The Drew Carey Show begins with a song and dance called ‘Cleveland Rocks!’, the joke being, of course, that Cleveland is pretty far down on the list of best cities in which to party. It sounds like a slogan concocted by the Cleveland department of tourism on the theory that if you repeat it enough, someone’s going to fall for it.

Last week, a judge upheld the NYC subway’s questionably random bag searches, deferring in part to the judgment of former U.S. antiterrorism adviser Richard Clarke. It may be the first time that anyone in the government has taken Cassandra Clarke’s warnings seriously (if you ignore ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.,’ you’ll pretty much ignore anything).

It may also be the least effective. Look who’s one of the latest suicide bombers in Iraq:

Muriel Degauque, suicide bomber

Muriel Degauque, believed to be the first European Muslim woman to stage a suicide attack, started out life as a good Roman Catholic girl in this coal mining corner of Belgium… Ms. Degauque, 38, detonated her explosive vest amid an American military patrol in the town of Baquba on Nov. 9, wounding one American soldier…

… European women who marry Muslim men are now the largest source of religious conversions in Europe… European terrorist networks were trying to recruit Caucasian women to handle terrorist logistics because they would be less likely to raise suspicion. [Link]

On 7/7, Al Qaeda switched from using Arabs to using Pakistanis and a Caribbean. Not two weeks later, they switched to using Africans… A race-based approach fails completely. It’s suicidal to rely on it. [Link]

Related posts: Banerjee wants bag search ban, A profile of cognitive dissonance, The profiling myth

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December 26th marks the one year anniversary of the devastating tsunami that hit South and South-East Asia. Globally it has been a year of immense natural disasters, so it has been hard to keep focus on the long term reconstruction of any single affected area (unless you live there). Luckily there are ever more grassroots efforts by the diaspora community. The tsunami wiped out much of the Sri Lankan healthcare infrastructure, which in turn left children the most vulnerable. Now two U.S. hospitals, Children’s National Medical Center (CNMC) in Washington, D.C. and Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh (CHP), have joined forces with World Children’s Initiative (WCI), to launch “Project Peds: Sri Lanka Tsunami Relief.” From their press release:

In the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, a pediatric cardiologist and a law professor – former college roommates at Brown University – traveled with two other young professionals to the South and East of Sri Lanka. For Dr. Ratnayaka, a Sri Lankan American of Sinhalese descent, and Professor Gulasekaram, a Sri Lankan American of Tamil descent, the mission was to aid family and friends in their motherland. Their multi-ethnic team of volunteers provided direct medical assistance at makeshift treatment centers along the southern coast. They brought school supplies and clothes to orphans on the decimated eastern shore, an area ravaged first by war for the past two decades, then by the tsunami. Though their ethnic communities have been stuck in a bitter civil war for more than two decades, these two men collaborated in their relief efforts as close friends, much the same way they have studied, worked, and socialized together for the past fifteen years even as the bloodletting in their birth nation worsened.

Wanting to do more, the group sought out potential long-term projects for improvement of pediatric health care. The team decided to rehabilitate the pediatric ward at MGH. When they returned to the United States , they assembled a band of more than 20 young professional volunteers — doctors, executives, lawyers and journalists from across the globe — to form WCI and launch Project Peds.

I am just using this one effort as a proxy to highlight the fact that there are still ways to get involved even after you have donated your money to the Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina, Earthquake in South Asia, etc. I think SM readers are generally more aware than others, but a reminder doesn’t hurt. I would ask that readers use the comments following this post to provide a link to any new organization you know of that was created by the South Asian diaspora as a response to one of the disasters in the past year. Most efforts have been through established organizations but I am sure there may be a few new ones like Project PEDS that could use a shot out for some publicity. Let’s give them some love.

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