Global AIDS con game: President Bush's new global AIDS initiative will provide a massive infusion of funds to UN affiliates that may be responsible for spreading the AIDS epidemic. (Culture War).

Hundreds of lawmakers, cabinet officials, foreign dignitaries, and news correspondents packed into the East Room of the White House on April 29th. They had come to witness the launch of another global crusade against another momentous crisis. "Time is not on our side," President Bush urgently declared, "So I ask Congress to move forward with [the] speed and seriousness this crisis requires." And the seriousness of the crisis, the president averred, requires an immediate deployment of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars, in an ongoing foreign aid program. What is this crisis? The president explained:

HIV/AIDS is a tragedy for millions of men, women and children, and a threat to stability of entire countries and of regions of our world. Our nations have the ability and, therefore, the duty to confront this grave public health crisis. We are here today to urge both Houses of the United States Congress to pass the emergency plan for AIDS relief, which will dramatically expand our fight against AIDS across this globe.

"Fighting AIDS on a global scale is a massive and complicated undertaking," President Bush proclaimed. "Yet, this cause is rooted in the simplest of moral duties." Thus, the president exhorted Congress to move quickly on his five-year, $15 billion global AIDS initiative.

Once again, George Bush has out-Clintoned Bill Clinton. The Clinton-Gore team (or any other Democrat-controlled White House, for that matter) could not have come close to getting most congressmen behind such an enormous and outrageous pro-abortion, anti-family foreign aid scheme. But with the Bush White House fervently supporting this UN boondoggle and providing cover, congressional Re-publicans jumped on board the global gravy train, eager to burnish their compassion credentials. On May 1st, 183 Republicans joined 191 Democrats to pass H.R. 1298, the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act, by a vote of 375 to 41. (Forty Republicans and one Democrat--Gene Taylor of Mississippi--stood on principle and voted against this unconstitutional, immoral measure.)

As we write, the Senate version is reportedly heading toward passage, with congressional leaders eager to meet White House demands that the final legislation be ready for the president's signature by Memorial Day.

Another Leftist Triumph

Yes, the AIDS pandemic is a terrible tragedy. Will this new legislation and the vast rivers of funds it releases provide the relief, cures, and solutions that its champions claim? Unfortunately not. In fact, it is virtually certain that it will fail in these stated objectives--while succeeding fabulously in its real objectives: empowering a vast new UN bureaucracy and advancing the radical population control schemes of the one-world elite. Here is the blunt, unvarnished truth about the Bush AIDS initiative:

* It is the creation of the most extreme-left, pro-abortion forces in Congress (e.g., Senators Teddy Kennedy and Joseph Biden, and Reps. Barbara Lee and Tom Lantos, to name a few), together with UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and World Health Organization and World Bank officials.

* It will pour billions of dollars into the personal bank accounts of African dictators, corrupt officials, and regimes allied to terrorist organizations.

* It will pour billions of dollars into the coffers of dramatically expanded UN agencies and NGOs that have accumulated atrocious records for promoting abortion, coercive sterilization, and sex-ed programs encouraging promiscuity and homosexuality.

* It will actually accelerate the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted and infectious diseases by funding "family planning" and "reproductive rights" programs that are already responsible, as recent studies show, for much of the AIDS pandemic in Africa (see sidebar on page 21).

In short, President Bush's AIDS initiative is a colossal betrayal of the pro-life, pro-family principles he claims to embrace. It is also a betrayal of his most loyal core constituency, far too many of whom continue to believe, against all evidence to the contrary, the president's empty pro-life rhetoric.

To get some idea of the truly radical scope of the president's AIDS program, consider the following statement from Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), one of the most extreme pro-abortion, pro-homosexual activists in Congress, on April 2,2003:

Today's mark-up is truly historic. This morning we are considering perhaps the most ambitious piece of legislation in this Committee's long history. The $15 billion authorized in the "United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Act of 2003" is an enormous sum by any measure. It is five times -- I repeat, five times -- the amount we considered authorizing for this cause just last year. For those of us who have long called for a real commitment of resources to address the HIV/AIDS crisis, our day has arrived.

The day of the Clintonite radicals has indeed arrived -- under a Republican president and a Republican Congress. One month after Rep. Lantos' jubilant remarks, his militant comrade-at-arms, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), offered a similar, triumphant toast. An official press release, issued by Rep. Lee's office on May 1st, stated:

"I am pleased that the House has passed this truly historic legislation," said Lee, who has worked many years on both international and domestic HIV/AIDS funding. "This bill gives us the opportunity to care for a significant number of individuals who are suffering from HIV/AIDS and also works toward preventing millions more from being victimized by this deadly disease."

As already mentioned, this "truly historic legislation" will not save millions of lives from the AIDS scourge, the claims of Lee and her cohorts notwithstanding. But it will do much to advance some very subversive agendas. And when it comes to Rep. Lee, one of the most overtly subversive members of Congress, as well as one of the principal architects of H.R. 1298, it is essential to be aware of those agendas.

