Thoughts from the Bottom of a Free World

The term ‘free world’ here should not be confused with the Cold War-era term that applies to non-Communist nations. This free world does not have any leader unlike the President of the United States being dubbed as the ‘leader of the free world,’ because of USA’s role in the Cold War. Although Obama and McCain can lambaste each other (and others can lambaste one another in their behalf) or someone wanting to see Sarah Palin naked may be also be construed as freedom, there is much more to the concept of free world than the Cold War’s definition of it.

Freedom is what I’ve known all my life. I was too young to fully comprehend the 21-year US-backed Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. I was honed on liberal education from the state university. I backed out of a boring religion. I divested myself of unnecessary material possessions. I quit the corporate rat race at the height of a corporate career and went into development work. I married late and have chosen to be childless, thereby espousing the zero-population growth theory. Coming from a family full of many sisters, my husband grew up respecting women, thereby not making me boxed into a gender gulag. I don’t belong to the top 1% of my country’s population, but I’ve been educated enough to heckle at that tip of the pyramid. I didn’t (and progressively, still don’t) have shackles in my life.

But I’ve been acutely aware of what’s been happening outside an unshackled world. Thus, my ruminations can only come from the bottom of a free world. The bottom can very well be the exposed underbelly of freedom. Otherwise, like the bottom of a pan, it is where the soot is found or that which meets the scorching fire.

Freedom is that privilege when one can confront the truth. (Delusional, hallucinatory, and self-denial situations are also part of the truth.) By truth, I mean objective reality, not the philosophical or spiritual truth that spiritual hacks have been bandying around.

All democratic debates and debacles are just a fudging of the following freedoms:

Freedom to choose. The free world is bursting full of choices, as well as the capacity to consider, evaluate, and take options. The downside of this is when the sheer volume of choices makes one opt for the wrong pick. It is also here where enterprising conmen take advantage of the year-round grand sale and offer fakes and lemons. The free world teems with a myriad of ideas, concepts, principles, learning, values, etc. The free man may stumble upon the wrong thoughts out there, and take them for real.

Freedom to believe. The free world offers many declarations of faith and belief for the potential convert to be converted into. Not lacking in choices, the gullible may end up believing the truly unbelievable. There is really no difference between one who believes that a supermarket promo is truly to his advantage and someone who thinks that a Born Again Christian sect will save his soul. I can have the freedom to discuss this here and maybe question the validity of God, but an unfree counterpart will consider it blasphemous. The trick is in the proselytizing.

Freedom to debunk. The free world endows the opportunity to repel what seems incongruous, as well as that which is not verifiable on the ground. The scientific and logical mind characterized by inquisitiveness exists only in a free world. The opposite universe will forever remain mired in accepting scriptures and traditional mores as the be all and end all of existence. These are the ones that live in fear of going against the tide and swimming up current. The ones who are not free to debunk are those who are forever oppressed by their objective reality. Followers of fundamentalist religions belong to this sorry state.

Freedom to discuss. The free world is noisy and clamorous. It believes that many lies and half-truths remain such for the longest time when they are hidden in silence. A noisy world exposes the sham and dissects it like a surgeon wielding a scalpel. The downside of this is when it truly gets too noisy for comfort.

Organized religion does not play much in a free world. Religion essentially implies the perpetuation of the status quo of dogma. The free world will think and rethink religious dogma, as well as invoke the freedom to do so just for the heck of it.

The free world thinks that truth is the kindest thing we can give people in the end.

I commiserate with those who are not free and those who are forced against their will. Is your lack of freedom brought upon you, thereby making you unable to unshackle yourself from your objective reality? It is upon your hands to remain chained to your imprisonment.

Or is your unfree condition all in your mind – your mind having been conditioned to not rock the boat?

Or is it possible that you do not even know you’re not free? This makes you cloistered from the outside world. This is also the condition of the insane people.

Or maybe, just maybe, you choose not to free yourself. You have opted to remain chained as you are – to dogma, ignorance, subservience, and the status quo you’re in. If this is the case, then don’t fool yourself. Your capacity to have made you choose this automatically gave you the freedom to choose. You are free, and you don’t even know it!

The free world, therefore, is not a geographical boundary.

No one can oppress you without your consent. But, then again, even that statement comes from the free world.

Let’s break the chain. Let’s break the fence.

Cheers to our freedoms!

Dressed To Kill

The phenomenon of female suicide bombers is a gender thing, and the burqa plays an important role in it. The Islamic traditional female garb that cloaks the entire body is given a new purpose with the rise of female suicide bombers. The burqa makes women avoid thorough searches at checkpoints because men are not allowed to search women, and there is a dearth of female guards. Islamic rules against men touching women have made it easy for female suicide bombers to be undetected.

