Every now and then the abortion debate resurfaces in Mauritius: do we legalize it or not? As usual, all the religious groups are very vocal against it. Those in favor claim it’s the right of a woman to decide, … and those against claim that life is sacred, we are murderers if we are for legalization of abortion, it’s the child’s right and not that of the woman, … the usual stuff and most articles in the press sound like a cheap General Paper essay written in 45 mins in an exam room!

Hold on. What are we talking about: are we for or against abortion or for or against the legalization of abortion? No one in his right mind can be for abortion; for the killing of an innocent child! There is a subtle difference there: the debate is about legalization of abortion and not about abortion!

Am I for or against abortion? I am against abortion.
Am I for or against legalization of abortion? I am for legalization of abortion.

I’m not being incoherent here. Face the facts, abortion is illegal and yet it’s done everyday. According to some figures I got from the website of Pierre & Monique Dinan , in 2007, there were 1,635 complications following abortion. So there are at least 4 abortions per day in the best case (as these figures are only linked to complications following an abortion). How many more are done every day that does not lead complications? So whether we are for or against the legalization of abortion, we’d better face the facts. IT IS THERE!

Given that it is there anyway, why don’t we legalize it? According to the “general wisdom”, legalizing abortion will make women use abortion as a means of contraception. I don’t buy that! I think a condom or the pill is what people would use as contraception and not abortion as these are much more convenient and much less risky as there can be complications to abortion. The next option would be the morning-after pill which I’ve heard can be effective up to 72 hours after unprotected sex. Moreover, a study by the World Health Organisation(WHO) showed that legalizing abortion does not increase the amount of abortions. Legalizing abortion only makes it safer and what really reduces abortion is providing better access to contraception.

Legalizing or not legalizing abortion does not prevent abortion; it only makes it safer for those who want it (anyway even it’s not legal, women “the so-called murders” according to those against legalization of abortion never get prosecuted for abortion in Mauritius while doctors “their accomplices” can be sometimes…). So unless we are happy that those women who had abortion are paying for their sins by suffering complications following it, we should accept that it is there and provide a safe way for these women. It is often rumored in Mauritius that the “rich” just take a 30 mins plane trip Reunion island (where abortion is legal), get their abortion there and come back safe and sound in the afternoon. I guess it’s true as abortion is not only for the poor and if you can do it safely you would but some real figures on that would be appreciated. So depending on how far this it true, this makes abortion in Mauritius a discrimination against the poor, who cannot afford to fly to Reunion island, which makes it worse.

As usual in Mauritius, we rarely take decisions based on facts but rather on emotions! So once and for all we should end this debate and legalize it. I’m not saying legalizing abortion till 8 months or something like that (you can’t decide after carrying a baby for 7 months that you suddenly don’t want it!) but find something that makes sense, get the right parameters and make it happen. We can then also provide protection and advice to women who are pressured into abortion and offer help or adoption services, …. (am I dreaming too much here???) Again I’m not saying you go to the hospital, say abort me and then you go home. Right procedures should be established and those “front” against abortion can try to convince these women to not abort – this is more work that just sitting behind a table and shouting no to abortion when the debate pops up but more like Mouvement d’Aide a la Maternite does, real work (I think they do right!).

Again decisions (as well as for who to vote) should not be taken not your heart but with your brains. I hope a real debate follows and people against the legalization of abortion finally come up with facts and figures why it is bad. I’m not in Mauritius anymore but what I read up to now is “No to abortion” with no real justifications apart from basically you’ll burn in hell, you have no heart, it’s murder, … all that will not stop abortion in Mauritius. Abortion is there to stay whether we legalize it or not! What should be our concern is whether legalizing it will make the situation worse (more abortions everyday) or better (more safe for women who will get it done anyway).

From all the evidence I have right now, I believe we should create a proper legislation and legalize abortion in Mauritius!

Elections are approaching and even from very far I cannot escape hearing about it. Some essential characteristics of elections in 3 questions (question 0 is just to set the scene).

0. A little digression first: Who is a Mauritian? (that’s needed to set the scene)

The Mauritian is a very special race; after years of isolation on a small island in the Indian Ocean he has evolved some very specific traits. For example, his official language is English (which very few speak and write properly), the common unofficial medium is French and the mother tongue is Mauritian Creole which he likes to degrade, says that it’s not a language, find inferior and vulgar but nevertheless enjoys speaking in! There are other important characteristics as well: his favorite sport: watching English Premier League (and believing that they have the best teams and players in the world), his favorite topic of discussion is local politics, and he has a superpower (which makes all of us superheroes) of always finding a way to blame someone else for whatever happens (sorry of writing this quote in a non-language, I sincerely apologize for that) “Pas mwa sa li sa!”.