This is the same Rep. Barbara Lee, recall, who was assistant and understudy to militantly pro-Communist Rep. Ron Dellums. In addition, she has traveled to Grenada to coordinate activities with the Castroite Politburo of that Communist regime; she has been a top official for the past decade of the Communist Party splinter faction known as the Committees of Correspondence; and she co-chairs the radical Progressive Caucus and formerly chaired the extreme-left Congressional Black Caucus.

The same press release issued by Rep. Lee's office on May 1st stated:

Lee and the bill's other sponsors defeated a number of amendments that attempted to weaken the bill.... In spite of the victory, Lee expressed disappointment that social conservatives passed an amendment calling for one-third of the bill's future prevention funding to be specifically designated for abstinence [education] programs, instead of leaving appropriations decisions to be made by experts in the field. "We will fight to remove this provision in the final version of the bill," said Lee. "We negotiated in good faith, only to have the Republicans and the White House push for this amendment. I am very disturbed that they politicized our efforts to address this humanitarian crisis."

Reps. Lee and Lantos are not really all that worried; they know the abstinence amendment was largely cosmetic, intended to give Republicans a phony "victory" they could crow about to placate their pro-life constituents. Even if the abstinence amendment survives in the final bill, there is little likelihood that Congress or the Bush administration (or any future administration) will monitor and enforce its far-flung global programs any more vigorously and efficiently than they do the numerous foreign aid programs that already exist.

When President Bush and his congressional allies began touting their new AIDS hobbyhorse in January, they assured social conservatives that the program would be based on a proven "ABC" approach that stresses behavioral change, with "A" for abstinence, "B" for be faithful, and "C" for using condoms--when appropriate. But it soon became apparent that "Abstinence, Be faithful, and Condoms" would be replaced by "Abortion, Be tolerant, and Condoms galore."

On February 16th, the Los Angeles Times reported: "In a major policy shift, President Bush has decided to allow social service agencies in Africa and the Caribbean to receive U.S. funds under his $15 billion emergency AIDS relief plan even if they promote family planning and provide abortions, White House officials said."

The Times report and other similar signals caused some of the president's mesmerized pro-life followers to snap out of their dream worlds. The February 2003 Ryan Report of the American Life League (ALL), for instance, reported that Bush's about-face on the AIDS issue "shocked members of the pro-life community who thought they had a friend in George Bush."

"This is an outrage!" the ALL Ryan Report went on to protest. "Bush's decision will certainly make Planned Parenthood happy. In fact it came in the midst of Planned Parenthood's National Condom Week (February 14-21) while Planned Parenthood was asking its supporters to send a condom to Africa in the president's name via its website. Planned Parenthood's claim on that website that Bush is anti-condom certainly does not seem to apply to Bush's AIDS initiative."

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) was one of the 41 House members who voted against H.R. 1298 on May 1st. "The supposedly conservative Congress overwhelmingly passed a foreign aid bill that could have come straight from the desk of the most liberal Democrat," Rep. Paul said in a blistering statement issued by his office on May 5th. "The legislation sends $15 billion of your tax dollars to Africa, ostensibly to fight AIDS by distributing condoms, providing sex education, and funding abortion providers."

The Texas physician, who has a solid pro-life voting record, continued:

Sadly, this $15 billion expenditure comes even as Congress is cutting funding for veterans by roughly the same amount. The Treasury is running record deficits, the Pentagon is engaged in enormously expensive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and veterans' programs are badly underfunded--yet still Congress is sending billions overseas for yet another dubious and unconstitutional program. This should anger every American who still believes in the true conservative tenets of limited government, fiscal restraint, and private charity instead of social welfare programs.

But most of the pro-life community remain in denial, preferring to believe that the president's promises of commitment to the unborn mean more than his actions that clearly indicate the opposite intent. The Republican leadership in Congress has aided and abetted the White House in this deception. This includes GOP stars who have built reputations as right-to-life champions.

The lead Judas goat in the AIDS sham has been Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House International Relations Committee and the principal sponsor of the Bush AIDS initiative. Chairman Hyde issued a statement for the committee on May 1st, declaring that H.R. 1298 "is an unprecedented bipartisan initiative that will lead the way for increased U.S. engagement and leadership to contain the spread of the pandemic, and ultimately to arrest AIDS as a threat to economic and national security." Echoing the White House, Chairman Hyde's release stated that "AIDS threatens the political, social and economic stability of the world, a danger that grows with each passing year."

Pratt House Genesis

Again, the Republicans were stealing a page from Team Clinton's playbook. But the Clinton playbook didn't really originate in the Clinton White House; it came from the Pratt House, New York headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The genesis and development of what is now the Bush global AIDS program can be traced in dozens of task force reports and round-table discussions sponsored over the past decade by the CFR, as well as articles from the CFR's journal Foreign Affairs.

Consider, for example, the November/December 2000 Foreign Affairs article entitled "A Foreign Policy for the Global Age," by Clinton National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger. In this piece, Mr. Berger (a CFR member) writes:

Finally, we have made the fight against deadly infectious diseases a national security priority. Some may think this goal stretches the definition of national security, but a problem that kills huge numbers, crosses borders, and threatens to destabilize whole regions is the very definition of a national security threat.... President Clinton made this issue a centerpiece of his last G-8 summit, but this challenge will call for even greater resources and attention in the future.

