U.S. Gag on Needle Exchange Harms U.N. AIDS Efforts

(New York, March 3, 2005) — U.S. efforts to force the United Nations to withdraw support for needle exchange programs endanger global efforts to prevent the spread of HIV, a group of AIDS organizations, human rights groups, scientific researchers and policy analysts from 56 countries said today.

The groups urged the United Nations to stand firm at a crucial international policy meeting on narcotic drugs to be held next week in Vienna.

“Silencing the United Nations on needle exchange is deadly diplomacy,” said Jonathan Cohen of Human Rights Watch’s HIV/AIDS Program, one of the signatories of an open letter released today to urge delegates of the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs not to capitulate to U.S. pressure. “The United States should be encouraging proven HIV prevention strategies, not attacking them.”

The United States, which is the only country in the world to explicitly ban use of federal funds for needle exchange, has recently intensified pressure on the United Nations to stop promotion of this HIV-prevention strategy.

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“Whether it’s sex or drugs, the United States is exporting an abstinence-only agenda to countries hard hit by HIV/AIDS,” said Joanne Csete, executive director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network. “If governments do not stand up to this bullying, millions will pay the price.”

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http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/03/02/global10250.htm

These criminals who seized our gov't want to mow everybody down, it looks like. They are truly possessed by something demonic.

The effect of banning condoms and clean needles will only mean one thing: increased HIV.

The neoCONS want to kill off as many brown people as possible.
They have all but admitted it:

Advanced forms of biological warfare that can “target” specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool.
Rebuilding America's Defenses http://www.newamericancentury.org

They don't have those yet (or they would have used them!) so they
have to settle for letting AIDS run rampant in Africa. Surely
nobody can read those words and believe otherwise.

All of this is OK with the Fundies, as long as they can claim that
the people who will die are "sinners".

... that will guarantee low wages.

I'm ashamed.

Regardless of the extreme disruption of society at large, we must crush any semblance of recreational joy. Intravenous drug use is suicidal, but rather than contain the maniacs, it's best to put us all at risk. Scream the reality of humanity from the rooftops, but that won't quell the puritans.

Hatred and destruction of weirdos is much more important than saving the many innocents with whom they have contact. Oh, and it costs money; that simply can't continue, pittance that it is. Regardless of the net gain, we must hold the upright, masculine course despite the human cost.

This is wrong. Deeply and morally wrong.

The left can't rely on an oddly libertarian attitude of letting the pain and fallout regulate policy, because the the threshold is way too high. What will it take? I don't want to see the debris, though I know far too well that I shall, and so shall my children. That debris will be in the form of lost and wounded people, and human failure and crisis hurts us all in so many, many ways.

Each day is an ever-darkening shroud of dismissal of others, and it will suffocate us all.

I've known several ex-junkies. (Traveled with a fast crowd in my youth--although junkies tend to be slow...)

But I've never met an ex-AIDS patient.

madness will stop.My head is simply going to cave in from frustration
if I don't. George W. Bush and his Cabal have not made ONE decision
that is good for 'Merka or the World. Eeeeeeevil!!!

because their god will it.

"Don't look at them too closely, Martha, or you might turn to a pillar of salt."