Stupid headline of the day:
Could Helmand be the Dubai of Afghanistan?
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MPs put through Early Day Motion on American use of depleted uranium in Fallujah:
Last week’s report from the BBC’s World Affairs Editor John Simpson was picked up by news outlets worldwide. While the report did not make a causal link between the use of uranium weapons and the subsequent rise in birth defects, it made clear that Iraqi medical staff suspect that the US’s use of toxic materials in its weapons is a possible cause of the health problems.
The story triggered a swift response from the US military, whose spokesperson claimed that they took claims about health problems “very seriously” but added: “No studies to date have indicated environmental issues resulting in specific health issues.” At no point did they deny using uranium weapons there. However, and in spite of several Freedom of Information requests, the US military is still refusng to disclose how much DU was fired in Fallujah, just as it is refusing to disclose how much was fired elsewhere in the country and where it was used. Unsurprisingly this makes it almost impossible to study whether these health problems are linked to uranium weapon exposure.
I saw John Simpson’s report on a BBC World programme hosted by Nik Gowing a few weeks ago. It was quite bizarre: Gowing spent the entire 5-7 minute slot trying to get Simpson to agree that the US wasn’t to blame. Simpson refused to get involved and simply discussed what he had seen and reported.
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Pakistani men sentenced to life for burying women alive:
Another defendant involved in the case was sentenced to six months in prison, while 16 defendants were acquitted of the so-called “honor killings.”
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Indonesia’s largest Muslim group calls for welcoming President Obama and condemns hardline protests.
(Via an emailer.)
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Glenn Beck is an American problem and has nothing to do with countries or people even remotely related to the ’stans’. Septics should create their own derogatory suffixes…
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Germany convicts home-grown militants.
I seriously think the only suitable punishment for such people is that they are parachuted into the middle of a war zone so they can play out their stupid fantasies.
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Waterboarding for dummies:
Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney “specially designed” to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner’s nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking – and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.
The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding “session.” Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to “dam the runoff” and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee’s mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second “applications” of liquid in each two-hour session – and could dump water over a detainee’s nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.
“This is revolting and it is deeply disturbing,” said Dr. Scott Allen, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University who has reviewed all of the documents for Physicians for Human Rights. “The so-called science here is a total departure from any ethics or any legitimate purpose. They are saying, ‘This is how risky and harmful the procedure is, but we are still going to do it.’ It just sounds like lunacy,” he said. “This fine-tuning of torture is unethical, incompetent and a disgrace to medicine.”
It is doubtful anyone will ever be held accountable for these, or other, crimes (no ‘change’ there then).
Meanwhile, we will continue to cover up crimes committed by the US, and to try and deflect attention from the acts of torture in which we wilfully participated. Jack Straw denies all knowledge despite evidence showing otherwise. David Miliband had to be humiliated by the courts while trying to cover up torture. And now Eliza Manningham-Bullshitter, former head of MI5, denies all knowledge saying the Americans hid the evidence from the UK — which shows he was either unfit for the job (CIA planes passed through the UK and used British facilities) or too stupid to use a search engine (in which case she would also have been unfit for her former job).
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If there’s a man writing for a British newspaper today who is more arrogant, stupid and ignorant than David Aaronovitch, his name must be John Rentoul.
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Rowan Williams has an argument which at least on front page contributor would agree with:
Dr Rowan Williams said it was right to be suspicious of proselytism that involves “bullying, insensitive approaches” to other faiths.
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British newspapers ‘racially profile’ terror suspects too:
It’s strange then that almost no coverage whatsoever has been given to the case of Ian Davison, although perhaps that name itself somewhat gives the game away.
I noticed that the Jihad Jane story was on the front of major British news outlets. Yet the arrest of Crusader Christopher wasn’t on the front page (and still isn’t) despite: a. the regional nature of the threat compared to someone tapping from their computer in the US; and b. the fact that ricin and handbooks on making bombs (i.e. ‘terrorist materials’) were actually found in his possession (unlike in the case of a number of high-profile, non-white, terrorists).
If this doesn’t highlight the racism of the British press, nothing short of headlines screaming “Kill All Pakis” ever will.
