I am sure the following information is not helping the argument at hand, but the term “sex-bomber”, as used in my native languages’ colloquial vocuabulary, is referring to an airplane fully loaded with sex-tourists who chose to spend their acquired wealth in engagaging in sexual activities with prostitute professionals in third world countries. That’s what a “sex-bombers” is.

In a sense I was not using it correctly in the above context, I was meaning to say that not the sex-bombers pay, but rather the people travelling IN those sex-bombers do. Sorry for this confusion…:)))

Sex-bombs, however, are defined as…

In addition, the US-planes that flew to Berlin after the second-world war to provide this town with groceries were called “raisin-bombers”. Germans obviously like the term “bombers” in different usages, for some reason. Strange.

I’m almost afraid to ask, but what is a sex-bomber?

Of course I don’t care. I never claimed to care. I don’t even really “want to be right”. I just find this amusing.

Thats whole a lot of text for not caring.

Indeed, Zimbabwe has “the world’s highest rate of AIDS[1] infection”.

Yes, HIV/AIDS and droughts are ‘magic variables’.

I assume the fact that “[b]illions were spent in the country’s involvement in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.”, and the severe economic sanctions placed on the country are also ‘magic variables’, that are completely random and outside of anyone’s ability to control?

Also, your earlier argument that relies on democratically elected governments and capitalism being essentially the same thing is silly, and Zimbabwe is one of many examples of why:

“Elections in March 1990 resulted in another overwhelming victory for Mugabe and his party, which won 117 of the 120 election seats.”

“In September 2005 Mugabe signed constitutional amendments that reinstituted a national senate (abolished in 1987) and that nationalised all land. This converted all ownership rights into leases. The amendments also ended the right of landowners to challenge government expropriation of land in the courts and marked the end of any hope of returning any land that had been hitherto grabbed by armed land invasions. Elections for the senate in November resulted in a victory for the government.”

During the early 1980’s, following its formation as a country, Zimbabe implemented socialist policies: “Economic inequality within the population decreased and provision of education and healthcare became more widespread. During the 1980s GDP per capita increased by 11.5%.”

Zimbabwe’s economy was growing, albeit at a subpar rate, in the 1980s, before the government decided to pursue more free-market policies:

“By the end of the 1980s there was increasing agreement amongst government elites that new economic policies needed to be implemented for the long term survival of the regime. The new policy regime designed by the government and its advisers.[4] It set out to encourage job-creating growth by transferring control over prices from the state to the market, improving access to foreign exchange, reducing administrative controls over investment and employment decisions, and by reducing the fiscal deficit. It had wide local support and was introduced before the economic problems had gone out of control. A 40 per cent devaluation of the Zimbabwean dollar was allowed to occur and price and wage controls were removed.[5]

The liberal experiment in Zimbabwe produced far worse results than its predecessor.[4] Growth, employment, wages, and social service spending contracted sharply, inflation did not improve, the deficit remained well above target, and many industrial firms, notably in textiles and footwear, closed in response to increased competition and high real interest rates.[2] The incidence of poverty in the country increased during this time.[5]”

Let’s be clear on this: the economy -began- degrading -during a period of liberal, free-market reforms-.

“In the 1990s Zimbabwe’s economy began to deteriorate due to mismanagement and corruption. Economic instability led several members of the military to try to overthrow the government in a coup d’état.”

Political instability, which resulted from the economic instability of the 1990’s (the period of liberal reform), is a major factor preventing the government from being stable enough to manage the country effectively.

Racism might have also been a significant factor. There was “a large scale eviction of white farmers”.

Yes, there are elements within the government now attempting to re-establish the socialist policies of the ’80s and doing so in an extremely incompetent fashion, and I do not doubt that this is aggravating a bad situation. Is that the -only- factor causing Zimbabwe’s current situation? Heck no.

Oh, in regard to the life expectancy change, declines in life expectancy have been observed in much of sub-Saharan Africa, with the degree of life expectancy decline correlating closely with the severity of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Factors contributing to HIV/AIDS are not ‘magic variables’, but unsafe sexual practices, ritual scarification, superstition regarding condoms, HIV denialism, ect. In other words, people are failing to listen to the experts telling them how to avoid spreading HIV. Unless you care to explain to me how communism, rather than the factors I mentioned above, is the real cause of the spread of HIV?

Finally, unemployment often is associated from the fact that people infected with AIDS and tuberculosis are unable to work: “AIDS has intersected with drought, unemployment and other sources of stress to create what Alan Whiteside and Alex de Waal have called “new variant famine,” characterized by the inability of poor, AIDS-affected households to cope with the demands of securing sufficient food during a time of food crisis.” Worse yet, many healthy people may have to quit their jobs just to care for infected relatives. “The social impact of HIV/AIDS is most evident in the continent’s orphans crisis. Approximately 12 million children in sub-Saharan Africa are estimated to be orphaned by AIDS. These children are overwhelmingly cared for by relatives including especially grandmothers, but the capacity of the extended family to cope with this burden is stretched very thin and is, in places, collapsing.”

But I guess HIV/AIDS is just a magic variable, and the fact that people in the US listened to their experts in regards to controlling the disease is really just because we’re a capitalist nation.

“For example, China’s policy in the 1950’s called the Great Leap Forward had absolutely nothing to do with 40 million people that starved to death”

How nice, you set up a strawman position. It’s okay, that’s a common tactic for people who know they are losing and are desperate to feel better about it. What I actually said was that economic policy was one of many factors, and there must be other contributing variables.

Regarding China: If the starvation deaths of the late 1950s and early 1960s were just because of communism and nothing else played a role, I’d like you to explain how communism caused the other mass deaths in China over the years, such as Sino-Japanese war, the Warlord Era, the fall of the Ming dynasty, or the Mongol Conquests. Good luck.

Oh, and just to drive home the point that socialism doesn’t cause HIV/AIDS, Sweden has one of the largest public sectors of any country in the world, largely to support its tremendous welfare state, and fewer than 100 AIDS deaths have occurred there.