I am delighted that a new canpaign has started today against the state enforced child slavery in the uzbek cotton industry, especially as this campaign originates in Germany, where a significant portion of society appears to have finally woken up to the reality of the German government’s appalling complicity in the Nazi style regime and atrocities of Karimov.
However in the UK it remains the case that since the coalition government came to power, there has not been one single government statement on the human rights atrocities in Uzbekistan or – even more damning of our sham democracy – one single statement or question from New Labour.
Two days back I requested an email subscription to Wikispooks. This morning checking my Junk mail (which I seem to do more often than ever) an activation email was sitting there for joining the subscription list. When I clicked on the link it came up with the message: ‘No list found. Please try again later’. Anybody know what’s causing this?
Well, we’re making progress, in that we’ve managed to flush out “Fred”.
“Fred” calls punishments such as stoning a woman to death for adultery or amputating limbs “having a harsh penal system” and persists in considering Iran, which enjoys such a system, a civilised country.
I rest my case. Having said that, I’m not terribly interested in “Fred’s” view, but I would be interested in hearing from Mary, who started this off by asserting that the UK was not a civilised country but who, so far, has failed to tell us, for the purposes of discussion, which country or countries she would consider civilised.
Mary, thanks for that link to Miriam’s FOI letter about photographs held by Thames Valley Police but presumably now ‘unavailable’ in the National Archives. It was one of two FOI requests she made. The other, to Thames Valley Police, also relates to the position of Dr Kelly’s body but this time through a witness (Detective Constable Coe) changing his testimony against that presented to Hutton, and whether he was questioned about subsequently about this change.
http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/information_regarding_thames_val
Thames Valley Police have been most slipshod in the way they have provided (or rather not provided) information in their posssession regarding FOI requests.
“It has been argued that dropping the two atoms bombs shortened the war with Japan by at least half a year and saved many more lives than those who perished at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
WARNING: Habitual babble from a very clever source, devoid of all wisdom. In fact too clever for his own good and ours. But of course, blind to it.
Habbabkuk
I see you have used the name “Fred”, complete with inverted commas three times there.
You complain when people call you a troll yet you seem to think it’s OK for you to attack the person when you can’t argue with their logic.
Women getting stoned and limbs getting cut off sounds like an average Saturday night out in Glasgow to me. There is no way you could compare that to the horrific murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people.
BTW, if any one here thinks this constant poking at Mary (whom i don’t know but already love) is civilised, please put their hand up.
In fact we witness insanity in action: going on and on and on and on, somehow expecting a different result, while Mary is not going to give one hoot in that direction, leave alone two. Now that is wisdom, not that cheap-shot style intellect served up for free.
O/T but what do you think of this reported on BBC text Around the UK:
Man posted beheadings on Facebook.
A ”total fantasist” who posted gruesome videos on Facebook of al’Qaeda beheading captives has been jailed for five years.
Craig Slee, 42, of Trawden Crescent, Preston, pleaded guilty to four offences under the 2006 Terrorism Act.
Slee also admitted possession of a prohibited weapon.
On sentencing him at Preston Crown Court, Judge Anthony Russell QC said the videos Slee uploaded revealed “shocking and barbaric depravity”.
The British Establishment were cold conspirators, they were cold murderers of hundreds of thousand, maybe more than a million people in Iraq, a crime of unimaginable proportions.
The British and American governments and their secret intelligence services hatched a conspiracy to deceive their citizens, to deceive and spy on the United Nations and to cheat the world into a false justification for war.
The Chilcot report has been constrained by whitehall’s refusal to release key evidence held by MI6 and GCHQ.. Sir John Chilcot has publically revealed frustration at the inability to observe key papers, including records of talks between Blair and George W Bush.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jul/16/chilcot-report-iraq-delayed-evidence
We can with some certainty gather the required 100,000 signatures to force the British coalition to respond to our request for the release of this evidence. Meanwhile we can I believe also demand the Chilcot report into Iraq IS RELEASED FORTHWITH and Antony Lyndon Blair and others charged as war criminals responsible for the annihilation of Iraq, including the orphaning, maiming and displacement of millions of children together with the murder of innocent civilians by British and American radiation and cluster bombs, chemical weapons, depleted uranium, death squads and torture.
I will post the petition url here shortly.
@ Fred : since they seem to annoy you, I’ll dispense with the inverted commas.
