02 June 2006 01:30 The Bush administration, heavily influenced by the Christian right, is blocking key proposals for a new United Nations package to combat HIV/Aids worldwide over the next five years because of its opposition to the distribution of condoms and needle exchanges and references to prostitutes, drug addicts and homosexuals.
The United States is being supported by many Muslim countries, including Egypt, and various conservative African and Latin American nations. "There are a lot of unholy alliances all over the place," said a European official attending UN talks in New York on Thursday night.
Fraught negotiations were continuing to try to salvage as much of the package as possible. More than 140 nations are attending the UN summit in New York which began on Wednesday. The meeting is intended to update a 2001 declaration that provided the momentum for a worldwide campaign against HIV/Aids. A new declaration is due to be agreed on Friday.
Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, told the summit: "The world has been unconscionably slow in meeting one of the most vital aspects of the struggle: measures to fight the spread of Aids among women and girls. These shortcomings are deadly."
A report published on Tuesday by the agency UNAIDS says new figures suggest the infection rate is slowing down globally, but new infections are continuing to increase in certain regions and countries.
The report adds that an estimated 38,6-million people are living with the Aids virus, HIV; 4,1-million were newly infected last year; 2,8-million died of Aids last year; and treatment with medicines is available to less than half of those infected with the virus.
Of those infected worldwide, almost half -- about 17 million -- are women, and three-quarters of those are in Africa.
The British government, which has sided with Washington so often over the past decade, is in the progressive bloc at the summit, along with Canada and other European countries, and is diametrically opposed to Washington over its approach to HIV/Aids.
Although the US is the world's highest spender in combating the virus, much of the money goes towards sex abstinence campaigns rather than the distribution of condoms or needle-exchange programmes.
Hilary Benn, Britain's International Development Secretary, who flew to New York last night and will address the UN General Assembly on Friday, distanced himself from the US approach.
He said: "We have to take action on the evidence of what works, on what saves people's lives, and not on ideology. That means making condoms available and reducing harm to people at risk: injecting drug-users, sex workers and men having sex with men."
He said he hoped a declaration would be agreed on Friday. "At the moment, one could say negotiations are deadlocked," he said. "I am concerned about that, but I do hope that we'll be able to find a way forward."
Sisonke Msimang, a spokesperson for the Johannesburg-based Open Society Initiative for South Africa, one of hundreds of civil groups attending the summit, said: "It is not going forward."
She added that the US was among the key antagonists, saying: "America has been clear that it will oppose global targets. America says any mention of condoms has to be matched by abstinence and faithfulness."
The US is also opposed to increased funding targets. UNAids wants spending to be increased from $8,2-billion a year on fighting HIV/Aids to $22-billion by 2010. But Washington has opposed this, preferring individual countries to set targets rather than the UN.
The Washington Post reported on Thursday that the US government feared that if the target was set and there were shortfalls, it would be blamed.
The summit overrode the US funding objections yesterday, but negotiations were continuing last night over who will fund the $22-billion target. The US wants conditions to be attached to funding, but is being opposed by the Europeans.
The Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), which represents Muslim countries, vehemently opposes references in the declaration to homosexuals, prostitutes and drug addicts, saying these should not appear in a public document. The US is supporting the OIC.
archaeopteryx wrote: > http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=273524&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/ > > US blocking deal on fighting Aids
The US already gives more money to fight AIDS that any other on the planet. Try not to cry, liar.
<*t@aol.com> wrote in message news:1149263572.443518.100800@f6g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... archaeopteryx wrote: > http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=273524&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/ > > US blocking deal on fighting Aids
>>The US already gives more money to fight AIDS that any other on the >>planet. Try not to cry, liar.
and yet gives very little towards /preventing/ AIDS. funny isn't it?
and btw, why the HELL are you using quoted printable encoding on your messages?!
<*t@aol.com> wrote in message news:1149263572.443518.100800@f6g2000cwb.googlegroups.com... archaeopteryx wrote: > http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=273524&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news/ > > US blocking deal on fighting Aids
>>The US already gives more money to fight AIDS that any other on the >>planet. Try not to cry, liar.
Because the AMERICAN GOVT PSYCHOPATHS dont LIKE TO MURDER people WITH AIDS.
AMAZING HOW the EVIL AMERICAN GOVT GETS AWAY WITH MURDERS, MAYHEM, RAPES, MASSACRES, LOOTING, PERVERSION, SADISM, TORTURES all over the world.
And the WORST PART is these AMERICAN GOVT CLOWNS spend DECADES and DECADES PSYCHOANALYZING EVERYBODY ELSE BUT THEMSELVES and conducting research and writing books WHY the rest of the world HATES AMERICA ? ROFLMAO...........