Team Bush has been more than willing to accommodate the AIDS expansion called for in this "centerpiece" initiated by Team Clinton. Why is this so? Because, party labels aside, the Clinton and Bush administrations, like the administrations preceding them back to the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt, are merely ball carriers for the organized one-worlders, who are most visibly represented at the CFR.

Senator Barry Goldwater described this subversive Pratt House influence in his 1979 book, With No Apologies. "When we change presidents," the senator wrote, "it is understood to mean that the voters are ordering a change in national policy. Since 1945, three different Republicans have occupied the White House for 16 years and four Democrats have held this most powerful post for 17 years." But even though the party labels of the men in the Oval Office during those years flipped back and forth, he noted, the CFR members in our government continued the same destructive policies from one administration to another.

Senator Goldwater observed: "There has been a great turnover in personnel, but no change in policy. Example: During the Nixon years, Henry Kissinger, a council member and Nelson Rockefeller protege, was in charge of foreign policy. When Jimmy Carter was elected, Kissinger was replaced by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a council member and David Rockefeller protege."

So it has continued to the present. CFR member Samuel Berger has been replaced in the National Security Adviser slot by Condoleezza Rice (CFR). Likewise, hundreds of other "liberal Democrat" CFR members in the top echelons of the Clinton administration have been replaced by hundreds of "conservative Republican" CFR members in the Bush administration. And that administration is giving full-throttle support to the CFR's one-world, anti-Christian agenda. Leaders of conservative, pro-life, pro-family, and Christian organizations who refuse to acknowledge this readily apparent fact are actually advancing this same agenda and assisting those destroying our civilization.

RELATED ARTICLE: UN Does More Harm Than Good

William F. Jasper

Under the new United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act, U.S. taxpayers would provide 33 percent of the funding for the global AIDS campaign. This means that in addition to our $15 billion, other countries (principally Japan and Western Europe) would provide another $30 billion, for a total of $45 billion over five years. That's for starters. Of the $3 billion per year in U.S. funding, $2 billion is supposed to go directly to the AIDS-afflicted countries as bilateral aid. The other $1 billion goes to the Global Fund for AIDS, setup, as Rep. Barbara Lee proudly boasts, by legislation she authored in 2000.

Before the U.S. voted for this new largesse, it was well known that the Global Fund was already providing money to international NGOs (non-governmental organizations) like the International Planned Parenthood Federation and Marie Stopes International, which provide abortions worldwide. Ditto for the UN's World Health Organization (WHO) and other UN agencies.

For more than a decade, these AIDS programs have been driven by the premise, as stated by WHO, that the AIDS epidemic has been caused by unsafe heterosexual activity. This has provided the justification for massive condom distribution, sex-ed promotion, sterilization, and abortion.

A series of studies published in the March 2003 issue of a respected, peer-reviewed science journal, the International Journal of STD & AIDS, suggests that this premise may be completely false. In fact, the studies suggest that the main cause of the spread of the epidemic in Africa is not sexual transmission but "medical transmission." Specifically, the studies point to the very clinics that the UN experts say are the cure as the likely cause of the current "crisis." In other words, the culprits are infected needles, infected instruments, and infected blood from the WHO and UN-approved medical facilities.

Why does HIV in Africa disproportionately strike women? Dr. Steven M. Mosher of the Population Research Institute answers, in the PRI's April 29th Weekly News Briefing:

The answer lies in the medical transmission of HIV/AIDS. The public health sector in many African countries has simply collapsed.... The one exception to the generally dismal state of primary health care in Africa is Western-funded Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) programs targeting women. African medical workers are taught (and paid) to emphasize reproductive health procedures (contraception, sterilization, and abortion), often to the near exclusion of primary health care. Poorly equipped clinics are kept well-supplied with Depo-Provera, IUDs, and condoms. According to Dr. Stephen Karanja, the former Secretary of the Kenyan Medical Association, "Thousands of the Kenyan people will die of malaria whose treatment costs a few cents, in health facilities whose stores are stacked to the roof with millions of dollars worth of pills, IUDs, Norplant, Depo-Provera, most of which are supplied with American money."

Dr. Mosher asks if it is "mere coincidence that the same groups that are targeted for invasive procedures are disproportionately afflicted with AIDS." He thinks not. "Women and girls account for such a high percentage of HIV/AIDS victims in Africa because they are infected during procedures designed to disable their reproductive systems and prevent them from conceiving or bearing children," says Mosher. Up to 70 percent of HIV infections in Africa, according to the International Journal of STD & AIDS, occur because of substandard health care, primarily HIV transmission through reusing needles.

It is, says Dr. Mosher, "the dependence and subordination of women to clinic personnel--often the only available source of health care for themselves and their families--that makes it very difficult to demand safe medical care, and to end medical relationships that carry the threat of infection."