Kenya: Muslim clerics declare war on condoms

Via Yid With Lid, KENYA: Muslim clerics declare war on condoms

Muslim leaders in Kenya's North Eastern Province have resolved to campaign against the promotion of condoms as a means of preventing HIV.
...
The leaders agreed to actively preach against the use and public promotion of condoms as a strategy to contain the pandemic and prevent pregnancy. They also agreed to oppose the distribution of condoms in villages and educational institutions across the northeast.

What to do, instead? Avoid looking at women, for starters:

The leaders expressed their view that the best way for the youth to avoid HIV was through the observance of Islamic teachings such as fasting, regular prayer and shunning extramarital affairs. They advised men to avoid looking at women, who should dress modestly.

Then there's the myth, too:

Abdi Welli, a taxi driver in Garissa, told IRIN/PlusNews he agreed with the clerics that condoms should be banned. He believed the widespread myth that condoms and contraceptives were laced with the HI virus. "We know the condoms are not safe ... if you want to contract the virus that causes AIDS, then use [a condom]," he said. "After all, we have heard in the past that the Western world is using the condom to eliminate Africans, and Muslims in particular."

In another part of the world, a Yemenite cleric claims to have found the cure for AIDS by reading a hadith: He "won't object to American companies adopting his invention on condition that they pressure the American administration to remove his name from the list of terrorism suspects."


What a guy.

But wait, the President of Gambia claims to have found the cure for AIDS, too... as long as it's on a Thursday:



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Importing the ruinous Bolivarian Revolution to Africa

Back in the olden days Fidel was sending troops to Angola.

Now we have Hugo sending advice to Africa. Doug Ross has the details, and pictures.

Venezuelan Minister Encourages Africa to Nationalize Oil: Who better to export the Bolivarian Revolution to Senegal than a guy named Reinaldo Bolivar? Mugabe's stranglehold on Zimbabwe is not about to ease, and Senegal can follow down the path to ruin.

Don't expect the Democrats to pay notice, especially after handing the Chavez Rule.



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Viktor Bout busted

In a day filled with news, some really big news: Arms Dealer Arrested in Thailand

Police Col. Petcharat Sengchai told reporters that Bout was wanted for conspiring to provide "weapons and explosives for Colombian rebels" known as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. The leftist FARC has been fighting Colombia's government for more than four decades, and funds itself largely through the cocaine trade and kidnapping for ransom.
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He has been accused of trafficking weapons through a series of front companies to war-wracked Central and West Africa since the early 1990s. U.N. reports say he set up a network of more than 50 aircraft around the world, owned by small, tightly controlled companies including Bukavu Aviation Transport, Business Air Services and Great Lakes Business Co.

Counterterrorism Blog asks, Why Was Viktor Bout in Thailand When He Was Arrested?

Others blogging:
A Jacksonian
Prairie Pundit
Cooperative Research



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Frozen Grand Central, and other Sunday items

Via The Anchoress, Frozen Grand Central
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The Ronulans are coming
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Evangelicals a Liberal Can Love?

Two words for Nicholas Kristof: 39th
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Laurie gets Morgellon's disease.
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Eric clarifies some Details which give me a splitting hair ache
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Is it real, or is it Mexifornia photoshop?
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Scrambling for Africa: A Conversation with John Ghazvinian
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Left bass player - sort of
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What is “Conservative” In This Republican Race?
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Last but not least, don't miss Jon's huge Blogroll amnesty day roundup.



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Sarko meets Gaddafi

The Tour de France was the big news yesterday in France, for good reason: ETA detonated two small explosive devices (the article didn't specify what kind of devices), and Tour de France leader Michael Rasmussen of Denmark was removed from the race and fired from his team after winning the 16th stage yesterday. Since the Tour ends on Sunday, this was way more than the usual excitement, particularly since this morning the Tour resumed with no-one wearing the yellow jersey.

But for the news addict like myself, there was another item of interest. Sarko's on a tour of Africa and dropped by Muammar Gaddafi's.

Always the fashion plate, Gaddafi wore a white suit with the emblem of African unity prominently pinned over his heart, black shirt and a wide (silk chiffon, maybe?) sash. Sarko looked appropriately French in traditional business garb. The day before yesterday Sarko was in Liberia, were he was warmly welcomed. Today Sarko's in Senegal, where he probably will have to work a little harder.

