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Songs of exile: a playlist for Psalm 137

Psalm 137 begins with one of the more lyrical lines in the Hebrew Bible: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.” It ends eight lines later with one of the thorniest: “Happy shall he be, who taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.” Partly because it deals with music—another famous verse asks, “How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”—the psalm has been like poetic catnip, a siren song luring musicians, composers, and singers alike for more than two millennia. The first four verses have generated by far the most musical settings, from classical pieces (Bach, de Monte, Guerrero, Byrd, Dvořák, Verdi, Bloch, Alkan) to popular renditions sung by Don McLean and the cast of Godspell. But it was “Rivers of Babylon,” an earlier, Rasta-tinged rendition by the Jamaican group, the Melodians, that gave the psalm global exposure. For more versions of the musical psalm, listen to the clips provided below.

“Al Naharot Babel”


The first example is a traditional Hebrew rendition called “Al Naharot Babel.” This particular version was recorded in Iraq.

“An den Wassern zu Babel” by Heinrich Schütz  (1619)


Born in 1585, Heinrich Schütz was one of the great composers of the 17th century, generally considered the most important German composer before Bach.

“Al Naharot Babel” by Salomone Rossi (1622)


A supremely gifted violinist and composer, Salomone Rossi came to the attention of the powerful Gonzaga family of Mantua. He was so highly regarded that he was allowed to travel freely in and out of Mantua’s Jewish ghetto, a rare privilege. Rossi is best remembered for his pioneering work, Hashirim ásher lish’lomo (“The Songs of Solomon”), which included a setting of Psalm 137.

“An Wasserflüssen Babylon” by J.S. Bach (c. 1720)


One of the best-known of all settings of the psalm, Bach is reported to have improvised on this tune for nearly half an hour in a 1720 concert at St. Catherine’s in Hamburg, as a tribute to the church’s regular organist.

Nabucco by Giuseppe Verdi (1841)


Verdi’s first successful opera, Nabucco (1841), was based on the Babylonian Exile, and one of his most beloved choruses, “Va, pensiero”  features a chorus of Judean captives. Most Italians know this chorus by heart.

“Ten Biblical Songs, op. 99” by Antonin Dvorak (1894)


This brief setting, composed while Dvorak lived in the United States, was famously performed  by Roland Hayes, the pioneering African American opera singer, and later adopted by Paul Robeson, a great admirer of Hayes.

Ten Biblical Songs by Paul Robeson (c. 1940)


“But history moves on: Hitler is gone; Prague lives and builds in a new people’s democracy—and now I, an American Negro, sing for her this ancient Hebrew song in the language of the people of Huss and Dvorak, Fuchik and Gottwald: Pri rekach babylonckych, Tam jsme sedavali a plakavali. ” -Paul Robeson

“Rivers of Babylon” by The Melodians, “On the Willows” from Godspell by Stephen Schwartz, and “Babylon” by Don McLean


Three of the most popular recent musical renditions of the song appeared within two years of each other: one (“Rivers of Babylon”) from Jamaica, the other two from the United States.

“Rivers of Babylon” by Boney M. (1978)


By far the bestselling version of “Rivers of Babylon” was recorded by the German-based band, Boney M. Their 1978 cover, with voices soaring over an infectious disco back-beat, became the second biggest-selling single in U.K. chart history, and was the group’s only song to reach the top 40 in the United States.

“Wood Street” by Judy Hauff (1986)


Composed in 1986, Chicagoan Judy Hauff’s setting of Psalm 137 in the latest edition of The Sacred Harp (1991) is one of the most requested songs in that venerable collection. Most of the composers featured lived in the 19th century.

“By the Rivers Dark” by Leonard Cohen (2001)


Recorded in 2001, Leonard Cohen’s “By the Rivers Dark” delivers somber and solitary riffs on the psalm.

Shanghai Dreams (2001)


Boney M’s cover turns up at an illicit dance held in a factory in China in Shanghai Dreams. In the film, families are “exiled” from Shanghai to the countryside, supporting the country’s industrial backbone in the event of World War III.

“Jerusalem” by Matisyahu (2006)


An inward-looking oath by the psalmist, the middle two verses have been of particular interest to political movements that invoke collective memory to mobilize social action. This one, by the self-styled Hasidic dancehall-reggae artist Matisyahu, carries a strong Zionist message.

Daniel Variations by Steve Reich (2006)


Steve Reich’s Daniel Variations, animated by the savage aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, features four movements alternating short, gnomic texts taken from the Book of Daniel with fragments of comments by Daniel Pearl, a young reporter who was captured by the Taliban and beheaded.

“Babylon” from Mad Men (2007)


In the first season of Mad Men, Don Draper and his girlfriend make their way to the Gaslight, a subterranean cabaret in Greenwich Village, where a folk trio plays a haunting, minor-key round setting of Psalm 137. The camera cuts to domestic vignettes suggesting Draper’s stream of consciousness: Manhattan as Babylon.

Tulpan (2008)


Boney M.’s ubiquitous cover version recurs again in world cinema, in a Kazhak film that deals with a young man’s return from military service and his poignant efforts to find a wife and establish a traditional life as a sheep-herder.

The Wandering Jew by Robert Saxton (2011)


This opera, The Wandering Jew, by British composer, Robert Saxton, begins and ends in a Nazi death camp. The first vocal music heard is a chorus of prisoners singing an angular melody, the opening verses of Psalm 137.

