Month: June, 2015
I’m not sure where we’re going, but we’re going somewhere for sure
| June 28, 2015 | 9:31 pm | Bernie Sanders, political struggle | Comments closed

Response to “What is fascism?”

By James Thompson

I wrote the article “What is fascism?” in 2010 in an effort to clarify the concept of “fascism.” It occurs to me that this is an appropriate time to revisit the article and update it.

We have been through a remarkable period following the election of the first African-American President of the United States, Barack Obama. Following his election, some on the left called it a “sea change” and a “qualitative change” in the political direction of this country. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

Although it must be conceded that several important issues have been resolved in a favorable direction, the political movement in the USA over the last seven years has been mostly backward. Many of us are happy that US- Cuba relations appear to be improving and that the Cuban 5 were returned home. Many of us are happy that same-sex marriage is now permissible. Many of us are happy that marijuana is now legal in some states. Many of us are happy that more people have health insurance.

However, it appears that the nation has taken two steps forward and three steps backward. Although US-Cuba relations appear to be improving, the US government is spending massive amounts of US taxpayer money to destabilize the Cuban government. Although more people have health insurance, the quality of their health coverage is generally poor. Universal health coverage is not being discussed.

One rallying cry of the Obama campaign in 2008, The Employee Free Choice Act, was immediately taken off the table as soon as Obama assumed office. The union movement in the USA continues to crumble and deteriorate.

However, the most frightening development under Obama has been the continuation of the development of an openly terroristic government highly influenced by finance capital. As the US government terrorizes the world by bombing, the use of drones, the use of US military troops in foreign countries, it terrorizes its own people at home. Recently, it has become the new normal for African-Americans to be beaten, shot and otherwise murdered by the most visible agents of the state, the local police. It has become the new normal for immigrant workers to be detained and deported. Openly fascist politicians, through the emergence of the Tea Party, are being elected to political office and this is part of the new normal.

Almost all US politicians, left and right, demonize Russia and fully support the fascist regime installed by the US government in the Ukraine through a coup d’ etat. No one blinks an eye at the fact that NATO is now surrounding the Western border of Russia. No one addresses the fact that the Obama administration is spending vast amounts of taxpayer money to terrorize the people of Russia, the people of the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and China.

Some on the left opine that fascism cannot develop if there is no credible threat from the left. For this reason, they argue “It can’t happen here.” However, as Don Sloan argued some years ago “It can happen here, it is happening here, it has happened here.”

One must consider what is a “credible threat from the left.”

People in the US tend to believe that the world revolves around the USA. They bray about “American exceptionalism.” They fail to recognize that there is a credible threat from the left around the world, in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and elsewhere. As the left grows in these regions of the world, imperialism morphs more and more into fascism.

In the US today, there is a political struggle developing between two Democratic Party candidates for president. It is important to have a clear understanding of the political spectrum in the USA today. If all politicians in the US were subjected to an ideological examination, none could be characterized as legitimate left. The CPUSA is morally and ideologically bankrupt, irrelevant, defunct and dead. Traditionally, CPs around the world have been characterized as the “legitimate left.” No such entity exists in the USA today. Although no one in the CPUSA has been recently persecuted, the CPUSA is not a viable political party and has virtually no influence on the political direction of the country.

The political struggle between the two Democratic Party candidates is a struggle between a far right candidate, Hillary Clinton, and a center left candidate, Bernie Sanders. The GOP candidates all occupy an extreme right or ultra right political space. They would make Barry Goldwater blush. In fact, Clinton might make Mr. Goldwater blush.

In the struggle for the primary elections, it is clear that if Bernie Sanders loses, the country will take a sharp right turn politically.

It is unlikely that in a rational world, anyone would argue that Bernie Sanders represents a credible threat from the left. However, the political ideology of the USA has shifted so far to the right (with the able assistance of President Obama) that Sanders might be considered “left.” There have been some reports that panic is developing in the Clinton campaign, and that panic could prove to be contagious. Clinton’s Wall Street backers may soon be quivering and quaking in response to a candidate who calls himself a “socialist” (even though he is not a socialist), calls for a tax on billionaires and speaks openly about “income inequality.”

We all should know by now that campaign promises are not the same as public policy. However, is it better to support a candidate with reactionary campaign promises or a candidate with somewhat progressive campaign promises? People of conscience and people on the left in the United States have a choice in front of them. Should they support a candidate who is somewhat progressive or should they sit on their hands and let the reactionaries win the day? Will people on the left continue to abstain from politics or will they wake up to the real threat coming from the openly fascist elements of the political spectrum? Will they continue to monkey with their phones and send out tweets about their individual escapades or will they struggle for progress? Will they recognize that the terroristic policies of the US government threaten the survival of all living things on the earth or will they continue to chant “It can’t happen here?”

What is fascism?
| June 28, 2015 | 7:59 pm | Analysis, political struggle | Comments closed
What is fascism?
Repost
http://houstoncommunistparty.com/what-is-fascism/
Originally posted in 2010.
By James Thompson

There have been many attempts to define fascism in an effort to understand it. Some maintain that fascism is the capitalists’ last option. Others ask, “What is fascism but the death throes of capitalism?”

