Still No Sunset for Patriot Act Measures

News and analysis…

Once again the US Patriot Act has entered the fray between security and freedom of speech. Within the last month there have been two separate debates circling the act. First is the issue of freedom of speech in relation to the Patriot Act’s prohibition on “material support” of terrorists groups, (a broadly defined term that includes everything from supplying weapons to teaching “terrorist” leaders how resolve disputes peacefully). Second is the recent extension of the Patriot Act without any increased restriction to protect privacy rights of citizens. These are fascinating debates to follow because it so clearly expresses how our government deals with issues of dialogue, privacy, and justice for those groups it declares suspect, and how the ideals of freedom of speech, privacy, and “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” are balanced against national security.

For an extensive background on the current debates surrounding the Patriot Act I recommend this article featured on Truthout.

The Huffington Post |  Dashing the hopes of liberals, the Senate Wednesday night instead passed – by voice vote without debate – a one-year extension of key parts of the USA Patriot Act that would have expired on Sunday.

Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government’s authority to spy on Americans and seize their records.

The House was prepared to approve the extension Thursday, dropping even more extensive privacy protections approved by the House Judiciary Committee.

The Democratic retreat is a political victory for Republicans, who gained new ammunition for their election theme that the GOP can better protect America. The outcome is a major disappointment for Democrats and their liberal allies, including the American Civil Liberties Union, who believe the Patriot Act fails to protect Americans’ privacy and gives the government too much authority to spy on Americans and seize their property.

Foreign Policy  | Senate Judiciary Committee ranking Republican Jeff Sessions, R-AL, confirmed to The Cable that the current thinking was to extend the Patriot Act provisions in their current form, ignoring the changes his own committee approved.

“The Patriot Act has worked and the last thing we should do is weaken it. So I think it’s a good development that we are going to continue it as is,” said Sessions. “That’s the right direction.”

Here’s the scope of the three provisions that will be extended, according to Congressional Quarterly:

One of the expiring provisions allows the government to seek orders from a special federal court for “any tangible thing” that it says is related to a terrorism investigation. Another allows the government to seek court orders for roving wiretaps on terrorism suspects who shift their modes of communication. The third provision allows the government to apply to the special court for surveillance orders involving suspected “lone wolf” terrorists who do not necessarily have ties to a larger organization.”

Alter Net | The specter of McCarthyism is again hanging over America, but this time it has found a new name. Next week, the Court will hear Humanitarian Law Project v. Holder, a case that calls into question broad restrictions on speech. The lawsuit challenges parts of the Patriot Act that prohibit American citizens from speaking with groups said to be terrorists. The government argues that speaking with or on behalf of these groups can be seen as “material support.” This is an eerily similar argument to the one made against Adrian during the Red Scare. I have heard family stories of screenwriters labeled communists for bringing food to a canned food drive loosely connected with the Communist Party. This kind of guilt by association is poison for a free society.

The Patriot Act’s provisions go even further than the Hollywood blacklists that ended careers and forced an entire generation of talented artists, intellectuals, and activists into the ranks of the unemployed and exiled abroad. Now, speaking with the wrong group can get you fifteen years in federal prison.

The upcoming suit is brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights on behalf of Ralph Fertig, a civil rights lawyer and president of the Humanitarian Law Project, a nonprofit group that has a long history of mediating international conflicts. His organization hopes to do human rights trainings around the world to promote nonviolent conflict resolution — but if he does so, he may be thrown in jail under the Patriot Act. It is a tragic irony that under the current law promoting nonviolence could get an American citizen imprisoned as a supporter of terrorism. Throwing Americans in jail for trying to convince terrorist groups to lay down their arms doesn’t make us safer. It weakens our democracy.

NPR | Federal law makes it a crime to provide material support to any organization designated as a terrorist group by the secretary of state. But the definition of material support includes not just providing weapons, money or bomb-making skills; it includes providing any sort of expert advice, training or personnel — including advice on how to resolve disputes peaceably or training on how to make human rights claims before the United Nations.

The nonprofit Humanitarian Law Project has a long history of engaging in such activity, mediating international conflicts and promoting human rights. But it has stopped doing some of its work for fear of being prosecuted under the material support provision.

“My speech is particularly nonviolent,” says Ralph Fertig, president of the organization. “I’ve gone to jail in the United States for my advocacy for peace.”

The federal government, he maintains, cannot constitutionally make it a crime to help others advocate lawful, peaceful solutions to international conflicts. In particular, Fertig and his organization have helped the Kurdistan Workers Party, known as the PKK, make human rights claims before international bodies. They have trained Kurdish leaders in peacemaking negotiations and have brought them to Washington to lobby. But when the PKK was designated an international terrorist organization under the Patriot Act, that all stopped, and the Humanitarian Law Project went to court.

The government, arguing that the PKK had engaged in terrorist activities that have cost some 22,000 lives, said it was justified in making the organization a pariah. Thus, the government contended, even filing a legal brief on behalf of the PKK in an American court would be a crime.

Best of the web…

Sudan Parties Sign Darfur Ceasefire  |  Al Jazeera

The conflict in Darfur, which has pitched ethnic African tribesmen against the Arab-dominated Khartoum government, has raged far the last seven years.

While numerous ceasefires agreements in the past have been short-lived, analysts say that the forthcoming elections in Sudan and increased international pressure could give this initiative a better chance of survival.

But officials warned a March 15 deadline for a final peace deal was overly ambitious.

“After the agreement is signed, the rest will come through more negotiations,” said Adrees Mahmoud, a Europe-based Jem representative, who was in Qatar for the signing.

El Sadig el-Faqih, a former adviser to Sudan’s president, who was also in Qatar, told Al Jazeera the move was a “framework to start discussing the details” and a peace deal could only go ahead when all parties were involved.

Twitter Reaches His Holiness, Now Online @DalaiLama  |  The Raw Story

The Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama has joined micro-blogging service Twitter, attracting over 55,000 followers in just two days.

The Dalai Lama’s Twitter feed — @DalaiLama — was launched on Monday, a day after he met in Los Angeles with Evan Williams, one of Twitter’s founders.

“Met the Dalai Lama today in LA. Pitched him on using Twitter. He laughed,” Williams “tweeted” following the meeting.

