An Uzbek woman imprisoned for criticising the government over its armed response to a protest in the town of Andizhan three years ago has won a prestigious international human rights award, organisers said on Thursday.
Mutabar Tadjibaeva, laureate of the 2008 Martin Ennals Award for Human Rights Defenders, is in declining health and her life is in danger, according to a statement by 10 leading human rights groups that form the prize's jury.
They demanded Tadjibaeva's immediate release and praised her as an "an exceptionally brave woman in a country where standing up for human rights is a dangerous activity which can lead to imprisonment and death, where human rights defenders often have to choose between prison or exile."
Uzbekistan has put pressure on activists since its troops quashed an uprising in the eastern town of Andizhan in May 2005. The government says that 187 people died during a police action against Islamist extremists, and that all the dead were either government troops or "terrorists".
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Thursday, May 15, 2008
Imprisoned Uzbek woman wins human rights award
'Sky-high gas prices have more commuters switching to employer-subsidized transportation—and loving it'
The surge in oil prices has accelerated the trend. So have new corporate tax deductions for employer-subsidized transportation. Consider what's happening at insurer Safeco. When the company moved to Seattle last year, it installed commuting concierges to help employees figure out how best to use the company's vouchers for mass transit, shuttles, car pools, and ferries. Free rentals from Zipcar await those who need to run errands during the day. Safeco also encourages its staff to skip the commute altogether by offering free phone and broadband service for their home offices, as well as a furniture stipend with which to decorate. Today, 90% of employees are out of their cars, up from 50% in 2006. The company is aiming for zero-car status. Says Safeco transportation analyst Brady Clark: "We're still working on that 10%."
A Permanent Shift?
Some companies can't meet the demand fast enough. After Microsoft rolled out a new shuttle-bus service last fall, employees immediately howled for more routes. The plush, Wi-Fi-equipped coaches have become so wildly popular—strategy chief Craig Mundie is a big fan—that when word leaked recently that Microsoft was adding to the service, a group of Microserfs hacked into the reservation system and filled up the new routes before they were even announced. Employee Bryan Keller used to commute alone in his 20-mpg Honda Pilot. "I've regained two hours of my day," he says. Using Microsoft's online "carbon calculator," Keller estimates he's saved $150 on gas and dropped 1,000 pounds of CO2 from his carbon footprint since he began using the service in October.
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'Did someone declare martial law?'
No less than 70 percent of U.S. cities now have SWAT teams. In cities with a population of 50,000 or more, 90 percent have SWAT teams.
Eastern Kentucky University professor Peter Kraska told the Washington Post that SWAT teams are currently sent out 40,000 times a year in the U.S. During the 1980's, SWAT teams were only used 3,000 times a year. Most of the time, SWAT teams are being sent out to simply serve warrants on non-violent drug offenders.
Many municipalities are using Homeland Security grants to even purchase large armored vehicles. The Pittsburgh Police Department now uses their 20-ton armored truck complete with rotating turret and gun ports to deliver many of their warrants. Pittsburgh Police Sgt. Barry Budd recently told the Associate Press: "We live on being prepared for 'what if'."
Our police departments now regularly receive free surplus equipment from the U.S. military, which they readily accept. The training being given at many police academies appears to be the type of tactics one would use in Baghdad, rather than Baltimore. It would seem that our police officers are being readied for war, with the American public as the enemy. In the last several years, there has been a transformation from community policing to pre-emptive assaults
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Cheryl Lynn Noel, a mom who was shot by police for picking up her legally registered handgun. She went for her gun to defend herself after a SWAT team in the middle of the night, broke into her Baltimore, MD home. Police stormed her house that night because they claim to have found marijuana seeds in the family's trash can.
Rev. Acelyne Williams, 75 of Boston, died of a heart attack as a SWAT team broke into his home. Police actually had the wrong address.
92 year old Kathryn Johnston who was so fearful that she never left her home and would only open her door after friends who placed her groceries on the front porch had left, was killed by an Atlanta SWAT team last year. An erroneous tip from an informant was enough for the Atlanta Police Department to invade her home. Police have since admitted to lying to obtain a search warrant and to planting drugs in her home after killing her.
In 2006, a 52 member SWAT team stormed into a Denver home in search of a friendly small-stakes poker game. The same thing happened a few months later when SWAT and K-9 units barged in on a charity poker game in Baltimore.
