[Mumbai, November 25. Image via Getty]

A woman mourns as members of the Jewish orthodox Chabad Lubavitch movement of New York attend a memorial service in memory of victims of last year's terror attacks, at the Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue in Mumbai on November 25, 2009. A total of 166 people were killed and more than 300 others were injured when 10 heavily-armed Islamist militants stormed the city on November 26, 2008, attacking a number of sites, including the city's main railway station, two luxury hotels, a popular tourist restaurant and a Jewish centre. AFP PHOTO/ Indranil MUKHERJEE (Photo credit should read INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images)

[Mumbai, November 23. Image via Getty]

To go with India-attacks-1year-child by Phil Hazlewood In a picture taken on November 23, 2009 Indian Viju Lakshman Chavan (R) holds her baby daughter Tejaswini (L), who is nicknamed 'Goli', 'Bullet' in Hindi because she was born during the Mumbai attacks last year, in the Colaba Woods Garden in Mumbai. Viju went into labour at the city's Cama and Albless Hospital on November 26, 2008, just as two heavily armed gunmen began stalking the building's corridors and eight others laid siege to India's financial capital. Tejaswini, already two weeks early, couldn't wait. She was born at 10.55 pm, about one hour after the gunmen took up position in the hospital. AFP PHOTO/ Indranil MUKHERJEE (Photo credit should read INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images)

[Mumbai, November 23. Image via Getty]

Ten year-old Devika Rotawan, a survivor of the November 2008 militant attacks, walks with the help of crutches after a protest against the lone surviving attacker Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, in Mumbai on November 23, 2009. Rotawan who was hit on the leg by a bullet when Kasab and his accomplice opened fire at the Mumbai's Chattrapati Shivaji Terminus(CST) railway station on November 26 last year, killing 52 people, took part in the symbolic of hanging an effigy of Kasab along with people from various walks of life. AFP PHOTO/Indranil MUKHERJEE (Photo credit should read INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images)

[Mumbai, August 28. Image via Getty]

An Indian street dwelling woman (R)holds a child as she looks at a grafitti image of the late 'King of Pop' Michael Jackson on a wall in Mumbai on August 28, 2009 on the eve of his 51st birthday. Michael Jackson's family has announced that its final farewell to the late 'King of Pop' will be at a Los Angeles funeral on September 3, not August 29-the day the singer would have turned 51, as had been announced earlier in the month. Michael Jackson died June 25, aged 50, in Los Angeles after suffering cardiac arrest — but the cause of his death remains unclear and police are investigating. AFP PHOTO/ Indranil MUKHERJEE (Photo credit should read INDRANIL MUKHERJEE/AFP/Getty Images)

• Almost 90% of the South Korean teachers surveyed in a recent study said that there needs to be something done to keep the gender imbalance of female-to-male teachers in check. The respondents (which were, strangely enough, mostly male) felt that the lack of male teachers is leading to problems in teaching and counseling students. • A teacher from Maine has officially apologized after he played the groom in a mock wedding with a fourth grade student. Having nothing better to complain about, parents called the school to express their distress over the playground game. • The online journal PLoS Medicine has released a report on the Centre for Vulnerable Women and Children in Mumbai, which offers service to women and children in crisis. The article can be viewed in its entirety here. •  A large scale study found that pregnant woman who undergo certain invasive tests may lower their risk of miscarriage. Although researchers believe that the tests affect the rate of miscarriage, there is no evidence about women who have not undergone the procedures. • According to the ladies over at Feministing, the first ever women-run pharmacy in North America (located in Vancouver) has an unfortunate policy of excluding transwomen, a decision it justifies by the presence of a nearby health clinic for trans people. •  The New York Times reports that although congenital adrenal hyperplasia, a hormonal disorder that can cause infertility, is easy to treat, many fertility centers do not perform the simple blood test for the disease, and some doctors are unaware of its effects on fertility. •  Snuggie, the backwards bathrobe that became a pop cultural phenomenon last winter, will be back in September with more sizes and colors. How long do you think they can ride the popularity wave born from almost incessant parodying? • Tyler Weinman, the 18-year-old accused of killing 19 cats in Florida, reportedly laughed at police during questioning, before he proceeded to excitedly describe the process of dissecting cats for class. Police also said that he was eager to show off the scratches on his body, which he said he got from his neighbor's cat. More horrible details here. •

[Mumbai, June 18. Image via Getty]

A child pushes a trolley in a super market in Mumbai on June 18, 2009. India's annual inflation rate slipped into negative territory for the first time in 30 years, according to official data, with the slowing of Asia's third-largest economy cutting into demand. AFP PHOTO/Pal PILLAI (Photo credit should read PAL PILLAI/AFP/Getty Images)

[Mumbai, May 20. Image via Getty]

Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire's child star Rubina Ali stands in front of her demolished shanty in Mumbai on May 21, 2009. The ramshackle home of nine-year-old Rubina Ali was one of about 25 properties near train tracks in the Gareeb Nagar slum in central Mumbai that was torn down. Rubina played the young Latika, the main female character in the Oscar-winning film. More than half of Mumbai's estimated 18 million residents live in either designated slums or illegal shanties. Many of them are next to sewers which overflow during heavy rains. But Mumbai city's municipal authorities readily admit that they can do little to stop the makeshift homes being rebuilt because of the city's acute housing shortage. AFP PHOTO/Sajjad HUSSAIN (Photo credit should read SAJJAD HUSSAIN/AFP/Getty Images)

• Naomi Campbell stalked the runway like a thoroughbred in Mumbai for a charity show. Last time Campbell blended fashion and philanthropy, the supermodel raised over $1 million for Hurricane Katrina survivors. [Daily Mail]

