I want to add one more comment to the earlier posting on The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion that Drove the Spaniards Out of the Southwest by David Roberts. One of my friends was bothered by Roberts' description of the Apaches and Navajos as "nomads" during the 16th century, where that term was used to contrast their societies with those of the Pueblos. She felt that the term was derogatory.
The Pueblos were permanent towns built by people whose diet was based on agricultural products which they produced locally. The Spanish word "pueblo" means both "people" and "town" or "village". Their agriculture was relatively complex, and they had long used fairly sophisticated means of water control to assure productivity in an arid land.
The Apache and Navajo were semi-nomadic. They did not live in permanent towns but moved from place to place. Their food included more produced from hunting and gathering (and trade with more agricultural tribes).
So at one level, the terms Roberts used were descriptive. I don't know any other simple term than "nomad" to describe the way of life of people who do not live year round in towns but move from place to place to take advantage of the seasonal opportunities of different locations. The term "puebloan" seems quite reasonable to describe the people who lived full time in the Pueblos, which were in some cases built of stone masonry.
It is interesting that many of my friends now live a nomadic existence in the sense that they spend the warm months in Washington and move to other climes in the winter. Still, I think there is a tendency to attach negative connotations to the nomadic way of life.
Of course traditional nomadic cultures tend not to accumulate too many goods, limiting their physical possessions to what can be easily moved. Indeed, one associates wealth of nomadic people with their flocks and herds, self propelled possessions. (My mother once worked for the Clark family of Singer Sewing Machine wealth, who migrated from place to place in their five railroad cars, keeping lots of immobile possessions in each of their estates.)
We should not assume that the lacking heavy physical possessions, nomadic cultures are impoverished. Poetry, music, textiles, and other forms of cultural expression don't weigh much but can be very rich! These indigenous cultures tend to have rich religious traditions and a lot of oral history.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Thursday, April 09, 2009
"UN to hold summit on financial crisis in June"
EDITH M. LEDERER writes in Public Opinion:
The General Assembly approved a resolution Tuesday inviting leaders of the 192 U.N. member states to a summit on the global financial crisis in June.......The summit at U.N. headquarters in New York from June 1-3 also will focus on reforming and strengthening the international financial and economic system.......The Group of 77, which represents 132 mainly developing countries and China, has already pledged full participation for the June summit.......A commission of experts chaired by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz is providing recommendations on international financial structures and practices in preparation for the summit."
FCC Developing Plan To Deliver Broadband
Subtitle: "Agency Examining How to Improve Access"
Source: Cecilia Kang, The Washington Post, April 9, 2009
"The Federal Communications Commission yesterday began mapping out a plan to bring high-speed Internet service to the entire nation, starting with questions on how to increase its availability, improve its quality of service and make it more affordable......The public will be able to submit comments to the agency for the next 60 days and then reply comments will be open for another 30 days."
Comment: I hope you will join me in commenting on how much we need a good plan to push universal broadband coverage quickly. It is an infrastructure the nation needs to compete in the global knowledge society. I don't know how best to develop the policies to stimulate broadband roll out, but I know it is important to get those policies in place! JAD
Source: Cecilia Kang, The Washington Post, April 9, 2009
"The Federal Communications Commission yesterday began mapping out a plan to bring high-speed Internet service to the entire nation, starting with questions on how to increase its availability, improve its quality of service and make it more affordable......The public will be able to submit comments to the agency for the next 60 days and then reply comments will be open for another 30 days."
Comment: I hope you will join me in commenting on how much we need a good plan to push universal broadband coverage quickly. It is an infrastructure the nation needs to compete in the global knowledge society. I don't know how best to develop the policies to stimulate broadband roll out, but I know it is important to get those policies in place! JAD
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
"Cybercriminals are profiting rom spam and 'scareware'"
Source: Jack Schofield, The Guardian, 8 April 2009.
"Scareware" is being used by cybercriminals promoting fake security software to exploit users' desire to keep their computers protected, according to Microsoft's sixth Security Intelligence Report.
Microsoft now reports that around 97% of all the emails sent over the net are unwanted. A MessageLabs Intelligence spokesman put the proportion of spam at 82% for 2008; however MessageLabs offers services only to businesses whereas Microsoft's numbers include a high proportion of consumers.