Fascism has also been described as “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.” According to Georgi Dmitrov in a collection of his reports in 1935 and 1936 Against Fascism and War, fascism is “the power of finance capital itself. It is the organization of terrorist vengeance against the working class and the revolutionary section of the peasantry and intelligentsia. In foreign policy, fascism is jingoism in its most brutal form, fomenting bestial hatred of other nations.”

He points out that German fascism, i.e. Nazism or National Socialism, has been the most reactionary form of fascism. He explains, “It has the effrontery to call itself National Socialism, though it has nothing in common with socialism. German fascism is not only bourgeois nationalism, it is fiendish chauvinism. It is a government system of political gangsterism, a system of provocation and torture practiced upon the working class and the revolutionary elements of the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and the intelligentsia. It is medieval barbarity and bestiality, it is unbridled aggression in relation to other nations.”

Fascism has manifested itself in many other nations, including most notably, Italy, where Mussolini declared that fascism should be more appropriately called “corporatism” since it represents the merger of the state and corporations. It also appeared in Spain under Franco and other countries. It is important to remember that fascism can be thought of as a logical extension of capitalism. It is one of the forms of rule that can take place under capitalism. It is not an economic system in and of itself. Fascism is a form of government intended to protect the interests of the capitalists through violence and oppression.

The capitalist press has been very effective in blurring the distinction between fascism and communism. Many people in the U.S.A. equate and confuse the terms. The main difference is that fascism is a form of government which safeguards and promotes the interests of the capitalists, whereas communism safeguards and promotes the interests of working people. Fascism is anti-democratic and only allows the political will of the capitalists to be expressed, whereas communism is pro-democratic and only allows the political will of the working people to be expressed.

There has been discussion among leftists in the U.S.A. as to whether the Bush administration was a fascist government. Many maintain that the policies of Bush and his cronies were fascist in nature. Others argue that the policies were different from those seen in fascist countries between the two World Wars. Norman Markowitz in his article “On Guard Against Fascism” published in Political Affairs (May, 2004) states “The domestic policy of fascism was to destroy the independent labor movement, all socialist and communist parties and all democratic movements of the people. The foreign policy of fascism was to completely militarize the society and organize the people to fight imperialist wars and accept and glorify such wars on nationalist and racist grounds. As both ideology and policy, fascism was the rabid response of a decaying capitalism threatened by the workers’ movement at home and anti-colonial movements abroad. The forms that fascism takes can change and be updated, but these are its essential characteristics.”

Gerald Horne, in his article “Threat Needs Study” in Political Affairs (July, 2004), calls for more study of the fascist movement in this country. He points out that there are organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center which track the activities of the extreme right. He also notes that the Center for Responsive Politics tracks political donations. He suggests that donations from certain sectors of finance capital could be tracked to political candidates and organizations.

Horne points out that many scholars maintain that fascism has historically developed as a reaction to the development of strong progressive movements which support the interests of working people. He goes on to note that some academics don’t think a fascist movement is likely to develop in the U.S.A., because there is no strong progressive movement currently. Whether there is a viable progressive movement in the U.S.A. is debatable, especially considering the mass movements which have been so conspicuous in 2006. As the right wing has mounted its assault on working people, the positive achievements of the twentieth century in civil rights, education, social security and health care become more apparent. One can conceptualize the recent actions of the right wing as a reaction to the gains of the progressive movement.

From a dialectical materialist point of view, we can see that the development of capitalist, fascist, socialist and communist movements are developments in the struggle between the owners of the means of production and the workers. As Marx pointed out, “All human history hitherto is the history of the class struggle.” The interests of fascism and communism are just as opposed and irreconcilable as the interests of working people and capitalists. As capitalism weakens, its options narrow and it is more likely that it will desperately grasp for fascist methods to sustain itself. Much as a wounded animal is more likely to bite, capitalism in its final stages is more likely to use direct violence against working people. However, just as the animal ensures its own destruction through violence, so it will go for capitalism.

It is noteworthy that there are similarities between the tactics employed by Bush and fascist movements in the past. Don Sloan, in his article “The ‘F’ Word” in Political Affairs (May, 2004) does a good job of comparing fascist tactics and those of the Bush administration. Sloan warns “It can’t happen here? It can happen here? It is happening here.”

It is easy to use the label “fascism or fascist” when trying to discredit our opponents. We, the people of conscience on the left, should be careful however when we apply labels. Applying labels tends to de-humanize people and is a tactic used in military training. Soldiers are taught to think of their “enemies” as subhuman thus making it easier to kill them. We must remember that a number of people apply labels to us. Do we really want to respond to mudslinging by mudslinging ourselves? People on the left use “fascist” far too easily these days to label people promoting policies they don’t like. It would be more useful and productive to attack the policies we do not like and explain that the reason we do not like them is that they are harmful to working people. Throwing around labels and failing to use a class analysis is counterproductive at best. Such tactics may actually hurt the credibility of progressive movements who engage in such behavior.

We do not like the “fascist like” tactics employed by our government, but it is important to remember that unlike Nazi Germany, we still have trade unions, opposition political parties such as the CPUSA, and a progressive press to include the People’s World and others. Writers such as Michael Parenti and publishing companies such as International Publishers are still publishing articles and books. We have not had book burnings and university professors are not clubbed and imprisoned. No Communist in the U.S.A. has been put in a concentration camp by the Bush or Obama administrations.

