Bush is going to Africa

[JessicaAnn]

Let's hope this will show Bush that more aid is needed for Africa.

Bush Says Will Travel to Africa Next Year
Thu Jun 20, 9:38 PM ET
By Arshad Mohammed

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush ( news - web sites) said on Thursday he will visit Africa next year and vowed the United States would help African nations with responsible policies to combat disease, poverty and illiteracy.

The dates and itinerary for the trip, which follows former U.S. President Bill Clinton's journeys to sub-Saharan Africa in 1998 and 2000, were not disclosed. A U.S. official who asked not to be named said Bush would also visit sub-Saharan Africa.

"I will be going to the continent next year," Bush told a black tie dinner in honor of the late civil rights leader Leon H. Sullivan, prompting a lengthy standing ovation. "It's going to be a great trip."

Immediately after Bush announced his journey, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo strode across the stage and warmly shook his hand, prompting the U.S. president to joke: "I think the president has in mind a particular stop."

U.S. officials said Bush had no plans to attend a summit in Johannesburg called the World Summit on Sustainable Development -- a follow-up to the 1992 Rio Earth Summit -- that is scheduled for Aug. 26 to Sept. 4.

Acknowledging the poverty and disease that plague much of the continent, Bush held up a vision of an Africa "where people are healthy and people are literate ... a vision free from the horrors of war and terror."

"America will not build this new Africa; Africans will. But we will stand with the African countries that are putting in place the policies for success," the U.S. president said.

"America stands united with responsible African governments across the continent and we will not permit the forces of aggression and chaos to take away our common future," he said.

The evening, which included a tribal dance performance, was in honor of Sullivan, who is best known for his "Sullivan principles," a code of conduct for companies operating in South Africa which called for nonsegregated work places and fair employment and pay and is credited with helping end apartheid.

The president proposed doubling U.S. funding to improve basic education and teacher training in Africa to $200 million over five years, a sum one critic suggested was inadequate.

Bush said the money would train more than 420,000 teachers, provide more than 250,000 scholarships for girls, and partner with historically black colleges and universities in America to provide 4.5 million more textbooks for children in Africa.

"That's $20 million additional a year. $20 million is about what it costs to build a major high school in the United States, and it's probably about 1/20 or 1/30 of what the World Bank ( news - web sites) estimates is needed for Africa for universal education," Gene Sperling," a former Clinton adviser, said on Thursday.

Bush also mentioned his pledge on Wednesday of $500 million to help fight the spread of AIDS ( news - web sites) in Africa and the Caribbean. There are an estimated 40 million HIV ( news - web sites)/AIDS sufferers in the world, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa, and more than 5,000 Africans die each day because of the disease.

The president also said that he would work to lower trade barriers that make it more difficult for African nations to export their products, calling this a "great obstacle to Africa's development."

The announcement of Bush's trip comes soon after Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill's 12-day tour of Ghana, South Africa, Uganda and Ethiopia to take a first hand look at African poverty and to ponder ways to alleviate it with Irish rock star Bono, who wore his trademark wraparound blue sunglasses.

"I knew the trip had had an effect on our secretary when he showed up in the Oval Office wearing blue sunglasses," Bush joked.

 

[JessicaAnn]

I was LMAO when I saw this AP Pronounciation Guide ...

Bono made the list

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020620/ap_wo_en_po/pronouncers_2

Let's hope this will help newscasters correctly say his name.

 

[madonna's child]

BAH-NOH!

 

[oliveu2cm]

This is good news the president is taking personal interest.. even if it is next year.

I wonder when B's wraparound shades will stop being such a cliched joke!

 

[verte76]

I think this is cool. Even if the promises Bush is making aren't adequate, it's clear that the activists have had an influence on him, including, uh, our favorite singer--I think *especially* Bono. I think that more $$ will be on the way if we just keep this pressure up. The way to change things is to pressure politicians, and don't stop! Hell, we're the ones with the votes!

 

[U2Kitten]

Is he taking Bono?

 

[JessicaAnn]

He should take Bono ... but I doubt he will.

