Wednesday, February 21, 2007

As The World Turns

It's heartening to acknowledge how much the world has progressed over time. Medical science has gifted us with longer life-spans. Technological progress in so many areas of life; travel, communication, food production, industrial production and distribution of goods enhance our lifestyles. All countries in all areas of the world are able to communicate more directly with one another, to effect trade and cultural-exchange agreements.

Every area of science has expanded our understanding of the physical world around us and our place within the greater scheme of things as the single species whose machinations manipulate the environment. In so doing we begin to understand how our activities are inimical to the globe and the well-being of all other living creatures. Science, we hope, will lead us out of the dilemma we find ourselves in.

We have great cause to celebrate, and at the same time to realize that in some areas, at some times, in some geographies progress is fighting a rear-guard action that threatens to haul society back to an earlier era. We are, if anything, a determined breed of beings, willing to struggle to achieve progress to advance toward new horizons. And sometimes there are news items that come from various sources that render us speechless with disbelief.
  • Banjul, Gambia - From the pockets of his billowing white robe, Gambia's president pulls out a plastic container, closes his eyes in prayer and rubs a green herbal paste onto the ribcage of the patient, a concoction he claims is a cure for AIDS. He then orders the thin man to swallow a bitter yellow drink, followed by two bananas. "Whatever you do, there are bound to be skeptics, but I can tell you my method is foolproof," President Yahya Jammeh told an Associated Press reporter, surrounded by bodyguards in his presidential compound. "Mine is not an argument, mine is a proof. It's a declaration. I can cure AIDS and Iwill." Mr. Jammeh held up the Koran, pointing it at each of the patients: "In the name of Allah, in three to 30 days you will all be cured," he said.
  • The claim of a cure has prompted comparisons to the South African minister of health who won international ridicule last year for suggesting that a diet of garlic, beet root and lemon juice is more effective than anti-retroviral drugs. South African President Thabo Mbeko has been accused of not addressing the epidemic; his government did not provide AIDS drugs until a lawsuit by AIDS activists forced it to in 2002.
  • Islamabad, Pakistan - An Islamic fundamentalist shot and killed a female Pakistani minister yesterday because of her refusal to wear a Muslim veil. Police said the bearded attacker had singled out the prominent women's rights activist in the belief that females should not be in politics. Zilla Huma Usman, 35, the Punjab provincial minister for social welfare and a supporter of President Pervez Musharraf, was shot as she prepared to address a public gathering in the town of Gujranwala. As party members threw rose petals at her, the gunman shot her in the head, police said.
  • Tehran, Iran - Iran's president yesterday demanded that western countries halt their nuclear programs, as the hours ticked by on a new international deadline for Tehran to stop enriching uranium. The United Nations Security Council has given Iran until today to halt this sensitive process, which can produce the material essential for making a nuclear bomb. Mr. Ahmadinejad said it was "no problem" for Iran to stop enriching uranium, but said: "Justice demands that those who want to hold talks with us shut down their nuclear fuel cycle program, too. Then we can hold dialogue in a fair atmosphere."
  • London, England - Closed-circuit TV footage of one of the alleged July 21 bombers fleeing from London disguised in a burqa a day after the failed attacks was shown to a jury yesterday. The six-foot-two-inch figure of Yassin Omar, dressed from head to toe in a black burqa, could be seen with a white handbag over his left arm as he made his way with a woman to a London bus station. A day earlier, Mr. Omar is alleged to have tried to set off a homemade hydrogen peroxide bomb at a London subway station. He was arrested on July 27 in a dawn raid on a house in Birmingham.
  • Harare, Zimbabwe - Robert Mugabe celebrates his 83rd birthday today as his supporters prepare a cake-and-fizzy-drinks party in the central city of Gweru. His ruling Zanu-PF party has been deducting money from public servants' wages and bullying near-bankrupt businesses for donations to raise the 300 million Zimbabwean dollars (about $1.4M Cdn) to pay for the celebration. Together with hundreds of Mr. Mugabe's rich and powerful cronies attendees are expected to hear a long address from the Most Consistent and Authentic Revolutionary Leader - his official title. The cost of the party would supply 300 AIDS sufferers with anti-retroviral drugs for a year in a country where a tenth of sufferers have access to drugs.
  • El Salvador - Three Salvadoran legislators, including a scion of one of the country's leading right-wing families were kidnapped and slain during a trip to neighbouring Guatemala and their bodies set ablaze, officials said yesterday. The congressional deputies were all members of the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance and were killed Monday night along with a fourth person, their driver, as they paid an official visit to Guatemala City. Their charred bodies and gutted vehicle were found on a farm outside the city. "The scene is Dante-esque," said a spokesman for Salvadoran president, Tony Saca.
  • New York, U.S.A. - Judy Gratton of Cortland, New York, yesterday was sentenced to 15 years in prison for starving her five-year-old handicapped son, who weighed just 15 pounds when he was found in a playpen infested with cockroaches and lice.
  • Toronto, Canada - The number of badly behaved youths in Canada has quadrupled since the 1950s, largely due to the spread of negative values on television and the Internet and in video games and movies, a retired sociologist from York University says. Anne-Marie Ambert, author of a study released yesterday by the Ottawa-based Vanier Institute of the Family, says young people today are four times more likely than they were 50 years ago to engage in a range of negative and anti-social acts.
Do we rest our case or do we just buckle down and try harder?

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posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 21, 2007

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