In June this year, a female suicide bomber killed 15 people and injured more than 40 near a government center in Baqouba, Iraq. 15 other women had carried out suicide bombings in the area alone. The women’s black cloaks hid everything, including the bombs.

Although the gender issue aspect does not stop with the purpose of the burqa, the use of females to explode themselves for the sake of “war,” and as expendable entities, has proven to be beneficial to the militant organizations that had hired them.

In February this year, remote-controlled explosives strapped to two mentally disabled females with Down Syndrome were detonated at a busy pet bazaar in the busy central al-Ghazl market in Baghdad. At least 73 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded. It was one of the deadliest attacks since the US had sent an installment of 30,000 extra troops. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice issued a statement saying that the use of mentally retarded women as suicide bombers proves al-Qaeda is “the most brutal and bankrupt of movements.” The remote-controlled bombs were attached to vests that the two women wore under their traditional black Islamic robe. Local police said that one of the women sold cream in the mornings at the market and was known to locals as “the crazy lady.”

The women were clearly not willing attackers.

The Muslim extremist group Hamas thinks that “shamed” women are good recruits as suicide bombers. In early 2004, a young mother of two blew herself up at an Israeli checkpoint. She was the first female suicide bomber from Hamas. The Jerusalem Post revealed that she was forced into the suicide attack as “punishment for cheating on her husband.” Male relatives wanted her dead. Her husband was an activist in the Hamas organization. She was pressured to commit suicide to preserve “family honor.”

Hamas leaders used to reject requests of women to take part in suicide attacks. The organization has since revised its position. Some Hamas leaders now permit the use of women in terror strikes, especially women who have transgressed moral norms. The woman’s “sacrifice” atones for the “stain” she has caused to her family for violating moral codes.

November 13, 2005. Iraqi Sajida Mubarek Atrous al-Rishawi opening her jacket and showing an explosive belt as she confesses on Jordanian state-run television to her failed bid to set off an explosives belt inside one of the three Amman hotels targeted by al-Qaeda. Around this time, three female suicide bombers detonated themselves in a spate of weeks, killing and injuring dozens as U.S.-led coalition forces catch insurgents suspected of training women to become human bombs.

Diaa Rashwan who follows Islamic militancy for Egypt’s Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies said, “Women appear to be used as human bombs as coalition forces push extremists out from former strongholds, shrinking their pool of potential recruits, and forcing them to devise alternative methods to penetrate stiffened security measures.”

December 4, 2007. A female suicide bomber dead at the site of her attack in Peshawar. The woman was clad in a burqa when she blew herself up at an army checkpoint, in a high-security zone of an intelligence services building. The attack happened in the neighborhood of senior retired and serving army officers. The police said this was the country’s first attack that involved a woman since 9/11. Image Source

March 10, 2008. A female suicide bomber in Baqouba, Iraq killed the head of a local group of Sunni fighters Sheik Thaeir Ghadhban al-Karkhi. The woman wore an explosives belt when she entered al-Karkhi’s home. The explosion that killed al-Karkhi also killed his 5-year-old niece and a security guard. al-Karkhi’s 24-year old nephew died later in a hospital. Image Source

November 28, 2007. A Tamil Tiger disabled female suicide bomber blew herself up outside the heavily guarded offices of Welfare and Social Development Minister Douglas Devananda, after she was stopped from entering the office. The explosives were hidden in the woman’s bra. At least 3 security officers were wounded. The LTTE, though, claims to be a secular nationalist group with no ties with the al-Qaeda, nor interested in establishing an Islamic regime. This insurgent militant group has been recruiting female cadres for the past 24 years. Image Source

February 03, 2008. A female LTTE suicide bomber exploded herself inside the Fort railway station in Colombo. 12 people were killed and over 100 others were wounded. Image Source

February 1, 2008. A female suicide bomber blew herself up inside the busy al-Ghazl market in central Baghdad. As if used to such occurrences, Iraqis take pictures on their cell phones of the dismembered remains. Image Source

Female suicide bombers have been more newsworthy than their male counterpart. The media and the world seem to be fascinated by this phenomenon. Female suicide bombers exist precisely because of some concepts attached to gender, making gender favorable for the sake of terror attacks.

The Methamphetamine Pandemic

Affecting the central nervous system, methamphetamines are addictive stimulants that trigger the brain to release high levels of dopamine. For the user, this means a sense of euphoria. Methamphetamines increase activity levels and alter a user’s appetite. While other stimulants may create a high that lasts 20-30 minutes, a methamphetamine user’s high may last 6-8 hours.