When someone straps on body armor and large caliber weapons, their adrenalin levels begin to surge. As they arrive at the scene, those levels increase. When these now militarized police officers actually break into a dark home and begin shouting at terrified citizens, severe injury and death is likely to occur. It is beyond reason to employ these tactics on anyone other than hardened, violent criminals.
SWAT teams were created in the wake of the 1966 University of Texas sniper shooting spree by ex-marine Charles Whitman. Police did not have the firepower to reach Whitman, who was perched atop the 27-story clock tower. Civilians with hunting rifles came to the scene and joined with police in the effort to stop Whitman. Eventually, police officers and a well-armed citizen scaled the stairs of the tower and killed Whitman, but not before he killed 17 people and injured another 31. As a result of the incident, police departments began to assemble small teams of highly trained officers with equipment specific to sniper shootings, hostage situations, bank robberies, etc.
SWAT teams were designed to deal with very violent individuals who represent a clear and present threat to the public. However, they are now being used to execute warrants on non-violent offenders and even those who have no prior criminal history at all. Turning our neighborhood cops into shock troops will do nothing but erode public confidence in the police and endanger the lives of innocent Americans.
Recently, Boston´s new police commissioner William Fitchet announced that the department´s Street Crimes Unit will begin wearing military-style black uniforms, to instill a sense of "fear." At last week´s city council meeting, police Sgt. John Delaney told council members that the black uniforms would send the message that officers were serious.
Did someone declare martial law?
Merck vaccine scientist and the connection with HIV and cancer
Vaccine chief of Merck (massive drug company) admits that the HIV virus was imported to America through the use of HIV-infected African monkeys.
Dr. Maurice Hilleman also acknowledges that the SV40 virus, which causes cancer, is being given through vaccines.
'An interview with Celia Farber, long-serving chronicler of HIV dissidents'
What are the failures of the paradigm?
The chief one is what used to be called the heterosexual AIDS explosion, which was the model. It was the core of the HIV theory—that there was a virus that was lethal, that was transmissible via unprotected sexual intercourse, needles, and other methods of transmission—blood-to-blood transmission. What they actually said was that there was a model of tertiary transmission. So anybody who sleeps with anybody who sleeps with anybody who's ever slept with anybody who ever was a drug addict, et cetera. It was a very terrifying model.
And one of the studies that the so-called dissidents have been drawing attention to is a study by a Berkeley researcher named Nancy Padian. Her study looked at transmission between couples where one was positive and one was negative. They had unprotected sex. They watched them over a period of 10 years. And there was not one single transmission in the whole group [during the 10-year study]—not one. [From the research paper: "Overall, 68 (19%) of the 360 female partners of HlV-infected men (95% confidence interval (Cl) 15.0-23.3%) and two (2.4%) of the 82 male partners of HlV-infected women (95% Cl 0.3-8.5%) were infected . . . transmission occurred prior to entry in the study. . . . Over time, the authors observed increased condom use (p <0.001) and no new infections."]
So what does that mean? Well, there's been a ruckus, a wild debate about this all over the Internet. At the very least, it means that the spread of HIV is extremely difficult, which is quite different than the terror, dread, bubonic-plague model we were given. That's just the first piece. The piece that I am most personally alarmed and upset by is the AZT piece of the history. When we were doing our most focused reportage in SPIN, it was during the peak of the AZT-mania years. AZT was given in extremely high doses. It is a chemotherapy that was developed in the '60s. Very crude, very toxic—some people say the most toxic drug ever given to human beings. And at the 1800- and 1200-milligram doses that were given in the first few years of the AZT craze, people died very clear AZT deaths. And there were some people around at the time who were saying, "That's AZT killing those people." And most people, by far, were saying, "That's crazy. It's the virus that's killing those people." That was where the first real war lines were drawn over AZT. AZT killed them—not the virus, not the illness, but the drug itself.
So what remains? Their great white hope is the cocktail therapy. And those cocktail therapies, protease inhibitors and so forth, definitely are a vast improvement. They are far less toxic. And, yes indeed, people stopped dying at the same rates they used to be dying. There are also broad-spectrum antibiotics and antimicrobials. So people have indeed been brought back from these complex immune disorders with those drugs.
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image from http://www.spitting-image.net
