After multiple decades of following failed education philosophies which have reduced literacy rates, increased learning “disabilities”, produced a highly disaffected student body, and fragmented families, Puerto Rico has agreed (been bribed) into ceding total control of its education system to the US federal government by adopting the controversial “Every Student Succeeds Act” (ESSA). Although this decision was taken some years ago, the government is only now holding public hearings on some aspects of this issue. In order that the public remain in darkness concerning the rather mediocre content standards, the PR-DOE, now under the leadership of the ex-Obama bureaucrat Julia B. Keleher, has “vanished” the aforementioned documents [1] from its webpage. It would seemingly prefer that the public remain ignorant of the lack of purpose behind the so-called “content” taught to students. In reality, these “hearings” are merely a tool to rubber stamp what is already a fait-accompli.
Indeed, ESSA, which is oriented to social indoctrination rather than education, will only worsen the current crisis in education. By data mining, ESSA aims to enforce conformity – it is designed to condition students to accept and propagate radical liberal postmodern “values,” thereby producing a population of non-thinkers. This has long been the unstated aim of government schools. According to Gatto [2], such schools produce:
“Young people indifferent to the adult world and to the future; indifferent to almost everything except the diversion of toys and violence? Rich or poor, schoolchildren cannot concentrate on anything for very long. They have a poor sense of time past and to come; they are mistrustful of intimacy (like the children of divorce they really are); they hate solitude, are cruel, materialistic, dependent, passive, violent, timid in the face of the unexpected, addicted to distraction.”
El verdadero amor espera. En un mundo en el que se precian los placeres instantáneos y las respuestas fáciles, esta frase te podrá parecer extraña o aun fantasiosa. Sin embargo, en tu interior sabes que dichos placeres y respuestas, aunque tal vez seductores, no contestan tus inquietudes ni llenan tu existencia. Te llamamos a ti, joven que no te conformas con lo superficial y lo mediocre. Te llamamos a ti, joven que buscas las respuestas correctas y la verdadera felicidad.
¿Por qué el verdadero amor espera? ¿Qué es la castidad? La castidad ejercita todas las virtudes cardinales: la justicia, la fortaleza, la prudencia, la templanza o moderación. Justicia porque se afirma la persona a sí misma y a los demás como seres con dignidad y valor intrínseco. Fortaleza porque requiere resistir y decir NO ante los halagos, las presiones o aun la burla de otros: la pareja, las “amistades”, el grupo. Prudencia porque requiere la recta razón y la aplicación de principios universales a acciones particulares. En especial, la castidad es una virtud de templanza porque requiere autodisciplina, autocontrol, el manejo de las pasiones y apetitos sensuales por la razón. Si controlas tu ingesta de calorías con el propósito de mantener tu salud y evitar padecer de los males que provoca la obesidad, cuanto más necesario el autodominio en la sexualidad. De ello depende tu salud física, social, y espiritual, al igual que la de tu pareja e incluso otros. … Leer el resto en fielesalaverdad.org
In 2004 August more than 40 million condoms of the Engabu brand were found to be defective and were recalled to be destroyed. This was after a huge public outcry concerning condom failures which may have exposed many people to HIV/AIDS. Unfortunately, more reliable condoms are not a solution. Independent of the reliability p, repeated use of condoms with a p% failure rate is like unto a game of Russian Roulette with a 100/p chambered revolver —so, for example a 20% failure rate would correspond to Russian Roulette with a five chambered revolver. The outcome of such a game is determined by:
Theorem. The risk of contracting AIDS during so-called “protected sex”approaches 100 percent as the number of episodes of sexual intercourse with an infected person increases.
Proof: Consider a Bernoulli random variable with value 1 if condom fails and zero otherwise. Let X be the sum of n such variables. Assume the variables are independent and identically distributed. For any n, the sum has a binomial distribution and it is a simple exercise to show that the probability that X > 0 (i.e. of at least one failure) approaches 1 as n increases.
Condom promotion spreads HIV
Two important related and seemingly contradictory effects are possible when condoms are promoted:
E1. A reduction in virus transmission probability per coital act when condoms are used.
E2. An overall increase in transmission rate in the population due to increases in promiscuity encouraged by the promotion of condoms.
Since factors (E1) and (E2) work in opposite directions, much polemic has been generated by those who, for economic or ideological motives or simply because they fail to understand that both effects are simultaneously possible, focus only on E1 and ignore the above theorem. In reality, evidence indicates that when condoms are distributed, the alleged benefit due to factor E1 is more than nullified by E2. According to Dr. Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies,
“There is a consistent association shown by our best studies, including the U.S.-funded ‘Demographic Health Surveys,’ between greater availability and use of condoms and higher (not lower) HIV-infection rates,” he said in an interview earlier this year.
“This may be due in part to a phenomenon known as risk compensation,” Green explained, “meaning that when one uses a risk-reduction ‘technology’ such as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) by ‘compensating’ or taking greater chances than one would take without the risk-reduction technology.”
