Religion based policies

[Frank S.]

This is the kind of stance which will have dangerous implications.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/21/polit ... gewanted=1

U.S. Is Accused of Trying to Isolate U.N. Agency
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

Published: June 21, 2004


WASHINGTON, June 20 - The Bush administration, which cut off its share of financing two years ago to the United Nations agency handling population control, is seeking to isolate the agency from groups that work with it in China and elsewhere, United Nations officials and diplomats say.

Pressed by opponents of abortion, the administration withdrew its support from a major international conference on health issues this month and has privately warned other groups, like Unicef, that address health issues that their financing could be jeopardized if they insist on working with the agency, the United Nations Population Fund.

The administration also has indicated that it hopes to persuade the United Nations' Latin American caucus to back away from a common position on population and development that was adopted in Santiago, Chile, in March on the grounds that the document's discussion of reproductive rights could be interpreted as promoting abortion.

The actions are part of an administration effort to ensure that international agencies and private groups do not promote abortions overseas. In its first days in office, the Bush administration reintroduced the Reagan-era that critics call the "global gag rule," which denies money to groups that even discuss abortion as an option, except in cases that threaten life or involve rape or incest.

The Population Fund, known as Unfpa, has long been a favorite target of abortion opponents in Congress and in religious-based organizations, who contend that it assists in coercive abortions in China. The critics prevented American financing of the fund for most of the last two decades, and they have now set their sights on curbing its operations with other United Nations agencies.

The administration's position has frustrated some United Nations officials and family planning advocates, who have complained that advances in education and awareness on reproductive issues are being undermined by the United States, where abortion is legal. Those critics, most of whom spoke anonymously because the United States government is the leading contributor to their agencies, charged that the administration was pandering to conservative supporters, and said that doing so placed the United States in alliance with tradition-bound Islamic countries and the Holy See.

Last year, the State Department cut financing to Marie Stopes International, a British charity involved in AIDS programs, because it worked with the Population Fund in China.

In a letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on Friday, four Democratic members of Congress demanded a legal explanation for withholding money from the fund and for the "threatened defunding of the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund."

Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, a New York Democrat at the fore of efforts to restore support to the fund, said the administration was jeopardizing programs in women's and family health that should not be considered contentious.

"When will the president's right wing be satisfied - when they close down the U.N.?" she asked, adding that the tough White House stance contrasts with its appeals to the United Nations for help in the Iraq war.

Supporters of the fund deny that it facilitates coerced abortions in China. They say it has made considerable progress in reducing the number of abortions through family planning programs in conjunction with the Beijing government.

Two years ago, the administration appeared to agree. A fact-finding trip for the State Department in May 2002, led by William A. Brown, the former ambassador to Israel, recommended the release of $34 million in American payments. "We find no evidence that'' the Population Fund "has knowingly supported or participated in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization" in China, it said.

But Mr. Powell, who had praised the agency's activities, abruptly reversed course, contending in a July 21, 2002, letter to Congress that the fund had provided computers and vehicles to Chinese government groups that enforced the country's coercive reproductive policy, which taxes parents who have more than one child. He charged that the fund was in violation of the 1985 law known as the Kemp-Kasten amendment, which prohibits the United States from giving money to agencies involved in coerced abortion or sterilization.

President Bush withheld the $34 million in 2002 and another payment last year. He has until July 15 to decide for this year's budget.

Conservative religious groups are keeping the pressure on the administration. A group leading the fight against the fund is the Population Research Institute in Front Royal, Va., which calls itself a research and education group that exposes human rights abuses in population control programs. The institute says China's population control policy bullies women through the mandatory use of contraception, forced abortions for those younger than 20 and prison for those who do not appear for examinations. By working with the government, the Population Fund is complicit, critics say.

The Population Fund's "support consists of public praise for, and misinformation about, China's coercive family planning policy," the institute says on its Web site.

Fund supporters counter that they have nothing to do with abortion policy. Through their programs, they give maternity kits and prenatal care to pregnant women. The administration's cuts, they say, have hurt poor women in China and elsewhere.

Sterling Scruggs, a former official in charge of external relations for the Population Fund, said his agency was being singled out to make an "ideological" point against abortion. "It reminds me of the McCarthy era," he said. "We're blackballed. They've defunded us, and even that isn't enough. It's unbelievable."

Recent signs suggest that the administration is increasing pressure on the fund in the heat of an election season.

At an informal meeting of the Unicef executive board and donors this month, the administration announced that it could no longer support joint programming with the fund because of concerns that the money could not be kept separate. United Nations officials say that joint programs allow agencies to pool resources, providing advantages in costs and efficiency.

