The Pope's Decree To Bring More Death To DC

The fact that HIV infections in our nation's capital are at rates high than those in West Africa should be distasteful and horrifying to every American. D.C. has no representation in Congress and 535 members of the "Board of Supervisors" who like to meddle in things like their gun laws, but ignore the serious problems of poverty and education that lead to these tragic outcomes. It's a problem in the black community that nobody likes to talk about, and the rates rise in direct proportion to the neglect. The biggest weapon to combat this problem is awareness

And then we have the defenders of ignorance.

Pope Benedict XVI says the distribution of condoms is not the answer in the fight against AIDS.

Benedict insisted that the church is in the forefront of the battle against AIDS in Africa. He spoke Tuesday aboard the papal plane on his way to Africa, his first trip to the continent as pontiff.

Benedict said "you can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms." He said that "on the contrary it increases the problem."
The Vatican encourages sexual abstinence to fight the spread of disease.

Improper education is now a killer in at-risk communities, and the Vatican knows this. The Pope was referring to Africa but he might as well have been referring to Washington, DC. He spreads falsehoods and ignorance, and given his authority he becomes an accomplice to the pain, suffering and death. It's unconscionable.

Next Up He Should Hijack The Private Jet To Davos And Take It To Malawi

This is actually a cool move by Bill Gates:

In what is probably the coolest conference-talk attention grab I've ever heard of, Bill Gates apparently just released a swarm of mosquitoes into the crowd at TED, the geniuses-only mind meld. Holy shit.

"Not only poor people should experience this," the Tweetosphere has Gates saying as he released the swarm into the audience. Malaria is a cause that Bill and Melinda have been hitting hard with their philanthropy, and this is certainly a way to drive that point home.

Take away their box lunch too. Turn TED into an episode of 30 Days!

The amount of money in that room could pay for mosquito netting for the entire continent of Africa. They should have it in their faces more.

Khat Scratch Fever

Ever since it kept cropping up in the Paul Theroux travel books I was reading, I have been fascinated with khat (pronounced "jat"), a narcotic leaf that is a social drug used in the Horn of Africa, typically chewed. Africans see it as normal a substance as coffee, but in this country it is illegal, and the influx of Somali and Ethiopian immigrants has led to smuggling and mass arrests.

In the last few years, San Diego, which has a large Somali population, has seen an almost eight-fold increase in khat seizures. Nationally, the amount of khat seized annually at the country's ports of entry has grown from 14 metric tons to 55 in about the last decade.

Most recently, California joined 27 other states and the federal government in banning the most potent substance in khat, and the District of Columbia is proposing to do the same.

"It is a very touchy subject. Some people see it like a drug; some people see it like coffee," said Abdulaziz Kamus, president of the African Resource Center in Washington, D.C. "You have to understand our background and understand the significance of it in our community."

The story is kind of a lesson in how different cultures can see the same green leaves as either a morning pick-me-up or the scourge of the universe. We have plenty of accepted drugs in our culture with terrible side effects, drugs that can ruin lives, but which simply have better PR machines behind them. And we have plenty of drugs which are banned, where the side effects are far less clearly negative, and which even have some medicinal qualities. The war on some kinds of drugs is not just the wrong way to go about treating addictions; it clearly chooses winners and losers for somewhat obscure reasons.

Took A While

Now the US decides it can't accept the power-sharing agreement in Zimbabwe, or any government with Robert Mugabe at the helm. Mind you, the power-sharing agreement was put together several months ago.

Jendayi Frazer, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, made the announcement in South Africa after spending the last several days explaining the U.S. shift to regional leaders. The new U.S. stance will put pressure on Zimbabwe's neighbors -- South Africa in particular -- to abandon Mugabe. But South Africa said its position was unchanged.

The U.S., Frazer said, has become convinced Mugabe is incapable of sharing power.

She cited political moves he has made since September without consulting the opposition, reports his regime has continued to harass and arrest opposition and human rights activists, and the continued deterioration of Zimbabwe's humanitarian and economic situation. Particularly worrying, she said, was the rapid spread of cholera, an easily treatable and preventable disease that has killed at least 1,000 Zimbabweans since August [...]