As it turns out, the Libya meeting took place a day after Libya released the six Bulgarian medics who had been convicted of deliberately infecting Libyan children with HIV. The medics had confessed under torture and had been sentenced to death. According to the BBC,

The medics' release was made possible by a deal struck in Tripoli on improving Libya-EU ties, following years of negotiations.

Not one to let a good opportunity go to waste, Sarko - whose trip was strategically timed - showed up, and the Guardian has the headline:
Sarkozy flies to Libya to reap rewards of medics' release

Mr Sarkozy ignored criticism that he and his wife Cecilia had been grandstanding by intervening at the end of the eight-year crisis when the hard work had been done by the European commission and other EU governments. Mrs Sarkozy joined in negotiations and then flew to Sofia with the freed medics.

Sarko and Gaddafi/Gadafy also agreed to work on a nuclear energy project that will turn sea water into clean drinking water.

Shall we drink to that?

Update, Friday 27 July
Nidra Poller examines the reaction in France.
Update, Sunday 29 July
Pinky and the Brain!

Kilimanjaro in the news

Study: Kilimanjaro's shrinking snow not sign of warming

POSTED: 12:34 p.m. EDT, June 12, 2007
Story Highlights
• Researchers: Global warming has little to do with the decline of Kilimanjaro's ice
• Kilimanjaro's decline in ice has been going on for more than a century
• Shrinking occurred two decades before any conclusive evidence of warming
• They attribute the decline to the shape of the ice and decreased snowfall

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The snows of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania have been diminishing for more than a century but probably not due to global warming, researchers report.

While the retreat of glaciers and mountaintop ice in the mid-latitudes -- where much of the world's human population lives -- is definitely linked to global climate change, the same cannot be said of Kilimanjaro, the researchers wrote in the July-August edition of American Scientist magazine.

Kilimanjaro's icy top, which provided the title for an iconic short story by Ernest Hemingway, has been waning for more than a century, according to Philip Mote of the University of Washington in the United States and Georg Kaser of the University of Innsbruck in Austria.

Most of the retreat occurred before 1953, nearly two decades before any conclusive evidence of atmospheric warming was available, they wrote.
...
Unlike mid-latitude glaciers, which are warmed and melted by surrounding air in the summer, the disappearance of Kilimanjaro's ice is driven by solar radiation, since the air around it is rarely above freezing, they wrote.
...
The researchers attributed the ice decline to complex interacting factors, including the vertical shape of the ice's edge, which allows it to shrink but not expand.

Decreased snowfall, which reduces ice buildup and determines how much energy the ice absorbs, also plays a role.

Much of Kilimanjaro's ice is vanishing by sublimation -- where ice at very low temperatures converts straight to water vapor without going through a watery phase -- rather than by melting, the scientists said.

Fluctuating weather patterns related to the Indian Ocean also could affect the shifting balance between the ice's increase, which might have occurred for decades before the first explorers reached Kilimanjaro's summit in 1889, and the shrinking that has been going on since.

Don't expect AlGore to adjust his powerpoint presentation.

Tim Blair says Enough of global warming - let's hear it for local cooling!
Here's my entry:

I hope I'm not too late for the Blair Fridge Project.

Nigeria, and today's items

Taleban terror attacks in Nigeria:
In the BBCA newscast this morning, The Nigerian army has launched an offensive to evacuate armed Islamic militants from the outskirts of the northern city of Kano; the Beeb tries to measure its words but finally gets to the point,

Islamists, known as the Taleban, hold an area of the town

The BBC's country profile states,

The imposition of Islamic law in several states has embedded divisions and caused thousands of Christians to flee. Inter-faith violence is said to be rooted in poverty, unemployment and the competition for land.

Captain Ed points out,

Even the introduction of Islamic law in Kano did not stop Islamist terrorists from taking the law into their own hands. They killed the police that administer shari'a in Kano. With radical Muslims attacking shari'a police, what chance do the Christians have in peacefully co-existing with them?

