Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright!

Today, April 14^th, was a historic day in the world of sports, specifically golf, when Tiger Woods sealed a 5^th ‘green jacket’ with a bogey putt at the 18^th hole on Sunday afternoon at the Augusta National.  So, Tiger winning his 81^st PGA tour title—and 15^th major title and 5^th green jacket-- why is that such a big deal? Because this win says as much about life, as it does about sports. Here are the 7 reasons why Tiger made history:

1.       Pulling oneself out of bad situations, calmness under pressure—one of the challenges of golf as in life, no matter how good you are, is that it will blindside you when you least expect it. But how you respond to that situation says a lot about your game—and about you as a person. Tiger had his fair share of missing the fairway and ending in the pine cones—but always had the nerve --and the talent!-- to pull off a shot and save par. The other thing about golf—and you guessed it, also in life!—is that draining experience called ‘drama’.  Avoiding drama around the golf course, forced or unforced, is invaluable. While others had plenty of drama hitting water hazards, Tiger played it safe and avoided all that (wish he had followed this life lesson back 10+ years ago!).  

2.       Experience and talent –using the “ridge” on the 16^th hole was sheer genius, the wisdom of playing 22 Masters. Tiger’s driving was back to his days of yore, and today the putting was too. To win these tournaments, you don’t need eagles—if you don’t double bogey. Anything worse than 2 puts will sink your chances. As reading the greens accurately and putting effectively gets harder with age, thankfully it also comes with greater wisdom—and better  management of your own expectations—which can make a big difference in the outcome—and the 12^th hole  was a great example of that.

3.       Going for 10 years and 10 months without a win must be hard for a champion—so how do you prime yourself? Golf is as much a game played between your ears, as on the course.  Every bogey must immediately be deleted from memory so as not to carry the ‘baggage’ to the next hole. For someone whose name’s almost synonymous with the game, to overcome almost 400 straight days of disappointments and utter defeats, is a herculean task --both in mind and body.

  

4.       Overcoming injuries, self-doubt, the doubts of your peers: while driving the ball at 160 mph over 300 yards, the back injuries that have plagued Tiger can take yards off the distance—and it has. His drives off the T have averaged 285 yards, but on the plus side, have probably helped reduced fatigue and improved his ability to stay on the fairway. With this win, Tiger has once and for all, laid to rest the doubt he and other professional golfers may have had that he would not win a Major again—and quite likely, with this mental barrier removed, we can expect to see some great golf this summer!

5.       Adapting to technology—it is amazing how much technology can impact this game.  From flash-faced technology for the driver that are forgiving of less-than-perfect contact, to aerodynamic design to increase the club speed, to better balanced putters for greater accuracy on the greens, to a variety of graphite and composite material to redistribute the weight , to multi-layered balls for distance, to the right shoes for support and comfort, there’s virtually no area of this game that has not been impacted by technology—and all this tends to help the older players stay competitive for longer, than in the yesteryears of golf.

   

6.       A new coach—with his long game under control and hitting the greens in regulation an astonishing 80% with that “squeeze fade” adjustments to his swing, it was his short game on the putting greens that had held him back—until today. With a new putting coach to avoid the bane of the professional golfer, the 3-putt, for Tiger it was good enough to win by a stroke.

7.       Finally, nothing matters without a healthy dose of LUCK! The 4^th round on Sunday was moved up 5 hours and the players were grouped into threesomes, starting simultaneously at the 1st and 10th holes, forced as a result of a mid-afternoon thunderstorm forecast. This must have been a god-send to Tiger, by far the oldest name on the see-sawing Sunday afternoon leaderboard. He astutely observes other players to see how they are doing, what clubs they are using, the way the ball in flight and upon landing behaves—and adjusts his game accordingly. Even when putting, with some of the greens being readjusted to make it harder to read the holes,  threesomes help the more experienced golfer more than the standard 2-way pairing. While Tiger is in great shape physically, the fact that threesome rounds are about 30% slower helps take the edge off of fatigue for a 43 year-old  when walking 7475 yards (about 7 km) of the Augusta National Golf Course, against much younger opponents!

