Diatribune

As President Bush constantly worries about his "legacy" in the final year of his Presidency (We hope...), Americans are too concerned with internal issues caused by Bush and Cheney to comprehend the depth of disaster that the Bush administration has wrought upon the global community. The Russians refer to President Bush as "The Master of Disaster", a title and nickname which are well deserved and earned, but in comparison to other disasters - natural or otherwise, the Bush administration has dealt the global community a dastardly combination of blows that threaten the entire world, not just The United States!

When historians attempt to compile the true effects of Bush's disastrous Presidency, Hitler's Third Reich, and Indonesia's recent tsunami may place second when the body count is eventually revealed - and it will likely equate to millions, or even tens of millions of deaths, all attributable to incompetence, adherence to religious dogma rather than science, and the greed of Bush and his supporters. Conservatives, Christians, right-wing Evangelicals, and Neo-conservatives first considered him to be their savior while he peddled his phony religious principles that temporarily captured wide support after 911, but like a pandemic out of control, Bush's policies will affect and destroy some of those who were his most ardent supporter's. How is it possible that one man, working in conjunction with Darth Cheney and their cabal of co-conspirators, were able to affect everything they touched in a negative manner - the reverse of the "Midas Touch?" According to legend, everything that King Midas touched turned to Gold, while everything this Presidency has touched has turned to S**T!

As you're reading this essay and analyze the "Bush Affect" that will control the future of generations to come, if you can, reserve a place in your memory that will hold just one area of accomplishment for this Presidency that has benefited mankind, or on a more limited basis, the people of America... Don't worry, there's no chance of it straining your memory unless you're a full-fledged Faux News fanatic - and even then, a closer look at the facts could change the view(s) of die-hard Bush supporters if they are ever exposed to factual evidence instead of the constant propaganda that is pushed by those who still seek America's total submission to fascism and religious fanaticism.

The Global Fight Against AIDS

Even though President Bush pledged fifteen (15) billion dollars in an effort to fight the global AIDS epidemic, those dollars are being spent in ways that guarantee further AIDS infections for those who don't follow abstinence only programs, and the United States has actually worked to dismantle programs in Africa and other nations that were dispensing condoms - the most reliable method of fighting new AIDS infections. "Abstinence only" is not a scientific approach to fighting AIDS and other life-threatening sexually communicable diseases, but is a religious doctrine that essentially demands abstinence only - and if people don't follow the religious dogma supported by the Bush administration, death, teenage pregnancy, and numerous sexually transmitted diseases are the punishment for having sex before marriage or multiple sex partners. To me, the intent is clear; if you choose to have sex before marriage and defy the principles of a religious-inspired abstinence only program, then those who are "sinners" and engage in premarital sex deserve what they get, and that's death, rapid transmission of STD's, and/or an increase in teenage pregnancies in our own country. The comments below are from CHAMP, a "Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project."

Introduction: Eric Sawyer, ACT UP NY

This really is the moment of truth for national and international HIV/AIDS policy. The last few years, the Bush administration and the media have primarily focused on the terrorism and the war in Iraq. Both are going terribly awry. These are unwinnable wars, but the war on AIDS is a winnable war – a winnable war that the generals aren't fighting. We know that enemy and can find it. We have the tools to defeat it, but our leaders have chosen not to fight it. They are posturing rather than using the tools of condoms, needle exchange and treatment to win it.

We have a need to help people with AIDS from around the world because the US administration is trying to ram unproven abstinence-only HIV prevention programs down the throats of people in developing countries. Other speakers will talk about this more.

Jodi Jacobson, Center for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE)

One thing we have to keep in mind as we battle around issues of abstinence-only education is that while George Bush won't be president in a few years, the movement that put him in power is not going to go away when Bush leaves. We have a longer-term challenge. The Democrats don't stand up for much of anything, especially around these issues.

We are fighting a battle with the media because Bush put $15 billion on the table to battle global AIDS, so it is hard to get media attention. Frequently reporters ask, "Aren't Bush's initiatives a good thing overall?" The answer is that we need sustainable policies and his policies aren't sustainable.

You may have heard of the global gag rule, which prevents discussing abortion or how to get an abortion in family planning clinics. It is a policy that the U.S. has exported, like the abstinence-only-until-marriage education. Abstinence-only programs began in the U.S. at local and national levels. States can't get state level funding for comprehensive sex education. Contraceptives can only be discussed based on their failure rate.

