Bush AIDS plan off to very slow start
Remember Bush's promise to fight AIDS in his 2003 State of the Union address? From the speech:

We have confronted, and will continue to confront, HIV/AIDS in our own country. And to meet a severe and urgent crisis abroad, tonight I propose the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief -- a work of mercy beyond all current international efforts to help the people of Africa. This comprehensive plan will prevent 7 million new AIDS infections, treat at least 2 million people with life-extending drugs, and provide humane care for millions of people suffering from AIDS, and for children orphaned by AIDS.

But like a lot of things Bush tries to tackle, this one isn't going so well. Via AEGiS: Bush AIDS Plan Reaches 1.25% of Treatment Goal:

The Administration says it is providing AIDS treatment to 25,000 people* through its own programs as well as its contributions to other AIDS programs. This figure represents 1.25% of the goal the Administration announced in January 2003, which was to deliver treatment to 2 million people by 2008.

The Bush plan is using expensive, brand name drugs, rather than keeping its promise to use the lowest cost drugs available. The President's promised "expedited" approval process has yet to review a single generic drug for use in the US program.

"It's disappointing that a year and a half after declaring AIDS a global emergency, we are still just 1.25% towards the treatment goal that had been announced," stated Dr. Paul Zeitz, Executive Director of Global AIDS Alliance. "If the Administration had not rejected emergency funding of its initiative last year we would certainly be further along."
(footnote added)

As the article goes on to explain, that's not the half of it. While "PEPFAR" -- the President's Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief -- twiddles its thumbs, coordinated international initiatives to fight AIDS wither on the vine. If I were cynical, I'd think Bush and Rove just made up an AIDS plan one night over a couple of beers so they could jam something sounding compassionate into the State of the Union speech -- directly ahead of the arguments Bush marshalled for the war on Iraq.

We're about a third of the way along to 2008, and the President's program has treated 25,000 HIV/AIDS patients, leaving 1,975,000 to go. Even in the unlikely event that's accomplished, say a prayer -- heck, say a couple of million of 'em -- for the millions of patients PEPFAR will be too late for by then.


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* Bringing Hope and Saving Lives: Building Sustainable HIV/AIDS Treatment, Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator, U.S. Department of State; p. 5. The number appears to be the rounded sum of 18,600 persons receiving direct anti-retroviral therapy (ART) in nine countries, plus an indirect increase of 6,100 persons receiving such treatment in Botswana via "support to national laboratory or logistics systems."

posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:10:00 AM -- |    

 
OK, I'll work for John Kerry
Oh, that crushing of dissent: the Alabama "Decatur Daily" reports "Moulton woman says she lost job for sporting Kerry sticker on car." (Via Brian Arner*)

Lynne Gobbell, an employee of the Moulton, Alabama company Enviromate, told the newspaper the company owner, Phil Gaddis, fired her for having a Kerry-Edwards bumpersticker on her car:

"Phil and another man who works there were there," she said. "I asked him if he said to remove the sticker and he said, 'Yes, I did.' I told him he couldn't tell me who to vote for. When I told him that, he told me, 'I own this place.' I told him he still couldn't tell me who to vote for."

Gobbell said Gaddis told her to "get out of here."

"I asked him if I was fired and he told me he was thinking about it," she said. "I said, 'Well, am I fired?' He hollered and said, 'Get out of here and shut the door.' "

She said her manager was standing in another room and she asked him if that meant for her to go back to work or go home. The manager told her to go back to work, but he came back a few minutes later and said, " 'I reckon you're fired. You could either work for him or John Kerry,' " Gobbell said.

Personally, I hope Ms. Gobbell returns to her "plan A" for dealing with this:

Gobbell said she consulted a lawyer, but then changed her mind about going to see him. She said she has cried about the incident and must do without income for three weeks while the state unemployment commission decides if she is eligible for compensation.