 

[Sherry Darling]

I think this is cool. Even if the promises Bush is making aren't adequate, it's clear that the activists have had an influence on him, including, uh, our favorite singer--I think *especially* Bono. I think that more $$ will be on the way if we just keep this pressure up. The way to change things is to pressure politicians, and don't stop! Hell, we're the ones with the votes!

Vertre, you're exactly right! If we keep on him and ALL of them, the tide WILL change! But we can't let up!

<broken record>
PLEASE I'm begging here, if you do think this is an important issue, WRITE that letter, MAKE that phone call. Go to Bono's Angels (url in my sig) and copy mine if you want. Go to Jubileeusa.org or stopglobalaids.com for letters you can click and send. Go to congress.com for your reps ph # and addy. O'Neill's # again 202 622 0190
</broken record>

We're at 38! Let's make 50 letters written/phone calls made by theh G8 summit on the 24th!

Thanks for the article, Jessican Ann!

SD

 

[hotpepper]

JessicaAnn - thanks for posting this article. I

t concerns me though that Bush isn't going to Africa until NEXT YEAR. Man, that's a lifetime away. I know being prez and all, the guy must have a busy schedule but come on . . .

 

[Sherry Darling]

President Bush said yesterday the United States should spend $20 million more each of the next five years educating African children.

Bush also announced an upcoming trip to the continent -- all part of his pledge to "take Africa's side in confronting obstacles to hope."

The president outlined his administration's agenda for Africa at a black-tie gala in memory of the Rev. Leon Sullivan, a Philadelphia minister credited with helping to end apartheid in South Africa.

"The people of America have a duty to advance the cause of freedom in Africa," Bush told a glittering crowd of several thousand diplomats, top administration officials, civil rights leaders and corporate chieftains. "America's interests and America's morality lead in the same direction."

Though the proposed spending boost would double the government's investment on an education initiative in Africa, the $200 million total was deemed modest by critics.

The World Bank has estimated that wealthy donor countries will need to commit between $3 billion and $4 billion annually in additional foreign aid over the next 10 years to achieve the goal of universal primary education in the developing world by 2015. Estimates of the number of children in poor nations who have never attended school run as high as 125 million, about two-thirds of them girls.

A bipartisan group of congressmen urged Bush to increase U.S. spending on basic education around the world to $1 billion per year by 2006.

On Wednesday, the president promised an extra $500 million over three years to help prevent pregnant women in parts of Africa and the Caribbean from transmitting the AIDS virus to their children.

Bush will travel to Canada next week for the Group of Eight summit of industrialized nations, which is intended to focus on the plight of sub-Saharan Africa.

The White House hopes the new African initiatives will ease criticism about U.S. spending on developing nations and project a compassionate image of Bush to foreign leaders and American voters. As a percentage of economic output, the $10 billion U.S. foreign aid budget is the lowest among rich nations.

The president's announcement that he plans to visit Africa next year drew gasps and a standing ovation from the hotel ballroom crowd. Bush said he plans to focus on increasing trade between the United States and African nations, reducing poverty, fighting corruption, protecting workers' rights and fostering human rights.

"Africa is a continent where promise and progress are important. And we recognize they sit alongside disease, war and desperate poverty -- sometimes in the same village," Bush said. "We take Africa's side in confronting obstacles to hope and development."

Bush had harsh words for what he called the few African nations that continue to harbor terrorists and wage war on their own people, singling out the 19-year-old civil war in Sudan, during which an estimated 2 million people have died.

Bush acknowledged cooperation from Sudan in the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, but he said it can only improve relations by ending the civil war and banishing slavery.

"Sudan can and must do more," Bush said. "Ending its support for terror outside Sudan is no substitute for efforts to stop war inside Sudan."


? 2002 The Washington Post Company

 

[Sherry Darling]

Bush to Propose Doubling Africa Education Aid
Administration Pledges $500 Million to Fight HIV-AIDS in Caribbean, Africa

A June 20 article on President Bush's AIDS announcement should have attributed the following quotation to Asia Russell, director of multilateral institutions for Health GAP: "By choosing to focus primarily on 'innocent' newborns, Bush is leaving women, families and communities for dead."


