Yesterday, Pope Benedict XVI gained headlines when during a tour of Africa, he pontiff claimed that condoms were not the answer to the continent's fight against HIV and AIDS. In fact, according to Benedict XVI, condoms could make the problem worse. Speaking to journalists on a flight frm Cameroon, the Pope stated that while HIV and AIDS was a terrible affliction, it is in the end "a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems." Throwing science out the window, it's not certain what alternative means the Catholic pontiff is suggesting. And, deservedly so, he was swiftly rebuked by health officials, activists and others world wide. A rather good rebuttal posted below. And to think, it was written in 2003!
More after the fold...
Is the Pope Crazy?
By Katha Pollitt
www.thenation.com
There are many things to be said against condoms, and most people reading this have probably said them all. But at least they work. Not perfectly--they slip, they break, they require more forethought and finesse and cooperation and trust than is easy to bring to sex every single time, and, a major drawback in this fallen world, they place women's safety in the hands of men. But for birth control they are a whole lot better than the rhythm method or prayer or nothing, and for protection from sexually transmitted diseases they are all we have. This is not exactly a controversial statement; people have been using condoms as a barrier against disease as long as rubber has been around (indeed, before--as readers of James Boswell's journals know). You could ask a thousand doctors--ten thousand doctors--before you'd find one who said, Condoms? Don't bother.
But what do doctors know? Or the Centers for Disease Control, or the World Health Organization, or the American Foundation for AIDS Research (Amfar)? These days, the experts on condoms are politicians, preachers and priests, and the word from above is: Condoms don't work.
read full article here.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
The Gods (Representative) Must Be Crazy
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Media News Roundup- Sunday Jul 8th to Sat Jul 14th
Keeping an eye on the failing Fourth Estate and looking for some TRUTH in journalism.
MSNBC's Tucker Carlson offers his expert journalistic opinion on Barak Obama--by calling him names. Media under reports damage of Bush's AIDS program on Africa. Bright spot of the week: On Democracy Now! Iraq War veterans describe "brutal techniques" used by U.S. military against Iraqi civilians.
MSNBC's Tucker Carlson "Name Calling" Problem with Obama
Tucker Carlson is a political analyst with his own television show described as "a fast paced, no-holds-barred conversation about the day’s developments in news, politics, world issues and pop culture." Too bad the best he can muster in the end is to resort to name calling. According to Media Matters, in the past two weeks Carlson has managed to refer to Barak Obama by a host of unflattering names. On July 3rd, Carlson claimed of Obama "He sounds like kind of a wuss." On the July 6th edition of his show, Carlson, in referring to a speech by Obama, stated "Well, he sounds like a pothead to me." On July 11th Carlson claimed Obama sounded "kind of wimpy," and by the 13th had come to question his gender with the comment, "Why has Barak Obama suddenly turned into Oprah?" Welcome to the new age of professional journalism.
Media Ignores Damage Bush's AIDS Program Inflicts on Africa
A popular theme in the media for the past few years has been Bush's AIDS program to Africa. Reports of increased funding to the continent have been repeatedly cited as a positive administration policy. Less publicized however, has been the voices of criticism highlighting the dangers Bush's conservative policies are having on Africa's AIDS crisis. In the American Prospect, Michelle Goldberg notes that "On July 5, Beatrice Were, the founder of Uganda's National Community of Women Living with HIV and AIDS, stood before hundreds of other HIV-positive women in Nairobi's vaulted city hall and denounced the Bush administration's AIDS policies." Mostly this denunciation has been because of failed abstinence-only policies that are seen as putting many more people at risk than any funding manages to save. Goldberg notes that Beatrice Were is not alone:There were lots of voices like Were's in Nairobi last week, where the YWCA sponsored a massive international conference on women and HIV. Yet they rarely seem to break through in the United States, where the conventional wisdom holds that the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is a bright spot in an otherwise execrable presidency, one that only the ideologically blinkered refuse to credit. Nick Kristof seems to repeat this notion in The New York Times every other week, and Bono affirmed it when he insisted on putting Bush on one of the 20 different covers that graced Vanity Fair's special Africa issue. "USA TODAY's Susan Page just got off the telephone with Bono. She says President Bush can count the rock star as a fan today," the newspaper's blog reported in late May. "The Grammy winner was singing the praises of the American president for his announcement today that he would propose spending an additional $30 billion over five years to fight AIDS in Africa, doubling the U.S. commitment."