Dear Lynne: I'm glad Kerry has personally hired you since then. Still, I'd like you to feel even better -- sue Phil and Enviromate for everything they're worth. Then buy the company. Then hire him to wash your car -- and tell him to be extra careful with that bumpersticker!


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* Although some kind of hosting glitch has erased his post now.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:10:00 AM -- |    

 
RNC private detention camp during convention?
Wouldn't that be cool! The mother of a woman arrested during the Republican convention alleges that Pier 57, called "Little Guantanamo" by protesters and used as a holding pen for thousands of arrestees, was leased by the Republican National Committee. Erin Starr, the mother, writes:

My husband called the NYPD to ask who had issued a Certificate of Occupancy or Fire Safety Inspection Certificate and who was managing Pier 57. He was given the number for the Republican National Committee. (via Kathryn Cramer)

Ms. Starr also claims her daughter was swept up in mass arrests while "walking with friends through a park where no protest was being held ... and was held prisoner -- without being charged -- by the NYPD for three days." The attitude of the RNC to its charges was apparent in the same phone call:

...the Republican rep who answered the phone said, in answer to my husband's inquiries about safety: "those protesters don't deserve a Holiday Inn, and they're all criminals anyway!"

The story is pursued in more detail by "annatopia," who learned that Pier 57 is currently under the management of the Hudson River Park Trust, which is headed by one Charles E. "Trip" Dorkey, III. Dorkey turns out to be a fairly major contributor to the Republican Party ($191,482 since 1989). However, annatopia hasn't yet been able to use online records to confirm that the property was rented by the RNC during the convention.

Of course, Ms. Starr should just chill out anyway. Even if running your own prison is illegal in Afghanistan, that shouldn't mean the GOP -- excuse me, "God's Own Party" -- can't do it, right?


=====
UPDATE, 9/17, 2pm: Just after noticing Southknoxbubba's link to this post (welcome all), I learned via Kathryn Cramer's update that the question has been provisionally clarified by "Matthew" at the "RadicalReference"activist librarian site. He called the Hudson River Park Trust and learned that Pier 57 was "leased to the NYPD sometime in August and ended last week." As Matthew writes:

If the police had to pay to use the pier, then a case could be made that security money provided by the Republicans financed the Pier 57 detention center, quite a different thing from the RNC actually renting it out for the NYPD. The more significant point in all of this is Pier 57 itself, and the fact that it existed at all...

That still leaves the NYPD and RNC responses to Mr. Starr's questions, but those could have been misunderstandings, pranks, or "statements" by whomever he spoke to. "annatopia" is still looking for the precise paperwork assigning responsibility for the property during the convention; Cramer suggests more will be revealed when campaign spending is declared.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:15:00 AM -- |    

 
Help Beslan children
Having bloviated about Putin and Chechnya, I'll now try to actually be useful in a small way. There are a few ways you can help victims of the Beslan atrocity:

• http://www.moscowhelp.org/donate.htm: this is a group that was originally formed to help victims of the Moscow theater attack last year. It is mentioned in a recent New York Times article ("A Groundswell of Sympathy and Donations)" and seems to have a good reputation.
  
• Patrick Belton of Oxblog forwards an urgent request for help obtaining medical equipment to save victims' lives right now; the hospital(s) in Rostov need specific kinds of anaesthetic and other equipment. When I called the Russian Cultural Center here in the U.S. as suggested, I was directed to the Russian Embassy home page, where moscowhelp.org and a second outfit, Children's Hope International Foundation, are listed. To specifically help buy the medical equipment, I've e-mailed the Russian Cultural Centre in Glasgow -- apparently two nice people who run a restaurant/cafe called Cossachok. I'll post more when I know more.
  
  A quibble is that I don't see Russian locations for the medical equipment company mentioned, Braun Melsungen AG, on that company's web site, but absence of evidence and all that.
  