? Bush Proposes More Money for AIDS


By Karen DeYoung and Paul Blustein
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 20, 2002; Page A02


President Bush will propose today to double spending on a U.S. initiative for education in Africa to $200 million over five years and will announce plans to travel to the continent next year, senior administration officials said yesterday.

The announcement on African education will be the second, relatively modest foreign assistance plan unveiled within two days by an administration that has questioned whether such aid has been wasted on inefficient and corrupt governments. Yesterday, Bush pledged an additional $500 million over three years to help prevent HIV-infected mothers in parts of Africa and the Caribbean from transmitting the virus, which causes AIDS, to their infants.

"Medical science gives us the power to save these young lives. Conscience demands that we do so," the president declared in a Rose Garden ceremony.

The flurry of initiatives come as Bush prepares to head next week to a summit of leaders from the Group of Eight leading industrial nations in Canada, where Africa will be a major focus. The $10 billion U.S. foreign aid budget is the lowest among rich countries as a percentage of economic output, and the new proposals could help the administration project a compassionate image at the summit.

Most of the 20 million deaths from AIDS have occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV infection rates are the highest in the world. The United Nations estimates that 800,000 children were born last year infected with the virus, even though as little as a single dose of medication to mother and child at birth can prevent transmission up to half the time. Bush's initiative aims to prevent up to 146,000 infant infections over the next five years. It is projected to provide extended treatment with life-extending anti-retroviral drugs for infected infants and their parents in numbers that will increase as the program expands.

But while saying the proposals were welcome, activists, aid advocates and some in Congress criticized them as too little, too late.

The AIDS initiative focused on the least politically sensitive aspect of care and treatment for a disease that is most often transmitted through adult sexual activity. "By choosing to focus primarily on 'innocent' newborns," said the Global Alliance of activist groups, "Bush is leaving women, families and communities for dead."

There was also criticism of the size of the funding, and what some saw as an attempt to take credit for congressional initiatives they believed Bush had helped undermine.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who along with Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) had proposed $700 million in new spending this year on global AIDS programs, yesterday called the Bush plan a "shell game," saying it "provides no funding beyond that already provided by the Senate until the year 2004."

Bush's $500 million consists of $200 million the House and Senate have already added to the president's proposed emergency terrorism appropriation for this year, which administration officials said would be spent over this year and next, and $300 million that Bush said he would put in his fiscal 2004 budget request next year. This year's budget for global AIDS projects is about $1 billion, without the new funding.

Rock star Bono, a global development advocate who last month accompanied Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill on a 10-day tour of Africa, issued a statement saying: "This crisis urgently demands an historic presidential AIDS initiative. This isn't it, but could be the beginning of it."

Others in Congress and among nongovernmental organizations said they were glad to have what Bush proposed. Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-Ariz.), who shepherded the House's version of the $200 million in emergency funds, said he was "especially pleased" by Bush's initiative. Mark Isaac, public policy director at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, called it "real leadership . . . in fighting global AIDS." Isaac said that working with mothers who care more about helping their children than avoiding the stigma often associated with AIDS in the developing world often provided a way to expand prevention and treatment.

Paul De Lay, director of the HIV/AIDS office at the U.S. Agency for International Development, said that infants infected even after treatment with nevirapine, the drug used to reduce transmission rates from mothers, would be put on a permanent regime of anti-retroviral drugs, along with those infected mothers and fathers whose stage of disease qualifies them for treatment.

The program is initially targeted at eight African countries, to expand to 12 by 2004, plus Guyana and Haiti and a regional program for other Caribbean islands. The plan also includes improvements in health care infrastructure, an exchange program between U.S. and African and Caribbean hospitals and initiatives to provide African women alternatives to breast feeding, which can pass the disease.

The education proposal is both an increase in size and a fleshing out of specifics for an initiative that Bush unveiled last year. Administration officials said the money will go to train 420,000 teachers, provide 250,000 scholarships for girls, and provide 4.5 million more textbooks for African schoolchildren.