A user’s euphoria is followed by depression and exhaustion that drive the need for the next fix. Some of the adverse effects of methamphetamine abuse are premature aging, deterioration of the user’s physical appearance, deficits in learning and memory, and brain damage.

Methamphetamine is commonly known as “speed,” “meth,” and “chalk.” In its smoked form, it is often referred to as “ice,” “crystal,” “crank,” and “glass.” It is a white, odorless, bitter-tasting crystalline powder that easily dissolves in water or alcohol. The drug was developed from its parent drug, amphetamine, and was originally used in nasal decongestants and bronchial inhalers.

In the 1980s, methamphetamine that can be smoked through a glass pipe or rolled tin foil appeared on the scene. “Ice” is clear crystal of high purity that is odorless, and with a potentially 12-hour effect. In some parts of Asia, this is called “shabu.”

In an article published in the Houston Journal of International Law, it was revealed how methamphetamine has become an international affair – when the abuse of the drug used to be solely an American problem. It has since become the most abused drug in Asia, Australia, and Mexico, with use of the drug spreading in Europe. One in ten Australians had tried methamphetamines at least once in their lifetime. New Zealand has emerged as the country with the highest methamphetamine usage rate in the world and as one of the leading producers per capita.

Large scale production of methamphetamines has been found in the Czech Republic and, to a lesser extent, the Balkans, Moldova, and the Slovak Republic. According to the 11th annual report of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 2006, use of methamphetamine among EU member states appears to be relatively high in only a few countries, namely the Czech Republic, Estonia and the United Kingdom. Most of the Czech production of methamphetamine is destined for the local market, although some are smuggled to Germany, Austria and Slovakia.

Methamphetamine is now the most abused hard drug in the world. The United Nations Office On Drugs and Crime 2007 Report states that the drug has approximately twenty five million users worldwide. More than four-fifths of all users are located outside the United States. Methamphetamine users worldwide outnumber heroin and cocaine users combined.

Today, Asia is the undisputed methamphetamine capital of the world, with over fifteen million estimated methamphetamine users.

The biggest producers of methamphetamine in Asia are Myanmar and China, while the drug is transported into Thailand along historical drug trafficking routes through the Golden Triangle. By 2004, about 20 tons of methamphetamine or 7.5% of global production was shipped annually into Thailand from Myanmar (Martin Jelsma, Trouble in the Triangle. Opium and Conflict in Burma, Silkworm Books, Chang Mai, Thailand, July 2005).

Methamphetamine easily covers wide areas of global usage, thus becoming a pandemic, because it is easy to make, and with components that are readily available. And because production is comparatively cheaper, methamphetamine is more affordable and widely accessible.

The basic method for making methamphetamine involves extracting the pseudoephedrine from cold medicine and combining it with a number of chemicals such as iodine crystals, muriatic acid, and red phosphorous. All ingredients of methamphetamine can be extracted from pharmaceutical drugs, cleaning fluids, and other substances that are readily available in drug and hardware stores. When “cooked” together, the chemicals produce the highly addictive and potentially lethal drug that is methamphetamine.

For “ice,” there are only 3 main ingredients needed: pseudoephedrine, iodine crystals, and red phosphorus. Other secondary chemicals needed are muriatic acid (HCl), acetone, and Red Devil Lye which is a very strong drain cleaner. Synthesizing methamphetamine can take just a few hours. Methamphetamine is easy to make, even at home.

Pseudoephedrine, the main precursor chemical of methamphetamine, is the active ingredient in Sudafed, an over-the-counter drug at any pharmacy. Crush the pills and soak in denatured alcohol for 4 to 8 hours. Filter, take the liquid, and simmer on the stove until liquid evaporates. Finish the drying with a hair dryer so you don’t burn the pseudo. Now, take the powder and mix it with distilled water. Let it settle and set it in the freezer for 30 minutes. Now, take the semi-frozen liquid and filter again. Take the pseudo water and slowly boil it again. Take out the hair dryer and finish drying. It now turns into powdered form. This is pure pseudo.

Iodine crystals can be obtained from another over-the-counter drug, Iodine Tincture. A gram of pure iodine crystals can be produced from one 1 oz. bottle of Iodine Tincture.

Red phosphorus is made from the strike pad on a match book.

All these chemicals translate to some ugly manifestations on a user’s body.

“Meth Mouth” is a term used to describe the mouth of a methamphetamine user. It is characterized by rampant tooth decay. In a short span of time, sometimes just months, a perfectly healthy set of teeth can turn grayish-brown, twist and begin to fall out. Several reasons have been identified as to the causes of this fast and severe decaying of teeth. During the “high” produced by this drug, users usually experience cravings for sugary carbonated beverages. The acidic contents of this drug can damage teeth. Ingredients can include battery acid, lantern fuel, antifreeze, hydrochloric acid, drain cleaner, lye, and over-the-counter cold medications containing ephedrine. Users of methamphetamines usually tend to clench and/or grind their teeth as a persistent habit. Methamphetamines also dry up protective saliva around the teeth.

