, a publication which runs circles around the pathetic mainstream media of the U.S.:
Africa’s first female president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, came to power in Liberia a year ago, promising to tackle the problem of rape, which had become increasingly common during the previous 14 years of conflict in the country.
Will Ross has been travelling around Liberia to assess whether that war on rape is being won.
“I like to turn lemon into lemonade - make a bad situation into a good one,” declared the smartly dressed woman as she entered the room.
Annie Demen is Liberia’s deputy minister of gender, a post set up to empower women.
She also heads the taskforce charged with stamping out sexual violence in Liberia. But there was not much to smile about when I turned up later that day to interview her.
News had just reached the office that an 11-year-old girl called Janjay had died after being raped six months ago.
Janjay’s mother said the rape had left her so badly injured she was incontinent and had to wear nappies.
I know domestic violence and rape have their own social causes in every country, but besides mental health disorder or just complete social instability, what the f@%k causes a man to rape a child?
Now, I have asked plenty of people here to try to shed some light on why a man would rape a five-year-old or even a baby and, after the initial shrug of the shoulders, there is often a whisper or two about superstition or belief.
They think it will bring them good luck, one man told me.
In South Africa people have struggled to dispel the belief that raping a baby helps prevent or cure HIV Aids. And it is possible that a similar belief exists here.
There are plenty of misconceptions of HIV/AIDS in the world, especially in Africa, but ‘raping a baby helps prevent of cure HIV/AIDS’ is just too much for me. Go read the rest of the article … I’m trying to come up with something smart and witty but I just can’t.
I have commented about this issue previously. By now you may have heard that researchers have found that .
Now comes in the New York Times:
Last month, scientists invented the AIDS vaccine. Missed it? Perhaps that’s because you were still seeking the vaccine fantasy: the magic bullet, the impenetrable shield that finally pitches this disease into the trash bin, the shot that will end not only the AIDS epidemic but our anxiety about the AIDS epidemic as well.
[…]The vaccine that arrived last month was not actually a vaccine. It was, instead, a confirmation of what scientists had long suspected: circumcision helps protect men from AIDS infection. For years, AIDS researchers have observed that many African tribes that circumcise boys or young men had lower AIDS rates than those that don’t, and that Africa’s Muslim nations, where circumcision is near universal, had far fewer AIDS cases than predominantly Christian ones. The first research proof came in 2005, when a study in South Africa was stopped early in the face of evidence that the men who had been randomly assigned to be circumcised were getting 60 percent fewer H.I.V. infections than the men assigned to the control group. Last month, ethics boards halted two similar studies, in Uganda and Kenya, when they found similar results. In both, the circumcised men caught the AIDS virus half as often as the uncircumcised control group.
I don’t have a problem with the results of the research itself, besides the obvious ethical questions, such as letting men have unprotected sex with HIV-positive women: if it is no biggie, then why didn’t the researchers try this little experiment somewhere in the U.S.? Ethics rule #1: if an (IRB, the one that regulates all research in every institution) would object to a certain experiment in your country, it is probably unethical to do so in another country as well. In layman’s terms, such research would never be allowed in the U.S.
But I digress. I don’t have a problem with the results of the studies. My problem is that because of these results, some people think that cutting part of their wiener is all it takes to fight AIDS. Thankfully, the New York Times article does tackle those issues, such as:
1) Will knowledge of circumcision’s protective status increase dangerous and ill-informed sexual behavior in men? 2) Does this protective status extend to the women circumcised men have sex with? 3) Will it increase or decrease research efforts for an AIDS vaccine? 4) How on Earth are we going to mass circumcise men in Africa? (really, what the hell do people think circumcision is?) 5) Who will train the medical personal?
You have to keep in mind that Africa’s health systems are very delicate - sometimes there is no sterilized equipment, or no autoclave machine, or surgical kits, or for that matter, very few medical personnel - and just cutting wieners left and right is not going to help in fighting AIDS.
