At the XV International AIDS Conference held in Bangkok in July 2004, U.S. delegate Randall Tobias was heckled by protesters chanting, "Bush lies, millions die," and U.S. policy was ridiculed by other international representatives. Their disdain targeted President George W. Bush's promotion of abstinence as a main thrust to address the epidemic and the strings he has tied to U.S. anti-AIDS funding and pharmaceuticals. The Bush administration has stipulated that 30 percent of U.S. anti-AIDS funds must go through faith-based organizations. France went so far as to accuse the United States of blackmailing developing countries into giving up their right to produce cheap drugs for AIDS victims.
Colombia has become the home to the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western hemisphere as up to three million people have been displaced from their homes, creating virtual ghost towns. The people have been driven out by the left-wing guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and forced to seek refuge in neighboring villages. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, up to 500 people are displaced in Colombia daily, creating a situation so grave that only Sudan and the Congo are blighted by worse humanitarian crises.
Scientists warn that dead zones are increasing in the world's coastal waters. The biggest culprit is fertilizer pollution, which causes decreases in the oxygen of bottom water and creates low-oxygen, or hypoxic, zones. Most sea life can't survive under these conditions: fish and other creatures swim away while other aquatic life, like shellfish, suffocate. Forty-three of the world's 146 dead zones occur in U.S. coastal waters, the second largest of which is in the Gulf of Mexico (as much as 21,000 square kilometers). The world's largest dead zone is in the Baltic Sea, spanning up to 70,000 square kilometers.
More than 1,000 bird species are facing extinction because of accelerating loss of biodiversity. Experts warn that 129 species have been classified extinct in the past 500 years and environmental degradation could wipe out 1,211 species--one-eighth of the world's total.
The 9,300-year-old skeleton of Kennewick Man, currently held at the Burke Museum in Seattle, Washington, has been a bone of contention between scientists and four Native American tribes. But the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently granted conservatorship to the scientists, ruling that it was impossible to establish a relationship by the Nez Perce, Umatilla, Yakama, and Colville tribes, which sought possession of "the ancient one."
The Republican leadership of the House of Representatives violated its own rules on July 8, 2004, when it took special steps to defeat a measure that would have protected citizens' privacy in bookstores and libraries. Although the amendment initially garnered a majority--with almost all Democrats and twenty-nine Republicans voting "yea"--by the time the vote closed thirty minutes later (twice the allotted time), Republican leaders had persuaded eleven representatives to switch their vote, leaving a margin of 210 to 210. The Bush administration had threatened to veto the entire multibillion-dollar spending measure if the amendment passed.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on June 29, 2004, in a five to four decision that the controversial 1998 Child Online Protection Act--signed by Bill Clinton and now backed by Bush--is probably an unconstitutional violation of free speech, upholding a lower court decision to block the law from taking effect. The ruling in Ashcroft v. American Civil Liberties Union doesn't end there, however, as the Court sent the case back to a lower court for a trial that could give the Bush administration another chance to promote censorship.
A week after the Senate rejected a gay marriage ban sponsored by Republicans and backed by Bush, House GOP members voted 233 to 194 to pass the Marriage Protection Act (H.R. 3313)--a disturbing and discriminatory measure that would strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act and would block access to the legal system for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community. The act is expected to fail in the Senate.
Karen Ann Gajewski is a freelance editor and editorial consultant to the Humanist. This is a slightly expanded version of that which appeared on page 47 of the September/October 2004 Humanist.