The Trustworthy Computing initiative of Microsoft seems to be reducing computer infections. Protection software was cleaning infections from 33.6 of every 1,000 PCs runnning the original version of Windows XP. It's only 2.6 of every 1,000 running Vista SP1.
"Has power grid been hacked? U.S. won't say"
Source: Steve Holland and Randall Mikkelsen, Yahoo Tech, April 8, 2009.
The Wall Street Journal is cited as reporting "that cyberspies had penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system. The Journal said the intruders have not sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure but could try during a crisis or war."
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters the power grid is vulnerable to potentially disabling computer attacks, while declining to comment on reports that an intrusion had taken place.Comment: I suspect that the cyber threat is more severe than most people know. Think about the experience of the World Bank, where during the Satyam problems the Bank's President was told that he could remove all the computer support people and contracts immediately or he could continue the operation of the Bank, but not both. It took a couple of years to untangle the contractor from the Bank. If the electrical system and other infrastructure systems could be crippled, the country would grind to a halt. Think about the banks, the airlines, the railroads, today's trucking industry, the mail and other delivery systems, not to mention the government's bureaucracy. Of course, the threat probably goes both ways. We have hackers too, and other nations are also increasingly dependent on the cybersystems running their infrastructure. JAD
"The vulnerability is something that the Department of Homeland Security and the energy sector have known about for years," she said. "We acknowledge that ... in this world, in an increasingly cyber world, these are increasing risks."......
The United States for several years has accused the Chinese and Russians, among others, of using cyber-attacks to try to steal American trade secrets, military secrets and government secrets.
The Chinese have been particularly active, a former U.S. security official told Reuters.
"They are all over the place," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They're getting into university systems, contractor systems, hacking government systems. There's no reason to think that the electrical system would be immune as well."
Texas School Board Strikes Against Evolution Still Again
Source: "SCIENCE EDUCATION: New Texas Standards Question Evolution, Fossil Record," Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, Science 3 April 2009: Vol. 324. no. 5923, p. 25
I quote:
New science standards for Texas schools strike a major blow to the teaching of evolution, say scientists and educators who last week tried unsuccessfully to block the adoption of last-minute amendments aimed at providing an opening for the teaching of creationism. The standards incorporate talking points from the intelligent design literature, including doubt that the fossil record provides convincing evidence of evolution. Supporters of the new standards, who prevailed on 27 March by a vote of 13 to 2, say the next step will be to press publishers to modify biology textbooks.Comment: The Texas standards influence textbook publishers in the United States because of the size of the Texas market, and thus influence the contents of school text books in all 50 states.
I would have hoped that on the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origen of Species the vast majority of Americans would accept evolution, but the ignorance of many Americans seems to defy such progress! Arghh!
It the United States is to stay competitive in a global economy increasingly dominated by knowledge-intensive goods and services, facing competition from increasingly educated peoples in Europe, Asia and even Latin America, then we can not afford to write off half of the country's educational systems, nor to take chances with the biological education of the rest of the nation's students. JAD
Rates of Computer Infections
The map illustrates the number of computers cleaned per thousand executions of the Malicious Software Removal Tool.Source: "The Latest Microsoft Security Intelligence Report," Microsoft.
A comment on the Pueblo Revolt
My book club last night discussed The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion that Drove the Spaniards Out of the Southwest by David Roberts. (I have already posted on the book.) The book tells the story of the colonization of New Mexico by Spanish speaking people from New Mexico. During the period of a century covered by the book native Americans joined the Spanish in campaigns against other native Americans. One of my friends asked why. The question made me think.
It presupposes that tribes in what is now New Mexico identified the Europeans as significantly different than the other native American tribes. The people of the United States have a couple of centuries of experience with discrimination and prejudice of European Americans against African Americans, native Americans and Asian Americans, so the European versus native is very significant to us. I can imagine that 500 years ago it may not have been so significant to the native Americans living in the South West. When tribes were taking sides for a campaign or battle, the "racial" difference may not have seemed any more important than the differences in language and culture among the tribes to the tribal peoples themselves.
One of my friends noted that it is sometimes hard to tell the differences that really matter from those that do not. After centuries it is painfully apparent that the European advance into what has become the United States, but how could the people of the tribes of the South West possibly have predicted that future in the 17th century?