Finally, most good Mauritians fail to see themselves as Mauritian but rather as Indian, African, European, … ; in other words denying your own culture and trying to associate yourself with others (careful though: we don’t want to go back to the country of our ancestors: we all want to go live and study in Europe) is what makes most Mauritians true Mauritians!

1. So how does a Mauritian decide who to vote for?

All political parties have a programme which it should implement once it wins the elections. But naturally, this is NOT the criteria for voting. The main criteria are: is he like me, what favors is he going to do for my community (community being defined as people who have the same religion as me) – nothing will change for him but his community will prosper (at least this is what he thinks).

Of course, when a politician registers himself as candidate for an election, he has to state his ethnic group. Honestly how dare he be just a Mauritian! He has to be Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Chinese, … as being just a Mauritian is lame; so damn lame that it denies him the right to be a candidate!

2. How do parties campaign for an election?

Fighting for their ideals or explaining how the programme is going to change the life of Mauritians is of course not an argument. Slinging mud at your opponent is good. Blaming his ethnicity ( who can argue that he is NOT to be blamed for being of a different ethnicity – it’s of course his fault for being born hindu, muslin, christian, chinese, … he should have know better!!! ) is particularly effective. I cannot blame the politicians for that as they are using the easiest and most effective startegy at his disposal.

Moreover a debate on TV to discuss your ideas is inadmissible; even suggesting this is downright stupid!

3. What happens when an election is won/lost?

Politicians:

• Winners: gloat about how good he is and have lavish praises for how smart Mauritians are for voting for him: (warning non-language quote ahead) “lepep admirable“. Message for his worthy adversaries: “Lev pake aller” (apologies for use of non-language again).

• Losers: I’ll be back.

Mauritians:

Nothing changes for the poor guy, if he didn’t manage to convince politicians that his local road needs to be asphalted/ lighted/ … better, he’ll have to wait for the next elections for that or hope to have some contacts or the next labour day (1st of May) for a free picnic to the beach and free birani!

Some things never change (though I hope they would). Life goes on!

Every now and then, Mauritian politicians seem to feel the need to shout for Death Penalty.

To me, this is just further evidence (if ever it was required) of their lack of arguments or solution to tackle criminality. Anyway it seems to be successful in appeasing the populace that is eager for blood. So why should they stop?

Death Penalty

I’m not going to start listing the arguments for and against death penalty: just ask any A-Level English (GP) student and he/she probably has an essay ready to dish out for you.

My opinion on the subject is depicted in the above picture and it sums it all.

So no arguments for and against?

What’s the role of Law in a country? According to me (who is not a lawyer), it’s to dictate what is considered to be bad conduct as different people seem to have different opinions on what is “bad” or will just pretend not knowing that “it” was bad.

Eventually, when someone breaks these laws, the latter has to face a certain penalty. For minor offenses, it’s most likely a fine (I hope and suppose)and, for more serious offenses, it will be a jail sentence.

So why do we need to imprison people? The reason should be according to me to protect the society from them, show that crime does not pay and, also to show to society that the bad guy is being punished. The latter is just for the sake of a human feeling called revenge yet it’s nevertheless very important as else people would start killing each other for revenge until whole families are decimated.

So why is not imprisoning someone enough? Why do politicians call for Death Penalty instead of Life imprisonment without any chance of release. I think both are equivalent deterrents and in both cases the society is no longer threatened because of a dangerous individual.

I can see only one reason, it’s our lust for blood!

that bridge close to CEB in Rose-Hill wasn’t on the old maps! In addition to updated map, there are many more streets.

The roads appear a bit offset for now but I guess that will be fixed soon and the main missing thing now is to be able to get directions from one location to another. Once this is done, we will have a very very complete and useful system!

Thank you Google.

Contribute

Once again, as I’ve done before, I strongly urge everyone to create content like add roads where they are missing, specify the type of roads, if it’s one way, … and why not put 3D models of building as well! It would be great to have much more content. That will be a way to help your country (instead of always waiting for others to help us) and also being able to brag about getting an invite to Google Map Maker Conference!

ACIM and the Exams

For nearly one year the NGO ACIM (Association des Consomateurs de L’Ile Maurice – Consumer Association of Mauritius)  have not received any subsides from the government. In protest, Jayen Chullum, the secretary general of this assiciation is on a hunger strike.