With the chant of “Tiger! Tiger! Tiger!” getting to be a roar from his fans, look for a whole new generation of kids hitting the greens this summer. Good for the game—and good for TV ratings! It’s amazing how much a single athlete can impact others. And it is always good to remember that success is not just about winning, it's also about failing--but getting up again and again and again...and if you do that often enough, Lady Luck will eventually give you a hand!

#golf #pga #tigerwoods #masters #augustanational 

Mylan’s myopia: an “epiphany” of greed and apathy.

What Mylan NV has done over the last decade, is nothing new. In fact, it is closer to the norm, rather than an exception this century (if not earlier), to the profit-at-any-cost business model the pharmaceutical industry follows (mostly in the US, since they think they can get away with it).  Here’s my take on the EpiPen outrage that’s playing out.

First, a brief history of the drug: Naturally produced by our adrenal glands, adrenaline is a hormone that helps us survive. It gives us that rush when we sense danger--or that blush when we are in love! Epinephrine,  the American name for adrenaline,  is an iron-complex that was isolated in 1901, and subsequently manufactured by well-known pharmaceutical companies as Parke-Davis, Hoechst, and others, for the treatment of asthma, anaphylaxis, and for a host of other symptoms.  The 1901 patent (yes, the US patent office actually did issue patents on naturally occurring hormones!—do you see the roots of this problem now?) has long since run out, and it is now a generic drug available wholesale for about 10 cents per dose in developing nations, and about 90 cents in the West. Due to its life saving ability in many common, everyday situations, the drug is on WHO’s List of Essential Medicines. In fact, so widely and cheaply available epinephrine is that its most expensive aspect is a ~ $10 spring-loaded, 1980-vintage auto-injector that the dosage is sold in. It is used to inject a precise dose of the medicine into the outer thigh of the patient. As such, the drug’s delivery plays an important role, as too-high a dose can cause blood-pressure to spike, and sometimes in an emergency, the patient must self-use the auto-injector quickly and easily, without any confusion or delay.  Epinephrine is sold by Mylan Pharmaceuticals under the trademark EpiPen (essentially a portmanteau of Epinephrine and Pen), which is a measured dose inside euphemistically a ‘pen’ (the auto-injector) which can be carried easily in a purse of backpack. 

Competition for EpiPen has been declining, and the way it is marketed and sold, you may say that there is virtually no competition. One may ask, how can a commodity 100-year-old drug, delivered via a commodity injector technology that’s 25+ years old, have so little—or no—competition?  In reality, besides Mylan’s EpiPen,  FDA has approved Sanofi’s Auvi-q,  Amedra Pharmaceuticals Adrenaclick, and a few other generics as treatments for anaphylaxis. Currently, there are 3 brands of auto-injectors on the market which look and operate somewhat differently. As such, the FDA has not tried to compare the 3 delivery methods for therapeutic equivalence.  While all auto-injectors have the same dosage of epinephrine, due to their somewhat different appearance, administration technique and dose verification, if your doctor writes “EpiPen” on the prescription, then the pharmacy cannot substitute without breaking the law --even if it says OK to substitute on the prescription itself! So, in effect, the doctor becomes the EpiPen salesman, and since most people trust their doctor, not many bother to question him about this. So, you may ask, why would my doctor steer me to EpiPen? For one, EpiPen was the first to market in the 1980s (long before Mylan bought the rights), and for over 25 years, enjoyed virtual monopoly status and brand recognition, while charging a nominal price to make a healthy profit. Since the price wasn’t very high ($50 per EpiPen until 2007), and the demand wasn’t rising, there really was not much effort by other manufacturers to get in—until Mylan bought the rights to EpiPen in 2007, and started aggressively to drive this from $200 million to over a $1 billion in sales, with sky-high profit margins! As luck would have it, Sanofi had a product recall of their Auvi-q in 2015. The recall was reportedly due to ‘potentially inaccurate dosage delivery’ based upon some reports of ‘device malfunction’. These ‘reports’ were never confirmed (sounds fishy, if you ask me).  The FDA, the once vaunted guardian of American drug safety that kept out Thalidomide, started dragging its feet on letting Sanofi’s Auvi-q back in after the batch of drugs in question were removed from the market. Further limiting competition, when the biggest generic drug company in the world, TEVA, wished to enter the American market with its own brand earlier this year, the FDA our gate-keeper  refused.  In the end, Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ that is supposed to regulate supply of a product in the market based on profit, simply did not work!  