• Mikhail Gorbachev is not enough for some people. The rapacious machine of Louis Vuitton's advertising, which most people don't realize actually sucks its subjects' dignity through the lens of Annie Liebovitz's Canon, has claimed more victims: Buzz Aldrin, Sally Ride, and fellow astronaut Jim Lovell. That's right: men and women who could withstand the g-forces of extraterrestrial flight could not say 'no' to LVMH. [WWD]
• British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman says her biggest concern about taking the position back in 1992 was that it would involve a lot of flying. "I hadn't been on a plane in 10 years," she said at an event in England. "How could I accept a job that would mean that I had to fly all the time? I'm still very nervous on a plane." [Vogue UK]
• More bad news for Halston: the oft-revived label, left semi-conscious as of late following the firing of its latest creative director, Marco Zanini, is now down one vice-president of marketing. Atul Pathak resigned two weeks ago, just after the Paris shows. [WWD]
• Los Angeles fashion week happened recently. Don't feel too badly if you missed it: the LA Times itself called proceedings "more than an exercise in futility." [LA Times]
• Vera Wang's Lavender line is in trouble. Hitting the high end of the price range for a contemporary line is causing some grief, and Saks has dropped it. Neiman Marcus will carry Vera Wang Lavender in only ten stores this season, and drop it for fall. Wang says she's mulling over lowering the pricing, or spinning it off into a license. [WWD]
• Lanvin's London flagship store is now open. I suppose that means Alber Elbaz's long contretemps with the architects, related by Ariel Levy in her recent New Yorker profile of the designer, was happily resolved. [FWD]
• Kira Plastinina's still got stores a-plenty, too. (Albeit not in the US, where her eponymous pink-themed clothing chain went bust less than a year after her entry into the market.) As soon as she finishes high school in Moscow this spring, the fruit juice heiress intends to take a step that most designers tackle before launching international retail chains — going to fashion school. Since Kira Plastinina rather strikes one as the kind of person whose life is the sustained experience of getting what she wants, without regard for talent or even passion, she's expecting acceptance at Parsons in New York and Central St. Martins in London, the Yale and Oxford of fashion design, respectively. [FWD]
• Fiona Ellis, who scouts models for the London agency Independent, thinks Tyra's shorties-only season of America's Next Top Model is dumb. The woman who found Alek Wek and Erin O'Connor, among many others, would know. [Vogue UK]
• Net profits at Versace fell 30.7% in 2008, but it was largely due to the softening of the Euro against the Dollar. Without the hard shift in the rate of exchange, their profits would have grown by 10%. [WWD]
• "Heavy black lines and crisp, grid-like patterns created an Op Art effect in Dries Van Noten's spring collection," says the LA Times. Which is why you should...wear a plaid shirt from Express. [LA Times]
• The top 10 new models of the Fall/Winter 09 show season: 90% white, 10% Japanese, 50% not actually "new." [Style.com]
• Do. Not. Want. Spanx clothing. No, just...no. [Glamour]
• Christian Siriano has picked up one hell of a stockist for his line: Saks Fifth Avenue. The department store will sell his fall collection in a new store-within-a-store for emerging talents. [WWD]
• Iekeliene Stange, the quirky Dutch supermodel/photographer, has an exhibition opening in London this Wednesday, following a successful show in Berlin. [The Horse Hospital]

"Forget Slumdog Millionaire. With all the thirtysomething women on the prowl - in chic sandals - Mumbai is starting to feel more like Sex and the City." So begins Keshni Kashyap's dissertation on the changing mores of her parents' homeland. Perhaps, she speculates, as a consequence of the emerging economy, there are suddenly a lot of visible single women in Mumbai, "cruising at bars, dancing at parties, flirting at barbecues and nightclubs, always with cocktail in hand, carving paths of their own, and struggling with the very American dilemma of enjoying the single life and putting marriage off just a little longer."

Sex and the City is big here and single women are leading the Cosmo life. The culture is, of course, still a conservative one, in which most marriages (like that of the author's parents) are arranged and a woman is considered past her marital prime by her 30's (given the rarity of divorce, it is hard for a woman of that demographic to find a single man in her own age group). Then too, because single women tend to live with their families, the opportunities for "dating" in the Western sense can be limited; one woman speaks of always going home even if she's slept with a man, "out of respect" for her parents.

The author, herself a single American woman, muses on the difficulties of being caught between the two cultures and the what-if of following her parents' path.

Like many Indian-American women before me, I've wondered if it might have been easier to marry the doctor from Fresno I met through the newspaper. To line up class, caste, education, and values on a grid, find out where I fall, and maybe even get engaged in four days, avoiding the potential for existential angst, bad dates and broken hearts. After all, the old Indian adage is that love comes after marriage.

But...are these the only alternatives? An arranged marriage or the shallow existence of a defunct TV show? Most of us exist somewhere between the two paradigms, surely - our lives less glamorous, or less secure, but surely more...livable? Sex and the City has always exerted a pernicious influence, dealing as it did in trite bromides, coating cliche in the mantle of a superficial "liberation" (made up largely of worrying about men and drinking cocktails) and tying problems up as neatly and traditionally as any of the fairy tales its protagonists would claim to scorn.

It's not a coincidence, surely, that it's a fairly traditional and even conservative subset of women who'd find this version of single life so alluringly glam, while the rest of us are as offended by its convenient blend of ideologies as its shallow aesthetic. It's troubling to see young women heading to the big city to quaff cocktails and buy shoes, but it's more worrisome still to see this taken up as the alternative to a traditional existence. What might be irritating escapism for those who can afford it is a nasty model for those who have less context. Carrie Bradshaw is not the ideal modern woman, not the archetypal modern woman, nothing but a poorly-drawn but winsomely acted 2-D character. Slumdog and Sex aren't the alternatives; there's a whole Netflix queue of life out there.

The Carrie Bradshaws Of Mumbai [Daily Beast]

"If SM projects India as Third World dirty under belly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky under belly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations. Its just that the SM idea authored by an Indian and conceived and cinematically put together by a Westerner, gets creative Globe recognition. The other would perhaps not."

Bachchan alleges that the world ignores "commercial escapist Indian cinema" but awards people like the legendary Satyajit Ray (whose amazing, critcally acclaimed film Pather Panchali remains a personal favorite, click for a clip) who "portray reality."

But, writes Aditi Nadkarni on Desicritics.com, tongue thoroughly set in cheek:

Can you imagine what it would do to our international image if people saw that we have dirty railway stations and snotty street-children? Danny Boyle, should have, like most of us, rolled up the tinted windows of his car in the face of a five year old beggar… Danny Boyle should have … shot his film near the squeaky clean neighborhoods of Colaba. He could've used sets instead of crowded railway stations where one can see the sweat running of off the citizens of this dirty underbelly. Danny Boyle should recognize that our patriotic sentiments are hurt not by the sights we see every day on the streets of Mumbai but by what he puts in his movie.

But it's easy to see how some could be hurt that this film, which is getting shown around the world, makes India seem like a miserable place. It's just one carefully edited side of a huge nation. But where, say, Sex And The City makes New York a wee more wealthy, shiny and glossy than it actually is, Slumdog reinforces some stubborn Western ideas about the East, that tie into a neat "don't brown people lead tough lives" bow. But, as Nadkarni posits, shouldn't we be upset not how the film portrays India, but that there are still slums in the world, period?

Perhaps the last word should go to a real life "slumdog," interviewed by Independent. 14-year-old Arvind Kumar, who lves in a jhuggi jhopadi, or shack area, in a poor neighborhood of Delhi called Govindpuri, watched a pirated copy of the flick on DVD and says: "I like it. I like the kids in the film. I can identify with them. This is how we used to play, running through the streets like naughty children." But he has issues with the plot: "Why would anyone give you all that money just to answer a few questions? It's not real. You have to toil to get money. I don't believe this. I think it's just show business." Smart kid.

AB: India ain’t all slums and dogs [Times Of India]
Big B [Amitabh Bachchan's Blog]
Amitabh Bachchan: Slumdog Millionaire Shows India As Third World's Dirty Underbelly [Desicritics]
Slumdogs Who Seek Success [Independent]

LATOYA: Where do you want to start this morning? We've got a piping hot plate of hot mess to go through.

MEGAN: Well, being as this is a women's blog, we should do something woman-y, and I nominate the news that the McCain campaign spent $110,000 on hair and make-up for Sarah Palin in 10 weeks and $180,000 on clothing and accessories for the Palin clan — which is $30,000 more than initially reported.