Of course, it is possible that it looked better to be on the side of the group with firearms, horses, war dogs, and steal armor than on the side of the folk fighting with rocks and bows and arrows. And indeed, the survival of the people who allied themselves with the Spanish might have been better than that of the people who opposed them.
Some may have been converted to Christianity and have seen the Spanish introduction of livestock and new crops as signs of a more advanced culture that they desired to share. And indeed, for the survivors of the epidemics and famines that followed the Spanish-Mexican colonization, there were important advantages in some of the technologies brought from Europe. We don't know what would have happened had those tribes not sided with the foreign invaders, and that future might have been worse for them and/or for all.
Ultimately, political decisions are made by groups of people working with limited rationality and incomplete information. As the cowboy said when asked why he had stripped naked and jumped into the cactus patch, "it may have seemed like a good idea at the time".
The comparable question is why the Spanish colonists went into New Mexico. Perhaps the leaders of the expedition had some hope of obtaining fame and wealth, but their followers were facing hardships and likely early death in a very harsh land that was already occupied by another people. Of course, it was likely that their futures would not have been very bright had they not immigrated to New Mexico. Some, like the priests among them, may have immigrated due to missionary zeal, but most one assumes were otherwise motivated. Perhaps to the too, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
One of the difficulties that David Roberts had in writing the book was that he believed that the modern Puebloans had sources of information on the events of the 17th century that they would not share with him.
He notes at one point in the book that the Pueblo leaders tend to feel that there are other times from their history that are more important to remember than the horrors of the Spanish colonization, that there are better lessons to be drawn from history than those from such desperate times. This reminds me that attitudes towards history as culture specific. And indeed, the aspects of history we find most interesting and valuable change with time, even within a given culture. That is why in every generation, historians can profitably reexamine the history that earlier historians have interpreted.
Still it seems that the Puebloans tend to be very secretive about aspects of their culture and history. It has been suggested that they feel that were critical information to be obtained by the wrong people it would be very dangerous. We find it hard to understand why that should be.
The metaphor that occurred to me is the U.S. government classification of information. The policies were created to keep military secrets from falling into the hands of enemies. Of course, any policy that allows government bureaucrats and politicians to shield their activities from public view is an invitation to corruption and misuse, but it seems clear that even with good intentions people classify information that poses no security threat.
If we "rational and modern" people can create a complex and expensive system to classify information and limit its distribution to those with "the need to know", we should be able to relate to Puebloans if they too have developed cultural taxonomies of information including categories of "dangerous information" and have institutionalized means to limit the distribution of such information to those culturally authorized to know it.
It presupposes that tribes in what is now New Mexico identified the Europeans as significantly different than the other native American tribes. The people of the United States have a couple of centuries of experience with discrimination and prejudice of European Americans against African Americans, native Americans and Asian Americans, so the European versus native is very significant to us. I can imagine that 500 years ago it may not have been so significant to the native Americans living in the South West. When tribes were taking sides for a campaign or battle, the "racial" difference may not have seemed any more important than the differences in language and culture among the tribes to the tribal peoples themselves.
One of my friends noted that it is sometimes hard to tell the differences that really matter from those that do not. After centuries it is painfully apparent that the European advance into what has become the United States, but how could the people of the tribes of the South West possibly have predicted that future in the 17th century?
Of course, it is possible that it looked better to be on the side of the group with firearms, horses, war dogs, and steal armor than on the side of the folk fighting with rocks and bows and arrows. And indeed, the survival of the people who allied themselves with the Spanish might have been better than that of the people who opposed them.
Some may have been converted to Christianity and have seen the Spanish introduction of livestock and new crops as signs of a more advanced culture that they desired to share. And indeed, for the survivors of the epidemics and famines that followed the Spanish-Mexican colonization, there were important advantages in some of the technologies brought from Europe. We don't know what would have happened had those tribes not sided with the foreign invaders, and that future might have been worse for them and/or for all.
Ultimately, political decisions are made by groups of people working with limited rationality and incomplete information. As the cowboy said when asked why he had stripped naked and jumped into the cactus patch, "it may have seemed like a good idea at the time".
