The way of the world.

[davywavy]

A truly shocking statistic which came my way the other day is the fact that, as I write, more than 20% of the population - that's 9 million people - of South Africa are HIV positive.
We are usually led to believe that the responsibility for this lies in two places:
1) With Western Pharmacutical companies who won't license their retroviral drugs for cheap copies to be used in Africa, and
2) With Pope Benedict who, if the online community is to be believed, spends most of his time running round Africa whipping Rubber Jonnies out of the grasp of Africans whilst laughing like The Hooded Claw.

There's a degree of truth in this. Both the above could be doing rather more to help the situation, but when blame is being apportioned some names we rarely hear are those of the South African Government. President Thabo Mbeki has gone on record as denying a causal link between HIV and AIDS and who (until the High Court over-ruled him in 2002) actively restricted the availability of retroviral drugs in South Africa on the basis that he didn't think they worked. Another name we rarely hear is that of South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who actually makes Mbeki look rational in his dealings with HIV. In 1999, she distributed the astoundingly deranged book Behold, a pale horse by William Cooper to regional health bosses in South Africa. This stupendously bonkers document claims, amongst other things, that AIDS was introduced to Africa to annihilate the blacks by the Illuminati, working in cahoots with flying-saucer people.

With a government like this, who needs The Hooded Claw?

Comments

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

THE CLAW!

...sorry

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

I think it is a combination of 1, 2, the aforementioned whack=jobs, a strange machismo culture, poor education standards, rape gangs, poor health standrads, lack of money, the church, aliens and probably rocks-from mars.

It's a complex web and there's very little positive stuff going on in it.

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Gee, didn't you know? Having sex with a virgin cures AIDS. It seems that far too many people in South Africa know that...

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

It does? Cool! That must increase their market value again, to balance out the virgin inflation going on in the suicide bomber market.

- Ben, inflating virgins for 30 years

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Ben, inflating virgins for 30 years

Gosh, the only woman I've ever inflated had 'not to be used as a life preserver' stencilled on her arse.

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

Gosh, the only woman I've ever inflated had 'not to be used as a life preserver' stencilled on her arse.

*sniff* That reminds me of my old love Winona. She left me for a Crash-test dummy.

Old Joke

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

"David, your girlfriend is rubbery"
(Chinese accent) "Why, thank you very much."

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

when blame is being apportioned some names we rarely hear are...

Maybe we're getting our information from different places, but I've heard these names a great deal in connection with being blamed for the problem -- I don't recognize your picture of a media that silently excuses them?

[(Anonymous)]

I'm reassured that S.A. has a supreme court capable of overruling the president: Mbeki's policy of brown nosing the loathsome Mugabe, who has deconstructed the legal system in Zimbabwe to armed thuggery, will probably kill more people than his whacked out ideas about Aids.
I guess it's post colonial guilt that stops us criticising black people, although since the effect in this case is misery, suffering, and death, this smacks of moral cowardice. Send in the marines.

[angelusmorbidum.livejournal.com]

Drug companies make surprisingly large amounts of charitable donations...
Selling their stuff to these countries at cost price... and offering to double what they actualy buy...
We wouldn't do the same... in fact we don't do the same... and these are, no matter what _businesses_.

If we take away their "business," claiming they can do more... we effectively take away drug development... and I'm sure we don't want that.

[ukporl.livejournal.com]

This website (http://www.aidsmap.co.uk/) will either tell you everything or link you to everything on HIV and AIDS, in my experience. You might have to navigate through the site map though if you can't cope with all of the medical papers and epidemiology conference reports!

[davywavy.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know - my point really is that whilst mos of the emotional blackmail you see in the media assumes that many of Africa's problems are caused by the vil white folks that used to run the place, the reality is that a great many problems are caused by the evil black folks that run it now.

Heh :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_grimtales_/]

The theory that AIDs was deliberately engineered or released is a fairly widespread one in many forms, some not quite so batshit as the one you present. Its an interesting idea for a book, short story or game but its a bit bonkers. If you genuinely wanted to wipe out Africa and free it up for colonisation (or eliminate homosexuality) you'd want something that did the job a lot more effectively.

(Unless of course the health companies were behind it, to whom long term profit is more important).

Much like the 9/11 conspiracy theories (and now the London bombing ones doing the rounds) not enough people deign to actually check their facts. You're lucky, you don't swim around so much in alt and activist culture as I do. It's beginning to get tiresome.