Three federal offices pulled their support in April from the 31st annual conference sponsored by the Global Health Council. The conference, which was the first week of June, included speakers from the fund and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, its organizers said. Unlike the Population Fund, Planned Parenthood openly supports abortion services where they are legal.

Dr. Nils Daulaire, the president of the Global Health Council, an alliance of health professionals, said he was notified by the United States Agency for International Development, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that no federal money would be made available for the conference, citing "statutory duties."

Dr. Daulaire said the withdrawal resulted in the loss of more than a third of the conference's $1 million budget weeks before the event. Arthur E. Dewey, the assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, was not available for comment.

At a meeting in March of family planning lobbyists and others, he said the department's goal was to reach a legal interpretation that would allow financing of the fund, two participants in the meeting said.

But Mr. Dewey warned that advocates of the fund should not try to hitch their fortunes to other agencies in China, including Unicef and the World Health Organization, to pull those larger agencies into the abortion dispute and "tar and feather" them, the participants said.

[Frank S.]

This is not the best example I could have found, but it's the latest. We're running the risk of losing our technological edge.

US Imposes New Limits On Scientists

Reuters | June 26 2004

The U.S. government is making it harder for scientists to speak to their global colleagues and restricting who can attend an upcoming major AIDS conference, a congressman charged on Thursday.

Rep. Henry Waxman said he has a letter showing that the Health and Human Services Department has imposed new limits on who may speak to the World Health Organization.

Under the new policy, WHO must ask HHS for permission to speak to scientists and must allow HHS to choose who will respond.

"This policy is unprecedented. For the first time political appointees will routinely be able to keep the top experts in their field from responding to WHO requests for guidance on international health issues," the California Democrat wrote in a letter to HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson.

"This is a raw attempt to exert political control over scientists and scientific evidence in the area of international health," Waxman wrote.

"Under the new policy the administration will be able to refuse to provide any experts whenever it wishes to stall international progress on controversial topics."

An HHS spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

Waxman also complained that HHS had cut back a list of scientists planning to attend the International AIDS Society conference in Bangkok, Thailand, next month. The conference is considered the premiere meeting for AIDS experts.

Waxman said that 40 presentations scheduled for the conference were withdrawn after HHS decided that only 50 U.S. scientists could attend. "The scientific community was outraged by this pullback," he wrote.

"I ask you to rescind this ill-advised policy until it can be adequately reviewed and justified," Waxman wrote of the restrictions on WHO requests.

He also urged Thompson to review his decision on the Bangkok conference.

[harry hackedoff]

Bon soiree, mon brave, I read your post and have no comment
Maybe the remaining "other third" of The Gang Of Three will have
Keep posting Frank

[Whitey]

Frank and Harry,
Good evening, someone call for help? Gang of 3, leave no man behind was the phrase they wore out in a popular movie. Well you know me.
Frank is right, we are losing our edge in our main blade. Technology. From GPS to Digital to engineering it is stagnating and due to over regulation I'm afraid.
I changed career paths and will be working with Ron Nelson on a movie in Denver and possibly Tampa soon. I'm still in school, the contract thing isn't going to work out. Too political, yeah they kicked ass at the police station and that is what brought the regulations down on them. Looks like we are going to roll out anyway, I'll see what happens after the election and may change my mind.
I won't be a movie star, but a co-director. I get the script friday at noon to read over. It's a movie on girls of the night. Hey it will get attention and hopefully a profit to do the next one.
But yeah things in the US economically are bad and regulations just make it worse.
Anyway I'll be around off and on, I will be going to Tampa soon to meet with an investor so it's a time thing.
Motion picture is alot more fun than GIS. We probably won't be rich and famous, but I'm going to make a movie.
I missed you guys.

[Frank S.]

Don't be a stranger..! Interesting developments on your end...
I'm looking at a career switch myself, from financial technology to digital media: content is where it's at.

[Wholley]

Well,
let me weigh in on this.
Waxman has gone real quiet since his original allegation.
It would not suprise me in the least if it was'nt because he hasn't gotten himself in the papers recently,not that it had much effect.
Oh,Whiteman when you said Ron Nelson,did you mean Ron Jeremy?
Some interesting twists and turns happening right now,I'm not going to the sandy place either,but not for such gallant reasons as yours.
I'm going to make the change from retired to REALLY retired.
Like Frank said,don't be a stranger.
Now we need to get Bill back.
Wholley.

[Frank S.]

Speaking of Waxman, have you ever seen an uglier mug?
I always picture him as some bespectacled, semi-dandified shopkeeper in a Western, you know, the kind who wants to hire a gunfighter to save the town but balks at paying for it...