This also points out the folly of those who believe that we can reach accommodation with radical Islamists. They do not act rationally, instead relying on violence and intimidation to extort the behavior they seek. Even fellow Islamists have no immunity from attack and annihilation. Islamists have begun to run wild in Nigeria, and unless something changes soon, it will follow Sudan in crumbling into civil war.

Nigeria is the world's eighth-biggest oil exporter.
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A Minority View: Exploiting Ignorance

So many Americans graduate high school and college having learned what to think as opposed to acquiring the tools of critical, independent thinking. Likewise, they have learned little about our nation's history. As such, they fall prey to the rhetoric of political charlatans and quacks. Let's look at a couple of examples.

Read it all.
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Interesting post by Howard Katz on The Collapse of the Dollar

If any of the larger banks start to sell their dollars, then the price of U.S. securities will collapse. The price of the dollar in international exchange will fall. And if the Federal Reserve intervenes to moderate these results, then the U.S. money supply will explode to the upside. The decline in U.S. securities will be equivalent to a serious rise in interest rates.

Right now world central bankers are concerned about this problem. In international financial circles, it is the elephant in the room: the great big fact that everyone pretends will go away if ignored. But of course, if 78.43 is broken in the U.S. dollar index, this will be an all-time low, and a great deal of attention will be focused on the situation.

While I believe the scenario is rather unlikely, it can not be ignored.
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Hitchens: Sliming Wolfowitz: The World Bank president did nothing wrong
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Gov. Corzine was flying down the turnpike at 91 mph when the accident occured.
Contrast and compare the media coverage with Dick Cheney's hunting accident.
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Soaked, in every sense of the word: TigerHawk posts about Who pays the federal income tax, and who does not

Special thanks to Larwyn for the links
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More blogging later. In the meantime, go listen to the Blog Talk Radio podcast.

Look who's green with ethanol envy:

Castro hits out at US biofuel use

Cuban President Fidel Castro has strongly criticised the use of biofuels by the US, in his first article since undergoing surgery last year.

He said George W Bush's support for the use of food crops in fuel production would cause 3bn deaths from hunger.

The article in the Granma newspaper did not mention Mr Castro's health.

As the AP's Anita Snow puts it,

The article is written in the same kind of apocalyptic style Castro typically adopts when discussing the impact of U.S. international policies on developing nations.

(Anita also added, "and there was no reason to doubt he was the author." Val might disagree. But I digress.)

'Fidel' now tells us ethanol is sinister. Will the Left be repeating his line? You betcha.

For starters, Fidel is factually wrong:

As more and more corn grain is diverted to make ethanol, there have been public concerns about food shortages. However, ethanol made from cellulosic materials instead of corn grain, renders the food vs. fuel debate moot, according to research by a Michigan State University ethanol expert.

The findings, which are being presented by Bruce Dale today at the ACS meeting in Chicago show that,

"The evidence indicates that large-scale biofuel production will increase, not decrease, world food supplies by making animal feed production much more efficient," Dale said.

But never mind that.

The real reason Fidel thinks ethanol is sinister is because it is a threat to his Communist Revolucion, be it in Cuba, in Venezuela, or elsewhere. As a Cuban minister recently said, "in order for the revolution to survive, it needs the poor".

An ethanol boom in Latin America will create great wealth and prosperity, and is already attracting investment and trade in Central and South America and the Caribbean. As I mentioned in a recent post,

• Sugarcane is grown in many countries throughout the region
• Countries that do not produce sugarcane but have ethanol processing facilities are benefiting from being exempt of the onerous ethanol tariffs.
• "An ethanol boom in Latin America would also attract investment to rural areas and create lots of jobs.That might help to reduce the steady northward stream of illegal immigrants. It would certainly burnish America's image, and stem support for anti-American tub-thumpers such as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. He has won friends throughout the region by selling oil cheaply. By sharing technology and promoting investment in ethanol, America would also be reducing Latin America's fuel bill. If it bought lots of ethanol from its neighbours, it would be providing them with a lucrative export of their own."

And that wealth won't be limited to Latin America: Just this week the World Bank is helping Brazil export ethanol technology to African countries such as Ghana, Angola (where Fidel tried to export his revolution by sending troops), and Mozambique.

