Month: February 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.

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.

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.

Farm Subsidies, Tariffs and Lifesavers

TechCentralStation.Com’s Ryan H. Sanger takes down George W. Bush for his recent statements linking farm subsidies, of all things, to the 9/11 terrorists attacks.

Sanger reports that at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association meeting in Denver, Bush told the cattlemen that, “It’s in our national security interests that we be able to feed ourselves . . . This nation has got to eat.”
As Sanger notes, given the relatively high levels of obesity in the United States, no one seems in danger of going hungry anytime soon. The truly bizarre thing about U.S. agricultural policy, however, is that it encourages low prices for some commodities while encouraging high prices for others.

On the artificially low price side, Sanger correctly notes that the problem with farm subsidies is that they create an excess of supply which makes farming unprofitable — at which point farmers turn into beggars at the government trough demanding one handout after another.

But the other side of the coin is that the United States uses tariffs and other devices to artificially raise the price of some agricultural commodities. A prime example of this is sugar — tariffs on sugar imports are set at such a high level that sugar in the United States costs up to twice as much as it does elsewhere.

The people who make Lifesavers understand that reality. Until a few months ago the major North American plant producing Lifesavers was located in Holland, Michigan — just a couple hours from where I live. But the high sugar costs in the United States finally took their toll, and the company announced it would close the plant and move to Canada where sugar producers don’t have the same influence. Sugar costs about half as much as it does in the United States, even after the exchange rate is accounted for.

Ah yes, thank goodness those tariffs are there protecting American jobs.

Source:

Beast of burden. Ryan H. Sager, TechCentralStation.Com, February 20, 2002.

Staph Vaccination Succeeds in Animals, Then Humans

Researchers at the U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development recently reported on the successful trial of a vaccination for staphylococcus infection — a relatively common, and potentially deadly disease usually contracted in the hospital environment.

Staph infection fools the body into not realizing that it is under attack. The surface of the bacteria is covered with two sugar molecules which most human immune systems fail to recognize as a threat.

Experimenting in mice, the researchers took those two sugar molecules and added a third protein that they knew the immune system would recognize as a threat. Researchers proved that, at least in mice, that approach would work.

They then conducted trials of the vaccine on 1,900 patients receiving dialysis. Such patients typically have weakened immune systems and are especially vulnerable to staph infection. In the first 40 weeks of the study, those receiving the vaccination had 57 percent fewer staph infections compared to a control group that did not receive the vaccination.

Longer term the success rate was lower, but still represented a statistically significant increase in protection against staph infection compared to the control group.

The upshot of that is that the vaccination is likely to work even better with people who do not have compromised immune systems. As the BC quoted Robert Naso, who works with a company working on developing the vaccine,

Kidney disease patients on dialysis are among the least like to respond to a vaccine because their immune system are generally compromised. Based upon previous clinical studies in normal, healthy volunteers, we believe that other patient populations at risk for rStaph infections will respond to the vaccine with even higher levels of antibodies than was achievable in kidney disease patients.

An excellent example of the sort of discoveries and advances that animal research makes possible.

Source:

Promising results for ‘superbug’ vaccine. The BC, February 14, 2002.

Is Positive Discrimination the Solution to Gender Imbalances in British Parliament?

After last summer’s elections in Great Britain, women made up only 118 of 659 politicians elected to the House of Commons. Great Britain is now considering requiring political parties to nominate women. Is this legal or even a good idea?

In the 1990s, Great Britain experimented with a system that forced parties to nominate more women for the British version of primary elections. That system was ruled illegal when it was challenged by law professor Peter Jepson.

On Jan. 28, Parliament approved a bill that would reinstate this system, essentially allowing political parties to engage in “positive discrimination” that would be illegal for private entities to do.

It is not clear that this is either legal or desirable.

Jepson told Women’s ENews that he would again challenge the practice, this time under European Union law. “I’m not at odds with the Labour Party over the inadequate representation of women in Parliament,” Jepson told Women’s ENews, “But there is nothing positive about discrimination.”

Current Member of Parliament Anne Widdecomb said she opposed the planned change not only because it would violate the human rights of men, but would also create a two-tiered group of female MPs. Widdecombe said,

It would create two groups of women MPs, one who could look everyone from the prime minister down in the eye, and the other that got there because of special favors. I wouldn’t find that helpful. I’d find it humiliating.

Widdecombe believes that the gender balance will shift when women who grew up in the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister reach their 40s and 50s. Even then, though, it is questionable if women will ever achieve the exact 50/50 split that some feminists seem to desire.

By comparison, Women’s ENews notes that only 14 percent of U.S. House of Representative members are women. That percentage will almost certainly be higher 20 years from now, but I suspect the same sort of factors that result in a rather persistent wage gap will also result in large gender imbalances in democratically elected legislatures.

Source:
British Parliament passes bill to elect more women. Paul Rodgers, Women’s ENews, February 15, 2002.