LATOYA: Oh, I forgot to tell you.

MEGAN: That, by the way, means they spent more on hair and make-up and clothing and accessories than my condo is worth.

LATOYA: I have personally instituted a ban on discussing anything to do with Palin. As far as I am concerned, she is irrelevant. If she manages a resurrection and comes back to haunt us in 2012, so be it.

MEGAN: What are you going to do when she opens up an exploratory committee in 2010?

LATOYA: But until then, I'd love to see her fade into obscurity. She should be remembered, fondly, like Ross Perot.

MEGAN: Ok, but can we discuss that kind of money?

LATOYA: Thanks for the memories of shout outs at VP debates, but you need to mosey along now. Take your folksy ways and return to the ice cave. I mean, we can discuss the money. But somehow, I can't muster up indignant outrage.

MEGAN: Like, I will guarantee that there's no way on God's green earth that I have spent $110,000 on hair and make-up in my lifetime, even though I've been highlighting my hair for about 6 years.

LATOYA: Maybe if I had bought that whole "salt of the earth, of the white people, heartland of real America" tripe they were selling. Homegirl was just an opportunist. Cindy McCain was rocking nice clothes — why shouldn't she?

MEGAN: Totally. Look, if RNC donors want to give me $180,000 in clothes, I will totally run for office as a Republican. They can even call me A Maverick over and over again because of my support of reproductive choice.

LATOYA: And it's obvious they had the money. If the first card maxed out and they let her keep going, I say get what you get. Credit Cards come with limits.

MEGAN: But Republican money never ends!

LATOYA: That's why they're Republicans. They're supposed to have money, want to keep money, spend their money the way they want, and tell the gov't to mind their damn business. That's what I expect from Republicans. It's comforting that way.

MEGAN: Yeah, I get that. So, moving on, want to talk about NOW and the Feminist Majority Foundation going metaphorical balls to the wall to promote Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy for Clinton's Senate seat?

LATOYA: Why not? Obviously, the dice are lucky.

MEGAN: Because I don't like the idea that a woman's seat ought to be filled by a woman, but McCarthy does have an established record on women's rights issues and is generally cool. But, mostly, I wish to continue pressing the point that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is an unmitigated casual racist not deserving of elected office but certainly not deserving of an appointment to a lifetime Senate seat by David Paterson, the state's first African-American governor.

LATOYA: Hmm, well, I am not so sure about Cuomo. Then again, I'm only thinking about his record at HUD.

MEGAN: Well, then, there's a question. If you have a good record of doing decent things for the community as a whole while tossing around the phrase "shucking and jiving" in reference to an African-American candidate for the Presidency, followed by a steadfast insistence that it is actually not a racist term after the world notices that you said it, what should a politically active person do? Because I choose to call him a racist and think that he should go fuck himself.

LATOYA: Oh, I wasn't sure about the appointment, not your comment on casual racism. I think his HUD record proves he doesn't care about black people.

MEGAN: Then, yeah, fuck that guy.

LATOYA: But back to the original point, I understand what you're saying about not wanting to do this tit for tat seating thing. But I can understand where NOW is coming from, especially with the whispers of sexism around this bailout committee.

Frank credited the current resistance to doing more about foreclosures to ruffled male feathers. “I think part of the problem now is that, to be honest, Shelia Bair has annoyed the Old Boys Club.” He likened the situation to several regulators “up in the treehouse with a ‘No Girls Allowed’ sign.”

MEGAN: I know! I could not believe that shit when I heard it from Moe. I was like, wait, the new Democratic Treasury Secretary is mad about the (technically independent) FDIC chair telling Bush to go fuck himself while she's trying to save Real Americans?

LATOYA: Pretty much. Just call it the "Fuck that bitch" doctrine. She is showing people up so she has got to go.

MEGAN: Also, I think saying that she has to go is akin to when McCain said he would fire Chris Cox at the SEC. I mean, it's their fucking government, you think they could learn who is supposed to be independent — and therefore given a term — and who is supposed to be a sycophant. Tim Geithner either needs to say a bunch more stupid shit so Obama withdraws his name, or get his head screwed on straight. Yo, Tim, you can throw all the money you want at Wall Street and get them to lower interest rates, but if no one has a fucking house in 2 years, the economy is still going to be fucked, and that's what Sheila Bair is trying to prevent, you dumb cunt.

LATOYA: I think prevention is a dirty word to some people. Kind of reminds them of socialism.

MEGAN: But the Republicans promised that we were electing a dirty socialist! They promised!

LATOYA: The Republicans are promising a lot of stuff, but one hand doesn't know what the other hand is doing. Like this rift between the religious right and the ...um...regular right.

MEGAN: This part is kind of awesome.

Ponnuru acknowledges that social conservatives “could present themselves more attractively,” and “pick their spokesmen more wisely.”

No, asshole, at the end of the day, you're still advocating for a fucking theocracy and I am gonna notice no matter how much you pay for Sarah Palin's stylists.

LATOYA: She even used the term Oogedy-Boodgey.

First, to the origins. “Oogedy-boogedy” was bequeathed to me several years ago by my dear, departed friend, political cartoonist Doug Marlette. We were doubtless talking about our shared Southern heritage, about which one does not speak long without mentioning religion.

And, you betcha, oogedy-boogedy.

Marlette, whose childhood was spent among Pentecostals, Baptists, and other passionate believers, had religion in his bones and forgot more scripture than most preachers can recall on a given Sunday. He also won a Pulitzer Prize for his lampooning of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker (peace be upon them) and their “PTL Club.”

If Jim and Tammy Faye put you in mind of oogedy-boogedy, you’re getting warm.

Now, I'm going to be saying Oogedy Boogedy all day.

MEGAN: And, Republican dudes, if you can't figure out what it means, I don't think you get to call me an Un-Real American anymore.

LATOYA: Rick Warren, talking about capping foreign leaders because the bible says so? Oogedy Boogedy!

MEGAN: Also, how is the world not fucking scared of that shit? Spencer said it best: if it was a Muslim preacher saying on national TV abroad that the Koran says they need to suicide bomb us, we would be flipping the fuck out. But a white guy? No, that's cool.

LATOYA: Selective memory. Side effect of the oogedy boogedy.

MEGAN: So, is the oogedy-boogedy something you catch from the Bible, or from other Jeebus-freaks?

LATOYA: Apparently, the bible is OK. It's the freak part that leads to the oogedy boogedy. There have been other strange happenings as well, outside of religion. Like Michelle Malkin talking sense.

MEGAN: Michelle Malkin has been talking some sense on and off again all year and it is sort of freaking me the fuck out in general.

LATOYA: She's done this a couple times before. I'm always kind of shocked, because I can't reconcile a sensible column with the author of "In Defense of Internment." I don't know whether to read or avoid. On her worst days, she makes me want to put my eyes out, Oedipus style, so I do not have to see what senselessness has wrought. But on other days, I wonder if I should move her and Kathleen Parker into regular rotation.

