The Binary Circumstance

“Conservative commentator” Ann Coulter was on The Today Show yesterday. She was talking about how Bush did during 2005.

During the course of the interview she mentioned that Bush’s domestic spying operation has been great for him in the polls and that democratic opposition to it showed just how soft the dems are on national security.

She added that in WWII Roosevelt put a lot of Japanese in internment camps and Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War.

Of course, putting the Japanese in internment camps forced them to sell their property for a fraction of its real value. Internment was a way to steal their property. It was an action for which the U.S. government later apologized and paid restitution, though no amount of restitution is adequate compensation for imprisoning the innocent and stealing their property.

For Coulter, these past actions clearly justified something as harmless as the president ordering wiretaps without court approval. She noted correctly that the Japanese internment was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Lincoln’s suspension of habeus corpus was overturned by by U.S. Circuit Court of Maryland but Lincoln ignored the order.

If the Japanese Internment was legal, why did the government (taxpayers) later have to pay compensation? Even the Supremes can’t be trusted to protect individual rights in a time of war.

For Ms. Coulter the president can do just about anything “in a time of war” to protect national security.

It’s more than a little ironic that the war for freedom in Iraq has allowed the Bush administration to topple a dictator in Iraq while installing one in the U.S.

What war powers will Bush claim for himself next? Perhaps it will be necessary to suspend the elections in 2008 to protect national security.

After all, if the democrats can’t be trusted with national security then it follows that the president, to protect the nation, must do everything in his power to keep them from being elected. Right?

So, no more elections until the war is over? Sounds like a plan to me. Now let’s see, how long can we keep the U.S. in a state of war?

Matt Lauer conducted this interview and I was amazed at how easily she got away with rationalizing Bush’s actions which bypass Congress and the courts to seize more power over the American people.

I’m tempted to label her a “fascist apologist” except that she wasn’t apologizing. [I should note that the definition of apologist does not require an apology.]

On her web site, Coulter makes a very seductive and provocative argument that if the New York Times can engage in what amounts to domestic spying to trap pedophiles as they did for a recent expose on child porn [reg. and purchase of article required], why do they have such a problem with Bush’s use of wiretaps against suspected Islamic terrorists?

Good question. The answer is quite simple.

With no oversight of the program by anybody outside the inner circle of the Bush White House, there is no assurance that the program is in fact being used only to go after terrorists. Bush could be listening in on anybody he wants including democratic political opponents. (Remember Nixon and Watergate?) Nobody knows who Bush is listening to because Bush won’t even tell a judge whose conversations he’s listening to.

Maybe he’s listening to young teenages talking about sex on the phone because Laura’s not that interesting to him anymore. Maybe he’s listening to adults having phone sex with minors and rather than reporting the crime, simply enjoying the conversation. There is simply no way to know.

The New York Times shared their information with the public as well as the methods that were used to obtain the information. They can also be brought to trial if they violated the rights of any person they investigated.

It is unlikely that Bush would ever be brought to trial for violating civil liberties since there is no way to collect evidence about how he is conducting his domestic spying program. In order for the domestic spying program to be tested in the courts, an individual would have to file a complaint. The only problem is that there’s no way for the individuals who are being spied on to know they are being spied on.

Unlike the New York Times, which disclosed its program of entrapment and the methods it used, the Bush program was completely secret until somebody leaked it to the press. You will remember that Bush was enraged that anybody had made his secret program public, predictably calling such leaks a threat to national security.

I would also like to point out that pedophiles are usually enraged when they are entrapped while hunting for sex with minors on the Internet.

Bush believes it’s OK for him to spy on others but nobody can spy on him.

Today I returned home to find that I had received four telephone calls from telemarketers. I’ve been getting a lot of them lately.

My number as been on the do-not-call list since it was started.

I report the numbers and company names on the FTC complaint site yet they are still coming in.

I’ve started to think that the do-not-call list is yet another waste of the taxpayer’s money.

This should have been handled by the land-line telephone companies in the same way that ISPs handle spammers. If you’re using your phone line to harass people who have made it clear they do not wish to be called, the phone companies would take their lines away to protect the customers who are not abusing the phone sytem.

Nigeria has promised free HIV/AIDS treatment beginning in 2006:

LAGOS, Dec. 22 (Xinhuanet) — Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjoon Thursday approved free anti-retroviral treatment (ARV) for people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa’s most populous country from January 2006 as “Christmas gift,” his health minister said.

Eyitayo Lambo said the gesture, which will cost Africa’s biggest oil producer over 1.44 billion naira (11 million US dollars) on treating 100,000 HIV/AIDS victims next year, would contribute towards ensuring that people living with the virus complied and adhered to treatment, according to the official News Agency of Nigeria.

Nigeria, which has the world’s third largest HIV positive population with an estimated 3.5 million sufferers, has asked patients to pay for at least part of their own AIDS care including drugs and monitoring before.

Lambo said Obasanjo also approved free antenatal care and delivery for all HIV positive women in federal government health institutions from the same date.

He said that all chief executives and heads of federal government health institutions had been directed to comply fully with the directive.

The minister explained that that the government realized that the 1,000 naira (about 8 dollars) subsidy granted each HIV/AIDS victim per month for treatment was not good enough, as many of them could afford their own counterpart contribution of 1,000 naira.

Here’s the CNN version of the story:

Nigeria has 3.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS, the third-highest number in the world after India and South Africa, and at the moment it has an estimated 40,000 people on subsidized anti-retroviral drugs, or ARVs.

