Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

BUSH CALLS FOR EASING THE BAN ON HIV-POSITIVE VISITORS ENTERING THE COUNTRY     ( -- SORT OF... THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS ) BUSH'S SECRET WAR ON WORLD'S POOREST AIDS PATIENTS Without a word of protest from the national AIDS organizations, the Bush administration -- behind closed doors -- has been secretly sabotaging the ability of the world’s poorest countries to produce or buy cheap, generic AIDS-fighting drugs.  –DIRLAND  July 2006 Bush's Christian Fatwa Bush Abstains From Appointing HIV Experts The president hasn’t been one to shy away from making openly political appointments to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS—or from otherwise beefing up “abstinence-only” influence on government policy and funding. But some of his critics say he has gone too far in choosing the Reverend Herbert Lusk     March 15, 2006 More HIV funds to promote abstinence Researchers call policy misguided The current White House takes a far more ideological stance toward public health than did the Reagan or first Bush administrations. December 10, 2005 Undermining the AIDS fight AIDS has hit Africa hard. But nongovernmental organizations confronting the epidemic have been hit even harder by the Bush administration's ideologically based edicts.  BALTIMORE SUN EDITORIAL "A Gross Misrepresentation of the Facts"  July 1, 2005   In January, officials from President Bush's $15 billion anti-AIDS program issued a news release citing their accomplishments. Nowhere were the numbers more impressive than in Botswana, where 32,839 AIDS patients were receiving life-extending treatment with the help of the U.S. government, they said.  But thousands of miles away in Botswana, the Bush administration's claim provoked frustration and anger among public and private partners that had built Africa's most far-reaching AIDS treatment program, recalled those involved. Although the Bush program had promised millions of dollars of support, no money had yet arrived, they said. The operations manager of Botswana's treatment program, Segolame Ramotlhwa, called the U.S. figures "a gross misrepresentation of the facts."  The number of patients in Botswana who had been put on treatment because of the Bush program: ZERO.    READ MORE  U.S. Under Fire Over Needle Exchanges  for AIDS Prevention  3/2005   more damn Lies from this White House  Bush 2005 AIDS Budget Cutbacks Texas abstinence plan not working Jan 25, 2005:  Abstinence-only programs like those promoted by the Bush administration don't seem to be working on teenagers in the president's home state, according to a state-sponsored study by Texas A&M University researchers    Needless restrictions on condoms and   HIV/AIDS information are undermining the   global fight against the epidemic,        -- Human Rights Watch   Bush Administration Condemned   by People with HIV/AIDS around the World   (two weeks before World AIDS Day 2004) Republican Convention Protests Vice President Dick Cheney knows dick about domestic AIDS issues in this country International Day of Action Demands to Bush Administration  June 24, 2004     Bush AIDS Speech Rhetoric  responses THOUSANDS PROTEST ABSTINENCE-ONLY HHS OFFICIAL SENT TO SPEAK AT NATIONAL HIV PREVENTION CONFERENCE Stop the War on HIV Prevention (pdf) Bush AIDS Coordinator denigrates Condoms             The Abstinence Folly . BUSH AND BIG PHARMA BLOCK GENERICS MEDICINES Bush and pharmaceutical profits Bush Report Card July '03  (pdf) Promotion of Ideology Over Science 2003 Year In Review HIV/AIDS U.S. Policy Briefing Papers   pdf file for downloading Bush's Global Gag Rule Spreads AIDS How Bush’s Policy Punishes Women Worldwide new report from the Bangkok AIDS Conference more abstinence-only "education"     . Conservatives head Bush's Presidential AIDS Advisory Council Bush is blocking an international drive to provide teenage sex education because of his belief in chastity before marriage Bush Policies Hurt AIDS Prevention, Groups Say Administration Accused of Disinformation on Condom Use, Harassment Audits of Education Programs U.S. Government Audits AIDS Conference Protesters CDC to probe San Francisco AIDS group for sexual content 2002 State of the Union Address Neglects AIDS 2003 State of the Union AIDS Speak 2004 State of the Union = broken promises When Mr. Bush 'Came Shopping' in Africa               download pdf Bush Administration Flunks in AIDS Education 2000 Republican Convention Actions and Arrests July / August 2000 2000 Candidate Bush ACTIONS Sept 5, 2000 ______ __Oct 12, 2000			SUMMARY    Bush has put the fight against AIDS and sex education into the hands of the right-wing Christers and condom opponents and the abstinence-only crowd is crippling AIDS-prevention efforts, both at home (where the CDC has just reported a dramatic upsurge in new HIV infections) and abroad. By insisting that no fed dollars can be used for anything smacking of birth control or condoms. . . Bush has decimated AIDS education and prevention programs around the world. . . . The effects of denying people access to condoms and science-based sex ed, not to mention the continuing efforts by the U.S. to blackmail countries on access to AIDS drugs and sabotage the WTO agreement at Doha that public-health crises take precedence over patents, means that millions and millions more will become infected and die between now and 2050, the earliest possible date by which — the scientists now tell us — we might reasonably begin to hope for an AIDS cure. These are not just people who’ve had sex, but their many children. That’s more than Saddam Hussein has killed, more than will be killed in the coming war (unless Dubya starts chucking around the nukes he has now authorized). LA Weekly article  by Doug Ireland          June 25, 2004  Lethal new regulations from President Bush’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, quietly issued with no fanfare last week, complete the right-wing Republicans’ goal of gutting HIV-prevention education in the United States. In place of effective, disease-preventing safe-sex education, little will soon remain except failed programs that denounce condom use, while teaching abstinence as the only way to prevent the spread of AIDS. And those abstinence-only programs, researchers say, actually increase the risk of contracting AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).   read more A FEW RESOURCE LINKS Portraits of Sexuality Education and Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs in the States    SIECUS The Religious Right-Wing and sex education People for the American Way Federal Funding Report Abstinence-Only Education American Civil Liberties Union Report Campaign to Fight Against Federal Funding Increases in Abstinence-Only Programs Lambda Legal Toolkit School Supplies To Get Real Sex Education IGNORANCE ONLY: HIV/AIDS Human Rights and Federally Funded Abstinence-Only Programs in Texas: A Case Study Human Rights Watch report SEE MORE  LINKS

