President Obama gets painted on nude carnival queen in rainforest protest

Posted on 2009-02-23 06:54:40 by Matt

Disappointment in Hillary and site news

In the next few days, I want to be watching closely for any news from Hillary Clinton. Her remarks with regard to China the other day, where she clearly set human rights on the back-burner, are disturbing to say the least. That said, I can see the political necessity for her remarks and am willing to watch for a few days before becoming to discouraged.

For a visiting dignitary making her first trip to an important potential ally on behalf of a new government, her remarks were quite possibly intended to put the Chinese government more at ease. Had I been a part of the Chinese government, I would have had concerns that Secretary Clinton was going to come in with both guns blazing, demanding massive reforms immediately at the risk of damaging economic ties between the two nations.

By allowing herself to take the hit on human rights, she may have alleviated some of those fears, making the Chinese more willing to cooperate on other issues such as the economic situation that is hurting both nations, as well as climate change problems where the U.S. and China are both the worst offenders.

Will see how that plays out over the coming days and weeks, I'm certain. I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt knowing that language, especially from a person in her position, is always, always important when meeting with foreign governments. But, if over time it seems that human rights isn't going to be discussed in any meaningful way, then I'll openly criticize her as well.

In other news, I'm obviously still working on the site. After finishing this post, I need to finish writing the script that actually displays my posts on the front page. As of now, there is only the front page, which is set to display four posts. I haven't written the part of the script that displays pages 2, 3 and so on.

I've also got to write a script that generates an RSS feed immediately after I make a post. That shouldn't take long, but it's an easy item that I should be able to tackle relatively quickly. Following that, I'll be changing the layout somewhat. I haven't decided if I want to stick with two columns or go to three, and I'm still considering ad layout. That will probably happen bit by bit over the next week. Following that, I'll have to take stock of where I'm at and debate whether or not to add a commenting system or leave things as they are.

For now, however, have a good evening and unless something major happens I'll post again tomorrow :)

Posted on 2009-02-22 15:13:50 by Matt

BOTSWANA: Bleak outlook for future AIDS funding

GABORONE, 20 February 2009 (PlusNews) - Botswana's government has warned that it may have to cut or completely withdraw its HIV/AIDS funding, despite the rising number of people needing treatment, as the global economic crisis takes a toll on the vitally important diamond-mining sector.

The government is the main financier of the national HIV/AIDS response, contributing up to 80 percent of the budget, with donors making up the remainder. But the global economic slump has led to significant declines in the sale of diamonds, Botswana's most important revenue source.

There are already indications that government HIV/AIDS funding may dry up after the latest National Strategic Framework (NSF) - to be launched next month - expires in 2016.

The national HIV response is guided by the NSF, which is developed by the government in consultation with the private sector, civil society and donors, and is renewed every four years.

"The budget we have now is not going to sustain us beyond 2016," Robson Dimbungu, chief programme planning officer of the National AIDS Coordinating Agency (NACA) told a meeting in Gaborone, the capital, this week to preview the new NSP. "If we do not do something about our revenues, we are going to find ourselves in a tough situation."

Botswana has used its mineral wealth to roll out an antiretroviral (ARV) programme that has been the envy of other countries in the region. By the end of September 2008, public health facilities were providing ARV treatment to 90,921 patients, which, together with the 22,000 people accessing medication in the private sector, represents about 94 percent of those in need of the life-prolonging drugs, according to UNAIDS estimates.

Significant declines in diamond sales have already been recorded and more are expected, according to the Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Baledzi Gaolathe. In his recent 2009/10 budget address, Gaolathe projected that revenue from diamond sales would decline by about 50 percent.

With the government's income dwindling, Dimbungu said there was an urgent need to scale up efforts to prevent further infections. "The bottom line is that we really need to change our behaviour. For those who are going to be infected after 2016, I think it is going to be very tough for them," he said, adding that measures would be put in place to ensure that those already on ARV treatment could continue receiving it.

Peter Stegman, a strategic planning and policy development consultant to the African Comprehensive HIV/AIDS Partnerships (ACHAP), a public-private partnership between the Botswana government, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. Inc, agreed that the likely funding cuts would shift the focus to behaviour change.

