Hitler killed himself as the Russians surged toward his bunker.
These days he’d probably get some regretful blog posts about who the real war criminals were, why it was in the interests of the allies to make him look bad, and how tragic it was the “truth” had died with him.
This is an extract from the latest HRW report:
The Zimbabwean army is responsible for a new wave of rights violations throughout Zimbabwe, Human Rights Watch said today. Military forces are providing arms and trucks to so-called “war veterans” who have been implicated in numerous acts of torture and other violence against opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) members and supporters.
[…..]
On April 23, in Manicaland, a group of “war veterans” and ZANU-PF supporters fired at a group of 22 MDC activists who had enquired about the whereabouts of 12 MDC supporters. Earlier the “war veterans” had abducted the 12 MDC supporters and taken them to Chiwetu Rest Camp – an informal torture center set up by the “war veterans” and ZANU-PF youth in Makoni West, Manicaland province. When the MDC activists arrived at the camp they found up to 50 “war veterans” and ZANU-PF supporters – 12 of whom were armed. The “war veterans” ordered the activists to sit on the ground and then fired shots into the air. As the MDC activists tried to flee, the war veterans fired another round of shots, this time at the group, hitting three of them. One activist, Tabeth Marume, was shot in the stomach and died of her wounds on the way to the hospital. Two other activists were also injured during the incident.
One of the victims of the shooting told Human Rights Watch that the man who fired the shot that killed Tabeth Marume was a known “war veteran.” When the victims informed the local police about the incident, the police refused to take action, claiming that such an incident could not have happened since they had no knowledge of any civilians in the area who were allowed to keep firearms.
The current whereabouts of the 12 abducted MDC supporters are not known. The activists who went to the camp told Human Rights Watch that they saw their colleagues at the camp with their hands tied behind their backs, lying on their stomachs. They said the 12 activists were badly bruised and injured. The activists also reported to Human Rights Watch that they later saw the “war veterans” bundle their colleagues into pickup trucks and drive off.
The lack of arrests and investigations into this and other incidents of organized political violence carried out by ZANU-PF and its allies contrasts starkly with the arrest of 215 people last Friday accused of committing reprisal attacks against ZANU-PF, Human Rights Watch said. Human Rights Watch expressed concern that those arrests were politically motivated.
This is Vincent Magombe, Director of Africa Inform International, speaking on Newsnight earlier this year, albeit in the context of Kenya’s struggle for democracy:
I think what I fear about the discourse around issues to do with democracy in […] Africa, is when people seem to suggest that Africa is not ready for democracy. I think the people […] have shown that they are ready for democracy–they went out there and practised democracy. The people who are not ready for democracy are the leaders, the dictators.
Christopher Hitchens maintains one should always specify a liquor brand when ordering a cocktail.
Hitchens is warning drinkers to always order by brand - or face sipping rot gut. “Having long been annoyed by people who called knowingly for, say, ‘a Dewar’s and water’ . . . I decided to ask a trusty barman what I got if I didn’t specify,” the thirsty journo writes in his intro to “Everyday Drinking,” a new collection of Kingsley Amis’ essays on booze. “The answer was a confidential jerk of the thumb in the direction of a villainous-looking, tartan-shaded jug under the bar. [It] was even grimmer with gin and vodka and became abysmal with ‘white wine’ . . . If you don’t state a clear preference, then your drink is like a bad game of poker or a hasty drug transaction: It is whatever the dealer says it is.”
Bonus: Alexander Waugh’s review of Everyday Drinking on Book Forum
… nor is it about meat eating. There is something else going on.
Sang Run was out in his boat at 7am when disaster struck his village. He arrived back at 11am to find bulldozers had flattened his home and those of the 229 families who lived beside him. He heard from neighbours that it had happened in an instant. Uniformed men, sent in by governor Say Hak, used electric batons to chase terrified residents from the burning ruins; three of Sang Run’s neighbours were knocked unconscious.
Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark report from Cambodia where extensive speculation is leaving land fallow and removing people from their homes. Why is this happening? One speculator says it all,
We are going to move as fast as we can. It’s fantastically exciting, the opportunity to zone the whole island, to see where the luxury exclusive villa plots will be, for the Brad Pitts, etc.
At the heart of the world food crisis is the dispossession of the rural poor. Whether for commercial and industrial development or for building golf courses for the super rich, land is passing out of food production and being taken away from the small farmers who grow much of the food consumed locally. They, in turn, are becoming destitute, and they are the ones who will starve. The driver is more than human greed and governmental corruption. Rampant global inequality privileges the exotic holidays of the rich over the feeding of the poor, turning productive farmers and fishers into supplicants at the rich man’s table. Some will be lucky to get crumbs.
You have to love CIF for its comedy moments. In a discussion about GM food, we discover that 911 occurred because rich Westerners eat Big Macs.
A less risky solution is simply for people to eat less meat. This would improve public health as well as making sure there is enough food to go around. But it won’t happen, because rich westerners will ignore anyone who wants to stop them eating a Big Mac. And we wonder why people will fly planes into buildings.
That’s in the first ten comments, I rarely read beyond the first three. Truly, the web has become a veritable goldmine of intelligent, knowledgeable, and balanced discussion.
Tariq Aziz is to stand trial. Here’s a rap sheet from Indict.
The Crime of Aggression
As a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, he is alleged to be complicit in launching two wars of aggression against Iran and Kuwait; invading Saudi Arabia and attacking the town of Khafji in January 1991.
War Crimes
As a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, he is alleged to be complicit in the gross violations of Geneva Convention IV Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time Of War and Geneva Convention III Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War, committed by Iraqi forces during the war with Iran and during the occupation of Kuwait between August 1990 - March 1991.
Personally lent himself to the act of hostage taking in Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf Conflict, in breach of the Convention Against the Taking of Hostages.
Genocide
As a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, he is alleged to be complicit in the use of excessive military force against the Marsh Arabs of southern Iraq as part of an ongoing campaign against the Shi’as, including the deliberate destruction of the Marsh Arabs’ way of life.
As a member of the Revolutionary Command Council, he is alleged to be complicit in the genocidal Anfal campaigns waged against the Kurds, including chemical weapons attacks, destruction of rural villages and the rural infrastructure and mass executions.
To help any moral guardians of liberalism who may be reading, who may be more concerned with imagined war crimes of democratic leaders, I append the thoughts of the top three recommended comments from the BBC’s Have your Say page.
Tariq Aziz? Oh yes,,, isn’t he the guy that stood before the United Nations and told the truth Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction whilst at the same meeting Colin Powell stood before the United Nations and told a parcel of lies about WMA so as to make a case for war?
I think they’ve got the wrong man on trial this time. BTW where is Colin Powell these days? We don’t seem to hear much about him.
It’s enough to make you sick…
Ron Martin, bridge of allan
They’ve got it backwards. George Bush & Tony Blair should be tried for illegally invading a soverign state. Tariq Aziz should be the prosecution.
Zamir Zamora, Milpitas, Ca
The blood letting should stop. This man was a true statesman and the best face of Iraq to the outside world even in the darkest days of Saddam Hussein. What’s more, he has no ethnic agenda like the Sunnis, the Shiites or the Kurds, as he is a Chaldean, a member of the most persecuted people in Iraq. Enough is enough.
Joe Akinmusuru, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States
While it is unfair to single out these comments as being representative of anything other than their owners’ own bizarre opinions, they (and their recommendations) come from a certain “moral” climate that is spread far and wide. That even includes apparently well-regarded liberals, who playfully point to the opinions of anti-semitic reactionaries that fit within that general climate, and who rarely take the time to acknowledge the undoubted criminality of the former regime in Iraq. Still less, do they take the time to look further than their own egos to support democrats within Iraq emerging from the darkness of tyranny through a veil of blood and loss.
