George W Bush is the greatest humanitarian of the 21st Century.

Discussion in 'The Red Room' started by Ancalagon, Sep 12, 2022.

  1. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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  2. MikeH92467

    MikeH92467 RadioNinja

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  3. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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    No.
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  4. Nova

    Nova livin on the edge of the ledge Writer

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    one could argue that a humanitarian is someone that's not spending government funds instead of those they raised on their own. But if the argument is about lives saved without that label attached...
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  5. Tererune

    Tererune Troll princess and Magical Girl

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    I would have to say Hitler is much more of a humanitarian. By losing and dying he saved countless numbers of people from annihilation.

    If you are going to screw with meaning and logic let us just fuck everything shall we?
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  6. Bailey

    Bailey It's always Christmas Eve Super Moderator

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    Definitely a program worthy of commendation overall, although the amount of resources pushed into unproductive abstinence lectures is a shame.
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  7. Demiurge

    Demiurge Goodbye and Hello, as always.

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    Interesting, especially in wake of Reagan's response that it was good that AIDs existed because all the right people were dying.

    20th century I'd go Norman Borlaug. Not sure in the 21st yet.
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  8. tafkats

    tafkats scream not working because space make deaf Moderator

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    Norman Borlaug makes sense to me.

    I hope the greatest humanitarian of the 21st century is someone we don't know about yet, because I'd hate to think we've already seen the best were going to get for another 80 years.
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  9. RickDeckard

    RickDeckard Socialist

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    Or Vasili Arkhipov.
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  10. Lanzman

    Lanzman Vast, Cool and Unsympathetic Formerly Important

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    The greatest humanitarian of the last two centuries is me. Why, you ask? Because I have so far not smashed this stupid planet into rubble, despite continuous provocation from you monkey-boys. :dendroica:
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  11. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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    BREAKING: A new report shows that the end may be in sight for AIDS, the world’s deadliest pandemic.

    The Joint United Nations Program on HIV and AIDS says that Botswana, Eswatini, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zimbabwe have all reached “95-95-95” targets, meaning 95% of the people who are living with HIV know their status, 95% of those people are on lifesaving antiretroviral treatment, and 95% of people in treatment are virally suppressed.

    Across eastern and southern Africa, new HIV infections have been reduced by 57% since 2010. Also since 2010, the percentage of pregnant and breastfeeding women living with HIV who have access to antiretroviral treatment has nearly doubled, and new infections among children have more than halved.

    There’s more work to be done, but the UN said the world could end AIDS by 2030 with sufficient investment from global leaders.

    https://twitter.com/joncoopertweets/status/1680938987123253249
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  12. NAHTMMM

    NAHTMMM Perpetually sondering

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    The world could do a lot of things by 2030.
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  13. Amaris

    Amaris Witch of Winter

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    GWBNZ.png
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  14. Eightball

    Eightball Fresh Meat

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    Not gonna say one bad word about him, that guy made me filthy rich. Made lots of others dead and miserably though.
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  15. shootER

    shootER Insubordinate...and churlish Administrator

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    Pro-Life Dispute Leaves Program for HIV/AIDS Patients in Peril
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  16. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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    Good listen:


    In 2003, President Bush created the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, and in the twenty years since, the program has been credited with saving over 25 million lives and stabilizing health systems around the world. On Sept. 30, 2023, the program will expire if Congress doesn’t act, putting millions of people at risk of losing access to HIV/AIDS treatment.

    Lawfare Associate Editor of Communications Anna Hickey sat down with Emily Bass, a writer and activist who has spent more than twenty years writing about and working on HIV/AIDS. In 2021, she wrote “To End a Plague,” a book on America's war on AIDS in Africa. They discussed how PEPFAR has changed over the past two decades, why it is at risk of expiring this fall, and what the expiration would mean for the millions of people who depend on it.

    Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/lawfare.

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lawfare-podcast/id498897343
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  17. Tuckerfan

    Tuckerfan BMF

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    You know, man, I can recognize that both the Model T and the VW Beetle were huge boons to humanity without ever referencing their creators. Because with or without those creators, the ideas were so good that sooner or later, someone would have come up with them independently. Ford didn't invent the assembly line, and even the story about him copying it from slaughterhouses is probably a lie, as pulley manufacturers were doing that in the 18th Century. (And no, I am not going around to find the stories where archeologists have found evidence of assembly lines being used in ancient times, but they're out there.) Oh, and the VW Beetle? Hans Ledwinka didn't realize that the paperhanging SOB he was talking to at the Berlin Autoshow was going to steal his ideas. (I'm not going to get into the number of car companies who came up with similar designs during that time period, but if you want to dig around, not only can you find nearly every automaker of the era experimenting with such things, but GM did as well. No shit. I mean, all of the cars could be parked next to one another, and then a VW Beetle and the automatic assumption would be they were all the products of one company trying to sort out a particular design.)

    And, yes, I know you're queer, and if you and I want to swap stories about how awful queer people have it in America, we can do that. I'm not queer, but enough of my friends fall into the whole LGBTQ+ spectrum that I have an inkling of what it's like to be queer in America. I'm also old enough that I had to deal with the fact that a gay friend of mine who was HIV+ and dealing not only with that but also the fact that the healthcare system in America is so horrific that he couldn't get treatment for the other issues he had, that he committed suicide on December 4th, 1993.

    It's great that millions of people today don't have to suffer the shit that HIV inflicts on people, and I haven't had any experience at all with what it's like to be in a war zone (as you have), but for the life of me, I just cannot see how someone who caused the death of a bunch of Iraqis can somehow be redeemed by doing something that we should have been doing anyway. Help me out here. How does this balance out?

    Obviously, I wouldn't trade my friend's life for all those folks who've been saved in the decades since, thanks to modern medicine, but you give me a time machine and tell me that I need to take out Ronald Reagan in order to save lots and lots of lives of people who are HIV+?

    01 bart.png

    I mean, suppose Gore had been President instead of W. Do you think that Gore wouldn't have embraced the idea of PEPFAR? Sure, we can argue that he'd have done better than that, but if all he could have done was PEPFAR, are you going to claim that he'd have rejected it? Obviously, we'll never know for certain, but I'd like to think that any President we elected would have enough sense to do that (Tangerine Tyrant excepted, of course). So, why give credit to W? You know, the guy who not only got us into an unnecessary war but also signed off on torture.
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