MEGAN: Is it terribly condescending to think that Malkin grew up a little? That after wallowing around in all that scary, informed-only-by-fear filth she sort of looked around at her compatriots, commenters and ass-kissers and thought to herself, damn, these people are crazy?

LATOYA: Then again, we both now she is one "banana cream pie"column (that link is NSFW) away from being in they "why did I ever think we could hang" category. And speaking of even more crazy shit — do you know they are trying to challenge Obama's citizenship?

MEGAN: I am hoping the problem is not just that other wannabe columnists have not decided to out-Malkin Malkin by being crazier, thus making her seem less insane in the process. Yeah, dude, that is some crazytown fucking shit. There are suits claiming the birth certificate is fake, and others claiming that because his father wasn't American, he doesn't qualify.

LATOYA: Remember that Colbert Report segment on Obama going to this crazy foreign nation of Hawaii? Yeah, someone must have forgotten the Colbert Report isn't real news.

MEGAN: Dude! If only! Actually, they are claiming that his mother actually gave birth to him in Kenya but faked that it happened in Hawai'i.

LATOYA: I mean, damn, the birth certificate is online. Hawaii published a column announcing it. WTF?

MEGAN: In this alterna-universe, claiming Hawai'i doesn't count is actually less cray-cray than what they are really claiming. They claim that all that stuff has been faked, as though he's an actual Manchurian candidate.

LATOYA: Oh wait, are you talking about that guy who is suing "the "Peoples Association of Human, Animals Conceived God/s and Religions, John McCain (and) USA Govt." The plaintiff previously sought to sue Wikipedia and "All News Media." Or is he just some fresh crazy? And Clarence Thomas picked up this lawsuit, to presumably dismiss it, which is making blogger like Karynthia get pissed off for having to defend him.

MEGAN: Dude, Alan Keyes filed one of the lawsuits. There are multiple strains of crazy at work.

LATOYA: I expected that. Do you want to talk about terrorism crazy now, or international government crazy?

MEGAN: Oh, it's so hard to decide. I was going to say that we should read what the nanny of the Jewish toddler said about rescuing him because it's sort of awesome in a We-Are-The-World kind of way that transcends race, but we can stick with crazy.

"First thing is that a baby is very important for me and this baby is something very precious to me and that's what made me just not think anything — just pick up the baby and run," Samuel said.

"When I hear gunshot, it's not one or 20. It's like a hundred gunshots," she added. "Even I'm a mother of two children so I just pick up the baby and run. Does anyone think of dying at the moment when there's a small, precious baby?"

LATOYA: I applaud that woman. I am also giving a half-hearted applause to Condi for calling out Mugabe and his general douchbagginess toward his people. The applause is half hearted because we only selectively seek to remove dictators that are screwing with us. Or, rather, standing in the way of something we want.

MEGAN: Right, although, if we're giving Condi a golf clap, we probably have to shout out Raila Odinga, the Kenyan PM, who sorta beat her to the punch on that.

LATOYA: He gets full applause.

MEGAN: I mean, Odinga even beat South African President Kgalema Motlanthe, who probably could have done it as his first act in office or something.

LATOYA: Meanwhile, our neighbors to the South have crazy drug war drama and our neighbors to the North have crazy Parliament drama. Is it just me, or are global current events starting to read like The Days of Our Lives?

MEGAN: OMG, Latoya, seriously, I used to watch Days of Our Lives sort of obsessively. And by sort of obsessively, I mean, once upon a time I stood in line at the mall to get an autography from and picture with Matthew Ashford. That I still have.

LATOYA: And your verdict is?

MEGAN: Days of Our Lives once featured a plot line in which Marlena, possessed by the actual devil wreaked havoc on Salem. I think it's a valid comparison to world events.

LATOYA: Hahahahahahahha — true! I'm about to go get some breakfast (Mocha Hut!) but I did want to leave with this gem. The ignored truth about Iraq is contained in an old ass booklet.

Republished in 2008 by Dark Horse Publications, the tiny booklet for troops heading to protect the Persian Gulf’s oilfields and supply routes is a pronunciation, cultural and religious survival manual whose wisdom applies to Iraq (i-RAHK) during the era of the Toyota pickup truck and Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia as much as to the age of the camel and the Luftwaffe.

“Show respect to all older persons,” writes the anonymous author.

“American success or failure in Iraq may well depend on whether the Iraqis (as the people are called) like American soldiers or not. It may not be quite that simple. But then again it could.”

MEGAN: Sigh.

LATOYA: The book is so old that Muslim is still spelled Moslem and Israel doesn't exist yet (while Iran is a footnote) and yet, the advice is still kind of pertinent.

MEGAN:

“You aren’t going to Iraq to change the Iraqis. Just the opposite.”

LATOYA: Alright — I am out. Pumpkin chai and salmon cake on a bagel, here I come. Thanks, Megan for a fun week, and thanks Jezzies, for the fun conversations. (And pics! Loved that!)

LATOYA: And here's Johnny!

MEGAN: I would never have expected that as your nickname!

LATOYA: LOL. Megan, we have a lot to cover today. The headlines seem good AND I got to talk to Lorelei about national security and terrorism. But first...

MEGAN: Ed Rendell is an insensitive, sexist jerk.

LATOYA: That seems to be going around lately. It's so textbook too — of course Napolitano must be a career woman, she has no family! I liked Campbell Brown's response.

MEGAN: I think it's a communicable disease, passed around by slapping one another's asses in the locker room.

LATOYA: Agreed. We should pass a no-locker-room-ass-slapping ordinance on Capitol Hill.

MEGAN: She is pretty awesome. But, no, it has to stop earlier! Ed Rendell didn't become a sexist late in life. He caught the bug early on! It's rotted his brain, like the syph.

LATOYA: You know, some people just can't be helped. But he should watch his back. Obama is bringing a lot of career women with him.

MEGAN: And some of them even have families and yet can totally do their jobs!!!

LATOYA: Come on Megan — you know they are all just exceptions to the rule.

MEGAN: Right. Women, being less smart and productive than men, have to give up on a family or a social life and work 19-20 hours a day just to kick ass at their jobs. If they have a family, well, they're really just superwomen. Maybe having kids makes you more productive? If you're a woman, that is.

LATOYA: Yup, because obviously, men don't have any help — they just have the aptitude. It's not like there's some kind of system cough patriarchy cough that gives them options and supports their careers working 19 and 20 hour days. But some men seem have resisted some of that conditioning. Did you see David Paterson getting all worked up that no women were nominated to the NY Court of Appeals Judge position?

MEGAN: He's so fucking hot when he's getting all angry.

"What we really wanted to do is just publicly acknowledge ... the disappointing fact that they spanned the globe and couldn't find a woman in New York state that was qualified to serve as the chief judge," he said.

LATOYA: You know, for someone who got drop kicked into the position, Paterson is kicking some ass.

MEGAN: Can you believe that the big boys of old New York politics didn't want him?

LATOYA: Oh, I have a few ideas why. But too bad suckas! Paterson is going to milk this 'till the cow is bone dry! In other news, Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen thought she was being "punked" when she got a congrats call from Obama so she hung up on him. Twice.

