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;void(0)) . . . ABORTION see: "BABIES" see: "BIRTH CONTROL" About the termination of pregnancy -- I want your opinion. The father was syphilitic. The mother tuberculous. Of the children born, the first was blind, the second died, the third was deaf and dumb, the fourth was tuberculous. What would you have done? 'I would have ended the next pregnancy.' 'Then you would have murdered Beethoven.'" --Maurice Baring (1874-1945) English man of letters "Freedom to Choose" by Bob Blue In a clinic on Main Street, in Washingtonville, Lost in thought, by a window, stood Mary McGill, When her eyes met the eyes of a woman outside. Was it rain on her glasses, or tears she had cried? Outside, on the picket line, Rosemary Flynn Felt the rain on her face, and the anger within, As she glared at the face inside, gentle, and warm, That seemed almost to beckon her in from the storm. And the two women found themselves staring awhile Recognition, awareness, but never a smile. And there seemed to be some kind of truce in that stare, Until Rosemary Flynn recalled why she was there. Then she held up her sign, which said, "Thou shalt not kill," And she pointed directly at Mary McGill. And Mary McGill, before starting to turn, Gave a nod to acknowledge Rosemary's concern. One day, Mary counselled a child named Michelle, Who tried hard to seem calm, in her personal Hell. Mary spoke to Michelle with the tone of a friend, And her gentleness brought Michelle's calm to an end. Michelle told her story with pain hard to hide, Of her mother, and John, and the new life inside. She had meant to show love. She had meant no one harm, But her mother felt anger, and John felt alarm. And the new life inside was a life. It was real, With a brain, and a heartbeat she thought she could feel. And she wanted the child. She would love it so well. She would build it a heaven to make up for this hell. But she'd end the new life, for her mother and John. "I'll do it," she said, "for my mother and John." These words had an emptiIness Mary saw through. "If you do it," said Mary, "please do it for you." Michelle looked at Mary through the pain, and the tears, And Mary saw all of Michelle's sixteen years, And she thought she saw something of several years more, Or perhaps she had seen Michelle's face once before. Michelle only murmured the words, "I don't know." And she stood, and she turned, and she started to go. And Mary made one last request of Michelle, With her parting words, "Take time to think this out well." That night, Michelle's mother stormed into the place, Not hiding her anger, yet hiding her face. "My daughter came here with a purpose," she said. "Not to have you put foolish ideas in her head. She is young; she's a girl, and the father's a boy, And she thinks that a baby is some kind of toy. Your job is to teach her -- to straighten her out, Not confuse her, and send her home riddled with doubt." "My job," explained Mary, "is not to confuse, But to make her aware of her freedom to choose. My job is to make sure the options are known. You are right. She is young. But her life is her own." Then Mary saw something in this woman's face, And remembered the person, the time, and the place. This woman had labelled abortion a sin. The face in the picket line. Rosemary Flynn. People often accuse, and are quick to condemn When the issue is safe, and does not affect them. I don't envy the job facing Mary McGill. I don't know all the meanings of "Thou shalt not kill." It's a problem more simply prevented than solved, But the choice must belong to the woman involved, And I think that the answers come not from above, But from us, and our consciences, tempered with love. - Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get. . . --Gwendolyn Brooks (1917- ) American poet, "The Mother" [1945] - The same amendment of the Constitution that forbids the establishment of a State Church affirms my legal right to argue that my religious belief would serve well as an article of our universal public morality. I may use the prescribed processes of government--the legislative and executive and judicial processes--to convince my fellow citizens--Jews and Protestants and Buddhists and non- believers--that what I propose is as beneficial for them as I believe it is for me; that it is not just parochial or narrowly sectarian but fulfills a human desire for order, peace, justice, kindness, love, any of the values most of us agree are desirable even apart from their specific religious base or context. . . . I can, if I wish, argue that the State should not fund the use of contraceptive devices not because the Pope demands it but because I think that the whole community-- for the good of the whole community--should not sever sex from an openness to the creation of life. And surely, I can, if so inclined, demand some kind of law against abortion not because my Bishops say it is wrong but because I think that the whole community, regardless of its religious beliefs, should agree on the importance of protecting life--including life in the womb, which is at the very least potentially human and should not be extinguished casually. No law prevents us from advocating