Frazer cited accusations from the Mugabe regime that the West waged biological warfare to deliberately start the cholera epidemic as an indication Mugabe is ''a man who's lost it, who's losing his mind, who's out of touch with reality.''

If Mugabe's neighbors were to unite and ''go to Mugabe and tell him to go, I do think he would go,'' she said.

It's just so late for this kind of change of heart. When Mugabe was threatening to kill his opposition back in June, that would have been a decent time to speak out. When he was plotting to rig the election, that could have been a moment to say no. Maybe before Zimbabwe had to print the 10 quintillion-dollar note, that could have been a good time. For months if not years it has been obvious that Mugabe was running his country aground, murdering and imprisoning dissenters and leaving many of his countrymen to die. At any point, the US could have shifted policy and pushed Mugabe's neighbors to expel him. Now? Well, he's not likely to listen, if he ever was.

President Robert Mugabe has said that "Zimbabwe is mine" and rejected calls from some African leaders to step down.

"I will never, never, never surrender," he told delegates of his ruling Zanu-PF party at its annual conference.

Mr Mugabe also said he had sent a letter to the country's main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, inviting him to be sworn in as prime minister.

Earlier, Mr Tsvangirai said he would pull out of power-sharing talks unless abductions of his supporters stopped.

I am encouraged that the US will finally try to move African nations to cut Mugabe a deal to get him out of power. But it took far too long.

Opinion Coalesces: Mugabe Must Go

It's not often that you can get consensus on anything between Russ Feingold and George W. Bush, but Robert Mugabe is a uniter:

While Robert Mugabe continues to stall and uses bullying tactics to avoid compromise, Zimbabwe has devolved into a full-fledged humanitarian crisis. A cholera outbreak has already killed more than 500 people and nearly half the country is facing starvation. The capital city of Harare is in disarray with hospitals and schools closed, soldiers looting, and union activists being beaten by police. If this deterioration continues, it could lead to a wider humanitarian disaster that costs many more innocent lives and spills into the surrounding countries.

To avoid such a catastrophe, leaders in the region and the international community must take action now to ensure that clean water, food and medication reach the most vulnerable populations in Zimbabwe, and to remove any barriers to the importation of these necessities. It is important that South Africa is sending a delegation to look at the humanitarian needs, but those efforts, while critically important, are only a stopgap measure to save lives. We cannot forget that Zimbabwe's humanitarian problems are the direct result of the lack of a legitimate government, for which Mugabe is responsible. Until he and his cohorts accept a negotiated solution that fully respects the will of the people, Zimbabwe's nightmare will continue.

Bush himself has said the same on the issue, although the African Union is resisting stronger steps.

"It is time for Robert Mugabe to go," Bush said in Washington. "Across the continent, African voices are bravely speaking out to say now is the time for him to step down."

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said countries in the region, notably South Africa, should do more to speed Mugabe's departure.

"They have unused leverage, at this point, that they could bring to bear. And we would hope, that they, as well as others, would bring to bear whatever leverage, political leverage, that they might have to help the situation," he told reporters in Washington.

But the African Union made clear it did not back calls for much tougher action.

"Only dialogue between the Zimbabwean parties, supported by the AU and other regional actors, can restore peace and stability to that country," said Salva Rweyemamu, spokesman for AU chairman and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete.

I'm sure African nations have a healthy disrespect for the wishes of colonial powers when it comes to their leaders. It's perfectly understandable. But Mugabe is objectively allowing his own people to die and breaking every trust he's ever made with them. He has forfeited his right to govern. Hopefully more African leaders will come around to this, as Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Archbishop Desmond Tutu already have.

...the impotence of America as a force for moral leadership is on display here. The UN Security Council is looking into further action.

The Hope Needle In The Depression Haystack

These are depressing times in the world. Super-rich investment bank CEOs won't get their multimillion-dollar bonus, Monaco doesn't have the scratch to build a giant artificial peninsula into the Mediterrenean Sea, and Jay Leno is moving to prime-time.

(That actually has a financial rationale too, it's going to save NBC about $13 million a week and cut hundreds of jobs on weekly dramas.)