Nevertheless, it will be important for people on the left to keep identifying clearly those tactics and developments that are not in the interest of the working class and mount united struggles against each and every one of them. This is already happening in the case of the War in Iraq, immigration policy, and the struggle to save social security. These struggles will move our country forward and will help build a strong progressive movement that can bring about positive social change. We cannot forget and must not abandon the gains made in the last century. Indeed, it is time to start making new gains for this century.

Bibliography

Georgi Dmitrov, Against War and Fascism, (International Publishers, New York, 1986).

Gerald Horne, “Threat Needs Study,” Political Affairs, (July, 2004).

Norman Markowitz, “On Guard Against Fascism,” Political Affairs, (May, 2004)

Don Sloan, “The ‘F’ Word,” Political Affairs, (May, 2004).

Africa: AIDS Struggle Continues
| June 22, 2015 | 12:44 pm | Africa, Health Care | Comments closed

AfricaFocus Bulletin
June 22, 2015 (150622)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“Both globally and in Africa, there is good news. Our collective
efforts to end the AIDS epidemic are paying off. Now more people
living with HIV than ever before are accessing treatment, more
people know their status, and AIDS-related deaths are declining. …
This progress, however, belies a dangerous reality: young African
women and adolescent girls are especially vulnerable to HIV.” –
UNAIDS, June 2015

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/hiv1506.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/hiv1506.php

Progress in scientific research and in treatment for HIV/AIDS
continues, with the most notable recent advance being the START
(Strategic Timing of Antiretroviral Treatment) results released in
May (http://tinyurl.com/on9gsm4). This international study funded by
the U.S. National Institute of Health showed that introducing
treatment at the time of diagnosis instead of waiting until further
damage to the immune system increases rates of survival by over 50%.
Yet this news also highlights the gap between what is now possible
and the results achieved (see latest data at
http://tinyurl.com/nrexvjc).

A new UNAIDS report released this month, and excerpted below in this
AfricaFocus Bulletin, makes it clear that those most vulnerable to
the decades-long pandemic continue to be young women and adolescent
girls in Africa. The response, the report stresses, must include not
only providing additional resources for all aspects of the fight
against HIV/AIDS but also addressing fundamental issues of gender
inequality.

For talking points and previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on health
issues, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-health.php

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Ebola Perspectives – Update

“The Other Ebola Battle: Fair Pay for Local Health Workers,” June 2,
2105
http://tinyurl.com/o2yvf2j

“Ebola Cases Rise Again in West Africa,” June 10, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/qcjfedr

“Turn on the taps to defeat the next Ebola,” June 15, 2015
http://tinyurl.com/nhonhk2

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Empower Young Women and Adolescent Girls: Fast-Tracking the end Of
the Aids Epidemic in Africa

UNAIDS

June 2015

[Excerpts only. Full formatted report, with references and graphs,
available at
http://www.unaids.org/en/resources/documents/2015/JC2746]

Foreword

Four decades into the HIV epidemic and response, we have made
encouraging progress. More people living with HIV than ever before
are accessing life-saving treatment; the number of deaths from AIDS-
related causes has declined; fewer babies are becoming infected with
HIV; and new HIV infections have fallen. Africa’s leadership
commitments, the tireless efforts of civil society–including the
women’s movement and networks of women living with HIV–combined
with scientific innovation and global solidarity have helped to
achieve these great strides. The response will be strengthened
further by the commitment from Africa’s leadership to end the AIDS
epidemic by 2030, while promoting shared responsibility and unity.

Yet, despite this progress, adolescent girls and young women are
still being left behind and denied their full rights. They are often
unable to enjoy the benefits of secondary education and formal paid
employment under decent conditions, which would allow them to build
skills, assets and resilience. The threat of violence is pervasive
— and not only in conflict and post-conflict situations. Many girls
are married as children and assume adult roles of motherhood.
Adolescent girls and young women are often prevented from seeking
services and making decisions about their own health. This
combination of factors drives both their risk of acquiring HIV and
their vulnerability to HIV. The impact of HIV on young women and
adolescent girls is acute: they account for one in five new HIV
infections in Africa and are almost three times as likely as their
male peers to be living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa.

The variables and risks associated with sexual and reproductive
health and HIV among adolescent girls and young women are tied to
gender inequalities that are intricately woven into the
sociocultural, economic and political fabric of society. Unleashing
the potential of half the population of this region and tapping into
the power of the largest youth populace in history will promote both
sustainable progress in the HIV response and wider development
outcomes.

In the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu: “If we are to see any real
development in the world, then our best investment is women.” This
holds true for the AIDS response, which needs greater attention,
reaffirmed commitment and resourced action to ensure the health,
rights and well-being of adolescent girls and young women throughout
their life-cycle. The solutions engage all sectors of society and
must embrace innovation.

The key message of advancing women’s rights and gender equality in
order to fast-track the end of the AIDS epidemic among adolescent
girls and young women outlined in this report is an important
contribution to the 2015 African Union theme “Year of women’s
empowerment and development towards Africa’s agenda 2063”. This will
guide our blueprint for future action.