any of these things: I am free to do so. So are the Bishops. And so is Reverend Falwell. --Mario Cuomo (1932- ) American lawyer and politician, speech in 1984 at Notre Dame [then-governor of New York] - I think incest can be handled as a family matter within the family. --Representative Jay Dickey (R-Ark.), defending his position against abortion even in the case of rape or incest - Liberals want to strike down the abortion laws, so that unwanted babies can be killed off before they are born. Conservatives want to strike down the welfare laws, so that unwanted babies can be starved to death after they are born. --N. Sally Hass - Sperm cells, even under optimal conditions, will never, never ever, become a human being. But that earliest embryo will, barring natural disaster or lethal human intervention, become what everybody recognizes as a human baby on its further way to becoming a fully developed human being. [...] The truth is so blindingly obvious that many are blind to it: nothing that is not a human being has the potential of becoming a human being, and nothing that has the potential of becoming a human being is not a human being. --Richard John Neuhaus Canadian-born theologian, http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0211/public.html I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born. --Ronald Reagan (1911-2004) U.S. President [1981-1989] and former Hollywood actor Dread not infanticide; the crime is imaginary: we are always mistress of what we carry in our womb, and we do no more harm in destroying this kind of matter than in evacuating another, by medicines, when we feel the need. --Marquis de Sade (Donatien Alphonse François, Comte de Sade) (1740-1814), French aristocrat, writer of pornography Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world. --The Talmud The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between. --Mother Teresa (1910-1997) Roman Catholic nun and missionary, Nobel Peace Prize Lecture [1979] It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish. --Mother Teresa (1910-1997) Roman Catholic nun and missionary - Extra place set at your mind's table like Ezekiel's empty glass, clean spoon. Hands that never pointed out the moon, laid the baby in the Christmas stable, dried dishes. Voice that doesn't call downstairs that he or she will be there soon. In steam behind a bathroom door, no one puts on makeup, leaves a towel for you to find. No hairdryer. No C in French. No midnight curfew, no slamming door, no not-speaking-to. When was it you began to hear silence? They don't tell you about that voice, clear, insistent, steady as a heartbeat, asking, How weren't you ready? --Sally Thomas, "Choice" - If anyone should administer a potion to a pregnant woman to produce an abortion, and the child should die in consequence, the woman who took such a potion, if she is a slave, shall receive two hundred lashes, and if she is freeborn, she shall lose her rank, and shall be given as a slave to whomever we [the king] may select. --_The Visigothic Code_ (Forum Judicum) (mid-7th century; 1910 trans.) p.206, quoted in M.J. Cohan and John Major {ed.} _History in Quotations_ [2004] - TOPICAL Oscar Wilde famously spoke so many years ago, referring to homosexuality, of "the love that dare not speak its name." Today, of course, homosexuality shouts its name and affixes it to marriage licenses. But there is a new kind of open secret - "the right that dare not speak its name." In a June decision, a federal judge in San Francisco ruled the recently passed partial-birth-abortion ban unconstitutional. The right to abortion is as legally secure as ever, but its advocates have never been so apparently ashamed of the practice itself. If pro-choice advocates believe in the necessity and goodness of their position, one would expect them to say something like, "We support abortion - that's A-B-O-R-T-I-O-N - so women can eliminate unwanted children." Instead, they take refuge in the foggiest corners of obfuscation. In April, supporters of Roe v. Wade held a rally in Washington in support of the right to abortion. But you would hardly know it. The rally was called the "March for Women's Lives" - well, for the lives of women who aren't very, very young. The word "abortion" was almost verboten among people who support the right to it. One of the nation's premier defenders of abortion rights is the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. It's a perfectly descriptive name, but the group nonetheless changed it last year to expunge the offending word. It is now known as NARAL Pro-Choice America. It's as if the National Rifle Association changed its name to avoid any association with the word "rifle." In three lawsuits challenging the partial-birth-abortion ban after it was signed, abortion-rights advocates refused to say "partial- birth abortion." They preferred the terms "intact dilation and extraction" and "dilation and evacuation," better to keep anyone from understanding whatever they were talking about: Namely, the partial-breech delivery of a baby, until a doctor can pierce its skull with a sharp instrument and vacuum out its brain. Shannen W. Coffin, a former Justice Department official who fought in