Daily Archives: 5 Jul 04

Bush’s AIDS Hypocrisy Cons The NY Times

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The NY Times bought Bush’s lies in reporting on his laudatory comments about Uganda’s AIDS prevention policy as if he supported condom use. Just one week earlier, Bush’s Centers for Disease Control had issued vicious anti-condon regulations denying federal HIV-prevention funding to any organization that failed to include information on the lack of effectiveness of condoms in their educational efforts. And it was not as if the Times would have had to look hard to find criciticism of the CDC stance. And this is not just another story about the bottomfeeding dishonesty of our dysadministration. Discouraging condom use kills.

“There’s only one word to describe the effect of the new CDC guidelines: lethal. And Bush’s campaign boilerplate on AIDS in Philadelphia was “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” bilge. Too bad the Times didn’t notice.” (The Nation [via walker])

Correction: Rivka did the responsible thing; she looked at the actual CDC guidelines, and concludes that Ireland’s position in The Nation is a distortion. The central point stands — Bush’s compliments to Uganda are hypocrisy. It is not as if Bush actually does support condom use, but the CDC regulations are not the place to look for the evidence.

“There’s plenty of outrage to be found in the Bush Administration’s approach to HIV prevention – say, in their relentless pushing of abstinence-only sex ed programs for teenagers and their political scrutiny of NIH grants. It’s not surprising that people immediately leap to think the worst of anything associated with the present government. But in this particular case, I think that Doug Ireland is frothing up a lot of public anxiety over very minor changes.”

Powell dumps diplomacy for disco at ASEAN

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“On Friday, Powell danced alongside five other U.S. officials sporting costumes that included an Indian headdress.


The group blasted out a version of the 1970s disco classic, to the delight of foreign ministers from across the Asia-Pacific and Europe.


‘President Bush, he said to me: ‘Colin, I need you to run the Department of State. We are between a rock and a hard place,” Powell and his colleagues sang to the tune of the disco classic.” (CNN)

Keyless Remotes To Cars in Maryland Suburb Suddenly Useless

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“The sporadic incidents — at least five days in the past year, by Drake’s count — have become something of a mystery in Waldorf, a sprawling mix of shopping centers and subdivisions in Charles County. But such outages are not unprecedented.


Three years ago, thousands of drivers in Bremerton, Wash., were stumped on two occasions when their push-button remotes proved impotent. It happened in Las Vegas in February, prompting hundreds of calls to car dealerships and locksmiths. And in May, a two-way radio system being tested at Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle jammed remote control garage door openers in communities near the base.


In most cases, remote control failure is little more than a curiosity, as drivers can simply use their keys to unlock the doors. Some cars, however, require the device to deactivate an alarm or start the engine. Charles Vernon, a retiree from Accokeek whose remote first malfunctioned at the mall in Waldorf on May 10, said the problem is a safety issue and an inconvenience.”

I am glad to see someone is tracking these incidents. I hadn’t heard of the Las Vegas or Florida events but readers of FmH may recall that I posted items about the Bremerton, Wash. occurrence when it happened. Speculation at that time related to the possibility that some radio technology employed by Navy warships coming and going in the area was interfering with the keyless entry systems (and, as I recall, garage door openers etc.). The frequency range of these devices falls in a waveband primarily registered for military and law enforcement purposes. Obviously, military derring-do is implicated in the Florida situation as well, and I am certain the Las Vegas area is well-endowed with military installations.

An engineer at an AT&T microwave tower in Waldorf made mysterious allusions to the use of the tower at times for broadcasts for secret government purposes.

“We don’t have a schedule when we use that signal; it occurs when necessary. I think it will go on . . . but we can see about not using that frequency.. I didn’t realize it was disturbing other folks.”(Washington Post)

On the other hand, of course, all of these incidents may be related to alien disruption of the conveniences of modern earthly life as a prelude to their invasion… or merely to teach us a lesson from their own experience about the perils of overreliance on technological inoovation.