In the midst of a massive humanitarian crisis in Burma in which 1.5 million people are at risk of dying from disease, local government officials in Rangoon have been selling aid and bribing residents in order to turn a profit, according to sources in Rangoon. It has been eight days since Cyclone Nargis wiped out entire villages along the Irrawaddy delta and left Rangoon in shambles, but the ruling junta has prevented relief efforts from barely making a dent in the recovery process.

Government officials have stolen donations of rice, cooking oil and diesel and sold them on the black market, a businessman in Rangoon said on Sunday. In several townships around the major city, the government announced that it would provide a certain amount of rice and cooking oil to each household, but local township officers were found refusing families their quotas and instead selling the goods on the black market.

“Most community heads and their staffs are doing good biz in leading distribution of aids, like petrol, oil with cheap price/ but they store a lot/ they steal a lot,” the businessman wrote.
The businessman, whose 15-month old baby has a case of diarrhea due to lack of clean drinking water, said the officers denied his family its quota as well.

He sent his information to a contact in Thailand via Google Chat because the junta can censor email from the government-service providers and from Gmail. Even natural disasters are politically sensitive in Burma, and the junta has sent Burmese to prison in the past for giving information to the international press.

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It’s no secret that the black church is more outspoken than say, my regular Sunday Catholic church service. I suppose we should give credit to the Rev. Wright controversy for that heightened realization (although I gather most people presumed this long before that YouTube clip hit every media outlet this side of the Milky Way).

But church sermons aren’t the only part of the service adopting that sort of rhythm and bluntness. Church music is increasingly taking on hip-hop beats to spread the word of the gospel. I spent several weeks with the young people at Crenshaw Christian Center in South-Central Los Angeles and documented their efforts at the unlikely combination of rap music and God in the video below.

The most frustrating aspect of Saturday’s cyclone in Burma, which left 22,500 dead and 41,000 missing, is all the ways the junta running the country makes the relief process more difficult.

UN relief workers are ready and willing to bring aid and medicine into the country. But the Burmese government hasn’t yet issued them visas. Foreign journalists must report the story from Bangkok because the junta won’t let them in. And Burmese inside the country aren’t allowed to talk to foreign journalists in Bangkok, or any other reporters not associated with the state mouthpiece.

Numerous non-governmental organizations like Doctors Without Borders aren’t in the country to begin with because they pulled out in years past when the junta made it impossible for them to travel to project areas or do their work effectively. The junta hasn’t allowed Burmese civil servants living in the new capital, Naypyidaw, to leave to visit their families in Rangoon, an area hit by the cyclone. They aren’t supposed to leave until after the referendum on the military-drafted constitution May 10.

On the other hand, it is impressive that the junta is allowing international organizations to help at all. This is unprecedented. In the past, the junta has tried to cover up all news about fires, storms and other natural disasters. If news about a disaster got out, the junta insisted it was capable of cleaning up the mess. The fact that the government is admitting a storm killed tens of thousands and is asking for help is clearly a good sign.

Ye Thu, a friend and reporter for Democratic Voice of Burma, told me via Google Chat last night: “I think even the government itself is really shocked. That’s why they called for help.”

But still, this is ridiculous. It’s a cyclone. No one is blaming the Burmese junta for causing it.

Well, that’s not totally accurate. A Burmese friend of mine living in Singapore said that Buddhists believe the government must have caused such a disaster. She wrote to me in an email: “As a Buddhist, we used to believe we are always safe from that sort of natural disaster, due to the power and protection of Buddha, Dhama and Sanga…Now that sort of miseries happened to our country. So all are saying that its due to the horrible disgusting junta who is ruling Myanmar very unfairly. Due to the worst ruling government, we have to suffer a lot.”

It’s hard to believe Sen. Hillary Clinton was ever honored to share a stage with her rival Sen. Barack Obama after seeing her latest last minute ad slamming Obama’s criticism of the much-ballyhooed gas-tax holiday.

But first—a word of praise. We’re actually talking about an issue. Gas taxes have never been so refreshing!

We’re talking about an issue for what seems like, the first time since December 2007. We’re talking about economics: supply, demand, production, profits, and loss. Slight upgrade from the status quo.

Hillary can call the economic pitfalls of her plan “elite opinion” until every last chicken comes home to roost, but economic theory as a media-driven, election-year conversation is a drastic and very welcome departure from said chickens.

Sen. John McCain proposed the tax holiday first. What makes his endorsement different than Clinton’s is that the New York Senator wants to use a windfall profits tax on oil companies to recoup the lost government income.