The next day, however, the Tibetan spiritual leader had an account and received a “Welcome @DalaiLama” message from Twitter’s new spokesman, Sean Garrett.

Drug-resistance Malaria ‘Growing’ on Cambodia  |  BBC News

Parasites are developing resistance to one of the most important anti-malaria drugs, according to experts.

Artimisinin has been highly effective, particularly in places where resistance to other drugs has developed.

But now some patients along Cambodia’s border with Thailand are taking longer to respond to the treatment.

Experts on the disease are meeting village health workers in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, to discuss ways to stop drug-resistant malaria spreading.

Utah Bill Criminalizes Miscarriage  |  RH Reality Check

In addition to criminalizing an intentional attempt to induce a miscarriage or abortion, the bill also creates a standard that could make women legally responsible for miscarriages caused by “reckless” behavior.

Using the legal standard of “reckless behavior” all a district attorney needs to show is that a woman behaved in a manner that is thought to cause miscarriage, even if she didn’t intend to lose the pregnancy. Drink too much alcohol and have a miscarriage? Under the new law such actions could be cause for prosecution.

“This creates a law that makes any pregnant woman who has a miscarriage potentially criminally liable for murder,” says Missy Bird, executive director of Planned Parenthood Action Fund of Utah. Bird says there are no exemptions in the bill for victims of domestic violence or for those who are substance abusers. The standard is so broad, Bird says, “there nothing in the bill to exempt a woman for not wearing her seatbelt who got into a car accident.”

Such a standard could even make falling down stairs a prosecutable event, such as the recent case in Iowa where a pregnant woman who fell down the stairs at her home was arrested under the suspicion she was trying to terminate her pregnancy.

The Plateau of Fat

Analysis…

The good news: A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that Americans have stopped getting fatter.

The bad news: 34 percent of adults and 17 percent of children are obese.

The study shows that obesity rates have remained constant for the last five years yet have more than doubled in the past decade in adults, and tripled in percentage of children.  A decade ago, federal health officials had set a goal that no more than 15 percent of people would be obese in 2010.  Today, nearly 68 percent of adults are considered at least over-weight. “Until we see rates improving, not just staying the same, we can’t have any confidence that our lifestyle has improved,” said Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital Boston.

So what does the public think of this study?  Here are few opinions from the crowd:

Ezra Klein |  Obesity rates have held steady for five years among men and a solid 10 years among women, which is good news. So what’s the cause here? Better eating habits? Exercise? Or can we just not get any fatter?

Dr. Ludwig said the plateau might just suggest that “we’ve reached a biological limit” to how obese people could get. When people eat more, he said, at first they gain weight; then a growing share of the calories go “into maintaining and moving around that excess tissue,” he continued, so that “a population doesn’t keep getting heavier and heavier indefinitely.”

Furthermore, Dr. Ludwig said, “it could be that most of the people who are genetically susceptible, or susceptible for psychological or behavioral reasons, have already become obese.”

That leaves us with a third of American adults who are obese, and 17 percent of children. So it’s good news in the sense of less bad news. It’s a bit like unemployment, actually: Stopping the upward trend is good, but what we really need to do is bring those numbers down. And that would be real good news: The easiest way to control costs in the health-care system would be for people to need less health care. And the easiest way for that to happen would be for people to lower their risk of chronic diseases.

Megan McArdle @The Atlantic |  We may have hit the biological limit on how fat we can get:  virtually everyone who is going to be obese, already is.  Obviously, this is not terrific news, especially in a country as opposed to body fat as ours.  But it suggests that, as usual, panicking over mindless trend extrapolations might be a little premature.
This suggests a few things.  One, that the rest of the world will eventually catch up to us (aside from small populations that are thought to have selected for thrifty genotypes during a fairly recent population botleneck, which will surpass us–and a few populations that may lean the other way.)
Two,  that we’ll at least be able to see now whether our interventions are working; if the rate of obesity actually goes down, it works.
Three, if we can’t make any measurable change, perhaps we can finally switch towards encouraging healthy lifestyles rather than making unrealistic promises about making people thinner.

Hit & Run |  In other words, WALL-E was not a documentary. But that does not mean we should succumb to complacency, which would threaten public health, the CDC’s budget, and obesity research grants:

“Experts like Steven Gortmaker, a Harvard public health professor, said obesity would decline only with new policies, like penalties and incentives to promote healthier foods and exercise.”

“If you look at the reversal of the smoking epidemic,” Dr. Gortmaker said, “substantial change didn’t really happen until there were bans on advertising and limits on consumption through things like taxation. We have to make some substantial changes.”

I’m not sure what sort of “penalties and incentives” Gortmaker has in mind to get us to eat our vegetables, turn off the TV, and go for a jog. But it’s not true that the decline in smoking occurred after tobacco advertising was banned and hefty taxes were levied on cigarettes. Per capita cigarette consumption began to fall after the January 1964 surgeon general’s report linking smoking to lung cancer. It rose a bit in 1965 and 1966, dropped for four consecutive years, and rebounded slightly in the early 1970s. But it never returned to its 1963 peak, and in 1974 it began a steady decline that continued for two decades. The ban on TV and radio commercial for cigarettes took effect in 1971 and was actually followed by an increase in cigarette consumption. Other substantial restrictions on advertising (such as the billboard ban included in the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement) were not imposed until relatively recently, and the same is true of big tax hikes aimed at discouraging consumption. Leaving aside the morality of paternalism, the experience with smoking does not suggest that coercive measures are necessary to move people toward healthier lifestyles.

Outside the Beltway |  Despite the enormous attention we’ve paid to the issue in recent decades, we’re at our infancy in understanding the physiology of fat.  While there’s no doubt that the combination of plentiful, cheap food; processed foods; and a sedentary lifestyle are the chief contributing factors to America’s obesity epidemic, there are all manner of physiological ones that we’re only beginning to understand.
At a little over 6?1? and 220 pounds, I’m right at the borderline between overweight and obese.  Then again, I’m middle aged and out of shape.  But it’s a good thing the current BMI charts weren’t around when I was a 185 pound ROTC cadet running 5 miles a day and in the best shape of my life — I’d have been on the border of normal and overweight.
Many of us could stand to eat better and exercise more.  And too many among us are morbidly obese, carrying around so much extra fat that their health is in jeopardy.  But we’re also wildly overstating the “epidemic” with bogus statistical measures.