Get serious, Fred, or be quiet. If you look at my post, you’ll see that I began “It has been argued…..”. Whether you accept it or not, it is an argument used to justify the use of the atom bomb. Can you give me ONE argument which can be used or has been used to justify the practice of stoning adulterous women to death or the amputation of limbs?
(And don’t be silly and answer “because it deters people”!)
Habbabkuk
I think you will find that that has been the practice since the dawn of civilization, which BTW dawned for the people of Iran a long time before it dawned for us westerners. In America they strap people to chairs and put electricity through them, equally barbaric. They also shoot school children.
But none of this can even remotely compare to the barbaric act of dropping atom bombs on cities, not in the same league by a long chalk, that has to be the ultimate act of barbarism.
@ Villager
“while Mary is not going to give one hoot….”
Villager, I don’t flatter myself that my posts will do anything to bring Mary closer to assuming a degree of responsibility for the rubbish she sometimes posts.
That would not be Mary, who will surely continue to break into each and every thread with total irrelevancies like “Mr X has 182 company directorships” or with idiocies which she is subsequently unwilling to explain, let alone defend, like “the UK is not a civilised country”.
But never mind, I’ll continue to bring her (and others of her ilk) up sharply as and when it’s deserved. That’s the wonderful thing about a public forum (as I’m sure you won’t agree).
@ Fred : I ‘ll give it one last try before using my intellectual firepower more productively on other matters today.
1/. You say “Iran is a civilised country”
2/. I reply “Does a civilised country have a legal system which provides for the stoning to death of women and the amputation of limbs?” This reply is organically linked to your assertion.
3/. Your reply then is to point out that the US is an uncivilised country because it dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during a war.
What is the relevance of Point 3 to Points 1 and 2?
Answer : none. It is a diversion. You cannot assert, in the face of my argument, assert that Iran is a civilised country because the US isn’t.
It’s as if you were to say, in another discussion, that Stalin was a good guy because Hitler wasn’t.
“But never mind, I’ll continue to bring her (and others of her ilk) up sharply as and when it’s deserved. That’s the wonderful thing about a public forum (as I’m sure you won’t agree).”
Actually I don’t agree. I think that the one thing which quickly turns a public forum into a cesspit is bigoted supercilious pricks who think they are better than everyone else, think they can dictate to others what they can or can’t post.
This is a free forum, Mary has every right to post anything she wants so if you don’t like her posts just don’t read them. It’s simple, the blocks which say “Mary” at the top just ignore and leave Mary to post as she likes and everybody else to read what they like.
Other than that, if you can find a better hole go crawl into it else stop moaning.
“I ‘ll give it one last try before using my intellectual firepower more productively on other matters today.”
Feel free.
But dropping atom bombs on cities will still be about as barbaric as you can get, not the sort of thing a civilised country does at all.
Habbabkuk
“It has been argued that dropping the two atoms bombs shortened the war with Japan by at least half a year and saved many more lives than those who perished at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”
So what? It’s still bullshit, and has been shown to be so so often that you do little more than confirm your ignorance.
It’s the extent to which you employ it in your argument for which you are condemned.
I find laughable too the notion that any argument from barbarian Anglo-Saxon sources be used to criticise Iran on the matter of civilisation.
The Americans, British, French, Belgians etc are indisputably the greatest barbarians in human history, and even today they continue their vile project. The only interesting feature is the extent to which they are now also turning their barbarity in upon themselves too.
Craig
rather amused so see how the hasbara troll, the magnificent hababba has already managed to take over the discourse at this site. This amico dei amici, employes his “intellectual firepower”, if there such a thing, to spread lies and nonsense, like the supposed stoning of that famous murderer Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani This hoax spread primarily by Bernard-Henri Levy the famous philanthropist and proponent of “humanitarian” but otherwise murderous bombing in Libya, like all the big lies of today already seems to show immortality. It may help if our amico could use his “intellectual firepower” (but no bombing, please) to tell us which part of the current Iranian penal code (including citations) is devoted to that matter. By “current” I mean exactly that and not the one from the days of Shah of Persia. In case of failure, habbabba could try his luck by digging into the Saudi Arabian penal code.
Finally, I would like to thank you dear Craig for encouraging this habbabba troll to amuse us here. We all rather enjoy to be smeared by his daily dose of filth.