defense of the ban, recalls one pro-choice lawyer letting slip the phrase "partial-birth abortion," only to correct herself. The judge chided her, "You won't get sick if you say the words." [...] Former President Clinton said abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." The bit about rare suggests that there is something wrong with abortion, that it is to be avoided. It is difficult to square that thought with our judicially legislated legal regime prohibiting any restriction on abortion whatsoever. When the partial-birth abortion debate cropped up a few years ago, abortion-rights advocates insisted the gruesome procedure was so rare that the issue was a sideshow. Now they say the procedure is indistinguishable from other late-term abortions. Hmm. So they all are gruesome? The San Francisco judge struck down the ban partly because she thinks it is sometimes safer to kill a fetus while it is being delivered intact rather than chopping it up inside the womb. By this standard, why shouldn't it be legal to fully deliver the baby and complete the abortion cleanly on the operating table? --Rich Lowry, The Right that Dare Not Speak Its Name http://www.nationalreview.com/lowry/lowry200406151146.asp - An abortion clinic routinely performed partial-birth abortions and even live births in order to maximize the profits from the subsequent sale of undamaged fetal tissue, claims a former technician for a business that markets fetal body parts. "Kelly" -- the name is a pseudonym -- worked for Anatomic Gift Foundation (AGF), which sells fetal tissue to researchers, drug companies, hospitals and universities. Although marketing fetal tissue is a violation of federal law, a major loophole has allowed a burgeoning growth industry in the sale of baby body parts. Working in AGF's rented space inside the abortion clinic, Kelly's job was to collect fetal tissue and body part "donations" from the clinic for AGF. After an abortion, Kelly would survey the various orders for body parts she had received from AGF's clients, and make sure these orders were filled in a timely manner. Nearly two years ago, Kelly says, the doctor in charge entered her office holding twins at 24 weeks gestation -- both gasping for air -- and told her they were "good specimens." Expected to end the lives of the premature infants and harvest their organs, Kelly says she told the doctor, "I don't do this. That's not in my contract." The doctor subsequently placed the twins in a pan and poured sterile water over them, she says, adding that she left the room as they drowned. From that point on, Kelly began gathering photocopies of the fetal tissue order forms from various universities and research facilities and offered them to Mark Crutcher, founder of the pro-life organization Life Dynamics in Denton, Texas. [...] Eric Harrah, a former abortion clinic worker, says that "live births" were the industry's "dirty little secret." In the industry for 11 years and owner or partner in 26 abortion clinics, Harrah said, "it was always very disturbing, so the doctor would try to conceal it from the rest of the staff." Live births from partial-birth abortions recently made headlines in Ohio when a woman was being prepared for an abortion at the Women's Med Center in Dayton. The woman went into premature labor and was then admitted to a Dayton hospital where she gave birth to a 25-to-26- week-old infant. Women's Med Center is operated by Dr. Martin Haskell, the developer of partial-birth abortion. According to news reports, this was the second time in four months that a woman had given birth during preparations for a partial-birth abortion at the center. The increasing demand for intact fetal body parts is the main reason the abortion industry wants to protect partial-birth abortion from any restrictions, Crutcher says. Partial-birth abortion "is about maximizing profits. First, you sell the woman an abortion. Then you turn around and sell the dead baby you take out of her. But you have to take it out whole, or you don't have anything to sell." http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=17246  ;void(0)) AFGHANISTAN . . see "PLACES" for related links The leadership of al Qaeda has great influence in Afghanistan and supports the Taliban regime in controlling most of that country. In Afghanistan, we see al Qaeda's vision for the world. [...] The United States respects the people of Afghanistan -- after all, we are currently its largest source of humanitarian aid -- but we condemn the Taliban regime. (Applause.) It is not only repressing its own people, it is threatening people everywhere by sponsoring and sheltering and supplying terrorists. By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder. And tonight, the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban: Deliver to United States authorities all the leaders of al Qaeda who hide in your land. (Applause) [...] These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion. (Applause.) The Taliban must act, and act immediately. They will hand over the terrorists, or they will share in their fate. --George W. Bush (1946- ) The 43rd President of the United States and a former Governor of Texas. Speech to a Joint Session of