“By the Rivers of Babylon” by Jack Richard Hodkinson


New settings of Psalm 137 continue to be composed; this is likely the most recent, by an undergraduate at Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, England.

Featured image: “Typography” by Benjamin Gray. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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Europe’s real refugee crisis: unaccompanied minors

The surge in asylum seekers and refugees arriving in Europe over the last two years is regularly described as a crisis. Certainly the numbers are significant: in 2015 there were about 1.2 million asylum applications in Europe, double the number in 2014 which was already a record year. The human suffering should also not be underestimated; almost 4,000 people are believed to have drowned in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe in 2015. These arrivals also pose significant policy challenges placing strains on asylum systems, testing the capacity of local municipalities in places like Southern Sweden, and posing longer term challenges of integration. Policy responses across Europe have varied widely and certainly not been harmonized, and in some cases have been quite extreme.

Challenging though this situation is, it need not be a crisis. A sense of perspective is required, that the majority of the world’s 20 million refugees are still hosted in poorer countries; and even the majority of Syrian refugees are in neighboring Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, not Europe. It is also worth remembering that Europe’s population is about 500 million, and it is the wealthiest single market in the world: it is quite surprising that the arrival of actually a relatively small number of people in need of help has triggered such a dramatic response. It may also be possible to turn a negative into a positive. While there are undoubtedly short term challenges, in the longer term refugees may help address the demographic deficit in Europe and fill labour market gaps.

One aspect of the asylum and refugee flows that may more legitimately be described as a crisis, however, concerns the arrival of unaccompanied minors; that is individuals under the age of 18 and not accompanied by a responsible adult. Recent data released by the EU statistical office Eurostat show that there were 88,300 asylum applications by unaccompanied minors in Europe in 2015. This is significantly more than had been estimated earlier this year. It represents a fourfold increase on the number in 2014, which itself was double the number reported in 2013. Of the 2015 total, 91 percent were male; 57 percent aged 16-17, 29 percent 14-15, and 13 percent under 14 years old. Over half of these minors were from Afghanistan, compared to about 16 percent from Syria. They mainly arrived in Sweden, followed by Germany, Hungary, and Austria. Unaccompanied minors made up almost one in four of all refugee children arriving in Europe in 2015.

Unaccompanied minors made up almost one in four of all refugee children arriving in Europe in 2015.

All refugee children require particular protection and assistance, arising from their unique rights and requirements. But unaccompanied minors may be especially vulnerable. They often have deep psychological trauma having become separated or been abandoned, compounded by the stresses of leaving their homes and their experiences travelling to Europe. They are also particularly susceptible to human trafficking.

Once they arrive in Europe, unaccompanied minors usually require one-on-one care. When possible they should be appointed a legal guardian or advisor. In some Central European countries unaccompanied minors have been detained on arrival, against UN guidelines, to place them into the care of surrogate families. Most unaccompanied minors cannot go home: their family members cannot be traced, and usually their countries of origin do not have sufficient capacity to establish legal guardianship. As a result their education and integration is also a priority.

Despite its growing scale, the special vulnerabilities entailed, and the specific policy challenges posed, the migration of unaccompanied minors has not yet attracted significant research attention. One reason for this is a methodological challenge, especially among the very young, and in particular relating to research ethics.

Featured image credit: Syrian primary school children attending catch-up learning classes in Lebanon. CC-BY-2.0 via Flickr.

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Single particle analysis taking biological research to the next level

Recent advances in technology have led to great developments in many fields – especially the field of medicine. In particular, better image detection has vastly improved electron microscopes, allowing for closer study of macromolecular complexes. The ability to visualize macromolecules in more detail, however, has raised even more questions to explore in the field of microscopy. To help us elucidate some of these questions, we turned to Professor Yoshinori Fujiyoshi, the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Microscopy. We spoke with Prof. Fujiyoshi about the journal’s latest special issue, “Single-Particle Cryo-Electron Microscopy,” to learn about the important role of this imaging method in current scientific research.

What, exactly, is single-particle cryo-electron microscopy?

Cryo-electron microscopy provides projection images of molecules and/or molecular complexes that are suspended and randomly oriented in a buffer layer. These images are classified according to the projection image type and averaged in each group with the same orientation in the buffer layer. Successful averaging of these single-particle images can dramatically improve the signal-to-noise ratio over that of the original images. The larger number of images could fundamentally provide a better signal-to-noise ratio, as well as better resolution of the averaged images. The three-dimensional structure at a high-resolution is then reconstructed from these averaged images.

What is the impact of single-particle analysis on current scientific research?

Before advancing this method, high-resolution structures were analyzed based only on crystallography. Crystallization, however, is generally very difficult or even impossible. Single-particle cryo-electron microscopy enables us to analyze high-resolution structures without first producing crystals of those structures. This method has dramatically changed the field of structural biology. Actually, more and more researchers, not only structural biologists, but also those in wider research fields of biology, have become interested in applying this method to their research.

Professor Yoshinori Fujiyoshi. Image provided by the author. Used with permission.

Why is this important for society as a whole?

High-resolution structures of biological macromolecules are very important for understanding biological functions at the molecular level, as atomic models of biomolecules enable us to elucidate the function of the molecule in detail. After 2000, pharmaceutical companies initiated “evidence-based drug development”, and have more recently begun to apply the concept of “structure-guided drug development”. Effective structural analyses are required not only to enhance our understanding of basic biology, but also for applied sciences such as drug development. As mentioned before, single-particle analysis allows us to study high-resolution structures without crystallization and in a relatively short period of time. Pharmaceutical companies are therefore very interested in this method.