News…

Learning from the foreshocks of the Haiti disaster  |  Foreign Policy

The disaster in Haiti did not occur yesterday.
While the nation’s latest tragedy was triggered by yesterday’s 7.0 magnitude earthquake, its real roots were not 10 kilometers beneath the earth’s surface as seismologists concluded. Rather, they were in two centuries of misfortune that have plagued the country and most heart-breakingly in the particular failures of the international community and the country’s leaders to help the country during the most recent decade and half — a period when real hope backed with real money seemed to bloom and then, just as quickly, fade.
It was the crushing poverty in the hemisphere’s poorest nation that resulted in Port-au-Prince being a city of ramshackle homes of unreinforced concrete or worse, shanties assembled of odd-shaped bits of rusty, corrugated metal, scrap wood, cardboard and old packing crates. It was decades of neglect that made rebar an unaffordable luxury for virtually all on the island or that left communications, power and water systems so underdeveloped that even prior to the earthquake they were operating at what even other poor nations would consider crisis levels.

Alzheimer’s disease ‘could be detected by eye test’  |  BBC

A simple eye test might be able to detect Alzheimer’s and other diseases before symptoms develop, according to UK scientists.
The technique uses fluorescent markers which attach to dying cells which can be seen in the retina and give an early indication of brain cell death.
The research has been carried out on mice, but human trials are planned.
Scientists from University College London hope this could lead to a high street opticians test for the disease.
The research, which is published in the journal, Cell Death and Disease, could enable scientists to overcome the difficulty of investigating what is happening inside the brains of those with Alzheimer’s.

More Misery Ahead For Haitians  |  NPR

First there was the violent seismic spasm, and then a continuing series of random temblors that keeps the survivors on edge.
But other dangers are beginning to emerge and multiply, say public health experts.
“I think there’s going to be a series of health aftershocks,” says Dr. Dan Fitzgerald of Weill-Cornell Medical College, who knows Haiti well.
He says for the next few days many more people will die from their untreated injuries, owing to infections as well as kidney failure that happens when protein from injured muscle spills into the bloodstream.
“That’s sort of the first wave,” Fitzgerald says. “The second wave will be a lack of clean water, housing and sanitation. So people are going to start suffering from diarrheal diseases [and] respiratory tract infections.”
The third phase arrives when what little food there is runs out.
“Haiti’s already one of the most food-insecure countries in the world,” Fitzgerald says. “So people are going to start starving over the next week.”
Fitzgerald predicts increasing social chaos.
“When you have 3 million people who are traumatized, have no clean water, no housing, no food — unfortunately, security is going to become a big issue,” he says. “People are going to be fighting to survive.”

Righting a Wrong: HIV Travel Ban Lifts

Analysis…

For 22 years, the United Stated has restricted travel/immigration to the United States for those who were HIV+.  On Monday, that ban ended. For countries where large portions of their population are infected with HIV, this ban has limited access to opportunities and education in the US.  The US had been one of only 12 countries that had such a ban.  Others include Libya and Saudi Arabia.  Originally intended to contain the infection of HIV,  the restriction has outlived its wisdom.  We now know that HIV is not transmitted from casual contact.  The repeal of the  ban has been lauded by HIV advocates and any opponents have largely remained silent.

The Independent | In fact, it was already well established when Reagan made his speech in 1987 that HIV was spread by intimate sexual contact or the transfusion of blood products. There was no evidence of HIV being transmissible through casual contact and there was no reason in 1987 for the travel ban, and certainly no excuse for it not being lifted in the intervening 22 years. The lifting of the travel ban is long overdue given that it has done nothing to protect the American public.

Box Turtle Bulletin | The HIV travel ban was officially lifted yesterday. One report has it that the first HIV-positive gay man arrived yesterday from the Netherlands. It turns out that couple won’t arrive until Thursday, so given thethousands of arrivals each day, it’s safe to say that the first arrival went unnoticed. As it should.

Advocate.com | Paul Zantkuijl of AIDS Fonds said his organization has been working alongside others to change the policy for years and wanted to celebrate their success by sending an HIV-positive person to the states.   “We all had to be patient, but finally this discriminatory and stigmatizing ruling has ended!” he said.

Change.org | “At long last, people living with HIV will no longer be pointlessly barred from this country,” said Rachel Tiven, Executive Director of Immigration Equality. “Every day, Immigration Equality hears from individuals and families who have been separated because of the ban, with no benefit to the public health. Now, those families can be reunited, and the United States can put its mouth where its money is: ending the stigma that perpetuates HIV transmission, supporting science, and welcoming those who seek to build a life in this country.”

On the Web…

Census 2010 Can Count on Controversy | Brookings

“Home” may have changed recently for those whose hardship leaves them little choice but to live with relatives or friends, however temporary that may be. “Home” for displaced residents of the Gulf Coast may be miles away from where they lived before the devastation that Hurricanes Katrina and Rita wrought in their communities.

“Home” for some immigrants is in U.S. communities even though they are not legally residing in the United States. And “home” may be in a prison or detention center in a state far away from the inmate’s hometown residence.

The War of the Presidents: Reagan Battles Obama in 2010 | The American Spectator

Yet in a high-speed culture in which politics is conducted in the short-hand of sound-bites, the 2010 election can be easily summarized by the last names of the two presidents immutably identified with their respective governing philosophies, making the first national election of the 21st century’s second decade a virtual War of the Presidents. It will beget one simple question. Are you Reagan or Obama?

Bathroom Mirror Shows Water Consumption in LEDs As You Wash Your Face | TreeHugger

This intriguing – and somewhat complex – concept design for a bathroom mirror brings the water crisis right in front of your face. The mirror is lit with LEDs powered by the flow of water in the pipes. As you use the mirror throughout the year, the patterns of water use and supply create a frame, and you can see how your habits affect the planet.

Designer Jin Kim’s idea is that the mirror breaks down daily, monthly and annual use of water. As you use too much water, there’s a control in the mirror so your supply can be limited. And if the lights are meaningless to the user, there are also icons for those who are affected by water misuse – kids, ecosystems, polar bears – so you’re guilted into shutting off the faucet.

A Year in AIDS Part 2 — The Bad News

The changes outlined in Part One of this series are significant developments in the fight against HIV. Scientists are making huge strides and nations are rising to the challenge of combating the virus. With such progress being made, the eradication of HIV may be in our near future.  Now, let’s turn to the challenges faced by those who fight for HIV prevention.