Congress [20 September 2001] and see: George W. Bush had it right and his administration followed through: "Give us bin Laden and we will trouble you no further." That was his simple ultimatum presented to the Taliban. Fortunately for Afghanistan and the free world, the Taliban fundadmentalist extremists never heard of the old Mafia saying, "Make them an offer they can't refuse." --Robin Moore, _The Hunt for Bin Laden: Task Force Dagger_ [2003] FAST FORWARD TO 2004: THERE JUST WAS an election in Afghanistan. A democratic election, more or less. American, European, and U.N. observers agreed on this, although it will take two weeks to count all the votes in trackless mountain regions. [...] Five years ago, even a half-free election would have seemed wildly improbable in Afghanistan. Of all the ancient Muslim lands, Afghanistan was, with Yemen and Oman before oil, the most medieval. The first public dropping of the veil--a real, all-concealing burka, not the flirtatious little compromise the Islamists now label hijab--took place in 1959, a century after the women of Cairo and Istanbul began to wear Paris fashions. At the end of the 1970s the Afghan Communists--the 2 percent of atheists in a very Muslim country--seized power. Resistance emerged all over, the Soviet Union invaded, and the country was engulfed in 20 years of war. [...] These factors, piled on top of each other, year after year, made Afghanistan perhaps the worst failed state in the world. Every political scientist would have laughed at the idea that such a country could be a candidate for democratic regime change. I certainly did. [...] The first step in waging the Afghan war was to neutralize the enemy's allies and acquire allies and bases for ourselves. To wage war on the Taliban, it was essential not just to shift, but to reverse the alignment of Pakistan, an enormous challenge. Pakistan was the Taliban's organizer and patron, while friction and sanctions over nuclear weapons, Islamization, human rights, and democracy had distanced the United States from our old ally. Moreover, Pakistan was itself a failing state, unstable politically, with vocal and rancorous Muslim extremist groups having deep roots both in the society and in the army. American military action or excessive pressure risked shattering the country's precarious order and bringing down the military government, with the extremists poised to take over or to submerge our anti-Taliban effort in wider chaos. By sending Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to Pakistan's military boss, General Pervez Musharraf, with essentially an ultimatum--making big threats and promises, and postponing all secondary issues--President Bush was able to reverse Pakistan's entire foreign policy. Musharraf shifted in a few days from ally and sustainer of the Taliban to our ally, providing bases and intelligence, and turning over many al Qaeda leaders including eventually the planner of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Not since 1939 has world politics seen a reversal of alliances so sudden and stupefying. Since the Iraq war, there has been endless whimpering about President Bush's arrogant refusal to line up allies. Somehow Pakistan is never mentioned. Pakistan was the indispensable ally to deal with Afghanistan and al Qaeda, and simultaneously the ally hardest to win. Bush won this ally. (He also won Central Asian bases and cooperation, much against the wishes of regionally dominant Russia and China.) In fact, President Bush converted Pakistan from probably the most important state sponsor of terrorism in the world to a major partner in the war against terrorism. There are incessant complaints that Pakistan's cooperation is not wholehearted, and in themselves some of these may be justified. But as so often with criticisms of established policy, proper criticism tends to omit the entire background that makes everything else possible. Any cooperation out of Pakistan at all--much less the extensive cooperation we now enjoy--is an enormous asset. That we have it is not good fortune, but the result of a titanic effort of will on the part of President Bush's team. [...] It is the very nature of war to set in motion an immense, indiscriminate process, like an avalanche. The United States did not join World War II intending to leave the Red Army on the Elbe or to weaken the last of the European great powers and inherit their role. To achieve the aim of victory, a power that unleashes war is compelled to accept many other consequences it did not seek. Most of all, the unpredictability of war flows from its nature as the only human activity where another side is trying to the death to prevent you from achieving your aims. The United States could chase al Qaeda from its Taliban sanctuary--and do so quickly, before another 9/11 attack--only by helping the Northern Alliance win. Then it was faced with Northern Alliance domination of Kabul, a lesser problem, but one that could gradually unravel everything achieved. [...] When an "international community" that exists only nominally undertakes to impose political order in strife-torn lands, disagreeing about every political issue but united by the demand that the formula