66 PEOPLE DIE In Outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome

Barely a week after claims that the ebola virus was Ghana bound, there are reports that the deadly Middle East Respiratory Syndrome could be heading for Ghana through travels to the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia’s health authorities say the death of two more men from the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) have brought the death toll from the illness in the country to 66.

The Saudi Health Ministry said in a statement released on Sunday that a 70-year-old national, who died in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, had also been suffering from chronic illnesses.

The statement added that the second victim was a medic, also in Jeddah, where the ministry reported four new cases of the fatal illness.

Saudi Arabia has recorded 167 MERS cases since the virus first emerged in the country in 2012.

The virus was discovered in September 2012 in a Qatari man who had recently traveled to Saudi Arabia.

Experts are still studying the disease, for which there is no known vaccine.

Similar cases have been also reported in Jordan, Qatar, Germany, France, Italy, Tunisia and the United Kingdom.

According to a study, the virus has been “extraordinarily common” in camels for at least two decades, and may have been passed directly from the animals to humans.

MERS-CoV is regarded a deadlier, but less transmissible cousin of the SARS virus which first broke out in Asia in 2003 and infected more than 8,000 people.

The World Health Organization announced at the end of March that it has been told of 206 laboratory-confirmed cases of MERS infection, including 86 deaths.

MDG: Where are we? 

By Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

The Millennium Development Goals were set as Earth entered the Third Millennium. Eight goals were set at the time on reducing poverty, improving infrastructures, providing access to healthcare and sanitation and increasing women's rights. In a world which spends up to two trillion USD a year on weapons, where do we stand? Prepare to feel disgusted.

Millennium Development Goal (MDG)1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. This goal aimed to halve the number of people living on less than 1 USD per day, to halve the number of people suffering from hunger and to achieve full employment. While there has been success in the first part of the goal (extreme poverty falling in all regions; people living on less than 1 USD per day fell from 47% to 22% in 2010), the goal for employment has fallen risibly short of its target.

In Northern Africa, only 68% of men are employed, as against just 18% of women. Western Asia fares little better (68% to 20%), Southern Asia: (78% to 30%), Latin America and the Caribbean: 75% to 49%, in developed regions: 62% to 49% and worldwide, 73% to 48%. In Southern Europe, inside the European Union, the youth unemployment rate is between 30 to 40 per cent. 2 trillion USD on weapons, countries spending 2% of the GDP pleasing NATO and they cannot even create jobs for their youth.

MDG2: Achieve universal primary education. This goal aimed to ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, would be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. By 2011, enrolment in primary schools had reached 90 per cent but the rate of enrolment slowed after 2004. Poverty continues to affect school enrolment, affects girls more than boys and the gap widens as the pupils grow older. The bottom line is that in a world which spends up to two thousand billion USD a year on weapons, we will not have achieved universal primary education by the end of 2015.

MDG3: Promote gender equality and empower women. The target was to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary (by 2005) and higher education (by 2015); greater participation of women in decision-making bodies. While progress has been made in primary education (the situation nears parity) only 2 countries out of 130 targeted have achieved gender parity at all levels of education. Women hold 40% of non-agricultural jobs and continue to enter the work market on an unequal basis. 21% of seats in national Parliaments (lower or upper houses) worldwide are held by women. How many women, even in developed countries, are really free to have a child and to receive the support needed to do so? In a world in which up to two trillion USD is spent yearly on weapons, we cannot even guarantee equal rights for women.

MDG4: Reduce child mortality by two-thirds (Under 5s). The child mortality rate has dropped from 87 deaths per 1,000 in 1990 to 48 per 1,000 in 2012, a drop of 41%, far from the 66% targeted. Again, the education of the mothers is a factor here, because children born in rural areas to uneducated mothers are most at risk. We spend two trillion dollars per year on weapons but cannot even protect our children.