As the African community and the global community stand at the dawn
of a new era of sustainable development, let us reaffirm our
commitment to empowering girls and young women. A firm foundation of
social justice, human rights and gender equality will make the AIDS
response formidable and the end of the AIDS epidemic possible.

Michel Sidibé, Executive Director, UNAIDS

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, Chair, African Union Commission

**************************************************************

Introduction

With the platform provided by the post-2015 sustainable development
goals, and leveraging the successes of the AIDS response so far,
Africa has a historic opportunity to end the AIDS epidemic as a
public health threat by 2030.

This requires adapting to the dynamism and opportunities of the
continent and reaching people most vulnerable to HIV including young
women and adolescent girls. It also requires taking action to target
the root causes of vulnerability. The magnitude of young women’s and
adolescent girls’ vulnerability to HIV cannot be explained by
biology alone but lies in pervasive conditions of gender inequality
and power imbalances as well as high levels of intimate partner
violence.

Since the 1995 adoption of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for
Action, the reality for most women and girls worldwide, including in
Africa, is that the pace of change has been unacceptably slow. Women
and girls are subject to multiple and intersecting forms of
discrimination. These inequalities are even more acute for
marginalized women, such as women with disabilities, migrant women,
female sex workers and transgender women, who are also at heightened
risk of discrimination and violence (1). There also remain other
large disparities, such as fewer than one in three girls in sub-
Saharan Africa being enrolled in secondary school, women having
unequal access to economic opportunities, and women lacking
decision-making power in the home and wider society (2, 3).

Within the context of HIV, this manifests in different ways. Young
women and adolescent girls acquire HIV five to seven years earlier
than young men, and in some countries HIV prevalence among young
women and adolescent girls is as much as seven times that of their
male counterparts(11, 54). Despite the availability of
antiretroviral medicines, AIDS-related illnesses remain the leading
cause of death among girls and women of reproductive age in Africa
(4).

Many of these young women and girls are born and raised in
communities where they are not treated as equal. Many cannot reduce
their vulnerability to HIV because they are not permitted to make
decisions on their own health care. They cannot reduce their
vulnerability because they cannot choose at what age or who to
marry, when to have sex, how to protect themselves or how many
children to have.

The impacts of gender inequality are far-reaching. Gender equality
matters intrinsically because the ability to make choices that
affect a person’s own life is a basic human right and should be
equal for everyone, independent of whether person is male or female.
But gender equality also matters instrumentally because it
contributes to economies and key development outcomes (3).

To be effective, any health and development agenda needs to focus on
the root causes of the gender gap, and the AIDS response is no
different. But there is also good news on which to build. In the
past 20 years the gender gap has closed in many areas with the most
noticeable progress made in primary school enrolment and completion,
in almost all countries. In addition, life expectancy of women in
low-income countries is now 20 years longer on average than in 1960,
and over the past 30 years women’s participation in paid work has
risen in most parts of the developing world (3).

There is also significant political commitment from Africa to gender
equality and women’s empowerment, with specific goals and targets
for the response to HIV and sexual and reproductive health and
rights. African leaders have enshrined the priorities of gender
equality and rights in (among others) the African Union Agenda 2063;
the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on
the Rights of Women in Africa (Maputo Declaration 2003); the Solemn
Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa (2004); the Sexual and
Reproductive Health Strategy for the Southern African Development
Community Region (2006-2015); the 2013 Ministerial Commitment on
Comprehensive Sexuality Education and Sexual and Reproductive Health
and Rights in Eastern and Southern Africa; the Arab Strategic
Framework on HIV and AIDS (2013-2015): and the Arab AIDS Initiative
2012; the Addis Ababa Declaration on Population and Development in
Africa Beyond 2014; and the 2013 Declaration of the Special Summit
of the African Union on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The depth and breadth of this political platform and the potential
for action to transform the lives of young women and adolescent
girls in Africa cannot be underestimated.

…

The Aids Response in Africa: Young Women and Adolescent Girls Left
Behind

Both globally and in Africa, there is good news. Our collective
efforts to end the AIDS epidemic are paying off. Now more people
living with HIV than ever before are accessing treatment, more
people know their status, and AIDS-related deaths are declining. New
HIV infections among young people aged 15-24 years are also
declining (460 000 new infections in 2013 compared with almost 715
000 new infections a decade earlier) (55). This progress, however,
belies a dangerous reality: young African women and adolescent girls
are especially vulnerable to HIV.

Globally in 2013, 15% of the approximately 16 million women aged 15
years and older living with HIV were young women; of these over 80%
live in sub-Saharan Africa (55).

Despite declining HIV infection rates, in 2013 globally, there were
approximately 250 000 new HIV infections among adolescent boys and
girls, 64% of which are among adolescent girls (Figs 2 and 3). In
Africa, 74% of new infections among adolescents were among
adolescent girls (55). In addition, AIDS-related illnesses are the
leading cause of death among adolescent girls and women of
reproductive age in Africa, despite the availability of treatment
(4).

…

Furthermore, young women and adolescent girls are missing out on the
scale-up of antiretroviral treatment access for people living with
HIV. Only 15% of young women and adolescent girls aged 15-24 years
in sub-Saharan Africa know their HIV status (6). In the Middle East
and North Africa, only one in five people living with HIV has access
to treatment (55).