The main reason behind that, at least this is what the government claims, is that ACIM organized a go-slow operation on the roads which coincided with the School Certificate Exams. As a result some students were late for their exams and were penalized.

Had I been one of the kids stuck in traffic, I would have been mad at ACIM. Who wouldn’t? But using that as a reason to cut the subsides is very cheap from the government.

Cheap Excuses

We Mauritians may not be the smartest nation on earth but come on we are not that stupid either. The government should know better and stop using so lame excuses! I wonder how many people believe them. Most people can see that this is just a way of ridding themselves of a thorn in the flesh.

Also, coming back to the go-slow. Why did that happen in the first place? Prices of petrol had plummeted all over the world except in Mauritius. Why? Some organisation, responsible for buying petrol for us, made a bad deal and again instead of saying that we will have to pay for that (at least one Minister was honest enough to admit that Mauritians will have to pay for this), they found all sorts of excuses which were ridiculous! Everyone knew we were paying the price of the bad deal!

The rest of us

Instead of being lied to and having to suffer the consequences of bad management, I’d rather just pay the price of the bad management. At least, I’ll know that I’m know being taken for a ride and our political leaders are somewhat brave chaps.

Anyway, hope that the subsides are restored soon with no string attached.

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The Barber of Seville

Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a new barber in town and he’s working in front of the government’s house. He specializes in head shaving but unfortunately has no license to practice. I think the shavings are free though.

That arrest for illegally practicing as a barber was hilarious ( at least that was extremely creative) and deserves a special mention:

“10 out of 10 for style, and minus several millions for good thinking” -  The Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy

On Monday 25 January,  I had the chance to see one on the movies in the Sundance Film Festival: To Catch a Dollar: Muhammad Yunus Banks on America.

If you’ve never heard about Muhammad Yunus, well you should definitely google him. He’s the founder of the Grameen Bank and was the Peace Nobel Prize laureate in 2006. The movie (or if you want documentary) follows Muhammad Yunus as he tries to raise awareness about the Grameen Bank and raise funds. I would very strongly recommend this movie.

Grameen Bank

It’s a bank for the poor. It lends small amounts of money to groups of 5 women that have a kindof business plan without any collateral. These women would probably never have been able to get money without such a bank except from loan sharks and we know the consequences of that.

The question that everyone asks is how can such a system work and everyone thinks that it won’t work in his country. Everyone thinks that it will fail but it’s at work in 43 countries!

So I wouldn’t say that it won’t work in Mauritius. I would just put it as “I don’t understand how it will work in Mauritius” but people all over the world are the same. If it has worked in so many countries why will it fail in Mauritius. So I just hope that they would set up a branch.

Everyone seems to be talking about that these days – not to mention the jokes like iTampon, … . Being an Apple product, it looks great and I’m sure its usability is awesome but this time, I really can’t figure out what it’s for. Some personal comments:

It looks like a giant iPhone but you can’t use it as a phone. So I would say it’s like a giant iPod touch which is an iPhone without the phone functionality! But it’s not as easy to carry around as the iPod Touch.

I certainly think it will spell the end of the kindle though the latter is cheaper. Anyway, I don’t see myself buying either of these until these products have been tested to repeatedly fall down without breaking. I would appreciate something more flexible too.

Netbook. It certainly looks like one of those and has equivalent computing power I suppose. However it’s flat and will it appeal to people as a replacement of a netbook?

Macbook. No way!!!

So down the line, I still don’t understand what the iPad is for. I guess we’ll have to wait a bit. Up to now, most apple products have been a success: the ipod, the iphone, the macbooks. So maybe there’s something I’m not aware of but I suppose, being an Apple product, it will have its followers soon.

I tried my luck at those but I couldn’t get any of these to work – they all messed up my display – until I stumbled on Przemoc’s wiki (last article on the page). The solution proposed there is much more elegant and easier than any I’ve seen yet since it’s based on modifying the sources of aptitude to get the latter to download the CUDA drivers for you which is the hardest part of the installation.

Once this is done, installing the CUDA toolkit and SDK is childplay and it works flawlessly with my GTX 260 graphics card even with twinview. That was CUDA 2.3 by the way.