But the level of funding drew a negative reaction from aid advocates. The world's rich nations are being exhorted by the World Bank and other aid agencies to contribute billions of dollars a year to fund an initiative aimed at ensuring that all children in poor countries finish at least five years of schooling by 2015; currently, more than 100 million elementary-school-age children are not in class at all. The United States and other donor nations have backed the plan in principle but not all have been forthcoming with the money.

"I think it's disappointing that the president is thinking on such a small scale when the needs are so great," said John Ruthrauff, senior policy adviser at Oxfam America, citing estimates that $5 billion a year would be required to meet the U.N.-backed goal of achieving universal primary education by 2015.

Administration officials countered by emphasizing the importance of Bush's plans to visit Africa. Noting that Bush earlier this year proposed a 50 percent increase in U.S. foreign aid spending targeted at countries that adopt anti-corruption and free market policies, they asserted that the amount of money is much less important than Bush's demonstrated commitment to African development.

"As the president said today, as the [AIDS] initiative demonstrates success, we will provide more resources to it," one senior official said. "That is this administration's approach -- instead of 'more money, more money, more money,' we're saying, 'more results, more results, more results,' and money will follow results."


? 2002 The Washington Post Company

 

[verte76]

I'm glad Bush wants to prevent babies from being born with AIDS, but what about the adult AIDS victims? They're dying, for crying out loud! This could be stopped. It has to be stopped. STOP GLOBAL AIDS!

 

[Sherry Darling]

Amen, Verte! Amen!

BTW, The Angels' message board is now up. Hop over and say hi if you'd like. Anyone welcome!

SD

 

[U2Kitten]

Thanks for the updates!

 

[adamswildhoney]

Its about time that Bush goes to Africa!

 

[verte76]

Its about time that Bush goes to Africa!

I agree--I'm glad he's going. Maybe when he sees the gravity of the situation first-hand he'll be more motivated to do something about this disaster.

 

[verte76]

Hey, I just saw a reprint of an irate article from "The Nation" about Bush's proposal being a slap in the face to Bono. It's scathing. It's at @u2. Check it out!

 

[verte76]

Hey, I just saw a reprint of an irate article from "The Nation" about Bush's proposal being a slap in the face to Bono. It's scathing. It's at @u2. Check it out!

Oops! I goofed! That was "Alternet" not "The Nation". Sorry!

 

[daisybean]

Here is that article:

Bush Bails on Bono

David Corn, AlterNet
June 21, 2002


So this is the thanks Bono gets?

Just weeks ago, the U2 frontman was jetting through Africa with Treasury
Secretary Paul O'Neill and exploring the deep poverty of the continent. With
a gaggle of media in tow, the unlikely duo visited cities and villages,
often inspecting hospitals, orphanages and clinics where the tragic effects
of the AIDS pandemic could be witnessed. One day, O'Neill was filmed
tenderly cradling a small baby girl who has AIDS. Look how cute she is, he
said, visibly moved, as Bono looked on.

By conducting high-visible public appearances with O'Neill and George W.
Bush -- Bono visited the White House in March when Bush announced a 14
percent boost in the paltry foreign aid budget -- the rock star has shared
his hipness with the Bush squares. (Not since a decked-out Elvis Presley
posed with President Richard Nixon has there been such a lopsided transfer
of cool in Washington.) By offering words of encouragement for Bush's modest
foreign aid initiatives, he has granted the administration a seal of
semi-approval. To be fair, he has probably prompted the misers to open the
purse more than they otherwise would. But when Bush the other day announced
a supposedly "important new" anti-AIDS program for Africa, it was not only
an insult to the millions being killed overseas by this plague, it was a
slap in the face to Bono.

At the White House, Bush said, "In Africa, the disease clouds the future of
entire nations ... In the hardest hit countries of sub-Sahara Africa, as
much as one-third of the adult population is infected with HIV, and 10
percent or more of the school teachers will die of AIDS within five years."
He proposed "to make $500 million available" to prevent the transmission of
HIV from mother to children. Stopping inherited AIDS is one of the best
bang-for-a-buck components of an assault against AIDS. A single dose of
medication given at birth will work half the time. This is also one of the
least controversial aspects of AIDS prevention because it has nothing to do
with sex -- or condoms. It focuses on newborns, not adults. Consequently, it
does not offend the religious riight and cultural conservatives.


