Domain: afrol.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to afrol.com.
Comments · 6
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Re:Been there
Maybe he lives in Mozambique. Coffee and tea are a better bet because a boiled bacterium is a think of beauty forever. Although bottled water is next best as a 3rd world beverage.
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Re:What about evolution?
This may have to be done for a whole rainbow of malaria carriers in many different local ecologies:
http://www.afrol.com/articles/24056
What I said about many prolific and rapid adaptation goes even more for microbes than insects. All it takes is one microbe that can survive in these new mosquitoes and the adaptation will likely occur more than once. Others have pointed out that it may buy time for vaccine research but I doubt this will eradicate malaria once and for all. -
Re:Well, if John Carmack says so. . .
--It would certainly go a distance in explaining the actions of some of the supposedly fundamentalist Islamic terrorists in the prelude to the grand 9-11 performance acting in ways most un-Islamic. (Booze and Cocaine and Women [gnn.tv] won't win the devout many points with Allah.) So what's the story here? Were they fundamentalist terrorists, or were they dupe mercenaries who didn't know what they were signing up for, and who were allowed to bring off their clutzy plan while the US secret services conveniently looked the other way [tvnewslies.org], while the secret/shadow government [washingtonpost.com] provided access to the remote controlled [911review.com] jets actually capable of performing the precision flying which badly-trained mercenary goof-balls could not have been asked to manage, and while the Israeli-owned security companies [whatreallyhappened.com] which held contracts at each of the airports involved during 9-11, gave them fast-lane service at the boarding check points?
There is a great antidote to some of that confusion: Debunking 9/11 Myths
Dudes with bombs and box-cutters working independently is still the false reality which needs to be understood here. The myth of terrorists is the preferred tool for building the fascist state. Luckily, this is increasingly well understood. It's the 'How' which seems to be causing some hiccups.
Here are some victories the good guys won against terrorism around the world in the last couple of weeks (this list doesn't include terrorist attacks):
11 suspected Islamic radicals arrested in Spanish African enclave
Spain arrests Chechen rebel suspect wanted in Russia
Turkey Arrests Suspected Regional Al Qaeda Leader
Turkey arrests 10 with suspected links to al-Qaeda
Pakistan arrests 47 suspected Taliban
13 foreign nationals arrested in S. Afghanistan
Police Claim Arresting Taliban Commander in Ghazni
Pakistanis Arrest 90 Afghans at Border
Saudi detains 139 suspected militants
Security forces scrambled to disrupt Asian summit terror plots
Court freezes Islamic group's bank account
Top aide of Qaeda chief in Iraq killed
Morocco jails 14 Islamists
Eight French Islamists Returned To France
4 Dutch Muslims Convicted of Terror Plan
and another trial: Denmark: Muslim terror trial begins
Terrorist plot targeting Illinois mall foiled
Man accused in Taliban arrest ordered held without bail
And reaching back just a little further just to inc -
Re:These look great!Well, a lot of problems can be traced back to lack of education. The solution to AIDS is obvious.
In Kwazulu-Natal province, South Africa, up to 40% of mothers giving birth have AIDS. Link. Education won't help them. Most AIDS babies die before they reach 5 years old. Education won't help them either. About 10% of babies develop AIDS from their mother while in the womb, another 20% during birth, and another 15% from breastfeeding. Link. Most third-world mothers can't afford to be on antiretroviral medication through her pregnancy. The biggest reduction comes from peri-natal treatment, where a $4 pill (nevirapine) can cut AIDS transmission from mother to child in half.
Education costs a lot of money, and its effect on preventing HIV/AIDS depends ultimately on a decision each educated person will voluntarily make. Most likely with a naked person in front of them. On the other hand, you've got a 50% shot at saving a life outright by spending $4.
Of course, as you point out, all of this is academic if the medicine/computers can't get to the children. Spend a few billion dollars to topple the corrupt governments first. If the US government had spent half of what they did in Iraq fighting African corruption and bringing in medicine and food, thousands of lives would have been saved rather than lost.
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I know, that's the worst part
You are being gamed to support endless war.
Funnily enough, I even know that, realise it, am 100% aware of it. I even know (and this is not very well publicised in the media coverage) that the very creation of these cartoons was a deliberate "social experiment" by a right-wing Danish publication designed to show that "western ideals" are at odds with the ideals of the Muslim immigrant populations and to polarise people on the issue. From http://www.afrol.com/articles/17949:
"The editor of the conservative daily had asked Danish cartoonist to draw Mohammed with the intention of "testing" what kind of reactions this would provoke. He wanted to find out whether the rather large number of Muslim immigrants to Denmark were influencing the limits of freedom of expression in the Nordic kingdom.
This "test" caused immediate reactions, with Danish Muslims demonstrating in front of the daily. The editor even received several death threats. 'Jyllands-Posten had achieved what it seemingly wanted - to demonstrate that there exists a conflict between liberal Danish cultural values and the values of the immigrant society."
But my own "ideology" (if you will, although putting it that way reeks of moral relativism) is an incredibly strong belief in the importance of freedom of speech in maintaining a healthy society. I didn't even know I felt so strongly about it until this incident. Here in South Africa we watched thousands of people suffer and die even very recently to give us this freedom. And we need to keep it or our society will slip back into a state of horror. Yet now I watch some of those very same people who fought for it already ready to give it up just to placate some violent killers. If (and I mean if) it really is the case that freedom of speech is at odds with a certain group of people, and there is no peaceful middle ground, then I find I have no choice but to fight it. The inevitable consequences of allowing free speech to be given up will be too horrible to even contemplate.
Here I am, my view polarised by a group of people I know was trying to manipulate and polarise my view. And yet my reasoning stands, my feelings on the issue stand, I can't ignore it.
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Re:Pay attention to the comments that will appear.
Then you're a bit silly. But as long as you're a harmless silly, I don't give a shit.
I guess what it comes down to is that I prefer the people around me to have decent critical thinking skills. Even if they're not doing any harm to me at the moment, gullible god-says-so types are a lot easier to subvert than people who actually think about what they're being told to believe.
Especially when you think about that psychological gaps the religion is being used to fill. Religion isn't necessarily a static set of beliefs, it can also be a collection of conflicting arguments providing convenient justification for nearly any action. Which brings us to...
I'm not a big fan of Christianity, but I'm not sure that's true.
Between the 9+ crusades, and the slaughter of native Africans and Americans I think it's pretty safe to say I'm right. As of 1897, M. D. Aletheia put the total at about 56 million.
So that number doesn't include any complicity in the holocaust, nor a host of other atrocities in Rwanda, Ireland,Vietnam (I assume you've seen this Pulitzer prize winning picture of Thich Quang Duc.)