MDG5: Improve maternal health. The aim was to reduce the maternal mortality rate by 75% and achieve universal access to reproductive healthcare facilities. Again, the figure is far from being reached. The maternal mortality ratio fell from 400 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births (1990) to 210 deaths by 2010: 47 per cent, not 75. In 2013, 140 million women did not have access to family planning programs. In a world that spends two trillion USD on weapons, each and every year, we cannot guarantee a women's right to maternal health.

MDG6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other diseases. This goal aimed to halt and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, achieving universal access to treatment for this disease. Since 2001, the number of women living with HIV has increased yearly and in 2012, 2.3 million people became newly infected. HIV/AIDS remains the main cause of death for women and girls of reproductive age and every minute, a woman is infected with AIDS. That means 1,440 since this time yesterday, many of these because their partner has become infected through unprotected sexual activity with others and infects the wife or girlfriend. Again, universal access to healthcare is far from being reached. As regards Malaria, 207 million cases occurred in 2012 and 627,000 people died from the disease - most of these children under five years of age in Africa. Since this time yesterday, 1,440 children have died from Malaria - one per minute. We spend 2 trillion USD a year willingly on systems to kill each other but see one child die every minute of every day from a preventable or treatable disease.

MDG7: Ensure environmental sustainability. The aim was to integrate principles of sustainable development in country policies and programs, reverse the loss of environmental resources and reduce by half the number of people living without access to drinking water and basic sanitation. Global emissions of carbon dioxide have increased by 45 per cent since 1990, the good news being that halving the number of people living without access to drinking water has already been achieved. However, 768 million people continue to take their water from improvised wells and women and girls (71%) are charged with water-collection activities, often having to walk miles and miles every day to collect water... and miss school. Access to basic sanitation has improved from less than half the world's population in 1990 to 64% today, 11 per cent short of the target. We can build weapons systems to murder millions of people, and are willing to pay two trillion USD a day for them but cannot build sewage systems and instal bathrooms, when two thousand years ago the Romans were doing so across their Empire with fewer resources.

MDG8: Establish a global partnership for development. This last goal aimed to create an open and non-discriminatory trading and financial system and to make available the benefits of new technologies to all. Official Development Assistance from developed to developing countries was 125.6 billion USD in 2012, 4 per cent down on 2011 and 2 per cent down on 2010. Global penetration of mobile phone devices has reached 96% while there are 2.7 billion users of the Internet (39 per cent of the world's population).

In conclusion: we can spend two thousand billion USD per year on weapons systems but only 125 billion of Official Development Assistance. We spend ten times more on weapons than we do on development.

Let this article, and articles like it, be a fitting epitaph to the stage humankind has reached in 2014 and let us all feel utterly disgusted with our collective effort. NATO, for example, accounts for seventy per cent of the world's defence spending - member states are supposed to spend 2 per cent of their GPD on military spending - and so should bear the brunt of criticism for this ridiculous situation.

Instead of bombing countries, installing puppet regimes using terrorists, strafing kids with military hardware and targeting civilian structures with bombs, instead of destroying water supply systems and electricity grids, suppose NATO disbanded, freed the populations of its member states from the yoke of the 2 percent of their GDP burden, and spent the money instead on development programs?

 Source: UNO

Lies about Rwanda mean more wars if ….

By David Swanson

Urge the ending of war these days and you'll very quickly hear two words: "Hitler" and "Rwanda."  While World War II killed some 70 million people, it's the killing of some 6 to 10 million (depending on who's included) that carries the name Holocaust. Never mind that the United States and its allies refused to help those people before the war or to halt the war to save them or to prioritize helping them when the war ended -- or even to refrain from letting the Pentagon hire some of their killers. Never mind that saving the Jews didn't become a purpose for WWII until long after the war was over.  Propose eliminating war from the world and your ears will ring with the name that Hillary Clinton calls Vladimir Putin and that John Kerry calls Bashar al-Assad.