"I thought it was one of the radio stations in South Florida playing an incredible, elaborate, terrific prank on me," Ros-Lehtinen told the newspaper. "They got Fidel Castro to go along. They've gotten Hugo Chavez and others to fall for their tricks. I said, 'Oh, no, I won't be punked."'

You know, we always talk about the toll MTV takes on the youth of America — but obviously, there is an unseen victim of reality TV shenanigans.

MEGAN: Ileana Ros-Lehtinen wasn't scared of being the next Chavez on the radio, she was scared of being the next Palin, thinking she was talking to Sarkozy.

LATOYA: Hahahah — good point, I had forgotten that one.

MEGAN: Or she's just heniously insecure:

When an amused Obama called again, Ros-Lehtinen he was either “very gracious” to reach across the aisle by contacting her, or “had run out of folks to call, if you are truly calling me.”

LATOYA: Ladies and Gentleman, I present to you the GOP.

MEGAN: I mean, the top Republican woman in Congress and the Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee — the week after a major terrorist attack AND the week Obama is announcing his team to work on foreign affairs — and she doesn't know why he would call her. Ladies, when I say things like "don't undervalue your contributions at work to people," this is what I'm talking about.

LATOYA: Word. She is not doing any favors to the cause. But now, let's chat about someone else who is rocking it out for women. As you know, Megan, I'm more social justice inclined. I only follow politics because I have to.

MEGAN: Yeah, I'm an addict.

LATOYA: So, I've been reading the terrorism reports with some interest and I had a ton of questions. Luckily, I happen to know a national security expert.

Lorelei Kelly (Washington, DC): Lorelei Kelly is a national security specialist working to educate elected leaders and the American public about security challenges revealed by 9/11. She is the Policy Director of the Real Security Initiative of the White House Project, a non-partisan organization whose mission is to increase the influence of women in media, culture and politics. [Note - she just left this gig, and is working with various military groups to draft National Security recommendations for the new administration.] Kelly's professional background includes teaching at Stanford University's Center on Conflict and Negotiation, working as Senior Associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, a DC think tank, and working on bipartisan national security in Congress. She founded "Security for a New Century" a study group that supports cutting-edge knowledge on foreign policy and defense issues for Congressional members and staff. Kelly attended the Air Command and Staff College program of the US Air Force as well as programs at the National Defense University and Army War College. She co-authored, with Dr. Elizabeth Turpen, a handbook for citizens entitled "Policy Matters: Educating Congress on Peace and Security" and produced a civil-military dialogue guide entitled "A Woman's Guide to Talking About War and Peace" with Dana Eyre USAR. She blogs regularly at democracyarsenal.org and www.huffingtonpost.com

I called her up last night, and we talked about the media, national security, where we are screwing up on terrorism, and what people can actually do.

MEGAN: Other than put their heads in the sand or use people's fears to increase the power and invasiveness of the state's security apparatus?

LATOYA: LOL — exactly. Some people seem to have noticed that move isn't working so well. So check this out — according to Lorelei, there has been no debate on the military budget since 1985. It is difficult to define, people don't want to talk about it, and it is not auditable" — we essentially can't measure what we are getting for what we are spending. Currently, the defense budget is 700 billion, the DoD just asked for 500 million more, and war spending is not counted in this budget.

MEGAN: Well, and part of the problem is that there is no public debate on the military budget, and much of it remains utterly classified as though knowing what we spend on porta-potties in Iraq will help the terrorists win. At best, we get a big number that no one really listens to and no explanation of what it was spent on.

LATOYA: Exactly. And when I talked about government graft earlier in the year, I pointed out how there are defense contractors who are not performing the services they are paid for and yet they can phone a friend and start bidding on contracts again.

MEGAN: And not just bidding, either. Winning. I mean, bidding is for companies that aren't well-connected enough to the Administration to finagle no-bid contracts for themselves.

LATOYA: That's true too! And the worst part is that what we are doing isn't working. Lorelei told me, "Generals coming back from Iraq that say maybe 20% of the problems there have military solutions. All the rest of the problems are about rule of law, girl's education, ideological alternatives, governments that work." She also broke down a big failure in counter terrorism measures that explains why we are wasting so much money:

"It's like spending 9 billion dollars on missile defense (which has never worked). This year, we spent 9 billion - the number is over 130 billion since it started in the 80s. But we don't secure docks and ports, we only apply maybe 400 million to that, and we only inspect 6 to 7% of ports." Lorelei mentions that most terrorists are able to move freely between ports, mainly because of their lack of oversight. And if terrorists were to try to move questionable materials, the port system is the safest as the security is so lacking. "The biggest thing is that our government loans out inspectors to areas that need the help - but since we haven't funded the program, transnational shipping is vulnerable. We have to be there with alternatives at every level."

MEGAN: We need to stop calling it "missile defense" and go back to calling it "star wars" because that was much more effective at conveying to people the fact that it was incredibly expensive and a cool idea that we don't have the capacity to do.

LATOYA: Good point. From now on, we will always refer to it as Star Wars for the purposes of Crappy Hour.

MEGAN: Also, let us point out that where we are citing part of it in Eastern Europe is also causing a large part of our diplomatic problems with Russia. So we are citing a Star Wars site in order to protect our European allies from getting nuked by a pissed off Russia, thus pissing off Russia and tempting them to aim their nukes at our allies in Western Europe.

LATOYA: Lorelei also points out that a friend on the ground (in Afghanistan) told her that a tarp set up in Afghanistan could defeat a 2 million dollar plane. She said "We are fighting this battle with the wrong tools. Whenever terrorist attacks have been foiled, it's come from Scotland Yard, Interpol, or the FBI. It's really local police work. This stuff is preventive work."

MEGAN: And that's not even to mention the need to actively cooperate with the Russians to secure nuclear materials to keep them out of the hands of terrorists eager to use a suitcase nuke or dirty bomb, which could then be snuck in through one of our ill-secured ports.

LATOYA: Oh right - speaking of Europe and Russia, Lorelei made a good point on how the nature of warfare as changed:

"The threats used to come from strong states. Now they come from weak states. The paradigm has been turned on its head. Pakistan is far more dangerous than N. Korea - with N. Korea, we can talk in a way that we know. There's one guy who you know is in charge and who exercises control. Pakistan doesn't have any centralized power - [a threat] could come from anywhere."

MEGAN: As India just found out.

LATOYA: Yeah, and how do you fight that? They are trying to talk to the government and Pakistani government is like "Yo - we don't know!"

MEGAN: Well, the parts of the Pakistan government willing and enabled to talk that was, indeed, not involved that is.

LATOYA: Yeah, that's a problem too. And before I forget, remember that article Anna sent through on the WMDs on Tuesday?

MEGAN: I mean, with all the pirates from Somalia running around trying to hijack cruise ships and stealing oil tankers and shit... Failed and weak states are seeming way more dangerous than Russia. You mean the one where we're about to get it? Yeah, how could I forget.