    

Demand for the drug has been rising, especially since the 2012 death of a Virginia first-grader after eating a nut. This tragedy could have been avoided if epinephrine was available in the school nurse’s office.  The fear this generated with parents of school-age children, sparked a nationwide wave of legislation allowing public schools (funded by tax-money) to stock the drug.  This in itself was an unusual move for a prescription medicine written for an individual, as  this would now require schools to store and dispense it just as though the school nurse was a doctor and pharmacy all rolled into one. But, once the law was passed and the school personnel were given legal protection for dispensing EpiPen, it became harder for another supplier to come and offer an alternative. So, with this ‘barrier to entry’ established, EpiPen’s monopoly status was reinforced with the roughly 8% under 18 school children –or about 6 million!--that suffer from food allergies. Taking advantage of this confluence of factors, Mylan launched in August 2012 a marketing campaign called EpiPen4Schools which offered the 2-pack EpiPen at about quarter the price they charge to pharmacies nationwide.  However, to qualify for this, the school had to agree to not purchase any competitive product, a clear violation of antitrust law. 

In fairness to Mylan, the drug maker at the center of the controversy, while the price has increased at about 10-20% every few months since 2009 (Source: Elsevier Clinical Solutions’ Gold Standard Drug Database), the current $600 price-tag for a twin EpiPen pack, has been that since 2015. None of the parents seemed to mind paying it back then, or so it would seem.  All of a sudden, with the 2016 school year round the corner, parents woke up. So what changed?  Health insurance plans are now pushing more onto the patient, with higher co-pays and higher deductibles. As such, the sky-high price is starting to hit the consumer where it hurts the most—in their wallet! The complicated system of 3^rd party payments in America’s healthcare industry, has to  a large extent, shielded the average consumer from the sordid picture behind the scenes where everyone (usually private parties such as doctors, hospital chains, pharmacies, pharmacy benefit managers, drug companies, diagnostic companies, medical equipment manufacturers, medical supply companies, etc. etc.) has a vested interest in maximizing billing/profit, while minimizing transparency, doing everything to distort the law of supply and demand—and even changing the law if they have to by using powerful industry lobbying groups, or funding election campaigns! The customer is usually in the dark about the ‘what, why and how’ aspects of the health products they consume. And, nobody wishes to explain that there may be an Option B or C where the same epinephrine may be bought for $150. But then, if you, the customer, are not paying for it and don’t care, why would anyone else?

   

Of late, the veil of secrecy shrouding drug pricing is starting to lift, driven by technology! With the rise of social media comes an amazing ability for individuals to band together, to shine a light on this darkness.  From the price gouging of Turing to Valeant to Mylan (it is no accident that these exposes are starting to happen more and more frequently!), armed with Facebook and Twitter—and an election year to boot--consumer activism is taking on a whole new dimension—people are able to team-up and beam-in, and spread the word around.  Unfortunately, in the case of Mylan when they got caught, instead of doing the right thing, which is to simply apologize and roll back prices, the CEO has not only given herself a 640% pay-raise, but has decided to shamelessly try and blow smoke with diversionary tactics, by expressing her “profound sadness” at the situation (of her own creation!) and coming out with coupons and a ‘generic EpiPen’ for half price! This whole saga just goes to show how far and how fast the much vaunted pharmaceutical industry, with their goal to invest in and invent life-saving drugs, have fallen in their quest for profits at the expense of our health and wellbeing.  Mylan’s behavior, whether it be the double-digit price increases since 2009, or the recent tax “inversion”, appears to be the new (or maybe not so new?) normal in the Western pharmaceutical space.  But let the word go out, with the new found (and growing) power of social media, consumers are now able and willing to fight back--even if our government won’t!

