Wall Street Journal is an excellent (and reliable) source of "news", as even its ideological enemies such as Noam Chomsky have pointed out, mainly because business requires good information to make/ base its decisions on. Its "opinion" boviating is a different matter entirely except, perhaps, as a fertile hunting ground for writers at Comedy Central or cartoonists.

But first some background: as a "brown" man (or a "maccaca", in the terminology of a racist Senator, who thankfully will no longer be the front runner for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination) living in the US, the recent case of Maher Arar scares the bejesus out of me. Yes, the United States can very well deport folks like me at its own pleasure but when the White House's Tonto, i.e., US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defends US conduct in handling the Maher Arar case, by saying that while the US did in fact deport the Canadian citizen, the US was "not responsible for his removal to Syria", it gets really surreal. O Wise Tonto, how did that towel head (telecommunications engineer) Arar get to Syria then? By camel was it? Or does FBI/CIA now have a Star Trek transporter at hand at New York's JFK Airport?

Arar has managed to extricate and completely clear his name from the Kafka-esque turn his life took this past week after a Canadian Commission of Inquiry declared that what happened to him was totally fcuked-up. Today, even the Canadian (WSJ supported, Conservative) Prime Minister Stephen Harper (who previously had asked the (then) Liberal government why they were "defending a suspected terrorist") has come around to the opinion that Arar's case was travesty of Canadian policing and "Western" values. But do you think this satisfies the boneheads who man the WSJ "Opinion" desk? No! This is what those buffaloes regurgitated today:

"Take the case of Maher Arar, an apparently innocent Canadian citizen who was arrested at JFK airport in September 2002 and turned over to Syria -- a process known as "rendition" -- where he actually appears to have been tortured. According to some of our media colleagues, this shows that CIA officials can't be trusted with the authority they're seeking under the proposed new Detainee Act to use a number of "stress techniques" against high level al Qaeda detainees.

But Mr. Arar's case proves exactly the opposite. For starters, it was the Canadian government that supplied what appears to have been bad information about Mr. Arar's alleged al Qaeda ties.

These opinion buffaloes, who apparently are also human beings, have actually appeared to have lost all sense of rationality. Ye Brother Kafka, looke down upon these wretches and smite them so that the next time they do know what they are apparently blabbering about. But this is minor when you get to the breathtaking leap of logic next:

More to the point, the temptation to get vital information by "rendering" such suspects for interrogation by governments that have little respect for human rights will only increase if the CIA's own al Qaeda interrogation program is shut down. This may make some in Congress feel better about themselves, but it won't do much for the "rights" of those interrogated.

The White House has been negotiating over the issue with Senator John McCain so U.S. interrogators aren't left in legal limbo because Congress refuses to define our obligations under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. It's precisely such legal clarity that will limit potential abuses, rather than leaving Article 3 open to interpretation by individuals -- or by the likes of Syria, since as it stands every country in the world interprets Article 3 in its own way now."

Did you get it? No? Let me simplify this line of buffalo thinking for you:

1. Better make the CIA's interrogation program legal because if you don't, CIA will have to "render" apparently innocent folks like Maher Arar "for interrogation by governments that have little respect for human rights."

2. Since Syria (and other countries like it) interprets Article 3 in its own way now, better get in the boat with them and provide "legal clarity" to the "potential abuses" that are kosher (freezing in the nude okay, electric prods to the balls not so okay).

"Crucial to any compromise is that the new rules not only protect CIA interrogators under relevant U.S. law (the 1996 War Crimes Act), but also assert our understanding of our obligations under Geneva. This is not about "rewriting" Geneva, as Mr. McCain and others have previously suggested; it is about the necessity of fleshing out what vague Article 3 prohibitions against "humiliating" treatment and the like actually mean.

President Bush has been very strong on this issue so far. We trust he won't endorse anything now that falls short of the comprehensive legal clarity he's been right to demand."

Hey you, apparently Christian buffaloes, do you have a Bible at hand? Look up Matthew 7:1 or Luke 6:31 sometime will ya if you really want to "clarify" what "humiliating" treatment is, and whisper the same in both the Lone Rider's and Tonto's ears:

All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye so to them; for this is the law and the prophets.

And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.

Today's NYT does a story on the rise of Type 2 diabetes in India. As my friend C, who sent me the article, quipped, "Reading it has scared the bejeezus (pardon the interjection) out of me!" as well. These are the sections that interested me most, for their implications/ associations:

" “Diabetes unfortunately is the price you pay for progress,” said Dr. A. Ramachandran, the managing director of the M.V. Hospital for Diabetes, in Chennai (formerly Madras).

For decades, Type 2 diabetes has been the “rich man’s burden,” a problem for industrialized countries to solve.

But as the sugar disease, as it is often called, has penetrated the United States and other developed nations, it has also trespassed deep into the far more populous developing world.

In Italy or Germany or Japan, diabetes is on the rise. In Bahrain and Cambodia and Mexico — where industrialization and Western food habits have taken hold— it is rising even faster. For the world has now reached the point, according to the United Nations, where more people are overweight than undernourished.