I need to feel good about something. Come on, world, hit me!

OK, Larry Craig is still guilty. Fine, fun in a schadenfreude kind of way, but lacking in "the world is a better place" kind of depth. Surely something must be benefiting the world!

... Found it.

A vaccine against the parasitic disease malaria cut illnesses by more than half in field trials and could be safely given with other childhood inoculations, two studies have reported. The vaccine, which will begin a third and final phase of clinical trials early next year, could become the first to protect children from malaria, which kills nearly 1 million people worldwide every year.

The studies, published online Monday in the New England Journal of Medicine, were reported at a New Orleans meeting of tropical medicine researchers and were hailed as a significant breakthroughin the fight against one of the most intractable and deadly infectious diseases.

If the phase three trials are successful, it would be "an extraordinary scientific triumph," said Dr. W. Ripley Ballou, deputy director for vaccines and infectious diseases for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which helped fund the research.

"But more importantly," Ballou added, "it could save millions of children's lives."

We're talking about 1 million people a year, largely children in sub-Saharan Africa, dying of a disease that has been all but eradicated throughout the rest of the world. A vaccine would not only relieve a monumental amount of death and suffering, but could finally bring some stability to Africa. If children can grow up without the threat of disease and death, the continent can focus on education and economic development, and those children can be an engine to growth.

OK, that's positive.

Ba-Dunc-A-Dunc

So Duncan Hunter, or "The Dunc," wanted to visit a refugee camp in Chad and distribute food to the people assembled. Sounds good, but he only wanted to do it if he could hunt wildebeests in his spare time. Only there are no wildebeests in Chad. So Hunter did the right thing. He cancelled the food distribution part of his trip.

Compassionate conservatism.

The Jesse Helms AIDS Bill

It is kind of disgusting that Liddy Dole is petitioning to get the Senate to name a global funding bill to fight AIDS after Jesse Helms, the man who did more to demonize gays than practically anyone in Congressional history. Yes, at the end of his career he supported AIDS funding in Africa and said he was "ashamed that I've done so little" to fight the disease, one of the few times he opted to repent for his sins, but that's a cold comfort.

At the same time, there is something ironic in putting Helms' name on a bill for a disease he spent most of his life attributing to teh gay. Just the fact that he would be incensed by it is reason enough to go ahead and add the title. It's almost like a final F-you.

World Report

If there's one thing the world needs, it's a report:

• Violence has once again sparked in Tibet, with at least eight dead in the latest round of clashes between protesters and Chinese police. Apparently you can be arrested just for being found with the Dalai Lama's picture. The government is planning 1,200 show trials for protesters and organizing what they call study sessions for residents, essentially to indoctrinate them into Chinese propaganda. Clearly the Chinese fear losing control of the situation, and now is the time for the IOC and the world community to increase pressure for reform. See also Matt Browner Hamlin's must-read demolition of "serious" thinker Nick Kristof's prescription for Tibet.

• If Tibet is bad, Zimbabwe may be worse, and it feels like we're headed toward a civil war or a brutal repression there. The reports are conflicting. The Guardian says that Robert Mugabe is negotiating a release of power in exchange for immunity from prosecution for past crimes, which the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) may not be willing to give. Morgan Tsvangirai is announcing that he has won the Presidency outright and that there's no need for a runoff through which "Violence will be the new weapon to reverse the people's will." Meanwhile Mugabe's ZANU-PF party is challenging the results of Parliamentary elections which resulted in an MDC victory. Prospects for a peaceful resolution look dim, frankly.

• Between the French offering a new battalion for Afghanistan and the United States vowing to add troops as well, it looks as if NATO is finally getting serious about the problem in the country, about 6 years too late. Democrats and Republicans basically agree about the need to increase our capacity in Afghanistan, though the Bush Administration has been asleep at the switch and has made the situation extremely difficult.

• Earlier this week I mentioned the growing world hunger crisis as food prices skyrocket and richer nations retrench and lower exports. The World Bank has recognized the scope of the problem as well.

The World Bank has called on the international community to co-ordinate its efforts in a "new deal" to fight global hunger and malnutrition.

