Places of Montezuma

While watching the magnificent and unique BBC detective series , Luther, with Idris Elba, who also played the part of Stringer Bell in the greatest television show ever made, "The Wire" I discovered this most interesting, if not brilliant song. Granted, the lyrics are a little dark--"The spinal cord of JFK Wrapped in Marilyn Monroe's negligee"--but then again, so is the series.

Psychedelic invocations
Of Mata Hari at the station
I give to you
A Java princess of Hindu Birth
A woman of flesh a child of earth
I give to you
The hanging gardens of Babylon
Miles Davis the black unicorn
I give to you
The Palaces of Montezuma
And the Gardens of Akbar's tomb
I give to you
The spider Goddess and the Needle Boy
The slave-dwarves they employ
I give to you
A custard-coloured super-dream
Of Ali McGraw and Steve McQueen
I give to you

C'mon baby, let's get out of the cold
And give me, give me, give me your precious love for me to hold

The epic of Gilgamesh
A pretty little black A-line dress
I give to you
The spinal cord of JFK
Wrapped in Marilyn Monroe's negligee
I give to you
I want nothing in return
Just the softest little breathless word
I ask of you
A word contained in a grain of sand
That can barely walk can't even stand
I ask of you

Oh c'mon baby, let's get out of the cold
And gimme gimme gimme your precious love for me to hold
C'mon baby come out of the cold
And gimme gimme gimme your precious love for me to hold

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How AIDS Changed America

The BBC documentary How AIDS Changed to America, hosted by Paul Michael Glaser (Starsky of 1970s TV series Starsky & Hutch) is available until Tuesday, December 9. 2008 at 11:32 P.M. It marks "the 20th anniversary of the first World Aids Day, charting nearly three decades of pain, prejudice and progress in the American people's struggle with HIV/Aids."

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British backtrack on Iraq death toll

British government officials have backed the methods used by scientists who concluded that more than 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the invasion, the BBC reported yesterday.

The Government publicly rejected the findings, published in The Lancet in October. But the BBC said documents obtained under freedom of information legislation showed advisers concluded that the much-criticised study had used sound methods.

The study, conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, estimated that 655,000 more Iraqis had died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. The study estimated that 601,027 of those deaths were from violence.

The researchers, reflecting the inherent uncertainties in such extrapolations, said they were 95 per cent certain that the real number of deaths lay somewhere between 392,979 and 942,636.

The conclusion, based on interviews and not a body count, was disputed by some experts, and rejected by the US and British governments. But the chief scientific adviser to the Ministry of Defence, Roy Anderson, described the methods used in the study as "robust" and "close to best practice". Another official said it was "a tried and tested way of measuring mortality in conflict zones".

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