What do you think are the challenges being faced in single-particle cryo-electron microscopy research?

To respond to this question, I would like to provide you with an example. The most important drug target is thought to be G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) and researchers in basic biology and pharmaceutical companies anticipate that the single-particle method will soon elucidate the structures of GPCRs. The molecular weights of GPCRs are currently too small for this method, however, and thus structural analysis of GPCRs is a current challenge facing single-particle cryo-electron microscopy. Technological improvements of this method could help to elucidate the structures of GPCRs.

Why did you select this topic for this year’s Microscopy special issue?

As I mentioned before, many researchers, not only in structural biology, but also in much wider research fields, are interested in single-particle cryo-electron microscopy. The advancing curves of knowledge about this method and also results analyzed by this method have been dramatic and I think this year is perfect timing for the special issue of Microscopy.

What did you enjoy most about working on this special issue?

Guest Editors Yifan Cheng and Thomas Walz have been my good friends for many years and I enjoyed exchanging mail with them regarding this special issue. I was also very happy to see that these Guest Editors selected the very best researchers in this field of single-particle analysis, and I enjoyed learning from these researchers’ outstanding reviews.

Featured image credit: Examples of membrane protein structures determined by single-particle cryo-EM. Density maps are shown as gold surfaces and atomic models as red ribbon diagrams. The black lines indicate the approximate position of the membrane. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Japanese Society of Microscopy. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

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The top 10 most common research mistakes (and how to avoid them)

As the saying goes, we learn by our mistakes. And so it goes for virtually all research scientists, with most mistakes occurring during their formative years when they are still being mentored. While missteps in the research process are not usually catastrophic, the risks of allowing them to occur unchecked are many: personal safety is at stake, as are the careers and reputations of individuals, departments, and entire institutions. All of these risks can be significantly mitigated through proper training at the early stages of a researchers’ career. Below, I describe ten common mistakes (listed in no particular order) that occur in laboratory research settings:

Mistakes can occur at many levels, and sometimes they turn out to be due to innocent reliance on common or specialized methods – even published protocols – that are less than optimal. All experiments should begin with a well-planned protocol. If the protocol is investigator-initiated, permutations of steps should be built into the protocol to determine the optimal methodological approach. If the protocol being used is a peer-reviewed method, there’s no guarantee that it will work for everyone. It’s a mistake to assume that the protocol will work flawlessly the first time you use it in your research. Practice makes perfect, but you also need to consider the possibility that a published protocol may have failed to provide important caveats (e.g. the method doesn’t work well when cultured cells are in S phase of growth). That can cause experiments to fail or yield inconsistent results.


Laboratory. By Darko Stojanovic. CC0 public domain via Pixabay.


Failing to troubleshoot by at least attempting to get advice from others who have successfully used a method is also a mistake. You can reduce the risk of failed protocols by reaching out the investigator who published the protocol.


A third research mistake concerns the need to pay close attention to all of the reagents used in a given experiment. Reagent expiration dates need to be assessed before using a given material in an experiment. Reputable manufacturers pre-test their products in quality control studies to determine their products’ shelf life.


A related mistake is the use of reagents that haven’t been stored properly (e.g. refrigerated instead of frozen). This is particularly common when using perishable biological reagents.


Another research mistake that is absolutely avoidable concerns how experiments are documented. Laboratory notebooks must contain detailed information if an experiment that works is to be consistently reproduced. Everything should be recorded. This includes all materials used, nuances of methods applied, anything that may have happened during an experiment that’s not typical (e.g. a brief power failure). Even so-called simple things such as the water used can impact an experiment one way or another. Be consistent!


Disregarding the “consistency imperative” is a big mistake. If your experiments require the use of distilled, deionized water, then always use distilled, deionized water.


Avoid taking short cuts. If an incubation period is 30 minutes, be patient and wait for the entire incubation period to be completed before moving on to the next step. When you plan an experiment, know what your time investment will be.


Failure to optimally maintain equipment is another mistake that can plague the most seasoned investigators. Standard maintenance is critical, especially when equipment is designed to protect users from environmental hazards (e.g. fume hoods). Is the equipment’s certification up to date?


Failure to perform manufacturers’ recommended calibration of equipment is another equipment-related mistake. A personal pet peeve is the failure to calibrate micropipettes used to measure minute volumes of reagents. When a protocol calls for one microliter of a reagent and the micropipette used to aliquot that volume hasn’t been appropriately calibrated, significant variance in the amount of reagent used can occur, resulting in significant variance of results from experiment to experiment.


Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a set of related mistakes that occur in laboratory settings are caused by failure to adhere to good laboratory practices. While most of us are good citizens who try to adhere to and advocate for these practices, we sometimes fail to comply with what our laboratory safety officers tell us to do for our own good. That’s a big mistake – one we can’t afford if we want to keep ourselves and others safe in our work environments.