Young women and adolescent girls from socially marginalized groups
are at increased risk of HIV because they face multiple challenges.
Stigma, discrimination, punitive laws and a lack of social
protection increase the risk of HIV, notably for young female sex
workers, young transgender women, young migrants and young women who
use drugs (7). In Kenya, HIV prevalence among female sex workers in
Nairobi is 29% — approximately three times the HIV prevalence among
other women in Nairobi (8).

Eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV and keeping mothers
alive

Progress to eliminate new HIV infections among children and keeping
their mothers alive has been one of the most impressive achievements
of the AIDS response to date. In 2013, for the first time since the
1990s, the number of new HIV infections among children in the 21
Global Plan 1 priority countries in sub-Saharan Africa dropped to
under 200 000. This represents a 43% decline in the number of new
HIV infections among children in these countries since 2009 (58).

Despite successes, progress among young women and adolescent mothers
has been slow with many challenges. The average adolescent birth
rate in Africa is 115 per 1000 girls, more than double the global
average of 49 per 1000 girls (6). In western and central Africa, 28%
of women aged 20-24 years have reported a birth before the age of 18
years, the highest percentage among developing regions. In Chad,
Guinea, Mali, Mozambique and Niger, 1 in 10 girls has a child before
the age of 15 years (9). In sub-Saharan Africa, an estimated 36 000
women and girls die each year from unsafe abortions, and millions
more suffer long-term illness or disability (9).

Many young women who marry or enter into partnerships early do not
have the knowledge or the personal agency that enables them to
protect themselves from HIV — for example, they cannot negotiate
when to have sex or to use condoms.

A core strategy to eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV is
to prevent pregnancy in young women and adolescent girls who do not
want to have a child at that time. According to the United Nations
Population Fund, 33 million women aged 15-24 years worldwide have an
unmet need for contraception, with substantial regional variations.
For married girls aged 15-19 years, the figures for an unmet need
for contraception range from 8.6% in the Middle East and North
Africa to 30.5% (one in three married girls) in western and central
Africa (10). Among unmarried sexually active adolescent girls, the
unmet need for contraception in sub-Saharan Africa is 46-49%; there
are no data for North Africa (10).

According to 2013 data, in sub-Saharan Africa, only eight male
condoms were available per year for each sexually active individual.
Among young people, and particularly among young women, condom
access and use remain low, despite offering dual protection against
HIV and unwanted pregnancy (11). Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 44%
of all unsafe abortions among adolescent girls aged 15-19 years in
low- and middle- income countries (excluding east Asia) (9).

Governments in Africa have already made important commitments in
this area that can be leveraged. Among the strongest is the 2013
Ministerial Commitment for Comprehensive Sexuality Education and
Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Eastern and Southern
Africa. This commitment includes action to “reduce early and
unintended pregnancies among young people by 75%”(12).

Providing access to comprehensive sexuality education, keeping girls
in school and implementing social protection programmes such as cash
transfer programmes have all proven effective in reducing new
infections among young women and adolescent girls.

Stopping child marriage and early pregnancy is also central to
success. Across Africa, 41% of girls in western and central Africa,
34% of girls in eastern and southern Africa and 12% of girls in the
Arab states are married as children (13). Child marriage has been
associated with higher exposure to intimate partner violence and
commercial sexual exploitation (13). Child marriage is a form of
violence.

Intimate partner violence and the association with HIV

Over the past decade strong evidence has emerged on the relationship
between intimate partner violence and HIV. There is equally strong
evidence for and recognition of successful community strategies to
prevent intimate partner violence and vulnerability to HIV (16, 29,
30, 57).

In high HIV prevalence settings, women who are exposed to intimate
partner violence are 50% more likely to acquire HIV than those who
are not exposed (16). Adolescent girls and young women also have the
highest incidence of intimate partner violence (11). In Zimbabwe,
for example, the prevalence of intimate partner violence among women
aged 15-24 years is 35%, compared with 24% for women aged 25-49
years; and in Gabon, prevalence of intimate partner violence among
young women is 42% compared with 28% for older women. In some
settings, 45% of adolescent girls report that their first experience
of sex was forced, another known risk factor for HIV (Fig. 4) (17).
In addition, girls who marry before age 18 are more likely to
experience violence within marriage than girls who marry later (14).
According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), globally
120 million girls — 1 in 10 — are raped or sexually attacked by
the age of 20 years (15).

…

Women and girls also continue to experience unique risks and
vulnerabilities to HIV during conflicts, emergencies and post-
conflict periods. In conflict situations, rape can be used as a
weapon of war, increasing the risk of HIV transmission because rates
of HIV among military personnel typically exceed those of the
general population (18). Adolescent girls are particularly
vulnerable and, in some cases, are abducted and used for sexual
purposes by armed groups (15). The 2011 United Nations (UN) Security
Council Resolution 1983 recognizes that the impact of HIV is felt
most acutely by women and girls in conflict and post-conflict
settings due to both sexual violence and reduced or no access to
services (19). As highlighted by the resolution, however, there is
also potential for peacekeeping operations to protect civilian
populations through prevention of conflict-related sexual violence.