Circumcision is a surgical procedure, however, and in the hands of traditional ritual circumcisers, it has a high rate of infection and mishap. The solution is to train these circumcisers and give them decent tools, and at the same time encourage men to come to clinics. Since men in studies say that cost is the biggest reason they are not circumcised, the operation must be free. Countries will also have to equip these clinics and train counselors and medical circumcisers, who don’t have to be doctors.
As you can gather, I oppose circumcision. It is a barbaric practice of ancient times, and you won’t see many docs offering circumcisions (unless you are Jewish). Here is another question for you: are we going to ? I really, really don’t want a religious crackpot to dictate that all those poor African children must be circumcised to prevent HIV.
You can read the rest of the article . The article compares circumcision to a vaccine, and even though it is clear to make the distinctions, I don’t like it one bit. The best way to prevent HIV/AIDS is through education. Education, education, education! Not prayer, certainly not wishful thinking - education.
Either you don’t have sex (you’re not going to last long in this group), you use condoms and protect yourself and your partner, or are faithful to your partner (once you have an honest dialogue, both are faithful to each other, and of course none of them have HIV). That’s the foolproof method. You need to be educated about your own body, and respectful of your partner(s).
Of course, the biggest question to me is that while circumcision is protective only 50%, perhaps 60%, of HIV in each sexual encounter the individual has, you are out of luck the other half of the time. You really are going to take your chances? Who is going to protect you the other 50% of the time? It’s basic statistics - in this case, almost like a coin toss. And it’s also common sense - a condom, or a circumcision? Thanks but no thanks , you can keep your to yourself. You can cut part of your wiener, but if you have unprotected sex with someone who has HIV/AIDS, trust me, you will eventually get HIV.
You would think that Dick Cheney has been finally shoved aside - or at least not as listened too as in the past - given the results of the recent elections, not to mention the disastrous results in Iraq… but think again. There is a saying in Puerto Rico that goes, “hierba mala nunca muere“, roughly translated to “bad weeds never die”. It would be like saying “bad blood never runs dry“. Well anyway, that’s Dick Cheney for you.
Via (be sure to visit their site and read the whole article):
Just Like with Torture, Cheney’s Got His Teeth Sunk into Iran
By Russ Wellen
So much creative destruction, so little time.
First the Republicans lost their majority status in Congress. Then the Iraq Study Group sent the White House its report card and gave it a failing grade. It looked like Dick Cheney had finally been put in his rightful place –- the ceremonial office vice presidents have traditionally occupied.
But this is a man who’s alternately schmoozed and clawed his way to the executive heights in both government and business. Also, he’s suffered four heart attacks and the onset of congestive heart failure. Not to mention undergoing a bypass operation, as well as an angioplasty, the implantation of a defibrillator, and the repair of an aneurysm in an artery.
Any resemblance to one of those horror movie characters that can’t be killed is not coincidental.
I’m posting this article because if push comes to shove, if the U.S. really goes ahead and invades Iran without giving a damn about what the world says, then it would truly be not only a gross international and human rights violation, but the beginnings of a truly global conflict. And just like the torture that goes on in Abu Ghraib & Guantanamo, you can bet your last dollar that Dick Cheney will be behind it all.
According to Porter, the scenario was playing out as Cheney hoped. Like journalist Chris Floyd says, Bush & Co. “love to be thwarted diplomatically.” If the sanctions weren’t tough enough, they could claim they’d tried, but that Iran was too irrational an actor to respond to reason.
Cheney would then feel free to nudge Bush in the direction of bombing Iran’s nuclear plants. Or, more likely, provoking an incident and retaliating with its designated hit man, Israel. Its fighter-bombers have been sighted training over the Mediterranean for the 2,000-mile round trip to the alleged uranium enrichment facility in Natanz.
[…]Cheney, ever the contrarian, may be incapable of restraining himself. Just as likely, though, he was trying to make sure it appeared as if he’d left no stone unturned in his attempts to strong-arm Russia into agreeing to harsh sanctions.