produced have some sort of legitimacy, democracy is by far the most likely outcome. Since the collapse of the contending Communist ideology, modern liberal democracy has become a kind of "default regime." The word "democracy" has come to stand for many inchoate aspirations to live a normal, prosperous life, as people in real democracies do. Bush's Greater Middle East Initiative simply applies this reality in a region where it has long been disregarded. [...] On October 9, Afghans went to the polls. Turnout was enormous, as registration had been after a slow start. Already it seems clear that Karzai won by a substantial margin, after subtracting inevitable fraud both for and against him. He had employed many tricks from the armory of traditional Afghan intrigue to bring him to this point, but apparently without compromising the public's sense that he represented modernity, order, and prosperity. Time will tell whether Karzai's skill in Afghan skullduggery goes to his head, whether disorder spreads or fundamentalism revives, but this outcome is an astonishing victory for democracy. [...] AS WE HURTLE TOWARD November 2, our country is divided by a deep and passionate opposition between parties, as bitter as the factional divisions of Cavalier and Puritan so powerfully presented by Macaulay: The effect of violent animosities between parties has always been an indifference to the general welfare and honor of the state. A politician, where factions run high, is interested, not for the whole people, but for his own section of it. The rest are, in his view, strangers, enemies, or rather pirates. The strongest aversion which he can feel to any foreign power is the ardor of friendship, compared to the loathing which he entertains toward those domestic foes with whom he is cooped up in a narrow space, with whom he lives in a constant interchange of petty injuries and insults . . . Strong words. But this election more than anything else is about the conquest of two foreign lands, and the humbling of enemy potentates, a project still messy in many ways, but nevertheless an American success, so far, a victory--even in Iraq. Yet it is detested by George W. Bush's opponents to the bottom of their souls. So violent are our animosities at this moment that Bush's staggering achievement in Afghanistan is never debated as we approach the vote. It is reminiscent of the postwar debate over "Who lost China?" The passionate partisans who raised this cry in frenzied accusation never reflected: We were debating who lost China only because we had gained Japan, South Korea, Germany, Italy, France, and so forth. There seems to be some flaw in our national character, some self- hatred whereby we respond to the complexity of the real world by trying to exorcise the devil within ourselves. And the devil within ourselves we locate soon enough in our neighbor, in the other faction. Rather than rending our national fabric with self-reproach, Election Day is a moment to take mature satisfaction in our country's real triumphs. In Afghanistan, four short years ago, murders were plotted for the World Trade Center and the Pentagon under the protection of the Afghan government. This year, the plotters and those who protected them have been driven from the country or into remote fastnesses, while vast hordes of Afghans turned out to pay homage to our ideals in a free election. As you part the curtains of your voting booth, remember them. --Charles H. Fairbanks Jr., "Afghanistan Reborn", _The Weekly Standard_, 11/01/2004, Charles H. Fairbanks Jr. is a research professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins/SAIS and director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute. - re Afghan elections in September 2005: Afghanistan has successfully conducted its second round of elections since its liberation from the Taliban in 2001. Turnout is estimated at over fifty percent. Despite promises to disrupt the election from al Qaeda and the Taliban, the violence on election day was insignificant. [...] Not a single attack achieved the desired result of disrupting the election, closing a polling place or intimidating the Afghan people from voting. [...] The resurgence of the Taliban has been predicted year after year since their ouster in the winter of 2001. Despite the Coalition's obvious vulnerabilities that are inherent in defending an election, the Taliban could not come close to making itself heard. This is not power, but impotence. The Taliban may have an underground 'army' and access to Pakistan's chaotic tribal regions, but their ability to influence day to day events and their relevance in the future of Afghanistan diminishes yearly. --Bill Roggio, http://billroggio.com/archives/2005/09/toothless_talib.php - KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) [5 October 2006] Contributions to NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, based on figures provided by its headquarters in Kabul. NATO said the numbers are based on broad contributions and do not necessarily reflect the exact numbers on the ground at any one time: United States, 12,000 Britain, 5,200 Germany, 2,750 Netherlands, 2,100 Canada, 1,800 Italy, 1,800 France, 1,000 Romania, 750 