Africa Needs a Marshall Plan

Interesting story on the future World Bank chief and a suggested plan for Africa going forward.

Why Africa needs a Marshall plan
By Glenn Hubbard and William Duggan

Published: June 4 2007 19:12 | Last updated: June 4 2007 19:12

Robert Zoellick, the likely new president of the World Bank, will face a long to-do list, but at or near the top will be the dire economic conditions in much of sub-Saharan Africa. As a seasoned diplomat, Mr Zoellick will seek counsel from many sources. But the best advice may be in the history books.

Sixty years ago on Tuesday, George Marshall, US secretary of state, announced what became known as the Marshall plan for Europe in an address at Harvard University. The Marshall plan has been widely heralded as an example of the triumph of foreign aid on a grand scale. Given the high rate of extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, and that Africa is poorer today than 20 years ago, some leaders have called for a Marshall plan for Africa.

An inspiring story of survival in the Congo

The BBC's Mike Thomson has the story of one of 5 million victims of the violence that plagued the Democratic Republic of Congo during its civil war. A vicious civil war ended in 2003, and the country is beginning to face the legacy of atrocities suffered during that war.
Note to readers: If you find yourself mired in self-pity or wrestling with a foul mood, take a listen to this Congolese woman's compelling story of survival, get off your ass and make your community and world a better place!

President Obama? Not this time

Alex Beam's Boston Globe article saying that Barak can't win.

"I write this with my head, not my heart....Meet Barack Obama, the BradleyDeanBabbittTsongas of the 2008 election cycle"

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/05/09/president_obama_not_this_time/

Deal Offered for Wolfowitz Exit

Report: Deal offered for Wolfowitz exit

European countries will drop demand that they pick next World Bank president if Wolfowitz agrees to leave soon, newspaper says.

http://money.cnn.com/2007/05/08/news/newsmakers/wolfowitz/index.htm?cnn=yes

Grey's Anatomy-Modern Woman as Ambitious yet Feeble?

As much as I adore Tim Daly on the new Grey's spin-off, I have to agree with the NY Times writer on this issue. Comments - anyone??

The New Modern Woman, Ambitious and Feeble

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

It’s time to play the blame game.

Everything wrong with “Grey’s Anatomy” and its soon-to-be spun spinoff is the fault of “Ally McBeal.”

Thursday’s two-hour episode of ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy,” in which Addison (Kate Walsh) has an emotional meltdown and flees Seattle Grace Hospital for a fancy wellness clinic in Los Angeles, serves as a prelude to a new, still untitled series centered on Addison and her new life in Southern California. It also suggests that the spinoff is doomed to be even sillier and more sex-obsessed than the original. And that is an achievement, considering that “Grey’s Anatomy” managed to squeeze in love scenes for a disfigured, pregnant disaster victim with amnesia.

Sex isn’t the problem with the new series; it’s the subjugation. Addison looks up her old friend from medical school whose perfect marriage has just ended and finds herself enmeshed with two other mature, reputable professionals: a fertility specialist and a psychotherapist. All three women are lovelorn, sex-starved and prone to public displays of disaffection.

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The cell phones in the pockets of the dead students were still ringing when we were told that it was wrong to ask why.

Great piece by Adam Gopnik on the strong arm tactics of the NRA

Shootings
by Adam Gopnik
The cell phones in the pockets of the dead students were still ringing when we were told that it was wrong to ask why. As the police cleared the bodies from the Virginia Tech engineering building, the cell phones rang, in the eccentric varieties of ring tones, as parents kept trying to see if their children were O.K. To imagine the feelings of the police as they carried the bodies and heard the ringing is heartrending; to imagine the feelings of the parents who were calling—dread, desperate hope for a sudden answer and the bliss of reassurance, dawning grief—is unbearable. But the parents, and the rest of us, were told that it was not the right moment to ask how the shooting had happened—specifically, why an obviously disturbed student, with a history of mental illness, was able to buy guns whose essential purpose is to kill people—and why it happens over and over again in America.

Virginia’s governor, Tim Kaine, said, “People who want to . . . make it their political hobby horse to ride, I’ve got nothing but loathing for them. . . . At this point, what it’s about is comforting family members . . . and helping this community heal. And so to those who want to try to make this into some little crusade, I say take that elsewhere.” If the facts weren’t so horrible, there might be something touching in the Governor’s deeply American belief that “healing” can take place magically, without the intervening practice called “treating.” The logic is unusual but striking: the aftermath of a terrorist attack is the wrong time to talk about security, the aftermath of a death from lung cancer is the wrong time to talk about smoking and the tobacco industry, and the aftermath of a car crash is the wrong time to talk about seat belts.