So what's the catch? First, Bush was proposing funding that does not meet
the actual need. Second, he was taking credit for money already approved by
Congress. Finally, he was covering up the fact that his administration had
pressed Congress to lower spending for this activity. Bush was spreading it
thick in the Rose Garden.


The President expects his project to prevent nearly 150,000 infant
infections over the next five years. The problem is, there are about 800,000
children born with AIDS each year, according to the UN. That means the Bush
initiative is aiming at helping less than 4 percent of this population.
Moreover, $200 million dollars of this supposedly "new" initiative were
approved for use this year by Congress days before Bush's announcement. What
he added was $300 million for this type of AIDS prevention in the following
two years. Which averages out to $150 million a year -- a cut from the
current level. It gets worse. At the start of June, several Republicans --
notably, Senators Bill Frist and Jesse Helms -- were trying to raise
overseas AIDS funding this year by $500 million. But the White House leaned
on Frist and Helms and got the pair to slice that to $200 million.


The bottom line? When Bush hailed his initiative as one that would save
lives, he could have as easily said, thanks to me, this program will save
fewer lives than it would have had Frist and Helms gotten their way. As
Senator John Kerry, a Democrat who has worked with Frist and Helms to
increase global AIDS funding, griped, "Just as we've achieved bipartisan
momentum to make a real difference on the toll this devastating disease is
taking on Africa, the Administration announces a retreat and pretends it's a
forward charge."


Bush boasts that his administration committed nearly $1 billion to global
HIV/AIDS assistance this year and has sent $500 million to the global fund
to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. That sounds like a healthy
contribution. But relief and medical groups argue this is far from
sufficient. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has been pressing the
international community to kick in $7 billion to $10 billion a year to the
global anti-AIDS fund, with the United States covering about one-fifth of
that. Catholic Relief Services has called for a $2 billion increase in US
funding for the effort against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, of which half
would go to sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 28 million people have
AIDS. (AIDS in Africa has left up to 13 million children orphaned.)


Bush shows no signs of rising to the challenge. The Senate Foreign Relations
Committee recently passed -- unanimously! -- legislation that would more
than double US spending on global AIDS, financing treatment vaccines and
education, and requiring the US government to create a five-year plan to
significantly reduce the spread of AIDS overseas. Bush has okayed a 13
percent hike in the billion-dollar program. Here's some budgetary
perspective: Under this Senate measure, US funding for anti-AIDS work in
Africa (and everywhere else abroad) would be about $2 billion -- the amount
New York State spends on its HIV/AIDS programs.


On June 10, Stephen Lewis, Kofi Annan's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in
Africa, delivered a passionate speech to an assembly of religious leaders in
Nairobi, Kenya. His words unintentionally provided context for Bush's recent
move. Lewis said:


"There's never been anything like the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Comparisons with
the Black Death of the 14th Century are wishful thinking. When AIDS has run
its course -- if it ever runs it course -- it will be seen as an
annihilating scourge that dwarfs everything that has gone before. I think we
may have reached a curious and deeply distressing lull in the battle against
AIDS. The [anti-AIDS] global fund has received no new sizeable contributions
for many months. The G8 summit later this month in my country, Canada, has
made it clear in advance that significant additional money will not be
forthcoming. A series of reports to be released in the near future will
acknowledge progress made but at the same time recite blood-chilling
statistics on the situation of youth and children -- statistics which make
you wonder whether the world has fallen into a stupor of indifference."


Urging his audience to action, Lewis remarked,


"The thing I find by far most emotionally difficult as I travel through
Africa, is meeting with you women, stricken by AIDS, who know they're dying
or soon to die, with two or three young children, and they ask me,
frantically, 'What's going to happen to my children when I've passed -- who
will look after them." And then they add, without using these exact words,
but the meaning is clear, 'Mr. White Man, you have the drugs to keep us
alive, but we can't get them. Why? Why must we die?' And I want to tell you:
I don't know how to answer that. I have never in my adult life witnessed
such a blunt assault on basic human morality. In my soul, I honestly believe
that an unthinking strain of subterranean racism is the only way to explain
the moral default of the developed world, in refusing to provide the
resources which could save the mothers of Africa."


