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What do I owe Africa?

Really?

"Fruits of the 21st Century?"

How about if Africa gets itself out of the 6th century by producing something the world wants?

And this time, try not to make it slaves, terrorists, virus es, endangered species, or diamonds to raise money to hack people to death.

--Blair
"You are only as free, happy, smart, and rich as you think you are."

There is an interesting debate going on in parts of Europe right now concerning the insertion of engineered plants / animals into the food chain (acceptance in Yurp isn't as high as in the US). There was a radio interview the other day in which a point was brought up which I thought was interesting:

Engineered food is an unknown risk, but in a new way. Other large-scale risks can be calculated with more precision, e.g. nuclear power, direct contamination of water supply etc. Engineered food may have a very large scale impact 20 years down the road, and however small chances are, they must be "multiplied" by this potential impact. The question was of insurance, and the point was: insurance in this instance is doing nothing other than allowing companies to take risks they would otherwise not take, by paying for someone else to take over not only the risk, but actually the accountability.

The worst-case scenario would be a cross between Thalidomid ("Contergan") for the masses and, well, lots and lots of insurance companies in chapter 13.

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."
Feodor Dostoevski, Russian novelist, 1821-1881

By this standard, one might be better off in Russia, even with its huge incarceration rate and multi-drug resistant TB epidemic in its prisons, than in the US.

Here's why:

In 1994 there were 14,300 victims in the jails at any time and that 290,000 males were victimized in jail every year, 192,000 of them penetrated. Once "turned out," a victim is earmarked for constant further assaults. With a repeat rate very conservatively estimated at every other day, and counting gang-rapes as a single incident, this gives at least 7,150 sexual victimizations a day in jails.

Nine per cent of the hetersexuals had been raped; 7.8% of them had been anally and 5.7% orally penetrated, but white heterosexuals were 2 to 3 times as likely to have been penetrated than black heterosexuals.

In 1996, released prisoners made up 17% (39,000 cases) of the total number of US AIDS cases and 13.1% to 19.3% of all people with HIV infection (98,000 to 145,000).

Russia and the United States lead the world in their use of incarceration. Russia jails 690 people per 100,000 citizens, while the U.S. rate is 600 per 100,000. The U.S. rate is higher than at any previous time, and it is 6 to 10 times higher than the rate of Western European nations.

The US incarceration rate has more than tripled since 1980.

A THIRD of the Russian prison population, about 350,000 inmates, will be released this year.

An estimated 4 million Americans are infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV), with between 20 percent to 60 percent of the nation's 2 million prisoners infected.

Just listen to the dishonorable senator from the state of North Carolina, Jesse Helms, who in 1995 argued for the cutting of Federal AIDS funding in as much as AIDS is a problem only facing "people deliberately engaging in unnatural acts".

And then there are plenty of other idiots espousing similar views, like Bob Enyart ("Gay stands for Got AIDS Yet?") and Fred Phelps (of godhatesfags.com fame, who leads protests at the funerals of people who die of AIDS).

Your other points are equally bogus, but I already fed another troll today. Look for an earlier post called "you depress me".