The election for Mayor of London and seats on the city assembly is just two days away, and I have had about as much as I can take of this bollocks. I’m sick of the candidates, and I’m sick of the endless pseudo-analysis of policies, personalities and the conduct of the election campaign.
Esteemed comrade Paulie has on his blog today issued a call for Londoners to vote for his least unfavourite candidate, Kenneth Robert Livingstone Esq.. In his post Paulie complains about the London Evening Standard and that newspaper’s vicious and relentless campaign against the re-election of Livingstone. Paulie is particularly upset about “revelations, smears and innuendo” published this week in the run-up to the poll.
The thing about such “smears” is that there is very often a ring of truth about them.
So exactly how much truth is contained in the allegations made by Andrew Gilligan in yesterday’s Standard? I’m talking of Labour leaflets handed out at mosques with Bengali text reportedly accusing Johnson of hating Islam, the Qu’ran and Muslims, claiming that Johnson is calling for the Qu’ran to be banned, and insisting that Muslims have a moral duty to support Livingstone.
If these leaflets are forgeries, then Labour should take the Tories and the Standard to court and have Johnson disqualified if he wins the contest. But Labour cannot complain about the moral deficiencies of others when their own camp is so compromised. Don’t talk to me about morality in an election where Livingstone is using every means at his disposal to cajole, scare and bully Londoners into voting for him.
In the Labourite blogosphere we are currently inundated with “If Boris wins the sky will fall” hysteria. Livingstone, we are told, may be a toad, but he’s our toad, and all caring, sharing Londoners should fall into line behind him. Where is the morality in this?
Despite spending much of my time in London, I do not have a vote in the city. But if I did have a vote I would not know what to do with it. Vote for the tosspot to get Ken out? Possibly, though in some ways this would be an abdication of moral responsibility.
Brian Paddick? He may have been an respected senior police officer, but in the political sphere he hasn’t a clue. And Siân Berry is part of an organisation contaminated by association with the moral-relativist and antisemitic left. The Green Party of Englandandwales is no Bündnis 90/Die Grünen.
Paulie also calls for the breakup of the Standard’s “monopoly”. I beg his pardon? The Standard’s backers and editors may or may not have indulged in some dodgy practices over the years, but the paper does not hold a monopoly position. There is nothing bar the lack of a viable business plan preventing the establishment of one.
What business is it of an elected mayor to interfere with the privately-owned press? He or she is not far off being president of a city-state, for goodness sake. When Hugo Chávez effectively nationalises the Venezuelan media we scream dictator, and rightly so.
I still don’t understand why we need executive mayors. I mean, it’s not as if Livingstone is a unifying figure, is he? Paulie somewhat bizarrely compares London with Ireland, but Livingstone is no Mary McAleese. Everyone in London bar a tiny coterie of advisors and cronies hates his guts, including many of those now calling for his re-election. How perverse can London politics get?
Sorry, Paulie, but your post reads like official Labour Party election propaganda or a press release. My recommendation, for what it’s worth, is for Londoners to give their first and second preference votes to candidates they approve of, and none other. If they do not like what is presented to them on the ballot paper, then they should spoil that paper by writing the word “ABSTAIN” across it.
“The challenges of national reconciliation, reconstruction and development after decades of dictatorship and war are massive. I was impressed, however, by the seriousness and commitment of the Government of Iraq to address these challenges with a view to ending the suffering and achieving a tangible improvement in the lives of the Iraqi people. This is a long-term endeavour that requires the sustained support of the international community.”
Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs B. Lynn Pascoe
Whereas John Quiggin is recycling Mahathir Mohamad’s ranting about war crimes. Mahathir Mohamad is a man who opposed the universal declaration of human rights as an oppressive Western project.