The list of related mistakes (the “never” imperatives) is long and includes the following:

Never bringing any food or drink into the laboratory and do not eat, drink, or smoke there.
Never smelling or tasting any chemicals or other lab samples for any reason.
Never working alone or unsupervised.
Never working when you are exhausted or emotionally upset.
Never leave experiments running unattended in the laboratory.
Never wearing loose or sloppy clothing that could get caught in any equipment or come in contact with any chemicals. Long hair should be pulled back out of the way of any reagents or machinery.
Never forgetting to wear the appropriate gloves, safety glasses or goggles, and a clean lab coat when handling chemical and/or biohazardous materials.
Never leaving the lab wearing protective personal equipment (PPE). How many times have you seen someone wearing protective laboratory gloves pressing an elevator button? If you do, do all of us a favor and tell that person why it’s against laboratory safety rules.
Never pipetting by mouth.
Never assuming that an accident that happens in the lab can be swept under the rug. If an accident or spill happens, be sure to notify your supervisor so that the appropriate protocols can be observed.
And finally, just like your mother always told you when you were growing up, never forgetting to wash your hands. Always do this before you exit the laboratory and especially after handling biohazards or chemical reagents.

The ever-present possibility of mistakes in experimental research should always be taken seriously, but should not be discouraging; all of these mistakes are preventable when researchers are properly trained and remain vigilant. By reducing mistakes we not only create a safer, more productive environment, but we do better science as a result.

Featured image credit: Chemistry lab, by Republica. CC0 public domain via Pixabay.

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History, philosophy, and political hope

Politics in general is all about how to develop, sustain, and revise institutions, practices, and policies that bind individuals together productively and that point toward more fulfilling individual and joint futures for them. Debates about how best to do this are natural. Should the US become yet more aggressively libertarian-individualist, or should a substantial social compact that enforces terms of fair cooperation via significant redistribution be instituted? Should the UK embrace European social democratic values and relations, or should it stand on its Anglo-Saxon distinctiveness?

These important questions are increasingly addressed, however, in the absence of significant, articulate knowledge of political ideals that historically have informed political life. As a result, debates about these questions are typically shriller and less productive than they could and should be. Various forms of nativism and populism supplant more considered deliberations, for good enough reasons, as individuals and subpopulations come to be and to feel disenfranchised from political and economic business-as-usual.  In a 15 May 2016 New York Times opinion piece, the economic historian Michael Lind reports that “A 2016 Presidential Election Survey by the RAND Corporation revealed that the single factor that best predicted voter support for Donald Trump among likely Republican voters was not income, education, race, gender or attitudes toward Muslim or illegal immigration, but agreement with the statement ‘people like me don’t have any say.’”  Globalization and the degradations of the powerful are increasing political and economic disenfranchisement throughout the industrialized world. Disenchantment then produces anger, for good reasons. Presciently, and echoing Plato’s criticisms of democracy (though not his proposals to abolish it), the philosopher Richard Rorty suggested in 1997 in Achieving Our Country that

members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers–themselves desperately afraid of being downsized–are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.

At that point, something will crack. The non-suburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking around for a strongman to vote for–someone willing to assure them that once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots…

One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion…All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.

The demand for an outlet for resentment and anger is being exploited by so-called anti-system politicians and parties, including Trump and Sanders in the US, Marie LePen in France, Nigel Farage in the UK, Beppo Grillo in Italy, and the Syriza Party in Greece. Whether from the left or the right, the watchword is “tear it down,” not “build it up.”

One way to begin to reverse these developments and to enrich political debates is to consider detailed accounts of political-ideals-as-lived that have been articulated and argued for by major philosophers who are sensitive to the values all at once of individualism, responsibility, political equality, economic security, rich joint meaningful life, and ongoing critical thought, as commitments to these values have been lived out against the backgrounds of religious and philosophical traditions. Immanuel Kant and Walter Benjamin are two thinkers of exactly this kind. Each of them eloquently asked and answered the question, “What may we hope for?,” and each of them answered it by taking seriously both political ideals and available historical possibilities that might be seized.  Working through their partly complementary, partly opposed ideas about the historical achievement of value within joint political life might help us to develop richer images of political maturity and help us toward more productive public political debate. As Michael Lind concluded his essay, “If we want to avert the sense of powerlessness among voters that fuels demagogy, the answer is not less democracy…, but more.” Reading Kant and Benjamin together and subjecting their accounts to reflective comparison and criticism can help us to cultivate a more genuine, informed, reflective democracy and, thus, to give life and depth to political hope.

Featured image: US Capitol Building at night Jan 2006 by Diliff. CC-BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. 

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Harnessing the power of scientific discovery in reproductive medicine

Reproductive medicine is a rapidly progressing field which generates a wealth of original and innovative research. As the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) gets ready to welcome a new open access journal to its prestigious family, we meet the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Siladitya Bhattacharya, to find out how he sees the field developing in the future, and what he has in store for Human Reproduction Open (HR Open).

How do you see this field developing in the future?

Advances in science such as the “omics” revolution have the potential to transform our understanding of reproductive biology and our approach to the management of subfertility. New techniques of ovarian stimulation, embryo culture, optimising implantation, and assessing embryo quality could make assisted reproduction safer and more effective. A personalised, prognosis-based approach could transform the way treatments are evaluated and implemented. At the same time, an expectation of conception on demand could prompt a redefinition of infertility and over-medicalisation of reproduction. There is a need to strike a balance between the availability of technology and its application in diverse social, ethical, and legal contexts. Harnessing the power of scientific discovery in order to provide treatments which benefit society will remain a key challenge.

What are the key benefits of open access publishing?