Core reasons why young women and adolescent girls are vulnerable to
HIV

Every hour, around 34 young African women are newly infected with
HIV. The reasons for relatively high rates of infection and low
scale-up of services for young women in Africa are complex and
interwoven. Changing the course of the epidemic requires addressing
the root causes and understanding the core conditions that
exacerbate vulnerability. Seven core conditions stand out:

* inadequate access to good-quality sexual and reproductive health
information, commodities and services, in some measure due to age of
consent to access services;

* low personal agency, meaning women are unable to make choices and
take action on matters of their own health and well-being;

* harmful gender norms, including child, early and forced marriage,
resulting in early pregnancy;

* transactional and unprotected age-disparate sex, often as a result
of poverty, lack of opportunity or lack of material goods;

* lack of access to secondary education and comprehensive age-
appropriate sexuality education;

* intimate partner violence, which impacts on risk and health-
seeking behaviour;

* violence in conflict and post-conflict settings.

Individually or in combination, these factors severely inhibit the
ability of young women and adolescent girls to protect themselves
from HIV, violence and unintended or unwanted pregnancy. Gender
inequality and lack of women’s empowerment or agency are key themes
that cut across these drivers.

Women’s agency or empowerment is the ability to make choices and to
transform them into desired actions and outcomes. Across all
countries and cultures there are differences between men’s and
women’s ability to make these choices. Women’s empowerment
influences their ability to build their human capital. Greater
control over household resources by women leads to more investment
in children’s human capital, shaping the opportunities for the next
generation (3). In sub-Saharan African countries, more than half of
married adolescent girls and young women do not have the final say
regarding their own health care and play a low decision-making role
in the household (20).

Poverty is another overarching factor. Poverty can push girls into
age-disparate relationships, a driver of HIV risk for young women
and adolescent girls. For example, in South Africa, 34% of sexually
active adolescent girls report being in a relationship with a man at
least five years their senior. Such relationships expose young woman
and girls to unsafe sexual behaviours, low condom use and increased
risk of sexually transmitted infections (57). The risk of
trafficking and sexual exploitation is also higher for young women
and adolescent girls living in poverty (21).

Poverty also increases the risk of child marriage, and girls in the
poorest economic quintile are 2.5 times more likely to be married as
children compared with girls in the richest quintile (21). In 2010,
67 million women aged 20-24 years had been married as girls, of
which one-fifth were in Africa (14).

In May 2014, after numerous national and regional commitments to
address child marriage (including the 2005 Maputo Protocol, Article
6c), the African Union Commission initiated a 2-year campaign,
starting in 10 African countries 2 , to accelerate the end of child
marriage on the continent by increasing awareness, influencing
policy, advocating for the implementation of laws and ensuring
accountability. Eliminating child marriage will decrease African
girls’ greater risk of experiencing domestic violence, premature
pregnancies and related complications, and sexually transmitted
diseases, including HIV.

There are promising solutions, but the solutions today are not the
solutions of yesterday. Fast-tracking the response is about being
flexible and taking account of the rapid transition taking place in
Africa today, looking at the new risks but also at the new
opportunities.

