Suchergebnisse

This article rebuts conventional claims that AIDS in Africa is a microbial problem to be controlled through sexual abstinence, behavior modification, condoms, and drugs. The orthodox view mistakenly attributes to sexual activities the common symptoms that define an AIDS case in Africa - diarrhea, high fever, weight loss and dry cough. What has really made Africans increasingly sick over the past 25 years are deteriorating political economies, not people's sexual behavior. The establishment view on AIDS turned poverty into a medical issue and made everyday life an obsession about safe sex. While the vast, selfperpetuating AIDS industry invented such aggressive phrases as "the war on AIDS" and "fighting stigma," it viciously denounced any physician, scientist, journalist or citizen who exposed the inconsistencies, contradictions and errors in their campaigns. Thus, fighting AIDS in Africa degenerated into an intolerant religious crusade. Poverty and social inequality are the most potent co-factors for an AIDS diagnosis. In South Africa, racial inequalities rooted in apartheid mandated rigid segregation of health facilities and disproportionate spending on the health of whites, compared to blacks. Apartheid policies ignored the diseases that primarily afflicted Africans - malaria, tuberculosis, respiratory infections and protein anemia. Even after the end of apartheid, the absence of basic sanitation and clean water supplies still affects many Africans in the former homelands and townships. The article argues that the billions of dollars squandered on fighting AIDS should be diverted to poverty relief, job creation, the provision of better sanitation, better drinking water, and financial help for drought-stricken farmers. The cure for AIDS in Africa is as near at hand as an alternative explanation for what is making Africans sick in the first place.

Reflects on personal experience as a faculty member of California State U, Chico, who was appointed to evaluate higher education finances from within the state legislature during dramatic 1990s budget reductions. The manner in which state funds are appropriated for higher education & failures of the legislative oversight process has resulted in a lack of control of CA college & university spending patterns. A series of hearings, convened in 1996 by the Budget Subcommittee of the CA legislature, revealed serious malfeasance on the part of university administrators, particularly in the area of affirmative action programs. It also revealed that projected demands on the state budget in the near future by health & welfare, prisons, & K-12 schools will make the goals of the CA Master Plan for higher education attainable. Universities & colleges are likely to respond to this crisis by even more dramatic cuts in tenured faculty & a further degradation of educational content. D. Ryfe