The whole proposal reeks of opportunism.

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Last week saw the continued brow-beating of the American people with Jeremiah Wright overkill. The first 16 minutes of Meet the Press were devoted to it. CNN, FoxNews, and the whole lot continue to replay the YouTube clips. I’ve even seen some ridiculous implications in the more whacked-out portions of the blogsophere that Obama and Wright are co-conspirators in a murder.

As the Democratic primary slogs on, it seems people really can’t get enough of this sensationalism, like all of the real issues have now been exhausted and the entire affair is reduced to a pseudo-meditation on race in America. If that’s what people really want to talk about, why not replay clips of Obama’s speech in March over and over again? Seems a bit more comprehensive than Wright’s sermons.

Frank Rich wrote a brilliant op-ed for the New York Times over the weekend discussing the double-standard in the media on the coverage of Wright/Obama vs. Hagee/McCain.

None of this is to say that two wacky white preachers make a Wright right. It is entirely fair for any voter to weigh Mr. Obama’s long relationship with his pastor in assessing his fitness for office. It is also fair to weigh Mr. Obama’s judgment in handling this personal and political crisis as it has repeatedly boiled over. But whatever that verdict, it is disingenuous to pretend that there isn’t a double standard operating here. If we’re to judge black candidates on their most controversial associates — and how quickly, sternly and completely they disown them — we must judge white politicians by the same yardstick.

Meanwhile, as our country is engaged in multiple fronts of war, all in the name of combating “terror,” a recent MSNBC article discusses the failure of the US government to work with Yemen in retaining many of the suspects in the USS Cole bombing. The suspects have either escaped or been outright freed by the Yemeni government as the US made several unsuccessful attempts at forcing extradition. Two went on to commit suicide attacks in Iraq.

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Against the cold, scientific glow of an unlikely, biology-inspired observation, I wonder, is this what we have been reduced to?

A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted from Friday to Tuesday- right in the thick of the latest Jeremiah Wright flap- indicates that only 51% of Democrats believe Obama will win his party’s nomination, down from 69% just a month ago.

As I have watched the second Wright controversy unfurl its stench in the licentious fertility of the mainstream media rainforest, I can’t help but think of a blossoming Amorphophalus titanum- a.k.a. the corpse flower.

“First you need to understand how the flower reproduces. The flower tries to mimic a rotting corpse so that it can attract sweat flies, which lay their eggs in rotting flesh,” says a BBC article.

It “wafts out this fragrance that attracts basically any insect that would be attracted to a rotting animal carcass,” an expert says in another article. The flower is a novelty. When it blooms in captivity, despite the horrid smell, people flock from all over to gawk at the spectacle of a plant that must lure bottom feeders so that it may dupe the pea-brained insects into pollinating its own, soon-to-be dead carcass.

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The Burmese government has rigging votes down to an art. In the aftermath of protests demanding political reform, the Burmese junta is holding a referendum on its new constitution. The vote represents the junta’s way of appeasing the international community by pretending to enact democratic reforms. The referendum will be May 10, and advance voting has begun this week. But there is nothing “democratic” happening; and these aren’t “reforms.” Here is how the junta holds a referendum. Let’s call it, “Voting, Burma-Style.”

First, the government handpicks the delegates who write the new constitution. Second, it adds a clause that forbids the national hero and Nobel Peace laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, from ever running for office.

The junta then makes amendments impossible; harasses, assaults and arrests pro-democracy activists; forbids criticism of the draft constitution; and bombards the state media with a campaign to promote the referendum. It prevents media outlets inside the country from publishing the views of anyone against the referendum. The junta doesn’t tell people what the draft constitution actually says. Then it insists that all civil servants and their families must vote and must vote “yes” - or lose their jobs.

Think that’s enough? Nope. The junta also prints some ballots with the “yes” box already filled in. An anonymous source told the Irrawaddy, a magazine based in Thailand and run by Burmese exiles: “I was given the ballot already marked—my duty was just to put it in the ballot box.”

And finally, just in case the above tactics fail, the junta writes the constitution ensuring that the military government will remain in power.

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Sen. Barack Obama’s 10-point loss in Pennsylvania turned the universe upside down in a few hours. Suddenly, he was no longer his party’s front-runner. Suddenly, he was facing questions about his candidacy in the general election. Suddenly, and rather remarkably Internet pop-up windows, of all things, shifted from “should Hillary quit” surveys to, “can Hillary stop him?”

The horse race metaphor describing the Democratic nomination is only half the picture. There’s another side to what is happening right now. And it’s more like a tornado than a horse race.