The wounds on a meth addict’s skin come from scratching, picking, and digging the spots to relieve the itching. They experience the sensation of small bugs, known as “Meth Mites or Bugs,” moving right under their skin.

Methamphetamine does not get eliminated from an addict’s body. Moreover, once the distribution of this drug has penetrated a community, it also does not get eliminated from the social system.

1st Global Conference on Methamphetamine
Prague, Czech Republic
15-16 September 2008

Theme: Science, Strategy, and Response

Objective: For the world’s preeminent scientists, leaders, and professionals working on issues related to methamphetamine to gather and discuss the intersection between methamphetamine use, public health, law enforcement, and civil society.

Darfur Genocide: Radical Islamism's Crime of Intention

The top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Argentine Luis Moreno-Ocampo, has sought the arrest of the first sitting head-of-state to be indicted by the ICC for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Darfur. Moreno-Ocampo has presented his evidence in court, and has requested a warrant on 10 counts, three of them for genocide. The charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity include allegations of murder, torture, attacks against civilians, and pillaging.

The UN estimates that up to 300,000 people have died since the Darfur conflict broke out in February 2003. The Sudanese government puts the death toll at 10,000.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. Accused of masterminding attempts to wipe out African tribes in Darfur with a campaign of murder, rape and deportation. Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo asked a three-judge panel at the International Criminal Court to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir on genocide charges.

The accused, Sudanese President General Omar al-Bashir, asserts the alibi that what his government has done is nothing but counter-insurgency. al-Bashir’s African Islamist regime introduced Sudan to a more radical brand of Islam and elements of Sharia law. The conflict in Darfur began in 2003 when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated regime, for a greater share of resources and power.

International Criminal Court (ICC) top prosecutor Argentine Luis Moreno-Ocampo

Moreno-Ocampo has evidence to prove that al-Bashir had “personally instructed” his forces to annihilate three ethnic groups in the western Sudanese region. He had ordered his forces “not to bring back any wounded or prisoners.” Moreno-Ocampo defends this as al-Bashir “wanting to commit genocide.”

According to the ICC top prosecutor, what happened in Darfur is a consequence of al-Bashir’s will. He said that the crime of genocide is a crime of intention. This means that al-Bashir had the intention to destroy the Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa ethnic groups that were engaged in a rebellion in Darfur.

For the prosecution, all of al-Bashir’s crimes were aimed at civilians, and not rebel groups. The prosecution had collected evidence showing that al-Bashir’s target group, some 2.5 million people who are now displaced and found in refugee camps, was being attacked with the aim of elimination through the use of state machinery that include the army and intelligence services, as well as the Janjaweed militia.

"They all report to him. They all obey him. His control is absolute."

Prosecution Panel in the al-Bashir genocide case at the ICC

"Three main weapons are used to attack them in the camps: rape, hunger, fear. They are the most effective methods to commit genocide today, in front of our eyes."

Moreno-Ocampo’s campaign for justice comes at a cost. There have been warnings that it could fan the flames of tension in Darfur, undermine cooperation with the UN, and result in the expulsion of aid workers and peacekeepers in Sudan’s troubled western region. Sudan immediately rejected the bid as damaging to Darfur peace hopes.

The three judges of the court will now examine the application to ascertain whether there are sufficient grounds for issuing a warrant. According to the prosecutor, this process may take two to three months.

Despite being under a United Nations-imposed obligation to execute any resultant warrants, the Sudanese government has refused to surrender two suspects named last year for war crimes in Darfur.

The courts, being what they are, will grind slower than what is hoped for. Even if universal jurisdiction can be levied against al-Bashir and will thus make him unable to run to and hide in a mansion in the Caribbean or the Pacific should he decide to build mansions there, time will still be on al-Bashir’s side. A lot can happen in those two or three months when the judges at the ICC examine Moreno-Ocampo’s application for warrant of arrest.

Lives may continue to be lost, including those of peacekeepers and aid workers. al-Bashir’s allies can come to his rescue and do all sorts of things, blatant or otherwise, for the genocider to get off the hook.

The UN may again prove to be inutile in diplomatic negotiations as it had shown in Zimbabwe.

I’m not sure if the justice system is the right tool to halt the doings of tyrants and dictators. But in the free world, it seems to be the only logical way.

Logical – only until that point in time when we all realize that justice delayed is justice denied.