The Dish

By Patrick

By Patrick
Here’s the latest story on the United States’ continued discriminatory treatment of tourists, travelers and immigrants with HIV:

The Surrey, B.C., man was on his way to Bellingham, Wash., for the Remembrance Day long weekend last November to shop, with the Canadian dollar trading at about $1.07 against the greenback. After lining up for four hours to reach the U.S. customs booth, he was asked where he worked.

"I said I was on disability. He said what’s my disability. I said I have HIV," said the 47-year-old, who was diagnosed in 1989.

The customs officer told him he needed a special visa waiver to enter the country, even though Canadians do not require a visa to travel to the United States.

"He hauled me into a backroom. … He put on a set of rubber gloves to hold each of my fingers. Nobody else wore rubber gloves. Then he fingerprinted me, photographed me, ran me through the FBI’s most-wanted list and told me to go back to Canada and not return until I came back with a waiver," Mr. Rooney said. "I felt like I was being treated like a terrorist."

Now that China is removing the ban on HIV travelers (because of potential embarrassment around the Olympics), the US is now one of only 12 nations that still treats people with HIV like criminals if they cross the US border. Among them: Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Sudan. Removing this draconian ban, introduced by Jesse Helms two decades ago, is long, long overdue. It was passed when panic, hysteria and quarantining were the rage about HIV and AIDS. We’ve moved on so far from there – even Jesse Helms came to regret his stance on people with AIDS. The US, moreover, leads the world in HIV research and is now leading the world in helping Africans with HIV. A bipartisan group of senators Gordon Smith, John Kerry, Richard Lugar, among others have introduced legislation to get rid of this bill still that treats people with HIV as if they have an easily infectious disease like leprosy (yes, that’s the class of illness HIV is now in). The House, alas, has yet to agree to remove the ban in the same legislation renewing the president’s AIDS relief program for Africa. If we are doing so much to help these people and remove the stigma of AIDS in Africa, why are still stigmatizing them and every other tourist with HIV in our travel and immigration laws?

Email Nancy Pelosi’s office to ask her to support the House’s inclusion of this repeal in the PEPFAR renewal.

By Patrick

The Economist writes about the correlation between happiness and political viewpoints:

…extremists of both sides are happier than moderates. Some 35% of those who call themselves “extremely liberal” say they are very happy, against only 22% of ordinary liberals. For conservatives, the gap is smaller: 48% to 43%. Extremists are happy, Mr Brooks reckons, because they are certain they are right. Alas, this often leads them to conclude that the other side is not merely wrong, but evil. Some two-thirds of America’s far left and half of the far right say they dislike not only the other side’s ideas, but also the people who hold them.

By Patrick

Larison with an enjoyable enough rant:

I don’t like, and generally try not to use, the word isolationist, because the word is pretty much meaningless and leads to all sorts of misunderstandings.  The word isolationist is inherently pejorative and is an extremely loaded term, and moreover there are not actually any real isolationists yesterday, today or at any other time.  These figures are the bogeys of progressive globalists.  They are to domestic foreign and trade policy debate what “Nazi” and “fascist” are to descriptions of foreign governments targeted by Washington: convenient props to be used to justify current policy and tar opponents with words with strong negative associations.  Like these latter attacks on foreign governments, the terms ”protectionist” and “isolationist” reflect the time warp and warped sense of history that progressive globalists of both parties share, in which it is perpetually the 1930s, the next Hitler is always on the rise and they must, like FDR and Churchill, boldly resist their domestic foes to prevent catastrophe, yadda yadda yadda.

By Patrick

Rasmussen has Clinton by five in Pennsylvania: last week the spread was 10. SurveyUSA has her by 12: last week it was 19. A good trend for Obama. We’ll see if it keeps up.

By Patrick

A reader writes:

I was really glad to see your post, "Loving the Firewall." I live and teach in China, and had a conversation on this subject last night with one of my colleagues. Your last line–"The greatest trick of state controlled media is getting the population to demand its own censorship."–is a bit of a stick in my craw. It oversimplifies the situation implies that the demand for censorship is something that common people have been duped into from the top down. This might have been true thousands of years ago, but by this time the negative attitude towards dissension permeates the culture to such an extent that I think the top-down framework needs to be jettisoned. The deference to superiors, government officials not least, is deeply ingrained in the culture here. Many positively believe that allowing more criticism would be an act of weakness on the part of the government, a failure to protect the public from pernicious ideas. I have a hard seeing that the people here have been tricked into something that they positively want and demand.

By Patrick
It has now been a week since Clinton said she hoped to release her returns "within the next week."  Why the delay?

By Patrick A Zimbabwean blog on the possibly rigged vote:

These results clearly show that the opposition coalition now enjoys a majority control of the House of Assembly. However, please be aware that should Mugabe steal the Presidential vote, according to the constitution he would have the power to dissolve the House of Assembly.

Parallel Voter Tabulation (PVT) results have been compared to the “official” Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) figures. The “official” results are emanating from the government controlled body at a snail pace and indicate massive discrepancies in certain constituencies, a clear sign Zanu PF is desperately attempting to inflate results in their favour. […]

The delay in the announcement of the official results by ZEC is being strategically planned in order to give the Central Intelligence Organisation the much needed time to manipulate the results. This is blatant rigging at its most iniquitous.

The people of Zimbabwe have spoken and it is now time for Zanu PF, SADC, all other African bodies and the rest of the world to respect and support the will of the people. 

The Times also reports on fears of vote manipulation.

By Patrick

A bookworm’s dilemma.