The Chinese Military Industrial Complex continues going from strength to strength–if they are not squashing kids in Beijing with tanks or herding the poor into sweatshops to stuff the pockets of the nomenklatura or banning independent workers’ organisations, they are massacring Tibetans, arming the Sudanese and Burmese dictatorships and attempting to ship ammunition to Zimbabwe to facilitate the suppression and murder of those Zimbabweans–the majority–who didn’t vote for President for Ever, Bob Mugabe; or shipping those noted agents of western imperialism–North Korean refugees–back to the Kim thanatocracy. Further protests and violence attended the Olympic torch relay in Seoul, a procession surrounded by 8,300 police.
Thousands of young Chinese assembled to defend their country’s troubled Olympic torch relay pushed through police lines on Sunday, some of them hurling rocks, bottled water and plastic and steel pipes at protesters demanding better treatment for North Korean refugees in China.Two North Korean defectors living in South Korea poured paint thinner on themselves and tried to set themselves on fire in an attempt to protest what they condemned as Beijing’s inhumane crackdown of North Korean refugees, but the police stopped them, according to witnesses and the police.
[…] In South Korea, one of the torch’s final stops before entering the safety of China, demonstrators focused on human rights for North Koreans who live in hiding in China after fleeing hunger in their homeland.
[…] When lone protesters demanded that China stop repatriating North Korean refugees, they were quickly surrounded by jeering Chinese. Near the park, Chinese students surrounded and beat a small group of protesters, news reports said.
In another scuffle, at the city center where the five-hour torch run ended, Chinese surrounded several Tibetans and South Korean supporters who unfurled pro-Tibet banners, and kicked and punched them, witnesses said.
[…..]
In recent years, thousands of North Koreans have fled across the loosely controlled Chinese border, rather than the heavily fortified border with South Korea. China sends back North Koreans it catches as illegal economic migrants, a policy condemned by rights groups. They face life-threatening punishment in labor camps once repatriated, according to rights groups.
“Even as it is preparing for the Olympics, China is arresting North Korean refugees and sending them to the valley of death. Is that an Olympic spirit?” said Han Chang Kwon, a leader of North Korean defectors.
Unfortunately for Han Chang Kwon, the ‘Olympic spirit’ is about unrestrained nationalism, juicy sponsorship deals and exhorbitant fees for the ‘rights’ to televise the whole sordid spectacle of synchronised swimming, show-jumping and rhythmic gymnastics.
Contrary to the Brendan O’Bollocks (and others) line that condemnation of the Chinese Military Industrial Complex is ‘racist’ and ‘anti-modernity’, I am as opposed to racist immigration controls and detention and forced removal of refugees in Britain, Australia or New Zealand, as I am to racist immigration controls and detention and forced removal of refugees in China. Why do soi-disant ’socialist’ states, held up by some as models of ‘workers’ paradises’ restrict the movement of citizens? How can some (few) misguided people call themselves ’socialist’ in good conscience and at the same time defend holding entire populations captive?
Let it be noted that the “hideously white” BBC now appear to have a view on how Islamic Muslim women are. Apparently, the answer is not enough.:
A new five-part series on Muslim women called Women in Black starts next week. The series boldly goes where no undercover Dispatches investigative journalist has ever been before. Yes, you guessed it, under the burka. Ever wondered what lies beneath? Jack Straw did.
Last summer, I was asked to take part in the programme. The makers said they wanted to shatter stereotypes and show the empowered, modern, young, cool Muslim woman (presumably because we haven’t gone off the rails like the modern, young, British, uncool Muslim man). Would I take part? ‘Of course,’ I said. Am I not empowered and modern and Muslim and cool? Hell, yes.
So I met the production team and one of the women (not Muslim, by the way) pulled out a little camera and filmed me saying, among other things, how irritating it is that non-Muslims act surprised that I’m Muslim just because I choose not to cover my head.
It went well, I thought, and so they said. But - and this was quite a big but - they were a bit concerned about my appearance.
‘Your dress is quite Western,’ they said ruefully. I was wearing jeans and a short-sleeved top (yes, I really do remember what I was wearing that day. How could I not? I thought I was going to be famous and on TV), but I was hardly scantily clad. So much for the empowered, modern, young, cool Muslim woman; turns out what the BBC really wanted was a authentic, well-covered one instead.
