Friday, November 23, 2007

Brutally and inhumanly tortured

Torture and repression continue in Uzbekistan:

Relatives say Islamic prisoners were tortured. Two Uzbek men convicted of Islamic extremism have died in prison and their bodies showed signs of severe torture, said relatives and a rights activist. The family of Takhir Nurmukhammedov, 42, received his body on November 15 and it was clear he had been "brutally, inhumanly tortured", one of his sisters said. The body of Fitrat Salakhiddinov, 40, was delivered to his family with signs of torture, human rights advocate Surat Ikramov said. The torture of people imprisoned for alleged Islamic extremism has increased ahead of next month's presidential elections in Uzbekistan, he added.
Associated Press in Tashkent
I wonder if this would be news in brief, if the victims were British or American Christians?

Monday, November 19, 2007

The Blair Which Project

That Blair middle-east peace plan in full:

  • Industrial parks to create jobs for all those unemployed Palestinians with nothing better to do than protest against Israeli tanks and settlers killing their kids and destroying their homes
  • Agricultural ventures - no doubt to replace the thousands of olive trees and fruit orchards the Israeli tanks have destroyed. In fact this could become a perpetual industry with the new schemes rebuilding what the zionist bulldozers destroy
  • A new sewerage system for Gaza- this is badly needed because so many people shit themselves when Israeli jets fly 10 metres above their roofs whilst breaking the sound barrier. Apparently this will be done secretly without Hamas finding out.
  • David 'The drip' Millibland has promised 'cash infusions'. I'm not sure if these will adequately replace the real medicines that are desperately needed in both Gaza and West Bank hospitals.
In a gesture of reconciliation, Israel has said it will unilaterally start building mega-terminals for the convenience of processing Palestinians on occupied land, and controlling the movement of food into peoples' mouths. Hitler would have been envious. The UN spokesperson apparently launched a scathing attack on this project saying:
"An insidious new regime to limit freedom of movement is threatening to further stifle economic activity and smother social interaction between villages and towns in the West Bank"

This is like complaining that a mad axe murderer is torturing his victims, whilst ignoring the fact that he is also killing them.

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Minging Excuses for Dictators

Musharaff invents a new reason for the imposition of Martial Law in Pakistan. First, it was to protect the country from terrorists. Now this:

Seeking to wrest the spotlight from the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, who has dominated the airwaves, Musharraf admitted that he had considered resigning but felt he was the man to lead Pakistan to democracy.

"I am not a dictator, I want a democracy," he told Britain's Sky News. "The day when there is no turmoil in Pakistan, I will step down."

Meanwhile, with an eye on the all-important US audience, the general told the New York Times that the state of emergency was crucial to fair elections - a position the opposition strongly rejects.

"The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner," he told the paper.

This must rank as probably the sorriest set of excuses for imposing dictatorship in history. He has only had 8 years to lead the country to democracy but only just got around to realising that he needed to do this. What made me laugh was the declaration that he will step down the day Pakistan is not in turmoil. This is like the Eurosceptics declaring that they will commit to a federal state of Europe as soon as the oceans have evaporated. Or like the BNP saying they will welcome immigrants as soon as they all pledge to whiten their skin and draw swastikas on their foreheads. Soon, Ian Blair will be announcing that he will resign as head of the Met, as long as everybody else in the country resigns their jobs too.

Didn't you know that it is necessary to have a state of emergency before elections? This is what poor Gordon Broon didn't know, before his prematurely aborted autumn election. He should have declared Martial Law and put David Cameron under house arrest (not a bad idea actually). On that theme he could have gone even further like Musharaff:

Pakistani authorities today charged the opposition politician Imran Khan under the anti-terrorism act after he was arrested at a student demonstration in Lahore.

Brown should have arrested Ming Campbell under the terrorism act for talking to students. In fact he could have done everybody a favour and outlawed all students unions and made attendance at lectures compulsory too. Mind you, arresting elderly gentlemen under the terrorism act is not exactly new territory for the NuLab gestapo.