Hours after making his disingenuous AIDS announcement, Bush attended a
black-tie Republican fundraising extravaganza that collected $30 million or
so, with a major portion of that coming from pharmaceutical companies. In
fact, Robert Ingram, GlaxoSmithKline's chief operating officer, was the
numero-uno fundraiser for the event. This drug company not too long ago
tried to prevent the South African government from manufacturing lifesaving
anti-AIDS drugs. This event was, sadly, a true Washington moment. After
undermining a more generous AIDS initiative, Bush bagged millions from drug
companies that have opposed measures to make anti-AIDS medication cheaper
and more readily available in Africa.


That day, Bono issued a statement in response to Bush's "new" AIDS program.
"This crisis urgently demands an historic presidential AIDS initiative," the
U2er observed, "This isn't it, but could be the beginning of it." Bono
deserves credit for pushing the tightwads of Washington and the West to
acknowledge publicly the problems of global poverty and global AIDS. How
long, though, can this Irish musician sing a song of hope regarding Bush,
O?Neill and the rest, when he still hasn't found anything close to what he
-- and those African mothers -- are looking for?


David Corn is the Washington editor of The Nation.

 

[verte76]

You know, I have to admit that this puts me in the mood for a demonstration! It might not do any good, but Bush just may be giving us something to protest against. I don't know, I just hope Bono gives him a piece of his mind at the G8. This has me very pissed off.

 

[Sherry Darling]

You know, I have to admit that this puts me in the mood for a demonstration! It might not do any good, but Bush just may be giving us something to protest against. I don't know, I just hope Bono gives him a piece of his mind at the G8. This has me very pissed off.

All I know to say to this is that we MUST NOT stop. We also need more help. Surely there are more people here willing to write or cut and paste a letter? Make a phone call? Check out the sight in my sig if, like Bono, you want to rebel against your own indifference!

Remember the wisdom of Zoo TV: It's our world. We can change it.

We're at 39 Angels. Who will make it 40?

SD

 

[verte76]

All I know to say to this is that we MUST NOT stop. We also need more help. Surely there are more people here willing to write or cut and paste a letter? Make a phone call? Check out the sight in my sig if, like Bono, you want to rebel against your own indifference!

Remember the wisdom of Zoo TV: It's our world. We can change it.

We're at 39 Angels. Who will make it 40?

SD

I know. I have a low frustration threshold. Sometimes this stuff really pisses me off! I am sending a letter I wrote on my Word program to the President! Yes! I am asking him to ask Congress for more aid. The catch is that some Senators claim that there's not enough support in the Senate for the amount of aid we're asking for. Senator Byrd of West Virginia pulled some parliamentary dirty trick with Durbin-Specter; because of whatever the heck he did it needed 60 votes to pass, and then he voted against the darn thing. This is *not* a partisan thing-- Byrd is a Democrat. Daschle didn't even vote.
Damn! These guys are out to lunch!

 

[Stories for Boys]

isn't that just what the president does, though? he takes credit for the hard work of many ppl in DC, then tells little white lies to cover the corners...maybe that's just me being cynical though...

 

[verte76]

isn't that just what the president does, though? he takes credit for the hard work of many ppl in DC, then tells little white lies to cover the corners...maybe that's just me being cynical though...

He's taking way too much credit for the African proposal. It's a joke. But some of these jokers in the Senate aren't any better. I don't know why Byrd had to do that; it was a dirty trick if you ask me. One of my own Senators told me he knew AIDS in Africa was a horrific problem, then he votes against this........if it had passed would it have been embarrassing for Bush to veto it? I don't know. I do know that when we've had major changes or reforms in this country--like desegregation and voting rights for African Americans--it's been because people put heat on the politicians. It took demonstrations and sit-ins and such for that because segregation was such an entrenched institution. But it got embarrassing for the politicians not to be doing anything about it so they passed the Voting Rights Act and abolished segregation. Likewise, we have to make the politicians embarrassed not to do enough about Global AIDS and debt relief and these awful trade laws. Different tactics, same goal: pressure the politicos.

