Category Archives: human rights

Merkel calls for ‘loyalty’ from Turkish-Germans – The Local

Chancellor Angela Merkel told Ruhr Nachrichten newspaper on Tuesday that people with Turkish roots living in Germany should be loyal to the country.”We expect that people of Turkish origin who have been living in Germany for a long time should develop a high level of loyalty to our nation,” Merkel said.”Therefore we are trying to have open ears to hear their concerns and to understand them. And for this we are also keeping in close contact with immigrant associations.”Merkel’s talk of loyalty comes as the government is considering new measures to combat terrorism, including getting rid of dual citizenship. Members of Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union party (CDU) have said that dual nationality poses a “huge obstacle to integration”.The Chancellor also commented on the current situation in Turkey where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been cracking down on suspected dissenters in the wake of a failed coup last month. She urged Germany’s Turkish community to remain calm despite the circumstances dividing the country.

Source: Merkel calls for ‘loyalty’ from Turkish-Germans – The Local

Donald Trump Cues Up Another Conspiracy – The New York Times

Mr. Trump did not invent paranoia; he did not create the Republican meme of fraudulent minority voting. He just took it — as he so often does — to an extreme. Senator John McCain made similar warnings in 2008, and murmurings of cheating go back at least to 2000, a close national election, botched in Florida, decided for George W. Bush by the conservative majority of the Supreme Court. And long before Mr. Trump entered the presidential race, Republican legislators were busy passing voter ID laws based on the fallacy of widespread fraud.Mr. Trump’s brain is a pincushion for conspiracy theories, so maybe it’s no surprise that he thinks the Clinton campaign will be sending African-Americans and foreigners into booths across the country to fake their votes over and over, millions of times.Now, more than ever, the country needs responsible political leaders and the courts to defend and expand voting rights, rather than sitting silently while Mr. Trump further demolishes public confidence in the foundations of our government.

Source: Donald Trump Cues Up Another Conspiracy – The New York Times

Humans of New York

“I have professors at Columbia who view me as a terrorist for fighting in Iraq. But I believe that America is an example to be emulated, and I went over there to provide those people with basic human freedoms. But when you get over there you realize that you’re fighting kids. Everyone was kids. You see it when they’re dead. These weren’t the guys who were flying into towers. These were kids who grew up poor, stepped into the wrong madrasa, and were manipulated by people with a shit load of money into executing somebody else’s worldview. None of them came out of the womb hating. None of them came out of the womb thinking anything else but holy shit this is a bright beautiful world.”

Source: Humans of New York

Dr. Donald A. Henderson, Who Helped End Smallpox, Dies at 87 – The New York Times

Smallpox, caused by the variola virus, was long one of mankind’s most terrifying scourges. Called the “red plague” or the “speckled monster,” it killed almost a third of its victims, often through pneumonia or brain inflammation. Many others were left blind from corneal ulcerations or severely disfigured by pockmarks.It is thought to have emerged from a rodent virus more than 10,000 years ago, and signs of it are found in the mummy of Pharaoh Ramses V of Egypt. Some terrified ancient civilizations worshiped it as a deity.It carried off many European monarchs and buried the lines of succession to thrones from England to China. Because it killed 80 percent of the American Indians who caught it, it was a major factor in the European conquest of the New World.Three American presidents survived it: George Washington, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. In the 20th century, before it was extinguished, it was blamed for at least 300 million deaths.The victory over smallpox proved the power of vaccine. Before the 18th century, some peoples, especially in Asia Minor and West Africa, inoculated themselves by piercing their skin with pus from victims or inhaling dried pox scabs. Although that sometimes produced a full-blown lethal infection, it killed much less often than epidemics did.In 1796, Dr. Edward Jenner, an English physician, infected a young boy with cowpox taken from a blister on a milkmaid’s hand. Cowpox, a mild disease, protected those who had it from smallpox, and the modern vaccine era began. The word “vaccine” come from the Latin for “cow.”

Source: Dr. Donald A. Henderson, Who Helped End Smallpox, Dies at 87 – The New York Times

Humans of New York

“ I don’t think it’s possible to be a medic in a conflict zone and not have something stay with you. Something that you didn’t have before you went. I have the hardest time forgetting this little girl. She was brought to our post one day. Two men ran toward us carrying a bundle of blankets. And they’re yelling in Pashtu. And at first all I can see are these bloody blankets, but then I peel them back, and there’s this little girl inside. She stepped on a landmine while playing soccer and she’s gone below the knee, gone below the elbow, gone below the hand. And everything is seething. And I can smell the flesh. And she’s screaming. But I’m trained to drown it out. I’m trained so well that I almost don’t hear the screaming. I focus on our interventions. Stop the bleeding. Apply tourniquets. Administer the IV. I overdosed her on morphine. I’ll never forget that. I just kept pushing until the screaming stopped. And then a helicopter came and got her. And she lived. And I was fine throughout the whole thing. I was just like a robot. I’d been trained for chaotic situations. But they don’t train you for the aftermath. They don’t train you for when the helicopter has lifted off, and suddenly everything is quiet.”

Source: Humans of New York

Duterte says Philippines might leave UN over criticism of drug trafficker killings | World news | The Guardian  – Trump and Putin being Trumped by Duterte?