In conclusion, what is this all about? It is about:

• A pharmaceutical company, run by a powerful and greedy (aren’t they mostly?) CEO with high-level government connections, with Machiavellian marketing skills, not only creating an outrageously priced commodity product, but also blocking out competition, and creating  demand by playing on people’s fears.
• Government, more specifically an FDA whose regulatory reach once provided the guide-rails for growth, research and safety, has morphed into a Frankenstein monster that is now more a hindrance than help.  Additionally, a dead-locked law making body, the US Congress, has failed to break the logjam of disincentives that business in general, not just pharma companies, face in doing business at home.   
• A health insurance marketplace with too many layers and players, with agreements and exclusions, with all kinds of copays and deductibles, so convoluted and shrouded in mystery, that an informed judgement by the average Joe is not only not possible but quite possibly best avoided for the sake of sanity.
• Consumer apathy, with an entitlement mindset that refuses to accept responsibility for their own health, that believes ‘more is better’ as long as somebody else is paying for it, layering on top of a hypocritical reasoning on how healthcare is managed and apportioned as long as they don’t have to cut back, often sacrificing any rationale or logic at the alter of politics—all the while believing that this is the best that there is. For how long can ignorance be bliss?

And finally, what is this not about? Sadly, it is not about our children.

Are we stronger today than 9 years ago?

It turned out to be nice and sunny this Saturday, nine years from that fateful Tuesday when America’s innocence about the world was shattered. After spending part of the afternoon wine-tasting at the Valenzuelo Winery and then strolling the boardwalk in Atlantic City, I returned to sit in the tranquility of my deck penning these words in the long shadows of the setting sun. As memories overwhelm me, I can’t but reflect on the change that has engulfed the land of my children. There are many questions being asked in the media, of the leaders of both major parties, of the political and every other pundit that abounds, but the one question above all is: Are we safer today? --which in my opinion is the wrong question to ask, but it still gets asked because then the politicians can twist it whichever way they wish, to make us feel more safer, or less, depending upon their political stripe. It is indeed sad that something so fundamental to the future of this great nation, has become so politicized. If anything, the question we should be asking is: as a civilized society, what have we learnt in the last 9 years, and as a result, are we stronger today as a nation?

The short answer is: we have learnt virtually nothing, and we are today a nation divided, a fissure that has made us weaker than any time in over a 100 years. The rest of this blog is my usual rambling reflection of this.

Millions enter America every year illegally from the South, and lie low for most of their lives, working peacefully to support our lifestyle. So the 20 that came here almost 10 years ago from a so-called “friendly” nation in the middle east, and laid low and trained and carried out their heinous act, was really not something that required any great level of organizational skill. So we tightened screening and airport security, but still the “shoe bomber” and the “underwear bomber” got in. So we tightened security even further, and all the flying public patiently suffered. Now we see a new breed of home-grown terrorists, such as the “Time Square” bomber, or the US Army Major in Texas that went on a shooting spree, or the US-born and raised muslim cleric now exiled in Yemen, spewing hatred in both English and Arabic over the internet. Then we have people like Jose Padilla and Jihad Jane that are born and brought up here, but have “embraced” this failed philosophy in a manner such that they become willing pawns in the hands of the extremist masterminds.