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Some Tories seem keen to adopt the tactics of their friends in the GOP, complete with the required hatred for Barack Hussein Obama.
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And I here I was thinking only Muslims are stupid enough to become brainwashed by extremist preachers:
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The words of one Guramit Singh of Nottingham, speaking at a recent English Defence League (EDL) rally:
“God bless the Muslims… they’ll need it when they burn in fucking hell.”
Bolton Council has also asked the Home Secretary to ban the planned EDL rally in the city.
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Interesting piece from Paul Sagar (a blogger from the left I highly recommend), on whether patriotism can combat anti-Muslim bigotry.
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£1,300: the value of an Afghan life:
US-led forces had originally claimed that the victims were part of a terrorist cell making improvised explosive devices but an investigation by The Times found that Nato now believes the victims, aged 12-18, were killed in an operation based on faulty intelligence.
The President paid relatives Afs100,000 (£1,300) for each of the victims — eight students from one family, a 12-year-old shepherd boy who was the family’s guest and a farmer from a neighbouring compound.
Silence from the usual quarters.
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Yasmin Alibhai-Brown yet again reminds us that ‘middle class liberals can be Muslims too’.
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‘500′ are reported to have been killed dead in the latest violence in Jos, Nigeria:
A resident in Plateau State, where the tragedy happened, said he had seen armored vehicles and military trucks arrive in the village along with patrolling troops.
The latest military move came after a Nigerian government official confirmed on Monday that at least 500 had been killed in a communal clash in Jos, which followed the crisis on Jan. 17 in the same region when some youths attacked worshippers at St. Michael’s Anglican Church in Nasawara Gwom.
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Remember this next time you see a British politician stand up and declare that some other country is flouting international law, or a threat to world peace:
Of course, whenever the misdeeds, crimes and muderous behaviour one of our dubious chums (Saudi Arabia, Israel) is brought up for questioning, it becomes “politically motivated”. But when we need to invade other countries, whether it is to grab resources or continue promoting our delusional sense of self-importance, we will dress it up with all the appeals to international law, peace and security.
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Yesterday, BBC World aired a debate entitled “Europe is failing its Muslims”. Although the teams on either side of the motion were made up of two people, this debate was basically Tariq Ramadan (arguing for the motion) versus Douglas Murray (arguing against the motion). The debate seems to be available on YouTube.
At one point Murray (whose tag team partner was Flemming Rose) suggested that being European and Muslim wasn’t possible at the same time, and made some blather about European values. It’s a shame no one asked Murray to explain whether these ‘values’ included the use, and covering up of, torture and the fascination with mindless warfare on others to spread your own ‘values’. And perhaps it would have been interested if Rose, who declared himself a believer in ‘universal human rights’, how he felt sitting alongside someone who has spent a lot of time attacking the Human Rights Act.
There were also the usual, and mindless, arguments about how great it was to be a Muslim in Britain compared to, say, Saudi Arabia. Who cares what they do in Saudi?
In the end the audience voted against the motion, although I don’t think this meant people supported Murray. For example, one of the audience members — a former British diplomat to an Arab country who also used to work for the Muslim West Facts Project — also objected to the motion, but noted that his reasons for doing so would probably differ to those being promoted by Murray. I felt that even Rose, who would usually be cast as an anti-Muslim bigot (Zeinab Badawi certainly did her best to constantly remind the audience of his claim to fame), came off better than Murray.
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“The Army does not tolerate racist behaviour…” Well, yes, it does:
The serviceman’s left kneepad has “Get some Paki” scrawled on it. His picture featured in Soldier magazine alongside a story about new rations for troops.
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FACT: There has never been an Israeli peace camp.
In response to this story, Aziz tweeted:
In other words, such an opinion could not be expressed in an open and frank manner in an American newspaper, whereas it can in a major Israeli newspaper.
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Ariane Sherine recalls an incident I am very familiar with. Though I have to say, no one has asked me that question in the UK, perhaps for fear of being branded a racist. Instead, the people who tend to ask me that question happen to be fellow Muslims.
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Turkey has recalled its ambassador from the US after the House of Representatives voted in favour of recognising the massacre of Armenians as genocide despite opposition from the Obama administration.