Spain, 625 Turkey, 475 Norway, 350 Denmark, 325 Belgium, 300 Hungary, 200 Portugal, 180 Greece, 180 Bulgaria, 150 Lithuania, 135 Czech Republic, 100 Estonia, 90 Slovakia, 60 Slovenia, 50 Latvia, 35 Iceland, 15 Luxembourg, 10 Poland, 10 Non-NATO contributions to the force: Sweden, 350 Australia, 200 Croatia, 120 Macedonia, 120 New Zealand, 100 Finland, 100 Albania, 30 Azerbaijan, 20 Ireland, 10 Austria, 5 Switzerland, 5 Total: About 31,000 ;void(0)) AFRICA . . see "PLACES" for related links I think he's done an incredible job, his Administration, on AIDS. And 250,000 Africans are on anti-viral drugs. They literally owe their lives to America. In one year that's being done... Yes, there's a lot of pressure on President Bush. If he, though, in his second term, is as bold in his commitments to Africa as he was in the first term, he indeed deserves a place in history in turning the fate of that continent around. --Bono (1960- ) Irish rock star, "Meet the Press" [26 June 2005] - REMEMBER AFRICA We live in a world of light and shade where people suffer and need our aid. Where children starve, their eyes downcast, with legs like sticks they're forced to fast. Do we care enough? Do we care? On TV we've seen them there, babies sucking on dry breasts bare. Once strong fathers giving up hope - with hunger and fear it's hard to cope. Do we care enough? Do we care? Men and women, old and young, walking for miles in the glaring sun. Upright and gaunt they make their way, refugees in the heat of the day. Do we care enough? Do we care? This miserable mass, flying no flags, just bundles of bones clad only in rags; tormented and goaded by fat filthy flies, crawling on faces with tearless dead eyes. Do we care enough? Do we care? When skeletal children stop asking why, and frail old people just lie down and die. When feudal armies plunder and fight, caring nothing for human right. Do we care enough? Do we care? How can we help to ease their pain? Find them water to grow their grain? Care and support is what they need, Not fear and hunger or selfish greed. Do we care enough? Do we care? --Written for Christian Aid by Valerie Copeland - Actually, today I had to defend the Bush Administration in France again. They refuse to accept, because of their political ideology, that he has actually done more than any American president for Africa. But it's empirically so. --Bob Geldof (1954- ) Irish rock musician, "Time" {magazine} [June 2005] - ...Most African countries have been atrociously governed in the past half-century. A lack of institutional checks has allowed an array of incompetent strongmen to rule as they pleased until the money ran out, at which point northern donors often tossed them an extra bundle of cash. Some of these strongmen were monsters. Mr. Meredith recounts their careers plainly and dispassionately. One of the lesser-known examples was Francisco Macias Nguema, who murdered a sixth of the population of Equatorial Guinea between 1968 and 1979 and drove half of the survivors into exile. His victims included virtually every educated citizen. "He closed all libraries in the country, prohibited newspapers and printing presses and even banned the use of the word 'intellectual,'" writes Mr. Meredith. "All formal education came to an end in 1974. Children from then on were taught only political slogans such as 'There is no God other than Macias.'" He had the head of the central bank publicly executed and ordered all foreign exchange to be delivered to himself. He kept it in bags in a bamboo hut next to his house. When his nephew overthrew him in a coup, he burned most of the country's reserves. Mr. Meredith tells similar stories about Idi Amin of Uganda, Mengistu Haile Mariam of Ethiopia, the Emperor Jean-Bedel Bokassa of Central Africa, who liked feeding people to his pet crocodiles, and many more. Dramatic as these tyrants' tales may be, they are less revealing than Mr. Meredith's sober demolition of some of Africa's heroes. Kwame Nkrumah, for example, is widely revered. The founding father of independent Ghana, he was also an eloquent advocate of a united Africa. Africans tend to recall him as a man of great personal integrity who strove mightily to drag his country into the industrial age. Mr. Meredith lays out the facts. Nkrumah paid for his grand (and uniformly loss-making) industrial projects by squeezing money out of Ghana's poorest citizens, the peasants, and by borrowing recklessly. He was utterly clueless about money. When his finance minister told him in 1963 that the national reserves were less than $1.4 million, he "sat in silence for fifteen minutes, then broke down and wept." He not only wrecked the Ghanaian economy; he also snuffed out such political freedoms as the country had enjoyed at independence. He had a law passed in 1958 allowing him to jail anyone suspected of subversive intentions. Twelve parliamentarians objected, on the ground that such a power was sure to be abused. Eleven of them were jailed, which rather proved their point. [. . . ] --Robert Guest reviewing _The Fate of Africa_ by Martin Meredith, in "The Wall Street Journal" [31 August 2005] - The most wonderful sight I had witnessed in Africa ... It had never been seen before