The internet has transformed the nature and speed of communication in all walks of life, including academia and clinical decision making. An open access model is rapidly becoming the currency of research dissemination and there is a general agreement that scholarship should not be the preserve of a few. Scientists and clinicians across the world are hungry for services that can keep them abreast of the latest advances in science and medicine. Another key element of 21st century communication is immediacy—already evident in current styles of news coverage and social media use. Open access publishing facilitates rapid dissemination of scientific knowledge and potentially quicker implementation of effective treatments.

Siladitya Bhattacharya (Author’s own photo, used with permission)

What are you most looking forward about being the Editor-in-Chief of Human Reproduction Open?

I am hugely excited about being in the vanguard of this initiative aimed at communicating high quality research in reproductive medicine in a more accessible way, to a new generation of clinicians, patients, and scientists. An open access format will allow tremendous freedom in terms of innovative ways of presenting scientific results. It is able to initiate and maintain a dialogue between authors and readers in real time and will hopefully encourage patients to access lay summaries of research relevant to their care. To me, this last element is one of the most innovative aspects of this journal which could play a crucial role in encouraging evidence-based, patient-centred decision making in reproductive medicine.

How do you see the journal developing in the future?

I see this journal playing a central role in providing a digital platform to facilitate the dialogue between those who generate high quality scientific output and those use it to make clinical decisions. To this end we will continue to innovate – in terms of content as well as delivery to provide a customised experience for our readers. I see this journal widening access to high standards of scientific knowledge on a global scale and addressing the needs of the next generation of readers to whom the electronic multimedia format is the natural vehicle for exchanging ideas. The actual format of the journal will be similar to the other ESHRE journals but I envisage that we may consider a number of multimedia options to get the key messages across. The strength of this journal will be its ability to respond to changing demands from our readers and evolving digital technology.

What do you think readers will take away from the journal?

For clinicians – this journal will offer a unique mix of cutting edge primary research, reviews, debates, and commentaries on topics of current interest. We aim to encourage debate around the articles published in the longer term. For scientists, it is an opportunity to ensure that their research can be accessed rapidly by a much wider constituency thus maximising potential for much greater impact. For patients, who are increasingly keen to have more ownership of clinical decisions, it offers an opportunity to understand their condition and effective ways of treating it.

Featured image credit: Pregnancy by widephish. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Uber in Europe: back to the future

Where will Uber stop? After the news that the Saudi’s have decided to invest $3.5bn in the company, came details of a further $2bn Uber wants to raise from financial markets using tecniques never deployed before by a start-up. Uber already has a war-chest of $14 bn. to spend in expanding its role in the Middle East, Africa, India and China, as well as to develop new services like driverless cars and car-pooling. But it’s in Europe that the company has encountered the greatest opposition to its presence and its methods, confirming the Old World’s status as the place where America’s tech giants find their toughest official critics and most militant opponents in local business.

Uber’s urge to simply ignore local regulations and apply the same aggressive drive to attract drivers and customers that worked so well in the US has backfired in Europe, as it has in nations as far apart as Indonesia, South Africa and Chile. In June 2016 a French court found that Uber had been guilty of starting an “illegal” car-booking service, of “misleading commercial practices” and “complicity in the illegal exercise of the taxi profession.” Large fines were imposed on the company and its local directors. After German courts banned the basic Uber service, Dieter Schlenker, head of Taxi Deutschland, a trade association, said the judgment “benefits all those who find it hard to defend themselves alone against the interests of big corporations.” (Financial Times, 6 June 2016)

The Uber story is a classic example, from a very long line, of American innovations which disrupted traditional European ways of organising life, government, business, culture and much more. This is the true American soft power challenge: demonstrating the force of an example which is exceptionally big, dynamic and attractive, and so cannot be dodged. Invariably it places Europe’s institutions, economies and peoples up against the conundrum of whether this is progress or not, and how to come to terms with it. Does acceptance imply some degree of “Americanization”? Does rejection mean opting for backwardness and marginalization? If some sort of adaptation is proposed, how to produce the resources of political and business imagination to develop alternatives and apply them?

Uber app. Photo by freestocks.org. Public domain via Flickr.

No society better than America demonstrates that what a soft-power superpower deploys always is a special ability to generate and deploy models of change and innovation, and to identify them as modernity: showing the world, society, the individual, possible ways to advance for the better, however defined. Such models offer what the sociologist Peter Wagner, in his essay on “Modernity,” calls “the interpretative and practical power of (their) normativity and functionality”; in other words – those of his colleague Gerard Delanty – their “normative salience.” The way Uber pushes its ‘normative salience’ is just what long-established taxi firms fear most.

Every traditional idea of modernity, sovereignty and identity in taxis is put in doubt by the Uber challenge. Modernity, because Uber shows how digital applications can revolutionise a traditional transport sector; sovereignty because its app functions world-wide, while most national and local governments have long evolved norms for running taxi services themselves; identity, as taxi drivers have always considered themselves a distinct body of workers in Europe with their own skills and knowledge, even their own particular vehicles in the case of the celebrated London black cab.