It is the function of the CIA to keep the world unstable and to propagandize the American people to hate, so we will let the establishment spend any amount of money on arms. " John Stockwell
" Coming to grips with these U.S./CIA activities in broad numbers and figuring out how many people have been killed in the jungles of Laos or the hills of Nicaragua is very difficult. But, adding them up as best we can, we come up with a figure of six million people killed-and this is a minimum figure. Included are: one million killed in the Korean War, two million killed in the Vietnam War, 800,000 killed in Indonesia, one million in Cambodia, 20,000 killed in Angola ... and 22,000 killed in Nicaragua. These people would not have died if U.S. tax dollars had not been spent by the CIA to inflame tensions, finance covert political and military activities and destabilize societies.
Certainly, there are other local, regional, national and international factors in many of these operations, but if the CIA were tried fairly in a U.S. court, under U.S. law, the principle of complicity, incitement, riot, and mayhem would clearly apply. In the United States, if you hire someone to commit a murder your sentence may be approximately the same as that of the murderer himself.
Who are these six million people we have killed in the interest of American national security? Conservatives tell us, "It's a dangerous world. Our enemies have to die so we can be safe and secure." Some of them say, "I'm sorry, but that's the way the world is. We have to accept this reality and defend ourselves, to make our nation safe and insure our way of life." Since 1954, however, we have not parachuted teams into the Soviet Union - our number one enemy - to destabilize that country... Neither do we run these violent operations in England, France, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, or Switzerland. Since the mid-1950s they have all been conducted in Third World countries where governments do not have the power to force the United States to stop its brutal and destabilizing campaigns.
One might call this the "Third World War." It is a war that has been fought by the United States against the Third World. Others call it the Cold War and focus on the anti-Communist and anti-Soviet rationales, but the dead are not Soviets; they are people of the Third World. It might also be called the Forty-Year War, like the Thirty-Year and Hundred-Year Wars in Europe, for this one began when the CIA was founded in 1947 and continues today. Altogether, perhaps twenty million people died in the Cold War. As wars go, it has been the second or third most destructive of human life in all of history, after World War I and World War II.
The six million people the CIA has helped to kill are people of the Mitumba Mountains of the Congo, the jungles of Southeast Asia, and the hills of northern Nicaragua. They are people without ICBMs or armies or navies, incapable of doing physical damage to the United States the 22,000 killed in Nicaragua, for example, are not Russians; they are not Cuban soldiers or advisors; they are not even mostly Sandinistas. A majority are rag-poor peasants, including large numbers of women and children.
Communists? Hardly, since the dead Nicaraguans are predominantly Roman Catholics. Enemies of the United States? That description doesn't fit either, because the thousands of witnesses who have lived in Nicaraguan villages with the people since 1979 testify that the Nicaraguans are the warmest people on the face of the earth, that they love people from the United States, and they simply cannot understand why our leaders would want to spend $1 billion on a contra force designed to murder people and wreck the country."
John Stockwell
Look, if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you're stupid. Did you hear that? - stupid." Arthur Sylvester, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, 1965
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin, 1759
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." Edward Abbey
Pax anti- american imperialism and terrorism is a philosophy.
Making sure evil, imperialistic american govt does not turn me into a slave like majority of the americans, is liberty building.
Think of it as somebody beating the shit out of EVIL AMERICAN GOVT CRIMINALS, MURDERERS and TERRORISTS for being FASCIST and GENOCIDAL.
David
2006-06-03 05:10:33 EST
On Fri, 2 Jun 2006 10:42:00 -0700, "AmerGovtCriminalsExposer" <*r@americangovt.org> typed furiously:
>Because the AMERICAN
Another idiot who can't disable the Caps Lock key. That was as far as I read. -- David At the bottom of the application where it says "sign here". I put "Sagittarius"
A*@gmail.com
2006-06-03 10:11:41 EST
David wrote: > On Fri, 2 Jun 2006 10:42:00 -0700, "AmerGovtCriminalsExposer" > <AmerGovtCriminalsExposer@americangovt.org> typed furiously: > > >Because the AMERICAN > > Another idiot who can't disable the Caps Lock key. That was as far as > I read.
The function of such postings is probably to make the opinions which it "supports" look ridiculous.
David
2006-06-03 12:13:45 EST
On 3 Jun 2006 07:11:41 -0700, anarcissie@gmail.com typed furiously:
> >David wrote: >> On Fri, 2 Jun 2006 10:42:00 -0700, "AmerGovtCriminalsExposer" >> <AmerGovtCriminalsExposer@americangovt.org> typed furiously: >> >> >Because the AMERICAN >> >> Another idiot who can't disable the Caps Lock key. That was as far as >> I read. > >The function of such postings is probably to make the >opinions which it "supports" look ridiculous.
It certainly makes the poster look ridiculous. -- David At the bottom of the application where it says "sign here". I put "Sagittarius"