As for Condoleeza Rice, she may have been trying to strike a blow for bilateralism. But, her quiver bereft of olive branches, she lacked the wherewithal to insist she be adequately outfitted. Following Rumsfeld’s advice about going to war with the army we had, she went to peace with what she had.
When she saw the writing on the wall, Rice reinvented herself once again, proclaiming, “I am also in favor of action.” In other words, bombing’s not just for boys. Her recent statements opposing negotiations with Syria and Iran demonstrate the extent to which, placing expedience before principles, she has reverted to form.
Attacking Shiite Iran seems now to be within the comfort zone of Rice, as well, of course, as Cheney and probably Bush. (No word yet of a sea change from Robert Gates, who, before becoming Secretary of Defense, came down firmly on the side of negotiation.) Meanwhile, in Iraq, the administration is pursuing the “80 percent solution” — siding with its Shiite majority.
[…]Does Cheney think that, despite his intention to attack Iran, propping up the Shiites in Iraq will win points with the Persian public? Perhaps he’s swallowed whole the Neocon tenet which holds that, post-bombing, Iran’s citizens seize the day (after). They overthrow President Ahmadinejad for double-daring the US to attack and cast out the mullahs for suffocating their culture. Sure, just like our path to Baghdad was strewn with rose petals.
The U.S. pretty much made sure that the “diplomatic” talks at the U.N. - with the subtletly of a falling sledgehammer and all the pizzaz of mashed potatoes on white bread - were programmed to self-destruct. According to the Scoop article, “The only way the Bush administration would negotiate with Iran is if it were slapped with punitive sanctions. Russia, Cheney knew, would never agree.” And neither would the Iranians of course. This is Bush & Cheney’s cover: “hey, we tried diplomacy, and it didn’t work.” Unless you call diplomacy, “please bend over backwards with your pants around your ankles please”, then yeah, diplomacy has truly been spent.
I’m telling you, the U.S. will cross the proverbial line if it attacks Iran. The whole world - China, India, Japan, Australia - gets it oil & natural gas from Iran. People in the U.S. think that because the U.S. doesn’t do business with Iran because of sanctions, then the world doesn’t do business with Iran. That is false.
The world may ‘tolerate’ what is going on in Iraq, but economically it cannot, and will not, tolerate war with Iran. The economic repercussions alone will be enormous, and you can expect that China will step up to the plate to slap the U.S. if it invades Iran.
But surely the newly elected Congress will stop Cheney, right? Not quite:
Cheney may be ready to begin the launch sequence with Iran, but first he needs to keep Congress from voting for a binding resolution to stay his hand. We got a sneak preview of how he intends to manage this when the administration ordered the deployment of an aircraft carrier, the Dwight D. Eisenhower, with its strike group, to the Middle East.
Though it’s been diverted to Somalia, two more aircraft carriers, the USS John C. Stennis and the USS Ronald Reagan, with their strike groups, have been since sent to the Persian Gulf. Thus do we see Cheney’s plan unfold. Ostensibly intended to warn off Iran’s own naval exercises, the deployment’s actual purpose is less likely to respond to a provocation than to provoke a response.
Not much imagination is required to envision a skittish Iran spooked into launching one of their state-of-the-art Shahib 4 missiles at one of our ships. Nor would anything more be required to make the obstacle of Congressional approval for a US attack magically disappear.
You think the idea that the Democratic Congress would roll over for another war strains credulity? House majority leader Steny Hoyer recently told The Jerusalem Post that he backed negotiations and sanctions. As for air strikes, “I have not ruled that out,” he said.
There is no need to push the button and go nuclear with Iran. But the neocons - crazed, deluded maniacs that they are - think they actually have to go ahead and do it. If it happens, God help us all, because while the American public won’t care much about Iran, the rest of the world does.
comes from Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medicins Sans Frontieres, one of the best humanitarian organizations around, and winners of the as well.
of the article:
New York — The staggering human toll taken by tuberculosis and malnutrition as well as the devastation caused by wars in the Central African Republic (CAR), Sri Lanka, and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), are among the , according to the year-end list released today by the international humanitarian medical aid organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The ninth annual list also highlights the lack of media attention paid to the plight of people affected by the consequences of conflict in Haiti, Somalia, Colombia, Chechnya, and central India.