Get past Hitler, and shouts of "We must prevent another Rwanda!" will stop you in your tracks, unless your education has overcome a nearly universal myth that runs as follows.  In 1994, a bunch of irrational Africans in Rwanda developed a plan to eliminate a tribal minority and carried out their plan to the extent of slaughtering over a million people from that tribe -- for purely irrational motivations of tribal hatred.  The US government had been busy doing good deeds elsewhere and not paying enough attention until it was too late.  The United Nations knew what was happening but refused to act, due to its being a large bureaucracy inhabited by weak-willed non-Americans.  But, thanks to US efforts, the criminals were prosecuted, refugees were allowed to return, and democracy and European enlightenment were brought belatedly to the dark valleys of Rwanda.

Something like this myth is in the minds of those who shout for attacks on Libya or Syria or the Ukraine under the banner of "Not another Rwanda!"  The thinking would be hopelessly sloppy even if based on facts.  The idea that SOMETHING was needed in Rwanda morphs into the idea that heavy bombing was needed in Rwanda which slides effortlessly into the idea that heavy bombing is needed in Libya.  The result is the destruction of Libya.  But the argument is not for those who pay attention to what was happening in and around Rwanda before or since 1994.  It's a momentary argument meant to apply only to a moment.  Never mind why Gadaffi was transformed from a Western ally into a Western enemy, and never mind what the war left behind.  Pay no attention to how World War I was ended and how many wise observers predicted World War II at that time.  The point is that a Rwanda was going to happen in Libya (unless you look at the facts too closely) and it did not happen.  Case closed.  Next victim.

Edward Herman highly recommends a book by Robin Philpot called Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa: From Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction, and so do I.  Philpot opens with UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's comment that "the genocide in Rwanda was one hundred percent the responsibility of the Americans!"  How could that be?  Americans are not to blame for how things are in backward parts of the world prior to their "interventions."  Surely Mr. double Boutros has got his chronology wrong.  Too much time spent in those UN offices with foreign bureaucrats no doubt.  And yet, the facts -- not disputed claims but universally agreed upon facts that are simply deemphasized by many -- say otherwise.

The United States backed an invasion of Rwanda on October 1, 1990, by a Ugandan army led by US-trained killers, and supported their attack on Rwanda for three-and-a-half years.  The Rwandan government, in response, did not follow the model of the US internment of Japanese during World War II, or of US treatment of Muslims for the past 12 years.  Nor did it fabricate the idea of traitors in its midst, as the invading army in fact had 36 active cells of collaborators in Rwanda.  But the Rwandan government did arrest 8,000 people and hold them for a few days to six-months.  Africa Watch (later Human Rights Watch/Africa) declared this a serious violation of human rights, but had nothing to say about the invasion and war.  Alison Des Forges of Africa Watch explained that good human rights groups "do not examine the issue of who makes war.  We see war as an evil and we try to prevent the existence of war from being an excuse for massive human rights violations."

The war killed many people, whether or not those killings qualified as human rights violations.  People fled the invaders, creating a huge refugee crisis, ruined agriculture, wrecked economy, and shattered society.  The United States and the West armed the warmakers and applied additional pressure through the World Bank, IMF, and USAID.  And among the results of the war was increased hostility between Hutus and Tutsis.  Eventually the government would topple.  First would come the mass slaughter known as the Rwandan Genocide.  And before that would come the murder of two presidents.  At that point, in April 1994, Rwanda was in chaos almost on the level of post-liberation Iraq or Libya.

One way to have prevented the slaughter would have been to not support the war.  Another way to have prevented the slaughter would have been to not support the assassination of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi on April 6, 1994.  The evidence points strongly to the US-backed and US-trained war-maker Paul Kagame -- now president of Rwanda -- as the guilty party.  While there is no dispute that the presidents' plane was shot down, human rights groups and international bodies have simply referred in passing to a "plane crash" and refused to investigate.

A third way to have prevented the slaughter, which began immediately upon news of the presidents' assassinations, might have been to send in UN peacekeepers (not the same thing as Hellfire missiles, be it noted), but that was not what Washington wanted, and the US government worked against it.  What the Clinton administration was after was putting Kagame in power.  Thus the resistance to calling the slaughter a "genocide" (and sending in the UN) until blaming that crime on the Hutu-dominated government became seen as useful.  The evidence assembled by Philpot suggests that the "genocide" was not so much planned as erupted following the shooting down of the plane, was politically motivated rather than simply ethnic, and was not nearly as one-sided as generally assumed.