The first signs of the McCain re-surge?

ARG has new numbers today from the early state troika, Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, showing McCain ahead in all three.He' s up by 7 percent over Rudy in Iowa, 5 percent over Romney in New Hampshire and 13 percent over Rudy in South Carolina. Per pollster Dick Bennett, McCain has gained strength among independents and continues to do well among Republicans.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/jonathanmartin/0507/The_first_signs_of_the_McCain_resurge.html

Duke lacrosse case was riddled with holes, report says

Check this out.

Click on this title to the post for the LA TIMES story.

Should GE shed NBC?

Some citigroup analysts are arguing the GE should sell NBC. Thoughts?


http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/ge-should-shed-nbc-citi-analyst-says/

Stephanie Daley LA Screenings

All:

The movie I produced that was at Sundance last year comes out today in Los Angeles. If you click on the title of this post, it will link to the time/theaters. It is playing at the Regency Theater on LaBrea and in Pasadena.

You can also go to the movie's website to read the reviews. It got some great reviews from Roger Ebert, NY Times, LA Times, Newsweek, etc

http://www.stephaniedaley-themovie.com/

I may go to a screening tomorrow if anyone wants to join.

Thanks

Sean

http://movies.aol.com/movie/stephanie-daley/24965/main

Transsexual Sport Writer - LA Times

An LA Times sport writer has written an article today on being a transsexual.

Click on the post title or else go to:

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-oldmike26apr26,0,2709943.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Love to hear some thoughts!

Charlie Rose Interview with Bush

You should check this out. Really interesting interview.

You can either double click on the title of this post or else go to:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2488160512679400604&q=tvshow%3ACharlie_Rose

Justice Dept Posits Civilian Lawyers Cause "Intractable Threats in Security" at Guantanamo

This story is beyond distressing - the Bushies are not only diabolical but desperate. My fave campaign bumper sticker to date is "Cheney/Satan 08"

U.S. Asks Court to Limit Lawyers at Guantánamo
By WILLIAM GLABERSON
The Justice Department has asked a federal appeals court to impose tighter restrictions on the hundreds of lawyers who represent detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the request has become a central issue in a new legal battle over the administration’s detention policies.
Saying that visits by civilian lawyers and attorney-client mail have caused “intractable problems and threats to security at Guantánamo,” a Justice Department filing proposes new limits on the lawyers’ contact with their clients and access to evidence in their cases that would replace more expansive rules that have governed them since they began visiting Guantánamo detainees in large numbers in 2004.
The filing says the lawyers have caused unrest among the detainees and have improperly served as a conduit to the news media, assertions that have drawn angry responses from some of the lawyers.

Bush Reiterates Support for Gonzales

Bush stated today that Gonzales' testimony last week actually INCREASED his confidence in him.

It seems to me that he is trying to avoid the momentum this would create for Democrats to go after Rove and Myers, but it pretty surprising considering the Republican response.

Stephanie Daley Opens

The movie I produced at Sundance last year opens this weekend in NY and next Friday in LA.

I am pasting a link here for the metacritic site Rotten Totamato which will link to most of its review. They were extremely positive.


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Take a read

Here's a fascinating take on the pros and cons of technological progress. Amazing story.