Uber’s force and ruthlessness seem exceptional even by the standards of Silicon Valley. “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission,” is one article of faith attributed to the firm. But its drive for constant innovation and ubiquity places it naturally in the long line of American service sector imports into Europe which started controversially with chains of down-market stores in the 1920s and cinema palaces in the 1930s. It then proceeded with coffee bars after World War II, shopping malls from the 1950s on, McDonald’s from the 1970s, Blockbusters in the 1980s, before morphing into the digital world from the 1990s on. Starbucks arrived in the early 2000s. In many nations the activities of chain stores were limited by those who sought to defend the rights and privileges of small shopkeepers (Hitler too played that game), an attitude still to be found in societies like India. As for McDonald’s, the hapless company has found its road blocked in the past, even violently, by activists from Hampstead to France, from Italy to Iceland.

Why the Old World itself has been unable to generate a world-dominating net-based service has generated discussion ever since Google started to loom so large, and has been renewed in the face of Uber. Technical and legal arguments have been taken up and dropped: sheer lack of imagination and ambition gets most of the blame these days. But the investors prepared to pour extraordinary sums in to Uber, and lose them, putting market share world-wide before profit, have no possible rivals anywhere. The head of Google in Europe has blamed the EU for ‘protecting the past from the future’. If so, it is only doing what so many of its citizens, with taxi-drivers head of the queue, would want it to do. But on the 2nd June, the EU made clear it was in favour of ‘the sharing economy’ in whatever form it might take, suggesting only that common guidelines across the ‘single market’ should emerge to help its growth. Given current attitudes in much of Europe to the EU’s eternal harmonising efforts, Brussels may well be wasting its breath.

Headline image: January 13, 2015, around 70 of Portland’s 460 Taxi cabs protested fair taxi laws by parking in Pioneer square. Photo by Aaron Parecki. CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

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Making queer history visible in North Carolina

This year, we have focused on people and institutions using oral history in innovative ways, discussing the challenges they face and their motivations for using oral history to make positive changes in the world. In April we talked to Scott Seyforth and Nichole Barnes about the impressive development of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s LGBTQ archive. Back in March, we looked at websites that are using oral history to intervene in process of erasure, and talked to Sarah Gould about the difficulties of effectively utilizing oral history in museum exhibits. Today we take a very timely look at the work of Josh Burford, a North Carolina based archivist and activist, who is working to make the history of LGBTQ people in Charlotte visible. Read more below, and make sure to check out the archive on Facebook or on their website to explore the collections.

Over the last few months, we’ve seen a mobilization to fight HB2 , the highly controversial North Carolina law that curtails the rights of queer people, and limits the ability of local communities to expand nondiscrimination ordinances or protect the rights of workers. Do you see your archival work connected to the current political fights happening in North Carolina?

I think that HB2 has given us a drastic reminder of what can happen when the community is not organized and does not know its history. When our history is invisible then we can be pushed aside as “outsiders” or not part of the community. HB2 reminds us that by making our history visible and accessible, we can see our place in the community and all the amazing work that is being accomplished. I want people to look back on this time and be reminded of how we fought and how we overturned this law.

How have the recent legal changes shaped the project or its reception?  

If anything, I think that the visibility of North Carolina at the moment has pointed our supporters to us in a much faster way. I would have preferred to live without it, but since the news went nationwide we have gotten amazing support. People see the oral history project as a way to get involved and a way to be a part of something that is not overtly political. Insisting on space to capture our history is an act of resistance but one that more people want to engage in and with.

Insisting on space to capture our history is an act of resistance but one that more people want to engage in and with.

Working backwards a bit, how did the project originally begin?

We started collecting Charlotte’s local history back in 2013. The manuscripts and materials are being gathered into the King-Henry-Brockington collection and we always knew that we wanted to expand into oral histories to enhance the collection. In October of 2013 one of our local leaders, Donaldson King, passed away a week before his oral history was to be taken. With his death we lost over 50 years of history and it really forced us to start much sooner than we planned so that it did not happen again.

How did you come to focus the project on historical figures in the LGBT community?

The committee working on the Charlotte Queer Oral History Project really wanted to capture the narratives of community leaders across generations. Since the physical collections had already garnered local and national attention, it just made sense that we start with the most visible leaders in our community and work out from there. Ultimately we will be focusing on historic events in Charlotte through the lens of these people and we will gather folks who are not as visible as we move along.

As you’ve gathered the collection, have you had any particularly memorable successes or frustrations with the project?

For me the biggest success of the project has been the planning committee itself. Our group is led by local community members who are giving their time to make this happen, the group is intergenerational (with our youngest member being 22 and our older in their 70s), and the group represents historic memory from past and present. The group is working so hard to make the project sustainable and accessible to anyone that wants to be a part of it. The only frustration we are experiencing at this point is there are simply too many people to interview and not enough time to do it. This is a great problem to have but one that forces us to work harder every day.

You noted early just how important it is for our history to be visible and accessible, especially in times of struggle. What plans does the collection have for publicizing its collection, or making them available, going forward?

The plan from the beginning has been to make the oral histories as accessible to the public as possible. We are going to try and engage the community in every aspect of the project from taking the histories, to transcribing them. We hope to make the oral histories available to the public as quickly as possible and we already have plans underway to organize events and community forums around the stories we collect.

What pointers can you give to other people interested in doing similar oral history projects?

First I would say to not be scared of doing a project of this size. Getting started is not as hard as people think, especially with a group of committed volunteers. I would find a local University/College and partner with their special collections department for both physical support and ideas. This way when you run into a problem you have an ally to step in to make sure the project continues. Lastly I would say that it is so important to capture the stories of older community members while they are with us, but don’t forget that our current Queer/Trans young people have so much to offer as well. Let this opportunity be one that creates space for dialogue between the generations so that everyone is learning and affirmed.