by European eyes; but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight. --David Livingstone (1813-1873) Scottish missionary and explorer. (On Victoria Falls), in _Missionary Travels and Researches_ [1857] - Niger has a fertility rate of eight children per woman. Girls are required to leave school when they get married, so most of them are primary- school dropouts. Less than 15% of the country's women can read and write. --news blurb [2005]  AIDS . . see "HEALTH" for related links I think he's done an incredible job, his Administration, on AIDS. And 250,000 Africans are on anti-viral drugs. They literally owe their lives to America. In one year that's being done... Yes, there's a lot of pressure on President Bush. If he, though, in his second term, is as bold in his commitments to Africa as he was in the first term, he indeed deserves a place in history in turning the fate of that continent around. --Bono (1960- ) Irish rock star, "Meet the Press" [26 June 2005] Actually, today I had to defend the Bush Administration in France again. They refuse to accept, because of their political ideology, that he has actually done more than any American president for Africa. But it's empirically so. --Bob Geldof (1954- ) Irish rock musician, "Time" {magazine} [June 2005] Sometimes I have a terrible feeling that I am dying not from the virus, but from being untouchable. --Amanda Heggs in "Guardian" [12 June 1989] - The media hysteria not only fools the public, it fools government. Regulators throw money at publicized risks - billions on Superfund and asbestos removal - instead of the riskiest risks. Consider government-funded medical research. You would think the bureaucrats would spend tax dollars on research that would save the most lives or relieve the most suffering. But they don't. The lion's share goes to the activists who make the most noise. In the '80s, when the National Institutes of Health were slow to spend money on AIDS research, activists in Washington, D.C., heckled President Reagan, stopped traffic, marched on Congress, and accused politicians of discriminating against gays. It worked. AIDS now gets more research money per patient than any other disease. But breast cancer and AIDS aren't among the leading killers. Among diseases, breast cancer is ninth, AIDS 18th. Yet in 2001, AIDS research got $4,439 per patient from NIH, breast cancer $290, Parkinson's $175. Diabetes, which killed more people than AIDS and breast cancer combined, got $41. Heart disease, the number one killer, got just $58 per patient. --John Stossel (1947- ) Ameriacan television journalist and author, _Give Me A Break_ - Our society is afflicted with the scourge of AIDS and other diseases that owe their origin to promiscuity. Yet the cry is not, "How can we stop promiscuity?" but rather, "How can we cure AIDS?" --Terry Virgo _Men Of Destiny_ [1987], "Blessed Are Those Who Mourn" - [Musician-turned-activist] Bob Geldof astonished the aid community yesterday by using a return visit to Ethiopia to praise the Bush administration as one of Africa's best friends in its fight against hunger and Aids. Former president Bill Clinton had not helped Africa much, despite his high-profile visits and apparent empathy with the downtrodden, the organiser of Live Aid claimed. "Clinton was a good guy, but he did fuck all." Lord Alli, the aid activist who is accompanying Geldof on the trip organised by the UN children's aid agency Unicef, echoed his praise of the Bush administration. "Clinton talked the talk and did diddly squat, whereas Bush doesn't talk, but does deliver," Lord Alli said." --the UK "Guardian" [28 May 2003] "Geldof back in Ethiopia" You'll think I'm off my trolley, but Bush has the most positive approach to Africa since Kennedy. --ibid. Bob Geldof (1954- ) Irish rock musician . . see "PEOPLE" for related links What above all distinguishes the Arabs from the peoples of the New World is that through the roughness of the former one can still see something of delicacy in their manners and customs: one feels that they were born in this East from which came all the arts, all the sciences, all the religions...In a word, in the Americans, everything proclaims the savage who has not yet reached the level of civilization; in the Arab, everything shows the civilized man who has relapsed into savagery. --François-René de Chateaubriand (1768-1848) French writer and diplomat, _Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem_ end page | ABORTION - ARABS | ANTI-AMERICANISM | ANTI-SEMITISM | BALI - BUSH | CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - CLINTON (HILLARY) | ELECTION [AMERICAN PRESIDENTIAL - 2004] & FOX NEWS | GLOBAL WARMING & GUANTANAMO | GUN CONTROL & GUNS | HEALTH CARE (CANADIAN) - HOMOSEXUALS | HURRICANE KATRINA | IRAN | IRAQ 1 | IRAQ 2 | ISLAM - ISRAEL v. PALESTINE | LEFTISTS | MEDIA (THE) & MEDIA BIAS | MOORE (MICHAEL) & NEW YORK TIMES | NORTH KOREA - PATRIOT ACT | RADICAL THOUGHT | RAP MUSIC | STEM CELL RESEARCH | TERRORISM 1 | TERRORISM 2 | TERRORISM 3 | TERRORISM 4 | TERRORISM (PREVENTING) | UNITED NATIONS | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The End | The Reviews | Photos | |
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