The Democratic Convention

The Democrats, in an effort both to unify and to reach the working class, elaborated a "message" that convention speakers were asked to reiterate.  Speakers stayed so close to message that I found the Convention quite boring.  If I heard one more comment about a unemployed factory worker from Scranton or a struggling single mother from Cleveland, I was going to throw a sneaker at my tv screen.  Mainly, I just pressed "mute" on my clicker.

Another bad mistake the Democrats made was to ignore Hispanic voters.  With the exception of Bill Richardson, I never heard any Spanish in all the hours I watched the proceedings.  I never even heard Spanish accents.  Where was Sal Si Puede? Hispanics are a large voting bloc that Democrats need to win big.  Inadequate attention to Hispanics hurt Kerry in 2004.  Ignoring them could hurt Obama as well, unless Democrats do something dramatic to appeal to that democraphic.

Convention Highlights

The Obama Family was delightful.  I kept pinching myself, thinking this amazing Afro-American family could well be in the White House.  In honor of our multi-racialism, maybe we should paint the White House beige.

Hillary did a fine and gracious job in her speech and even better when she moved to nominate Barack by acclamation. (I missed Bill's speech, not intentionally but probably subconsciously since I've never been a Clinton fan.)  Happily, the Clintons played their parts, even if their prime motivation was 2012.

Using the Stadium on the last night of the convention was a brilliant move.  I thoroughly enjoyed seeing Democrats dance to Stevie Wonder and watching firecrackers take the place of balloons, although the Democrats should have hired the Chinese for an even better extravaganza.

The Choice of Palin

My husband called out to me, "McCain has chosen a woman." I yelled out "Who?" He responded, "Sarah Palin." I again yelled out "Who?"  Okay, now we know who she is and she's seems impressive for an Alaska politician, but, as a friend of mine put it, the elephant in the room wonders if she could be President.  Let's acknowledge that elephant, and I don't mean the Republican symbol.

The Daily Show did a funny, although fairly tasteless, skit on Palin being chosen for her gender. But the point is right on.  If she were everything she is but male, she would never have made McCain's short or long list. It's a strange time when being female makes you Number One -- or Two.

Of course, I have many reasons to oppose Palin -- she is anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-gay marriage, and perhaps even anti-birth control. I mean, five kids is ridiculous. Her fiscal conservatism and readiness to sacrifice Alaskan wildlife for oil rigs are also strong negatives. What is appealing is her partisan unconventionality, e.g., naming Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton in her first national speech in which she thanked McCain for the nomination.  

The big problem is not Palin, but McCain. If he chose Palin because she is young to his "old," a social conservative to his "maverick" image, that's understandable. If he chose her to pick up women supporters of Hillary, that's wacky reasoning. Hillary women are not looking for a Hockey Mom who belongs to Feminists for Life (an anti-choice group), but for someone who is a feminist for life.

The Democrats should check out Palin's passport -- if she has one.  She may have been to Canada, but I doubt she's seen, or even knows, anything of the rest of the world.  Even if she's tutored three hours every day from now until the election, she's not likely to pass International Relations 101.  As Jon Stewart said, visiting the Bering Straits doesn't make you an expert on Putin.

Bring Back Experience

According to the pundits, this year, experience is no longer an asset that wins campaigns. Hillary didn't make it work against Barack, and McCain also seems to have given up on using the "experience factor" in his own campaign. Reportedly, he wants to project an image not as an experienced Republican (Bush) clone, but as someone new, risk-taking, on the vanguard.

Dismissing experience is scary. Whenever someone argued to me that Barack lacked experience, I responded that his experience was different and extremely important -- being raised in mulitcultural and mulitnational worlds, working as a Chicago community organizer, achieving one of the most impressive legal honors in the US, knowing state legislative politics and Washington politics, being well-versed in the ways and desires of African-Americans, youth, and religious believers.  Unfortunately, I find both McCain and Palin short on experience despite McCain's many years in the Senate and Palin's term as Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.  

Experience should not be based only on years in office or knowledge of the issues, although these help.  Experience also needs to based on breadth and depth of national and international exposure. Wouldn't it be amazing to choose our leaders on these criteria?

This column is written by a Russian friend about Russia and Georgia, but it's even more about the current political system in Russia.  While there are many different views about the situation on the border of Georgia – and about who provoked whom –  it is clear the Russian response to tensions in South Ossetia and Abkhazia  was overkill.  Please read what a Russian has to say about the conflict and Russia's current regime.

Spasibo, thank you.