The comparable question is why the Spanish colonists went into New Mexico. Perhaps the leaders of the expedition had some hope of obtaining fame and wealth, but their followers were facing hardships and likely early death in a very harsh land that was already occupied by another people. Of course, it was likely that their futures would not have been very bright had they not immigrated to New Mexico. Some, like the priests among them, may have immigrated due to missionary zeal, but most one assumes were otherwise motivated. Perhaps to the too, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
One last thing
A Metaphor
A Metaphor
One of the difficulties that David Roberts had in writing the book was that he believed that the modern Puebloans had sources of information on the events of the 17th century that they would not share with him.
He notes at one point in the book that the Pueblo leaders tend to feel that there are other times from their history that are more important to remember than the horrors of the Spanish colonization, that there are better lessons to be drawn from history than those from such desperate times. This reminds me that attitudes towards history as culture specific. And indeed, the aspects of history we find most interesting and valuable change with time, even within a given culture. That is why in every generation, historians can profitably reexamine the history that earlier historians have interpreted.
Still it seems that the Puebloans tend to be very secretive about aspects of their culture and history. It has been suggested that they feel that were critical information to be obtained by the wrong people it would be very dangerous. We find it hard to understand why that should be.
The metaphor that occurred to me is the U.S. government classification of information. The policies were created to keep military secrets from falling into the hands of enemies. Of course, any policy that allows government bureaucrats and politicians to shield their activities from public view is an invitation to corruption and misuse, but it seems clear that even with good intentions people classify information that poses no security threat.
If we "rational and modern" people can create a complex and expensive system to classify information and limit its distribution to those with "the need to know", we should be able to relate to Puebloans if they too have developed cultural taxonomies of information including categories of "dangerous information" and have institutionalized means to limit the distribution of such information to those culturally authorized to know it.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
"After the G20: UN chiefs point the way to recovery"
Meeting at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on the weekend of 4 and 5 April, the Chief Executives of 28 UN bodies issued a joint communiqué on the economic crisis.The social effects of the crisis are already disturbing and could worsen. If action is not taken urgently, it can be devastating for the most vulnerable and voiceless, with growing social insecurity and displacement of people. The achievement of the MDGs is at stake. Progress in reducing poverty and hunger in developing countries is being set back. The 850 million people already suffering from chronic hunger in 2006 will increase to around one billion in 2009. The middle class in many countries is being weakened. The vulnerable groups, children, women, youth, elderly, migrants and people with disabilities, are hit the strongest.The communiqué defined a set of joint initiatives:
Even before the onset of the current financial crisis, significant challenges existed in terms of food, education, health, water and sanitation, housing and minimum welfare for the most needy. Poverty and deprivation define the lives of too many.
1. Additional financing for the most vulnerable: advocating and devising a joint World Bank - UN system mechanism for the common articulation and implementation of additional financing, including through the World Bank proposed Vulnerability Fund.
2. Food Security: strengthening programmes to feed the hungry and expanding support to farmers in developing countries.
3. Trade: fighting protectionism, including through the conclusion of the Doha round and strengthening aid for trade initiatives and finance for trade.
4. A Green Economy Initiative: promoting investment in long-term environmental sustainability and put the world on the climate-friendly path.
5. A Global Jobs Pact: boosting employment, production, investment and aggregate demand, and promoting decent work for all.
6. A Social Protection Floor: ensuring access to basic social services, shelter, and empowerment and protection of the poor and vulnerable.
7. Humanitarian, Security and Social Stability: Emergency action to protect lives and livelihoods, meeting hunger and humanitarian needs, protecting displaced people and shoring up security and social stability.
8. Technology and Innovation: developing technological infrastructure to facilitate the promotion and access to innovation.
9. Monitoring and Analysis:
• strengthening macroeconomic and financial surveillance and implementing an effective economic early warning system;
• Urgently establish a UN system-wide vulnerability monitoring and alert mechanism to track developments, and report on the political, economic, social and environmental dimensions of the crisis.
Monday, April 06, 2009
UNESCO WSIS Study Series
On the occasion of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), UNESCO publishes a series of titles summarizing some of the most essential issues related to the development of the information society. Titles in the series are:
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Status of Research on the Information Society
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UNESCO's Basic Texts on the Information Society
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Science in the Information Society
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Cultural and Linguistic Diversity in the Information Society
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Media development in the Information Society
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Measuring Linguistic Diversity on the Internet
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Measuring & monitoring information & knowledge societies
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Education in the Information Society
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Social Transformations in the Information Society
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Memory of the Information Society
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Gender in the Information Society: Towards Equity?"Emerging Development Opportunities: The Making of Information Societies and ICT Markets"
"The publication comprises two parts.