A move was needed because of soaring global food and energy prices, said the bank's president, Robert Zoellick.

Mr Zoellick said the top priority was to give the UN World Food Programme an extra $500m for emergency food aid.

The World Bank estimates 33 countries face potential social unrest because of rising food and energy prices.

Unless we do something legitimate and globalized about climate change these resource wars are going to continue. In the case of the food crisis it's not the only cause, but it will be a sustained cause going forward.

• The fallout from having a Musharraf policy instead of a Pakistan policy continues, as we may have alienated the new Parliamentary players and sidelined our efforts at engagement and even counter-terrorism. Just another way Bush has harmed national security.

• Fighting the right enemies:

Saudi Arabia remains the world's leading source of money for Al Qaeda and other extremist networks and has failed to take key steps requested by U.S. officials to stem the flow, the Bush administration's top financial counter-terrorism official said Tuesday.

Stuart A. Levey, a Treasury undersecretary, told a Senate committee that the Saudi government had not taken important steps to go after those who finance terrorist organizations or to prevent wealthy donors from bankrolling extremism through charitable contributions, sometimes unwittingly.

I remember when the 9-11 Commission report blocked out references to Saudi Arabian involvement, as if they could possibly cover up the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabian. What could be more damning than "They did it"? Apparently this cover-up relationship with the Saudis continues, as they still fund terror and we still call them a great ally. How warped.

• Really interesting article on the Iranian blogosphere. The fact that an Iranian blogosphere is allowed at all shows that it is not quite the caricature our leaders would have us believe, though some topics are filtered (often in surprising and erratic ways). Many bloggers have been arrested and persecuted, but also many have thrived and criticized the official dictates of the Islamic Republic. Eventually, open-source communication does make an impact, and it's an honor to be working in the same medium as those in Iran.

• Finally, it appears that a liberal is a conservative who's been mugged by reality.

Conservative U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., joined some of his most liberal colleagues in the House of Representative on a recent trip to Africa. What he saw there changed him, at least a little.

Struck by the unrelenting poverty in a South African slum, Nunes this week joined Democrats in supporting a $50 billion global AIDS relief package. Most of his fellow Republicans opposed the bill.

“It’s one thing to hear about a problem,” Nunes said Thursday. “It’s another thing to see it for yourself. This was horrendous.”

Once you step outside that bubble, it's hard to ignore the truth and the suffering.

The President Of The United States Of America

He's on his latest "Innocent Abroad" trip in Africa, and first there's this unbelievable quote:

GOLER: The president says it's better that African nations deal with African problems. White soldiers in Darfur, he believes, would be targets for all sides.

BUSH: A clear lesson I learned in the museum was that outside forces tend to divide people up inside their country and are unbelievably counterproductive.

He said this after coming out of the Rwandan genocide museum. Now, there's a somewhat credible explanation, that the Belgian imperialists set the Hutus against the Tutsis and indirectly caused what occurred in 1994. But should GEORGE BUSH be talking about how outside forces are counterproductive?

Then there's this unbelievable exchange from Liberia, where Bush is given a medal and then, seriously, breaks the medal.

It really makes you want to hide inside a box or something.

Laura Bush is in the bubble, too

I defy you to listen to this NPR report from Weekend All Things Considered and not lose your lunch. It describes the lengths to which large government agencies will go to shield the powerful, in this case, the First Lady, from undeniable truths, and in fact it accurately characterizes how Western elites have allowed themselves to be exposed to colonial lands for centuries. While visiting the African nation of Mali, one of the most persistently poor and water scarce countries on the planet, the US Embassy and international aid organizations did their best to create a Potemkin village, ensuring that Mrs. Bush would walk away from the visit satisfied that life was improving for the people of Mali, when in fact the same struggle for existence continues. It's a sickening report.

Addie Goss courageously chronicled the tremendous amount of work done to refurbish a school that would be the centerpiece of the First Lady's visit, which is financed by the President's African Education Initiative:

It was Thursday, only 24 hours left before the First Lady’s visit, and a work crew from the US Embassy was installing electrical outlets in two classrooms. The next day, the outlets would power the fans to cool Mrs. Bush and the rest of the crowd. But like most schools in Mali, the Mandela school doesn’t have enough money for electricity, so the power cord from these new outlets led out the windows to a mobile generator the Embassy brought over and hid out back.