“Many conflicts worldwide are profoundly affecting millions of people, yet they are almost completely invisible,” said MSF Executive Director Nicolas de Torrenté. “Haiti, for example, is just 500 miles from the United States and the plight of the population enduring relentless violence in its volatile capital Port-au-Prince received only half a minute of network coverage in an entire year.”
According to Andrew Tyndall, publisher of the online media-tracking journal , the 10 countries and contexts highlighted by MSF accounted for just 7.2 minutes of the 14,512 minutes on the three major U.S. television networks’ nightly newscasts for 2006. Treating malnutrition, tuberculosis, and Chechnya were mentioned, but only briefly in other stories. Five of the countries highlighted by MSF were never mentioned at all.
These issues were given all of 7 minutes of airtime - how noble of the mainstream media, which prefers spending its time say, .
In no particular order, here is the top ten. You can read the entire report by the way, but the links below correspond to the specific sections of the report. You can read the whole thing, or just what interests you.
Somalia - Central African Republic - Tuberculosis - Chechnya - Sri Lanka - Malnutrition - Democratic Republic of Congo - Colombia - Haiti - Central India -
is a great read, and it comes courtesy of Corp Watch. I love the specials these guys publish. Last year, on October to be precise, they broke the story about - slave labor basically - to save themselves a few bucks, with the U.S. State Department turning a blind eye, which is ironic to say the least because they .
Now, they have a special on Iraq’s broken healthcare system. It’s quite long, with plenty of interviews, stories and excellent sourcing, and while its main focus is corruption, they do cover most of the basics, like how non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are trying to operate in Iraq, and how all of the promised hospitals - - are not being completed, or not being built at all.
Of course, Iraq is a land of opportunity, if you are a war profiteer big-name contractor. Take the above mentioned Basra Children’s Hospital. :
(all emphasis is mine)
Cancer Hospital Remains Unfinished
Most prominent among the long list of failures is the Basra Children’s Hospital, which was intended as crown jewel of U.S. aid to Iraq. Instead, it has become a showcase for everything that went wrong. In August 2004, USAID awarded the $50 million contract to build the Hospital to Bechtel, a San Francisco-based engineering company, one of the largest engineering companies in the world, which has become synonymous with the building of nuclear power plants, gold mines and large projects like the new Hong Kong airport.
The idea was to create a state-of-the-art facility to treat childhood cancer, a pressing need in a city where cancer rates have skyrocketed following the first Gulf War. (Contested data link the rise in cancer to extensive U.S. use of depleted uranium weaponry in the region.)
The facility, championed by the First Lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, looked suspiciously like a political propaganda effort. And as with much U.S. aid, it was designed with little local consultation: the city lacked clean water and already has a leukemia ward where lack of funding means that each bed is shared by two or three children.
The hospital was planned by Project Hope, a charity headed by John P. Howe III, president of the University of Texas, San Antonio, and a Bush family friend. Project Hope had built similar hospitals in Poland and in China. Howe pushed the project after Rice and Bush invited him to visit Iraq to assess the country’s healthcare system.
Before construction began in August 2005, the project attracted skeptics, who were concerned that it was a white elephant. Republican Congressman Jim Kolbe criticized the project: “Why build a hospital for kids, when the kids have no clean water?” the Arizonan asked. But it went ahead: No new technology would be spared in this showcase facility featuring with 94 beds, private cancer suites, CAT scans, a linear particle accelerator for radiation therapy, no.
But like every so many U.S.-initiated projects, the money to build this fancy facility would disappear when things went wrong. A year after the August 2005 groundbreaking, the project became a target for attacks, according to the company. The price tag rose from $50 million to an estimated $169.5 million. Cliff Mumm, president of the Bechtel infrastructure division, predicted that the project would fail. “It is not a good use of the government’s money” to try to finish the project,” Mumm told the New York Times. “And we do not think it can be finished.”
