.P. Drops in Voting Rolls in Many States
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

Well before Senators Barack Obama and John McCain rose to the top of their parties, a partisan shift was under way at the local and state level. For more than three years starting in 2005, there has been a reduction in the number of voters who register with the Republican Party and a rise among voters who affiliate with Democrats and, almost as often, with no party at all.

While the implications of the changing landscape for Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain are far from clear, voting experts say the registration numbers may signal the beginning of a move away from Republicans that could affect local, state and national politics over several election cycles. Already, there has been a sharp reversal for Republicans in many statehouses and governors’ mansions.

In several states, including the traditional battlegrounds of Nevada and Iowa, Democrats have surprised their own party officials with significant gains in registration. In both of those states, there are now more registered Democrats than Republicans, a flip from 2004. No states have switched to the Republicans over the same period, according to data from 26 of the 29 states in which voters register by party. (Three of the states did not have complete data.)

In six states, including Iowa, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, the Democratic piece of the registration pie grew more than three percentage points, while the Republican share declined. In only three states — Kentucky, Louisiana and Oklahoma — did Republican registration rise while Democratic registration fell, but the Republican increase was less than a percentage point in Kentucky and Oklahoma. Louisiana was the only state to register a gain of more than one percentage point for Republicans as Democratic numbers declined.

Over the same period, the share of the electorate that registers as independent has grown at a faster rate than Republicans or Democrats in 12 states. The rise has been so significant that in states like Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina, nonpartisan voters essentially constitute a third party.

Swings in party registration are not uncommon from one year to the next, or even over two years. Registration, moreover, often has no impact on how people actually vote, and people sometimes switch registration to vote in a primary, then flip again come Election Day.

But for a shift away from one party to sustain itself — the current registration trend is now in its fourth year — is remarkable, researchers who study voting patterns say. And though comparable data are not available for the 21 states where voters do not register by party, there is evidence that an increasing number of voters in those states are also moving away from the Republican Party based on the results of recent state and Congressional elections, the researchers said.

“This is very suggestive that there is a fundamental change going on in the electorate,” said Michael P. McDonald, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an associate professor of political science at George Mason University who has studied voting patterns.
Mr. McDonald added that, more typically, voting and registration patterns tended to even out or revert to the opposing party between elections.

Dick Armey, the former House majority leader and one of the designers of the so-called Republican Revolution of 1994, said: “Obviously, these are not good numbers for the party to be looking at. Democrats have always had extremely broad multifaceted registration programs.”
But in terms of the presidential election, Mr. Armey said the tea leaves were harder to read.
“I think the key in this one is, where do all these new independent voters break?” he said. “I think right now, you’ve got a guy in western Pennsylvania saying, ‘I am really disgusted right now and I’m not going to register as a Republican anymore, but I really don’t want this guy Obama elected.’ ”

Those in charge of state Democratic parties cite a national displeasure with the Bush administration as an impetus for the changing numbers, which run counter to a goal of Karl Rove, President Bush’s former top adviser, to create a permanent realignment in favor of Republicans.

“I think nationally and here, people are kind of tired of the way this administration has been conducting the policies of this country,” said Pat Waak, chairwoman of the Colorado Democratic Party.

Yet while an unpopular war, a faltering economy and a president held in low esteem have combined to hurt the Republican Party, Democrats are also benefiting from demographic changes, including the rise in the number of younger voters and the urbanization of suburbs, which has resulted in a different political flavor there, voting and campaign experts said. The party has also been helped by a willingness to run more pragmatic candidates, who have helped make the party more appealing to a broader swath of the electorate.

Among the 26 states with registration data, the percentage of those who have signed on with Democrats has risen in 15 states since 2004, and the percentage for Republicans has risen in six, according to state data. The number of registered Democrats fell in 11 states, compared with 20 states where Republican registration numbers fell.

In the 26 states and the District of Columbia where registration data were available, the total number of registered Democrats increased by 214,656, while the number of Republicans fell by 1,407,971.

The unsettled political ground has manifested itself in state and local elections. Twenty-three state legislatures are controlled by Democrats and 14 by Republicans, with 12 states with divided chambers (Nebraska has a nonpartisan legislature). After the 2000 election, 16 state legislatures were dominated by Democrats, and 17 by Republicans, with 16 divided.
It is a similar story in governors’ mansions. After the 2004 election, there were 28 Republican governors and 22 Democrats; those numbers are now reversed. After the 2000 election, there were only 19 Democratic governors.

Elected Democrats have made significant inroads even in places where Republicans have enjoyed a generation of dominance. In Colorado, for example, Democrats control the governorship and both houses of the Legislature for the first time in over four decades. Last year, Virginia Democrats gained a 21-to-19 majority over Republicans in the State Senate, the first time the party has controlled that body in a decade.

In New Hampshire, Democrats are in control of both the legislative and executive branches for the first time since 1874. In Iowa, Democrats have taken over the statehouse and the governor’s office simultaneously for the first time in a generation.

The changes in state government could have broad implications for Congressional redistricting and on policies like immigration, health care reform and environmental regulation, which are increasingly decided at the state level.

In many states, Democrats have benefited from a rise in younger potential voters, after declines or small increases in the number of those voters in the 1980s and ’90s. The population of 18- to 24-year-olds rose from about 27 million in 2000 to nearly 30 million in 2006, according to Census figures.

Mr. Obama’s candidacy has drawn many young people to register to vote, and some of the recent gains by Democrats have no doubt been influenced by excitement over his campaign. But even before Mr. Obama’s ascendancy among Democrats, younger voters were moving toward the Democratic Party, demographers said.

Dowell Myers, a professor of policy, planning and development at the University of Southern California, also noted that a younger, native-born generation of Latinos who have a tendency to support Democrats is coming of age.

Further, young Americans have migrated in recent years to high-growth states that have traditionally been dominated by Republicans, like Arizona, Colorado and Nevada, which may have had an impact on the changing registration numbers in those places.

The changing face of many American suburbs has also had in impact both in voter registration and voting patterns. In many major metropolitan areas, suburbs that were once largely white and Republican have become more mixed, as people living in cities have been priced out into surrounding areas, and exurban regions have absorbed those residents who once favored the close-in suburbs of cities.

“What we speculate is that density attracts Democrats,” said Robert Lang, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech who has researched voting patterns. “It is not that people move to those areas and change positions. It tends now to be a self-selection of singles, childless couples,” who tend to vote Democrat more than their married with children counterparts.

In the nation’s 50 largest metropolitan areas, Democrats carried nearly 60 percent of the Congressional vote in 2006 in inner suburbs, up from about 53 percent in 2002, according to Mr. Lang’s research.

This trend is particularly evident in places like St. Louis, southern Pennsylvania and Fairfax County, Va., which President Bush won in 2000 but lost in 2004.

Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, who won her seat in 2006, picked up the large majority of voters in the St. Louis and Kansas City metropolitan areas, and Senator Jim Webb, also a Democrat, won his seat in a similar manner in Virginia, which has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964.

Democrats have also succeeded, at least in part, by running centrist candidates where they are most needed. Bill Ritter, the Democratic governor of Colorado and former district attorney of Denver, opposes abortion rights. Among the men who flipped three of Indiana’s eight Congressional seats in the midterm election in 2006, two also oppose both abortion rights and gun control.

What the demographers, political scientists and party officials wonder now is whether the shift of the last few years will be sustained.

“Major political realignment is not just controlling the branches of government,” said Mr. McDonald of the Brookings Institution. “It is when you decisively do it. We haven’t seen that in modern generations.”

Rebecca Cathcart contributed reporting.