India's Skewed Sex RatioPuts GE Sales in Spotlight
By PETER WONACOTTApril 18, 2007; Page A1
INDERGARH, India -- General Electric Co. and other companies have sold so many ultrasound machines in India that tests are now available in small towns like this one. There's no drinking water here, electricity is infrequent and roads turn to mud after a March rain shower. A scan typically costs $8, or a week's wages.
GE has waded into India's market as the country grapples with a difficult social issue: the abortion of female fetuses by families who want boys. Campaigners against the practice and some government officials are linking the country's widely reported skewed sex ratio with the spread of ultrasound machines. That's putting GE, the market leader in India, under the spotlight. It faces legal hurdles, government scrutiny and thorny business problems in one of the world's fastest-growing economies.
Indian activists protest against female feticide in New Delhi last May.
"Ultrasound is the main reason why the sex ratio is coming down," says Kalpana Bhavre, who is in charge of women and child welfare for the Datia district government, which includes Indergarh. Having a daughter is often viewed as incurring a lifetime of debt for parents because of the dowry payment at marriage. Compared to that, the cost of an ultrasound "is nothing," she says.
For more than a decade, the Indian government has tried to stop ultrasound from being used as a tool to determine gender. The devices use sound waves to produce images of fetuses or internal organs for a range of diagnostic purposes. India has passed laws forbidding doctors from disclosing the sex of fetuses, required official registrations of clinics and stiffened punishments for offenders. Nevertheless, some estimate that hundreds of thousands of girl fetuses are aborted each year.
GE -- by far the largest seller of ultrasound machines here through a joint venture with Indian outsourcing giant Wipro Ltd. -- has introduced its own safeguards, even though that means forsaking sales. "We stress emphatically that the machines aren't to be used for sex determination," says V. Raja, chief executive of GE Healthcare South Asia. "This is not the root cause of female feticide in India."
But the efforts have failed to stop the problem, as a growing economy has made the scans affordable to more people. The skewed sex ratio is an example of how India's strong economy has, in unpredictable ways, exacerbated some nagging social problems, such as the traditional preference for boys. Now, some activists are accusing GE of not doing enough to prevent unlawful use of its machines to boost sales.
"There is a demand for a boy that's been completely exploited by multinationals," says Puneet Bedi, a New Delhi obstetrician. He says GE and others market the machines as an essential pregnancy tool although the scans often aren't necessary for mothers in low risk groups.
Earlier this month, prosecutors in the city of Hyderabad brought a criminal case against the GE venture with Wipro as well as Erbis Engineering Co., the medical-equipment distributor in India for Japan's Toshiba Corp. In the suits, the district government alleges that the companies knowingly supplied ultrasound machines to clinics that weren't registered with the government and were illegally performing sex-selection tests. The penalty is up to three months in prison and a fine of 1,000 rupees.
Both companies deny wrongdoing and say they comply with Indian laws. A GE spokesman said yesterday the company hadn't received court notification but its legal team would be looking into the charges.
Vivek Paul, who helped build the early ultrasound business in India, first as a senior executive at GE and then at Wipro, says blame should be pinned on unethical doctors, not the machine's suppliers. "If someone drives a car through a crowded market and kills people, do you blame the car maker?" says Mr. Paul, who was Wipro's chief executive before he left the company in 2005. Mr. Paul is now a managing director at private equity specialists TPG Inc., formerly known as Texas Pacific Group.
Critical Market
India has been a critical market to GE. Its outsourcing operations have helped the Fairfield, Conn., giant cut costs. The country also is a growing market for GE's heavy equipment and other products. The company won't disclose its ultrasound sales. But Wipro GE's overall sales in India, which includes ultrasounds and other diagnostic equipment, reached about $250 million last year, up from $30 million in 1995.
Annual ultrasound sales in India from all vendors reached $77 million in 2006, up about 10% from the year before, according to an estimate from consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, which describes GE as the clear market leader. Other vendors include Siemens AG, Philips Electronics NV and Mindray International Medical Ltd., a new Chinese entrant for India's price-sensitive customers.
India has long struggled with an inordinate number of male births, and female infanticide -- the killing of newborn baby girls -- remains a problem. The abortion of female fetuses is a more recent trend, but unless "urgent action is taken," it's poised to escalate as the use of ultrasound services expands, the United Nations Children's Fund said in a report this year. India's "alarming decline in the child sex ratio" is likely to exacerbate child marriage, trafficking of women for prostitution and other problems, the report said.
The latest official Indian census in 2001 showed a steep decline in the relative number of girls aged 0-6 years from 10 years earlier: 927 girls for every 1,000 boys compared with 945 in 1991. In much of northwest India, the number of girls has fallen below 900 for every 1,000 boys. In the northern state of Punjab, the figure is below 800.
Wider Gap
Only China today has a wider gender gap, with 832 girls born for every 1,000 boys among infants aged 0-4 years, according to Unicef. GE sells about three times as many ultrasound machines in China as in India. In January, the Chinese government pledged to improve the gender balance, including tighter monitoring of ultrasounds. Some experts predict China will be more effective than India in enforcing its rules, given its success at other population-control measures.
Boys in India are viewed as wealth earners during life and lighters of one's funeral pyre at death. India's National Family Health Survey, released in February, showed that 90% of parents with two sons didn't want any more children. Of those with two daughters, 38% wanted to try again. While there are restrictions on abortions in this Hindu-majority nation, the rules offer enough leeway for most women to get around them.
GE took the lead in selling ultrasounds in the early 1990s soon after it began manufacturing the devices in India. It tapped Wipro's extensive distribution and service network to deliver its products to about 80% of its customers. For more remote locations and lower-end machines, it used sales agents.
The company also teamed with banks to help doctors finance the purchase of their machines. GE now sells about 15 different models, ranging from machines costing $100,000 that offer sophisticated color images to basic black-and-white scanners that retail for about $7,500.