Diabetes does not convey the ghastly despair of AIDS or other killers. But more people worldwide now die from chronic diseases like diabetes than from communicable diseases. And the World Health Organization expects that of the more than 350 million diabetics projected in 2025, three-fourths will inhabit the third world. ...

Throughout the world, Type 2 diabetes, once predominantly a disease of the old, has been striking younger people. But because Indians have such a pronounced genetic vulnerability to the disease, they tend to contract it 10 years earlier than people in developed countries. It is because India is so youthful — half the population is under 25 — that the future of diabetes here is so chilling."

Implications/Associations :

1. We live in a truly Lewis Carroll "Upside Down" world - we are either dying of having too little, or even worse, of having too much.

2. If the "third" world falls into the "chronic" diseases trap, things in the domain of nascent public health can really get grim. Why? Simply, because chronic diseases are far more lucrative to discover cures for - as the Big Pharma here has figured out long ago[1] , and this may funnel health spending into this sector instead of infectious diseases, which are, I think, still the main killers in that part of the world.

...

"Too much food has pernicious implications for a people with a genetic susceptibility to diabetes, possibly the byproduct of ancestral genes developed to hoard fat during cycles of feast and famine. This vulnerability was first spotted decades ago when immigrant Indians settled in Western countries and in their retrofitted lifestyles got diabetes at levels dwarfing those in India. Now Westernization has come to India and is bringing the disease home.

Though 70 percent of the population remains rural, Indians are steadily forsaking paddy fields for a city lifestyle that entails less movement, more fattening foods and higher stress: a toxic brew for diabetes. In Chennai, about 16 percent of adults are thought to have the disease, one of India’s highest concentrations, more than the soaring levels in New York, and triple the rate two decades ago. Three local hospitals, quaintly known as the sugar hospitals, are devoted to the illness.

The traditional Indian diet can itself be generous with calories. But urban residents switch from ragi and fresh vegetables to fried fast food and processed goods. The pungent aromas of quick-food emporiums waft everywhere here: Sowbakiya Fast Food, Nic-Nac Fast Food, Pizza Hut. Coke and Pepsi are pervasive, but rarely their diet versions."

Implications/Associations :

1. Two of my uncles and my father have some variant of diabetes - not Type 2, I think. And going back in time, I have known people, including a grandfather, who have had amputations because of it. Further, desi moms, including mine, want their kids to be chubby, and think exercising/ working out (I know, a rich sedentary man's activity) is actually harmful or unnecessary.

2. Is it that desis are "genetically" vulnerable to diabetes because the genes that they possess haven't "evolved" to face an "environmental situation" where they frickin' eat like pigs and do nothing? I am not saying agrarian desis were any healthier for the physical work they did - they were not.[2] What I am saying is not only should you get rich, you should get "smarter" health wise.

3. In all the recent desi exultation at Ms. Nooyi's taking the helm at Pepsi Co, what is forgotten is that soft drink firms view India & China as their biggest potential growth markets given the market saturation for their mainline carbonated products out here in the West. Now I drink and enjoy an occasional Coke/Sprite but when companies speak of increasing their share (in percentage points) of annual per capita fluid intake (I read this in the context of China, where Coco-Cola was finding it hard going to replace green tea fluid intake with Coke intake, in percentage points), it sounds positively sinister.

...

"In the United States, an inverse correlation persists between income and diabetes. Since fattening food is cheap, the poor become heavier than the rich, and they exercise less and receive inferior health care. In India, the disease tends to directly track income.

“Jokingly in talks, I say you haven’t made it in society until you get a touch of diabetes,” Dr. Mohan said. He points out that people who once balanced water jugs and construction material on their heads now carry nothing heavier than a cellphone. At a four-star restaurant, it is not unusual to see a patron yank out his kit and give himself an insulin injection."

Implications/Associations:

Even though fast food has penetrated India, both a taste gap and natural meat aversion/ veggie preference may yet save the rich desis from dying like the Happy Meals eating poor Amrikans here. But I may be wrong, here is a shout out: stick to the idli-dosa combo, people, and stay the hell away from French fries & pizza.

...

"People believe in bitter gourd juice and fenugreek, an Indian spice, which can temper sugar levels, but are not cures. Some years ago, the wood water cure gained considerable traction. Drink water stored overnight in a tumbler made of Pterocarpus marsupium heartwood, the promotion went, and it would wash away the diabetes.

All this exasperates Dr. Murugesan. He is among those trying to stanch the spread of the disease. Diabetes education is hard enough, without tomfoolery and witchcraft to discredit."

Implications/Associations:

Do I sniff a whiff of the arrogance of allopathic medical tradition- the heroic triumph of chemicals over any damn disease - here? With much respect to the tradition that stopped polio and other nasty diseases (at least in most parts of the world), I sometimes think (some/ many?) doctors got their heads screwed backwards. Don't simply dismiss "bitter gourd juice and fenugreek" (I hate bitter gourd) out of hand - instead investigate if increasing these elements in the desi diet reduces incidence of diabetes in the first place. Prevention is always better than cure. O wait! In that case, who and what will doctors treat![3]

[1] Pfizer and Sanofi-Aventis will be giddy with joy; this is a huge market for their recently FDA approved inhaled diabetes treatment, Exubera.