USAID bought brand-new gravel to cover the mud in the courtyard, so Mrs. Bush could walk down it during her choreographed visit. The trees and bushes were freshly trimmed and watered. The kids who would serenade Mrs. Bush wore matching traditional outfits. This is about as far removed from the reality of Mali as humanly possible.

Demba Bundi is a high school teacher who works with the Teacher Training Via Radio program. During the week before the First Lady arrived, he watched the slow removal of plastic bags, peanut shells and paper trash from the courtyard. On Tuesday, he saw an embassy work crew tear out two of the kid’s water spouts because they were in the way of Mrs. Bush’s entrance. He was also struck by some selective re-painting on the wall surrounding the school.

DB: Only the entrance door has been painted new, because that’s where everybody gets in. But the rest of the wall is dirty, and you have all these American gangster boy kind of graffiti on the wall, and nobody seems to care about that, but just the entrance door which to me is so interesting.

Every move of Mrs. Bush was planned to the letter, so the US Embassy did the bare minimum needed to ensure that she wouldn't encounter anything in her line of sight that would trouble her beautiful mind. The school even set up a chorus of third-graders who would grace the First Lady with a "traditional song." So traditional that it was in a language none of the kids knew, French, the COLONIAL language of the nation. That must of been more soothing to the Western ears of the First Lady than Bamanka, what they actually speak. So FOUR DAYS of class time was spent teaching these kids this one song in a foreign language so the First Lady could smile that Joker grin and feel good about herself and her husband's fine work serving the educational needs of Africans.

Incidentally, even BEFORE the renovations, this was one of the richest and most successful schools in all of Mali, inaugurated by Nelson Mandela (the school bears his name) and a recipient of plenty of foreign aid. But for a White House official visit, every blade of grass had to be in place, every piece of the wall had to be freshly painted. God forbid that someone noticed the crushing POVERTY in the country.

American sources at the Embassy say the school is refurbished to allow Mrs. Bush to be comfortable and focus on the substance of the event. Aside from the Mandela School, Mrs. Bush made just two stops in Mali: the President’s mansion and the house of the US Ambassador. The whole visit was over within hours.

So this was the part of the visit where Mrs. Bush got the "authentic" view of "real Mali." A complete fabrication. And did the US Embassy even bother to leave the improvements in place after the visit?

Yesterday morning I returned to the Mandela School with teacher Demba Bundi. The courtyard was once again covered in trash, this time water bottle labels and donut cartons from the First Lady’s visit [...]

We went into the classroom that had been electrically fitted. The Embassy had removed the fans, the furniture and the generator the same afternoon as the First Lady’s visit. Even the outlets had been pulled out of the walls.

It's impossible to know whether or not the First Lady knows about any of these herculean efforts to make surface-level improvements so the places she visits look just gleaming. Maybe she's as blissfully ignorant as the President. It's a comfortable place to be, as the Embassy employees said. You can will yourself into believing that you're a fine person who's doing great things to help impoverished Africans and build them a better life. The reality is far crueler. But this of course is how emissaries have viewed the "rabble" of faraway lands for quite some time. And this false impression is a two-way street. The very wise teacher Demba Bundi had a great quote:

Mali is a poor country, we’re not ashamed of saying it, we’re poor. But despite poverty level, we still want to impress the West. Which to me is pointless. If I am poor and sleeping on the dirt and you are coming to visit me, let’s hang out on the dirt. And maybe I’d have a better chance to get some help from you.

If I didn't happen to be in the car on a lazy Sunday in the middle of summer right before a holiday, I wouldn't have known about this truly shocking report. Kudos to NPR for putting it on the air. And there's a lesson in it for all of us. We all have this subjective sense of how things operate, without going deeper into what has been constructed behind the curtains to maintain that impression. I know that the likes of Laura Bush probably never reflect on that, but maybe we all should. And we should always endeavor to seek information about the world as it is and not they way we would like it to be.