The Tripoli Six Have Been Freed

They've left Libya and are in Bulgaria. Allegedly no money changed hands for their release, but I'm not buying it.

Their plight is over. The plight of AIDS victims in the developing world continues to overwhelm aid efforts, which now feel the chill of the possibility of false accusations, long and injust imprisonment, and tortured confessions - all for the sake of conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact.

Science is the greatest gift that we have. It isn't perfect - nothing is - there is no such thing as perfection - but until we learn to look at the world as it is, we don't have the right to just have faith that the world is as it should be. We need to work for that kind of world.

(Shimmies to Pharyngula)

Previous posts on this subject:

Free the Tripoli Six!

Remember the Tripoli Six

The Tripoli Six May Be Freed Soon

Tripoli Six May Be Freed Soon

We hope.

Read the story at Pharyngula.

UPDATE: It's a mixed bag: their death sentences have been commuted to life, with possible extradition to Bulgaria. We can only continue to hope that behind-the-scenes diplomacy will eventually free them.

I think this entire affair will have a chilling effect upon aid work, however, which will eventually overtake the benefits of all the blood-money that Libya got paid for making false charges against people who only wanted to help the world's children, and essentially holding them for ransom.

Beliefs Have Consequences

Aetiology has a summary of the HIV-denial trial, calling it HIV Denialism's Kitzmiller v. Dover School District, et al. Let us hope so. The trial is taking place in Australia, where Intelligent Design also has a foothold, but as you know the U.S. has its own home-grown Intelligent Design hucksters/HIV Denialists.

Shimmies to Tara at Aetiology for all her hard work to counter these dangerous superstitions about science and AIDS.

In other news, it seems that global warming is finally being taken seriously.

All of us have a right to our own opinions as to the seriousness of global warming. We don't have the right to our own science. - Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.)

UPDATED: The one-and-only Stranger Fruit sniff out a new "sciency journal" that really stinks.