The Pope

In March 2009, while in Africa, Pope Benedict XVI misled thousands of followers concerning the effectiveness of using condoms to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.  His statements on the topic set off a media firestorm and backlash.

Benedict also said the Roman Catholic Church was at the forefront of the battle against AIDS.  “You can’t resolve it with the distribution of condoms,” the pope told reporters aboard the plane heading to Yaoundé. “On the contrary, it increases the problem.”  The pope said a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease.

The Roman 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 crucial weapons in the fight against AIDS.

Many understood the pope’s comments as offering a scientific rather than moralistic reading of the situation. The pope has clarified that his comments were meant to provide a moralistic perspective.  But, many followers do not perceive a difference between the two.  Advocates of prevention worried that the pope’s comments would have an adverse effect, for instance if a man infected with HIV heard the pope’s comments and decided to stop using condoms because the pope had said they only make AIDS worse.

Domestic Statistics

Most Americans have no real sense of the population of HIV+ individuals in the USA.  HIV infections are present in approximately 1 of every 300 people.  In the US, we have a changing face of AIDS, which increasingly affects people of color disproportionately.

In the United States, approximately 1.1 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, including 280,000 women. Women now account for more than one in four new HIV/AIDS diagnoses in America — up from only 8 percent in 1985. HIV/AIDS also disproportionately affects women of color. African Americans and Hispanics represent only a quarter of the U.S. population, but they account for 82 percent of AIDS cases among women. Additionally, African-American women are diagnosed with AIDS at a rate 23 times that of Caucasian females and four times that of Hispanic women. Moreover, adolescent women represent 40 percent of AIDS cases reported among people aged 13 to 19 in the United States.

The prevalence of HIV infection among people of color is yet another barrier faced by a population for which discrimination is already a problem.  Increased stigma and discrimination is also a barrier for the LGBTQ community.

New Battlegrounds

Despite trending down overall, new geographic areas have arisen that have a high prevalence of seroconversion.   One of these is Indonesia.

The number of HIV-Aids cases in Indonesia is rising, according to the government in Jakarta. And U.N. officials say it is spreading far more quickly through sexual intercourse rather than drug use, which they say is a cause for alarm. The latest figures show there are at least 290,000 people in Indonesia infected with HIV.

Global management of HIV is like the hydra of Greek mythology, cut off a head and two grow back in its place.  Controlling the virus will mean managing all of its potential and actual manifestations.

Conclusion

Great strides have been taken in the last year to combat the spread of HIV.   However, this disease is still a significant foe, one about whom we cannot afford to forget.  We must recommit ourselves and our resources to banishing HIV from the human experience.

A Year in AIDS Part 1- The Good News

December 1st was World AIDS Day.  Events were held in Oklahoma, across the nation and the world to commemorate those lost to HIV/AIDS and those who suffer discrimination because of their HIV status. In addition, World AIDS Day events function to provide education and prevention tools in order to prevent future seroconversions (fancy word for the when someone goes from being HIV- to HIV+). World AIDS Day provides a reminder of the continued threat of HIV in a world where red ribbons are now rarely seen and AIDS is no longer a hot topic.  I will take this opportunity to review the year of developments in the field of HIV/AIDS research and study.

There is good news.  But the danger of beginning with good news is that you may not read the bad news in the next article, and glean from this only the good news, thus completely defeating the purpose of raising awareness about the threat of HIV/AIDS.  So I begin with the good news only after that word of caution that bad news will follow, and I proceed with the cautious optimism that you will take both good and bad together.

The vaccination trial

September 2009 saw a huge breakthrough in AIDS research with the announcement of the first successful vaccine trial, which reduced infections by approximately 25%-30% among participants.  The study was performed in Thailand with over 16,000 subjects.

The vaccine — a combination of two earlier experimental vaccines — was given to 16,000 people in Thailand, in the largest ever such vaccine trial.  Researchers found that it reduced by nearly a third the risk of contracting HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS.  It has been hailed as a significant, scientific breakthrough, but a global vaccine is still some way off.

The study was carried out by the U.S. army and the Thai government over seven years on volunteers — all HIV-negative men and women aged between 18 and 30 — in parts of Thailand.   The vaccine was a combination of two older vaccines that on their own had not cut infection rates.  Half of the volunteers were given the vaccine, while the other half were given a placebo — and all were given counseling on HIV/AIDS prevention.  Participants were tested for HIV infection every six months for three years.

The results found that the chances of catching HIV were 31.2% less for those who had taken the vaccine — with 74 people who did not get the vaccine infected and 51 of the vaccinated group infected.  The vaccine is based on B and E strains of HIV that most commonly circulate in Thailand not the C strain which predominates in Africa.

This is by far the most exciting news of the year which is why it earns the primary position.

Reduction in New Infections

In November, UNAIDS announced a reduction in new infections worldwide in the last eight years.  This shows the beginnings of controlling the spread of the virus.

According to new data in the 2009 AIDS epidemic update, new HIV infections have been reduced by 17% over the past eight years. Since 2001, when the United Nations Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS was signed, the number of new infections in sub-Saharan Africa is approximately 15% lower, which is about 400,000 fewer infections in 2008. In East Asia new HIV infections declined by nearly 25% and in South and South East Asia by 10% in the same time period. In Eastern Europe, after a dramatic increase in new infections among injecting drug users, the epidemic has leveled off considerably. However, in some countries there are signs that new HIV infections are rising again.

Microbicides

In February 2009, the story broke that microbicides had been preliminarily found to be effective at preventing HIV in women.  Microbicides function by blocking the initial infection of HIV.  This news is especially important for women because the microbicides are applied through a vaginal gel that a woman can use as a prevention tool if her male partner refuses to use a condom, a potentially huge advancement for women.

About 3,100 women participated in the study, which was designed mainly to test whether it was safe. The women were divided into four groups. One-quarter of them used the Indevus gel, which is supposed to block the AIDS virus from attaching to certain white blood cells.Another quarter were put on a gel made by Baltimore-based ReProtect Inc. The rest were given a placebo gel, or no gel at all.