Moreover, the killing of civilians in Rwanda has continued ever since, although the killing has been much more heavy in neighboring Congo, where Kagame's government took the war -- with US aid and weapons and troops -- and bombed refugee camps killing some million people.  The excuse for going into the Congo has been the hunt for Rwandan war criminals.  The real motivation has been Western control and profits.  War in the Congo has continued to this day, leaving some 6 million dead -- the worst killing since the 70 million of WWII.  And yet nobody ever says "We must prevent another Congo!"

Nigeria: Africa's Biggest Economy?
By Ejike Okpa II

Word is going round that Nigeria is poised to become Africa's biggest economy. Nigeria does not have economic development; but mainly a transaction economy that is fueled by consumption of imported goods and reliance on foreign goodwill to achieve its basic needs. If more than 75% of what Nigeria needs to survive as a nation are imported, can such a country be considered as growing and developing?

When there is hardly any city or state that can supply 24-/7 water to its citizens, and public servants are owed outstanding wages, and pensioners have seen the real value of their pension gone, Nigeria is on a make-believe trajectory. My in-laws live in Ibadan and they have said that the entire city goes without power for days. Just imagine that, and Ibadan, Oyo State, is a major population center.

No Nigerian bank stock is worth an equivalent of $2/share. The total mortgage notes in Nigeria; a country of 160m people is 20,000. There is outstanding housing need of 16 million, and no developer in Nigeria builds 1000 housing units a year. Do the maths. Housing, as a significant component of any economy because of its socio-economic benefits, is annoyingly lacking given that since 1914, no government in Nigeria in collaboration with the private sector has built 100,000 housing units annually. Why so?

The government is playing with numbers and banking hope on mineral resources/reserves which are unearned income. Since the US importation of Nigeria’s oil has dropped from about 22% to its current import of 16%, Nigeria has had to scramble to find buyers. Spain is now the leading importer of Nigeria’s oil. Spain, a country that is struggling, is the importer of Nigeria’s main commodity that affords the government 85% of its overall expending. Do you understand the implication of such a relationship? Spain is hardly a member of G-8. She is neither a developed nation nor a third world country a floater. Since oil transaction is often carried out on IOU basis, what does Spain have to offer Nigeria? Longer payment terms and seeking support from EU to help facilitate balance of payment arrangements.

As a country with weak finances, Nigeria’s strength to borrow/trade [current account] is based on its foreign reserve. The Naira has been having problem sustaining its value. If Nigeria is that buoyant, how come 85% of its refined oil need is imported? Its currency, the Naira, since 1999, has lost about 210% value. Since Finance Minister Okonjo-Iweala’s debut, the Naira has lost almost 40%, and Nigeria’s bank debts are not easily tradable assets as majority of the debts are not well collateralized or secured by verifiable assets.

Hinging growth on rate of change of GDP as a volume, while the fundamentals are missing is voo-doo economics and that has been prevalent since 1999, as the leaderships tries harder to convince Nigerians they are up to the task of delivering the most populous black nation in the world. Is the economy stupid? One may say YES in the case of Nigeria. But do not take my word for it. Go to the street and look at the people and see the agony and suffering. Many college graduates in Nigeria, after more than a decade are not able to afford a 2-3 bedroom home, car and job that matches their education. Mark you, many Nigerians just so they have a job, are well underpaid such that any number of those employed, a good half are sweating it trying to make ends meet.

Here are three basic aspects of economic development: job creation, stabilized interest rate and stable currency. A major fluctuation in any of the three factors makes an economy stand on a faulty foundation quicksand. That is why Nigeria’s Naira is weak currency - it has lost tremendous value and Nigeria’s banks cannot afford to make loans on amortizing schedule. Instead, they do so on interest-only, with hefty up-front charges and payments. And the desire of Nigeria businesses to source credit facilities off-shore placed additional pressure on the foreign reserve such that Nigeria is not able to meet its 90-day current account requirement. The resultant effect, the Naira is on a wide and wild swing.

