Daily archives: July 31, 2006


Massacres and Wirecutters

I just don’t know what to say. The bodies of so many children bring tears, not words.

Even if you believed the crazy Bush and Blair logic, I cannot understand how anyone can look at these tiny corpses and say “it is worth it to eradicate Islamic fundamentalism”. If you do that, you could watch the corpses from the gas chambers and say “its worth it to elminate the World Jewish conspiracy.” This is crazed and aburd. We must reject the logic of hate.

Even last night and this morning, the UK and US are still working full out at the UN to head off any resolution calling for an urgent unconditional ceasefire. Instead we are pushing a plan which involves the ethnic cleansing of Southern Lebanon to create an empty zone – and the international community is expected to enforce the ethnic cleansing.

President Chirac’s proposal has much more justice – that there should be an international force deployed equally both sides of the border. We have made plain at the UN that we will veto such a proposal. Blair is still pushing Bush’s view that the US has to have latitude to pursue the military option while diplomacy goes on, until the world is obliged to accept ethnic cleansing.

And if it needed any more underlining, where was Tony Blair? At a meeting addressing Rupert Murdoch’s chief executives from News International. My last musings suggested that anyone who stayed in the Labour Party was a pariah. That was not strong enough.

I don’t know if the bomb that killed 37 – and rising – children was carried on a plane that landed in the UK. Quite likely. I see that Prestwick being considered insecure, they are now coming through USAF Mildenhall.

I hope that everyone will come to the national demo from the Stop the War Movement on 5 August. Once that is over, perhaps the next day, let us organise a reclamation, however temporary, of part of Mildenhall from the Americans.

This is going to involve, at least, getting beaten up and arrested. But how do you weigh that against 37 child corpses? I am up for it. Wire cutters, anyone?

Craig

View with comments

Workers from Uzbekistan sold one of their group to slave-masters to earn their own way home

“This story may be instructive for anyone who feels the events in Murder in Samarkand are far-fetched.”

Craig

From Ferghana.Ru (19.07.2006)

In early spring, four young men from the Samarkand region decided to travel to Russia to earn their families’ living. They had heard somewhere that there were special coaches running to Russia, raised the sum they were told would suffice to pay their fare, and turned up at the bus stop.

“What we had raised was not enough after all,” said Azamat, one of them. “Coach driver said we owed him and would settle the debt in Moscow. We could only agree, and the bus started rolling.”

“When we were travelling across Kazakhstan, the coach was stopped by local gangs on several occasions. The guys just entered and commandeered whatever took their fancy,” Azamat said.

“We could do nothing, not even protest because they could just kick the protester out of the coach, batter him, or even murder him, and leave the body right there in the steppes,” Azamat’s brother Hairullo added.

The road to Moscow took several days and nights. The coach finally made it and this was where the four young Uzbeks discovered what a real nightmare was. The driver beckoned some acquaintance of his, pointed at the four young men, and explained that he owed them and that they were for sale.

(more…)

View with comments