Dear Ellen,
Maybe  you remember our conversation in 2007 about the possibility of a third term for Vladimir Putin in the elections in 2008.  I remarked that  "they (the powers that be) will invent something to ensure Putin's presence in power." Unfortunately, I turned out to be right. Now some people say we have two Presidents in Russia or we have a Prime-President.

My comment that I want to share with you now is about the so-called peace-keeping mission of Russia in South Ossetia. It  is not based on information received from official Russian TV channels or the Western  news agencies. When the war started, I was in our summer cabin (80 km from Moscow) without access to the TV or Internet.  I only listened to my favourite Echo of Moscow radio station and Svoboda. Echo of Moscow is the only democratic radio in Russia (unfortunately it has only 1 million listeners, if I am not mistaken).

A context of some events that preceded the war with Georgia:

Since Putin's era started, I haven't expected anything good. Putin's team of "chekists" (KGB/FSB officers) was gaining momentum during his Presidency. Now they (including representatives of militia and army) compose about 42 percent of the political elite, according to a sociologist, Olga Krishtanovskaya.

Recently some visible conflicts between competitive  groups of the "chekists" happened. By the way, it's a new phenomenon  here -- public arguments among the representatives of the chekists. One of the chekists  published an article about the "chekists' hook" (chekistskii  kryuk) on  which the country is being hung and is being saved due to chekists' corporations. In his opinion it's good for Russia. There are two kinds of chekists: good guys that are "warriors" and bad guys that are "merchants".

It's a tragedy for Russia that Putin and his team have hung Russia on the chekists' hook. During the last several years, nationalism is being spread among the ordinary citizens, especially the youth, and  becomes more aggressive. More and more non-Russians were murdered in Russian cities in this period.

The war against Georgia is an example of  a "little victorious  war" (malen'kaya pobedonosnaya voina) needed to consolidate power in the hands of the present elite. The "little triumphant war" in Chechnya was used to mobilize Russian society and raise Putin's rating, as the public polls showed in 1999.  And now I am sure the war will contribute to raising President  Medvedev's rating.

 
Anti-USA aspirations have continually gained momentum in the country, but during the Georgia-Russia conflict, the US became for Russia as infuriating as  red flag for the bull. Many Russians used to accuse the US of double standards, but this war has showed that not only the Kremlin but also the majority of Russian citizens demonstrated double standards.

On the 14th of August this year Sergei Kovalev, a famous human rightist repeated Andrei Sakharov's words: There are big empires, but there are  small empires too.  Andrei Sakharov meant Georgia and its conflicts with Abkhazia and Southern Ossetia in the beginning of the 1990s. Georgia in its attacks against SO used methods that were practiced by Russia in two wars in Chechnya, using terrible weapons like Grad  rockets against peaceful people. But even if you concede that Georgia attacked  SO "to restore the constitutional order" (the Kremlin used the same expression to justify the wars in Chechnya) and that Russian peace-keeping forces had to respond (as the official stand says),

There are still questions:

1) Why did Russian peace-keeping forces react after a delay of years?
2) Why did the Kremlin not address international organizations like the UN?
3) Why did the Kremlin condemn the formation of Kosovo, yet support the peoples of  SO and Abkhazia in their wish to become independent states?
4) Why did Russia provoke Georgia, providing the citizens of  SO and Abkhazia with passports of the Russian Federation long before the present conflict?

As one of the listeners of "Ekho of Moscow" said, "Imagine that the USA gave passports to the  people of, say, the Perm region (the Ural mountains). Many people would get them willingly, but that doesn't mean that the USA can come to Russia to defend its 'citizens.'"

There is the letter of the law and the spirit. If one admits that the letter of the law  was observed by Russia (though I think not) and the people of  SO needed  immediate help from the Russian army, then all the same, it's hard to see Russian tanks on the territory of a foreign state, Georgia.

It reminds me of Czechoslovakia.

My conclusions:

1) The presidential term  (two consecutive four years at a maximum) shouldn’t be "prolonged" as happened in Russia when the former President became the Prime Minister. The government remains too influential, given there is no strong civil society, no political (parliamentary and  party) institutions to oppose his politics.
2) The  “chekists' hook" is too dangerous for Russia. The mentality of the chekists is too far from "new thinking" and general human values.
3)  Not only the Kremlin, but also the ordinary citizens support imperial chauvinistic thinking: about 75 percent of respondents want the Russian army to stay  in SO
4) Gas and fuel became the weapon for Russia to put pressure on Europe. Some authors think that gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea  was the aim for bombing to defend the interests of the Russian gas state corporations.
5) Russia is in isolation in international politics after the invasion of Georgia. That's bad. As political scientist Oreshkin says, in practically all former Soviet  republics, there are Russian citizens (as in SO and Abkhazia) and nobody  in the former Soviet republics wants the Russian army to intervene and to form independent states within the borders of the former republics.
6) To understand the Kremlin's policy and the situation in Russia read (in English) "Russian Diary" by Anna Politkovskaya, who was killed almost two years ago.
7) I don't want the worsening of relations between Russia and the West, Russia and the USA.

