Calendario Romano 2009.
The calendar can be bought here 10% of proceeds go to The Food Chain a registered charity supported by peripheries.

The Roman Catholic Church has issued guidance for future priests to have psychological test aiming at preventing “tragic situations” (read “sexual abuse by priest”) caused by what the Church calls psychological defects.
According to the BBC, “The guidance says the voluntary tests should also aim to vet for those with ‘deep-seated homosexual tendencies’ ”. The advice also stipulates priests must have a “positive and stable sense of one’s masculine identity”.
There …

Ivory Coast Campaign
(Click to enlarge)

A few days ago Elizabeth Pisani commented on her website on how the Cambodian government caved in to US pressure. US pro-abstinence ideologues were meddling with a recognised efficacious HIV prevention intervention in exchange for economic advantages.
This was an interesting post and it fitted with one of the main theme explored in Elizabeth’s book, i.e. how ideology can take over epidemiology and surveillance data when it comes to designing HIV prevention programme.
Interestingly, in a Washington Post column, Rev. Sam L. Ruteikara, co-chair of Uganda’s …

In her book The Wisdom of Whores Elizabeth Pisani observes that “Funnily enough, it is often those [governments] that are secure in their popular majority (such as Thatcher in 1986) or those that don’t have to worry too much about voters (such as Iran and China) that can afford to be compassionate.” (p.254)

This against-the-flow statement has gained some weight this week when Public Health Minister Chaiya Sasomsab of the 2007 democratically elected Thai government announced that the the compulsory licences (CL) issued by the military government of Surayud Chulanont soon …