Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

SANE 2004 ended on Friday, leaving me feeling a little sad. For five days, that had formed my purpose and I had enjoyed biking through the south of the city to the RAI, drinking lots of decent coffee and attending the various technical sessions.

Thursday's social event saw us take a coach to Nieuwendam, where we boarded a boat that sailed up and down the North Sea Channel for a few hours. It was a catered event, with good oriental food and a cheesy, slightly discordant saxophone band. We had lots of fun, though, which is the only thing that counts.

Friday saw my business card randomly plucked from the hat to select the contestants for the InSANE quiz. Random, my arse. I had to get up on stage and compete in the closing trivia quiz. I hate the limelight, but I must admit that it was quite amusing and satisfying in a personal way. I didn't win, but I did manage to answer a few hard questions (and miss a few easy ones, I'm afraid).

I took part in a demonstration yesterday against the current cabinet's myopic and destructive policies. More than 200,000 people turned out for the march to the Museumplein, which is reportedly the largest turnout for a march in Amsterdam since the demonstrations against the deployment of American cruise missiles here in the early eighties. It was quite a moving experience to march alongside thousands upon thousands of similarly pissed off people.

In the evening, Jo and I went out to a Belgian restaurant called Lieve, which was particularly good for the price.

This evening, we went to see Simon, the Dutch entry for next year's Oscars. Geoff couldn't understand a word of it, but Jo and I enjoyed it immensely. That's a film I'd like to own on DVD when it eventually emerges.

Time has passed quickly since we got here. It's hard to imagine that we're leaving already. I've viewed a prospective home on the Prinsengracht, renewed some acquaintances, attended a system administration conference, biked around my favourite city on earth, attended a demonstration and generally had quite a productive time of it. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to seeing my wife again, even if I do have to return to the US in order to do so. Still, at least I can get some Leonidas on the way out.

Geoff pointed me in the direction of David Neiwert's blog this morning. I haven't had a great deal of time to peruse it, but my eye was caught by the first instalment of a six-part article entitled The Rise of Pseudo Fascism.

I urge you to read this. It's not very long and it very eloquently addresses an important concern: the American neo-conservatives are not conservative at all. They are radical and extreme, and their movement has taken on many of the tenets of fascism. Only a few key elements are still absent, which is why the author talks of pseudo-fascism, as opposed to the real thing.

I won't bother paraphrasing or quoting chunks of the article here; it's better that you simply read it for yourself and think about the issues raised, especially if you are an American citizen or a resident of the US. This lays bare the tactics being used to demonise all who oppose the so-called conservative movement's agenda, branding dissenters as weak and un-American.

Wij zijn in blije verwachting or, put another way, we're expecting a baby! Sarah is pregnant.

This is something we had been postponing for a while now, as both Sarah and I had been ready to have children for some time.

For one thing, I didn't want Sarah to have to deal with American ante-natal medical care, which places too much emphasis on technology and not enough on nature and the woman's body. The high Caesarian section and episiotomy rates alone are enough to scare one away from obstetrical care in the US. Add to that the lack of midwifery in hospitals and I lose all faith in the medical system here.

The situation is much better back in The Netherlands, where home births are the norm and midwifery is standard practice, so it seemed sensible to wait another year and reap the full benefits of the Dutch healthcare system.

Secondly, I didn't want to have to deal with citizenship issues. If the child is born here, it will automatically be a US citizen and I will have to take steps to acquire the Dutch nationality for the child. What a hassle.

On the other hand, what if one or both of us turned out to have some kind of fertility problem? What if there was no problem to be found, but it just took us a year? Wouldn't we be sorry if we waited, only to find out we were going to have to wait even longer?

The urge to have a baby was already very strong, so we reasoned we should just start trying and see what happened. It would probably take a while, in any case. Only if she got pregnant very quickly would we end up having the baby in the US, and what were the chances of that?

Well, we were wrong. Sarah got pregnant on the first attempt and the baby is due on 18th May 2005.

Sarah and I paid our first visit to the obstetrician today. Although we plan to use a midwife for a natural delivery at home, we also hope to gain from the obstetrical system the few benefits we feel it offers. One such benefit is ultrasound.

Thanks to this, we were able to take our first look at our fledgling progeny today. The ultrasound equipment measured the embryo and estimated its age at 8 weeks, 4 days ± 3 days. We know the exact age to be 8 weeks and 6 days, so that was a pretty good estimate by the machine.