For more, see the full article:
Media Ignores Damage Bush's AIDS Program Inflicts on Africa
Bright Spot of the Week
Democracy Now! Iraq War Veterans Speak of Violence Against Iraqi Civilians
The Nation magazine has published a startling new expose of fifty American combat veterans of the Iraq War who give vivid on-the-record accounts of the US military occupation in Iraq and describe a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts. The investigation marks the first time so many on-the-record, named eyewitnesses from within the US military have been assembled in one place to openly corroborate assertions of indiscriminate killings and other atrocities by the US military in Iraq. We speak with the article’s co-author, journalist Laila Al-Arian, and four Iraq veterans who came forward with their stories of war.
Read/Listen to Interview:
The Other War: Iraq Veterans Speak Out on Shocking Accounts of Attacks on Iraqi Civilians
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Media News Roundup- Sunday May 27th to Sat June 2nd
Keeping an eye on the failing Fourth Estate and looking for some TRUTH in journalism.
Media notes AIDS pledge at G8 but not massive cut of important medicare to those infected. Five stories of actual importance buried by the media's shameful Paris Hilton-mania. Bright spot of the week: Sam Seder show, taking cue from Media Matters report, shows what diversity in news media can look like.
Media Reports G8 AIDS Pledge; Misses Important Cut to Medicare of Infected
As noted by Democracy Now on June 7, while there was much publicizing of the G8 AIDS pledge, little coverage was given to deep medicare cuts for HIV/AIDS patients promised just two years prior. The Financial Times reported that under pressure from the U.S., the G8 has backtracked on a two-year old pledge to fund universal access to medical care AIDS sufferers. In 2005 at Gleneagles the leaders of the summit had agreed to reach ten million AIDS patients. However internal documents now show the G8 has proposed to cut that number by half--to five million. The lowered goal was introduced by U.S. negotiators, just one week after President Bush cited AIDS funding as a major priority. A senior G8 official called the proposal “a huge backward step.”
5 News Stories Buried by the U.S. Media's Shameful Paris Hilton-mania.
In a week that highlighted the shameless trend of the U.S. corporate news media to cover celebrity gossip in a chase for profits rather than conducting investigative journalism, several news stories of profound impact were woefully underreported or missed completely:(1) Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commanded U.S. forces during the first year of the Iraq war, this week derided the idea of a military "victory" and stated that the best outcome America can hope for is to "stave off defeat."
(2) Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for lying to a grand jury and the FBI during the investigation into the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame, wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson who challenged the White House on claims of Saddam Hussein-WMD ties to Niger during the lead up to the Iraq War.
(3) The Senate Judiciary Committee passed an important bill to restore habeas corpus, the fundamental right to challenge government detention in court. Last year Constitutional rights activists were stunned when the Military Commissions Act, passed by a GOP led Congress, revoked habeas corpus—an act that was widely criticized as unconstitutional and un-American.
(4) In back-to-back rulings, military judges threw out all charges against Canadian Omar Khadr and Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni national, who are detainees at the now infamous Guantánamo Bay prison. Khadr has been held there since he was 15; Hamdan has been fingered as the alleged chauffeur of Osama bin Laden. In a move that highlights weaknesses in the Bush administration’s unlawful definition of “enemy combatants,” the judges claimed the cases could not go on because the U.S. government had failed to “establish jurisdiction.”
(5) Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey told the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, in written remarks this past Wednesday, that Vice President Dick Cheney blocked the promotion of a top Justice Department lawyer after the official called into question the legality of the White House's secret domestic spying program. Relatedly, this was the fourth week in which the wire-tapping hospital drama involving Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, White House Chief-of-staff Andrew Card and a gravely ill John Ashcroft went underreported in the mainstream press. As cited previously in this forum, James Comey's May 15 congressional testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on the matter was like a bizarre tale out of an Oliver Stone film.
Bright Spot of the Week
Sam Seder Show’s Diverse Political Roundtable
A recent report by Media Matters highlighted the manner in which women and people of color are all but shut out of most political news discussions. So it was a breath of fresh air this past weekend to hear the political roundtable on the Sam Seder Show on Air America Radio. Featured were not only media critics like Glenn Greenwald and a voice for women through FireDogLake blogger Christy Hardin Smith, but also Ron Daniels the Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and President for the Institute on the Black World 21st Century. Daniels was not simply invited on to discuss pertinent "African-American" specific issues, but was given the rare opportunity to voice his thoughts on political topics as diverse as the Iraq War, American foreign policy and more. Kudos to Sam Seder for recognizing that people of color have opinions on large topics that are not always bound to topics of race, something of which most mainstream media Sunday shows seem wholly unaware.