- The first presents a comparative analysis of the stage of ICT development across a large number of countries, as well as the progress made in recent years. It does so though the conceptual notion of Infostates and relies on the most recent data released earlier this year by the ITU, in the form of the ICT Opportunity Index. It adopts a regional perspective and contains detailed analyses for economies in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Africa.
- The second part breaks new ground by targeting the ICT sector and attempting to shed light on its magnitude, composition and evolution across several countries."
The ITU ICT Development Index
I quote from the Orbicom description of the study results:International Telecommunication Union (ITU) releases its new ICT Development Index (IDI), which compares developments in information and communication technologies (ICT) in 154 countries over a five-year period from 2002 to 2007. The Index combines 11 indicators into a single measure that can be used as a benchmarking tool globally, regionally and at the country level. These are related to ICT access, use and skills, such as households with a computer, the number of Internet users and literacy levels.
The most advanced countries in ICT are from Northern Europe. The exception is the Republic of Korea. Sweden tops the new ITU ICT Development Index, followed by the Republic of Korea, Denmark, the Netherlands, Iceland and Norway. They are followed by other, mainly high-income countries from Europe, Asia and North America. Poor countries, in particular the least developed countries, remain at the lower end of the index with limited access to ICT infrastructure, including fixed and mobile telephony, Internet and broadband.
The Report finds that all countries (except one) have improved their ICT levels during the past five years, but some much more than others. Eastern Europe not only features high relative growth but also one of the highest IDI value gains and can thus be considered as the most dynamic region on ICT developments during this time period. Countries that were driving this process include the Baltic States and Romania. Other economies that have significantly improved their ICT levels are Luxembourg, the United Arab Emirates, Ireland, Macao (China), Japan, Italy and France.
"Worldwide Expenditure on ICT4D"
Source: Richard Heeks, ICTs for Development, April 2009.
Spending on all ICTs were estimated:
Spending on all ICTs were estimated:
- for all developing/transitional economies at US$840billion in 2007.
- excluding upper middle income countries by setting the GNI bar at US$3,705 per capita (around the level of Indonesia, Philippines) at US$500bn.
- Including just low-income countries (GNI
Data from the World Bank Group shows it invests around US$800m per year in specific loans and guarantees on ICTs and development, and US$1-1.5bn per year on projects with ICT components (at present, it cites a total of nearly US$8bn invested in such projects).
Global ICT Spending Tops $3.5 Trillion
JCNNetwork reports, citing WITSA's Digital Planet 2008, that "the global marketplace for information and communications technology (ICT) will exceed $3.7 trillion this year and will top $4 trillion by 2011......the top 10 ICT spending countries are, in descending order: the United States, Japan, China, Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Brazil, Canada, and Spain."
Knowledge Mapping of IT competencies in the Mediterranean region and dialogue fostering
MAP-IT-MED.EU is the official website under the MAP-IT! project – (Knowledge Mapping of IT competencies in the Mediterranean region and dialog fostering) and is funded by the European Commission under the FP6 IST Program. UNESCO is one of the partners in the project.
The project aims to highlight the opportunities for research collaboration in ICT between Europe and the Mediterranean region with a specific focus on the following MED partner countries: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon Morocco, Palestinian Authority, Syria, Tunisia.
Comment: This sounds like a very important project, defining the basis for development and cooperation in an important area. JAD
Libraries of Free Online Books
I find it useful to read books online since I can manage the font size, usually search the books, and so many good books are available free. I own a Kindle, the Amazon portable digital book reader for which one can purchase a fairly large number of recent books. On the other hand there are several sites that provide books you can read on your laptop, free, with millions of choices. Here is a sample:
Google Book Search: This works like the Google web search engine, except it searches books. It returns book content matching your search term. However, it allows the reader to preview many books under copyright online, to see Full Views of many books, and for books that are out of copyright, to download the entire book in PDF format.