As the obstetrician levered the probe, the embryo twisted into view and a few pulsating pixels revealed the location of the heart. My eyes filled with tears at the sight of this tiny person, amorphous and scarely bigger than my little toe, but somehow already imposingly real and a huge part of my world and feelings.

I've been sure all along that I'm completely ready to become a father, but my reaction to the ultrasonic sight of my future child was another emotional confirmation. I already feel so much love for this tiny miracle growing in Sarah's womb that it's hard to imagine what will take hold of me when he or she joins us in the corporeal world.

Our next ultrasound is scheduled for 14th December. I can hardly wait.

We finally picked our midwife today: Rosanna Davis from Town & Country Midwifery. She'll be delivering our baby, some seven months from now, in our home. Rosanna shares our views on childbirth, favouring a holistic and natural approach, free from medical procedures and interventions.

Oddly enough, midwives are not terribly common in this part of the world. Back home in The Netherlands, however, they are the norm. Most births there are performed at home, whilst here in the USA, most women choose to give birth in the hospital. Why is that?

Well, first of all, choose isn't a very accurate word to use here, as most women in the US simply aren't offered the choice. Sliding into obstetrical care is completely automatic once you're pregnant. The word midwife won't even come up during your visits to the doctor unless you are the one who utters it.

But why would anyone want a midwife in this day and age? After all, hospitals are full of medical experts, who are trained to deal with any emergency, right? Don't you want the best for your baby? Besides, the doctors are the experts in pain management, right? You don't like pain, do you? Why not just have an epidural and make it easy on yourself?

This article by Shelley Girard goes some way to explain why Sarah and I are choosing to have an unmanaged home birth instead.

We don't believe that pregnancy is an illness. We therefore think it's odd to treat it in hospital. Those are for sick people.

Women who give birth in hospital are strapped up to foetal monitoring machines, which impede their ability to move around. The supine position they are forced to assume for the convenience of the medical staff causes narrowing of the birth canal, which makes labour that much more difficult. Food and drink is usually not on hand, even though the woman needs to keep up her energy and stay hydrated.

Research has shown — and women will tell you — that labour is much easier when the woman is allowed to move around, stand, lean, squat and generally do whatever it is that her body tells her to do. She does not need to be told when to push; her own body will do that.

A woman who feels uncomfortable in her surroundings may find her labour does not progress. This can have many root causes, such as the unfamiliar and inhospitable delivery room, strangers walking in and out of the room, a complete stranger delivering the baby in many cases, or a lack of confidence in herself and a fear of pain, often inspired by positive reinforcement that she needs the medical staff and their technology in order to give birth.

To make matters worse, non-progressive labour is often treated with Pitocin, a drug that can lead to unnaturally heavy contractions, which, in turn, can lead to foetal distress.

Babies born in hospital are susceptible to infections, as hospitals are full of germs, germs that the baby has no resistance to. If the mother gives birth at home, the baby will still enter an environment full of germs, but they are germs that the mother has been subjected to for a long time. In turn, she has passed immunity to those germs on to her baby via the placenta.

In the US, 24% of births result in a Caesarian section, compared to 8% in The Netherlands. The mortality rate of babies born by C-section is 3 to 4 times higher than those born vaginally. The morbidity rate is 20 times higher. The mortality rate is also much higher in the US than it is in The Netherlands, as is the mortality rate of babies born in the hospital vs. babies born at home. Coincidence?

Sticking with the statistics, an episiotomy is performed on more than 90% of American woman during labour. In The Netherlands, that figure is only 8%. Is the northern European vagina anatomically different to its American counterpart? I think not.

Malpractice suits are common in the US and damages run high, so fear of such suits is a genuine concern amongst physicians, including obstetricians. Add to this the fact that hospitals can charge a woman's health insurance company more money if they perform more interventions and the picture starts to get very ugly, indeed.

These are just a few of the reasons we don't want a hospital birth. Believe it or not, there are many more, ranging from child/parent separation issues to a differing belief on when to cut the umbilical cord.

As is the case with any subject one cares about, it pays to have educated yourself when it comes to making the best choice for yourself and your loved ones.

Thanks to Geoff for sending in this story.

That Bush's supporters are so patently stupid that many of them believe whatever the right-wing extremists tell them is not news to anyone, but that they choose to believe statements that even Bush and his cronies (no longer) claim to be true, should give you some clue as to how deep in the shit the US now is.