All the women were counseled to have their partners use condoms. The study was done in South Africa, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the United States, and was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.Researchers found that women who used the Indevus-made gel had a 30% lower rate of HIV infection than the other women in the study. But the difference was not statistically significant, meaning the results could have occurred by chance.

The most important section of the above quotation is the last sentence, stating that these are preliminary results that may not be statistically significant.  Let’s cross our fingers that they are when the research is completed.

South Africa

On World AIDS Day, South African President Jacob Zuma announced that his country will be putting many more resources behind the fight against HIV, particularly with regards to preventing prenatal and perinatal infections.

The new policy on pregnant women, aimed at ensuring that babies are born healthy, is in line with the new treatment guidelines issued by the World Health Organization just a day before. Treating infected babies earlier is expected to help South Africa, one of only four countries where child mortality has worsened since 1990, improve the survival odds of its youngest citizens.

More people are H.I.V. positive here than in any other nation, and Mr. Zuma called on South Africans to struggle against AIDS as they had against apartheid. “We have no choice but to deploy every effort, mobilize every resource and utilize every skill our nation possesses,” he said.

The policy changes he announced will expand access to treatment. Mr. Zuma said that by April the government would start treating H.I.V.-positive people with tuberculosis earlier, when their immune systems are stronger — a step the World Health Organization said would reduce death rates. Tuberculosis is the leading killer of South Africans with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, and deaths from tuberculosis have more than tripled here since 1997.

The reduction of new infections, scientific breakthroughs and response of affected nations is the trinity of progress made in the field of HIV this year.  No one could have predicted what significant gains we have made in only twelve months.  In a couple more years, could we have completely eliminated the threat of HIV?  Read part two of this series to see what challenges we face.

Palin’s Going Rogue

Analysis…

 Sarah Palin’s memoir, Going Rogue is set to release November 17 but it is already causing quite a stir.  Will she unload on the McCain campaign? Will she give an honest behind the scenes look into the 2008 election?  Will she set herself up for a run in 2012?  Let the speculating begin!

Huffington Post | An associate of Sarah Palin tells Mark Halperin that her memoir, “Going Rogue,” will “include some score settling with McCain aides she believes ill-served her (names will be named).” But those aides will have to buy the book to find out what Palin has to say about them. One source tells Halperin the book does not include an index.

MSNBC | For now, the opening stops of her tour in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama and Florida, could be valuable if she later decides to run.

So far she is steering clear of major cities, going to smaller places like Fort Bragg, North Carolina, home of one of the biggest military bases in the country.

Christian Science Monitor | But Halperin, who saw her return to public speaking on Nov. 6 outside Milwaukee, say that two things are already clear: “Palin is now a thoroughly professional rogue — and she is going to sell a ton of books.”

Despite occasional instances of misspeaking, Halperin says that Palin was easily able to energize her audience with lines like: “Don’t let anyone ever tell you to sit down and shut up.”

Mediaite | We have entered the official Sarah Palin Going Rogue countdown. Come next week it is going to be all Sarah Palin, all the time, till at least Christmas. Probably more like 2012. So enjoy these last day’s of relative Palin calm before the storm while you can.

News…

Amazing Homes Built with Whole Trees | WebEcoist

There’s something truly primitive about the sophisticated homes designed and built by Whole Trees Architecture and Construction. The buildings are beautiful in a raw and natural way because Whole Trees believes in using whole, young-growth trees in their projects. The idea is to get back to the roots of construction, to use a whole material rather than an over-processed one, and to let the inherent beauty of nature shine through in each and every project.

 

Black Men in the Age of Obama: 4 Things CNN Got Wrong | Racialicious

2. No (out) black men

There wasn’t any gay representation on the panel.* This was ironic because the panel was held in Atlanta (which has a large, black gay population) at Morehouse College, of all places. The concentration of gay students at Morehouse is well-known and is partially why the the historic, black college created a new, controversial dress code.

Even worse, Bishop Eddie Long was among the panelist. His disrespect of non-heterosexuals is well-documented. Like the rest of the panel, his comments on black gay men included PC words like “respect” and”love” which failed to convince me of their acceptance.

HIV/AIDS #1 Killer of Women Worldwise | Feministing

On Monday, the World Health Organization (WHO), an agency of the UN, released its first-ever study of women’s health worldwide, Women and Health: Today’s Evidence, Tomorrow’s Agenda. The findings of the study, although perhaps not surprising to those of us who work in the field of international women’s health, are still pretty outrageous: H.I.V. is the leading cause of death and disease among women between the ages of 15 and 44.

 

Band Aids and Beyond

Analysis…

The Ethiopian government is asking for emergency aid of $285 million to feed 6.2 million people.  The country, faced with extreme drought and 4 years of bad harvests, is requesting donations from the international community.  A report titled Band Aids and Beyond calls on international donors to adopt a new approach that focuses on preparing communities to prevent and deal with disasters before they strike. The report also focuses on providing resources for communities, such as irrigation for crops, grain stores and wells.

Matthew Yglesias | I don’t think we should construe the existence of famine conditions in the Horn of Africa (there are problems beyond Ethiopia) as a reason not to send additional troops to Afghanistan. But I do think it’s a reminder that we shouldn’t look at individual elements of our foreign policy in isolation, or see the Afghanistan situation with tunnel-vision. Is there some reasonable calculus of risks in which it makes sense to spend tens of billions of dollars on prevent a situation of chaos in Central Asia but doesn’t make sense to spend a fraction of that in the Horn of Africa? Alternatively, if the US lacks the tools and skills to solve profound governance and economic problems in the Horn of Africa why do we have the needed skills and tools to solve the in Central Asia?

The Moderate Voice | The human race, generally, tends not to want to act in its long-term best interests, reacting to emergencies rather than proactively avoiding or planning for them. So, it’s anybody’s guess as to whether OxFam will be heeded. But the fact is that drought need not lead to famine, as tragically, it so often has in Ethiopia and elsewhere.

NPR Blogs | Ethiopia is asking for $285 million in emergency food aid for 6.2 million people facing famine. Oxfam says that the imported aid helps, but that the country needs longer-term investment in irrigation and well systems to avoid a food crisis every time drought strikes.