 

[Sherry Darling]

Ladies, take this as anger-motivation to KEEP UP THE WRITING and CALLING! If we back off, he'll think we agree with him.

Bush Bails on Bono
David Corn, AlterNet
June 21, 2002

So this is the thanks Bono gets?


Just weeks ago, the U2 frontman was jetting through Africa with Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and exploring the deep poverty of the continent. With a gaggle of media in tow, the unlikely duo visited cities and villages, often inspecting hospitals, orphanages and clinics where the tragic effects of the AIDS pandemic could be witnessed. One day, O'Neill was filmed tenderly cradling a small baby girl who has AIDS. Look how cute she is, he said, visibly moved, as Bono looked on.


By conducting high-visible public appearances with O'Neill and George W. Bush -- Bono visited the White House in March when Bush announced a 14 percent boost in the paltry foreign aid budget -- the rock star has shared his hipness with the Bush squares. (Not since a decked-out Elvis Presley posed with President Richard Nixon has there been such a lopsided transfer of cool in Washington.) By offering words of encouragement for Bush's modest foreign aid initiatives, he has granted the administration a seal of semi-approval. To be fair, he has probably prompted the misers to open the purse more than they otherwise would. But when Bush the other day announced a supposedly "important new" anti-AIDS program for Africa, it was not only an insult to the millions being killed overseas by this plague, it was a slap in the face to Bono.


At the White House, Bush said, "In Africa, the disease clouds the future of entire nations ... In the hardest hit countries of sub-Sahara Africa, as much as one-third of the adult population is infected with HIV, and 10 percent or more of the school teachers will die of AIDS within five years." He proposed "to make $500 million available" to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to children. Stopping inherited AIDS is one of the best bang-for-a-buck components of an assault against AIDS. A single dose of medication given at birth will work half the time. This is also one of the least controversial aspects of AIDS prevention because it has nothing to do with sex -- or condoms. It focuses on newborns, not adults. Consequently, it does not offend the religious riight and cultural conservatives.


So what's the catch? First, Bush was proposing funding that does not meet the actual need. Second, he was taking credit for money already approved by Congress. Finally, he was covering up the fact that his administration had pressed Congress to lower spending for this activity. Bush was spreading it thick in the Rose Garden.


The President expects his project to prevent nearly 150,000 infant infections over the next five years. The problem is, there are about 800,000 children born with AIDS each year, according to the UN. That means the Bush initiative is aiming at helping less than 4 percent of this population. Moreover, $200 million dollars of this supposedly "new" initiative were approved for use this year by Congress days before Bush's announcement. What he added was $300 million for this type of AIDS prevention in the following two years. Which averages out to $150 million a year -- a cut from the current level. It gets worse. At the start of June, several Republicans -- notably, Senators Bill Frist and Jesse Helms -- were trying to raise overseas AIDS funding this year by $500 million. But the White House leaned on Frist and Helms and got the pair to slice that to $200 million.


The bottom line? When Bush hailed his initiative as one that would save lives, he could have as easily said, thanks to me, this program will save fewer lives than it would have had Frist and Helms gotten their way. As Senator John Kerry, a Democrat who has worked with Frist and Helms to increase global AIDS funding, griped, "Just as we've achieved bipartisan momentum to make a real difference on the toll this devastating disease is taking on Africa, the Administration announces a retreat and pretends it's a forward charge."


Bush boasts that his administration committed nearly $1 billion to global HIV/AIDS assistance this year and has sent $500 million to the global fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. That sounds like a healthy contribution. But relief and medical groups argue this is far from sufficient. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has been pressing the international community to kick in $7 billion to $10 billion a year to the global anti-AIDS fund, with the United States covering about one-fifth of that. Catholic Relief Services has called for a $2 billion increase in US funding for the effort against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, of which half would go to sub-Saharan Africa, where an estimated 28 million people have AIDS. (AIDS in Africa has left up to 13 million children orphaned.)


