ran across this article today, apparently there are a small number of female prostitutes in Nairobi who are functionally immune to HIV. researchers have been taking blood samples and studying them for 20 years now as billions of dollars in funding go to study them. apparently the immunity is at least partly the result of the fact that they are constantly being exposed to the disease and so their immune systems stay on high alert.

and yet, even though the women themselves say that they’d give anything to escape sex work and find a better way to make a living if only there was someone - anyone - who could offer them a job, none of those billions of dollars have gone to help them get out of the poverty trap. why? well the article doesn’t give a good answer, but the cynical part of my mind wonders if perhaps it has something to do with the fact that if these women were no longer prostitutes they would no longer be regularly exposed to the disease, and western medical researchers would be unable to continue studying them.

meanwhile, i can’t help being reminded of Sarah Bartman

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,,2087394,00.html

Posted: May 28th, 2007 under economics, gender & feminism, politrix, science and history.
Comments: 1

I just found these quotes on wikipedia and they mesh rather nicely with what I remember reading in the church library way back when i was a confused little mormon kid ……

check it: Read more »

Posted: May 24th, 2007 under gods & religion, race & racism.
Comments: none

I just saw an interesting article on gun ownership posted up at the Phoenix Insurgent website. It analyzes the origin of gun laws a bit differently then I did in my recent post on the same topic, but I don’t think the two pictures of history are mutually exclusive. Rather, they show two different sides of the same phenomenon, viewing the same process from two different angles. Their article is also very relevant because it looks at class and race as factors in the modern gun control regime. Interesting stuff.

They’ve got a bunch of other great articles up as well, including one on intelligence and wealth that should be required reading for every social darwinist. check ‘em out.

Posted: May 23rd, 2007 under politrix.
Comments: none

Ah the joys of American justice! just like the war on some drugs that incarcerates millions of people and destroys uncounted lives every year to protect us from the dangers of addiction, even as the pharmaceuticals sell billions of dollars worth of addictive drugs every year; the war on terrorism now officially needs to be renamed the war on some terrorism.

Yeah I know, the United States government is the biggest sponsor of terrorism on the planet, but most of that is done under the cover of the CIA and NSA and other organizations designed to act “outside” of the law. I guess the judicial branch must have felt left out though, U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans has freed Luis Posada Carriles, an admitted terrorist who “has boasted of helping set off deadly bombs in Havana hotels 10 years ago and the alleged mastermind of a 1976 bombing of a Cuban airplane that killed 73 people” (quoted from the LA times article linked to above). Why have they let this mass-murdering son of a bitch go? Because his victims were Cubans, victims of Fidel Castro’s brutal Marxist regime, and thus their lives are considered expendable by American imperialists intent on replacing Castro’s tyranny with their own.

The hypocrisy is staggering. I just wish it was the exception and not the rule.

Posted: May 23rd, 2007 under news.
Comments: none

My man Uncle Scams, who put in a verse for my song ‘peace inside‘ on my last album, is facing federal charges this Monday for allegedly smashing windows at two army recruiting stations.

Read more »

Posted: May 19th, 2007 under news, politrix.
Comments: none