Round-up of the week
In the absence of an entry since Wednesday on the grounds of too much work and too little energy for composing one, here's a round-up of this week's news, insha Allah:
The Guardian printed this piece, originally from The Nation, compiled from interviews with US Iraq war vets. Really, what can I say? When they wreck people's houses on a whim and spray bullets at a car for driving a bit too fast near a checkpoint, can we really believe the story that the "insurgency" is actually a Saudi Wahhabi-dominated plot to re-establish a global caliphate?
Still on the subject of the alleged "war on terror", Clive Stafford Smith in the current New Statesman explains how one of his clients, abducted in Pakistan and sold to the Americans, was repatriated to Tunisia, a notoriously repressive country with a long record of unjust imprisonment and torture, to face a 23-year jail term (we're not told what for, but it was held while he was unable to defend himself) before his lawyers could see him in Guantánamo. It's these sorts of countries our government want to send alleged terrorists back to. Sickening.
On a quite different subject, the "super casino" plan for Manchester has been put on ice. This is really good news ma sha Allah. I don't know why anyone thinks casinos equal regeneration when they are dumped in a deprived area; if anything, recent evidence shows that gambling shops are a sign that an area is going down-hill, simply because they fill up with people desperate for money. The only way to regenerate any area is to invest in it with real industry.
Don't know how much news this was in America, but the conviction of Conrad Black for fraud was big news in the UK. Obviously I don't object if he has stolen shareholders' money and used it for his own ends and gets locked up, but I don't believe that a jail sentence in double figures is justified for a non-violent property crime. In this country, he would get five years or so - and, no doubt, be barred from company directorships and face other public disgraces, as Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken did.
Comments
"When they...spray bullets at a car for driving a bit too fast near a checkpoint" I think we should employ them as traffic wardens.
Posted by: Thersites | July 14, 2007 7:35 PM
How can one "re-establish" a global caliphate when a "global caliphate has never ever existed?
Posted by: George Carty
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July 15, 2007 3:35 PM
that's clever and whimsical, thersites - can I presume that you find the thought of dying along with your family, for nothing more than not trusting a bunch of armed men who've occupied your country, amusing?
I do think that Iraqis have long memories, and there will be a time when far more grevious payments will be exacted by Arabs, along the lines of 9/11... and trust me, that gives me no feeling of pleasure or amusement, just remorse.
Posted by: dawud | July 16, 2007 6:13 PM
"How horrible it is to have so many people killed! And what a blessing that one cares for none of them!"
Whimsical? Perhaps, Dawud. However motorists directly kill about a million people a year worldwide- rather more than all the terrorists and miltary combined- and they'd kill many more if they hadn't intimidated others into letting them have possession of the road without argument.
Posted by: Thersites | July 17, 2007 7:25 PM
Thersites, are you intentionally missing the point?
I was speaking about the tragedy that you put between quotes "When they...spray bullets at a car for driving a bit too fast near a checkpoint", which you thought made the soldiers good traffic wardens. I would agree the roads are dangerous in England or anywhere else, but perhaps you're making fun of other people's deaths because thinking about the inhumanity of people dieing, by soldiers from your country in a war whose aims you support, makes you uncomfortable.
Perhaps you've already forgotten the 500 000 Iraqis who died between the first and second Gulf wars, or the more than 300 000 who've died since the invasion of 2003... but the Iraqis haven't, I can assure you...
And if you have an uncomfortable conscience, forgive me if I think that that's a good thing.
Posted by: dawud | July 18, 2007 9:58 AM
I am making a different point to the one you wantme to make, Dawud. I am merely entirely in favour of summarily executing motorists and regret that we don't have such policies on the roads of England.
"Soldiers from your country in a war whose aims you support" You are mistaken on both counts, Dawud.
"The 500 000 Iraqis who died between the first and second Gulf wars" died as a direct result of Saddam's policies and most of the 300,000 who died since the invasion of Iraq have been killed by other Iraqis. One of the reasons I oppposed the invasion was because I thought something like that would happen if the murderous repression exercised by Saddam and the baathists was removed.
Posted by: Thersites | July 18, 2007 7:08 PM