Democrats are competing in states they’d otherwise never visit. They are building organizations. Can you imagine Indiana in the blue column this November? How about Virginia or Colorado or Missouri? The Democratic primary has gone sweeping through these states, and could very well leave a center-left footprint on the landscape.

What thousands of new voters in Pennsylvania reinforce is a new breath of life across the American electorate. It’s a momentum of its own, and it is favoring Democrats.

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In recognition of World Malaria Day this past Friday, P+P has a related offering from contributing author Laurie Lathem.

St. Louis University medical students Andrew Sherman and Jesse Matthews refer to the summer of 2005 as their “last summer” because it fell between their first and second years of med school. Facing three more years of medical school and three grueling years of residencies after that, they might have been expected to take it a little easy as most of their colleagues were doing. Instead they formed a non-profit organization called NetLife Africa, and spent several weeks bicycling over dirt roads in rural Senegal distributing anti-malarial bed nets to villagers.

Malaria is the number one killer in Senegal, as well as in other parts of Africa, with children the most vulnerable. It is estimated that malaria kills one child under the age of five every 30 seconds in sub-Saharan Africa which amounts to 3,000 children every day. Picture four 747 jumbo jets loaded with children crashing every day, or a 9/11 every single day of every year. While there is treatment, many malaria sufferers have no access to medical care, particularly in rural areas. The prospect of a vaccine remains poor. Spraying DDT is unpopular and safe only under certain circumstances. As the parasite carrying mosquitoes are nocturnal, the best prevention is the simplest: long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets (LLIN’s) that provide protection while children and their mothers are sleeping.

Concentrating on an area of Senegal called Kedougou that is largely without roads or health care facilities, Sherman and Matthews distributed 600 nets in 2005 and 1,110 more on a subsequent trip in 2007 (their next trip is planned for 2009). They have protected approximately 3,400 people from malaria carrying mosquitoes and have saved an estimated 85 lives (on average, two or three family members sleep under one net, and for every 20 nets delivered, one life is saved). Adamant that NetLife Africa remain a zero overhead organization and that every dollar raised go to the cost of bed nets, Sherman and Matthews pay for their travel with their student loans and raise money from their friends and families to pay for the nets. The cost of one LLIN is $5; the average donation to NetLife Africa is $20.

Asked where they got the crazy idea of going around Senegal on bikes loaded with bed nets, Sherman says, “When I was in the Peace Corps in Kedougou, I saw that the main problems were diarrheal diseases and malaria.” But water problems, as Matthews puts it, are “harder to get your arms around” than malaria. As a Peace Corps volunteer, Sherman recruited a troupe of non-performers from his village to perform a theatrical presentation on the cause and effect of malaria and take it around to neighboring villages. Everyone, Sherman said, had the same question. “How do we prevent this?” After educating the villagers on how to best prevent malaria, he had no way of helping them obtain the nets which at that time in 2002 were about $10 each, roughly double their current cost. Sherman “was stuck with one hand tied behind my back.” It was this feeling he says, and the fact that the price of LLIN’s was dropping, that made him want to go back to Senegal during his “last summer.” “I wanted to do something,” he says. “I didn’t want to go back as a tourist.” So he teamed up with fellow medical student Jesse Matthews and NetLife Africa was born.

Their method is simple and efficient. Sherman and Matthews (who incidentally look so much alike they could easily be mistaken for twins) fly to Dakar where they pick up the LLIN’s, rent a minibus and drive the sixteen hours to Kedougou where the nets are stored in rented rooms under lock and key. There they work with a local health official to identify which villages are at most risk, a determination made on the basis of access to health care, amount of stagnant water and high incidences of positive malaria testing in the past. In each village, they work with a community health agent to make up a list of recipients, prioritizing married women and children first. Sherman, who is fluent in Pulaar, the local language, and Matthews who is becoming proficient, greet the villagers, and give an educational talk on the nets and how they should be used.

Everyone wants a net. They are hard to come by. When a local police officer attempts to bribe Sherman and Matthews on the roads, for example, he wants a net, not money. As they hand out each LLIN, Sherman and Matthews write down each recipient’s ID card number in order to keep the distribution organized and to track their coverage for future visits. Even though Netlife Africa works with the larger organization Against Malaria to buy LLIN’s for the low price of five dollars each, this is still beyond the reach of most rural Senegalese. But the .20 cents that Sherman and Matthews charge is a minimal, symbolic amount that they say helps give a sense of ownership. NetLife Africa then donates the proceeds to a group called Senegad that works to educate adolescent girls in Senegal. Once the distribution is complete, there is singing and dancing, Sherman and Matthews are fed and, once they have slept, they pack up, get on their bikes and do it all over again. The process is physically punishing (Matthews lost 25 pounds in one month in 2007), but the reward keeps them going. The people receiving the LLIN’s are extremely thankful, and the impact is obvious and immediate. Matthews likens the trip to backpacking. “It’s satisfying because it’s hard,” he says.