Let this opportunity be one that creates space for dialogue between the generations so that everyone is learning and affirmed.

You can read more about the King-Henry-Brockington Archive on Facebook and their website to follow along as the collection develops. If you enjoyed this article, make sure to check out the special issue of the OHR, “Listening to and Learning from LGBTQ Lives”, which is available for free until the end of June. Chime into the discussion in the comments below, or on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, or Google+.

Featured image: “Moral March on Raleigh” by James Willamor, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Flickr.

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Buyers beware: the digital dangers of purchasing medicines online

Recently, INTERPOL announced it had coordinated the shutdown of close to 5,000 websites illegally selling medicines online. Dubbed “Operation Pangea IX”, this ninth annual international week of action against illicit online pharmacies boasted the participation of over 103 countries from a multi-stakeholder coalition, led to 393 arrests, and resulted in the seizure of $53 million dollars worth of potentially dangerous medicines. Yet a fundamental question remains: is Operation Pangea really a “panacea” in the global fight against criminal organizations looking to profit from fake, substandard, and downright dangerous medicines sold online?

For those consumers, clinicians, and policymakers who don’t know, there is a robust and active transnational criminal trade in fake medicines that impacts patients from the poorest to the richest countries. Though the exact scope and impact from this insidious form of health crime is hard to determine, seizures of fake medicines by customs, regulatory, and law enforcement officials occur throughout the world, reflecting what is estimated to be a multi-billion dollar criminal enterprise.

Fueling this underground industry is the Internet, which has made everything from flowers to iPhones easier to buy on the web. Yet, the advantages of e-commerce (allowing consumers expanded choices, 24/7 convenience, competitive pricing, and access to goods and services globally) have also empowered criminals with the same tools and platforms, leading to new and dangerous forms of cybercrime.

Technology by Daniel Agrelo. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

Herein lies the rise of the illicit online pharmacy: a crime of opportunity borne from the unhealthy union of the global fake medicines trade and widespread accessibility and anonymity of e-commerce solutions, a problem we explore in detail in a recent review article published in the British Medical Bulletin. In fact, while it is estimated that 35,000 online pharmacies are in existence, 96% of them are actually illegal, with many operating as “no prescription” online pharmacies.

“No prescription, no problem?”

A “no prescription” online pharmacy is exactly what it advertises. Essentially it allows consumers to buy prescription drugs online without a legitimate script from their doctor and in the absence of partnership from a healthcare professional. Though this may seem ideal for the modern empowered and independent “e-patient”, it creates several patient safety risks that could endanger one’s health. At the heart of this risk is the fact that many of these online medicines are actually fake, ineffective, and often dangerous.

The health risks of buying a medicine from an illicit online pharmacy is real, with documented patient deaths and adverse events resulting from overdose, toxicity, and misuse. Indeed, some of the medicines sold by illegal online pharmacies are dangerous no matter what the context, with studies finding everything from controlled and highly addictive substances, vaccines (to be self-administered by a prospective consumer), and even recalled drugs sold online.

Your health is not the only risk, with many of these sites simply swindling consumers out of their money by engaging in financial fraud or infecting computers with viruses and other malware. Are you one of the millions who have received email spam to buy “cheap” erectile dysfunction drugs online? It turns out this is just one of the ways online pharmacies market their wares.

In fact, illicit online pharmacies are savvy at marketing, using multiple strategies (including online marketing, social media, and marketing affiliate networks) to advertise their products in a competitive landscape. They focus on “selling arguments” in order to convey a false sense of safety and emphasize lower pricing and convenience in order to lure in consumers. They also engage in outright fraud, including the use of fake licenses/accreditation, and misleading consumers about the legality of purchasing their products.

“Whack-a-mole?”

If you don’t know what “whack-a-mole” is, then you likely haven’t been to an amusement arcade. Essentially the game involves a machine with a large amount of holes, a black mallet, and moles (plastic versions of the small mammalian variety) that move up and down while players attempt to hit them on the head and score points.

Coincidentally, this same futile effort to knock down constantly re-emerging and elusive targets is the way many in the law enforcement community characterize the fight against online pharmacies.

In order to better understand this analogy, one has to understand that an illicit online pharmacy is only one small part of a much larger and complex ecosystem. To start, a website is simply code that is indexed on the World Wide Web. Enabling its services are both legitimate companies (including registrars, internet service providers, search engines, payment processors, and global shipping companies) and criminal networks that manufacture and distribute illegal medicines (see figure below).

Internet ecosystem for illicit online pharmacies. Edited image based on original from “Digital danger: a review of the global public health, patient safety and cybersecurity threats posed by illicit online pharmacies” in the British Medical Bulletin. Used with the author’s permission.

Hence, any effective solution requires international cooperation, coordination, and enforcement engaging all of these disparate actors, which is challenging to say the least. It also demands more than just simply closing down websites (or whacking the mole), as new illicit online pharmacies quickly “pop up” in place of the ones being shut down.

A digital problem, a digital solution?

The same digital technology that enables illicit online pharmacies to criminally profit from global consumers is also a vulnerability that should be exposed in research, policymaking, and law enforcement activities.