In 1989 I won a contest organized by one of the Soviet journals and became a participant  of the project  "Soviets Meet Middle America". The project was initiated by the Fund for Social Initiatives in San Francisco. I was so impressed by what I have seen in the USA. The Iron Curtain was raised for me personally (for the first time in my life) and I don't want to pull it down again. Our cultures are so different in many ways. How to understand each other?  About 20 years passed since perestroika has been started. Why is there mistrust and hatred yet? Who is responsible for that? What can we do? We must find a common language to talk to each other.


    

I remember an old anecdote about sex prediction in pregnancy. A doctor -- who is always 100 percent correct -- predicts a boy, then writes down "girl" on a piece of paper he puts in his desk. If a boy is born, he's correct. If a girl is born, he pulls out the paper and convinces the mother he knew all along it was a girl.

Today, the process of sex prediction works almost as well as the doctor's trick due to a high tech and very reliable method of sex (or gender) selection. As many of us learned in Biology 101, gender is determined by male sperm which carry either an X or Y chromosome. The female egg always has an X chromosome. So, for a boy (XY chromosome), the egg must be fertilized by a sperm carrying a Y chromosome; and for a girl, by a sperm carrying an X chromosome.

How do you get the right sperm to fertilize the egg? Simple.You go to a fertility treatment center, such as The Fertility Institutes, to have the male's sperm sorted by chromosome.  This is done in a procedure called PGD (Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis) which may also be used to determine other genetic characteristics, some of which might signal serious genetic disease. Next, in most cases, you fertilize the egg through IVF (in vitro fertilization) with X or Y chromosome sperm and then implant an egg with the "right" sperm into the uterus.  At The Fertility Institutes, the cost for PGD is a mere $18,490 which includes an IVF fee.  The Institutes claim a 99.99 percent success rate.

PGD/IVF Is Not All That Easy

The Web site for The Fertility Institutes presents three case studies for PGD which provide some idea of how complex the procedure is.  You can't isolate a single sperm; you need to do an implantation with millions of sperm.  But how many millions?

The first case study involved an American couple that had three girls and wanted a boy.  Of the male's 42 million sperm per ejaculation, only 28 percent carried the male chromosome. The institute decided that 12 million sperm with Y chromosomes was not enough "for a reasonable chance with simple sperm selection and insemination."  So the couple had to have an IVF which ultimately delivered to them a boy baby.

In the second case study, a British couple that had three boys discovered the male had 38 percent or 34 million sperm with X chromosomes, enough for a normal insemination.  The result was 3 healthy female embryos and 7 healthy male embryos as determined by the Institute. Two female embryos were implanted which resulted in a successful pregnancy for the birth of a girl. I had to ask myself what happened to the other healthy embryos. Shouldn't the right-to-life movement be on a crusade against the disposal of "wrong" sex embryos?

In the last case, a Canadian couple with three girls had decided, after the last birth, on tubal ligation.  Then they changed their minds and decided they had to have a boy. They got one $19,000 later.

Why Do I Find Sex Selection So Offensive?

First, it's obvious that the overwhelming majority of people, especially those from traditional cultures, will select to have boys rather than girls.  The process of sex selection in less technologically advanced cultures is usually the abortion of a female fetus as determined by ultrasound.  Sex selection has produced extraordinary and dangerous imbalances in gender ratios in India, China and many other countries where there are far more males than females. The sex selection process is so offensive to Indian advocates (where sex selection is against the law but not enforced) that they have sued Google and Yahoo for carrying sex selection advertising on their Web sites.

Although it would be hard to obtain the data, I suspect that even in the Western world most PGD is done to identify male sperm.

Second, PGD contributes to overpopulation.  In each of the case studies above, PGD was performed after three normal births.  Aren't three children enough even if they are all the same sex?

Finally, what about adoption? There are millions of children of both sexes waiting for families. For roughly the same amount of money, a couple could adopt a child of the sex they were hungering for and lessen the world's problems instead of adding to the population.

PGD/IVF seems to me to be a technological innovation that is helping the world go backwards.


For more information on high tech sex selection, go to www.fertility-docs.com

NB  I have written two reproductiion pieces this month because the subjects seemed more interesting than the political news, but I will get back to politics at the start of the Democratic Convention!