The Office of AIDS policy is taking an extremely narrow interpretation of legislation in place mandating one-third of prevention funds go to abstinence-only prevention programs. They disaggregate programs so that only "high risk" people can get condoms. These people are sex workers and gay men. 60-70% of the people that are sexually active receive abstinence-only-until-marriage education. The rest of sexually active people, that are married, only get the "Be Faithful" rap. So huge monies are being funneled into the abstinence-only programs or secondary abstinence programs.

In Nigeria, 70% of the HIV prevention money is for abstinence-only education.

In Zambia, the US administration dismantled the comprehensive social marketing system for condoms.

The condom crisis in Uganda happened at the same time as the popularization of abstinence-only education. This effectively dismantled their condom distribution system.

The Bush administration has also instituted a prostitution loyalty oath, requiring care providers to not advocate for prostitution or legalization of prostitution.

Part of the problem is pervasive fundamentalist ideology, which has damaged previous successful programs and will be hard to undo without concerted activism in the long term. MUCH MORE

Abstinence only programs in the US are failing, and teen pregnancies and STD's are rising; the evidence is pointing to "Abstinence only" as the culprit behind this alarming trend - but instead of accepting that abstinence only doesn't work, the government is planning to spend even more on a program that is doomed to failure:

Teen Birth Rate Rises in U.S., Reversing a 14-Year Decline

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 6, 2007

After falling steadily for more than a decade, the birth rate for American teenagers jumped last year, federal health officials reported yesterday, a sharp reversal in what has been one of the nation's most celebrated social and public health successes.

"This is concerning," said Stephanie J. Ventura, who heads the center's reproductive statistics branch. "It represents an interruption of 14 years of steady decline. Now unexpectedly we have an increase of 3 percent, which is a significant increase."

While experts said it was unclear what may be causing the reversal, the new data reignited debate about abstinence-only sex-education programs, which receive about $176 million a year in federal funding. Congress is currently debating whether to increase that by $28 million.

"The United States is facing a teen-pregnancy health-care crisis, and the national policy of abstinence-only programs just isn't working," said Cecile Richard, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. (Emphasis added.) "It is time for everyone who cares about teenagers to start focusing on the common-sense solutions that will help solve this problem." MORE

When we look at the impact of abstinence only programs as they relate to the global AIDS epidemic, the lives which are affected are not a few thousand, or even a hundred thousand, but number in the millions:

There were an estimated 1.7 million [1.4 – 2.4 million] new HIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa in 2007—a significant reduction since 2001. However, the region remains most severely affected. An estimated 22.5 million [20.9 – 24.3 million] people living with HIV, or 68% of the global total, are in sub-Saharan Africa. Eight countries in this region now account for almost one-third of all new HIV infections and AIDS deaths globally. LINK

Admittedly, according to the WHO, AIDS infections have "leveled off", however, if the US would have supported the use of condoms to prevent new AIDS infections, rather than remaining stagnant, or increasing ever so slightly, there's little doubt the transmission rate of AIDS would have been substantially curtailed rather than remaining at a so-called "level rate."

While the global prevalence of HIV infection—the percentage of people infected with HIV— has levelled off, the total number of people living with HIV is increasing because of ongoing acquisition of HIV infection, combined with longer survival times, in a continuously growing general population. LINK

Considering that in Africa alone, "there were an estimated 1.7 million [1.4 – 2.4 million] new HIV infections" in 2007, how many of those infections could have been avoided by promoting the scientific method(s) of containing AIDS transmissions rather than promoting a program that is based on religious dogma? How many deaths can and will be attributed to our "abstinence only" program? This is a figure that is open to speculation, however, when we look at the numbers from 2007, and then combine them with numbers from past years of this failed program - there's little doubt that US policies in combating the AIDS epidemic have actually raised the death toll rather than decreasing it, and what those actual numbers are is currently unavailable. By examining the numbers, it's not hard to imagine that millions of new AIDS cases have been exacerbated by abstinence only programs. It will take years, if not decades to compile the data, however, when Bush’s failed policies are replaced by programs based on science – the drop in new AIDS infections and the lowering of the death toll will exemplify the failures of the Bush administration.

The incidence of new AIDS infections in the United States is also rising:

HIV infection rates appear to be rising in USA

By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY

BOSTON — HIV infection rates in the USA that have remained stable for years now appear to be rising, researchers here reported Tuesday.

Of 900,000 people living with HIV in the USA, about one-third don't know they're infected. Experts have estimated that another 40,000 people become infected each year. But several studies reported at the 10th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections hint that the number could be rising.