LATOYA: Well, the first thing Lorelei said when I sent her the link was:

"These kinds of reports are easily oversensationalized. It's really important not to lump all of these things together. Chemicals are very different from nuclear, which are very different from biological. Biological terrorism by pandemic disease can either be natural (an accident) or man introduced. The best response to a biological attack is the hospital staff in your era. The problem is there is never enough - enough communication between labs and hospital teams, enough beds, enough doctors, enough of anything."

MEGAN: Well, that's totally not depressing at all, and about what we said about it the other day, too.

LATOYA: By the way, Lorelei also gave me a link we can use to check your state's preparedness for a biological or chemical attack. They rank all the state heathcare systems. In short: We're screwed. But back to the cashflow — according to Lorelei ""A lot of the Homeland Security money went to "hardening" security. What they call it in government is the better mousetrap." We build these things instead of upgrading our work on TB, AIDS, and Malaria which become pandemics that can spread and cause nationwide chaos.

MEGAN: Yeah, we are pretty much just completely fucked. If I hadn't already driven through Kansas, I would say I was gonna move to Kansas to be safe, but I have, so I don't wanna.

LATOYA: Oh I know. When I worked on the Hill, I thought about moving every time we had a terror drill. If something happened, we would be so screwed. And we aren't VIPs!

MEGAN: I sort of disagree, in that we need to be able to watch and chew gum at the same time as a government. As you pointed out earlier, there are major infrastructure flaws that need fixing and those cost money. Thing is, AIDS, malaria and TB are all the purview of Health and Human Services which, luckily, didn't end up at DHS when it was formed (run, FEMA, run away!!). We need to be funding both.

LATOYA: They are — but they also dovetail into terrorism, as in, what's easiest to spread? Again, we're dropping tons of cash on Star Wars, while the terrorists are bombing cars, hijacking planes, and running up on people with machine guns. I think it's time to reevaluate.

MEGAN: AIDS are malaria are, technically, kind of hard to spread. Are they going to breed infected mosquitoes, smuggle them in and release them? Run around pricking everyone in NY with dirty needles?

LATOYA: Again, depends. But like Lo said, they are all different things. Chemical/Biological/Nuclear all have to be evaluated and dealt with separately. But your point I think goes back to evaluating risk. What poses the greatest risk to the citizenry?

MEGAN: True, but I think conflating AIDS funding with terrorism funding hits on one of my pet Washington peeves, which is how people try to tie their pet issue to the thing most likely to generate funding rather than arguing its merits.

LATOYA: No, I agree the tying funds to something unrelated is an annoying Washington tic. But these things are related.

MEGAN: I don't deny the public health crisis, or the need to spend more money on prevention and research on major diseases, but malaria is of virtually no risk to the U.S. population.

LATOYA: Umm...you sure? I just got my health insurance back.

MEGAN: Yeah, I'm sure.

LATOYA: Before then, if there was an outbreak of anything, I might die. I can't remember my last vaccinations.

MEGAN: There are few vaccinations you need as a grown-up other than a tetanus booster, Hep and a flu shot. I, at least, am too old for Gardisil, so there you go.

LATOYA: But then again, I come from a state where a kid died from a tooth abscess, just because of a lack of dental care, so maybe I'm just paranoid like that.

MEGAN: That was so sad! I remember that case. It's such an argument for expanding SCHIP coverage.

LATOYA: It actually did. They named the new dental bus thing we have after that kid, and it lead to Maryland increasing what dentists are paid with Medicaid so more dentists will accept poor patients. So while I would love to think we're immune to things like Malaria, TB, and other things we thought we cured, you never really know. Like TB — we're okay, and the rate is dropping in the US but there is some disturbing news about TB along the border and drug resistant strains in Latin America. Lorelei mentioned ""We're so stuck [in an old way of thinking] - the first thing we do is build a wall." (See Mexico). "There is a mentality that you can contain threats in today's world. And we have to realize we can't - it is no longer possible."

MEGAN: Well, no one argues that we cured malaria or TB, but malaria hasn't been an issue here in a really, really long time. But, I'm all for raising Medicare reimbursement rates, expanding SCHIP coverage, increasing medical research funds, all that stuff. We just don't have to tie it to terrorism to do it, I think.

LATOYA: So we need to look at that. We may not have to tie it to terrorism, but the two agencies should work in tandem. Just like an increased TB risk may have something to do with securing our border with Mexico.

MEGAN: Drug-resistant diseases are sort of a scourge of health care, in part because so many people — particularly in the developing world where care is lacking —- don't finish their course of antibiotics, they stop taking it when they feel better or they take them when they don't need it. Of course, if we talk about drug resistant TB and securing the border, you know it will inflame prejudices when there's been exactly one case of a Mexico businessman who had it and came here and never infected anyone.

LATOYA: Very true. We also talked about the IMF/World Bank and the relationship between capitalism and democracy, but it's about that time Megan.

MEGAN: It is, but for whatever reason Breton Woods made me start singing the song "Norwegian Wood" in my head, so I will go hum that to myself while I post this.

LATOYA: And now, you made me think of Haruki Murakami. Now I just want to read instead of work.

LATOYA: Ok, let's rock. But first I want to add something to the discussion we were having yesterday. I went back to my site to decompress the thoughts on what should and should not be shown in terms of coverage of tragic events.

MEGAN: Sure.

LATOYA: And after reading through the points made by my readers, the answer was pretty clear: We want more truth in coverage. Violence can be a part of that truth, but most of us are concerned that violent coverage is more for ratings and shock value. Violence happens, and it should be reported on. But asking for more bodies and gore won't necessarily lead us to truth, you know?

MEGAN: And, on the other hand, the American media sanitizes the violence for fear of turning viewers off, and for fear of getting in trouble with the FCC.

LATOYA: Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn't. Like I said before, it depends on who the victims are. That largely dictates what kind of coverage is provided. Your reference to porn yesterday was apt, because I forgot this phenomenon has already been termed disaster pornography.

MEGAN: I disagree that there's any honesty in our coverage, period. I know that, in other countries, there was more coverage of people hurling themselves from the towers on 9/11. I know that, in other countries, there is more honest carnage shown. Our news generally shows people crying as a stand-in for the results of violence. No, disaster porn is different. Disaster porn is fetishizing the violence. There's a difference between showing it and making it beautiful or erotic.

LATOYA: You don't think we fetishize the violence?

MEGAN: I think we fetishize fake violence, and then don't show real violence, so we end up fetishizing violence we never really see.

LATOYA: Part of that fetish led to the comparisons of the war surges with video games. And ultimately, I wonder if violence can be applied effectively at this point because again, the treatment depends on the victims. Nameless bodies piling up in Iraq? Sure, we could show them the citizens, but because Iraqis have been so othered (insert Katt Williams' joke about insurgents here) would it have an impact? And would it have the same impact if we showed the casualties in Iraq, but continued to hide the deaths of our own?

MEGAN: I think it did in Vietnam. And I think we should show both.

LATOYA: But times have changed since Vietnam.

MEGAN: I think humans should be fully aware of what we can do and are doing to one another.

LATOYA: We are literally inundated with data and images of suffering.

MEGAN: And they still carry power over people. Even those images of Vietnam still do.