Huma Qureshi notes the story that the BBC miss when creating the story they have decided upon.
While I am sympathetic to isolated aspects of neo-conservatism I despise neo-conservatives more than conservatives (and I despise both with the utmost venom).
Neo-conservative proclivities, whichever financial plutocracy holds the key to the future are fucking shit. Kill them all. Stamp on their necks. Americans are a sorry lot of wankers — they deserve pity and commiseration (and a bullet to the head). Oh — you think that is a non sequitur? You can fuck off as well. Dirty little Randbots.
1. Democracy
2. Free Speech
3. Hardcore pornography available
4. Satellite TV/Cable TV
5. Religious nutjobs claim there’s a liberal conspiracy against them.
Dirty little religious scum. Let us annihilate them.
Utter shit — from beginning to end.
Michael Connarty, MP for Linlithgow and Falkirk East at Westminster has just been interviewed by BBC One Scotland’s Politics Show about the strike at Grangemouth refinery. An economist in former life, Connarty condemned Ineos for ‘macho management tactics’ and ‘attacking the workers’ pensions’ through its imposition of a two-tiered pension scheme without consultation or negotiation with the union. He said ‘why we’re in this situation is [Ineos are] doing things that no sensible management would do’. The pension scheme at the centre of the dispute is in surplus and Ineos have reportedly rejected independent auditing of the accounts. Connarty suggested that Ineos’ ‘maverick way’ of approaching management has a political rather than economic agenda–’why have you provoked this strike now?’ The one obvious conclusion–Ineos are seeking to break the power of organised labour at the Grangemouth complex.
The poster below was spotted on the wall of the Chapelle Notre-Dame de la Santé, at the Bastide Saint-Louis end of the Pont Vieux in Carcassonne–in this instance, the god-botherers are shaming so many soi-disant ‘progressives’, particularly those who proclaim sympathy or support for the pursuits of god-bothering, while at the same time supporting the Chinese military industrial complex.
It’s worth remembering that not everybody suffered under the 10p tax rate.
The entire workforce of Somerset print firm Butler and Tanner – 287 employees to be precise – was yesterday made redundant. Sacked without warning and with immediate effect. And this while the company and representatives of Unite were in talks at ACAS in Bristol, with strike action hanging in the air but not yet implemented.
We are told that Butler and Tanner is now being put into receivership. Yet on Thursday of last week company chairman Mike Dolan told PrintWeek that this would happen if the threatened strike went ahead. So Dolan is a liar as well as a corporate bully. He had previously accused the union of “election fraud” after a ballot of workers resulted in a 92% vote for industrial action.
Dolan then conducted his own ballot, but Unite’s Ann Field says that this was boycotted by the “vast majority” of union members. The company boss claimed that his ballot showed a majority of union members to be against a strike. A majority of those few union members who took part in his unofficial, informal and irregular ballot.
And to add insult to injury, along with receiving ungrammatical dismissal notices the sacked workers have been told that they will not receive their salary this month. The redundancy letters state that the company is “unable to invoice sufficient work to pay this month’s wages.”
So how can Dolan declare that Butler and Tanner’s suppliers and creditors will be paid in full?
Mike Dolan is a bounder and a cad.
Fucking catholic genocidal maniacs and scum.
I would kill catholics at the drop of a hat and promote labour and union leaders to the highest realms of governmental apparatus in order to make it so.
Frankfurt School Rules OK.
Not only that — the death instinct inherent in religious ethnocide and mass extermination immanent in the major monotheisms should be wiped off the face of the earth. Hitchens and Dawkins are pussies when it comes to the real deal.