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
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WITH OR WITHOUT WEAPONS? THAT’S THE QUESTION!
| June 18, 2015 | 9:12 pm | Bernie Sanders, political struggle | Comments closed
By A. Shaw
Around 1848, two of the world’s greatest revolutionaries — Marx and Engels — wrote in the Communist Manifesto
“In all these battles, it [the bourgeoisie] sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie,”  the Manifesto says.
Let’s be specific about these “elements of political and general education.”
Let’s be specific about these “weapons.”?
(1) What are these elements and weapons?
(2) Where are they?
(3) Do they work?
As for the question (3): Do they work?
Well, the Tea Party and its predecessors over the last two decades armed several hundred thousand reactionaries, lunatics, and crackpots with these weapons. Today, this political force or mass movement or electoral apparatus is a powerful force in the class struggle of the bourgeoisie against the working class and against the rest of the masses.
So, it seems these elements and weapons work.
As for the question (2), Where are they?
Everywhere in the USA — bookstores, Ebay, libraries, etc. An excellent source are bookstores operated by GOP county organizations. The county organizations of the DP are usually worthless. These elements and weapons are often found in campaign manuals or books on how to win elections.. Obviously, the readers or students of campaign manuals should as soon as possible supplement their reading and studies with experience in actual campaigns.
The Bernie Sanders’ campaign, still in its early stages, is a splendid resource to supplement one’s self-training.
Lenin, the great Russian revolutionary, says “It takes years to train oneself to be a professional revolutionary.”
To be sure, the Koch brothers, the degenerate U.S. billionaires, say “It takes years to train oneself to be a professional reactionary.”
One highly recommended text is Ronald Faucheux’s Winning Elections: Political Campaign Management.
So, it seems the elements and weapons are everywhere, largely abandoned and ignored, especially by liberals and leftists who prefer to dine on and to digest the foul-looking and foul-smelling bullshit of their failed leaders and idols.
As for the question (1): What are these elements and weapons?
The elements and weapons that farsighted Marx and Engeld saw in the middle of the 19th century are merely fields of electoral specialization in which a liberal or leftist can train oneself to be professional or a professional amateur or professional nincompoop.
Among others, these fields of electoral specialization include planning and budgeting, fundraising, targeting, voter contact, free media, paid media, candidate activity and development, opposition research, volunteers, GOTV, anti-voter fraud, etc.
The Tea Party has trained hundreds of thousands of its supporters to be real good or even professional in these fields or in the use of these weapons. These highly trained and experienced reactionaries easily prevail over liberal and especially leftist nincompoops.
Generally, well trained reactionaries are “professionals” based on their level of political skill, not their dependence on their political skills as the only or a major source of income. But increasingly,  these “professionals” trained by Tea Bags are getting multi-million dollar fees for a few months work.
Cuban revolutionaries are training and providing opportunities for self-training for Latin American and Caribbean revolutionaries. The implied precondition of being a revolutionary is a serious obstacle to the participation of US liberals and leftists in these Cuban political programs.
So, it seems that weapons are merely  electoral skills.
Obviously, if a state is not a democracy, the immediate task of the working class is not winning non-existent elections. The immediate task is then the introduction of democracy or, better still, to win the battle for democracy as Marx and Engels said in the Communist Manifesto. By winning the battle for democracy, Marx and Engels did not mean, like many US liberals and leftists, winning the battle for the bourgeois democracy, Marx and Engels meant the battle for a proletarian democracy, a state in which workers chiefly and democratically exercise state power and in which the workers  chiefly and democratically exercise power for the working class.
WEAPONS THE WORKING CLASS CAN USE TO HELP BERNIE?
The weapons that seem most available to the liberal and revolutionary sectors of the working class are volunteers and free media.
The two can creatively be forged into one. Creativity and audacity are exactly what the forging demands.
Traditionally, this is how volunteers were addressed by the campaign.
Hey volunteer,
Do you know how to knock on doors?
Do you know how to use a telephone?
Do  you know how to lick a stamp?
Do you know where to buy a bucket of KFC chicken?
Volunteers today should learn to respond something like this.
Hey asshole,
I’m here to learn what you do if you do anything in this campaign.
I’ll do my share of the doors, telephones, stamps and chicken,
but I’m here to get some fucking weapons, not to fuck around with assholes.
Bernie himself says this campaign is not about Bernie Sanders.
If it’s not about Bernie, then for sure, it’s not about your ass.
Remember this, I’m not going to take any shit from you.
In other words, the weapons are not JUST for the leaders and big wheels of the campaign.
Mass movement becomes politically independent only when the mass, among others, possesses  weapons because the armed mass, which knows what the leaders know, does not depend on leaders who may be controlled by the political police, chiefly the FBI and G-2 units of the military.
A mass with weapons identifies, exposes, and isolates corrupt leaders whose treachery can cause a mass movement without weapons to collapse.
A mass with weapons is too solid to collapse.
With over 200,000 volunteers signed-in, the campaign may want to establish or at least assist in the establishment of a network of two hundred or three hundred volunteer-operated websites called something like LIBERALS AND SOCIALISTS FOR BERNIE (ST. LOUIS) and LIBERALS AND SOCIALISTS FOR BERNIE (NYC) and LIBERALS AND SOCIALISTS FOR BERNIE (Chicago), so on and so forth.
The national network of “volunteer-operated” and volunteer-financed websites lifts the participating volunteers above doors, telephones, stamps, and chicken.
 
But the proposed operation modifies the concept of free media.
Before Obama 2008, free media meant coverage in the mainstream of the bourgeois media for which the campaign wasn’t charged.
Obama 2008 added something new to the concept of free media. 2008 introduced a campaign owned and operated media providing self coverage of the campaign to the masses.
When Obama won in 2008, the sellout president-elect promptly dismantled his electoral apparatus. Obama, of course, knew he would sell out during his first term. So, the electoral apparatus may have been used against him in his 2012 re-election. So, he dismantled the thing as quickly and as completely as possible.
Obama is a sellout and an Uncle Tom, but he’s not a fool.
2008 required a lot of creativity and audacity in regard to free media, but now 2008 is just history.
2016 demands fresh creativity and audacity.
Now, in 2015, what we find is evolving concepts of volunteer and free media forging into one.
Obviously, there are potential complications.
CONCLUSION
With weapons.
The Americans studying medicine in Cuba
| June 13, 2015 | 11:15 am | Cuba, Health Care | Comments closed

By Sam Laird June 12, 2015Source: ProgesoWeekly

The Americans studying medicine in Cuba
HAVANA, Cuba  After Hurricane Katrina devastated parts of Louisiana and Mississippi in August 2005, Cuba offered a cadre of doctors and medical supplies to help treat injured and displaced Americans. Cuba is renowned around the world for the quality of its doctors, but the United States government declined the offer.
Of course, that’s not exactly surprising given the two countries’ decades of animosity. Tension between Cuba and the U.S. is most visibly epitomized by a still-in-place trade embargo imposed by the U.S. in 1960, one year after Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara led a revolution to turn Cuba into a communist state.
Given the frosty relations and how the U.S. declined Cuban medical aid in 2005, one might reasonably assume the island just 90 miles south of Florida is the last place an American would go for medical school.
One would be wrong.
Lillian Burnett, who is from Oakland, is proof and she’s not alone.
But how does someone get from California to the Cuban capital en route to becoming a certified doctor?
It’s a story that involves Castro, an inspiring presentation back in the Bay Area, a personal desire to do good and a forward-thinking Cuban mission with an international outlook. It’s also a story that shines a light on the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina (ELAM), a program that trains doctors and helps patients worldwide, including in the U.S., even though few Americans are aware of its existence.