To boost sales, GE has targeted small-town doctors. The company has kept prices down by refurbishing old equipment and marketed laptop machines to doctors who traveled frequently, including to rural areas. GE also offered discounts to buyers inclined to boast about their new gadgets, according to a former GE employee.
"Strategically, we focused on those customers who had big mouths," said Manish Vora, who until 2006 sold ultrasounds in the western Indian state of Gujarat for the Wipro-GE joint venture.
Without discussing specific sales tactics, Mr. Raja, of GE Healthcare South Asia, acknowledges the company is "aggressive" in pursuing its goals. But he points out that ultrasound machines have broad benefits and make childbirth safer. As the machines become more available, women can avoid making long trips into cities where health care typically is more expensive, he says.
Indian authorities have tried to regulate sales. In 1994, the government outlawed sex selection and empowered Indian authorities to search clinics and seize anything that aided sex selection. Today any clinic that has an ultrasound machine must register with the local government and provide an affidavit that it won't conduct sex selection. To date, more than 30,000 ultrasound clinics have been registered in India.
GE has taken a number of steps to ensure customers comply with the law. It has educated its sales force about the regulatory regime, demanded its own affidavits from customers that they won't use the machines for sex selection, and followed up with periodic audits, say executives. They note that in 2004, the first full year it began implementing these new measures, GE's sales in India shrank by about 10% from the year before. The sales decline in the low-end segment, for black-and-white ultrasound machines, was especially sharp, executives say. Only last year did GE return to the sales level it had reached before the regulations were implemented, according to Mr. Raja.
Complying with Indian law is often tricky. GE can't tell if doctors sell machines to others who fail to register them. Different states interpret registration rules differently. GE also is under close scrutiny by activists battling the illegal abortion of female fetuses. Sabu George, a 48-year-old activist who holds degrees from Johns Hopkins and Cornell universities, crisscrosses the country to spot illegal clinics.
Criminal Case
The criminal case in Hyderabad against Wipro-GE, a company representative, three doctors and an ultrasound technician followed an inspection in 2005 that found one clinic couldn't produce proper registration and hadn't kept complete records for two years. A team of inspectors seized an ultrasound supplied by Wipro-GE. The inspection team's report said it suspected the clinic was using the machines for illegal sex determination.
The owner, Sarawathi Devi, acknowledged in an interview that her clinic, Rite Diagnostics, wasn't officially registered at the time of the 2005 inspection. She said the ultrasound machine was owned by a "free-lance" radiologist who had obtained proper documentation for the Wipro-GE machine, but wasn't there when the inspectors had arrived. She denied the clinic has conducted sex determination tests. Later in 2005, Dr. Devi's records show she registered the clinic with the government and bought a Wipro-GE machine, a sale the company confirms.
The court case was part of a wider dragnet spearheaded by Hyderabad's top civil servant, District Magistrate Arvind Kumar. During an audit last year, Mr. Kumar demanded paperwork for 389 local scan centers. Only 16% could furnish complete address information for its patients, making it almost impossible to track women to check if they had abortions following their scans. Mr. Kumar ordered the seizure of almost one-third of the ultrasound machines in the district due to registration and paperwork problems. A suit also was lodged against Erbis, the Toshiba dealer.
GE's Mr. Raja says that, in general, if there's any doubt about the customer's intent to comply with India's laws, it doesn't make the sale. "There is no winking or blinking," he says.
A Wipro-GE representative is scheduled to appear May 7 at the Hyderabad court. An Erbis spokesman said he was unaware of the case in Hyderabad. A court date for Erbis hasn't been set.
A visit to the clinic in Indergarh, a town surrounded by fields of tawny wheat, shows the challenges GE faces keeping tabs on its machines. Inside the clinic, a dozen women wrapped in saris awaited tests on GE's Logiq 100 ultrasound machine. The line snaked along wooden benches and down into a darkened basement. On the wall, scrawled in white paint, was the message: "We don't do sex selection."
Manish Gupta, a 34-year-old doctor, said he drives two hours each way every week to Indergarh from much larger Jhansi city, where there are dozens of competing ultrasound clinics. He said even when offered bribes he refuses to disclose the sex of the fetus. "I'm just against that," Dr. Gupta said.
But he is not complying with Indian law. Although the law requires that clinics display their registration certificate in a conspicuous place, Dr. Gupta's was nowhere to be seen. When Dr. George, the social activist, asked for the registration, he was shown a different document, an application. But the application was for a different clinic: the Sakshi X-ray center. Dr. Gupta said the proper document wasn't with him, adding: "I must have forgotten it at home."
Asked by The Wall Street Journal about the clinic, the local chief magistrate of Datia district called for Dr. Gupta's dossier later in the day. When a local official arrived, "Sakshi X-Ray center" had been crossed out on the application. In blue pen was written the correct name, "Sheetal Nagar," the part of Indergarh where the clinic is located.
It's not clear how Dr. Gupta procured the GE machine. Dr. Gupta said he bought it from a GE company representative, but he declined to show documents of ownership. GE says it doesn't comment on individual customers.
Like the rest of India, the Datia district government has taken a number of steps to try to boost the number of girls in the district. For girls of poor families, the local government provides a place to live, free school uniforms and books. When they enter ninth grade, the government buys bicycles for them. Yet the low ratio of girls born hasn't budged much over the past decade, according to Ms. Bhavre, the district government official.
Ultimately, says Mr. Raja, head of GE Healthcare in South Asia, it's the job of the government, not companies, to change the prevailing preference for boys. "What's really needed is a change in mindsets. A lot of education has to happen and the government has to do it," he says.
India's Ministry of Health, which is now pursuing 422 different cases against doctors accused of using ultrasounds for sex selection, agrees. "Mere legislation is not enough to deal with this problem," the ministry said in a statement. "The situation could change only when the daughters are not treated as a burden and the sons as assets."
-- Binny Sabharwal contributed to this article.