“The Americans, British, French, Belgians etc are indisputably the greatest barbarians in human history, and even today they continue their vile project. The only interesting feature is the extent to which they are now also turning their barbarity in upon themselves too.”
David, just to put things into perspective, vis-a-vis your whitewashing of Iran; after Nadir Shah had taken Delhi in 1739, he stood upon a rooftop and watched as his soldiers carried out their orders to butcher every man, woman and child in sight. Some 35,000 Indians were slaughtered in this wholly unnecessary act.
All cultures, societies, civilizations resort to brutality, though personally I would find it hard to top Stalinist Russia in the evil stakes.
Non argues:
“All cultures, societies, civilizations resort to brutality, though personally I would find it hard to top Stalinist Russia in the evil stakes.”
Yes, Non, all cultures, societies, civilizations may resort to brutality, but it’s also important here to understand the distinction between brutality and cruelty. Cruelty is much more the mark of the barbarian.
The main distinction though is between those who for whom barbarianism is their main economy and the more civilised approach.
It can’t for example have escaped many peoples attention that the major economy for Europeans hasn’t much changed since their tribal days. It’s still rape and plunder. It’s important to contrast this with the traders of the ME, wherein civilisation grew. You can see the distinction most sharply in how Palestine was changed by the influx of Europeans.
I’d grant that the slavs are barbarians too of course.
Habbakuk, our very own local hasbarra, which btw. also translates into the German word Arschloch.
“Villager, I don’t flatter myself that my posts will do anything to bring Mary closer to assuming a degree of responsibility for the rubbish she sometimes posts.”
You post nothing mate, just argue the toss because you’re not getting enough/attention, oh dear. you must be hard up to go into overdrive here.
So who cut of Kenian men’s gonads and called it ‘negotiating with the Mau Mau’? and who marched young children past concentration camp ovens, some as young as six years old, under the term ‘de-nazification’?
Not to speak of the horrendous torture committed to the chagossians, interned in Mauritius in infested housing, never to be allowed to return home?
Without British support Stalin would have never been so sure of himself when he disappeared millions.
Irans justice system is as detestable than our own.
But they don’t start wars or shoot at children, deliberately, to torture society and local communities, but our allies do.
Your performance here has been piss poor you hypocrite
http://morallowground.com/2011/04/07/kenyans-including-obamas-grandfather-tortured-raped-castrated-in-british-death-camps/
The debate is futile to say the least
Here I am again, the educational mission continues!
@ Fred (14h57) – of course Mary has the right to post what she wants. And I have the same right to post on her posts if I feel like it. There! I’ve tried to put it in the simplest possible manner so that you might finally understand.
@ David (15h24) – another person who needs to learn how to read more carefully. If you did, you might have noticed that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were introduced into this discussion not by me but by Fred. And the “extent” to which it’s employed is all Fred’s, I’m afraid.
BTW @ Non (16h41) – an excellent reply to an outstandingly stupid statement, thank you for saving me the trouble to reply.
Habbabkuk
I read well enough. I wasn’t concerned at who introduced the American’s barbaric bombing, but who made stupid statements about it.
It was you, unsuprisingly.
And still the main modus operandi of the Anglo Saxon peoples is as it was in their tribal days, raping, plundering and pillaging. You see, it’s all they know.
The Americans aren’t even coy about their barbarism. They’re quite proud of it. Only a complete fool would attempt to argue otherwise.
I’m of Saxon forefathers and have you know that rape pillage and plunder is sadly in the blood of any stirred soul, just look at all those eastern European immigrants to Israel and what trouble they can cause.
There is no top shelf on barbarity, maybe a genetic anomaly that has turned us into savages long before we walked upright.
http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14341.html
“of course Mary has the right to post what she wants. And I have the same right to post on her posts if I feel like it. There! I’ve tried to put it in the simplest possible manner so that you might finally understand.”
Then I will proceed to pull you and others of your ilk up every time you post your inane drivel and we will have a forum consisting of nothing but whingers like you.
Nevermind
It’s a cultural rather than a genetic thing. The main point though is that the Americans as with the Europeans before them are so barbaric in their pursuit of wealth that it’s laughable of Habbabkuk, their supporter, to seek to make such distinctions of Iran, especially now as American and Western barbarism is in full and open attack.
We are civilised. They are barbaric. It’s garbage.
