Why isn't this horror story on the front page? The BBC reports:
A Libyan court has sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death for knowingly infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.
The medics protested their innocence throughout the case, retracting confessions that they said were obtained under torture.
Medical experts including the French co-discoverer of the HIV virus had testified on behalf of the medics.
Relatives of the HIV-infected children
Relatives of the children have protested outside the court
And the World Medical Association and the International Council of Nurses said Tuesday's verdict ignored scientific evidence.
Evidence obtained under torture...sound familiar?
(title changed from "AIDS Activists to be Executed", hat-tip Rob Cole and homogenius)
Forget the build-up, the hype, the rhetoric. Everybody on this site knows exactly what's going on here. The west's failed AIDS efforts, corrupt local officials, ignorant and poorly trained doctors trading in witchcraft and superstition are rescued by six volunteers, who try to bring sound medical practices to the impoverished on the other side of the world.
Watching US troops sail past the Horn of Africa in 2002-3 was one of the saddest periods of my life.
650,000 Iraqis are dead in just three years. That's 2.4% of the entire population. America lost 4000 on 9/11 and 3000 more in Iraq/Afghanistan. If the US losses were on the same scale as Iraq's that would be 6 million US dead. Don't like the Lancet numbers? Divide by six and you still get double the total number of US dead in WWII. Talk about a nation out of touch.
Twice as many Iraqis have died in the US "occupation" than died during the Iran-Iraq war in less than half the time. The difference is that most of the Iraqi dead back then in the Iran-Iraq war were military folks who knew they were in a war, not civilians told they were being "rescued"from despotism.
America could have done it. The world was screaming for leadership. Screaming for the US to stop.
What if the boats had stopped in Africa rather than Iraq and US troops had disembarked with medicine instead of anti-personnel weapons, if the US military had supported a concerted drive to bring fresh-water, basic health care and good medicine to neglected areas of Africa, areas where many Muslims live in poverty.
Soft power. How would the US look now had America taken a real bold stand and fought to end poverty, starvation and suffering in black Africa? US marines inoculating children from infectious diseases and educated women in the military and from civilian life helping with family planning. Keeping folks safe.
Imagine: no Abu Ghuraib, no extra-ordinary renditions, no pictures of some poor, ignorant woman dragging her own nation through the mud on the end of a dog leash.
Screaming into the wind. The quality of the diaries here in recent weeks has, IMHO, been spectacularly good. But the rage quotient has definitely dropped.
All the crap that was going on before the election is still going. Shrill is always in when Bushco is running wild. This trial is a fucking farce. Libya and the goons who conducted this kangaroo trial need to be called to account. Things are most definitely still spinning out of control. Where's the outrage?
The farce in Libya is all part of the same sick cycle, one in which good folks are often punished for the crimes of others, who cynically play the system for vile fun and obscene profit; crimes so obscene they beggar any profanity.