[E.O.M.S.]

Thursday, 7 January 2010

A major police investigation is under way after the number of heroin users across Scotland infected with anthrax rose to 11, including five who are now dead.

The 11 confirmed cases are in the Greater Glasgow, Lanarkshire and Tayside areas. Test results are also awaited from another suspected case in Fife.

The rising toll has prompted Health Protection Scotland, the national agency for protecting the public from infectious and environmental hazards, to issue a warning to all heroin users to stop using the drug, regardless of whether they inject it or take it by other means.

Officials stressed that the risk to others, including immediately family members of those infected, remained low.

Police and doctors believe contaminated heroin or heroin mixed with a contaminated cutting agent could be responsible for the cases.

Anthrax is an acute bacterial infection most commonly found in hoofed animals such as cattle, sheep and goats. It usually infects humans when they inhale or ingest anthrax spores, but cannot be passed from person to person.

The current outbreak in Scotland was discovered three weeks ago when tests carried out on a drug user who died in a Glasgow hospital confirmed the presence of anthrax.

It was the first anthrax death in Britain since Fernando Gomez, a 34-year-old drum-maker from London, died in October 2008 after inhaling the spores while handling untreated animal hides.

Colin Ramsay, consultant epidemiologist at Health Protection Scotland, said: "Evidence now suggests that potentially contaminated heroin may be in circulation in other parts of Scotland, not just the Glasgow area.

"All heroin users need to be aware of the risks – contaminated heroin is potentially dangerous taken by any route, not just injection. I would advise heroin users to stop using heroin and seek advice from local harm reduction and drug services for support.

"If any heroin users do notice signs of infection, for example marked redness and swelling around an injection site or other signs of serious infection such as a high fever, they should seek urgent medical advice."

Signs of infection include soreness at the injecting site, developing into redness and then spreading into a black "scar". If not treated at this stage the infection can spread into the blood and other organs.

Dr Ramsay also sought to reassure the public, saying that the risk to non-drug users is neglible. "While heroin users do need to be on their guard, the risk to the general public, including close family members of the confirmed cases, is very low indeed," he said.

"It is extremely rare for anthrax to be passed from person to person and there is no evidence of a significant risk of airborne transmission associated with the current situation."

The present spread of anthrax poses one of the greatest dangers to addicts since 23 injecting users in Glasgow died ten years ago during an outbreak linked to heroin contaminated with the Clostridium novyi bacterium. A fatal accident Inquiry in 2001 led to Sheriff Edward Bowen criticising communications between public health and accident and emergency staff on information about the outbreak.

Gordon Meldrum, director general of the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency, and drugs spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland, said a major national investigation had been launched into the latest deaths.

He said: "The deaths associated with anthrax are disturbing and are being treated very seriously by all the relevant authorities.

"The Scottish Police Service is now co-ordinating the investigation into a number of drug-related deaths across the country in order to gather as much information as possible about possible links and causes."

"Illegal drugs are often prepared in unhygienic surroundings and can be vulnerable to contamination from various harmful agents.

"Those involved in the trafficking of drugs are driven by profit and have no care for the harm they can cause or the health of those who take these potentially lethal drugs."

It was highly probable that the contamination had occurred by accident, he added.

Mr Meldrum advised drug users who feel ill to contact the NHS.

@'The Times'

Err on a G-spot

For years, it has been described as the Holy Grail of female sexual pleasure.
But for many women and their partners, the quest to find the so-called G-spot has ended in frustration.
Now new research suggests this elusive, erogenous zone supposed to be located on the front vaginal wall, may not exist.

Someone said: 'Why not call it the Whipple Tickle?'

Sexologist Beverly Whipple, who coined the term G-spot

A study of nearly 2,000 female twins by King's College London, found no evidence of the spot, based on the experiences of women who share similar genes.
Many scientists and doctors have long doubted its existence, while women's magazines have feasted on the notion it is real, with countless how-to-find guides and articles about G-enriched sex lives.
The latest finding is unlikely to put an end to debate about the G-spot. But why have we been so preoccupied with it?
It all began in 1950, when German scientist Ernst Grafenberg claimed that stimulation of a sensitive area on the front wall of the vagina could trigger female orgasm.

G MARKS THE SPOT

1: Area in which G-spot said to be, although its location and existence is questioned

2: Uterus

3: Vagina

4: Clitoris

The term itself is much more recent - having been popularised by academic Beverly Whipple, along with John Perry in 1982, with their book The G-Spot and Other Recent Discoveries About Human Sexuality. The work was based on the apparent discovery of G-spots in hundreds of women they interviewed.
They first coined the term in the late 1970s, when addressing conferences about their work in trying to prove Grafenberg's theory.
"Someone said: 'Why not call it the Whipple Tickle?'" says Professor Whipple, speaking from Rutgers University in New Jersey.
"But I said: 'No, we are going to name it after Dr Grafenberg.' Then we included it in scientific papers before the book came out."
'Liberation from ignorance'
Prior to its publication, her appearance on a television discussion show prompted a huge response.
"I received 5,000 letters from men and women who said that, at last, someone was validating their own experiences.