While the response to NetLife Africa both in Senegal and here in the United States has been almost entirely positive, resistance has come from the most unlikely corners. Some Peace Corps volunteers in Senegal have been unwilling to work with Matthews and Sherman, subscribing as they do to a more free-market enterprise approach to humanitarian work. They believe that LLIN’s should not be given away for free ($0.20 is negligible) and that money is better spent paying for ads that encourage people to buy them. The opposing view is that the urgency of malaria is akin to that of a famine or a natural disaster, both instances in which other outreach organizations such as the World Health Organization routinely give handouts. “There is a fence within the Peace Corps,” explains Sherman, “and Peace Corps volunteers fall on either side of that fence.” Sherman explains his position this way: “These are people who are below the first rung on the ladder of poverty. They need a little help.” Health problems as persistent and devastating as malaria help keep poverty’s oppressive grip on the population he works with. “They need a boost in health to reach the first rung.” Nevertheless, Sherman says he was asked by a Peace Corps volunteer in Senegal not to distribute the LLIN’s in her village, an encounter that left him in tears.

However, recent developments in relations between NetLife Africa and the Peace Corps have changed for the better. The new Peace Corps country director in Senegal, Christopher Hedrick, has announced that volunteers in Senegal should also be “anti-malaria volunteers” and has agreed to work with NetLife Africa to distribute LLIN’s over a wider area and with a larger workforce. With these new promising collaborations underway they hope to distribute 4,000 nets in Senegal this summer and eventually to partner with other organizations in neighboring countries such as Guinea

Now that Sherman and Matthews are about to enter highly pressurized medical residencies, and with the Peace Corps wiling to take over the responsibilities of distribution, how much involvement can they realistically expect to have in the future of NetLife Africa? Says Matthews, “malaria is not going anywhere.” And with a new study showing that widespread distribution of LLIN’s and medical therapies in Zanzibar reduced mortality in children under five by half, they have every reason to continue what they started. They only considered residencies whose directors were receptive to their efforts in Senegal. Matthews will be specializing in infectious diseases and Sherman in pediatrics, all the better to serve the population in Kedougou with such things as staph infections and water borne illnesses. Mr. Sherman’s fiancée, Chrystal Jenkins, also a doctor, will travel with them in 2009 to work on programs that empower women. Having scoped out this remote 30 by 40 mile rectangle of the globe where each corn stalk growing between the huts holds enough water to breed mosquitoes, Sherman and Matthews plan on going back to Kedougou every two years. They will even buy a hut there to use as a home base for the price of $500. However grueling their methods seem, they say they have the process streamlined.

“The better we can do it, the more we can do it,” says Sherman. “Besides, we like to get on the bikes.”

“You are the coolest place on earth right now!”

Prince exclaimed this at the beginning of his much-anticipated, $4.8 million set on Saturday night at Coachella. Looking around, it seemed like everyone believed it.

“From now on, this is Prince’s house!”

And that follow-up statement, that qualification of exactly what he meant, sort of felt like the dagger in the heart of the Coachella magic that I’ve experienced my previous two years going. Yes, the production quality was second-to-none. Yes, the weather (at least on Saturday) was perfect flip-flip and shorts temperature the entire night. And yes, the price tag is still a ridiculous bargain for the amount of acts you can see in one day, considering what many acts charge for their regular shows.

Let me just say first that Boyz Noize, Hot Chip, M.I.A. (at least the first 20 minutes), Aphex Twin, Diplo, The Verve, and the entire Do Lab (especially The Glitch Mob…daaaamn!!) all brought their Coachella A-game. They all had a presence- like they knew they were at something special and were stepping it up a notch to meet the magic of the environment.

And Portishead was simply stunning in their first live performance in 10 years. Definitely the crown-jewel of the entire weekend for me (although I did not go on Sunday). They were epic. Her voice was melancholy, haunting, and utterly overpowering. The guitar-solos took you to another planet (if you weren’t there already). It was the type of seminal performance that people will be talking about for years. A quick check of YouTube yesterday revealed that almost every video across all three pages of uploads were all Portishead. It was captivating, to say the least.

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