Day: February 26, 2002

Jonas Savimbi Killed

Jonas Savimbi was killed on Feb. 22 by soldiers of the Angolan army. Savimbi waged guerilla warfare against governments in Angola for 36 years and became an ally of the United States during the 1980s when Ronald Reagan received Savimbi in the White House. Whatever else he was, Savimbi was skilled at public relations.

At that time, the Soviet Union and Cuba supported the government of Angola, while South Africa supported Savimbi’s UNITA (in fact, it is doubtful UNITA would have survived at that time without South African and then U.S. aid.)

After the Cold War, the United States lost interest in Angola and Savimbi proved once and for all that Washington’s bet on him as a supporter of freedom had been misplaced. In 1991, Savimbi reached a peace treaty in which he was supposed to abandon guerilla warfare in favor of democratic elections in Angola. But after Savimbi was defeated in those elections, he once again returned to guerilla warfare.

The BBC report on Savimbi’s death notes that he died with a pistol in his hand and that the Angolan army unit that tracked him down shot him no less than 17 times. Few people will likely miss him.

Source:

Obituary: Jonas Savimbi, Unita’s local boy. The BBC, February 25, 2002.

Savimbi ‘died with gun in hand’. The BBC, February 25, 2002.

Mugabe Can’t Even Frame His Opposition Without Enormous Gaffes

Zimbabwe has elections coming up — elections that would almost certainly result in a loss of power for Robert Mugabe if they were fair and free. Mugabe’s got a problem, and this week a solution appeared in the form of a videotape supposedly showing opposition leaders plotting to kill Mugabe.

The setup is this: opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai recently met with Ari Ben-Menashe. That meeting was surreptitiously taped, apparently by Zimbabwe secuirty forces.

Ben-Menashe used to work for Mugabe, though was apparently passing himself off now as an independent consultant. At the meeting, the two discuss a variety of issues related to the upcoming elections until Ben-Menashe proposes assassinating Mugabe, at which point Tsvangirai claims he left the room and refused to have anything more to do with Ben-Menashe.

But Mugabe is selling a different story — that Tsvangirai proposed the assassination plot and Ben-Menashe turned the opposition union leader in, saying he was shocked when Tsvangirai proposed the political murder.

So how do we know that Tsvangirai’s version is correct — and that Ben-Menashe was working with Zimbabwe’s security forces to set all of this up? Because Mugabe’s government released a videotape of that meeting. An extensively edited videotape. No, make that an idiotically edited videotape. Here’s how the BBC sums up the problems with the edited video, citing the point at which Tsvangirai appears to agree to the murder of Mugabe,

Although this sounds like damning evidence, after each question or answer, the film suddenly jumps and the figures switch their seating positions, showing that the clip has been heavily edited.

The Media Monitoring Project of Zimbabwe has analysed the video tape and says that a version broadcast relentlessly on Zimbabwe television has a video timer on the screen, which also demonstrates “that the video had been cut and rearranged in a manner that appeared to suit the assassination conspiracy theory”.

“The timer… changed repeatedly from, 9.45am to 9.25am; and from 9.25am to 9.43am and then back to 9.27am; and from 9.52am to 9.44am,” says the MMPZ.

Mugabe’s security forces are so stupid they left the damn timecode stamp in the edited video the released to the public! Sure puts a better perspective on his mismanagement of Zimbabwe.

Source:

What lies behind Zimbabwe’s treason tape. The BBC, February 26, 2002.

Screensaver Narrows Possible Anthrax Drugs, Enrages Some Users

New Scientist reports that researchers at Oxford University used one of those distributed computing screensavers to analyze 3.5 billion potential anthrax-fighting compounds and reduce that to a mere 300,000 potential compounds which will now be analyzed using a supercomputer. This sort of analysis would normally require several years.

Oddly enough, some people who ran the screensaver were angry because they were told it would be used to search for cures for life threatening diseases and thought that research on cancer was more important than research into anthrax. According to New Scientist,

But despite the near euphoria on the project, not everyone in the screensaver user community is happy. That is because 1.2 million of the 1.35 million people who ran the screensaver actually downloaded a program that seeks useful drugs for treating cancer.

