Wednesday, 06/27/2001

agreements

My goodness. An agreement on an approach, and it only took them 20 years to reach it. Let's see on those particulars, there ....

• The need for member states to focus comprehensive preventive efforts on young people.


• The importance of creating preventive and treatment programs that reinforce one another.


• The need for member states to empower women to have greater control over decisions relating to their sexuality, particularly as they relate to their ability to protect themselves from HIV infection.


• A call to involve people living with HIV/AIDS in every aspect of their care, from development to evaluation of programs.

Oh, please. Oh, please. Let's see what such a program will probably look like under Bush II Fraudulency, shall we? Let's shall.

For the first option, we'll offer "just say no! to sex" abstinence programs, because, after all, if you're not having sex, you're not getting AIDS, and everybody knows that the Youth of America can be counted on not to have sex, right? And on that second item, well, if you've got a prevention program telling people not to have sex, then you don't need to do much with treatment, right, because nobody will be getting the disease! And we'll empower women to have control over their sexuality by encouraging them to stay home and virginal until marriage, after which they need merely stay home and obey their lord and master ... I mean, "husband", of course. And if we do all that, we won't need to involve people with HIV/AIDS in doing messy things like building programs that work, because all the people currently with the disease will die off, and there won't be any new cases, right?

Right?

Looking outside the US, it's hard to see how the section on women's rights can be implemented in countries with even stronger traditions of restricting women than the US has. How does this work in countries which, for example, think that raping lesbians back into heterosexuality is a valid treatment? (Note that the Muslim and Caribbean countries objected strenuously to mentioning the "vulnerable groups".) What rights over their sexuality do women have in such places?

And, of course, the final kicker is that compliance is completely voluntary for all signatories. Which means that this is a declaration of principle and nothing more ... and barely that.

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the last ten ...

12/19/2001: vive la france

12/19/2001: princess, redux

12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld

12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now

12/18/2001: interesting donation

12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed

12/18/2001: saudi princess

12/17/2001: new resolve

12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right

12/17/2001: polluters ho!