Shakesville | In the long term, Ethiopia needs “drought-resistant seeds and technical support to incorporate soil conservation and soil improvements on their small plots of land” and “more family planning services are needed so the population doesn’t double again in another 25 years.” The international director of Oxfam, Penny Lawrence, also notes: “If communities have irrigation for crops, grain stores, and wells to harvest rains then they can survive despite what the elements throw at them.”
So, Shakesville can go in one of two directions (or both): In support of providing immediate food aid (Americans: urge your congress people!), and in support of providing long-term tools.

News…

Fewer Americans See Solid Evidence of Global Warming  |  Pew Research Center

There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. And fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem – 35% say that today, down from 44% in April 2008.

For Some Parents, Shouting Is the New Spanking  |  NYTimes

Many in today’s pregnancy-flaunting, soccer-cheering, organic-snack-proffering generation of parents would never spank their children. We congratulate our toddlers for blowing their nose (“Good job!”), we friend our teenagers (literally and virtually), we spend hours teaching our elementary-school offspring how to understand their feelings. But, incongruously and with regularity, this is a generation that yells.

Does Military Service Turn Young Men into Sexual Predators?  |  AlterNet

A 2003 survey of female veterans from Vietnam through the Gulf War found that almost 8 in 10 had been sexually harassed during their military service, and 30 percent had been raped.
Yet for decades, in spite of the terrible numbers, the military has managed with astonishing success to get away with responding to grievances like Krause’s with silence, or denial, or by blaming “a few bad apples.” But when individual soldiers take the blame, the system gets off the hook.

‘Family values’ of Mexico drug gang  |  BBC

They decapitate, torture, and extort. Then they pray, and donate to charity.
The “Familia” cartel is perhaps the most extreme example of the paradoxical enemy which Mexico faces as it tries to defeat organised crime.
It is a fight which would be much easier if the cartels were simply maverick gangs on the fringe of society.
But they are, in many areas, part of society.

Will You Get a Swine Flu Shot?

Analysis…

Are you worried about getting the swine flu?

According to polls: Yes, but you may be even more worried about the safety of the H1N1 vaccine; oddly, polls also show there’s a high demand for the vaccine, as well as an inadequate supply. As the virus continues to spread, claiming the lives of 11 children in the past week and bringing the total number of children’s deaths to 86, health officials are making plans in case the epidemic becomes a reality, and worrying that people’s lack of action might indeed bring that epidemic to fruition.

Daily Kos |  “The main issue is not the hard core opposition (they are always there, fixed in their thinking, and not subject to rational discussion), it’s the reasonable and persuadable public that needs convincing that this vaccine is safe, and they won’t be reached by yelling at the nutters. To put this another way, there are legitimate concerns about wanting to see safety data that should be addressed rather than ignored. For example, whenever something gets studied, it ought to get published asap and made available.”

NPR |  “Fewer than half of Americans say that they are planning to receive the new H1N1 swine flu vaccine, according to recent polls — a trend that is leaving many health professionals at a loss. “I’m genuinely baffled,” says Arthur Kellermann, an emergency medicine physician at the Emory University School of Medicine who has treated swine flu cases. “The public has developed this odd sense of complacency. The only thing that comes to my mind is photos of people standing on the seawall of Galveston hours before the hurricane hit.”"

Salon |  “As the nation prepares for a possible swine flu pandemic this winter, we are learning that the firm determination of both parties to deny medical care to people without papers is actually quite flaccid. Even the most hysterical immigrant-bashers seem content to allow the government to vaccinate immigrants against the H1N1 virus (unless, that is, they happen to be among the right-wing chorus that suspects vaccination itself to be a nefarious socialist plot). Even they seem to realize that viruses don’t discriminate on the basis of citizenship — although they wrongly tried to blame last spring’s first outbreak of swine flu on the Mexicans among us.”

ProPublica |  “Florida health officials are drawing up guidelines that recommend barring patients with incurable cancer, end-stage multiple sclerosis and other conditions from being admitted to hospitals if the state is overwhelmed by flu cases. The plan, which would guide Florida hospitals on how to ration scarce medical care during a severe flu outbreak, also calls for doctors to remove patients with a poor prognosis from ventilators to treat those with better chances of survival. That decision would be made by each hospital.”

The Daily Beast |  “Swine flu may be hogging the headlines, but H1N1 is far from the only disease worrying researchers. The worldwide spread of HIV in the early 1980s marked the dawn of what many scientists believe is the age of pandemics, when diseases emerge from remote areas and strike people everywhere. Blame the destruction of rainforests, the ubiquity of international travel and inadequate public health services in developing countries. Whatever the reason, it’s clear that what happens in the jungle no longer stays in the jungle. “In 1918, it took three years for the flu virus to get around the world,” says Dr. Parviez Hosseini, a senior research fellow with the Wildlife Trust, “but H1N1 traveled through vast parts of the world in just three months.””

News & Analysis …

Are the Maldives Doomed?  |  FP Passport

Dan Drezner howls at the Maldives government’s brilliant stunt of holding an underwater cabinet meeting (more photos here and here) to make the case that “if we can’t save the Maldives today, you can’t save the rest of the world tomorrow,” and wonders if “a rational, cost-benefit analysis of how to allocate climate change resources between mitigation and adaptation” would really redound to the benefit of such small-island countries.

I doubt it — and the world has already pretty much already decided to let these nations drown.

Finland Makes Broadband Access a Legal Right  |  FP Passport

Finnish citizens now have a legal right to broadband access:

“[E]very person in Finland (a little over 5 million people, according to a 2009 estimate) will have the right of access to a 1Mb broadband connection starting in July. And they may ultimately gain the right to a 100Mb broadband connection.”"

Campaign to Make Immigration Reform a Top Issue in 2010  |  New American Media

Last Tuesday, October 13, immigrant families from around the country gathered to join in a vigil and rally in front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., where Congressman Luis V. Gutierrez and other elected officials launched a new push for comprehensive immigration reform, building to the opening months of 2010. Our banners read “Reform Immigration FOR Families” and “Family Unity Cannot Wait.”

When Black and White Aren’t Black and White  |  Miller-McCune

Quick! What color is sinfulness? What about moral purity?

If you’re like most people, you naturally see sinfulness as tinged in black, while moral purity comes through in soft whites. And if you are the kind of person who really values cleaning products, or, for some reason, you were just thinking about immorality, the mental coloration of these abstract concepts is even stronger. So demonstrates doctoral student Gary D. Sherman and professor Gerald L. Clore, both of the University of Virginia Psychology Department, in a recent article from Psychological Science.