For example, online pharmacies cannot survive without electronic payment, so computer scientists have targeted their access to banks. Our recent research employs data mining and machine learning strategies in order to proactively identify high-risk illicit online pharmacies and their marketing affiliates that advertise via social media.

However, no solution will be effective until there is international consensus on the need for sustained action, a commitment to increased resources research and law enforcement activities, better consumer education and outreach, and harmonization of laws against this form of health-related cybercrime. A week of international attention, albeit laudable, is simply not enough.

Featured image: Cure by Ewa Urban. CC0 Public Domain via Pixabay.

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Fighting the new misogyny: a social work approach

Rape threats against female bloggers. A major presidential candidate calling women “pigs” and even worse. Women being deprived of basic health care from Planned Parenthood because of anti-abortion politics. Female politicians facing mockery for being women. The pay gap getting worse as many women continue to be undervalued. Misogyny (hatred of women) is nothing new, of course. But in the past few years, anti-women sentiments have erupted through the Internet, popular culture, right wing attacks, and the rejection of basic civility now ridiculed as “political correctness.” What do the international feminist movements have to teach us about fighting misogyny? What could we learn from the suffragists and others who demanded to be treated as equals?

Lately, I have been immersed in research on both misogyny and feminism. Only a few years earlier, I would have considered today’s misogyny to be subtle and even ambiguous at times. During this past year, though, I have seen so many examples of overt and unmistakable woman-bashing that it can seem hopeless. Why even bother trying to fight this avalanche of words and images meant to demean the female?

Then I picture the ten-year-old Nujood Ali taking a taxi on her own in the big city of Sanaa, Yemen. She entered the courthouse and looked for a kind-looking adult to hear her story. Fortunately, lawyers who heard about her abusive marriage decided to help her get a divorce. Her story inspired Yemenis to fight child marriage through public awareness and legislative advocacy.

Another activist who inspires me is Waris Dirie, who has led the global fight against FGM/FGC (female genital mutilation/female genital cutting). Mothers fear that their daughters will not get husbands if they are not cut, so girls as young as six are held down by a group of women for the ritual. One Somali woman once told me about the experience: “I will never forget the pain.” Dirie’s bold attempts to fight long-held cultural beliefs about virginity and sexuality are remarkable. She gave up her career as an international model to work as the United Nations Special Ambassador for the Elimination of Female Genital Mutilation, as well as establishing foundations for the empowerment of women.

Besides global violence against women is the issue of ecofeminism. Bella Abzug, the feisty politician who taught women how to be leaders, also helped to found WEDO (Women’s Environment and Development Organization) in the 1990s. One ecofeminist influenced by Abzug wrote:

In my heart I believe that women will change the nature of power rather than power change the nature of women.

For we are the Old Ones, the New Breed, the Natives, who came first but lasted, indigenous to an utterly different dimension. We are the girlchild in Zambia, the grandmother in Burma, the woman in El Salvador and Afghanistan, Finland and Fiji. We are the whale-song and rainforest, the deep wave rising huge to shatter glass power on the shore…

We are the women who will transform the world.

(Poem cited in Moghadam, V.M. (2005). Globalizing women: Transnational feminist networks. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, p. 114.)

Alice Paul, American suffragette in 1918 by Library of Congress. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

These international feminists have joined a centuries-old movement of demanding equal rights for women. The story of feminism deserves to be taught in every history classroom alongside the story of the Founding Fathers. Students are usually taught that women were “granted” the vote as if it were an inevitable and graceful event. Decades of passionate speeches and violent confrontations, though, demonstrate that society resisted the idea of women voters. The suffrage movement was anything but pretty. Alice Paul, for instance, was jailed with other women for their street protests. Facing brutal conditions, these women went on a hunger strike in 1917. The authorities responded by first placing her in a psychiatric ward, then later force feeding her. This method consisted of using a metal clamp to force her mouth open for the tube, thus prompting the name for her: Iron-Jawed Angel. She still continued the hunger strike for weeks. One of her most famous quotes is, “When you put your hand to the plow, you can’t put it down until you get to the end of the row.” She later wrote the Equal Rights Amendment, which has not yet been added to the US Constitution.

Besides these exemplary feminists, social work values can also guide us in our fight against misogyny. Social justice issues are intertwined with feminism including: minimum wage (women are more likely than men to work in low-paying jobs), health care (women are being denied the most basic services because of sweeping anti-abortion restrictions), and crime (women are more likely than men to be raped or assaulted by a partner). Almost every social justice issue, then, could be examined from a woman-centered perspective for greater clarity.

Another social work value, the dignity and worth of all persons, can embolden us to speak out when we hear the derogatory use of words such as “bitch” and “skank.” I still struggle with the most effective way to speak out against misogynistic language, so I hope that we can start a dialogue about it. Through the years, I had laughed along at jokes that actually made me cringe. Now I hold myself accountable to rejecting anti-women comments in my social circles. Fortunately, it appears that the younger generation is unafraid to speak out against slut-shaming and other negative behaviors.

The feminist movement needs social workers—and we need them. Despite the fact that I wrote a book about “women’s issues,” I really consider them to be human issues because men are also damaged by polarized gender roles. Although it can be discouraging to live during a time of resurgent misogyny, we can remain hopeful because we are not alone. The powerful women of the past and the international feminists of today are part of our movement. As social workers, we cannot help but believe that both individuals and societies can transform themselves.

Featured image credit: abstract color watercolor by Gerd Altmann. Public domain via Pixabay.

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