African Unrest

In Madagascar, Andry Rajoelina was officially sworn in today as the nation's new president after deposing Marc Ravalomanana. The turmoil began in November, when the Ravalomanana government and Daewoo inked a deal to cultivate crops on 2.5 million acres (an area roughly equal to Rhode Island and Delaware combined) of the island. Madagascans felt betrayed by Ravalomanana's apparent selling-out.

In January, a TV station owned by Rajoelina broadcast an interview with Ravalomanana's foe, former President Didier Ratsiraka, and was shut down by the Ravalomanana government. Rajoelina supporters marched on, looted, and set fire to the state broadcaster in retaliation. Rajoelina was then fired from his post as mayor of Antananarivo, the nation's capital.

The opposition was losing momentum until February 7, when 28 Rajoelina supporters were killed. Defense Minister Cecile Manorohanta resigned in protest. Ravalomanana resigned on March 17, transferring power to a military triumvirate, who in turn handed over power to Rajoelina.

In response to the coup, Madagascar's membership in the African Union has been suspended and the U.S. has cut foreign aid. The responses seem a little rash. The Ravalomanana government cracked down on free speech and killed opposition members; that does not seem like an entirely legitimate government to me. And Rajoelina has promised to write a new constitution and hold elections within two years. A little longer than I would like, but this hardly seems like a power grab. I may be proven wrong in time, but I do not yet have a reason to distrust Rajoelina.

But along the South Africa-Zimbabwe border, South African authorities have shut down the Musina refugee camp. Zimbabweans fled to South Africa to seek refuge from economic and political turmoil and a cholera epidemic. And now the South African government has shut down the camp, dispersing 4,000 refugees.

A South African spokeswoman, Siobhan McCarthy defended the move, saying:

The showground is simply not designed for people to live. There is no water, there is no ablution facilities, there's nothing there, so people cannot live there. It has already become very unhygienic.

Why doesn't the South African government just provide the needed supplies? Mostly xenophobia:

With thousands of Zimbabweans homeless and roaming the streets of the city, human rights activists and opposition political parties in South Africa have raised fears of a fresh outbreak of xenophobic violence.

Business people in the city have complained to the government, saying the presence of Zimbabweans on the streets was affecting their business.

HIV/AIDS at Home and Abroad

Two important articles regarding HIV/AIDS crisis, both domestically in the USA and regarding the Pope, were published today. In light of Wolverine's prior post discussing the myriad of problems that the Obama administration is attempting to address, I found these articles extremely relevant for your review.

First, the BBC announced today that Washington, D.C. is suffering from an HIV/AIDS epidemic on par with the infection rates in some African nations. The article reports that HIV is defined as a generalized and severe epidemic when the overall infection rates among residents of a specific geographic area exceed 1%. Washington, D.C. clocks in at 3% (although the real figure may be higher), putting the United States AIDS epidemic in just DC at the same level as Uganda's. The article also states that the hardest-hit segments of the population are black men and people aged between 40 and 49. Additionally, the primary means of transmission is men having sex with men, followed by heterosexual sex, and infection through drug use. For the full article, please click here.

In my opinion, this is a shame for the United States. With so much knowledge about how to prevent HIV, ways to make programs effective, and the availability of condoms and medicines to treat HIV/AIDS in the United States, one would think that the representatives in the country's capital would take far better care of the residents. The unfortunate truth is that the residents of Washington, D.C. tend to be ignored despite all the politicians and representation within the city. The United States has been a leader in the development of treatments for HIV/AIDS and as such, should be a leader in prevention as well. The entire country needs to do a far better job encouraging people to get tested and be proactive in their health. For more on HIV/AIDS prevention, see one of my previous articles: "HIV Myths Sentence Man to 35 Years."

The second article that is also the subject of the most recent "What do YOU think" poll, regards Pope Benedict XVI's trip to Africa and the statements he made regarding condoms and HIV/AIDS.

"You can't resolve it [HIV/AIDS crisis] with the distribution of condoms," the pope told reporters aboard the Alitalia plane heading to Yaounde. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

The pope said a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease, as he answered questions submitted in advance by reporters traveling on the plane. His response was presumably also prepared in advance.

The Catholic Church rejects the use of condoms as part of its overall teaching against artificial contraception. Senior Vatican officials have advocated fidelity in marriage and abstinence from premarital sex as key weapons in the fight against AIDS.

While abstinence is the only certain way to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV, latex condoms when properly and consistently used have been found to have a 98 to 100% rate of effectiveness. Additionally, abstinence-only education programs have been found to fail where sexual intercourse was the primary means of HIV transmission. Furthermore, male circumcision has been found to be up to 60% effective in preventing HIV transmission in the aforementioned circumstances. While it is never a good idea to pursue only one policy avenue, it is a critical mistake to discount the effectiveness of condoms and the necessity of safe sexual practices.

As Rebecca Hodes, head of policy, communication, and research for the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, so aptly stated, "if the pope is serious about preventing HIV infections, he should focus on promoting wide access to condoms and spreading information on how to use them. Instead, his opposition to condoms conveys that religious dogma is more important to hiim than the lives of Africans."

For the full article about the Pope, please click here.

Please voice your thoughts, questions, or concerns in the comments area or in the poll on the right of the screen (link provided above).

Politics: You're Doing It Wrong

Maybe I'm naive, but I don't understand either politically or intellectually why prominent politicians and intellectuals are saying and behaving as they are. First,

President Obama

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Let me explain. I think what Obama said he would do is both good and extremely important. But trying to achieve everything he said he would--fix the economy, improve health care, ameliorate the education system, slow climate change, stabilize Afghanistan, and so on--is incredibly ambitious. And promising accomplishments in all of these fields is politically dangerous. Despite the difficulties, a failure (and I will be pleasantly surprised if he succeeds on all fronts) could be held against him and could cause his being voted out of office in 2012.

Obama must walk a fine line between hope and realism, and it just seems that his non-State of the Union address fell too far away from the realistic side.

Republicans

Lately, Republicans' and conservatives' statements have seemed incredibly vacuous. Take, for example, this editorial by Charles Krauthammer about Obama's non-SOTU. You would think, it being an opinion piece, that Krauthammer would explain what he thinks and why he thinks it. Not so. He merely describes Obama's plans in a negative fashion:

Conservatives take a dim view of the regulation-bound, economically sclerotic, socially stagnant, nanny state that is the European Union. Nonetheless, Obama is ascendant and has the personal mandate to take the country where he wishes. He has laid out boldly the Brussels-bound path he wants to take.

Let the debate begin.

"Let the debate begin." That's funny. One would think that Krauthammer would want to take part in that debate, but evidently not. 'Because it makes us look like Belgium' is not a good reason to oppose universal health care, limiting greenhouse-gas emissions, and providing college educations.

And claims that Obama is a socialist because he's raising taxes to Clinton-era levels are ridiculous. Ditto on claims of class warfare. No, what we've had, where "each family in the bottom 80 percent of the income distribution was effectively sending a $10,000 check, every year, to the top 1 percent of earners," was class warfare.

The sad thing is that there are legitimate arguments to be made. But Republicans seem to be unable to make them. You cannot say that we should not do everything Obama wants because you're concerned about the national debt: you presided over its near doubling over the past five years. And you need to provide an alternative plan. Besides tax cuts. Because they obviously have not worked.

Lewis Black used to joke that the Republican Party was the party of bad ideas and the Democrats were the party of no ideas. For now, at least, the tables seem to have turned.