Having slogged and blogged my way last month through four consecutive, wearisome days of Democrat Securocrats repeating the words ‘strength’ and ‘security’ ad infinitum (ad nauseum?), I have decided to decamp from the current invasion of my hometown by George W. Bush’s Republican Guard and head for London, where perhaps distance will add some much-needed perspective to the current race for the presidency.
The occasion for my trip is another gathering taking place simultaneously with the RNC fest. Called ‘Countdown 2015′ (countdown2015.org for more), the London conference brings together more than 600 global leaders from 100 countries to map an action agenda for the next decade in the fields of population and development — and to assess the damage done by the withdrawal of US support that has occurred since the election of George W. Bush.
So instead of spending the next four days listening to Republican boiler-plate bromides about “security and strength,” I’ll be listening to the voices of those individuals and organizations suffering from what The New York Times has termed George Bush’s “war on women.”
One would be hard pressed to imagine two conferences taking place at the same time that could be more different. The London affair will center on the actions of the Bush administration, which has consistently inserted domestic US abortion politics into the international development arena — with disastrous effects. It has held up congressionally appropriated funds amounting to nearly $100 million over the past three years that were intended to assist the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) assure reproductive health to families in Asia, Africa and Latin America. It has also re-imposed the Reagan-era ‘global gag rule’ that forbids US government support to any agency or non-governmental organization that even mentions abortion — most notably taking away millions of dollars in support of the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), the leading global agency in this field.
The London conference will mark the halfway point — ten years — after the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo, Egypt that led 170 countries to adopt common goals, including reproductive health care for all, to be attained by 2014. Now IPPF, UNFPA and other, like-minded groups (such as Family Care International) are trying to draw attention to the crisis in the population and development field that has resulted from the funding cutbacks and attacks on their work. I’ll be videotaping the entire conference for them, posting the plenary sessions on the web (go to planetwire.org for access), and producing daily news reports for free distribution to every major international and domestic media outlet.
It will be illuminating to see how much attention the London conference gets — particularly here in the United States, where all the media outlets we’ve contacted thus far have predictably said they are covering the Republican Convention this week, and little else. As usual, the American media’s narrow-minded ethnocentrism, celebrity-and-power focus, and general dumbing-down tendencies are battling a far different worldview, as expressed in world capitals such as London. And media aside, what the Republicans have done — and failed to do — to women, children and families abroad will be a major focus of attention at the London conference.
IPPF Director-General Steve Sinding accurately predicts that “the Republican convention will pay no attention to us.” But what about the rest of America? “That depends a lot on what the press does,” says Sinding.
Perhaps the American media will see a usable ‘sidebar’ in the inevitable Bush- bashing that will emanate from the London gathering. After all, as Sinding points out, “We will be calling the world’s attention to the grave damage that the Bush administration is doing to reproductive health around the world.”
But will the world be listening? Will the media even allow the message to get out? Or will the mainstream airwaves and print organs be filled with the usual accounts of celebrity-sightings, corporate parties, and ‘horse-race’ analysis?
That was a rhetorical question, and I think we all know the answer.
