Day: July 10, 2002

World’s Outrage Directed at Pakistan Rape Case

Pakistan bore the full brunt of world outrage this month after published reports that a tribal council sentenced a 30-year-old woman to be forcibly raped by four men as punishment for her brother’s alleged affair with a woman of a higher prestige tribe.

The incident happened in the last week of June after the brother of Mukhtar Bibi was accused of carrying on an “illicit affair” with a woman of the Mastoi tribe. Bibi and her brother are from the Gujjar tribe which has a lower social standing.

A tribal court decided that as punishment, Mukhtar Bibi would be raped by four men of the Mastoi tribe. In front of hundreds of witnesses, the four men took her in to a room and raped her for more than an hour. The woman’s father tried to stop the rape, but told CNN that, “We begged for mercy in the name of God from them, but they held guns on us and so we were helpless.”

Pakistani police largely ignored the matter. Although the rape took place on June 22, it wasn’t until more than a week later that police began investigating the rape, and then only because a group of human rights lawyers all but forced them to. Pakistan’s Supreme Court was extremely critical of the local police, and promised an investigation into their inaction.

Meanwhile, two of the four men who participated in the rape have been arrested along with some members of the tribal council that passed the outrageous sentence.

Although the tribal decision was extreme even for Pakistan, women’s rights activists in Pakistan noted that such human rights violations are par for the course in a country that is often extremely hostile to women. After all, honor killing is a major problem in Pakistan and that country has sentenced more than one woman to death by stoning for adultery (although none of those sentences has been carried out yet). Human rights activist Fouizia Saeed told The BBC,

We must condemn institutional acceptance of women symbolizing honor and the routine rape and killing of women being carried out to dishonor or restore honor to families, and institutionalized violence.

This controversy is also a stark reminder of what often seems like an impassable chasm that separates Western attitudes toward women from those in countries dominated by traditionalist versions of Islam.

Sources:

Police attacked in Pakistan rape case. The BBC, July 5, 2002.

Pakistan police arrest second gang rape suspect. CNN, July 6, 2002.

Protests over Pakistan gang rape. Owais Tohid, The BBC, July 3, 2002.

Is Conversant Too Expensive?

MicroContent News has a nice followup to the question it posted yesterday about what Conversant is. But John Hiler concludes that the system is just too expensive at $500 for the production server version.

But if you just want to run a web site or web log, you definitely do not need to shell out $500 for the production server version. Instead check out the hosted options.

You can sign up there for a free site, which is really what you want to do to see if the system will work for you. And that free site will probably be more than enough for what most webloggers are doing.

But if you need multiple web sites e-mail forwarding, a static FTP area, etc., Macrobyte offers non-domain hosting for $25/month and domain hosting for $35/month. Or go hog wild like I did and go for a dedicated server (but I have more than a dozen separate sites and subsites and a lot of other stuff that most people are not going to need).

Is Organic Agriculture Viable? Probably Not

Ronald Bailey took a look at the inconvenient parts of a Swiss study that the media largely covered as offering proof that organic farming was viable and efficient. A close look at the study, however, finds that it is neither.

First, it is important to note that organic crops are not efficient at all when it comes to land use. The crop yields the Swiss researchers found were significantly lower for organic crops than for intensive modern farming. Bailey notes that the study found that organic “cereal crop yields in Europe typically are 60 to 70% of those under conventional management.”

This simply confirms what has been obvious for a long time — any wholesale switch away from intensive farming to organic farming would mean converting massive amounts of land to agricultural purposes.

The Swiss researchers maintain, however, that organic farming is more energy efficient. Their study claims that organic farms use only half the energy that conventional farms do. The difference is mainly due to the use of fertilizers and pesticides in intensive agriculture. By the time that the higher crop yields of intensive farming is factored in, though, this 50 percent energy savings is lowered to 19 percent.

But does organic farming really save energy? Not according to Bailey,

Secondly, the researchers declare that they found nutrients “in the organic systems to be 34 to 51% lower than in conventional systems, whereas mean crop yield was only 20% lower over a period of 21 years.” But — to ask the organic advocates’ own question — is organic agriculture sustainable over the long run? Again, the fine print says no. As their research confirms, organic farming is mining the soil of its vital minerals, particularly phosphorus and potassium. Eventually, as these minerals are used up, organic crop production will fall below its already low level. Conventional farming, on the other hand, restores mineral balance through fertilization.

So much for sustainable agriculture.

Source:

Organic Alchemy: Organic farming could kill billions of people. Ronald Bailey, Reason, June 5, 2002.

Relatively Low Cost AIDS Efforts Could Have Big Results

Ahead of the 14th International AIDS Conference, a number of reports were released by various organizations suggesting that AIDS prevention programs could greatly diminish the number of people infected with HIV and at a relatively low cost.

One such report, published in The Lancet, analyzed the results of 86 studies of AIDS prevention programs in over 126 countries. The report estimated that intensive prevention programs could prevent as many as 29 million new AIDS cases by 2010. The total cost of such a program is estimated at about $10 billion.

Another report, from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, identified measures that such an initiative would need to focus on, including improving the status of women in the developing wold; additional usage of drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV; education programs about how AIDS is spread and other measures.

Dr. Peter Piot, of the United Nations AIDS program, told The New York Times that in many developing countries people are still often unaware of how AIDS is spread.

Source:

Modest anti-AIDS efforts offer huge payoff, studies say. Lawrence K. Altman, The New York Times, July 5, 2002.

What Is Wrong With Thabo Mbeki?

Unbelievably as the 14th International AIDS Conference is getting under way, South Africa’s government is still fighting for the right keep AIDS drugs out of the hands of pregnant women.

And Thabo Mbeki had the balls to show up in Canada last month begging the West for more development aid saying,

The common thread here is the renewed determination among political leaders and civil society to build a humane world of shared prosperity.

Yeah, unless you happen to be an HIV positive pregnant woman.

In fact, in Mbeki’s vision of South Africa, many AIDS deaths don’t happen. Mbeki worked hard, for example, to suppress a report that found AIDS was the leading cause of death in South Africa.

Politician, heal thyself.

Sources:

South Africa ‘must provide Aids drug’. The BBC, July 5, 2002.

Mbeki calls for Africa aid. The BBC, June 24, 2002.

Ministry attacks Mbeki Aids stance. Barnaby Phillips, The BBC, September 21, 2001.

Animal Rights Activists Apparently Behind Smoke Grenade Attack In Seattle

Animal rights activists were apparently responsible for setting of a smoke bomb in a downtown Seattle office building that caused the entire 27-store building to be evacuated.

The building was apparently targeted because insurance company Marsh has office there. Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty has adopted Marsh as its latest target-of-opportunity, claiming that Marsh provides insurance coverage to Huntingdon Life Sciences.

The military-style smoke grenade exploded at 9:30 a.m. local time on the 23rd floor of the building causing smoke and fumes to spread throughout several floors. The building was quickly evacuated, but workers were allowed back into the building shortly after the noon hour.

For its part, SHAC said it was celebrating the attack. Frank Marsh of SHAC told television station KIRO-7,

Marsh has again been sent a very clear, or in this case, smoky message that their involvement with Huntingdon Life Sciences is unacceptable.

In this time when people are still worried about Al Qaeda terrorism, these morons set off a grenade in an office building? What the hell is wrong with these people?

(Thanks to Americans for Medical Progress for quickly getting details on this story out).

Source:

Downtown Seattle Building Evacuated. Associated Press and KIRO-7, July 10, 2002.

Animal Rights Activists Celebrating Smoke Bomb Attack. KIRO-7, July 10, 2002.