The Universal Digital Library: Sometimes called the Million Book Library, with a number of mirror sites. has exceeded its original objective of a million books digitized and searchable.
The Open Library: This is a project of the Internet Archive, with more than 20 million book records online, of which more than one million are available in full text. The books available to be read online are in a format allowing you to page through with a "virtual book".
The Internet Archive itself has more than one million texts online, but it also provides moving images, music and audio files free, online. The Open Content Alliance, which supports the Internet Archive, makes a Book Reader available.
Project Gutenberg: This is one of the grandfathers of the digital book program, with 28,000 online books, all in public domain, and more than 100,000 titles available through affiliates, partners, etc.
The Perseus Digital Library: Covers the history, literature and culture of the Greco-Roman world and is expanding to other works from the Classics to other subjects within the humanities and beyond.
Page by Page Books: Hundreds of classics from the English language that can be read free online.
The National Academies Press: This is a specialized source with the full production of books and reports from the U.S. National Academies of Science (Medicine and Engineering). The materials can be read online in a special format for folk from developed nations, but can be downloaded free by those in developing nations.
Coming in the future is the World Digital Library, by a coalition under the auspices of UNESCO, headed by the Library of Congress.
Google Book Search: This works like the Google web search engine, except it searches books. It returns book content matching your search term. However, it allows the reader to preview many books under copyright online, to see Full Views of many books, and for books that are out of copyright, to download the entire book in PDF format.
The Universal Digital Library: Sometimes called the Million Book Library, with a number of mirror sites. has exceeded its original objective of a million books digitized and searchable.
The Open Library: This is a project of the Internet Archive, with more than 20 million book records online, of which more than one million are available in full text. The books available to be read online are in a format allowing you to page through with a "virtual book".
The Internet Archive itself has more than one million texts online, but it also provides moving images, music and audio files free, online. The Open Content Alliance, which supports the Internet Archive, makes a Book Reader available.
Project Gutenberg: This is one of the grandfathers of the digital book program, with 28,000 online books, all in public domain, and more than 100,000 titles available through affiliates, partners, etc.
The Perseus Digital Library: Covers the history, literature and culture of the Greco-Roman world and is expanding to other works from the Classics to other subjects within the humanities and beyond.
Page by Page Books: Hundreds of classics from the English language that can be read free online.
The National Academies Press: This is a specialized source with the full production of books and reports from the U.S. National Academies of Science (Medicine and Engineering). The materials can be read online in a special format for folk from developed nations, but can be downloaded free by those in developing nations.
Coming in the future is the World Digital Library, by a coalition under the auspices of UNESCO, headed by the Library of Congress.
Bridging the Digital Divide in Uganda
This video describes a community information system in Uganda that combines library, telephone service and computer center with Internet access to serve isolated rural communities. It is dated February 2007, but may have been recorded earlier. The video was produced by the Canadian IDRC. (7'44" streaming video)
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Thoughts on Reading The Pueblo Revolt
I have been reading The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion that Drove the Spaniards Out of the Southwest by David Roberts. Focusing on the revolt of the Pueblo Native Americans against the Spanish in 1680, the book tells the early history of Spanish-Native American contacts in New Mexico.
I find it useful to remind myself that there were Spanish colonists in Texas and New Mexico before the English colonists arrived in Massachusetts and Virginia. It is even more necessary to remind myself that before the Spanish arrived in New Mexico there were people living in communities of adobe or stone buildings in there, in agricultural societies that had mastered irrigation, and that had already developed complex and rich cultural traditions.
The Fragility of Historical Knowledge
The book makes clear the difficulty of figuring out what actually happened during the Revolt and its aftermath. There are a few modern histories of the events, but Roberts is clear that their work is criticized by other historians as well as descendants of the protagonists of the story.
There are contemporary accounts in the archives of Spanish documents from the period, but we are reminded that there were often self serving documents written by people seeking to obtain the approval of superior officials or at least to avoid their sanctions.
Those original Spanish accounts include reports of the testimony of Native American captives obtained by people well acquainted with the interrogation techniques of the Inquisition. Even if these accounts are faithfully transcribed, we know that the methods of the Inquisition were more likely to obtain "confessions" than intelligence.