How can one sing about a growing economy with an interest rate that runs in doubt digits, such that it is hard to get a loan that goes beyond a few years? The absorption rate of capable employable Nigerians is less than 3% of jobs produced as a result of the growing economy. And given that many Nigerians are in default professions jobs different from what they went to school for, means that many Nigerians are just getting by and causing employers more money on training because they are not squarely placed in their field of study. One can understand the frictional unemployment rate that exists in every economy. But when more than 80% of a nation’s labor resources are floaters - underemployed or marginally employed, labor as a critical factor for productive existence is seen as not throwing off benefits for sustainability.

Until Nigeria admits its shortcomings in getting the fundamentals of the economy right, the fuzzy math, fluff in the projections, forecasts and predictions, will continue to undermine actual gains. The gains are imagined than actually measured. It is like what my mom taught me one who lies about catching fish pretending to throw fish into a bucket, will go home empty handed. While Nigeria’s leadership is pretending on how well it is doing, Nigerians are having a difficult time reconciling what gets said and what they see and feel. In a country where TRUST is in short supply, no one believes what comes out of Nigeria, even the leadership. As they huddle in their federal cabinet weekly meetings, it is more beer parlor chant as Finance Minister Madam Okonjo-Iweala, the coordinating minister for economic development, dazzles them with voo-doo stats as no one in the cabinet questions the authenticity of the numbers. It is a case of a barely one eyed expert leading a pack of totally blind cabinet who dare not question her.

What/where does that leave one get back to the basics and free Nigeria from central command and control economy such that the mood of the president and his loose set of mechanics and experts dictates what happens. Since Madam Okonjo-Iweala’s debut, the Naira has lost value and she was recommended for HIRE as a World Bank expert. Well, we know the World Bank is not a bank for developed nations but for less fortunate nations that are seen as not worthy of access to global capital markets, such that they must live dealing with shylock lenders vultures that descend on them. Under her Finance Ministry, Nigeria has seen more damages to her economy. It is amazing.

Japan’s Housewives Opts for Online Dating

It turns out Japanese married couples like sex as much as anyone, but not so much with each other.

In the last year headlines about how celibacy is trending in Japan have gained attention around the world: “No sex please, we’re Japanese,” reports the BBC. But, wait a minute. This is a country where an estimated two trillion yen ($19.3 billion) are spent each year on the legal sex industry. And now it looks like the land of the rising sun is also the land of rising adultery. Ashley Madison—the international web site for married people who want to fool around—is taking Japan by storm.

“Life is short. Have an affair,” the site advises its clients, and when it launched in Japan on June 24 of last year it signed up over 120, 000 members in just ten days. As of March 27 of this year, that membership had grown to 1,074,075 people.

Out of all the markets Ashley Madison has penetrated, Japan was the fastest to reach one million members. If the numbers continue to grow at the current pace, by the end of the year one per cent of the entire Japanese population will have joined. Those numbers do not immediately negate Japan’s sexless marriage problem, but they do suggest that there are over a million people trying to get some action, and the problem may not be so much that married couples don’t want to have sex as that they don’t want to have sex with each other.

The ratio of women to men on the site is about two to one, which shows that many of Japan’s desperate housewives are determined to be desperate no more.

“There’s no doubt in an intelligent Japanese woman’s mind that her husband, who probably isn’t making love to her all that often, is somehow partaking in sexual encounters somewhere out there,” said Noel Biderman, the founder and CEO of Ashley Madison. “And to her, in what is becoming a more equitable society, that seems like BS,” he told The Daily Beast. “She doesn’t want a life of celibacy—that’s not how she’s engineered either.”

In a survey to be released on April 2, which targeted 75,000 users around the world (3, 500 in Japan), there are some interesting statistics.

