I think that last sentence is something we can all agree on!
I hate condoms!

Most medicines do not have a label with a skull and crossbones on it, warning you to be careful of getting any on your skin !
Those poison warnings are often on things like toilet bowl cleaner, drain cleaners and rat poison.
Putting poison in the body is not exactly synonymous with the idea of 'getting better'.
Birth control/ population control is a immoral business, no two ways around it. In the African AIDS campaign, we see just how sinister they can be.
Thank heaven the Catholic bishops are aware of it and protesting against it.

A LOT of medicines are toxic.

Dear Tim,
The toxicity of AZT or Nevirapine is
established fact. Consult a PDR if you need to know more. No conspiracy, just a nasty medication.
The effort to use these medications on pregnant women in Kenya is well documented.
What exactly do you find conspiratorial about that ?
I suggest visiting the slums outside of Nairobi, Kenya for a first hand look. Try the slums of Kampala or Kibera. And for a real eye opening experience visit the largest slum in Kenya, the Mathare Valley Slum.
Lots of cholera, hunger and a lack of sanitation along with crowded conditions the likes of which most Americans have never seen.
At that point the notion of all these African men, who have so much extra time to be visiting prostitutes and bringing home a HIV disease will be seen for what it really is, mere propoganda.

Oh, absolutely, JD.
I don't doubt that there is a great deal of politics behind what the media find fit to cover in developing countries.
Because we have this idea that we live in the "information age" and all that, we might think we know a lot more than we really do about the world.
In general, I think if we paid more attention to the people and situations immediately around us, everyone would be better off.
In the words of Mother Teresa, "Be where you are. Do what you are doing."

Tim,
Obviously CatholicDefender's conspiracy theory is far-fetched, far-reaching, and, well, patently...interesting.
Nevertheless--We do, in the US, get a distorted view of life in Africa and other "third world places." I know this because a close friend of mine is a Nigerian priest who grew up, in many ways, better than I did in middle class New Jersey.
And, perhaps the way India, Africa, Latin America is presented to us does encourage Americans to a paternalistic attitude about the developing world, and about some people here at home. Think about it. If you realized that some people in India are suffering when the cable goes out, you might think that maybe we don't ever hear that for a reason that very well may be racist.
Now, I realize that proportionally, many more in the developing world suffer hunger, famine, and disease than we in this country do, but I also realize that isn't the whole story, and one wonders why we rarely see successful, comfortable Indians or Latin Americans portrayed in the media, and we NEVER see that for Africa, except in athletics.
Does seeing only images of suffering, helpless people of color in their ancestral homelands effect the way we think about people of color in our own land?
That's all I'm wondering.

Jason wrote:
Everyone heard about the pope being criticized because he is the Pope – the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics. I doubt many will care so much about the "general consensus" among the Muslim voice. It would be a far different matter of there was a single authority like the Pope representing them.
That's an interesting comment, and I suspect their is much truth to it. Still, although 200 people is an awfully small number, they might get coverage if they were making a statement the left supported, such as blaming the U.S. for their AIDS epidemic, because we don't do enough to stop it.

In an episode of Red Dwarf, Rimmer pronounces that something is as useless as a "condom machine in Vatican City."

Arthur Ash? He died of a heart attack.
For those who are not aware, CatholicDefender has a fondness for conspiracy theories.