UPDATE, 6:30pm: Julia -- one of the people at Cossachok -- writes:

With the help of many people we have bought some of the equipment
Web.page is http://public.fotki.com/rostovhospital/first_help_arrived/
The green equepment on photos was bought by our Beslan Childrens Appeal!!
Marian Simonyan (15 years)-photo No1
Gunshot wounds to abdomen leading to peritonitus

On Sunday tthe 12th we received a telephone call that 3 more children are in Intensive Care Unit in Rostov on Don with severe burns

Kusova Karina (7 years)
10% burns severs chest injuries
gunshot wounds to legs & pelvic area
Kabaloev Rustam (12 years)
30% burns
Severe brain and chest injuries
Chedjemov Sasha (12 years)
40% burns
severe breathing difficulties

I am flying out to Rostov-on-Don on 6;40 am this morning to see the money being put into action at the hospitals and to meet the children. Dr. Feodor Sharshov and the rest of the medical team have asked us to pass on their deepest gratitude and to keep supporting the cause because the battle has only just begun.

PLEASE KEEP SENDING DONATIONS. MORE MONEY IS NEEDED TO HELP CARE FOR ALL THE CHILDREN. SO FAR WE HAVE MANAGED TO RAISE ENOUGH MONEY FOR 5 BEDS, YET THERE ARE NOW THREE MORE CHILDREN IN THE BURNS CENTRE INTENSIVE CARE.

We are closely monitoring the situation and speaking to the doctors at least twice a day. If you need to know more please contact us.

Reg,

Julia Atlas

Beslan Children Appeal in Glasgow Account details are

The Royal Bank of Scotland
Sort code 83 2210
acc number 00222416
"We believe you can fly " Charity account
Russian Cultural Centre Reg. Charity SCN 028887
0141 6493270
0141 5530733
07968977763

(The last numbers are phone and fax numbers for the Cultural Centre.) So it looks like some medical equipment has arrived, but the donations will still help care for what are obviously very severe injuries. It also looks like there's no online mechanism for this, so any donations will need to be mailed. As stated in Oxblog, the address to send donations to is

The Russian Cultural Centre
10 King Street
Merchant City
Glasgow
G1 5QZ

posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:40:00 PM -- |    

 
If I were Putin
If I were Putin, this is what I'd do:

1. Realize that I don't have to give a rat's ass about keeping Chechnya in Russia.
2. Make a list of SPIR and other Chechen terror organization leaders directly or indirectly responsible for the Beslan atrocity and other attacks on Russian civilians, with Shamil Basayev at the top. That's people known to have blood on their hands, or people who paid those people. Keep it short: let's say the top twenty Chechen terror leaders.
3. Go on TV and address the Chechen people:
   
   

   You want your independence? Fine. You can get it, while I remain in office, by handing over the following people to the Russian authorities: (1) Shamil Basayev, (2) etc., etc. They'll be put on trial for their crimes -- and to be honest, I'm pretty sure they'll be convicted.
   
   But until all of these people are handed over, Russian armed forces will remain in Chechnya. If new terror acts are committed, any additional persons responsible must be handed over as well.

4. Wait.
5. Grant Chechnya independence once everyone on the list is handed over.
6. Resettle those who would be in danger in an independent Chechnya.

That would be the gist of it. Maybe there should be a deadline, maybe not; maybe that "to be honest" part should be skipped, maybe not. Maybe the terrorists should be put on trial for their lives, rather than life in prison, maybe not.

At any rate, the list should be long enough that the terrorist organization would be effectively destroyed. These scum seem to like to have their pictures taken, so it should be possible to compile a pretty good list.

But it should also be short enough that real thought is given to listing only the truly important terrorists, the ones with blood on their hands -- and so it leaves a great number of other Chechens to turn against them, including ones able to locate and overpower them. Evidence against the listed terrorists should be strong enough to convince a Russian court, and preferably strong enough to convince any court. In particular, it's not all that clear that either Ilyas Akhmadov or Aslan Maskhadov deserve the "terrorist" label.*

Unlike Al Qaeda, the Chechen terrorists have the "Achilles heel" of a definite, feasible demand -- Chechen independence. Ensuring those terrorists were not alive or free to enjoy the fruits of their crimes might not satisfy the goal of not rewarding terror, and that's admittedly a considerable drawback.

