Hans Rosling: HIV - begining of the end!

Hans Rosling: HIV - begining of the end!: "Once more lack of good statistics has kept us sadder than needed. Accumulating data indicate that the global HIV epidemic has passed the peak. A new study form India shows that HIV infection rates remains low in the north and DECRESES IN THE SOUTH (Lancet April 08, http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet).

...

From a fraction of a percent in Arabic North Africa, to 1-5 % in West Africa and above 30% in Southern Africa. With frustration she states that research has done little to tell why. World Health Organization failed to put 3 million on HIV drugs by the end of 2005, but in spite of its focus on medical treatment, the prevention has worked in silence. The horrendous HIV epidemic has reached the end of its beginning, and maybe even the beginning of the end.."

Emphasis mine.

(Via G A P M I N D E R.)

Hang Separately? Nah. Drown Together.

Daily Kos: Hang Separately? Nah. Drown Together.: "It's fascinating. Seriously. They can't shut up, they can't stop passing money around between them, they can't refrain from the fatal error of blaming kids for their problems, they can't forgo getting their pasty compulsive mugs on TV, they can't stop paying for commercials apologizing, they can't stop campaigning on each other's behalf even though the complex scandals are creating a vortex of circling-the-drain defeat. The cover-up for Foley bleeds into the money accepted from Foley bleeds into the apologists for Foley bleeds into the crossovers of all the above in the Abramoff money scandal, which bleeds into the apologists for the lies of Iraq camp.

And then they think throwing a president whose numbers have hit the 33% skids, whom a majority of Americans now believe responsible for lying the country's way into a preemptive war with no strategic way out that has cost more than 2,700 American lives ... they think throwing this president in this atmosphere out on the campaign trail for oxygen-deprived, scandal-ridden candidates is helpful."

(Via Daily Kos.)

Analyst suspects Foley contributed ‘bribes’ for cover-up

Analyst suspects Foley contributed ‘bribes’ for cover-up: "An MSNBC segment examines if Rep. Foley made a large contribution to the Republican Party in exchange for silence about sexual messages that Foley sent to House pages. Foley gave $100,000 to the GOP Campaign Committee in July. The large contribution came at same time when Republican House leadership ignored Foley's emails."

(Via Crooks and Liars.)

Foley, Gays and the Religious Right: Is This the Nail in the GOP Coffin?

Foley, Gays and the Religious Right: Is This the Nail in the GOP Coffin?: "It's become clear that the Republican leadership protected a predator. Will it cost them the conservative Christian votes they so desperately need?

If there's any question as to why former Rep. Mark Foley was able to continue his harassment of teenage congressional pages, look no further than the spin of Bush spokesman Tony Snow: 'Look, I hate to tell you but it's not always pretty up there on Capitol Hill, and there have been other scandals, as you know, that have been more than simply, uh, uh, uh, naughty emails.'

...

But the bigger, more institutional question remains: What did the GOP leadership know, and when did they know it? Evidence suggests that Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Jim Boehner both knew that there were issues -- though neither, of course, cops to awareness of anything approaching the text above. In fact, evidence suggests that Foley's behavior was well known in GOP circles for years, with former page Matthew Loraditch telling ABC News that pages were warned to "watch out for Foley" as early as 2001."

(Via AlterNet.)

State Dept. Confirms Rice-Tenet Meeting

State Dept. Confirms Rice-Tenet Meeting : "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice did receive a CIA briefing about terror threats just about two months before the Sept. 11 attacks, but the information was not new, her chief spokesman said.

In doing so, Sean McCormack confirmed a meeting -- on July 10, 2001 -- that his boss had said repeatedly she could not specifically recall. She had said earlier that there were virtually daily meetings at the time.

A new book by reporter Bob Woodward of Watergate fame describes the White House meeting as an emergency wakeup call that Rice had brushed off. Rice was President Bush's national security adviser at the time and was promoted to the top diplomatic job last year.

Although spokesmen for the State Department and the National Security Council indicated Sunday that such a meeting had taken place, Rice was still saying Monday that she was not sure about it. She said she would have remembered the sort of forceful warning the book claims was conveyed there."

(Via Salon.)

Rice: No Memory of CIA Warning of Attack

Rice: No Memory of CIA Warning of Attack: "Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she cannot recall then-CIA chief George Tenet warning her of an impending al-Qaida attack in the United States, as a new book claims he did two months before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

"What I am quite certain of is that I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says, that there was about to be an attack in the United States, and the idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible," Rice said.

Rice was President Bush's national security adviser in 2001, when Bob Woodward's book "State of Denial" outlines a July 10 meeting among Rice, Tenet and the CIA's top counterterror officer."

(Via Google News.)

2001 memo to Rice contradicts statements about Clinton, Pakistan

2001 memo to Rice contradicts statements about Clinton, Pakistan: "A memo received by United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shortly after becoming National Security Advisor in 2001 directly contradicts statements she made to reporters yesterday, RAW STORY has learned. "We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al Qaeda," Rice told a reporter for the New York Post on Monday. "Big pieces were missing," Rice added, "like an approach to Pakistan that might work, because without Pakistan you weren't going to get Afghanistan."

...

However, RAW STORY has found that just five days after President George W. Bush was sworn into office, a memo from counter-terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke to Rice included the 2000 document, "Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects." This document devotes over 2 of its 13 pages of material to specifically addressing strategies for securing Pakistan's cooperation in airstrikes against al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

...

The strategy document includes 'three levers' that the United States had started applying to Pakistan as far back as 1990. Sanctions, political and economic methods of persuasion are all offered as having been somewhat successful."

(Via AlterNet.)

How White House Warmongers Learned to Love Empire

How White House Warmongers Learned to Love Empire: "Long before President Bush articulated his Middle East doctrine, an earlier Republican administration argued that a different region was so corrupt, so in need of reform, and was saddled with such oppressive and backward rulers that bringing about stability and the potential for prosperity for its citizens was beyond the realm of politics or diplomacy.

Ronald Reagan smilingly asserted that only U.S.-backed violence and American-style nation building could give the benighted people of Central America a chance to join the modern world.

He followed the claim with his infamous "dirty wars," and his administration framed the bloodshed in the loftiest and most idealistic terms. The Reagan administration launched an intensive public relations campaign to convince Americans that the tens of thousands of civilian deaths that resulted were regrettable but necessary, not only because of the United States' mission to promote human rights and democracy around the world but also in order to defeat terrorism.

Clearly, there are differences between Reagan's wars in El Salvador and Nicaragua two decades ago and Bush's debacle in Iraq today. But there are also threads that bind the two."

(Via AlterNet.)