“Up until now we provided ARVs at a subsidized rate, and patients had to pay 1,000 naira [$8] per month. They will not have to pay that anymore,” said Babatunde Osotimehin, chairman of the National Action Committee on HIV/AIDS, on Saturday.

Nigeria’s goal is to get 250,000 people on ARVs by the end of next year, and Osotimehin said providing the drugs for free would help meet that target by encouraging more people to come forward for treatment.

Funding for the free drugs will come from extra government money approved by President Olusegun Obasanjo as well as from major donors, including the World Bank, the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and the U.S. government.

Two-thirds of Nigeria’s 140 million people live on less than a dollar a day, and aid groups say many HIV-positive people are too poor to pay for drugs. [emphasis mine]

$11 million to treat 100,000 people comes out to $110/yr per person.

Maybe all people in the U.S. who have HIV/AIDS should pack up and move to Nigeria where they could get treatment for a tiny, itsy-bitsy fraction of what it costs here, even if they pay the bill themselves.

This is yet another example of how the American government is using health care to enslave its citizens to drug companies as well as the other nations of the world.

Most of the drugs and tests used in diagnosing and treating HIV/AIDS were developed in the United States. Gay men played the major role in advocating for the treatments. The basic research to produce these therapies was provided by the taxpayers.

So how come people with HIV/AIDS in this country are paying thousands of dollars a year for therapies that can be bought for pennies on the dollar in “developing” countries?

Oh, wait a minute. Now I think I get it.

The U.S. government is spending American taxpayer dollars fighting AIDS in Nigerian because the cost per patient is so much lower than it is here, largely due to our government’s cozy relationship with drug companies. That way they can save the most lives with the American taxpayer’s money. They just won’t be American lives.

The lives the American taxpayers are paying to save in Nigeria will provide the cheap labor to power their rapidly growing economy which is largely driven by oil.

Read on…

Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa and the eleventh largest producer in the world.

Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, most recently reelected in 2003, returned Nigeria to civilian rule with his first presidential win in 1999. Prior to that, the country had not held successful elections under a civilian government since independence from the United Kingdom in 1960.Although Nigeria has substantial oil wealth, it is one of the world’s poorest nations, with more than 70 percent of the population living in poverty. Nigeria’s economy is heavily dependent on oil sector revenues, which account for nearly 80 percent of government revenues. Real gross domestic product (GDP) grew approximately 5.5 percent in 2004 and is expected to post similar growth in 2005. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently praised the government for adopting tighter fiscal policies. The Obasanjo administration is also working on a number of economic reforms including the privatization of state-owned entities.

[…]

Nigeria is the largest oil producer in Africa and the eleventh largest in the world, averaging 2.5 million barrels per day (bbl/d) in 2004. In August 2004, Nigeria’s finance minister announced plans to produce 2.6 million bbl/d of oil in 2005.

Maybe the U.S. is helping to save Nigerians not only because it’s cheaper but because the American oil companies will need workers as Nigeria’s oil industry expands and is privatized.

As for why an oil rich country has so many poor people and needs U.S. taxpayers to subsidize HIV/AIDS treatments which are already much less costly than in the U.S.:

A World Bank report released in October 2004 indicated that up to 80 percent of revenues from Nigeria’s oil industry accrue to only one percent of the general population. In January 2005, two Nigerian Navy admirals were convicted of facilitating the theft of an oil tanker in August 2004, confirming long-held suspicions of theft of crude oil for profit, with navy officers often colluding with criminals. In the same month, Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) began to investigate allegations of tax evasion by multinational oil companies in collusion with government officials. In February 2005, the Nigerian government began an investigation into the illegal existence of 193 unlicensed airstrips and helipads operated by large multinational oil companies.

Nigeria is also predominantly Muslim.

Nigeria’s oil production averaged “2.5 million barrels per day (bbl/d) in 2004. In August 2004, Nigeria’s finance minister announced plans to produce 2.6 million bbl/d of oil in 2005. The Nigerian government plans to increase oil production to 3 million bb/d in 2006 and 4 million bbl/d in 2010.”

With oil selling around $60/barrel you would think they could afford their own AIDS drugs wouldn’t you? They could even buy AIDS drugs for all the people in the U.S. who can’t afford them.

Yes, it looks like it was indeed a very Merry Christmas in Nigeria for people with HIV/AIDS.

The U.S. taxpayer was Santa Clause.

I came across this site for the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative.

As a sign of their commitment to support innovative ways for governments to work with the private sector in tackling global health challenges, on December 3 the G7 Finance Ministers announced their support for a pilot program to develop advance market commitments (AMCs) for vaccines. AMCs would encourage pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to invest in vaccine research and development (R&D) for the major diseases of poor developing countries by guaranteeing that donor nations will help them to purchase effective vaccines at a fair price once they are developed.

“Along with direct funding of research, AMCs could be a powerful market-based mechanism to support research and development of vaccines for diseases that affect poor countries,” said the G7 Ministers in a communiqué issued in London at the conclusion of their meeting.

The AMC initiative could give a critical boost to ongoing efforts to combat today’s global diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies bring tremendous expertise in vaccine process development, medicinal chemistry, structural biology, and a range of other vaccine-enabling technologies, yet market forces do not provide sufficient incentives to overcome the scientific and commercial risks, which so far have limited private sector investment. To help offset this imbalance, AMCs would complement existing public sector subsidies for private R&D by providing substantial guaranteed revenues for these vaccines and creating a competitive market in which donor agencies would only pay for successful products.

This is directly related to my earlier post this AM.

AMCs are a fancy name for a commitment by governments to use force against their own citizens to pay for vaccination programs.