[wordup] proud to be an american? (aka. the seperation of church and state)

[Adam Shand]

[ sorry this has been queued up for a while, but it's still worth sending
  out.  better now then never :-) ]

from an expatriate american living in kiwiland via a kiwi friend.  or
something like that. :)

anyway glad georgefuckerbush is keeping his campaign promises and making
sure that church and state stay seperated.  my only hope is that dubya
will piss off so many people that something might actually get done.  hell
maybe we'll finally have that revolution everyone's been talking about for
the last 40 years.

adam.

----

Two of the groups Bush has chosen to represent us in the World Health
Assembly in Geneva. Not the AMA, not the American Nurses Association. The
organizations will be representing the US.

This is their home page:
	http://www.frc.org/site/index.cfm?get=about

Their anti-domestic partners:
	http://www.frc.org/iss/hsx/retrieve.cfm?get=IS94F5

This is the home page for another of the groups representing us
	http://www.lifeissues.org/whoweare.html

From: rebecca <rebecca at wetafx.co.nz>
URL:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36643-2001May16.html

Organizations Find Big Changes in Bush's A-List
Professional Groups Lose International Delegation Spots

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 17, 2001; Page A21

The American Public Health Association assumed it would be invited to join
the official U.S. delegation to this week's World Health Assembly in
Geneva. As the nation's oldest and largest organization of public health
professionals, the APHA has been a U.S. delegate to the annual meeting of
the world's health ministers for many years, said its executive director,
Mohammad Akhter.

But two weeks ago, a senior official at the Department of Health and Human
Services called to say the association would not be part of the delegation
headed by HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson. The American Nurses
Association, which had also participated in past assemblies, was similarly
excluded.

They are not the only ones feeling left out. Numerous private-sector
organizations accustomed to having their voices heard in government, from
the American Bar Association to the American Medical Association --
another Geneva reject -- are feeling shunned by the Bush administration.
But while some organizations have gotten the cold shoulder, others feel
they have finally come into the sun.

The selection of private-sector organizations to take part in official
government business is one of the many small ways for an administration to
make its mark. Official delegations to international meetings have
included the administration-friendly Family Research Council, which
advocates conservative social policies, and the National Law Center for
Children and Families, whose mission is "the protection of children and
families from the harmful effects of illegal pornography."

As for this week's Geneva meeting, where representatives from 191
countries are discussing global strategies for infant and child feeding,
the AIDS pandemic, strengthening health systems, and the health effects of
depleted uranium, "the members of [the U.S.] delegation are certainly
going to represent the philosophies and priorities of the administration,"
said Thompson chief of staff Bob Wood.

In addition to Thompson, Surgeon General David Satcher and other HHS and
State Department officials, five "private-sector advisers" are on the
official team, including Jeanne Head, the antiabortion International Right
to Life Federation's lobbyist at the United Nations; and Nancy Brinker,
inaugural party-giver and friend of the Bush family, and a major
fundraiser for breast cancer research and President Bush's campaigns.

Chevy Chase psychiatrist James Egan, who said he had never been to such a
gathering, was "sort of curious" as to why he was invited. Egan, who once
served as head of child psychiatry at Children's Hospital in Washington
and is now in private practice, said he assumed it was because he has a
friend in the upper echelons of HHS, whom he declined to name. Norwood
Knight-Richardson, medical director of an Oregon health care system, is a
physician and college friend of Bush, who as governor named the then-Texas
resident to the state drug and alcohol commission.

The final private-sector delegate, University of North Carolina Public
Health School Dean William Roper, has a clear claim on the issues and was
once considered a contender to be Bush's HHS secretary. Roper held senior
health care positions in the Reagan and former Bush administrations.

Wood, who agreed it was important for major U.S. health care professions
to be represented in the official delegation, said that requirement was
fulfilled by Head, who is a nurse, and the three physicians, all of whom
belong to the AMA. He said it was important to recognize Brinker's
involvement in women's health as founder of the Dallas-based Susan G.
Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

The Clinton administration was not immune to the temptation of favoring
ideological soulmates for such appointments. Clinton's delegation to the
1999 U.N. General Assembly Special Session on Population included
representatives from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the
International Women's Health Coalition, both advocates of abortion rights.