Friday, November 09, 2007

The real Mexico

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Falafel Bureau of Investigations

Spot the balls competition

Thanks to Haitham for pointing out this amusing story about how the brains of America dreamt up a scheme to track Iranian terrorist cells in the USA. Allegedly they wanted to follow sales of Falafel to track down the sleeper cells of dangerous Iranian agents. Meanwhile it is reported that Hamas have managed to set up their own drug peddling, cigarette smuggling and fake Viagra scams in the US. No doubt the FBI will soon discover the Syrians running brothels in California and the North Koreans running an illegal gambling racket in South Dakota.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Martial law returns to Pakistan

No surprise then that the West's favoured military dictator in Pakistan has caved in and declared military rule. While the West ridicules legitimately elected leaders like Hugo Chavez as dictators, the hypocrisy of supporting Musharaff could not be more stark. I think the arrest of people Imran Khan, lawyers and the chief justice Muhammad Iftikhar Chaudhry, illustrates the desperation and lies of Musharaff's government. For once the Observer headline is accurate. Chaudry's lawyer said as he was bundled into a police van:

'Musharraf is acting like a spoiled child, holding the whole country hostage. These are the last days of Pervez Musharraf'

The claim of a threat to the country is laid bare as an empty lie. What has Imran Khan done, except to criticise the government for its conduct? Has he planted any bombs or supported the Taliban? Certainly not. The chief justice and lawyers have only demanded independence and lack of interference. The threat of suicide bombers and instability in the north is all the creation of the USA and Musharaff, killing and provoking local tribes, simply to show they are 'fighting terrorism'.

Western politicians are only expressing 'dismay' because it strips away the tiny veneer of democratic appearance from a military dictatorship, they are supporting. Their military support continues. What will martial law achieve in Pakistan? The same old corrupt politicians including Benazir Bhutto are waiting in the wings for the dictatorship to collapse so they can carry on looting the country when the pretence of a civilian administration is resumed.

The country is need of a revolution but is riddled with the cancer of corruption that no military dictatorship has resolved or corrected. There will certainly be not be a popular celebration for this latest seizure of power by the military. The country seems to be destined to forever repeat cycles of dictatorship with corrupt civilian rule, whilst the population suffer.

Saturday, November 03, 2007

Who sprung the nukes?

Some interesting observations and pertinent questions by David Lindorff on the mysterious Minot-Barksdale nuclear weapons flight:

at least two people, since it’s long been a basic part of nuclear security that every action involving a nuclear weapon has to be done by two people working in tandem—had to deliberately and consciously disable those alarms......

we’re asked to believe that some low-ranking ground crew personnel at Minot AFB simply walked out of a nuclear weapons bunker with six nuclear armed Advanced Cruise Missiles, not knowing what they were carrying, and labored for eight hours to mount those missiles and their launch pylon on the wing of a B-52 strategic bomber without ever noticing that they were armed with nuclear weapons. We’re asked to believe that none of those electronic alarms and motion sensors built into the system went off during that whole process....

  • Who disabled the alarm systems on those [nuclear] weapons and on the bunker itself?
  • Who mounted six nuclear weapons on the noses of six cruise missiles and put those missiles onto a B-52 launch platform?
  • Who authorized them to perform this operation?
  • Who moved the armed weapons out of the Bunker at Minot AFB and mounted them on the wing of a B-52 bound for Barksdale AFB? (Barksdale, it should be noted, bills itself as the main staging base for B-52s being flown to the Middle East Theater.)
  • Were the six missiles flyable? Were they fueled up and ready to fire, or were they not fueled at the time of the Minot-Barksdale flight?
  • Was there targeting information in the missile’s guidance computers and if so, what were those targets?
  • What happened to the three military whistleblowers who blew the whistle on this incident and reported it to a journalist at the newspaper Military Times?
  • Why hasn’t the Air Force or the FBI investigated the 6-8 untimely deaths including three alleged suicides, one of a Minot weapons guard, one of an assistant defense secretary, and one of a captain in the super-secret Air Force Special Commando Group, as well as alleged fatal vehicle “accidents” involving four ground crew and B-52 pilots and crewmembers at Minot and Barksdale?
  • Could any of this strange cluster of deaths have been related to the incident? The Air Force “investigation” didn’t even mention these incidents, and my investigation, reported in the Oct. 24 issue of the magazine American Conservative, found that none of the police investigators or medical examiners in those incidents had even been contacted by Air Force or other federal investigators.
Lindorff point the finger at Cheney as the chief suspect based upon his track record of shady dealing and intelligence manipulation. I doubt though that Cheney is the only one. Iraq was not solely a Cheney plot and neither is Iran. So if he did it, then it is probable that many others in the Bush junta were aware and approved of it.