Relevant (to something-or-other)
At the opening of his boutique for luxury menswear in Zurich, designer Tom Ford ponders the subject of body hair. “I talked to my father about it, he’s 76. And he can’t understand the world any more. Everyone is shaved everywhere. When a woman is naked, you should see lots of hair, he thinks. And he’s right. That’s natural, pure, animalistic. But that’s my personal taste. It is something that really preoccupies me though… We were doing a photo shoot with a big group of naked men, all heterosexuals between the ages of 19 and 60. The older ones had full, natural pubic hair, the under-40s were strarkly trimmed, and a few had none at all. I asked the younger ones why they were shaved all over and they replied: because my girlfriend likes it. … It’s a hairless generation, their sexual socialisation happened with porn films that showed no pubic hair. I grew up in the seventies where porn films were still porn films, it was sweaty and hairy.”
Truefact.
Some were dismissive of the attempts of the Iraqi government to exert control in Basra:
The negative sum nature of war is most obvious when, as predictably happened in Basra, the stage of bloody stalemate is reached. At this point, both sides typically want to come out of the fight with some gains to show for the exercise. Fighting on, they sometimes achieve this and sometimes do not. But the losses incurred in the process ensure that both sides are worse than they would have been with an immediate ceasefire.
In this respect, Basra is a microcosm of the whole Iraq war.
However, the negative sum appears less negative than it did. Basra, in relative terms, appears to be blooming.
three years of being terrified of kidnap, rape and murder – a fate that befell scores of other women – Nadyia Ahmed, 22, is among those enjoying a sense of normality, happy for the first time to attend her science course at Basra University. “I now have the university life that I heard of at high school before the war and always dreamt about,” she told The Times. “It was a nightmare because of these militiamen. I only attended class three days a week but now I look forward to going every day.”
She also no longer has to wear a headscarf. Under the strict Islamic rules imposed by the militias, women had to cover their hair, could not wear jeans or bright clothes and were strictly forbidden from sitting next to male colleagues on pain of death.
“All these men in black [who imposed the laws] just vanished from the university after this operation,” said Ms Ahmed. “Things have completely changed over the past week.”
In addition, the Iraqi government seems to be increasing its monopoly of violence, and their hold on the streets of Basra. Sadr has also decided not to fight. If Basra is a microcosm of the whole Iraq war, then we should all hope that this fragile and hard-won (by Iraqis) security is replicated throughout the rest of the country suffering persecution at the hands of terrorists and undesirable foreign infiltrators.
I’ll see how British Airways treats its passengers. And of course, sucker Bob bought a business class return across the Atlantic, found the crew polite and friendly, but then – on returning to Heathrow for my onward connection to Beirut – was downgraded to economy class. Flourishing a fistful of dollars in compensation, the Heathrow staff told me that the flight was overbooked.
No, it wasn’t their fault, Jim. I know that. But it was the same old BA story. Too many of us animals had turned up for your flight and the last donkeys in transit got sent to the stalls at the back.
Is it me, or does his whining about his globe trotting seem out of kilter with the understanding given to his attackers in 2001?
If I had been them, I would have downgraded him.
Comrades Lauryn Oates, Jonathon Narvey and Karim Qayumi do a fine job explaining what the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee is all about, here.
I especially appreciated the fact that the reporter on the story, Brian Hutchinson (who knows Afghanistan well), noticed that among CASC’s founders are people “who will never be mistaken for conservatives. . .[and] include “academics, gay rights activists, student activists, Afghan-Canadians and feminists,” and that we are “united under the premise that we must honour our obligations to the cause of solidarity with the people of Afghanistan.”
That’s a refreshing change from the usual crap about us being “right wing,” let me tell you. But I would also want to point out that, just as we’re not merely a west coast phenomenon, there are also Red Tories among our founding members, such as two former federal Progressive Conservative cabinet ministers (John Fraser, Flora Macdonald), and a former federal Liberal cabinet minister and British Columbia lieutenant-governor (Iona Campagnolo). These are damn good people, and I will not hear a bad word spoken about them from any of the posh townie bastards who frequent this web lodge from time to time.
These are my people, and you will mind your dang manners.
Mental health warning: the following video contains scenes of a particularly cretinous cretin exercising his special talent, and some of you may find this too painful to watch.
Hat tip: Anthony Cox