On a more personal note, I'm sure Fidel must be particularly incensed that sugarcane is bringing wealth to the region, after he ruined the Cuban sugar industry.

As Fidel himself said,

The sinister idea of converting food into combustibles was definitively established as the economic line of foreign policy of the United States

And let's do it right, by abolishing all farm subsidies and tariffs.

Previous post on here.
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In a somewhat related topic, Alvaro Vargas Llosa explains
Why Perfect Totalitarianism Is Impossible:

The lesson of our time, a decade and a half after the fall of communism in Europe, is that the slow, almost geological, accumulation of little bits of heroism throughout society can bring down a totalitarian giant over time. These acts of heroism, both inside and outside the structure of power, constitute the best hope for countries in which governments continue to enslave millions of people today.

But even if these acts of silent heroism are not enough to cause all despots to come tumbling down, they are at least enough to keep the human spirit alive. That is a comforting thought.

Via Dr. Sanity, who today explores the economic interaction of humans.

Phallologocentrism, and other items

I got an A in Phallus 101: The list of the 12 most bizarre college courses in the U.S. includes offerings such as 'The Phallus' and 'Queer Musicology'. Since college students don't get college credit for thinking about sex, Occidental College has remedied the situation:

a course called "The Phallus."

No, it's not a biology course. It's a survey, offered by Oxy's department of critical theory and social justice, of "feminist and queer takings-on of the phallus." Topics include "the relation between the phallus and the penis, the meaning of the phallus, phallologocentrism, the lesbian phallus, the Jewish phallus, the Latino phallus, and the relation of the phallus and fetishism."

I thought if you had seen one you had seen them all, but noooo...

Annual tuition at Occidental, a private college, is $32,800. That means if you take "The Phallus" and "Blackness" (plus its prerequisite "Whiteness") this year on a four-course-per-semester schedule, you will have set your parents back $12,300.

[the following link is not work-appropriate. You've been told.] But does that fee include field trips? Not that it matters - it's their parents' money, after all. (And notice how I refrained from asking if the professor's named Dick.)

Here's the list of the twelve "most bizarre and troubling instances of leftist activism supplanting traditional scholarship."

On to more serious matters,
Gov. to seek cuts in aid to families on welfare
Children whose parents don't work enough or are undocumented would lose funds.

The governor's welfare plan would extend to a program that provides cash grants to children who are U.S. citizens but whose parents are here illegally. Advocates said most undocumented adults work enough hours to meet federal welfare requirements even though their citizenship status prevents them from participating in CalWORKS.

The governor will propose that payments to those families be limited to five years.

They are breaking the law. Why should they be rewarded for that?
On a related story, Kevin points out that Home Depot's Improvement Must Begin In The Parking Lot

Via Albert, Zimbabwe, the land of dying children: Mugabe has ruined his country with policies that are killing thousands, writes RW Johnson in Harare

Via Larwyn:
Crossroads

We've arrived at a crossroads in history. The choices are simple.

In a letter to President Bush Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate President Harry Reid said they want out of Iraq. It's over. The American people are sick of it. There is no reason and no will to keep fighting this.

At the American Enterprise Institute the same day, senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman came out for a big, sustained surge of troops into Iraq. They made the case for fighting. Key word: "Winnable." They outlined the consequences of accepting defeat. Key word: "Catastrophic."

The Democrats' First 100 Hours, Part I: Surrender
Force structure, grand strategy and forcing the issue
Whispers in the Execution Chamber
Jordanian Islamists Attack Hezbollah & Hamas
The Peace Process in Kashmir
Earmark Reform - I Want To Believe

Closing this post on a light note, Undergarment saves a life
Via Beth, Stronger Than a Falling Bullet: Woman's Bra Softens Bullet's Blow

France's genocidal enablers

Via Pajamas Media, Andre Wallis explains why France, steeped in genocidal blood, must face trial

In April 1994 the French Embassy became the setting for the formation of the extremist Hutu Government that was to organise and carry out the meticulously planned genocide of the Tutsis. Witnesses spoke of these ministers, many now facing life imprisonment for crimes against humanity, sitting in plush embassy chairs comparing notes on where the killing was going best. Their host, the French Ambassador, later helped to evacuate those extremists to Paris, away from the apocalypse they had created. The ambassador then made a bonfire of two rooms piled high with documents linking his Government with that of the Hutu dictatorship of Juvénal Habyarimana.