First of all, Japanese women lead the world in their rush to have affairs, and, yes, 55 percent of Japanese women have an affair because they’re not having enough sex with their husband. This matches the results of a national survey of 14,000 people by condom-maker Sagami, which found that 55 percent of married couples considered their relationship sexless. By comparison, the women surveyed in other parts of the world cited lack of sex as the reason for an affair only 40 percent of the time.

It seems that Japanese people also don’t feel much guilt about their affairs: 8 percent of women and 19 percent of men throughout the world said in the survey that they felt bad about their adultery. (Remember, the people surveyed have already signed up for a fling.) But in Japan, hey, the guilt quotient is only 8 percent for men and for women just 2 percent, or about a quarter of the world average.

And not only are people in Japan not guilty about their affairs, they’re also proud of them.

“In America lots of women use Ashley Madison, but I don’t think they tell their friends about it. I think they’re telling their friends about it here. I think there’s some ‘virality’ going on. Not only are they unashamed, they are, in a sense, proud,” said Biderman.

Japanese people, who typically follow Shinto and Buddhist religions, don’t have as strong a sense of guilt over sex as people in the West, who follow Judeo-Christian traditions, with their strong concept of sin.

The Kojiki, one of the classics of the Shinto religion, contains a remarkably bawdy interlude: The sun goddess is lured out of her cave another goddess performs an impromptu striptease before the other assembled deities and concludes by masturbating on stage. The hoots and hollers and all the commotion bring the sun goddess out from the darkness, probably because she’s missing out on the fun. Even Buddhist priests have sung the praises of both legitimate and illicit intercourse.

In other words, Japanese people aren’t as concerned about being sent to hell for having sex with someone else’s husband or wife.

In the survey, 84 percent of Japanese women and 61 percent of Japanese men answered that having a fling has a good effect on their marriage.

“When people jump into an affair, they alleviate a lot of psychological stress on themselves, because they were pretty unhappy and lonely before, and now they have some attention being paid to them,” said Biderman (who is known as “the King of Infidelity”). “They’re less agitated about their children and their partner. I even get anecdotal e-mails from women, in particular, who say that.”

Ashley Madison had figured that frustrated Japanese women would be a lucrative market. There are plenty of hostess clubs, “soaplands,” and other services for men who are seeking something else outside of their marriage. Not so for their wives. But in some respects targeting women has proved difficult. The company has not been able to get a single female-focused TV channel to agree to run any of its ads. “Japan is a very enlightened sexual culture but refuses to acknowledge it,” said Biderman.

Paradoxically, the experience of online arranged adultery may have gained wider acceptance because of the long tradition of family- arranged marriages known as o-miai. In practice these are arranged dates between a man and a woman who share common goals, looking to settle down, marry and have children. The Ashley Madison paradigm also depends to a great extent on shared goals: both partners are looking to not get married, not upend their family life, and not settle down. They want to stir things up in the bedroom, not the courts.

So Ashley Madison expects continued high growth in the Japanese market. Currently, the country is ranked fifth in overall members, behind Brazil and the United States, but Biderman thinks Japan will move up the ranks.

Notwithstanding the carefully guarded anonymity of Ashley Madison’s users, the trend is likely to be very well documented. Japan leads the world in selfie porn: 84 percent of women and 89 percent of men love to take footage of themselves in the act. That’s far ahead of everyone else: in the rest of the world only 52 percent of women and 60 percent of men take photographs of themselves having sex.

So, now maybe we know why Japanese tourists love carrying around their cameras so much. But here’s another curiosity: while fellatio, frottage, and just about every conceivable sexual service besides actual vaginal penetration can be purchased legally in Japan, pornography is still censored. The scenes of penetration are obscured with masking or blurring. This may account for Japanese fascination of taking taboo “non-edited” porn on their own initiative. “Oh, that’s what it looks like,” may be the reaction for many home directors.

So, while it’s hard to deny statistics showing Japan has a low sexual frequency rate, the focus on sex within marriage may be misleading. According to the Sagami survey cited previously, in cases where the married man or woman was having an affair, the number of sexual encounters per month more than doubled.