But this plan would satisfy the goal of not rewarding terrorists, which is pretty good, amounts to much the same thing, and might have to do -- given the considerable crimes and killings committed by the Russian side over the years.** Finally, as a take-it-or-leave-it announcement, the approach even manages to avoid negotiating with terrorists -- indeed, it essentially ignores them.

Of course if I really were Vladimir Putin I'd be much more interested in rearranging oil and media empires, stamping out political opposition, and consolidating power than in resolving the Chechnya issue. So never mind.


=====
* See for instance the "SPIR" article referenced above.
** UPDATE, 9/14: That's seven separate links.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:19:00 PM -- |    

 
Overtime petition

Dear President Bush:

Americans are among the hardest working people on the planet, and yet your administration seeks to take away overtime pay for millions of workers. Americans deserve their overtime pay. Despite your threat of a veto, both the House and Senate have announced their intent to overturn the new overtime rules put forth by your administration.

Mr. President, Americans are finding it harder and harder to make ends meet. I urge you to restore the overtime rules and protect the income of millions of families around the country.

Sincerely,

Your name here, please!

(Petition circulated online by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee; links added.) posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:10:00 PM -- |    

 
Great
ABCNEWS.com : Blast, Mushroom Cloud Reported in N. Korea:

A large explosion occurred in the northern part of North Korea, sending a huge mushroom cloud into the air on an important anniversary of the communist regime, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Sunday.

Citing an unidentified source in Beijing, Yonhap said the explosion happened on Thursday in Yanggang province near the border with China. The damage and crater left by the explosion in Kim Hyong Jik county was big enough to be noticed by a satellite, the source said.

"We understand that a mushroom-shaped cloud about 2.2 miles to 2.5 miles in diameter was monitored during the explosion," Yonhap quoted an unidentified diplomatic source in Seoul as saying.

=====
UPDATE, 9/13: The South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reports South Korean officials believe it was not a nuclear test, but remain unsure what it was, perhaps a massive munitions dump explosion. A second article provides a satellite image of what appears to be a large smoke cloud drifting north and east. GlobalSecurity.org forwards a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty report that North Korean officials claim "the blast was a controlled explosion conducted as part of a hydroelectric power project." The BBC reports that North Korea will allow a British diplomat to visit the blast site "as early as Tuesday."

UPDATE, 9/22: Relax -- maybe it was all just a big misunderstanding. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:33:00 AM -- |    

 
Rumsfeld actually said this about Iraqi detainee abuse

'Does it rank up there with chopping someone's head off on television?' he asked. 'It doesn't.'

It's true, we're not head chopper offers. At least not on TV. At least not unless it's a matter of military necessity, I suppose.

What a schmuck -- excuse me, what a boon to America's fight against all of its enemies. File under "Abu Ghraib? So what, you peons." And we're supposed to believe this man -- and his boss -- had nothing to do with how Abu Ghraib came about. (Via Yglesias)

PS: Not surprisingly, of course, Zell Miller was months ahead of Rumsfeld. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:15:00 AM -- |    

 
Survival training in the White House pool
Paul Krugman, writing on September 7:

If I were running the Kerry campaign, I'd remind people frequently about Mr. Bush's flight-suit photo-op, when he declared the end of major combat. In fact, the war goes on unabated. News coverage of Iraq dropped off sharply after the supposed transfer of sovereignty on June 28, but as many American soldiers have died since the transfer as in the original invasion.

And I'd point out that while Mr. Bush spared no effort preparing for his carrier landing - he even received underwater survival training in the White House pool - he didn't prepare for things that actually mattered, like securing and rebuilding Iraq after Baghdad fell.
(link, emphasis added)

His Heroicness! Oh master, you survived! Via Fafblog. Seriously, I did not know that. Did you know that?
posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:00:00 AM -- |