John Mack = Duke Sports Booster

Here's interesting news.

Vindicated Duke grad David Evans just landed a plum, six figure job as analyst at Morgan Stanley. Who's the head of Morgan Stanley? Duke grad and Iron Duke (e.g. sports booster) John Mack. Golly, that's peculiar.

Thoughts?

"The rule of law is what I fight for. Men die for this. Don't stop."

This is a compelling, heartfelt piece by Lt. Commander Charles Swift, defense counsel in the Office of the Chief Defense Counsel in the Department of Defense (DoD) Office of Military Commissions. He is currently detailed to represent Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who is facing trial by Military Commission in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. His piece begins:

It's time for some perspective, please. It's time to close Guantanamo Bay. Yes , I am the military officer who sued my commander in chief and the secretary of defense on behalf of a Guananamo Bay detainee named Salim Hamdan.

What I sought was simply that the president, just like the soldiers, sailors, and marines under his command, be required to comply with the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions. Because I believe that resorting to secret prisons, coercive interrogations, and the abandonment of the rule of law is not the way to keep our country safe from a handful of fanatics. Last summer, with the help of my civilian co-counsel, Professor Neal Katyal, and the law firm of Perkins Coie, I won the case in the Supreme Court of the United States. The problem is that the victory, as big as it was, was disdained by the administration, which has attempted to defy the Supreme Court and the rule of law by building Guantanamo up in the wake of the decision, instead of down. That needs to change.

Why did I sue my chain of command?
Before I go any further, let me introduce myself. I am from a small town in western North Carolina called Franklin. I have been in the Navy since I entered the United States Naval Academy in the summer of 1980. Before going to law school, I spent seven years serving as a surface-warfare officer in the greatest navy the world has ever known. After law school, I returned to active duty in the Navy as a member of the Judge Advocate General's Corps. That means that I am both a uniformed officer in the United States Navy and a licensed and practicing attorney. This May I will retire from active service. Serving in the United States armed forces as both a combat officer and a lawyer is the greatest privilege I will ever have, because of both who we are and what we defend. And part of who we are and what we defend are the Geneva Conventions.

I say that not just because I am Hamdan's lawyer; I say that because it is what I was taught from plebe summer on. General John Vessey, who retired after serving as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff under President Reagan, summed up those teachings better than I ever could in a recent letter to Senator John McCain. In the letter, he quoted General George Marshall:

"The United States abides by the laws of war. Its Armed Forces, in dealing with all other peoples, are expected to comply with the laws of war, in the spirit and the letter. In waging war, we do not terrorize helpless non-combatants, if it is within our power to avoid so doing. Wanton killing, torture, cruelty, or the working of unusual hardship on enemy prisoners or populations is not justified under any circumstance. Likewise respect for the reign of law, as that term is understood in the United States, is expected to follow the flag wherever it goes...."
It does not matter that Al Qaeda does all of the terrible things that General Marshall enumerated and more. It is not about them. It is about us.
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Supreme Court Backs Ban on Abortion

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long- awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.

The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

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Obama Links Virginia Tech to Imus' "Verbal Violence"

Below is a link to the 23-minute .mp3 file of Obama on the state of violence in the U.S. You will hear him connect the violence at Virginia Tech to the "verbal violence" of Don Imus.

You should really listen to him.

http://www.wispolitics.com/1006/20070416obama.mp3