Is there one common thread in all the above referenced individuals? Yes, you probably guessed it: Islam. To use a biological analogy, researchers believe that we all carry a “cancer gene” which lies dormant in most of us so we don’t get cancer. But in a few of us something triggers it, maybe chemicals or radiation or what, we don’t know—and cancer results. Similarly, because it is such a tenet-based religion so anathema to any other, that most born Muslims and many born non-muslims raised in the shadow of Islam, have in them a “terror gene”, for the lack of a better phrase, “implanted” in their DNA at birth. Most of these “blade children” if you will, go through life being normal but, in a few, the “normal” will mean a proclivity for annihilation of the “disbeliever”. And because Islam is all encompassing, it is both a religious as well as a political philosophy. It imposes on a Muslim, to be a true believer, that he/she must live under the laws of shariah. As such, the term “American Muslim” is really an oxymoron (or for that matter “British Muslim” or “Indian Muslim” or any pluralistic secular democracy), for in the eyes of Allah, the just Muslim is just a Muslim. Period. No more, no less.

At what stage are these “blade children” most likely to turn significantly violent against the non-blade population? There is no clear indication of a “critical mass”, but once their number exceeds 10% of the general population, there is a greater likelihood of the “terror gene” getting activated. As such, the British and many European societies are sitting on powder kegs, as are both India and Israel. Except in the case of Israel, they have the guts and the means to use decisive and brutal force (but that also is getting to be a PR nightmare, with the enemy getting smarter). The US is fortunate in that only about 2% of the population are Muslim—yet we already see cases of home-grown terror! In populations where Muslims are greater than 50%, it is almost assured that the non-muslim population will disappear. The Muslim majority will either convert them, kill them (or rape them) or drive them out.

With their numbers so small here in the US, and the American fire-power almost certain to destroy any remote cave or mountain hideout with bunker-buster clusters or predator hellfires, the terror-gene-activated Muslim has evolved and become smarter. Think about it: with just 19 terrorists and a few hundred thousand dollars in funding, Al Queda was able to make itself the second most recognized franchise in the world in less than 10 years! It did that while driving America into a huge over-reaction that contributed to the country going into the deepest recession in 70 years accompanied by joblessness and budget deficits assured for years to come, not to mention the thousands of soldiers lives lost in combat. And on top of that, Americans have become deeply divided over the most ridiculous of things, and don’t even talk to each other on the serious issues! So much so that for the first time, the US dropped on the global “competitiveness index” to 4^th place! These are remarkable victories for a rag-tag bunch of Bedouins holed out in some village or cave in Southern Waziristan.

One example of the enemy using smarts to divide the American society was the “ground zero” mosque controversy that they created. From the politically correct Left to the xenophobic Right, to the pedagogic President, just about everybody got this issue wrong--and fell into the trap that the reputedly progressive Sunni peace-loving Imam of the Cordoba Initiative had set. I don’t know it was a trap, but must assume that Muslims (and the Imam in particular) are not that tone-deaf as to try and piss on or near hallowed ground! Now, they have the right to do as they please so long as no laws are being broken but, with the mosque a couple blocks from Ground Zero, it was bound to attract the good and malevolent attention of imams, clerics and other holy/unholy types from across the Islamic diaspora who would want to come there and preach. A “constitutional right” and what is right from a societal and sentimental standpoint, are not always the same—and the President certainly got this one all wrong. The total silence in the Muslim community indicated that they were either (a) completely oblivious and tone-deaf, or (b) they did this knowing fully well what they were doing

Or, take the “controversy” over the proposed burn-a-koran-a-day by a 50-member church in Florida. Again, everybody and his uncle got in on the act. Even the general overseeing operations in Afghanistan got involved calling it an endangerment to our troops. Even the people in Afghanistan and Pakistan demonstrated and burnt the US flag (as an aside, I observe Pakistanis, perhaps because they are more recent converts or are half-blood Muslims, tend to show their faith more fully by defending the Koran more vigorously than, say, the Saudis!). I never could understand why Muslims get so inflamed at any affront to their religion, real or perceived, in the present or in the future, as to take laws into their own hands and do the exact same things to others that they feel so insulted about for being done to them? No matter, this IMO was a non-issue. If the Florida church wished to practice their 1^st Amendment right in this very asinine manner, then so be it—I mean one doesn’t have to be an Arab to be dumb! If people half way across the world whose only “constitution” is the Koran, are offended that our dumb people in Gainesville, Florida also have a Constitutional right to express their views in a stupid way, then too bad.

