“Truth? You can't handle the truth!”

[Old Tankie]

If military advisors are a sign of invasion, Sharky, we're currently being "invaded" by Australia, Canada, Russia, France, USA, Poland, Spain, Germany, India, etc., etc. and, as for air space, all you've got to do is look in the sky where I live and the good ole U S of A is "invading" us all the time, by your criteria!!!

[Richmond Clements]

If military advisors are a sign of invasion, Sharky, we're currently being "invaded" by Australia, Canada, Russia, France, USA, Poland, Spain, Germany, India, etc., etc. and, as for air space, all you've got to do is look in the sky where I live and the good ole U S of A is "invading" us all the time, by your criteria!!!

You just keep telling yourself that, eh?

[Old Tankie]

Oh!  Thanks for your okay on that, Richmond!

[Richmond Clements]

Oh!  Thanks for your okay on that, Richmond!

No problem- anything else you want to know how to think about, just ask.

[Old Tankie]

Cheers, Richmond, I'll be in touch!!

[M.I.K.]

Letting people stay at your house is not the same as having squatters.

[Matt Timson]

I'm also pretty sure- and you can correct me if I'm wrong here- that Gadaffi is an evil bastard.

Plenty of evil bastards out there in the world, some running countries. The criteria for whether we are allies with them (or at the very least flogging them weapons) or kicking their teeth down their throat seems to be a rather cynical cost/benefit analysis.

Just take a look Uzbekistan - we are quite happy to look the other way as the regime their boils people alive, because they let us use their airbases.

That is just horrific.

[Proudhuff]

because they let us use their airbases.

and pipe oil out

[Emperor]

Indeed. From 2003 - "Tony Blair's new friend":

There are over 6,000 political and religious prisoners in Uzbekistan. Every year, some of them are tortured to death. Sometimes the policemen or intelligence agents simply break their fingers, their ribs and then their skulls with hammers, or stab them with screwdrivers, or rip off bits of skin and flesh with pliers, or drive needles under their fingernails, or leave them standing for a fortnight, up to their knees in freezing water. Sometimes they are a little more inventive. The body of one prisoner was delivered to his relatives last year, with a curious red tidemark around the middle of his torso. He had been boiled to death.

His crime, like that of many of the country's prisoners, was practising his religion. Islam Karimov, the president of Uzbekistan, learned his politics in the Soviet Union. He was appointed under the old system, and its collapse in 1991 did not interrupt his rule. An Islamist terrorist network has been operating there, but Karimov makes no distinction between peaceful Muslims and terrorists: anyone who worships privately, who does not praise the president during his prayers or who joins an organisation which has not been approved by the state can be imprisoned. Political dissidents, human rights activists and homosexuals receive the same treatment. Some of them, like in the old Soviet Union, are sent to psychiatric hospitals.

But Uzbekistan is seen by the US government as a key western asset, as Saddam Hussein's Iraq once was. Since 1999, US special forces have been training Karimov's soldiers. In October 2001, he gave the United States permission to use Uzbekistan as an airbase for its war against the Taliban. The Taliban have now been overthrown, but the US has no intention of moving out. Uzbekistan is in the middle of central Asia's massive gas and oil fields. It is a nation for whose favours both Russia and China have been vying. Like Saddam Hussein's Iraq, it is a secular state fending off the forces of Islam.

So, far from seeking to isolate his regime, the US government has tripled its aid to Karimov. Last year, he received $500m (£300m), of which $79m went to the police and intelligence services, who are responsible for most of the torture. While the US claims that its engagement with Karimov will encourage him to respect human rights, like Saddam Hussein he recognises that the protection of the world's most powerful government permits him to do whatever he wants. Indeed, the US state department now plays a major role in excusing his crimes. In May, for example, it announced that Uzbekistan had made "substantial and continuing progress" in improving its human rights record. The progress? "Average sentencing" for members of peaceful religious organisations is now just "7-12 years", while two years ago they were "usually sentenced to 12-19 years".

...

So what of Tony Blair, the man who claims that human rights are so important that they justify going to war? Well, at the beginning of this year, he granted Uzbekistan an open licence to import whatever weapons from the United Kingdom Mr Karimov fancies. But his support goes far beyond that. The British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, has repeatedly criticised Karimov's crushing of democracy movements and his use of torture to silence his opponents. Like Roger Casement, the foreign office envoy who exposed the atrocities in the Congo a century ago, Murray has been sending home dossiers which could scarcely fail to move anyone who cares about human rights.

Blair has been moved all right: moved to do everything he could to silence our ambassador. Mr Murray has been threatened with the sack, investigated for a series of plainly trumped-up charges and persecuted so relentlessly by his superiors that he had to spend some time, like many of Karimov's critics, in a psychiatric ward, though in this case for sound clinical reasons. This pressure, according to a senior government source, was partly "exercised on the orders of No 10".

I may have missed the news that we have cut our links with Uzbekistan after Tony Blair stepped down...

[Peter Wolf]

Lybia was invaded because he asked for an enquiry into the JFK killing?

No but it goes to show that Gadaffi is seen as a problem and a liability by the "international community".Its well worth watching the entire speech and without making light of the very serious subject matter it does have a certain amount of entertainment value.

I admit that i am biased towards Gadaffi and i never thought i would support a dictator but there is a first time for everything.Gadaffi isnt perfect either as there is no such thing as a dictator/despot who has a perfect record of no abuses of power and sure enough there are problems with Gadaffi in this respect but on the plus side look at what he has done for the Libyan people.Someone will be along in a minute to say "look what Chairman Mao did for the people of China !" or Hitler or Stalin or PolPot etc etc but Gadaffi is not in that kind of league or anywhere near it.

I am tired and i have lost track of what i was going to type so it will have to wait till later.

Libyan airspace has been invaded and taken over by a hostile foreign military force so i am not sure what aspect of that is difficult to understand.It is what it is and there will be  US/NATO troops on the ground before this year is out and again this is an invasion as Gadaffi didnt invite them.

Nice country - We will take it !

[vzzbux]

If gaderffii had the power and strength of both Stalin and Hitler he would be up there in their price range.




V

[TordelBack]

I admit that i am biased towards Gadaffi and i never thought i would support a dictator but there is a first time for everything.

Peter, you know that as a man of strongly voiced opinions, you'd be dead, in jail or disappeared long ago if you lived in Gaddafi's Libya?  Despite the many flaws of western plutocracies they do tend to let us rabbit on in public, protest, and (while I know you think it makes no difference) even vote on occasion.  It's hard to hear someone voicing their support for someone who'd have them executed on the spot.

[JOE SOAP]

Peter, you know that as a man of strongly voiced opinions, you'd be dead, in jail or disappeared long ago if you lived in Gaddafi's Libya? 

Orwell often called-out the left-wing/socialists in the UK when they showed naive/comfortable bias for Stalin, it can be easy when throwing boquets and bullets from the other side but you must condemn/stand-up for all equally, the power-of-facing as he called it.

[The Legendary Shark]

We simply suffer from a different flavour of tyranny. What we have in Britain, at least for the moment, is Tyranny Lite.

[TordelBack]

We simply suffer from a different flavour of tyranny. What we have in Britain, at least for the moment, is Tyranny Lite.

In the same way a sniffle is Tuberculosis Lite.  One is irritating, the other will kill or cripple you.