Bush shows no signs of rising to the challenge. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee recently passed -- unanimously! -- legislation that would more than double US spending on global AIDS, financing treatment vaccines and education, and requiring the US government to create a five-year plan to significantly reduce the spread of AIDS overseas. Bush has okayed a 13 percent hike in the billion-dollar program. Here's some budgetary perspective: Under this Senate measure, US funding for anti-AIDS work in Africa (and everywhere else abroad) would be about $2 billion -- the amount New York State spends on its HIV/AIDS programs.


On June 10, Stephen Lewis, Kofi Annan's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, delivered a passionate speech to an assembly of religious leaders in Nairobi, Kenya. His words unintentionally provided context for Bush's recent move. Lewis said:


"There's never been anything like the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Comparisons with the Black Death of the 14th Century are wishful thinking. When AIDS has run its course -- if it ever runs it course -- it will be seen as an annihilating scourge that dwarfs everything that has gone before. I think we may have reached a curious and deeply distressing lull in the battle against AIDS. The [anti-AIDS] global fund has received no new sizeable contributions for many months. The G8 summit later this month in my country, Canada, has made it clear in advance that significant additional money will not be forthcoming. A series of reports to be released in the near future will acknowledge progress made but at the same time recite blood-chilling statistics on the situation of youth and children -- statistics which make you wonder whether the world has fallen into a stupor of indifference."


Urging his audience to action, Lewis remarked,


"The thing I find by far most emotionally difficult as I travel through Africa, is meeting with you women, stricken by AIDS, who know they're dying or soon to die, with two or three young children, and they ask me, frantically, 'What's going to happen to my children when I've passed -- who will look after them." And then they add, without using these exact words, but the meaning is clear, 'Mr. White Man, you have the drugs to keep us alive, but we can't get them. Why? Why must we die?' And I want to tell you: I don't know how to answer that. I have never in my adult life witnessed such a blunt assault on basic human morality. In my soul, I honestly believe that an unthinking strain of subterranean racism is the only way to explain the moral default of the developed world, in refusing to provide the resources which could save the mothers of Africa."


Hours after making his disingenuous AIDS announcement, Bush attended a black-tie Republican fundraising extravaganza that collected $30 million or so, with a major portion of that coming from pharmaceutical companies. In fact, Robert Ingram, GlaxoSmithKline's chief operating officer, was the numero-uno fundraiser for the event. This drug company not too long ago tried to prevent the South African government from manufacturing lifesaving anti-AIDS drugs. This event was, sadly, a true Washington moment. After undermining a more generous AIDS initiative, Bush bagged millions from drug companies that have opposed measures to make anti-AIDS medication cheaper and more readily available in Africa.


That day, Bono issued a statement in response to Bush's "new" AIDS program. "This crisis urgently demands an historic presidential AIDS initiative," the U2er observed, "This isn't it, but could be the beginning of it." Bono deserves credit for pushing the tightwads of Washington and the West to acknowledge publicly the problems of global poverty and global AIDS. How long, though, can this Irish musician sing a song of hope regarding Bush, O?Neill and the rest, when he still hasn't found anything close to what he -- and those African mothers -- are looking for?

 

[verte76]

We've got to make these guys act, not just say pretty things. So far all they are doing is talking and then not doing anything. We need to tell these guys to ACT, dammit!

 

[verte76]

I just read a rather peculiar quote from Bono. It's from the talk he had with the press right after he met Bush. He claimed that Bush had actually said he needed a "pest" to pester him on this issue and Bono promised to do it. Apparently Bush has actually asked him to come back!
This is weird. No telling what's going to happen next. Maybe some shocking announcement from the G8 summit. Hell, that's probably too optimistic. Maybe we can get more out of these pennypinchers after all.

 

[Sherry Darling]

I'll keep my eye out for any news on the G8 summit and let you know what I hear.

We're at 41 angels now! Let's make it 50 by the weekend! Even if you don't wanna "join" send that letter! Make that phone call! The time now is perfect because this issue is being debated as we post!

Also, I'd like to thank Matt of atu2 for the link he gave us and the kind blurb. Hopefully that will get more letters sent!

The site has been updated, btw....



SD