Inspiration from Honduras

Burnett graduated from UC Berkeley in 2005 with an eye on becoming a doctor. Soon after, Pastors for Peace, an interfaith organization that aims to help underserved populations, came to Laney College in Oakland to give a presentation about ELAM. An ELAM graduate named Luther Castillo spoke of his own experience in the program and told of the work he was doing back home in Honduras, serving his own Garifuna community, a Central American population of African descent.
“The Garifuna are very much a disenfranchised, oppressed, ostracized people in their countries and Luther was just this amazing young man who was doing amazing work,” Burnett recalled last month, sitting in her small one-bedroom apartment in Havana.

Hospital Salvador Allende in Havana where Burnett and her classmates study medicine. Hospital Salvador Allende in Havana where Burnett and her classmates study medicine.

Castillo talked about how he and other ELAM graduates had taken a method of medicine modeled after the Cuban system and applied it to his Garifuna community in Honduras. Small neighborhood clinics served and built relationships with collections of families in particular neighborhoods, where doctors functioned as community leaders as well as medical professionals.
The effect was something more intimate and holistic than the American health care system in which treatment can often feel hasty and impersonal.
“I saw that and was like, ‘Yup, that’s what I want to do,” Burnett says.
That’s the kind of doctor I want to be. I want to be groomed like that. Even if I can’t necessarily come back to the States and practice that way, let me have those values instilled in me as I’m learning this science.”
ELAM brings students from around the world to Cuba for a six-year program, taught in Spanish and covered by scholarships from the Cuban government. (For Americans, those scholarships are administered by the IFCO/Pastors for Peace partnership.)
Students have to make just one promise: After finishing the program, they’ll return home to work in underserved communities in their own home countries.
ELAM’s six-year program includes more than 10,000 students from more than 120 countries, according to MEDICC, a non-profit organization that works to facilitate cooperation in medical education between the U.S., Cuba and other countries. As of 2014, ELAM had graduated a total of 23,000 students from 83 countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas since its first class finished in 2005. American graduates, as of 2014 there were more than 100, along with about 100 current students from the U.S., are “overwhelmingly young people of color from low-income families, over half women,” according to MEDICC.
Gail Reed, MEDICC’s research director, says ELAM is the world’s largest medical school.
Sold on both Castillo’s story and ELAM as a whole, Burnett spent some time in the U.S. taking pre-med courses and saving money, then enrolled in the program and moved to Havana in 2011.
Her journey was just beginning.

Classmates and connections from all over

Burnett says one of her favorite aspects of ELAM is its emphasis on group responsibility beyond cultural lines. A typical group assignment could partner her with students from Lebanon, Pakistan, Mongolia, Ecuador and the Comoros, all of them working together in Spanish. In the eyes of their Cuban professors, success “or failure” is earned together, not as individuals.
“Say the kid from Pakistan and the kid from the Comoros are killing it, but the rest of us are struggling,” she says. “Professors aren’t going to let them get 5s and the rest of us get 2s and 3s. They’ll say, “How come you guys did well and your companeros are having a hard time? Shame on you. You need to help them out. You need to lift them up.”
But the benefits aren’t only educational.
That’s an excellent political diplomacy and international solidarity move, because you’re not going to be so quick to make someone an enemy,” Burnett says. “You have this mentality of, “Nah, man, I went through six years of medical school and some real stuff with my friend from Palestine right there. That’s the homie!”

“You have a responsibility in that, too”

Burnett is currently nearing the end of her fourth year in the program. The first two are spent mostly in the classroom learning hard sciences, the subsequent four doing hands-on clinical work. From day one, however, students get assigned to individual neighborhoods where they go door-to-door to take people’s temperatures, test blood pressure and inquire about people’s general well-being.
It’s not an intrusion to those residents, though, Burnett says, since they’re used to such a community-based healthcare model. Typically, a clinic called a consultorio will serve a given neighborhood; the doctor often lives above the clinic where he practices and gets to know local families well. Then a bigger clinic will offer more specific care for a collection of neighborhoods, with hospitals existing as a top-tier for last resort or in case of emergencies.
Aspects of that connected, social, community-based system are what Burnett and many of her fellow ELAM students hope to take back to their own countries after graduation.
“There’s a way of interacting with people and being present in the community that’s not just scientific or hard medicine,” she says. “I’d really like to practice in a community to help it mobilize around its own health.”
Burnett mentions her own hometown of Oakland.
“Cubans would say there’s a role the physician has to play around addressing gun violence in the community, around addressing addiction in the community, addressing police brutality in the community,” she continues. “Those are things people are dying from, even if there’s not a pill for them. You need to understand the impact that all those other social, political economic stressors have on someone developing an infectious disease or diabetes or hypertension in that atmosphere.
“There’s medicine in that, too. You have a responsibility in that, too.”