Which brings me back to the original question: are we stronger today than at the beginning of the decade? In just about every measure, be it the economy, global competitiveness, jobs, middle-class, manufacturing base, future outlook, or even respect for our fellow man, the answer in all cases is a “no”. This house has never been more divided in the last sesquicentennial years, with one group opposing the other not because it is right for the future of our children, but because it has become a game of political football and that every move of your opponent needs to be blocked and tackled at every step of the way so as to wrestle control of the ball. And while we are locked in this mortal game of chicken, the world is quietly but surely passing us by!

Tiger by the Tail!

As the sordid details of his so-called "private life" over the last couple years unfolds, Tiger has this to say:

"But no matter how intense curiosity about public figures can be, there is an important and deep principle at stake which is the right to some simple, human measure of privacy. I realize there are some who don't share my view on that. But for me, the virtue of privacy is one that must be protected in matters that are intimate and within one's own family. Personal sins should not require press releases and problems within a family shouldn't have to mean public confessions...".

This just goes to show how completely clueless he is (for that matter, any public figures here or anywhere is)--that once you go "public", your entire life, is just that! Some of us make a distinction between a politician and a sportsman, that somehow the latter's private life and foibles are less open to scrutiny than a politician's. While that distinction is not untrue, its not entirely true either. Once a sports personality such as Tiger, takes my money, be it in the form of a paid ticket to his event or a product endorsement from Nike, AT&T or American Express (all of which I use, so in effect, Tiger has bettered himself with my money), he has established an implied social contract with me which, once established, requires him to maintain his life, both public and private, above reproach. Any whiff of impropriety--and it looks like the flood-gates are opening here as far as Tiger's many escapades over the last 2 years!-- should be dealt with openly and honestly, and with candor. To his fans, Tiger's sex life is private only within the confines of socially accepted norms, i.e., marriage (of course, if he were single, his lease would be a lot looser). While deviations are not uncommon in the common man (think Barack Obama on drugs in his college days), no such leeway exists once you are a public personality (President Obama doing drugs today would not be as well accepted or tolerated as Obama doing drugs in college, to which he has freely admitted, and for which the population seems to have had no problem with).

If Tiger means what he says (as quoted above) and is serious about facing his demons and vanquishing them, he should be willing to keep but a small portion of his $800 million fortune for 13 years of work since turning pro, and donate the rest to charity. As far as his wife Elin is concerned, I can't see what she has in common with Tiger, and there is really nothing to keep her from walking away from this with half his earnings from the last 5 years (and the 2 kids). And last but not the least, this incident--and all that has led up to this-- might well mark the end of the phenom of Tiger Woods. Physical prowess and athleticism matter a whole lot less in this game, which tends to explain why golfers peak in their 40's, and it is not uncommon for the 50-something golfer to win tournaments whilst 20-somethings fail to make the cut. In the end, and in the rarefied atmosphere of professional golf, it is a game of intense focus and mental challenge. Where reading every inflexion on the green to the minutest detail makes the difference between a birdie or a bogey, even the slightest lack of concentration can dramatically alter the names on the leader board come Sunday afternoon. Golf is a demanding mistress that does not tolerate well being in second place to any other! Will Jack Nicklaus's record of winning 18 majors stand, or will it be shattered in our lifetime? Tiger is well within range to make this record, his. But first, he has a tough choice to make--and for all of us that enjoy this game, I hope he chooses wisely!

Let me know your comments/thoughts on this...

When is "rape, rape"?