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"I want you to stand, raise your right hands" and recite "the Bush Pledge" said Florida state Senator Ken Pruitt. The assembled mass of about 2,000 acceptable people in this Treasure Coast town about an hour north of West Palm Beach dutifully rose, arms aloft, and repeated after Pruitt: "I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my family. I care about my country. Because I care, I promise to work hard to re-elect, re-elect George W. Bush as president of the United States."

The original photograph shows a sea of soldiers      sitting behind the president as he stands at a podium.     Bush spoke at Fort Drum in New York on July 19, 2002  >  .LIKE THE VOTE COUNTS FOR BUSH IN OHIO AND FLORIDA, HUH?      or disregarding political voting fraud: Four More Fears "This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it -- that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." Hunter S. Thompson  Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail  November 1972  SHORT CLIPS / BUSH DECADENCE Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report in February of last year charging that the administration's political agenda had permeated ''the traditionally objective, nonpartisan mechanisms through which the government uses scientific knowledge in forming and implementing public policy.'' A petition appended to the report and signed by more than 60 pre-eminent scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates -- among them Harold Varmus, former director of the National Institutes of Health -- accused the administration of ''systematically'' manipulating scientific findings.  In June, the American Civil Liberties Union released a report, ''Science Under Siege.''  Bush's political "science" is reflected in: ''Data Manipulation Behind Reported Drop in Terrorism,'' ''Federally-Funded Abstinence-Only Programs Teach False and Misleading Information,'' ''Bush Administration Dishonest About Stem-Cell Research'' [--listing only a few of the many examples].  ''The level of official dissembling from federal environmental and resource agencies has never been worse,'' he said. ''The federal government today is thoroughly corrupt.'' states Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.  ''Commercial interests have inappropriately induced the reversal or withdrawal of . . . scientific conclusions or decisions through political intervention,'' from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. ''What has been happening has long-term consequences for the health and capabilities of government science,'' says Kurt Gottfried of the Union of Concerned Scientists, ''and we're beginning to see that scientists don't want to go into government. This is a virus that will take a long time to eradicate.'' Neal Lane, Clinton's science adviser, adds that morale has been plummeting in many federal agencies over the past five years. He points to several reasons that this might be the case, highlighting a directive issued by the Health and Human Services Department in 2004 that strictly limited the number of scientists the N.I.H. and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were permitted to send to the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok. An internal department e-mail message revealed that the decision, which Lane says was an egregious instance of top-down interference, was issued because of the heckling of Tommy Thompson, then secretary of Health and Human Services, at a previous conference. "Meeting only with handpicked audiences in rehearsed 'town hall' meetings, Bush not only encounters little substantive challenge to his views but also avoids getting any realistic sense of how little traction his plan has gotten. In this way, this propaganda president risks becoming the real victim of his administration's own fake news." Jacob Weisberg

               Bush Inauguration Protests  January 20, 2005

Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

, in the Bible, the mysterious riddle written by a hand on the wall at Belshazzar’s feast. These Aramaic words may be translated literally as, “It has been counted and counted, weighed and divided.” Daniel interpreted this to mean that the king’s deeds had been weighed and found deficient and that his kingdom would therefore be divided.

    The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition 2001      

                           homage to Gore Vidal "Something Rotten in Ohio" from The Nation       

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