Actually JD, is it much much worse than racism.
Just to be clear, keep in mind that the 'AIDS' people are dying from in America is not the 'AIDS' people are dying from in Africa.
Here is one solid piece of evidence;
two of the most characteristic diseases among homosexual AIDS victims in America - pneumocysistis and candidiasis - are not found among African AIDS patients even though the microbes which cause them are found in every human being. African AIDS, has all of the traditional poverty related African diseases,
simply redefined.
That aside, the African AIDS campaign is far more sinister than a massive condom campaign.
These campaigns propose using medicines, that are toxic, such as AZT, which kill the "virus" and the person.
When AZT is sent out to doctors in the mail, as a sample, it comes in bottles containing 25 milligrams, or 1/20th the dose that is given to anybody who is " HIV antibody positive ". One pharma firm sends out bottles of AZT with a skull and cross bones on it, with instructions not to ingest or get slashed with it.
Such warning labels are accorded to those substances with the highest level of toxicity.
The FDA approved AZT with a dose of 1500 MG daily.
We now know HIV tests can give a false positive to 66 separate conditions , none of which is traceable to HIV. Hence many folks who took AZT, died, from this poison. Names like Ryan White, Kimberly Bergalis and Arthur Ashe are a few who took AZT and died. Magic Johnson is alive because he did not.
AZT is now called Nevirapine, but offers just as much toxicity.
It's toxicity is one reason it should not be given to pregnant woman.
But that is exactly what is being pushed in Africa, to get pregnant women of Africa treated with this toxic compound. This should send chills down the spines of the civilized world.
One doctor said millions of Africans will die
needlessly from medications given for a politically defined disease which they may not have.
So one can see where all the phony talk about women's health issues in the third world have come from * and where they are leading *
Need to ask what * stands for ?

A transistor radio, you say? hmm...
Just kidding.
CatholicDefender, this isn't actualy pertinent, but I want to say that your recognition of the racism in that circumstance is entirely on the mark. Western business and political interests do much, even through seeminly innocous channels to perpetuate a racist, paternalist attitude toward Africa and India among Americans. Talk to many African priests who grew up learning Latin, to play the organ, who had drivers and grew up in solidly middle-class homes, by AMERICAN standards. You won't see their homes in NAtional Geographic, because it is vital to business and political interests that Africa and much of Asia be seen as the "dark continent."

The condom campaigns of India and Africa,
supposedly to combat " AIDS " is really nothing more than a population control program. We know this to be a fact, because in the 1970's the director of the USAID office, Reimert T. Revenholt, let the cat out of the bag.
USAID stands for United States Agency for International Development. Shortly after the 1966 population control conference in Bucharest, this is what he said " population control ...is needed to maintain the normal operations of US commercial interests around the world. The US is seeking to provide the means to sterilize 25% of all Third World women, in part to protect the interests of American business overseas". opps, you are not suppose to tell the truth when talking about social engineering, but he did and we owe him a debt of gratitude.
In the late 1970's the revolt against the population control movement had brought down governments in India, the Phillipines, and the Shah of Iran was run out of town, ( ushering in its place Isalmic Fundalmentalism today, and all the problems we now face).
Ravenholt got fired in 1979 for being too open and telling the truth about population control.
And where did he wind up.
A small outfit in Atlanta called the CDC.
And what appeared on the landscape shortly after Revenholt got his feet planted on the ground at the CDC.
The CDC annnouned to the world a new " problem " called AIDS. And health, ( not population control ), particularly women's health, became the leading concern for all the former population control workers who migrated to the CDC.
And the rest is history.
Apparently 37,000,000 people in Africa are now dying of AIDS, and condoms are the answer.
Actually, if you pack 1,000,000 people into a two or three square mile area like in the slums in Kenya, and they have no running water, no sewers, and no medicine or health care to speak of, people will die like flies.
But if that is the case, no body makes any money.
Turn these deaths into HIV or AIDs and billions become available to stop the AIDS spread.
How about billions for sewers, clean water and farm equipment. NOT.
It is about population control. The old tricks of giving some illiterate peasant a cheap transistor radio in return for a operation to sterilize him ( done to 6.5 million men in India) won't fly in this day and age.
Condoms are the only other choice.
But Africans do not like to use them.
Then tell every african female she will get a disease called AIDS and die if she does not
use a condom, because after all, every African man is using the services of HIV infected protitutes. Does anyone see the incredible racism in this?
Thank goodness the Catholic bishops in Africa see right through this scheme.

If I had to guess, I’d say that they won't wag fingers at them because the liberal crowd likely considers them uneducated due to their underdeveloped society.
But, if they do wag the finger then we have to keep in mind criticism gets its headlines due to the target of the criticism, not the source.
Everyone heard about the pope being criticized because he is the Pope – the leader of 1.2 billion Catholics. I doubt many will care so much about the "general consensus" among the Muslim voice. It would be a far different matter of there was a single authority like the Pope representing them.

Let me get this straight...
John Paul II is not awarded a nobel peace prize.
Yasser Arafat is.
That's all I need to know.