Nicaragua Journal | Agüita

Que el agua es de todos, no del mejor postor

Aterciopelados, Agüita

By Barbara Schwartz
Editorial Director
The Xenia Institute

Sitting here right now, writing this blog, I am leisurely sipping from a 32-ounce water cup that I drew from the kitchen faucet. Since that faucet is located in Norman — instead of Oklahoma City, which has some of the best-tasting tap water in North America — this cup of water has a slightly sour taste that isn’t very pleasing to my palate. But it’s pure and it’s free of bacteria, parasites, chemical waste and industrial toxins that can cause life-threatening illnesses like cholera, diarrhea and cancer.

Most of the world isn’t this fortunate.

According to Good Magazine:

• One-sixth of the world’s population does not have access to clean water;
• Every minute, four people across the world die from a water-related disease;
• Diarrhea caused by water-borne diseases kills 4,100 people per day; 90 percent of those deaths occur in children under the age of 5.

I spent my time in Nicaragua with one eye on the work that I was doing and the other on my ever-present plastic water bottle, which served not only was a source for drinking water, but also for teeth-brushing and some hand-washing. Any water that didn’t come from that water bottle, or the 5-gallon vessels of purified water we bought at the corner stores, I had to look at with suspicion and avoid, lest I end up with any number of water-borne ailments.

Again, most of the world is not this fortunate, to be able to shell out $1 a liter for a day’s drink. Neither are most of the people in rural Nicaragua.

The irony, of course, is that parts of Nicaragua are very wet and water-covered, at least during the rainy season. According to Public Citizen, water covers about 10 percent of Nicaragua’s surface, and the water table has been easily reachable through hand-dug wells. However, over the past 20 years, environmental degradation, pollution and a rising population that’s taxed the available water has threatened the country’s ability to provide clean water to its people. Only about half the country is able to access clean water; in rural areas, only a quarter of the country as clean water. Only about a third of the country has sewage coverage. In addition, what water is available that is available is being scooped up by multinational firms, backed by  International Monetary Fund policies, that are privatizing water access.

Clean water access is one of the the main projects that JustHope is working on together with Chacraseca. The community has been working on getting clean water to all its 8,000 residents for about nine years. Thanks to a $250,000 grant from the Austrian government and fundraising efforts by JustHope partners, Chacraseca was able to buy pipeline, professionally drill two wells and build clean water tanks in order to provide water to all but 200 families in the sector. Community members — women, men and children together — took part in the work, from digging trenches for the pipelines to building and installing the tanks. JustHope is currently raising the last few thousands of dollars to bring water to the rest of the community.

For those who have had taps installed at their homes, getting clean water is as easy as turning a knob. The final tests on the last wells took place while I was in Chacraseca. The water in those wells, purified through chlorine, were finally deemed safe to drink. I took a sip from a plastic bottle that had been filled at the well; it was sour and left a terrible taste in my mouth, but it was drinkable, and it was safe.

For those who don’t have faucets at their home, clean water is neither safe nor easily accessed. At the home our group was helping to build, in the remotest part of Chacraseca, the family still got its water the old-fashioned way: via a single well that served the entire neighborhood, drawn 20-gallon bucket by 20-gallon bucket. It takes a team of oxen, hitched to the pulley system, to pull the water up from the water table more than 200 meters below the earth. One man led the oxen down a long trail so he could haul the bucket up to the surface; another man tipped the water-filled bucket into a cistern, where the women of the neighborhood could then draw water for their homes’ use. The mother of the family whose house we were helping build showed us how she transports the water, in 2-gallon buckets atop her head. I gave the chore a try; I could barely lift half a bucket, and the weight of it left a painful bruise on the top of my head that I felt for days. This water, of course, wasn’t drinkable without purifying it first, and the family, which included two small children under the age of four, had no way of purifying it.

Access to clean water is only part of Nicaragua’s water problem. The other is water privatization, in which for-profit companies take over a nation’s water supply, create infrastructure for water delivery, but charge a high price for what was previously free. The good part: clean water; the bad: water only goes to those who can now afford it. Water privatization for many developing countries is often a condition of a International Monetary Fund development loans. According to Jennifer Schwab, director of Sustainability for Sierra Club Green Home:

The shrinking supply of clean drinking water worldwide is on a collision course with its relentlessly growing population. And in a number of developing world countries such as Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, Angola, and others, private for-profit corporations are taking over the water supply and charging high prices for this previously free commodity. In many cases, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank are behind this strategy.

The world’s three leading for-profit water firms — Vivendi, Suez and Thames — would counter that they are installing an infrastructure to support a supply of clean fresh water that otherwise would not be built by the governments of these under-financed nations. They also provide jobs and inject significant sums into otherwise struggling local economies.

So who is right? Nobody can charge citizens for the air we breathe. Should water be for sale or is it a basic human right? Is it possible for sustainable social policies and multinational, public companies to coexist? I think the answer is no. If Vivendi, Suez or Thames invest the capital to install the clean drinking water infrastructure and their business model is to sell drinking water, how can they be required to give it away to local citizens? This is the quandary we face especially in the developing world. Company CEOs and Board Members will argue they have a responsibility to their shareholders to maximize profits, while local governments have a responsibility to their citizens. These poor countries, most often targeted for privatized water systems, need infrastructure and money to provide clean drinking water. Private companies feel that by providing these essentials, they have the right to charge for water consumption, regardless of the consumer’s socioeconomic status.

The IMF has pushed for water privatization in several parts of Nicaragua, including the capital Managua, Jinotega and León, which is three miles away from Chacraseca, and the cost of water increased water prices by 30 percent in Managua. The public policy nonprofit Public Citizen lays out the the IMF and World Bank’s structural adjustment programs for Nicaragua that include plans for water privatization and an increase in residential water prices here. The report states:

The government of Nicaragua has been responding slowly to IMF and Inter-American Development Bank pressures to increase cost recovery and privatize water services. There are a variety of domestic political obstacles, from the role of water utilities in the political patronage system to popular resistance to increased water fees, that have slowed the externally imposed water sector “reform” program. Gaining popular political acceptance of the water privatization agenda will not be simple. There is tremendous resistance and social opposition to increased tariffs for water and social anxiety about relinquishing control of major portions of the country’s water system to foreign multinational corporations. Water, like food, air, or land, is basic to human survival. The basic injustice of water fees that are unaffordable to the majority poor population is very clear to most Nicaraguans.