Apparently, 75% of Bush's supporters still believe Iraq was providing substantial aid to Al-Qaeda. But wait; it gets worse. 51% believe Bush favours participation in the Kyoto treaty, something for which our least favourite babbling baboon has never even tried to conceal his contempt. The mind boggles at the extent to which people will go to delude themselves.

Perhaps the only rational explanation is that, when something like the Kyoto treaty is explained to people in a political survey, they conclude that their president simply must be in favour of it, because it's so obvious a good cause and one that should be supported. But then, the discovery that their beloved president is against it would shake their world to its core and cause them to have to rethink their loyalties.

As Kevin Spacey's character, Lester Burnham, says in American Beauty, never underestimate the power of denial.

Poignant. Thanks for sending that in, Geoff.

Even staunch Republicans are abandoning ship now, including Eisenhower's son.

The British Royal Navy now allows Satanism to be practised on board its vessels.

This seems to have caused quite a stir, which is rather odd, if you consider that the Church of Satan preaches the tenet of vengeance instead of turning the other cheek. That seems closer to the British military's modern day raison d'être of attacking without provocation, so why the fuss?

Of course, it's the little horned bloke with the trident in his mitt. God-fearing people have always had a problem with that imagery. If you remove the religious association from the dogma, then it would make for a much more comfortable fit. The Church of Satan just needs some good PR people.

Europeans often tell me that Americans have no appreciation for or even perception of sarcasm. Indeed, I have noticed that many people here will sometimes say, "I was being ironic", when they wish to indicate that they were attempting to employ sarcasm, not irony, in something they just said.

At the recent SANE 2004 conference, a Frenchman remarked to me how sarcastic my accompanying colleague, Geoff, was and how surprising he found this, coming from an American.

Well, Geoff's not the only one, as this article about maintaining one's belief in George Bush demonstrates. Thanks once again to Sarcastic Geoff for this one. It's nice to see George's long list of successes so cogently stated, so that we may all admire them and the figure responsible for them.

Thanks to Jo for letting me know that John Peel died today.

This is a very sad day for music lovers everywhere. John's commitment to exposing new talent and filling the massive gap left by mainstream radio resulted in the unearthing of countless British acts, who would otherwise quite possibly have gone undiscovered.

John would frequently play demo tapes, sent in by bands looking for some exposure and dreaming of a record deal. Thanks to him, the Cocteau Twins hooked up with 4AD. Can you imagine what the world would have been like without the Cocteau Twins?

Often, John would invite bands into the BBC studio to record three or four tracks for broadcast on his evening show. Taped recordings of these shows were a favourite with fans and bootleggers alike. Many an album of the so-called Peel Sessions made its way onto the markets of Portobello Road and Camden Town.

In the late eighties, Strange Fruit started to officially release these sessions on vinyl and CD. Some of my favourite bands to feature on the Peel Sessions were The Sisters of Mercy, The Stranglers, That Petrol Emotion, Cocteau Twins, X-Mal Deutschland, Joy Division, New Order, Dead Can Dance, Inspiral Carpets, The Smiths and House of Love, but there are hundreds, if not thousands more.

John was 65, an age I'll reach in 27 years. The thought leaves me feeling strangely old and mortal. I'll never forget the sheer love of music that poured from him on each and every one of his shows; nor the tales he told of The Pig (his affectionate name for his wife); nor the times I saw him standing at the back of many a gig in London (where he was twice the age of everyone else there); his sarcastic introductions to artists appearing on Top of the Pops ("Just when you thought pop music was getting boring, here's Bon Jovi!"); the Festive Fifty at Christmas; etc., etc.

You'll be missed, John. Your innumerable loyal listeners and the hundreds of bands whose career you launched all owe you an immeasurable debt of gratitude. Your show was literally the only thing about England that I missed when I left for good in 1991.

Wishing you teenage kicks right through the night.

After an entry on sarcasm, here's one on irony.

The Google adverts down the right-hand side of this page are now proudly trying to encourage you, the humble blog reader, to depart this site in favour of those extolling the virtues of the Republican cause. That's right: all my railing against Bush has convinced Google that I must be a big fan of this intellectual midget. Now, that's irony!

One of the adverts, however, is simply too crass to pass up. If you thought the next American election would be fought on foreign policy, taxation or something similarly banal, think again. The real action is on the dining room table, where condiments are the new weapons of mass distraction.

I hope you care as much as I do about which way your ketchup will vote.