There may be hidden archives in the modern Pueblos and oral histories, but they are not available to outsiders. Of course, it may be that the events of 300 years ago are too painful to remember, or to remember correctly. It seems more likely that the problem is that the Pueblo peoples invest knowledge with power and limit its distribution to a small select minority within their own communities.
Spanish speaking communities still exist in New Mexico that maintain oral histories hundreds of years long, but Roberts seems to distrust their accounts of the events. Not only is there the difficulty implied by the accuracy of history transmitted by oral processes for centuries, there are potential sources of distortion in the historical patterns of pride and shame over the years.
Don't get me wrong. We can be fairly sure that something important happened and when and where it happened. However it is harder to figure out who were the key players (especially on the Native American side) and the whys are only available by inference.
It is interesting how the beliefs of people about the events differ among the Pueblo Modern society, the Hispanic modern society, and the more maistream "Anglo" society. The knowlede subsystems of our larger society that serve these ethnic groups convey differennt information about the events, and the beliefs depend on the knowledge system that formed them.
Pfizer Drug-Trial Case
Source: "Pfizer Reaches Settlement In Nigerian Drug-Trial Case," Joe Stephens, The Washington Post, April 4, 2009.
I quote extensively from the article:
Consequently, the ethics of drug trials are important. My friends at the Fogarty International Center and others at Johns Hopkins University and other centers are working to help researchers in developing countries to learn about the ethics of biomedical research. Indeed, intergovernmental organizations are doing similar work.
Ethics in different societies come from different philosophical bases. There are also differences in the literacy of patients and their families and the social organization in which permission is granted, not to mention the differing epidemiological and economic conditions.
I am delighted that the press is covering charges of misconduct, and that governments are prosecuting those accused of misconduct, but it seems to me that charges are not proof, that legal systems are not always as fair and just as one would hope and even the best make mistakes, and that companies sometimes settle cases without admitting guilt. It is not a bad idea to withhold judgment on what we read in the newspaper. JAD
I quote extensively from the article:
Pfizer has reached a broad agreement to pay millions of dollars to Nigeria's Kano state to settle a criminal case alleging that the drug company illegally tested an experimental drug on gravely ill children during a 1996 meningitis epidemic.Comment: Randomized, blinded, case-control drug trials provide a standard against which other knowledge sources can be measured. Clearly one wants to assure the safety, efficacy and effectiveness of a drug before turning it loose in the hands of millions of doctors on tens of millions of patients. Yet there are unavoidable risks in carrying out the drug trial.
The details remain private, but sources close to the negotiations said the total payments -- including those to the children, their families, the government and the government's attorneys -- would be about $75 million under the current settlement terms.......
Nigerian authorities say Pfizer's infamous trial of the antibiotic Trovan killed 11 children and disabled scores more. The world's largest drug company says the deaths and injuries were the result of meningitis.......
Pfizer defended its drug trial in a 2007 statement, saying it was conducted safely, legally and "with the full knowledge of the Nigerian government." The company said Trovan demonstrated the highest survival rate of any treatment at the field hospital......
Details of the drug trial were first made public more than eight years ago in a Post investigative series. The articles reported that the trial did not conform to U.S. patient-protection standards and that the oral form of the drug used in the trial had not been previously tested in children. Pfizer had no signed consent forms for the children, the articles said, and the company relied on a falsified ethics approval letter. Researchers also gave children substandard doses of a comparison antibiotic, the articles added.
Consequently, the ethics of drug trials are important. My friends at the Fogarty International Center and others at Johns Hopkins University and other centers are working to help researchers in developing countries to learn about the ethics of biomedical research. Indeed, intergovernmental organizations are doing similar work.
Ethics in different societies come from different philosophical bases. There are also differences in the literacy of patients and their families and the social organization in which permission is granted, not to mention the differing epidemiological and economic conditions.
I am delighted that the press is covering charges of misconduct, and that governments are prosecuting those accused of misconduct, but it seems to me that charges are not proof, that legal systems are not always as fair and just as one would hope and even the best make mistakes, and that companies sometimes settle cases without admitting guilt. It is not a bad idea to withhold judgment on what we read in the newspaper. JAD
Quotation: Truth and Novelty
Richard Sheridan commenting on a Ministerial presentation in Parliament:
It contained a great deal both of what was new and what was true, but unfortunately what was new was not true and what was true was not new.
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