"The more infections we prevent, the fewer the people who will need treatment," he said. "There is a lot to be done in terms of looking at alternative directions."

Even before the extent of the economic crisis became apparent, President Ian Khama warned that the government could not shoulder the cost of a continually expanding ARV treatment programme indefinitely. Speaking at a World AIDS Day event in December 2008, he noted that if patients were enrolled in the programme at the current rate it would nearly double in size by 2016.

Lydia Mafhoko-Ditsa, the HIV/AIDS programme manager at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Botswana, suggested that a potential solution to a future funding shortfall might be to follow the example of Zimbabwe and Zambia: both countries have introduced an AIDS levy that channels a certain percentage of taxes into the national HIV/AIDS response.

"How can we also come up with innovative and sustainable programmes?" she asked at this week's meeting. She proposed partnering with other countries in the region to manufacture generic ARVs as one cost-saving measure, and said more research was needed into the cost implications of Botswana's treatment programme over the next five, 10 and 20 years.

Botswana has an adult HIV prevalence rate of 23.9 percent, the second highest in the world, but Mafhoko-Ditsa urged people not to dwell on these gloomy figures.

"For me the bone of contention is not the statistics, but what we should do to get to a better position; numbers will not help us in fighting this epidemic."

Posted on 2009-02-21 16:18:18 by Matt

ZIMBABWE: Remittances saved the country from collapse

HARARE, 20 February 2009 (IRIN) - The official sanctioning of foreign currency as legal tender in Zimbabwe to tackle hyperinflation is bringing into sharp relief how remittances have staved off the country's complete collapse in recent years.

Before Robert Mugabe's government officially endorsed foreign currency, long queues would form outside banking halls to exchange foreign bank notes for Zimbabwean dollars, but since the use of foreign currency has been permitted the queues have shifted to commercial banks, where money transfers are processed.

An executive at a commercial bank in the capital, Harare, who declined to be named, told IRIN that the bank had opened two additional counters specifically to deal with money transfers.

"We would not have survived these harsh times had it not been for our son and daughter in England," Zodwa Nyathi, 58, of Cowdray Park, a working-class city suburb, told IRIN as she waited in a queue outside a commercial bank. Both her son and daughter pursued tertiary education and decided to remain in the UK after they had completed their studies.

Money in the pocket

Foreign currency remittances from Zimbabweans living outside of the country - excluding hand-to-hand transfers - were expected to double in 2009 from an estimated US$361 million in 2008, according to projections by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, a UN agency dedicated to eradicating rural poverty.

Other estimates have put all remittances from expatriates in Britain to Zimbabwe at about US$1 billion annually.

"If this is true, it puts a new dimension on this issue - it shows that the actual Zimbabwe-origin population in the UK is much bigger than estimated, and that they are sending much more money home than we ever imagined," Eddie Cross, a prominent member of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), told IRIN.

"This would explain where all the foreign currency that keeps this country going, is coming from; it explains why many more people are not actually dying from the present crisis in terms of hunger, malnutrition and neglect."

About seven million of Zimbabwe's official population of 12 million, or more than half the people, are receiving food aid, although this does not factor in the millions thought to have left the country in recent years.

Dollarizing

Cross said the remittances explained the government policy of printing money, which fuelled hyperinflation and enabled the ruling ZANU-PF elite to access hard currency and fund their lifestyle.

Zimbabwe's central bank estimated in 2008 that locals were spending an estimated US$950 million annually on basic commodities in neighbouring states, a trend believed to have precipitated ZANU-PF's decision to dollarize after the local currency collapsed under the weight of hyperinflation, officially estimated in July 2008 at 231 million percent.

Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, US, and hyperinflation specialist, estimated inflation in Zimbabwe at 89.7 sextillion percent in November 2008.

It is thought that more than three million people - at least a quarter of the population - have left for neighbouring states and further afield to Britain, the US and Australia, to escape 94 percent unemployment, hyperinflation and a humanitarian crisis at home.

Posted on 2009-02-21 16:02:59 by Matt