[Whitey]

Wholley my man! In a jive talking kind of "my man" way.
The desert, Iraq, Uzebki, Paki or where ever is b/s. Once I got cleared I got the rules, they can kiss my rebel ass. These yankees deserve to lose if they want to fight with their hands behind their backs.
Bill would e-mail with you but won't be back. I could give you his # if you'd like. He likes your writing style. On 6 Jul he gets a long awaited promotion to E-7. I want to try and work him into the film as an extra.
Filming seems pretty easy, just keeping investors is hard, especially with the economy going up and down. I don't blame them though.
No Ron Nelson who did "The Trackers" and a few other daytime kids films. He wants to do big people stuff now.
Ron Jeremy, I actually picked him up at the airport in Tampa in 1997 when I was working for a club. He was like a human pig and could well be gay. But no Hedge Hog in this film.
Yeah I'll be back from time to time. I got a cult following at SFTT though.
I figured if I was going to trash the US I'd do it on an American forum, but then again everyone reads it.
Problem is its alot of Bush vs. Kerry b/s.
We are really screwed in this election. Kerry is everybodys boy, anti-gun pro-angry lesbian, Bush is pro-gun, pro-spend free, anti-queer, and has his cabinet running the war or should I say troops into the ground.
Vote for? Bush? Maybe, whats is the worst that could happen? Maybe we'll hit rock bottom that way quicker rather than suffer steadily for years. If there be trouble let it be in my time.
Oh btw Wal-Mart now sells those Heinze bens you like, if they don't in your area they can order them.

You and Frank, I missed you guys.

[Frank S.]

Some links to film financing. Some may be useful, some may not:
http://www.lib.msu.edu/harris23/grants/3film.htm

I think the Bush/Kerry BS is obscuring way too much of the debate, of the issues at hand, and especially the future.
I don't quite know what it is that makes people even consider running for high office nowadays. Kerry has to know he'd inherit a hell of a panoply of problems, in the same way that Bush inherited burgeoning economic issues which are coming to roost.
Whoever gets elected has to consider, if they're worried at all about legacy (sacrosanct for politicos), that they'll come out bloodied in the next several years.
That's the danger in personalizing the debate and process, it effectively conceals the issues. Well, no matter...

I did notice the following you attracted at SFTT, Don. I suspect the honing of your debating skills on this here site may have something to do with it.

You're missed here too, remember!

[Whitey]

Hey I like it here, but working on turning British minds into American oldschool ones is wrong and futile. There I can say things Americans understand. Like 9/11, I say there all we need to do is close the borders, put the US Army on the Mexican border instead of Iraq. This would prevent alot of things as well as deter terrorism. Here it would open up an egalitarian can of worms this Rebel don't like to play with. See the UK should do the same thing and we could work a deal since they supported us in the war. They close the borders and they get posh deals on US travel including Disney. I'd give up my yardman for that.
But you know the deal.
I want to make a flick on the Patriot Movement eventually. While TSA shakes down 2 year olds the southern and northern borders are wide open and American citizens have taken it upon themselves to patrol the Mexican border on their own.
A year ago a Mexican Army unit crossed into south Texas and a brief firefight broke out with the armed Americans . Stuff you don't hear much
about. I'll be around like I said, but Bush and Kerry trashing and Constitutional stuff will more likely take place their.

[Wholley]

Whitey,
I don't think thats the point.
We don't need to turn British minds or American one's for that matter.
We enrich each other through sensible debate and the sharing of differing
points of view,well,most of us anyhoo.
Gimme Bill's #Please.You know it makes sense.
Wholley.

[Whitey]

It was good to talk to you tonight and made me all the more sure I did the right thing on the contractor job.
Maybe we could get Harry, Artist, Frank(Depending on his wife) you, me and Marina(We need a doctor at our ages) to convince Congress to give us a letter of Marquee and we could run around the globe privateering terrorist targets. We take them out, use their gear on the next group, finance the missions on their captured funds and donate a percent to a fund for soldiers famalies killed in this war.
We could have some fun I'd bet. Frank is smart so he'd be the OS operations specialist. Artist can do demo, he seems deranged enough(In a good way)Harry heavy machine gunner without a doubt and incharge of booze distribution, Wholley maybe you could be the leader, you are level headed and Frank has enough to do, Marina(Doctor duh) and I'll be the token American to make it look official, plus I can shoot good right or left handed ask Bill.
So you guys game?

[Wholley]

Sounds rather like a re-make of"The Wild Geese"
Can I be Roger Moore?Always wanted to be a"Saint"
Wholley.