"The signs are unmistakable," says Cornelius Baker, executive director of the Whitman Walker Clinic, which tracks trends and provides AIDS services in Washington, D.C. "There's the potential for a whole new wave of HIV infections, especially among the young. (Emphasis added.)

"They weren't around when we did education the first time," Baker says. "They haven't experienced as much death and illness. They've become complacent about the very real risks of HIV. MORE

The figures in the USA Today report may be misleading - and the totals may be much higher than stated:

United States:

* An estimated one million people are currently living with HIV in the United States, with approximately 40,000 new infections occurring each year.

* 70 percent of these new infections occur in men and 30 percent occur in women.

* By race, 54 percent of the new infections in the United States occur among African Americans, and 64 percent of the new infections in women occur in African American women.

* 75 percent of the new infections in women are heterosexually transmitted.

* Half of all new infections in the United States occur in people 25 years of age or younger. LINK

Finally, when we consider that “abstinence only” is failing in the United States with a population that is much more educated and exposed to facts in regard AIDS and other STD’s, the utter failure of this program in less educated societies staggers the imagination; how many people have and will die because of Bush’s reliance on religion rather than science in fighting the AIDS epidemic? I believe these numbers will reach into the millions, possibly surpassing the death-count of the Jews during Hitler’s Holocaust – and no amount of propaganda or spin will change those numbers. As it pertains specifically to the global fight against AIDS, Bush has truly earned his Russian Nickname as “The Master of Disaster.”

The War In Iraq

There is now conclusive evidence that the War in Iraq was started on false pretenses, and rather than WMD's, it appears that our mission in Iraq was based on oil, war profiteering and power, not because Iraq posed a threat to the United States! How many deaths in Iraq will be attributed to this illegal and immoral war? The actual statistics on civilian deaths in Iraq has been a subject of endless debate and reports that contradict one another, so the figures that are presented are likely the result of Bush's influence with the Iraqi government and are not representative of the actual death-count, another "statistic" that will undoubtedly change dramatically when Bush loses control of the White House. Time Magazine recently tallied the deaths, and as you view this report, it's best to consider these estimates as the barest minimum rather than a realistic approximation of civilians who have lost their lives in Iraq:

Toting Up Civilian Deaths in Iraq (Excerpts)

The Baquba killings will become part of the disparate statistics and numbers being amassed and studied to tally Iraq's official civilian death toll, a body count that has drawn widely differing estimates. On Wednesday, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a new study saying that roughly 151,000 Iraqi civilians died violently during the three years following the U.S. invasion. The new U.N. report marks the most comprehensive effort thus far to document civilian deaths in Iraq, where reliable statistics are scant.

The WHO death toll represents a rough average based on a survey of nearly 10,000 households. The low estimate for the study totaled 104,000 civilian deaths, with the high figure reaching 223,000. Both tallies were well below the 600,000 estimate put forward in a disputed 2006 John Hopkins University study, which surveyed far fewer households. But the new U.N. total rose significantly above the most widely cited running tally by Iraq Body Count, a human rights group that puts the number between 80,000 to 87,000 from the start of the war until now.

"It's unfortunate and it's tragic and it's horrific and brutal when you see the kind of murders that the Iraqis and our soldiers have seen on the street," Hertling said. "When you see severed heads. When you see people kidnapped, have their family held, and them being told that unless you drive this suicide truck laden with ammunition, your family is going to die. That's not an ideology, that's a threat." MORE

On Just Foreign Policy.org, another set of statistics exist that place Iraqi civilian deaths at 1,168,058. LINK It's obvious there are major discrepancies in the actual death count, however, those "in the know" are aware that America's Mainstream News Media is controlled by corporations that support the war profiteering of the Bush administration, so these figures will remain in contention until another President is elected, unless, through hook and crook, another Republican is placed in office to continue the Neo-conservative agenda rather than the rule of law this country was based upon.

I wish the death-count would have ended here, but is doesn't, and what lies in our future, as well as current trends and policies that will usher in misery and death throughout the global community, will be covered in Part II of this essay. Unfortunately, "The Master of Disaster" isn't finished yet - and what awaits us here, in the continental United States, is just beginning to unfold.

William Cormier

__________________________

"The whisper becomes louder, then a voice is heard, and then crowds of voices, and eventually the whisper becomes the roar of change!" wjc

http://justanothercoverup.com