A bizarre debate is playing out across the media in America today over the arrest of Roman Polanski over the rape of a 13-year old child. If you are even half-tuned to any of the media outlets, be it the newspaper, TV or the internet, I am sure you have more than a passing familiarity with the events at the time of the crime in 1977, then the "coming out" of the victim in the mid-1990s after suing Polanski in civil court and settling for an undisclosed amount in the late 1980's, and finally, at the behest of the US Justice Dept., the arrest of the fugitive by Swiss authorities, themselves not exactly the perfect paragons of virtue, when Polanski visited Zurich to receive an award. Everybody, from Debra Winger to Harrison Ford to Whoopi Goldberg, to a bunch of Hollywood elites, have been tripping over each other for the MOHO Award (for "Most Original Hypocrite Oscar"), calling it simply "a case of morals" (which they don't have nor would know if it hit them in the face). How can anyone defend this monster knowing what we know of the crime he committed, no matter how long ago it was or if the victim has moved-on with her life and decided to forgive the perpetrator, or if the Los Angeles DA's office reneged on a "deal", or what have you. The basic facts of the case remain unchanged, sharp and clear for any one with a sense of morals--and half a mind, to see and decide for himself or herself. That is why Lady Justice has blindfolds on, so that she imparts justice without being blinded by how rich or powerful or talented the criminal is.

While I must give credit to a whole bunch of other Hollywood-types that have so far refrained from participating in the run-up to the MOHO Award, there are a couple of things that I sense: one is that, the people defending this deed may have something similar hidden away in their closets, just as Angelica Huston, being in the very next (thats what she said, it could well be that she was in the same) room that day in 1977 when Polanski was plying the 13-year old child with drugs and alcohol prior to committing vile acts on her in Jack Nicholson's house (of course, Jack was conveniently "out of town", or so the court documents show). The other is that Polanski's childhood in the Warshaw ghettos and the murder of his parents at the hands of the Nazis, and then the murder of his wife and unborn child by Manson followers, being used to defend his vile acts. For all we know, Polanski is a serial child molestor who was unfortunate enough to get caught in the US. Pedophilia, it has been well documented, is not a passing fad or a one-time act. Usually, the predator repeats the crime, time and time again, until caught or castrated. That's why we have in the US such laws as "Amber Alerts" and "Megan's Law" and "chemical castration" has been debated but unfortunately does not have the political muscle to become law. Makes you wonder how many children Polanski may have raped and sodomized in his many chateaus in Europe?

The thing about the Swiss authorities role in all this that bothers me is the fact that Polanski has owed a chateau in Switzerland for many decades now, coming and going as he pleased. It would have been a relatively easy bit of sleuthing to stake out the chateau for a few months, and nab the monster when he visited, anytime years ago. So, why now? The Swiss simply say that they "didn't know", an excuse that they have used in a myriad other places and times to cover their own complicity and duplicity in heinous crimes against humanity, from "oh, we didn't know Hitler was herding the Jews in Zurich to kill them" or "we didn't know what those trains rumbling through Zurich in the middle of the night from Italy to Dachau during the War were carrying and to where they were going", or "we didn't know all this money belonging to abandoned accounts belonged to Jews exterminated during the holocaust and should rightfully go to their descendants", or "we didn't know that the 40,000+ US citizens with numbered Swiss Bank accounts totalling tens of billions of dollars may have been ill-gotten gains or from money laundering operations or for evading US taxes". All throughout history, the Swiss have mastered the Machiavellian art of playing the ends against the middle, remaining so-called "neutral" and making a pretty penny for themselves, and to thereby enjoy the highest standards of living anywhere. Now that the Swiss are facing the growing wrath of the US Government, maybe, just maybe, Polanski was a pawn they were willing to offer in sacrifice? Oh edleweiss, small and bright, your innocence hides a sullied land, full of blight!

If Polanski crime reveals the seamier side of human nature, his recent arrest and subsequent events, have laid bare the double-standards of the West. How easily do we in the West denigrate the muslims for the treatment they mete out to their women, yet at the most fundamental level, with the veneer of respectabilty removed, is the Western Society's view of women really any different or any better?

Ah...Amsterdam!