Rwanda is made up mainly of two ethnic groups, the vast majority being Hutu, who, under Habyarimana’s “apartheid” State, took total control of the army, bureaucracy and government. The Tutsi, 15 per cent of the population, were banished from public life.

When François Mitterrand, then the French President, decided in 1990 to send in crack paratroopers to protect Habyarimana, his French-speaking friend and ally, it looked like just another attempt by Paris to keep a client leader in power. The danger came from across the border in Uganda. Anglophone Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front, made up mostly of Tutsis previously driven from their homeland by a series of earlier massacres, had invaded.

During the next three years Mitterrand had no compunction in sending in troops to save a brutal and corrupt regime. The Hutu army received millions of dollars of French weaponry; and the French elite training corps trained its Rwandan allies in how to dismember bodies, fire its new heavy artillery and use attack Gazelle helicopters.

Habyarimana was assassinated on April 6, 1994, when unknown assailants shot down his Falcon 50 jet, another present from the French taxpayer. The event ushered in possibly the hundred bloodiest days in history. Up to one million Tutsis were slaughtered.

As the body count grew, France welcomed ministers of the genocidal Government to an official reception in Paris. Meanwhile, its military continued to send arms to bolster its Hutu allies in power, regardless of the genocide they were perpetrating.

Since 1994 France has been adept at trying to hide this stain on la gloire. Its ministers, including the current Prime Minister, constantly repeat the “double genocide” myth, which alleged that while Hutu killed Tutsi, the Tutsi also killed Hutu. It is akin to claiming that Holocaust victims were also mass murderers.

So the latest French government attempt to cover its Rwandan shame is no surprise to observers of La Françafrique. The timing behind the sudden release of Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière’s report, which blames Kagame for Habyarimana’s death, is no coincidence. Four senior French military and political figures will shortly give testimony before the international war crimes tribunal in Arusha. They have been called by the defence team of Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, who faces charges of being the mastermind behind the genocide.

Will they ever face justice?

I doubt it.

Update: Via Larwyn, Le Hotel Rwanda at Belmont Club

School with beauty parlor, school without; and today's other items

Forty-five years before Oprah...
Before Oprah went to South Africa to open a girls' school with a beauty parlor,

While a beauty salon may be an unorthodox addition to the traditional educational experience, it is in keeping with the Oprah gospel of empowerment through self-love.

a group of Americans founded in 1961 the first multi-racial private college in Kenya, which is now co-ed, Strathmore University. Next week I'll be interviewing my friend Tom Pyle, director of the Strathmore University Foundation.
While Strathmore doesn't have a beauty parlor on campus, it has been training scholars, women and men, for leadership positions for decades.

Mona Charen reviews Unprotected: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student

"Unprotected" is a hard slap at the sexual free-for-all that prevails on American campuses and throughout American life. The author, revealed since publication as Dr. Miriam Grossman, a psychiatrist at the student health service at UCLA, was hesitant to put her name on this book. The orthodoxy within the academic world is a strict one, and those who transgress often pay with their jobs. Let's hope for her sake, but particularly for her patients' well being, that she is not punished for her heterodox views.

It boggles the mind to read that a physician with her qualifications fears for her job for telling the truth.

Mary Katherine looks at the right deficit

Via Darleen, Congress is going to be about the children:


ACLU Condemns Vote to Advance Marriage 'Discrimination'; Vows to Redouble Efforts to Force It On The People

From Maria
An act of moral hygiene
Children see, children do:

Also via Maria, a beautiful video about Lorenzo's horses

From Larwyn
Talking about the longest running big lie

First, the murders of Noel and Moore (and the Belgian diplomat who was murdered in the incident) were performed in the most brutal possible manner. The victims were raked with machine gun fire starting from the feet and going up to the head in order to inflict the maximum amount of suffering. Second, the Fatah paymaster who cut the checks for all such operations (including the Black September operation at the Munich Olympics in 1972) was Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat's right-hand man, the current Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority.

Pork Soup is Not Racist in France