Free the Tripoli Six!

These six medical professionals:

Ashraf al-Hajuj
Valya Chervenyashka
Snezhana Dimitrova
Nasya Nenova
Valentina Siropulo
Kristiyana Valtcheva

were working at the al-Fateh Children’s Hospital in Banghazi, Libya in the late 1990s. A year later, about 400 children were diagnosed with HIV; the doctors and nurses were accused of conspiring with Israel and the USA to intentionally infect children with the disease, and were thrown into jail.

Five years later — five years spent in a Libyan jail, where they were tortured with electric shocks and beatings, and two of the nurses were raped! — defenders were able to show that the children were largely victims of HIV exposure prior to the arrival of the accused, and that the real culprit was a policy of poorly trained staff, unsterilized equipment, and generally shoddy hygiene. It didn’t matter; they were convicted in a sham trial, and sentenced to death by firing squad.

They appealed (wouldn’t you?) and are now being retried. Prospects look bleak. Libyans celebrated joyfully when the initial verdict was cast down, and Mouammar Gaddafi…well, let’s just say that having a megalomaniacal dictator running the country in which the trial takes place does not encourage much hope for a merciful intervention. The Libyans are now demanding $5.5 billion in compensation if they are to release the prisoners. This is nothing but a showy and high-priced extortion plot.

Declan Butler has put out a call for more awareness and more vocal protest of the plight of the Tripoli Six, and Nature has published a strongly worded editorial.

…scientists should lend their full support to the call by Lawyers without Borders — a volunteer organization that last year helped win the freedom of Amina Lawal, who had been sentenced to death in Nigeria for having a child outside marriage — that Libya’s courts should order a fully independent, international scientific assessment of how the children were contaminated.

I agree. The prisoners should be immediately released, and if Gaddafi is actually interested in correcting the tragic problems that led to the infection of 426 children with HIV and hepatitis, he’d be better off eschewing this disgraceful scapegoating and instead encouraging a deeper and more honest investigation into the tragedy—something that might help correct problems in Libyan hospitals and avert future adversity.

Webology and communication

The Next Hurrah discusses how information (and misinformation) is spread over the web, determined by tracking how a story about PETA and gay sheep circulated. A couple of interesting points are that he emphasizes that the way to persuade is to get out and make comments on other blogs—having a popular blog is not enough, I presume since the readers will typically be of a similar mindset, and you need to break through to people who might not be of like minds—and that MySpace and LiveJournal are important.

[Read more…]

That’s an upside to global warming I hadn’t considered before

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Republicans are capable of thinking long term—really long term. After a recent hearing, Rep. Don Young (Reprehensible, Alaska) enlightened us with a Deep Thought:

Before he left the hearing, Young, noting the presence of network TV crews, took a moment to reflect on his thoughts regarding climate change, citing the benefit of global warming — not caused by man — in another eon to an area that today is frozen much of the year. “We’re dealing with the most northern part of the United States of America, and a most hostile climate, and we’re pumping oil, and I’d just like to remind them if they’re asked where did the oil come from, and I would say this to Al Gore specifically: This was a jungle at one time, this was a forest at one time, this was a fern-laden area with mammoths at one time, and that’s really why we’re pumping oil,” he said.

Oh, yeah! Global warming will foster the luxuriant bogs and swamps of a new, more tropical Alaska, laying down the deep beds of carbon that will fuel the SUVs of tomorrow’s America! Carbon dioxide…it’s for our future! (“Tomorrow” is defined as “100 million years from now”, and “America” refers to the evolved, sentient descendants of whatever species makes it that long and is resident on the tectonic plate corresponding to the current state of Alaska. No promises to current voters are intended or implied.)

A Minnesotan mentioned another little problem with Young’s peculiarly hopeful idea.

Next to speak was the committee’s ranking Democrat, James Oberstar of Minnesota, who reminded Young that while global warming might have been good for fern jungles, human civilization is another story.
“That happened years ago,” Oberstar said. “The place was uninhabited by humans at that time.”

Pssht. Nattering nabob of negativism.

I think it’s very ambitious. I’d always thought the Republicans would love to roll back history to the Middle Ages, but who’d have thought they’d set their sights on returning to the Carboniferous?

Five years of dishonor

There was some kind of anniversary yesterday, to which I did not and will not refer—I think the tragedy of that day has been overwhelmed and lost by the ongoing catastrophe of the criminal response by our government, and while a single day is trivial to memorialize, five years of disgrace is surprisingly easy for many to gloss over. About the only appropriate response I’ve seen is Neddie Jingo’s, which points out the discordancy of the pattern we’re making.

Move on. Look at what we’re doing now, at the waste and foolishness and cacaphony and corruption and outright evil we’re perpetrating in the name of our affronted national honor—honor that’s little more than a tattered ragmop anymore, that we slosh around in the blood and pain of innocents, that we use to smear over the words of the law.

Our memorial isn’t tall and shining. It’s a dark, slimy pit into which we’ve thrown our sense and self-respect.

Look who’s coming to town

Minnesotans are going to be a little less above average in October, when a gaggle of evil morons hit the state: James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and Gary Bauer are having a rally in St Paul to “motivate pro-family conservative Christians.” It may also help motivate us pro-family liberal atheists.

Andy wonders which Minnesota politicians will show up for these hucksters for fascism: would Michele Bachmann be a safe bet? Mike Hatch better not; I’ve seen a few of his ads, and his gun-totin’ bird-killin’ pseudo-populism is almostas annoying as Mark Kennedy’s badly acted family dramas that play up his ‘credentials’ as a CPA—if Hatch sucks up to Dobson, he’ll lose my vote. I will rip his sign out of my yard.