Amsterdam never ceases to amaze me, and every time I go there and wander its maze of cobbled streets and shallow canals, I leave exhausted, physically and mentally--and my visit this Father's Day weekend was no different! But, as I get to know more about her history, the character of it's people--those that conceived, mid-wived and help her to bloom from the 1300's and on--becomes laid bare, and while certainly one facet that I see, is that of taking risks and reaping rewards, there are multiple others that reveal the seamier side of human nature. Starting with the 1500's for a period of some 300 years, the Dutch seem have gone on a worldwide mission of loot, pillage and plunder, with gold and slaves their prized commodities. So much so, that by the 1700's, some 40% of the worlds wealth was concentrated in the hands of the Dutch (that statistic was provided by a tour guide, and may be off a little, but still, the number is staggering, to say the least). Immense wealth in the form of precious metals & diamonds, herbs & spices, silk & slaves, flowed in to the land-- abundantly and virtually free! The Dutch, a practical people with a distinctly distorted sense of business ethics, traded in humans from the African Continent, and ipso facto, may have introduced the Western World to the concept of slavery.

Ah...Amsterdam, behind your beautiful facade, lies such an ugly past--your majestic canals awash with the blood, sweat and toil of innumerable less fortunate souls. It is said "Behind every great fortune, is an even greater crime"...well, Amsterdam, you certainly give that cliche a whole new meaning!

My take on Slum Dog...

As you may know, being a Bernese Mountain Dog, I don’t get to watch too many movies. The last one I did, “Beverley Hills Chihuahua” was such a chick-flick, a complete letdown for someone of my stature, know what I mean? So, when “Slum Dog Millionaire” won all those Oscars, I said wow (well, actually I said “bow-wow” but my owner edited it so it wouldn’t sound so cheesy—talking of which I do love cheese-cake, but that’s for another day, another blog!) maybe I should check it out.

To say I was impressed would be an understatement (and I don’t impress easy, so). It was truly a love story at par with another movie from another time: “Titanic” –except that while that one’s setting was the grand opulence of the majestic ship that could never sink (and so it did!), and a love that never was consummated (or was it? hmmm…), this one was set in the squalor, but nevertheless great vibrancy, of the Mumbai slums. To take a dozen or so, more or less disjointed stories, from a book that at first glance really does not lend itself to a movie, and with an abundant use of artistic license, to dexterously change and concatenate them all into a powerful and, more importantly, fluid and meaningful screenplay, was really the superb foundation upon which the director has then built this tome of love, akin to the sheer breathtaking majesty of the Taj Mahal rising simmering out of the marshy swamps on the banks of the Yamuna. The screenwriter’s sharp eye has seen this diamond in the rough (the novel by Swarup), and has, with amazing grace, extracted and expanded its essence and created the screenplay for this poignant moving picture far more effectively than any literal translation of that novel could ever have achieved! The kid’s moral compass –and his brother’s lack thereof, but abundance of street smarts and survival skills!--brought him thus far…he wasn’t doing it for revenge or money…it was for love. So mundane, yet so profound!

Which leads me to ask: why did it have to take a couple of non-Indians to make this so quintessentially Indian movie? Don’t we as Indians see the beauty that is all around us, or do we only see and smell the feces—but fail to perceive what’s within? Is beauty really skin-deep to us? In my opinion, it is but a paradox of life, that to truly observe it and “paint it” (be it with a brush, a pen or the lens of a camera), one must be able to “step out” from everything that define us. In other words, to take a dispassionate view, one must be able to completely detach oneself from ones surroundings and beliefs and yet be able to use the innate talents we posses to tell the story we wish to tell. And I don’t mean detachment in just a superficial physical sense, but also to some extent, mentally and spiritually as well. Did the duo of Beaufoy and Boyle have this?—well, not necessarily. It’s just that their psyche did not come burdened with the excess baggage of “Indianess” that Indians seem to carry around with them (which would make them comment-- with disdain, might I say-- on a slum kid jumping into a shit-pool, without ever walking in his shoes). There are some great Indian screenwriters and directors, but from the work they keep churning out year after year, it would seem they are not able to overcome this final hurdle to true cinematographic greatness!