“You now, United Nations, if you can say one bad thing about me, I can give you 10 [about you]. I tell you, you are an inutile. Because if you are really true to your mandate, you could have stopped all these wars and killing.”Asked about the possible consequences of his comments, he said: “What is … repercussions? I don’t give a shit to them.”He said the UN should have acted according to protocol by sending someone such as a rapporteur to talk to him.“You do not just go out and give a shitting statement against a country,” he said.

Source: Duterte says Philippines might leave UN over criticism of drug trafficker killings | World news | The Guardian

‘Next year or the year after, the Arctic will be free of ice’ | Environment | The Guardian

Why should we be concerned about an Arctic that is free of ice in summer? People tend to think of an ice-free Arctic in summer in terms of it merely being a symbol of global change. Things happen, they say. In fact, the impact will be profound and will effect the whole planet and its population. One key effect will be albedo feedback. Sea ice reflects about 50% of the solar radiation it receives back into space. By contrast, water reflects less than 10%. So if you replace ice with water, which is darker, much more solar heat will be absorbed by the ocean and the planet will heat up even more rapidly than it is doing at present.Sea ice also acts as an air-conditioning system. Winds coming over the sea to land masses such as Siberia and Greenland will no longer be cooled as they pass over ice and these places will be heated even further. These effects could add 50% to the impact of global warming that is produced by rising carbon emissions.

Source: ‘Next year or the year after, the Arctic will be free of ice’ | Environment | The Guardian

Dani Garavelli: Show mercy for suffering of Ebola nurse – The Scotsman

Dani Garavelli: Show mercy for suffering of Ebola nurseCafferkey in January 2015 just before her release from the Royal Free Hospital, where the virus nearly killed her. Photograph: Lisa FergusonDANI GARAVELLI23:22Saturday 20 August 20160HAVE YOUR SAYI remember when I first heard the name, Pauline Cafferkey. It wasn’t when she became the first Scottish aid worker to contract Ebola. It was a week earlier – a few days after Christmas 2014 – when Scotland on Sunday published a diary of the vital work she was doing caring for the victims of the virus in Freetown, Sierra Leone.At the time, West Africa was in the grip of the epidemic. Every night, our TV screens were dominated by images of doctors dressed head-to-toe in contamination suits as reporters rattled off terrifying statistics about the spread of the disease.There were few images of those who had contracted Ebola; they were all in isolation. But the tales – of fever, vomiting and internal bleeding – were like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie. “What kind of person would have the courage to go out and help in these circumstances?” we asked ourselves from the comfort of our living rooms.The answer, of course, was someone like Cafferkey: an ordinary woman from South Lanarkshire who was inspired to go into nursing by images of the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s and who – having acquired the requisite skills – was willing to jeopardise her own health to put them to good use.In her diary, she acknowledged the risks she faced. But she focused more on the plight of the victims; her sadness for entire families wiped out by the virus and the air of celebration that greeted each fresh discharge.Since that diary appeared, many terrible things have happened. First, Cafferkey contracted Ebola, hovering for weeks between life and death. Then, 10 months after her supposed recovery, she fell ill with meningitis as a result of the virus persisting in her brain. Four months after that, she was hospitalised again after suffering a second relapse.In interviews, she has talked about some of her long-term symptoms: thyroid problems, joint pains, her hair falling out. And she may never be able to go running again.Alongside her medical problems, however, she has been forced to endure another trauma – one that has been drawn out for far longer than seems fair or necessary: the threat of disciplinary action as the result of complaints passed from Public Health England (PHE) to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC).Last week, 20 months since she first became ill, the NMC finally outlined the case against her. It claims Cafferkey deliberately tried to conceal a temperature higher than 38 degrees during a screening in Heathrow Airport. She is also accused of failing to inform medical staff that she had taken paracetamol, which lowers temperatures.If the hearing, to be held in Edinburgh next month, finds against her, she could be struck off. In the meantime, she is being abused on social media by trolls who have accused her of “turbo virtue-signalling” and of exposing other people on the connecting flight she boarded from Heathrow to Glasgow to unnecessary risk.Of course, I have not seen the evidence that will be put in front of the hearing. But you do have to wonder at the wisdom of pursuing a woman who has already suffered so much for what was – even if true (and the allegations may well be false) – a misjudgment made in extremis.I imagine months of dealing with death in the African heat plays havoc with both body and mind (in her diary Cafferkey talks about the way the oral hydration salts made her vomit). And I imagine aid workers – exposed every day to Ebola – frequently overreacted to minor symptoms; that they fretted every time they coughed or sneezed, and were consumed by the possibility the virus was already working its way through their bodies.How easy would it be to convince yourself that a slightly inflated temperature was another over-reaction – a projection of your worst fears, especially when you were so close to home?Admittedly, Cafferkey’s flight from London to Glasgow could have been catastrophic (although Ebola is spread by bodily fluids and there is no suggestion she was vomiting). Those on board had to be contacted and checked, a process which must have been inconvenient and scary for all. But no-one did contract the virus during that flight.Surely there ought to be a balance between the need to enforce the rules and an acknowledgment of the nurse’s contribution to society. After all, not only did Cafferkey save lives, she provided scientists with vital information about the way the disease behaved; by studying her medical history, they learned more about the recurrence of the disease in survivors and how to treat it.At the very least, any investigation that had to be held should have been swiftly resolved not dragged out over a year and a half. She has already spoken of the additional stress the protracted inquiry has caused her. And – let’s be blunt – t

Source: Dani Garavelli: Show mercy for suffering of Ebola nurse – The Scotsman