"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

I was watching a PBS/Frontline special the last two nights, "The Age of AIDS" (if you haven't seen it, it'll be available online tomorrow). It was a very good program and covered all aspects of the disease--from its origins in chimpanzees to the first suspected deaths in the 1950s, to the earliest activism in the gay community in the mid-1980s, to the political inaction throughout the 1980s, and finally to the pandemic that it has become today, especially in countries that did not take steps to mitigate the spread of the disease.

On the last point, countries that did take steps early to confront the reality of AIDS head-on, such as Brazil, Uganda, and the U.S. are fairing much better today than countries that didn't such as India and South Africa. The case of South Africa deserves special attention--as it did in the program--because there are over 5 million people (at least 16% of the population; 30% of pregnant women; 33% of 25-29 year olds) diagnosed with HIV. The major reason is that a) Nelson Mandela, after becoming president in 1994, completely ignored the problem and barely even mentioned AIDS in any of his speeches and b) his successor, Thabo Mbeki, who during the election campaign promised to help AIDS patients, actually denied that HIV caused AIDS after becoming president in 1999. He then banned antiretroviral drugs, claiming they were too toxic. AIDS activits in South Africa sued th government and the high court ruled in their favor in 2002, but it took two more years before the drugs were available to the public. In the meantime thousands died.

I still don't know, and the program didn't explain, why Mbeki would do something like that, although the program also showed the political cowardness of Reagan, Bush Sr., and Clinton to confront the problem head-on in the U.S. Clinton did the most out of the three (probably because by then the disease was rapidly spreading into the general population vs. being largely confined to the gay community earlier; i.e., political calculus) to help vicitms in the U.S., but it was (many would say surprisingly) George W. Bush who actually took the initiative in establishing a multi-billion dollar fund to help African and Caribbean countries (according to Frontline, Bono and Franklin Graham had a big influence on Bush on Christian grounds).

Going back to Mbeki, by doing nothing, or in this case actually thwarting organizations who wanted to help AIDS victims, he should be tried for crimes against humanity. It will of course never happen, because the industrial world doesn't care that much because South Africa is not a strategic interest, and African leaders themselves haven't raised an eyebrow. In fact, Mbeki is viewed as the regional leader because South Africa has the largest economy on the continent. None of this is surprising--that's how geopolitics works, but it is a little dissappointing at the human level.

After the second episode of the program aired last night, I watched the local news for a few minutes. There was a protest in Olympia the last three days to try to stop a Navy cargo ship full of supplies from going to Iraq. The protest, was of course, unsuccessful, but they did score media attention. The story from the Seattle Times:


The protests grew larger and more intense Monday after the Pomeroy arrived at the port. Police in riot gear used pepper spray to try to disperse the crowd and on Tuesday dragged off numerous demonstrators by their arms and legs.

Twenty-two people were arrested Tuesday after more than 100 activists confronted police at the port's main entrance. Demonstrators pulled down one of the port's chain-link gates. Most of those arrested were charged with criminal trespass; some were charged with rioting and resisting arrest.

Andrew Yankey, a 19-year-old student at Evergreen State College, was one of the demonstrators arrested Tuesday. Yankey acknowledged hurling verbal abuse at the police — "I didn't say very nice things" — but said he thinks the police overreacted.

"Whatever happens to us is nothing compared to what the troops, equipment and war machines can unleash on Iraqi civilians," Yankey said.

These two events--the AIDS outbreak in South Africa and the Iraq war protest--are related and speak to the same universal truth: you have to be active and you have to fight to prevail over injustice. Why are there no Vietnam-era anti-war-like protests today? Has American society become too complacent? Keep it up guys...