Some downloaders have been offended by the way their PC was harnessed for use in a project that they did not sanction. Some, who have written to New Scientist expressing their anger, say cancer is a far bigger killer than anthrax, and they wanted their software to continue working on cancer.

Of course if they really want to have an enormous impact on life-threatening diseases, I would suggest malaria and dysentery which, along with AIDS, are the big killers outside of the developed world (and since malaria and dysentery tend to disproportionately kill infants and children, their impact on life expectancy is far greater than cancer’s impact in the developed world).

Source:

Anthrax screensaver finds promising new drugs. Paul Marks, New Scientist, February 19, 2002.

AIDS Research in Primates Bears Fruit

In primate research Merck set out to find a vaccine that prevented HIV infection. It failed at that, but it may have produced the next best thing — a vaccine that suppresses HIV so thoroughly that those receiving it may not even be able to pass along the disease to other human beings.

Researchers were obviously disappointed when their vaccines failed to prevent HIV infection in monkeys. But after a bit of tinkering the vaccines did almost completely suppress the virus and the associated symptoms.

Very preliminary clinical testing of these vaccines have begun in human beings, and the results so far are promising. Two small groups of human volunteers were injected with different versions of the vaccines in Phase I tests designed largely to determine whether or not the vaccine is safe to move into larger trials in human beings.

The vaccine exposes the body to a protein that HIV relies upon to reproduce. In the two vaccines tested, one simply exposes the immune system to that protein, while the other exposes it to a cold virus that is wrapped around the protein. Even with the relatively low dose vaccines used to evaluate the safety of the approach, large percentages of both groups saw immune response systems much like those experienced by the monkeys who were exposed to the vaccine.

There was some concern about these sorts of vaccines earlier this year when one of eight monkeys injected with a similar virus finally succumbed to infections caused by SIV. In that a case a single mutation in the SIV virus carried by that particular monkey rendered the vaccine useless, although the seven other monkeys continue to have suppressed the disease and remain healthy.

In that case, though, the monkey that died received a relatively weak form of the vaccination, suggesting that vaccination should produce the strongest immune response possible to provide longer term suppression of the disease.

Given the clinical trial results of Merck’s vaccine, hopefully it will not be too long before the vaccine is tested on those already infected with HIV to see if it can provide the sort of disease suppression in humans that it does in monkeys. So far, the results are encouraging.

Source:

HIV vaccines show promise. The BBC, February 26, 2002.

Land Trust that Banned Hunting Brings in Sharpshooters to Kill Foxes

The Essex Wildlife Trust owns almost 8,000 acres of land in 93 nature preserves in Great Britain. A few years ago, the Trust banned all hunting on land it owns, but got more than it bargained for in the process.

On the 600-acre Tollesbury Wick reserve, the past few years have scene the fox population increase dramatically with an attendant decline in the population of ground-nesting lapwings. Five years ago there were only 4-5 foxes on the reserve, whereas today there are about 20. While there were 38 pairs of ground-nesting lapwings five years ago, today there are only three. There have also been increases in fox attacks on other animals in the reserve.

The solution to deal with the problem? Hunting, of course. The Trust hired sharpshooters to cull the foxes, resulting in predictable outrage among animal rights activists in Great Britain.

Graham Game, the Trust’s development manager, told The Daily Telegraph,

We are getting the worst of both worldsWe are getting lots of flak for deciding to cull the foxes, but it looks as if not a single predator will have been shot. He said the decision to kill the foxes was only taken after much heart-searching and research. We have now reached the situation where these predators are making the future of endangered species unsustainable.

Of course the animal rights activists aren’t buying that argument at all. “When we tell them that we have seen foxes killing lambs and ground-nesting birds,” Game said, “they simply do not accept it.”

Do these activists think that foxes are herbivores?

Source:

Hunting ban trust faces protests over fox cull. David Sapsted, The Daily Telegraph, February 22, 2002.