If a group or individual is already maximally promiscuous and condom using, effect E2 will be negligible. However, in this case, the reduction in transmission probability per coital act achieved by condoms will be more than counterbalanced by the fact that, for HIV discordant couples, the asymptotic limit of repeated condom roulette is virus transmission with probability 1. As a result, the overall residual infection rate for such a group will remain high —despite condom promotion and use. Only behavioral shifts can reduce overall infection rates. This partly explains why, notwithstanding the promotion of condoms, transmission rates for certain populations, such blacks in many US inner city areas and gays have remained many times the average for the population as a whole. In the case of gays, reductions in average life spans exceeding 8 years have been observed and, in some studies as much 20 years. HIV infection rates for US blacks in 2003 were 650% higher than for the population as a whole.
For populations of intermediate promiscuity, effect E2 will tend to outweigh E1 and the promotion of condoms can be expected to increase the net infection rate, a fact in accordance with the studies cited by Green. It is notable that every year, for many years, the South African government has distributed hundreds of millions of condoms in a futile bid to control the AIDS epidemic. Despite this, the AIDS rate has risen to almost 30%. and millions are condemned to die in this futile and unethical attempt to refute the now empirically based null hypothesis that “condoms are ineffective in fighting the AIDS epidemic”.
In the case of a highly monogamous population, factor E1 is insignificant and promotion of condoms can only increase the virus transmission rate. This might be the case in some poor countries, where promiscuity is kept low, precisely because the majority of the population can afford neither condoms nor the shame of children born out of wedlock. In such a situation the false sense of security caused by the distribution of free condoms can be especially significant in increasing disease transmission. Moreover, the very notion that unfaithful men will use condoms to protect their wives is absurd. In reality many prefer to hide their unfaithfulness and/or HIV status. And what of normal couples who want children?
In every case, we see that the promotion of condoms fails stop the AIDS epidemic and can actually increases the level of infection. Despite the annual use of over 10 billion condoms AIDS rates remain high. Halting the epidemic can only be done by promoting abstinence and monogamy. In this sense, the recent controversial claim by Pope Benedict that condoms cannot stop the AIDS epidemic and can even worsen it is good science and good mathematics. Those who proclaim otherwise may have blood on their hands.
Some Statistics
The following table based upon data from the 2003 World Factbook of the US Central Intelligence Agency shows HIV/AIDS rates as a function of Catholic population.
Country
Religion
% Aids Infection
Burundi
62% Catholic
6%
Angola
38% Catholic
3.9%
Ghana
63% Christian
3.1%
Uganda
33% Catholic (66%christian)
4.1%
Botswana
5% Catholic
37.3%
South Africa
6% Catholic
21.5%
The available statistics show that countries with a large Catholic percentage population, show significantly lower rates of HIV/AIDS infections than countries with mostly non-Catholic populations.
On December 26th 2004, a massive tsunami devastated many countries bordering the Indian Ocean leaving hundreds of thousands of persons dead and many more homeless. Unfortunatly, the United Nations, agency UNFPA, which describes itself as the “largest international public sector supplier of contraceptives, condoms and other “reproductive health” essentials, is seeking donations of 28 million dollars for reproductive “healthcare” for the victims of this disaster.
the so called reproductive health kits developed by UNFPA for the initial acute phase of an emergency, include condoms, oral and injectable contraceptives including the abortifacient morning-after pills, and IUD[s]. The kits also contain manual vacuum aspirators, portable abortion devices that are easily used in primitive conditions such as refugee areas.
Thus, rather than helping the victims of this disaster by providing food, help with economic reconstruction and medical care, the priorities of this UN agency are in reality, the provision of abortion services including “emergency” contraception and the promotion of promiscuous and unsafe sexual practices such as the use of condoms. The UNFPA falsely claims that distribution of condoms helps control the spread of AIDS. The abject failure of this pernicious policy is well illustrated by the spread of this disease in Africa. Uganda, the only African country to successfully beat back its AIDS epidemic, did so, NOT by following the UN backed policies based on the promotion of so called “safe sex” but rather by encouraging abstinence. The failure of the UN to learn from the Uganda policy and adopt standard public health measures which promote chastity borders on criminal negligence and will inevitably lead to the deaths of millions of people.
Failure to halt the spread of AIDS and control diseases such as malaria are not the only opportunity cost of the UN’s blind obsession with abortion and population control. For many years, UN agencies have supported the coercive and genocidal one child policies of the Chinese government which are based upon forced abortions, compulsory sterilization, infanticide, and control of the number of live births. These policies have lead to the murder of millions of babies and to a catastrophic decline in the number of female births. If current trends continue, China will soon have an exponentially decreasing 4-2-1 population distribution with one grandson supporting 2 parents and 4 grandparents. Future economic and social collapse will likely follow.
The UN has become a corrupt organization, obsessed by dystopic visions of a new world order. Its solutions to many of the world’s ills are predicated upon primitive neo-malthusian notions of population reduction with no clear analysis of the consequences, moral or otherwise. Such an organization is manifestly unfit to lead relief efforts. For this reason, donors of aid are strongly urged to give only to reputable charities and to investigate carefully how their money will be used.