To be honest, before I went to Nicaragua, I never thought about how much water I use each day, and how that access to all that water might be a justice issue. According to Good Magazine, the average North American resident uses more than 100 gallons a day; the average person in a developing country uses about 1.3 gallons a day, a little less than a single flush of a low-flow toilet in the U.S. Curtailing my water use might be better for the environment, lower my own bills, and even help ensure the supply for those in my immediate area. But are my water concerns related to those in Nicaragua?

Public Citizen points out that eventually, all water problems will be local:

In the U.S. we have taken for granted access to basic water and sanitation services. However, policies promoting privatization and increased cost recovery are creeping into the wealthy countries as well. Recent tax cuts and the U.S. “War on Terrorism” will make in unlikely that water and sanitation infrastructure will receive the public subsidies sufficient to maintain operations and hold the line on consumer water fees. According to the U.S. Water Infrastructure Network (WIN), an additional $23 billion a year is needed in the U.S. to meet environmental and public health mandates, and to replace the aging infrastructure. Relying just on utility rate increases will cause consumer bills to double or triple, according to WIN.

As a result, cash-strapped municipal, country and regional water system managers will likely have to face hard choices, including the temptation to sell or contract operations to private multinational water corporations. In addition, new rules proposed by the World Trade Organization (WTO) services agreement may help private investors access government subsidies and ease the entry of foreign private water companies into the U.S. market. The policies of water privatization and increased cost recovery may soon begin to hit home in the U.S.

So paying attention to the impact of water privatization in developing countries like Nicaragua is a smart thing for those of us in the U.S. to do, to watch for when these policies might begin affecting us. But there’s more to it than that. As a person who cares deeply about justice and who tries to participate in the creation of a just and sustainable world, the issue of water access has to be understood as something more than either profit or how they might affect me individually. Access to clean, safe water has to be seen as a human right, because water, like air, is something we must have in order to live. Jennifer Schwab calls for the world to take a middle path in managing water access and costs, finding a way to provide clean affordable water to every person while still providing the companies that create the infrastructure a reasonable profit. Perhaps that is the answer; how that might be implemented, however, is anyone’s guess. And whatever happens, it must happen justly.

Right now, all I know is I stand with the quote in the epigraph of this post: May water belong to everyone, and not the highest bidder.

Watch …

For the past few years to mark World Water Day, GOOD Magazine has created these videos about water inequality and the need for safe, clean drinking water worldwide.

Who Can Solve Honduras’ Political Crisis?

Analysis …

The BBC reported this week that Honduran interim leader Roberto Micheletti has asked the government to lift an emergency decree that suspended civil liberties in the nation after President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in June. Meanwhile, U.S. officials’ planned fact-finding missions to Honduras raises questions about a resurrection of ’80s-style foreign relations between the U.S. and the Latin American country; and Zelaya takes heat for stating that he believes Israeli agents were behind the coup.

Truthdig |  “There may finally be movement in Honduras’ political crisis, as representatives of ousted President Manuel Zelaya and interim President Roberto Micheletti will reportedly meet next week to discuss a potential deal to end the crisis that began with June’s coup d’état. Also in the news is the visit to Honduras by several U.S. Republican congressmen despite a U.S. ban on direct discussions with the architects of the coup against the democratically elected Zelaya.”

CSMonitor.com |  “A Nobel Peace Prize laureate tried and failed. Pressure for a brokered solution has also come, to no avail, from presidents, top diplomats, and the world´s most credible global organizations. Now, a new round of ideas, deals, and calls for dialogue is emerging from the one place so few had looked before: Honduras itself. Some think a solution is impossible without the outside world. But from church leaders to well-heeled businessmen, new compromise proposals from within the country are being floated to end the standoff between ousted President Manuel Zelaya and the interim regime of Roberto Micheletti.”

Global Comment |  “Mainstream papers have chosen to paint the dispute about DeMint’s trip as one over policy—as if the de facto government is simply an opposing political party rather than a military-backed group that forced Manuel Zelaya, the democratically-elected president, from the country. Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, refused to give DeMint permission for his trip, but minority leader Mitch McConnell arranged a plane for DeMint and his cohorts, Representatives Aaron Schock, Peter Roskam and Doug Lamborn. Separately, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen plans to head to Honduras to meet with the de facto regime, which employs her former press secretary and his PR firm.”

• Related link: Democrats Target Jim DeMint’s Honduras Trip  |  Politico

The New Republic |  “On September 12, the United States government revoked the visas of de facto Honduran President Roberto Micheletti and 14 of the country’s Supreme Court justices. Days earlier, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S.-government body, voted to cut off $11 million in aid to the cash-strapped Central American country. The move came two months after the Honduran military, on the orders of its Congress, Supreme Court, and attorney general, removed Micheletti’s predecessor Manuel Zelaya from office following his repeated attempts to undermine the country’s constitutional provision limiting presidents to a single term. Explaining its decision to not recognize Honduras’s interim government, which it has repeatedly declared came to power via a “coup d’état,” the Obama administration says that it is sending a “very strong message” to “anyone, be they civilian or military, who are thinking of deposing or removing from–illegally removing from office a duly elected president in any country.” Yet according to a recently released and widely overlooked report drafted by the Library of Congress, the actions the Honduran government took in removing Zelaya were consistent with that country’s constitutional procedures.”

FP Passport |  “The Anti-Defamation League has raised the alarm over the use of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric by supporters of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya: “From President Zelaya himself down to media pundits and political activists, there has been a troubling undercurrent of anti-Semitism in the situation in Honduras,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director.  “We know from history that at times of turmoil and unrest, Jews are a convenient scapegoat, and that is happening now in Honduras, a country that has only a small Jewish minority.”"

News …

• Swine flu vaccines hit hospitals and doctors’ offices; what you need to know about them (Read more).
• What would happen if legal immigrants were barred from participating in a reformed U.S. health care system (Read more).
• Texas judge’s ruling over same-sex divorce may pave the way for same-sx marriage in the Lone Star State (Read more).
• A book about gay penguins tops the list of the most-banned books in the U.S. (Read more).

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