There’s trade and then there’s plunder and pillage as a means of economy. The trading economies are simply more civilised than those which are based on plunder. That’s obvious, and anyone can reason why it might be so. It’s simply the case that the ME was the crossroads of world trade and that’s reflected in the culture of the people. By the same token the West hasn’t moved much from plunder as a dominant means of economy.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out that our culture is much more militaristic and violent than that of a trading people, for example. When Europeans began to arrive in Palestine, they, like the Dodo, weren’t prepared for the violence and slaughter that was to be visited upon them.
It’s important too to avoid collapsing everything into sameness. Distinctions and difference really do exist.
habbabba
thanks for telling everybody that your “educational mission continues”. What a loveable little hasbara clown you are. Please continue amusing us for the rest of this, not yet so old “New year” of 2013.
Fred and others – I never had any intention of responding and will not do so now. To give any answers to the resident interrogator would just result in one of those pointless circular arguments. Just to say that it is not a nice feeling to be singled out for rubbishing but I guess that there is some agenda. Something pathological about it?
Hague has just announced that five British hostages and one British resident in Algeria have either been killed or are unaccounted for. That is sad news.
I have been out today but when I came in I looked up AFRICOM as I had been discussing it with friends and did not know much about it. Reading through this below one is struck by the sheer arrogance of the Americans in creating this monstrosity and stride the African continent. It is a creation of Rumsfeld’s and is yet another manifestation of the PNAC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Africa_Command
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Task_Force_Aztec_Silence Note Algiers.
I/C General Ham. Would that be the son of Noah whose siblings were Shem and Japheth? 🙂 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_F._Ham
Note this
General Ham has stated (in an online Washington Post article by Greg Miller and Craig Whitlock, posted on October 1, 2012) that, as a result of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb’s overtaking and capturing more territory in Mali in Africa, and possessing arms from Libya after the Libyan civil war which overthrew Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, there is the possibility of the U.S. assisting (not leading) counterterror operations done by other countries. A more radical step would be the use of drones.[5] On October 18, 2012, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta announced that President Obama will nominate General David Rodriguez to succeed General Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command.
A comment in this report on Ch 4 from one of the Mali army officers said that the ‘terrorists’ are very well and expensively armed. He can’t imagine where the supplies and endless supplies of fuel come from!
http://www.channel4.com/news/niono-holding-the-line-against-malis-jiahdists
Whilst the operation has been going on in Algiers, nothing much has been reported from Mali. Algiers has been almost like a distraction. How much of what is happening is real or is psy op?
No laughing, Sky have just had Col Richard Kemp on.
@ Fred (19h01) : yes, you absolutely must. Nobody should be above constructive criticism, there should be no posts with an exemption- from – comment pass.
@ Karel : always pleased to oblige a Charlie (Karel=Charles, geddit?). Your wish is my command, Sir.
@ Mary : I’m sorry – but not surprised – to hear you say that to ask you the occasional simple question (eg “how is it relevant to the point under comment that Mr So and So has 182 company directorships?” is to rubbish you. I thought that this blog was a place for reasoned discussion rather than for reading ex cathedra statements which we are somehow expected to swallow without demur.
Craig,
You say “However in the UK it remains the case that since the coalition government came to power, there has not been one single government statement on the human rights atrocities in Uzbekistan…”
It seems to me that there is much duplicity in the world. The Americans turn a blind eye to human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia as does Britain not seeing or hearing any evil in Bahrain.
The silence in the UK simply reflects the fact that the Government is comfortable with the status quo.
However, it is a very good thing that this campaign has started.
Habbabba,
your prosaic outpourings remind me of Glenda Slagg’s contributions to Private Eye. Are you by any chance a fictitious character? Geddit??
@arbed “the US administration knew full well where Osama was stashed all along.”
Thats my feeling as well. It is difficult to believe that it really took the US so long to find him. There would be many advantages to keeping him a secret prisoner. They obviously wouldn’t want to publicly admit to holding him prisoner. If they could control him then they could gain useful information about Islamist groups contacting him. It could well be that he thought he had cut a deal with the Pakistani ISI, and they housed him and looked after him.
Plus of course his confessions/boasts are the only public evidence of his involvement with 911.
Plus the ‘search’ for him was the main reason quoted by ordinary Americans trying to justify their country’s continued war on Afghanistan.
I suspect that he was never nearly as influential as he was made out to be – just a useful bogeyman for the Americans to use in their war of terror.