Sometimes the terror of a mundane, daily drumbeat towards perpetual war and torture and ignorance and regression overwhelms one so greatly he or she becomes numb to its totality and actual nature. We can be made to forget or to tolerate the uncivilized. The following lists and graphically depicts the monstrousities of Bush's insane new world order.
Bush's attitude and policy towards infectious disease has coupled with widespread environmental devastation and conflicts around the world to foster epidemic conditions. The Administration's pro-16th century "Abstinence" propaganda would be bad enough if HIV/AIDS was not a gateway problem for many nations and communities, but HIV often facilitates other paralyzing societal problems, like non-HIV epidemics. Now, multi-drug resistant and extensively drug resistant tuberculosis are surging across Sub-Saharan Africa.
"One third of the world's population carries the tuberculosis bacterium, but the disease remains latent in nine out of 10." TB is no longer latent in conjunction with HIV, just as other non-lethal sicknesses and disease suddenly can become horrifying crisis for families and one's own life. You don't just get HIV in Africa, you get TB and if not die from that, die from food or waterborne illness, malaria or even a common cold (which are dangerous enough in Africa's current state without HIV). I wouldn't be surprised if Bush has never been really educated by his crony staff about the real-world, demographical story of HIV or any disease.
Environmental devastation also fuels epidemics. Many Americans fear their wild areas due to threats of West Nile and other diseases, but mosquitoes harboring West Nile are more likely to be living in their lawns, drainage ditches or gutters, where humans and pets are nearby and the water is plentiful. And as we and other leaders like China use our economic pressure to lead the world in stripping the Amazon and Asian rainforests of their native resources, diseases once associated with the dark past have resurged;
In Peru, malaria was almost eradicated 40 years ago, but this year 64,000 cases have been registered in the country, half in the Amazon region. It is thought there are many more unregistered cases deep within the massive and humid rainforest, where health authorities find it almost impossible to gain access.
"Malaria is present. There have been 32,000 cases this year in this area alone - that says malaria is very much present," said Hugo Rodríguez, a doctor at the Andean Health Organisation, which is fighting malaria in border areas of Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. (The Guardian.)
Also Cholera. Cholera in Iraq where we're told coniditions are improving, in the "other Iraq" in the secured, safe, pro-American North. And Congo:
KINSHASA (Reuters) - A cholera outbreak in Congo's eastern city of Goma is raising fears of an epidemic among tens of thousands of refugees in camps, aid workers said on Thursday.
Fighting between government soldiers, Tutsi insurgents, Rwandan Hutu rebels and local Mai Mai militia has forced more than 370,000 to flee villages in North Kivu province this year.
...Leo Jansen, MSF-France's head of mission in eastern Congo, said that while the outbreak was manageable, it could soon flare out of control because refugees continue to flood in.
"They're in a bad situation. They're susceptible to cholera. We've seen the number of cases double inside Mugunga (camp) in recent weeks," he told Reuters. "We are fearing that the outbreak could be bigger than in other years." (Reuters.)
Then there's also war, because war combines with environmental devastation and also with rape and demographical shifts--mass deaths, refugees, huge populations moving about--spreading disease.
Here's a quick and dirty map of war since 2001: (Click to enlarge)
In bright red are the countries and territories being occupied. (West Bank, Western Sahara. Iraq and Afghanistan were invaded by Bush; in the case of Somalia, his strongarmed proxy Ethiopia). Also in red are those suffering internal conflict (Algeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka) or civil war (Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda) or invasions (Lebanon). Sudan's combination of civil wars and genocides are in the west, south and east and have spilled west into Chad and the Central African Republic. In the dark red are countries that have been recently bombed (Syria by Israel) or suffered a coup (Thailand, Togo, Venezuela and Haiti were both overthrown via the influence and actions of the Bush Administration). In black are some of the countries doing the warring against some of the red countries but not suffering internal conflict, like the United States and Britain. Essentially this is the multi-national force in Iraq plus Israel, even though most of these countries have contributed a pittance as far as their numbers account for strategic value.
This is not meant to be exhaustive and cannot please everyone, but it gives an idea of what the world actually looks like. For example Mexico's election last year was clearly vote fraud if not a non-violent coup. Also the NATO and AU nations are not all colored black as occupiers. Nor did I include countries which only sent medics to Iraq: Japan was included because its Self Defense Force is, to me, clearly being used in an occupational capacity.
But this map is scary: it clearly tells a story, and that is in part a Western-dominated neocolonial or neoimperial force asserting itself in Western Asia, the Himalayas and Africa, or ignoring or facilitating conditions tantamount to continuous war and similar disaster in places like Africa and Columbia. Somalia is being pushed to the "breaking point" by violence.
Now imagine essentially all those sub-Saharan countries in Africa are overshadowed by a fog of HIV and TB and malaria and diarrhea and other infectious disease. Those bright red countries have lost millions in war, and this is ignoring conflicts of the 90s like the Rwandan genocide and previous wars in the same countries. As rape has devastated millions of women in Africa, HIV and other STD's were spread, to the point where some countries have more people infected with HIV as a percentage of population than we have registered Republicans or Democrats.
While this may all sound very dark ages, these intensified wars, as in the case of Congo, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan and the political intrigues of the Middle East and Asia, the resurgence of archaic diseases and the use of superstition and religious zealotry as an approach to disease are really more like the 16th and 17th centuries, which were far bloodier and darker than the predecessing ages. The age of Bush isn't that bad here but in Africa conditions range from fair to dire. The conflicts on this map have claimed millions of lives in only 6 years.
Of course, skeptics might claim that things in Africa were also bad during Clinton years. Clinton, of course, failed to act during Rwanda, having been scared away from intervention following a media-GOP hounding from the prior Marine incident in Somalia. (And then tried to redeem his administration in Kosovo.) But the age of Bush is worse in two obvious regards: that the Bush administration has abandoned its approach to epidemics to the witch doctors, and that few parts of Africa have qualitatively improved, barring Ghana and other countries that were not in dire straits 1998-2004. Stasis is the goal of communists and some socialists, and only after a utopia or sorts is achieved. Not locked in against developing and struggling countries. Africa not only is a moral necessity but is central to mining for computer parts, the breakneck gold exchange market, diamonds and other raw materials and vital commodities for a globalized economic system. Where the U.S. abdicated, China is stepping in as an unprecedented challenge to American hegomony and status as premier superpower.
Also Bush has committed himself to the wrong fight several times from a realist perspective: overthrowing Venezuela, not Colombia, Haiti and not Cuba, intervention in Iraq but not Congo or Sudan in those dark days from 2003-2004, allowing the bombing of Lebanon to drag down both Israel and the U.S.'s reputation at the United Nations and among Arabs (who else can help you in the Mideast?) strongarming Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia, which isn't working, instead of bolstering the African Union's work in Darfur. Every major foreign policy decision this administration has made was not only botched but always the wrong target
That map shows the Bush world is one of feudalism. They didn't tell you that shining city on a hill is shielded from pan-continental suffering ruled by famine, plague and the machine gun by an insurmountable cliff which keeps us ignorant and the oppressed from hoping for real justice.