If you want to frame a statement yourself, then provide your own cites. All I’m saying is that it should come as no surprise if a part of the money went to the greedy bastards, given their history of corruption and scandal, the particulars of which you can Google for yourself if, for whatever reason, you are unfamiliar with them. That was one claim. The other was that it stands to reason that for an agency formed to deal with a particular problem, there is incentive for the agents to maintain the problem rather than eliminate it because in so doing they would eliminate their own jobs. That is a common premise in economic theory which you can also easily track down if you’re unfamiliar with it as well.
…er since you are the one making the accusatory claims, against what appear to be reasonable refutations, from reasonably coherant and analytical posts, I think that the rule on cites applies,
The person making the claims bring the cites to the table.
This is consistant with the scientific process, where the evidence is presented, along with the interpretation and this is then scrutinised.
Ifs, buts maybes and very likelies, along with bias and prejudice may well be presented here, but you would expect these to be dissected and exposed for what they are.
Bring cites please.
I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I admit that freely but why is it that the loudest anti-UN voice is always from the US?
Is it because being top dog doesn’t allow for the co-operative approach? It doesn’t seem to matter what the UN think the US will see the wrong in it.
Iraq seems to have proved that sometimes the UN knows best.
A persistent and woeful tendency to overestimate things, I suppose. I have revised my already conservative opinion of our friend’s arid and disease-ravaged intellect accordingly.
I’m curiously let down by this response. How come Czarcasm doesn’t deserve the same excellent quality cites that were being flung about earlier in the thread? What about the imaginary victims of diseases that are still devastating countless fictional universes thanks to the hypothetical greed of hallucinatory corrupt agencies? What about the hideous zombie plague that was allowed to ravage Earth thanks to the willful blindness of the FDA?
Please, won’t someone think of the imaginary children?
Right, except I didn’t make the claim he said I made. (That’s what “If you want to frame a statement yourself, then provide your own cites” meant.) And he was the second person to reword my claim to suit himself.
Bring reason, please. Leave straw men in the corn field.
There’s reason aplenty, and at the moment your side of the debate is down, now if you wish to pull it back your way, then that’s fine.
I’m only a spectator, maybe I am deciding which side is making its point best, yours isn’t but maybe you can, I’ll wait.
Out of curiosity, might I ask you to state what you believe my “side” to be?
True, but mention Iraq and UN-haters will throw back at you the corruption in the pre-invasion “Oil for Food” program. It always happens, though there’s no connection between that and the UN’s well-advised efforts to forestall the invasion.
Update on Dec 1st: (World AIDS Day).
In an interesting counterpoint to the UN’s revision of worldwide AIDS cases (which prompted this thread), it now seems as though the CDC has been underestimating the rate of HIV infection in the US over the last decade:
No doubt those greedy scientists are changing their story just to get more funding that they can divert to their private bank accounts… :dubious:
The good news (IMHO) is that GWB is again calling for more funding for the fight against AIDS. Despite my feelings for the man on just about everything else, I’ll give him props for this.
Going back to the OP and the November 20th WaPo article, it seems to me that there’s no really good case for cutting any UNAIDS funding just because the new worldwide estimates are lower. I’d say that there are four main categories of spending:
[ol]
[li]Research: What causes AIDS? How is it spread? How can it be fought?[/li][li]Education of the public, especially those in groups known to be at greater risk of infection. [/li][li]Supplies to prevent new infections: condoms, mosquito nets, etc.[/li][li]Treatment for those infected.[/li][/ol]Whether the global number is 40 million or “only” 33 million, shouldn’t categories 1 through 3 be funded at the same level regardless, given that AIDS is an epidemic? It’s not as though fewer condoms are needed than before the UN report, or that educators should only visit 83% of the number of schools that they did previously. As for category #4, since the number of AIDS-infected people treated is such a low percentage of those who have the disease, it would surely be foolish to cut back funding even there.