CLAIRE RAYNER'S VIEW

'When the word G-spot was first used, there was a lot of fuss and magazines made a lot of it. I remember writing about it for Woman's Own and I said at the time I thought it was rubbish

'The idea that there was this one wonderful element that made the earth move during sex and threw you three feet into the air

'People always expect too much of sex. It's fun but not the be all and end all. I'm delighted that more research has come up with more evidence that's it's nonsense'

G-spot 'doesn't appear to exist'

"Some women even said they had had operations to stop them having orgasms, because they didn't know what was happening. Some thought they were urinating."
Although her work liberated many people from ignorance and fear about their own bodies, Ms Whipple says it also had unfortunate and unforeseen consequences, years later.
"In recent years, every time someone publishes a book entitled How to Find the G-Spot, or How to Ejaculate, it's putting pressure on women.
Finding the G-spot became a goal in itself, rather than one of several forms of stimulation, says Ms Whipple.
"But that's not what we did the research for. It was to make people feel better about themselves. There's not one set sexual response in women."
It's like they have taken my work and twisted it into something that wasn't intended, she says, while dismissing the "flimsy" Kings College study because it discounted the experiences of lesbians and included sexual positions in which the G-spot was less likely to be stimulated.
Hopes raised
Other experts in the field of female sexuality think the cult of the G-spot has been nothing but detrimental for women, feeding anxiety among women and men.
"It's important to feel that we are normal physically and sexually, and to conform to what society is saying is attractive sexually," says sexual psychotherapist Paula Hall.
"One of the problems of the so-called discovery of the G-spot, and the amazing orgasms to be enjoyed if your partner can find it, was that it left women and men - who before were thinking that their sexual life was OK - thinking that something was missing."
The reality is that we are all different and therefore some women may feel things like a G-spot but for others it could be tiny, she says.
Many women don't enjoy penetrative sex, but the G-spot raised expectations of orgasm through penetration. Anything that tries to tell you 'This is the norm and this is how you should enjoy sex' just creates more sexual anxiety, says Ms Hall.

No-one really knows whether it exists or not, says psychotherapist Mary Clegg, chair of the British Association of Sexual Educators, but the male-dominated medical profession is so keen to learn more about female orgasm that a mythology with unhelpful labels has developed.
"We don't fully understand female sexuality and we don't understand how it all works, which is unbelievable in the 21st Century."
It doesn't help that the media is still obsessed with sexual performance and that's not healthy, she says.
"People in this country are woefully inadequate in sexual technique, despite all the magazines. It's about the quality of information given and the expertise of the writer."
What the G-spot did, says Petra Boynton, also a sexual psychologist, was that it gave magazine editors the opportunity to talk about sex in a sanitised way that met reader demands for such discussions but without offending advertisers.
"It was a boon because it doesn't sound as rude as vagina or penetration. Even penis is rarely used. And ask any journalist if their editor will let them use the C-word, clitoris, and they will say 'no'.

ADVICE FROM AN EXPERT

'Couples need to be open and communicate. There are good resources but people need to know where to go for them

'There are videos and books that can help them. They should try new things and if they fall off the bed and laugh, then that's fine. Does it matter?

'People have lost their sense of pleasure and fun that a good sexual relationship can bring them, and not focus on something that might not be possible'

Source: Mary Clegg

"The G-spot allowed you to go looking for something without saying what it was."
But the G-spot also became a commercial product, she says, and ill-informed people selling toys to stimulate it would pop up in magazines giving questionable advice.
"It fools everyone to think we are so liberated but if you read these articles, most people don't have a clue about what they should be doing. The mythology has partly been driven by the media. And if Cosmo is talking about it then everyone is talking about it."
Identifying a spot inevitably means that while you liberate some women you make others feel inadequate, because we are all different, she says.
But despite the odd flurry of publicity when more research questions or supports its existence, the G-spot's heyday of the late 80s and early 90s has passed.
The new G-spot, she says, is hormones. Women, do you have the right ones?

@'BBC'

Iran Official Accused in Prison Deaths

A parliamentary panel on Wednesday implicated a senior official and ally of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the deaths of at least three detainees arrested in June during anti-government demonstrations, the Alef Web site reported.

The Web site, which is overseen by a prominent conservative member of the parliament, Ahmad Tavakoli, said that the report was submitted on Sunday and is expected to be read on the floor next week.

The man singled out in the report, Saeed Mortazavi, was responsible as Tehran’s city prosecutor for the arrests of over 100 journalists, activists and former government officials after the election. He has been loathed by reformers since the late 1990s, when he shut scores of reformist newspapers and arrested dozens of journalists.

The allegations against Mr. Mortazavi represent a victory for the more moderate wing within the ruling establishment, which favors compromise to end the anti-government protests, over the more ruthless faction led by President Ahmadinejad, Iran experts said.

“They want to sacrifice Mortazavi, thinking that people would back down,” said Mohsen Sazegara, an opposition figure and political analyst in Washington. “This conservative faction is willing to even sacrifice Ahmadinejad to end the protests.”

Iran’s state radio reported that the panel had concluded its investigation and listed some culprits, but refrained from mentioning Mr. Mortazavi by name.