LATOYA: We are in a different time, war photography has changed, how we perceive war and death has changed and I think we need to look toward a different version of truth. If those images still held the power you say, why are we still engaged in these wars? Why do people not commemorate the bombing of Hiroshima or listen to the survivors of that bombing, some of whom are still living and speaking out?

MEGAN: I mean, I don't want to gross anyone out in the morning, but go look at the pictures of the Bhutto assassination aftermath I picked out when I worked at Wonkette. Tell me that it looks like what you see on TV. Tell me that it looks like what you saw on the news then, or even this weekend. Tell me is isn't horrifying and sickening and much more real. And then think that this is what you didn't actually see in Mumbai, but that it was there too. No amount of blood on a floor can convey that carnage, or that horror.

LATOYA: But is it really, Megan?

MEGAN: And, so, no. It's not at all the same as listening to a survivor, or watching someone cry — even a kid.

LATOYA: We remember that — we're knee deep in news everyday. But do people?

MEGAN: Do people look? They're hardly ever given a chance to.

LATOYA: It's kind of like dealing with the images of starving kids in other nations. Particularly in Africa (and I hate just using a continent as a blanket term.) For a while, it tugged on people's heartstrings.

MEGAN: We're still engaged because people have short memories.

LATOYA: But then, strangely, people just started to accept this is how things are. Africa is just fucked up, no rhyme, no reason to it, and it will never get better.

MEGAN: We aren't engaged because people have short memories. Every place is fucked up. And the solutions are not easy solutions. People gave money, and it didn't get better.

LATOYA: And that mindset is part of the reason why it is hard to motivate people to take action and to protest. If you go for shock (which is what I feel the media is doing) you have to continually shock on a larger and larger scale to take action. Truth is more potent than that. It is less jarring than that initial shock to the system, but longer lasting.

MEGAN: See, I don't think the media is going for shock, because they have to put it on the airwaves. The story I linked to yesterday, that I wrote — they took one of the photos in the set I just linked to, cropped out much of the carnage and then blurred the rest so that you couldn't see. They are giving you a piece of the truth, but not the whole truth. Period. And so the truth remains shrouded. I don't think the truth of Mumbai is a crying child — let alone a crying white child. But that's the truth that people are willing to look at.

LATOYA: I'll cosign, but I don't think the truth is blood on the floor either.

MEGAN: Or, rather, people here. I think the truth is the body on the floor. It's the loss of life. It's the lack of energy in a face.

LATOYA: Anyway, on that note, let's talk about terrorism. As it was dominating the Washington Post coverage this morning. So apparently, a WMD attack is imminent.

MEGAN: Well, that doesn't surprise me. If we think all that planning that went into Mumbai was the end of it, then we're fooling ourselves.

LATOYA:

The report, ordered by Congress last year, concludes that terrorists are more likely to obtain materials for a biological attack than to buy or steal nuclear weapons. But it says the nuclear threat is growing rapidly, in part because of the increasing global supply of nuclear material and technology.

"Without greater urgency and decisive action by the world community, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013," says the draft report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post. The Post reported excerpts from an earlier draft in Sunday's editions.

I am watching to see how the India/Pakistan thing shakes out. India is pushing hard to get Pakistan to hand over people they think were involved in the attacks.

MEGAN: Of course they are. I believe we were keen on then handing over people that were involved in 9/11 and Daniel Pearl's murder once upon a time. I wish them luck with that. I'm more concerned that we're talking about nuclear and biological weapons being used in a terror attack and Homeland Security is years behind on things designed to detect them.

LATOYA: Okay, so I know I've been going on all kinds of tangents this morning (and we've only been talking 15 mins) but it's a big picture kind of day for me. Not only is Homeland Security behind on detection, but our infrastructures won't support an attack.

MEGAN: Or, rather, won't support a decent response to an attack.

LATOYA: Our local governments are stretched to the max and cutting vital services everyday - do you think we're in a position to respond to a major biological attack? With our current health care system?

MEGAN: Hell, it's more than 7 years after 9/11 and emergency responders still can't communicate with one another in many cases. Hospitals are closing.

LATOYA: Right. Why isn't this a part of counterterrorism measures? Our infrastructures need to be stable and funded so if - heaven forbid - something does happen, we can actually minimize the damage.

MEGAN: It is, actually. It's just that getting the bandwidth required for communications back from the phone companies we sold it to was a complete clusterfuck in Washington for years.

LATOYA: head desk

MEGAN: The company that owned it — Nextel — didn't want to give it back without major concessions and new bandwidth. There was lobbying, and gobs of money to be had.

LATOYA: I thought corporations had human rights under the law. Can't we force them to be good citizens?

MEGAN: The government chased its tail (and the bandwidth) for most of the last 7 years. That's why Homeland Security is so far behind on it. That, and no one there has any idea what the fuck they are doing. Nope. Welcome to Washington.

LATOYA: Maybe I should buy one of those Corporate America flags from Adbusters after all...

MEGAN: Back to biological weapons,

Meanwhile, although recent intelligence assessments have warned that a biological attack poses the greatest terror threat, signature defense measures - including the multibillion-dollar Project Bioshield to stockpile antidotes - have made only limited strides, according to Tom Ridge, the first secretary of homeland security.

"There has been a modest amount of work done in that venue, candidly," Ridge said in a recent interview. He said Americans "have spent billions on the development of a bio-defense stockpile but they don't have much to show for it."

LATOYA: More minor notes getting lost in the terrorism frenzy. The EU is concerned that we aren't providing enough aid to developing nations. I swear — what can we buy with a billion dollars? Obviously, not what we were expecting.

MEGAN: Yes, let's talk about that during a recession, when we're trying to provide aid to ourselves. Our own states are asking for aid money now.

LATOYA: Well, if you look at the reports:

The World Bank has said that developing countries are facing a 'perfect storm', with the convergence of slowing growth, a withdrawal of private capital, and higher interest rates on their debt.

The Bank says that growth in developing countries will fall by two percentage points to 4.5% next year, as the volume of global trade contracts for the first time since 1982.

But aid agencies have criticised the fact that neither the head of the World Bank or the IMF, or many other world leaders from rich countries, have come to the talks.

LATOYA: I recently spent a few weekends in the company of some rock star National Security experts —- most notably Lorelei Kelly, formerly of the White House Project — and they all had the same answer to this one. Where we invest the money is the problem.

MEGAN: I don't mean to be terribly flip about it, actually. Foreign aid, when done well, is important. But, yes, where we send it is at issue.

LATOYA: Instead of investing in people and infrastructure, we invest in governments and weapons.

MEGAN: More microfinance and less stock market development, please.

LATOYA: According to Lorelei, the security policy of the 21st century has to include helping countries to develop and educated populace. Umm... I'm on the fence about microfinance.

MEGAN: Oh, and let's eliminate the Mexico City Policy, while we're at it.

LATOYA: It has great benefits.

MEGAN: And, notably, it's cheap.

LATOYA: But...

MEGAN: And it also doesn't generally end up in the hands of dictators to build more palaces.

LATOYA: My girl Tanglad opened my eyes to the other side of microcredit.

