Mike Allen reported this morning, "Pastor Rick Warren will present President George W. Bush with the first International Medal of PEACE from the Global PEACE Coalition in recognition of his contribution to the fight against HIV/AIDS and other diseases."
I thought, "That can't be right." And in a way, the name of the award is a little misleading. Here's a press release from Rick Warren's office.
"No U.S. president or political leader has done more for global health than this Administration, which has raised the bar on America's role and responsibility for providing critical humanitarian assistance around the world," Warren said. "Over the past eight years, the President and Mrs. Bush have traveled the globe as they and their staffs have worked tirelessly to bring awareness and solutions to pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, and we are privileged to honor their efforts on World AIDS Day."
The "International Medal of PEACE" is given on behalf of the Global PEACE Coalition for outstanding contribution toward alleviating the five global giants recognized by the Coalition, including pandemic diseases, extreme poverty, illiteracy, self-centered leadership and spiritual emptiness. The Coalition is a network of churches, businesses and individuals cooperating together to solve humanitarian issues through the PEACE Plan, an effort to mobilize 1 billion Christians to Promote reconciliation, Equip servant leaders, Assist the poor, Care for the sick and Educate the next generation.
"PEACE" is an acronym. The "P" stands for "promoting reconciliation." Of course, Bush isn't good at this either, but it's at least slightly more plausible than giving him an award for promoting actual peace.
Even so... are you fucking kidding me?
And while Bush undoubtedly deserves credit for aggressively tackling the problem of AIDS, his ideological insistence on refusing to fund contraception and forbidding family planning organizations for using their own funds to provide contraception or abortion services has hampered AIDS workers’ efforts and cost lives.
Of course, this award is coming from the same fuckwit who inspired this total insanity.
It strikes me that awarding Bush recognition for his efforts on AIDS is somewhat akin to congratulating an arsonist for his tireless work in promoting fire safety awareness:
The U.S. has played an important role in bringing life- saving treatment to HIV patients who had been unable to get it, said Adel Mahmoud, a former head of Merck & Co. vaccines and professor in the department of molecular biology at Princeton University.
"But when the data says for every person we put on anti- retroviral therapy in Africa there are six new infections and we are doing nothing about it, it's absolutely mind-boggling,'' he said in a telephone interview. "Prevention is really the solution.''
Take a moment to absorb that one. We're patting this fuckwit on the head for treating more people with AIDS, while his pathological hatred of condoms helps ensure more people get infected with AIDS. Tell me how that's supposed to make sense.
Let's not even talk about what he's done to the CDC. It's too depressing.
And yet Rick Warren thinks Bush deserves awards for his efforts. As one of my dear Christian friends would say, it appears too much prayer has rotted his brain.
People wonder why atheists have such a hard time seeing the good that frothing Christians do. Well, when you have a 1:6 ratio in the good vs. bad department, it tends to make us think that a little less blind faith and a fuck of a lot more rationality would be, on the whole, better for humanity.
Which is why I hope Obama stops encouraging this psychotic freak:
Barack Obama will also be addressing Rick Warren's Saddleback Civil Forum on Global Health in Washington, held to commemorate the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day, via videotaped remarks.
There are people doing far more good in the world, without the religious agenda that makes Rick Warren and his best buddy Bush blind to certain aspects of human suffering, and they're not playing the "look at me, I'm so saintly" game. Let's reward and recognize them for a change.
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