The panel named Mr. Mortazavi as “the main culprit,” the person who “was in charge of Kahrizak detention center as the former Tehran prosecutor,” the Web site reported. “He personally gave the order for the transfer of detainees to Kahrizak.”

It concluded that three young men, Mohsen Ruholamini, Amir Javadifar and Mohammad Kamrani, were killed at Kahrizak because of “unhealthy environment and beatings by prison authorities.” Mr. Ruholamini was the son of a senior member of the Revolutionary Guards and a close aide to Mohsen Rezai, who was a candidate in the disputed presidential election in June.

Mr. Mortazavi served as the Tehran prosecutor until August, when he was promoted to deputy state prosecutor overseeing efforts to combat smuggling.

The opposition leaders have accused authorities of torturing detainees to death and raping some of the female and male detainees. The outrage over treatment of prisoners forced the supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to order the closure of Kahrizak.

The report made no mention of the rape allegations, which the government has denied. Nor did it provide any information on the suspicious death of a Ramin Pourandarjani, a 26-year-old doctor who was one of the few civilians allowed inside the prison at the time of the protests. He was found dead some time after confirming in testimony before the parliamentary panel the allegations that jailers had tortured and raped prisoners.

The report today was a surprise, in that the panel had announced in September that it would no longer pursue the case and was instead forwarding it to a military court. The military court issued a statement last month saying that 12 officials at Kahrizak had been charged with murder and other crimes, but it did not name the individuals.

Norwegian state television said on Wednesday that an Iranian diplomat, Mohammad Reza Heydari, had resigned his post in protest over the harsh crackdown in Tehran. A spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry denied the report.

Perviz Khazai, a former Iranian ambassador to the Nordic countries who now heads the local branch of the dissident National Council of Resistance of Iran, said he believed Mr. Heydari, 43, had worked at the embassy in Oslo for three years and was one of its top diplomatic officials. He said Mr. Heydari’s resignation was reminiscent of his own highly public defection to Norway in 1982. He said he did not know Mr. Heydari personally but could empathize with him.

“He did a brave thing and he has every reason to be scared of this brutal regime now, but I hope will stand up very openly, as I did,” said Mr. Khazai, recalling the 1982 news conference in Oslo at which he denounced the government of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

He said that Kazem Rajavi and Hussein Naghdi, two other Iranian diplomats in Europe who defected from their posts shortly before he did, have since been murdered. After his own defection Mr. Khazai, now 63, spent a year in hiding with his wife and six-year-old son, protected by the Norwegian security service.

“I think this is a symptom of the crack that is forming from top to bottom in this regime,” he said. “It reminds me of my own experience. Officials who love their country and have a feeling of humanity cannot tolerate being part of it any more. It is a shameful thing.”

@'NY Times'

Three days in Iran

Westbrook's Blake - Long John Brown and Little Mary Bell 6.12.08

Mike Westbrook's William Blake Project @ Toynbee Studios, London 06.12.08. 'Long John Brown and Little Mary Bell', sung by Phil Minton. Billy Thompson - Violin, Karen Street - Accordian.

Westbrook's Blake with Phil Minton 6.12.08

Mike Westbrook's William Blake Project @ Toynbee Studios, London 06.12.08. 'The Fields' and 'I See Thy Form', sung by Phil Minton.

Let The Slave (Incorporating The Price Of Experience) Text: William Blake

Henry Cow w/ Mike Westbrook's Brass Band

Let the slave grinding at the mill run out into the field

Let him look up into the heavens and laugh in the bnght air
Let the inchained soul, shut up in darkness and in sighing
Whose face has never seen a smile in thirty weary Years
Rose and look out; his chains are loose, his dungeon doors are open;
And let his wife and children return from the oppressor's scourge
They look behind at every step and believe it is a dream
Singing: The sun has left his blackness and has found a fresher morning
And the fair Moon rejoices in the clear and cloudless night

For empire is no more and now the Lion and Wolf shall cease
For everything that lives is holy
For everything that lives is holy
For everything that lives is holy
For everything that lixes is holy

What is the price of Experience? Do men buy it for a song?
Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price
Of all that a man hath, his house, his wife, his children
Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy
And in the wither'd field where the farmer plows for bread in vain
It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer's sun
And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn
It is an easy thing to talk of patience to the afflicted
To speak the laws of prudence to the homeless wanderer
To listen to the hungry raven's cry in wintry season
When the red blood is fill'd with wine and with the marrow of lambs

It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements
To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughter house moan;
To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast
To hear sounds of love in the thunder storm that destroys our enemies' house;
To rejoice in the blight that covers his field
And the sickness that cuts off his children

While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door
And our children bring fruits and flowers

Then the groan and the dolor are quite forgotten
And the slave grinding at the mill
And the captive in chains and the poor in the prison

And the soldier in the field
When the shatter'd bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead
It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity:
Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me.

The Orckestra

Let The Slave

Originally from the Mike Westbrook album 'Bright As Fire'

This version recorded in Italy in 1977.

Featuring the mighty voice of Phil Minton.

Full soundboard

HERE