In her study of Grameen Bank microcredit programs in rural Bangladesh,* Leila Karim finds that the focus on the 98 percent loan recovery rate hides how beneficiaries are co-opted into “a political economy of shame.”

Microcredit works by appropriating the only social capital poor women possess — their virtue and family honor. Among the Ifugao women in the northern Philippines,** microcredit beneficiaries are grouped into cohorts of five to fifteen members. They are given clear instructions: “You are all responsible for the loan and have to make sure that no one defaults.”

This lays the foundation of a very effective surveillance system, wherein poor women monitor other poor women. And the poorest women, the ones who need loans the most, are evicted from the group to minimize the risk of default.

Given the surprising lack of entrepreneurial or job skills training in microcredit schemes, it’s not unusual for a member to default on her loan. This is when things get even uglier, as the other women in the cohort are forced to extract payment.

In Bangladesh, for example, women march off together to publicly scold a member who falls behind on her loan payments. The cohort would also scold her husband in public. If she could not produce the money, the other women in her cohort would take anything that could be sold for loan payments — her cows and chicks, grain from her family’s pantry, uprooted trees and plants from her yard. Even her gold nose-ring, an important symbol of marital status for rural women.

When even these repossessions were not enough to repay the loan, the cohort could instigate the ultimate dishonor of ghar bhanga (literally, “house-breaking”), where the defaulting member’s house is sold off to pay for the microloan.

I think it's a good tool, but not a solution. Just like with capitalism, some people will flourish and thrive under microcredit, and some won't. Oh, some background — Tanglad writes from the Philippines, a major export zone, and ground zero for monitoring the effects of globalization.

MEGAN: That's true. But, like the protesters who argue that vast swaths of the developing world should not have to pay back their loans to lending institutions, I disagree that structuring a system without consequences for default is a good plan. Like, say, what we're seeing with Fannie and Freddie here.

LATOYA: This is also true. I'm not sure Tagland is arguing for that though — she's basically asking that some of the worker protections we enjoy are extended to the developing world, which would allow for more women to take traditional jobs. But, that would also make labor more expensive, which defeats the purpose of exporting. (She also blogs about labor activism and the people who vanish each year for asking for the rights we enjoy.)

MEGAN: I'm for labor protections, but the idea that we'll pay the same wages in the Philippines as here isn't going to function. There will always be labor cost differentials.

LATOYA: True — but do we have to pay the dirt cheapest wages at all times? I know you watched that Primark documentary.

MEGAN: That is, for better or for worse, how capitalism functions. Management buys labor for what laborers are willing to sell it for. It's the purpose of organized labor, to set an agreed-upon floor.

LATOYA: But our capitalism ain't capitalism. Laborers are willing to sell things for so low because they don't have many other options, and major players rig the market so that many countries are forced to import food and other vital necessities at above cost. I feel like a lot of our global problems can be solved by understanding the flow of money and labor. So many things stem from that: the artificial understanding of cost, the desperation that leads to terrorism, the food crisis.

MEGAN: Well, I think the importation of goods that could be locally produced cheaper is a remnant of colonialism, so thank Britain for that.

LATOYA: And just shrugging and saying "hey, that's the way things are" ignores how this system has hyper-evolved over the last fifty years.

MEGAN: But it's also a lack of free markets in those countries that would allow the market to function properly — which is to say, if it can be produced cheaper locally, in a functioning market, it would be.

LATOYA: False. Not if we prohibit them from doing so!

MEGAN: But there are still a lot of governments in the developing world that rely on command economic structures.

LATOYA: Hang on, let me pull out my old post standby...

MEGAN: We don't prohibit countries from producing goods. We prohibit them from exporting them to us by our tariff structure, or make it less economically viable by our farm subsidization programs. That isn't the same thing.

LATOYA: Actually, we do. We can put restraints on the money we provide unless the country meets the conditions we set. This happened in Malawi. We told them that in order to get funding from us, they could not farm their own food. Analysts decided it was cheaper for Malawi to import food and sell other goods and services. This led to a massive food shortage for a few years. The government finally decided to defy the recommendations (at great risk - because that could mean the end of the money stream) and subsidized its farmers the way we do. And that ended the food crisis for two consecutive years.

MEGAN: Now, that is an oversimplification of what went on, honestly.

LATOYA: They sent the emergency aid to other nations. Now, every African nation is not Malawi.

MEGAN: We didn't prohibit them from farming their own food. We refrained from giving them money to pay for a subsidy program.

LATOYA: Megs, if they rely on that money, isn't that a prohibition? Now, it's not like every single situation works out this way.

MEGAN: So we're supposed to fund every other country's farm subsidy program?

LATOYA: Global finance works in strange ways, and impacts different nations differently.

MEGAN: We shouldn't be funding our own.

LATOYA: We are funding our own — but, yes, we need to shift to helping nations become self-sufficient.

MEGAN: The point of subsidies is that it encourages inefficiencies. Subsidies don't encourage self-sufficiency.

LATOYA: In some nations. And in some nations, it prevents starvation. Yes, they can. If you check the food experts take on this, our insistence on an efficient market lead to this mess in the first place.

MEGAN: No, there are plenty of factors which led to the underlying problems that then necessitated the use of subsidies.

LATOYA: Like the droughts. But there is a reason the global south continues to reject a whole slew of policies that they see as ensuring their dependence on foreign aid and imported food.

MEGAN: Or the inefficient farming system that relied upon one, high-intensive food stuff.

LATOYA: What, like Mexico?

MEGAN: Maize is not an efficient crop. It's also debilitating on the soil and — notably — not native to Africa.

LATOYA: Who structured most of their eating habits around what could be bountifully grown and then found themselves fucked over following the import/export strategy prescribed?

MEGAN: In no small part because we subsidize heavily the growing of it here. Which we should stop, but we won't, because no one else will either. Subsidies either have to be multilateral disarmament, or they will never go away.

LATOYA:

When tens of thousands of people staged demonstrations in Mexico last year to protest a 60 percent increase in the price of tortillas, many analysts pointed to biofuel as the culprit. Because of U.S. government subsidies, American farmers were devoting more and more acreage to corn for ethanol than for food, which sparked a steep rise in corn prices. The diversion of corn from tortillas to biofuel was certainly one cause of skyrocketing prices, though speculation on biofuel demand by transnational middlemen may have played a bigger role. However, an intriguing question escaped many observers: how on earth did Mexicans, who live in the land where corn was domesticated, become dependent on U.S. imports in the first place?

From the Nation Manufacturing a Food Crisis. Damn, it's close to 10.

MEGAN: Notably, we also subsidize the production of ethanol — and impose heavy tariffs on cheap Brazilian ethanol to keep the prices high.

LATOYA: Resume tomorrow? I'll call Lorelei about national security and grab my copy of notes from the Global South.

MEGAN: Or maybe we'll have just convinced the government to forgo ethanol tariffs and farm subsidies by then.

LATOYA: Farm subsidies fuck us up — but that's my day job, so I'm biased. We'll talk more about that tomorrow too.

MEGAN: Farm subsidies fuck a lot of shit up, and it isn't my day job. But, yes, tomorrow!