In July 2006, Bechtel was asked to withdrew from the project, which is now on hold. USAID spokesman David Snider’s cheerful spin on the stall was that the contract did not actually require the company to complete the hospital. “They are under a ‘term contract,’ which means their job is over when their money ends … (so) they did complete the contract.”
So Bechtel got to keep the money - U.S. taxpayer’s money - and the hospital is “on hold”. Because corporate profits are way more important than sick children.
Lets take another contractor: Parsons Global, a Pasadena, California-based engineering company.
The convoy of flat-bed trucks picked up its cargo at Baghdad International Airport last spring and sped north-west, stacked-high with crates of expensive medical equipment. From bilirubinmeters and hematology analyzers to infant incubators and dental appliances, the equipment had been ordered to help Iraq shore up a disintegrating health care system. But instead of being delivered to 150 brand-new Primary Health Care centers (PHCs) as originally planned, the Eagle Global Logistics vehicles were directed to drop them off at a storage warehouse in Abu Ghraib.
Not only did some of the equipment arrive damaged at the warehouse owned by PWC of Kuwait, one in 14 crates was missing, according to the delivery documents. The shipment was fairly typical: Military auditors would later calculate that roughly 46 percent of some $70 million in medical equipment deliveries made to the Abu Ghraib warehouse last spring had missing or damaged crates or contained boxes that were mislabeled or not labeled at all.
Not that it really mattered. Just over three weeks before the April 27th delivery, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had canceled the construction of 130 of the 150 PHCs for which the materiel was intended. As a result, the equipment that could help diagnose and treat Iraqi illness (and escalating bomb or gun injuries) now sits idle waiting for someone to figure out what to do with it.
[…]But if Iraqis have failed to benefit from the idle PHCs, the $70 million contract to supply them has been a shot in the arm for Parsons Global. The Pasadena, California-based engineering company reaped a $3.3 million profit according to an audit report issued by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), an independent U.S. government agency. And that is in addition to the $186 million that U.S. taxpayers shelled out to Parsons to build dozens of clinics that have yet to dispense a single aspirin.
Again, go read the entire article . There is much to discuss, so feel free to comment away. Is it any wonder why Iraqis want us out of Iraq?
Three opinion pieces about the true price of the Iraq war, and the hidden price of oil:
The Independent:
The Independent:
The New York Times:
Here’s a small bit (from the ):
How the West will make a killing on Iraqi oil riches By Danny Fortson, Andrew Murray-Watson and Tim Webb Published: 07 January 2007
Iraq’s massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.
The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972.
The huge potential prizes for Western firms will give ammunition to critics who say the Iraq war was fought for oil. They point to statements such as one from Vice-President Dick Cheney, who said in 1999, while he was still chief executive of the oil services company Halliburton, that the world would need an additional 50 million barrels of oil a day by 2010. “So where is the oil going to come from?… The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies,” he said.
Remind me again please, why are we in Iraq in the first place?
I don’t know if you have heard about this, but Nicaragua just passed a law that absolutely prohibits women from having an abortion, even for rape victims and even if it is medically necessary. :
MANAGUA, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Human rights activists in Nicaragua on Monday asked the Supreme Court to block a controversial law that bans abortions for rape victims and women who risk dying in childbirth.
They urged the Central American nation’s top court to declare the law, which was passed in October and went into effect last year, as unconstitutional on grounds it violates “fundamental rights and principles.”
Nicaraguan lawmakers approved the bill with support from two right-wing parties and leftist legislators from the Sandinista party of Daniel Ortega, the president-elect who takes office on Wednesday.
Sandinista legislators backed the bill, also sought by Nicaragua’s powerful Roman Catholic Church, only a week before presidential elections to avoid alienating church leaders and religious voters.