But government officials who have served in both administrations, as well
as representatives of a number of mainline nongovernmental organizations,
insisted that such selections were more the exception than the rule and
that standard practice was to seek -- and approve -- recommendations from
other government agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health and
the Center for Disease Control for health-related conferences, and from
leading nongovernmental organizations.

"The previous administration and the administration before invited NGO
participation from the mainline . . . groups" said James Bishop of the
American Council for Voluntary International Action, whose 160 members
include most U.S. humanitarian, refugee and disaster aid organizations.
"There was not too much ideological debate."

Last year's World Health Assembly delegation, led by then-HHS Secretary
Donna Shalala, included Akhter of the public health association; Iowa
Public Health Director Stephen Gleason, a former Clinton health official
and former vice president of the nationwide Catholic Health Initiatives;
AMA President Randolph D. Smoak Jr., and Joan Dunlop, head of a
Rockefeller Brothers Fund project to foster U.S. women's involvement in
international issues and a member of the board of CARE.  Dunlop is also
the former head of the International Women's Health Coalition.

"I think this is setting a bad precedent," said Akhter of this year's
Geneva team. "This is not at all what America is about. It doesn't matter
who the president is, we represent our people. That's what has put us
above all the other countries in the world. . . . Now, we're the same as
Third World countries where they bring in their friends and make a mess of
things."

The ANA, representing 2.6 million registered nurses, is more circumspect.
"We're disappointed. We wanted to go," said Cheryl Peterson, director of
the ANA's international nursing center, adding that the assembly was to
consider a resolution on nursing and midwifery. "You would hope that they
would want organizations and professionals who deal with these issues on a
day-to-day basis."

The AMA head office declined to comment, except to confirm that it had
requested inclusion.

Each year, scores of official U.S. delegations travel to international
conferences and meetings. Some, such as this week's Assembly -- the
governing body of the World Health Organization -- are major events on the
diplomatic calendar, with teams headed by a Cabinet secretary or even the
president. Many more are preparatory meetings for upcoming big events or
follow-ups once an event is over.

Non-governmental advisers are chosen to "provide . . . informed views on
policy and technical matters under discussion," according to federal
regulations written for the State Department. The advisers have the task
of reporting back to their organizations the "positions being taken by
other countries, the alternatives available to the United States, and the
process by which agreements are reached."

Those selecting them are instructed to strive for a "balanced
representation of interests" and to "exercise judgment as to what private
interests are most likely to be directly and substantially affected,"
giving most emphasis to "representatives of broadly-based interests."

The first indication that change was in the air came just days after
Bush's inauguration, when Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), who administration
officials said has become a major influence on such selections, alerted
the State Department that the Clinton-named delegation to a Jan. 30,
low-level U.N. meeting on children included the Global Health Council, an
umbrella group of health care professionals. The council was among 20
groups that had signed a letter to Bush disagreeing, on freedom-of-speech
grounds, with his Jan. 22 decision to reinstate the "Mexico City policy"
prohibiting U.S. aid to overseas health organizations that perform
abortions, refer patients to abortion clinics or advocate abortion rights,
Helms's staff reported.

State Department officials responded that the council membership was
broadly representative on global health issues -- including a number of
Christian aid and children's groups, the AMA and the American Dental
Association, virtually all of the top U.S. pharmaceutical companies and
major university public health departments. They also said it was too late
to eject the council from the delegation, but compromised by expanding it
to include Michele DeKonty, a Helms aide on abortion and social welfare
issues, along with the Family Research Council and the National Law Center
for Children and Families.

A senior Helms aide said that oversight of the private-sector advisers
will be particularly important until Bush has his own team in place at the
United Nations. "There's a new president with completely different policy
on some key issues," he said. But "there's not one political person
they've put up there yet," including designated U.N. ambassador John
Negroponte.

"I'm not saying it's some kind of conspiracy," the aide said, "but don't
you think that Bill Clinton's person up there is not going to have quite
the fire in the belly for a Bush administration?"

(C) 2001 The Washington Post Company