The cool link once again: Przemoc’s wiki (last article on the page)

or the relevant part of the page copied here

sudo nvidia-xconfig
sudo nvidia-settings

it should work. It did for me anyway with two screens and an Nvidia GTX 260

The debate has been going on for a while. Should we or should we not have the Gamma Covanta waste incinerator in Mauritius? I don’t know much about incinerators and the technology they use and so I’m definitely not in a position to comment on whether they are safe or not. So my analysis of the situation will be based on other points:

1. No free lunch

We’ve got a lot of waste and don’t know what to do: let’s burn it and we’ll get energy! Doesn’t that just too good to be true: turning a major problem (too much waste) into a source of revenue. There’s just got to be a catch somewhere. I might be mistaken but I’ve not heard anyone saying that we should classify the waste and selectively burn only some of them. This is just too too easy and definitely look fishy.

2. Why do they want to set it up so badly?

Gamma Covanta seems to be extremely keen on setting up this plant. There have been adverts everywhere on the island and recently there are even adverts on the radio saying that the incinerator is our only solution to deal with waste in Mauritius. Gamma and Covanta are not philanthropic organizations – they are businesses and the aim of a business is to make money – and if they are putting so much effort to convince everyone, there’s got to be a lot of money behind it.

Well this is just my personal opinion and there’s no scientific basis behind what I’m saying but common sense tells me that it just can’t be that good, that easy and generate some and have no side effects.

Panaceas like that just don’t exist.

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Update (23 July 2009) starts here: The myth of dioxins

I’ve assisted the talk at the university today (Thursday 23 July 2009) given by Prof Jean Francois Narbonne. It was a good talk followed by a very nice debate. In the light of this, I know a bit more about incinerators and the Mauritian context and I was wrong along several lines:

• the incinerators, if used properly operating at 850 degrees, with filters are basically safe: the level of dioxin the emit is well below the level recommended by the European union
• I was mistaken, the incinerator will separate the different kind of waste and selectively burn some
• incinerators are not a super way of becoming rich; dumping the waste like we currently do is.

Is it really the solution?

However, it’s not that great and I’m not too sure it’s the best for Mauritius. To operate the incinerator, we will need a lot of waste; if I got it right, an incinerator needs at least 150 tonnes of waste to be effective – will we have enough to burn? Moreover, we are not going to burn metal, glass and plastic (these can be recycled) and that leaves us with burning paper and organic waste (I suppose that will produce lots of Carbon dioxide). Out of these two, in Mauritius, we mainly have organic waste but it’s got lot of water and the amount of energy required to dehumidify these might be more than what the incinerator produces. In addition to that, if we burn all the organic waste and paper, there’ll be nothing left for composting as these need a minimal amount of waste as well to be cost effective notwithstanding the fact that even paper can be recycled. Finally, even incinerators produce waste which must be stored in class 1 landfills (landfills that are constructed with impervious material that will prevent fluids from leaking into the ground and polluting underground water for example).

What are the other options?

Landfills like we have in Mare Chicose seems to be worse than incinerators. In addition to being an eyesore, it’s very polluting.

Recycling paper, plastic, metal, glass, … basically everything that would seem ideal but do we have enough of these to make these recycling plants sustainable. I think we already have a plastic recycling plant (one of my friends take plastic bottles somewhere in Plaine Lauzan I think) and some people are so keen on recycling metal that they even steal them but I think these are exported. I don’t know if it’s cost-effective to export all that can be recycled though; again I know very little about waste disposal and all the mechanics involved there.

Given that we have mainly organic waste, composting could be a solution there. Professor Narbonne warned against producing compost of poor quality but since we mainly have organic waste, I suppose that wouldn’t happen here. But still not a complete solution: what happens to non-organic and non-recyclable waste?

Plasma arc waste disposal: this is what is used in Japan but it seems to require high technology.

Others exist but I don’t know enough and this post is getting too long anyway !

Conclusion

1. Wrong debate!

Down the line, it would seem that dioxin is not the main concern for the incinerator. Why the hell are so many people talking about that? Two possibilities:

• The ecologists are totally clueless about what is happening!

• Gamma is trying to focus the debate on that so that it appears as the major hurdle. Since, it seems, that it can be easily proved that the dioxin levels are very low with incinerators, there’s no reason to stop the project and Gamma wins easily.

2. We need a solution … soon

Landfills for everything is not an option and an alternative needs to be found soon. Like I said before, panaceas do not exist and I believe the ideal (or less evil) solution will be an array of techniques and I’m not too sure incinerators are the best choice (again, not because of dioxins) – even Professor Narbonne prefers other alternatives to incinerators. We need a Mauritian solution to the problem as the Mauritius context is very specific.

Who’d believe that waste would be such an interesting topic!