That it is way harder to fix this than he is making it out to look. Luckily, we also have . From :
In a recent speech to a standing-room-only audience at the New York University School of Law, Gore declared, “We are moving closer to several ‘tipping points’ that could — within as little as 10 years — make it impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet’s habitability for human civilization.” The audience cheered wildly. Presumably audiences are not cheered by the prospect of imminent catastrophe. So what is going on here?
British journalist George Monbiot, author of (Doubleday, 2006) has a theory.
“We wish our governments to pretend to act,” he writes. “We get the moral satisfaction of saying what we know to be right, without the discomfort of doing it. My fear is that the political parties in most rich nations have already recognized this. They know that we want tough targets, but that we also want those targets to be missed. They know that we will grumble about their failure to curb climate change, but that we will not take to the streets. They know that nobody ever rioted for austerity.”
Austerity? Hold on. Al Gore and the rest of the U.S. environmental movement never utter the word “austerity.” Their word of choice is “opportunity.” The prospect of global warming, they maintain, can serve as a much-needed catalyst to spur us to action. A large dose of political will may be required, but we need not anticipate economic pain. We can stop global warming in its tracks, expand our economy and improve our quality of life. We can, in other words, do good and do quite well. A leading environmentalist, for whom I have a great deal of admiration, summed up his position to an interviewer, “I can’t stand it when people say, ‘Taking action on climate change is going to be extremely difficult.’”
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan’s government and Darfur rebels have agreed to a 60-day ceasefire and a peace summit sponsored by the African Union and the United Nations as steps toward stopping the violence in west Sudan, a visiting U.S. official said on Wednesday.
Sudan has also agreed to let foreign journalists visit Darfur after a two-month ban and to remove a requirement for exit visas for aid workers, one of the biggest bureaucratic obstacles to the world’s largest aid operation in Darfur.
By the way, it isn’t George W. Bush or Condi Rice that gets the credit for this - it is none other than :
Richardson said rebel commanders he had met in Darfur had also agreed to the ceasefire, which would begin on a date to be set by the United Nations and the African Union, which are jointly mediating Darfur peace efforts.
A joint statement by the Sudanese government and Richardson also said Sudan would not use military aircraft painted in white colors, usually reserved for humanitarians, and that Darfur rebel commanders could safely call a conference in the field monitored by the United Nations and the AU.
See, that wasn’t that hard. Just acknowledge the problem, go there and talk about it. Just like we wish had happened in Iraq.
I am no fan of the term “flip-flopping” - thank you Karl Rove - but that does not even come close to what they did with their “First Baby of the Year Sweepstakes”.
Basically, this was a New Year’s baby contest - first baby to be born at midnight gets the prize - a $25,000 savings bond! But :
NEW YORK (AP) — After coming under fire for denying a Chinese-American infant a $25,000 prize in a New Year’s baby contest because her mother was not a legal U.S. resident, the Toys “R” Us company said that it had reversed its decision.
The prize was originally supposed to go to Yuki Lin, who was born at the stroke of midnight at New York Downtown Hospital, according to hospital officials.
She won a random drawing with two other babies for the $25,000 savings bond, said Toys “R” Us spokeswoman Kathleen Waugh. The Wayne, New Jersey, company had said it would go to the first American baby born in 2007.
Yuki was born an American citizen. But the company disqualified her because “the sweepstakes administrator was informed that the mother of the baby born at New York Downtown Hospital was not a legal resident of the United States,” Waugh said.
How nice of Toys ‘R’ Us, right? I wonder what made them change their mind:
Toys “R” Us, which opened its first mainland China store less than a month ago, changed its mind after Chinese-American advocates protested and the story was reported in ethnic newspapers and The New York Times among other outlets.
“We love all babies,” the company said in a written statement Saturday. “Our sweepstakes was intended to welcome the first baby of 2007 and prepare for its future. We deeply regret that this sweepstakes became a point of controversy.”
Basically, they got pounded by criticism and listened only because they have $$$ interests in China. Just because they are a toy company does not mean they are any nicer than the rest of the other companies.
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Posted by truly.equal 
