Time's emotional blackmail

The staggering Wikileaks evidence proves that Nato Governments have been lying about the failure of policies in Afghanistan  for the past nine years.

Hitting back Time magazine published the mutilated face  of a wife punished by her husband, with the headline "What happens if we leave Afghanistan?" It's crude emotional blackmail.

A truthful message  would be, ' After 9 years of Nato's  costly and bloody warfare and nation-building husbands still mutilate their wives and humanist charity workers are murdered?

Cowardly Coalition

The Observer calls for an end to drugs prohibition today. The policy is Richard Nixon that we obediently followed from 1971. Then UK had fewer than a 1000 addicts, now it's 320,000.

Several South American countries are in despair because of the bloodshed that prohibition has created. They are espousing forms of legalisation of drugs.

Is there a gleam of hope here? Cameron and Clegg know drugs prohibition kills and that reforms work. They said so when they were backbenchers. Why are they courageous when they are wrong and cowardly when they are right?

Money rules

The People Voice saga has been hailed a movement of principle. Its story is one where opportunism played a large part.

One councillor and his friends delayed joining the party until one of them had finished his year as mayor. Had his principled conversion come earlier he would not have had Labour Party support for the mayoral role.

Huge credibility was given by the press to embryo Peoples' Voice parties in Torfaen and Islwyn. ITV Wales and the Tories exaggerated the Islwyn threat when I was last on ITV Wales. In May, their challenges were puny and Blaenau Gwent recorded a massive drop in support. 

Their bubble has burst. Future elections will produce swings to Labour in protest at the ConDem coalitions. The motivations for the disappearance of People Voice's councillors In Blaenau Gwent has a financial motive. One of them said that  he would now 'accept the full special responsibilities allowance paid to members', after stating at the last general election that they would 'try to reduce the payments by 50 per cent.'

Principles are fickle and transitory. Money is solid and permanent.

Newport, Newport

GLC's Genuine home-grown ballad of Newport - beware of imitations. You knows it 

Resemblance

The only interest that Ann Milton, Cameron's embarrassed Health Minister's, aroused in the last parliament was because of her resemblance to comedian Julian Clary.

  

Comments

[Richard T]

In connection with resemblances, your colleague in the Rhondda bears an unfortunately close resemblance to Tony Abbott, the Leader of the Coalition in Australia who is a loud advocate of 'family values' and was reported to have been stridently anti gay in his university days.

[Ad]

'Malalai Joya, a leading Afghan activist for women's rights and politican who featured among Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people in 2010, spoke out against what she calls the manipulation of public opinion over the plight of Afghan women.

In an interview with FRANCE 24, she criticised TIME’s cover as another “false slogan” to justify the war and argued that brutal crimes against women have actually been on the rise during the nine years of US occupation.

“During the Taliban’s regime such atrocities weren’t as rife as it is now and the graph is hiking each day. Eighteen-year-old Aisha is just an example and cutting ears, noses and toes, torturing and even slaughtering is a norm in Afghanistan,” Joya said.'

http://www.france24.com/en/20100801-afghanistan-kabul-women-rise-in-violence-mutilation-taliban-us-military-time-report

[HuwOS]

Just when you might think that British democracy is inefficient and opaque at best, comes the timely reminder that the US is still light years ahead of us in that.

Congress was recently recalled early to vote on an important bill, titled
The ______Act of____.

Yup, so important it's the blank act of blank.
Apparently it was originally intended to bring in taxes on bonuses received by executives whose companies had to be bailed out with US government funds.

Then briefly it was about aviation and was being speculatively called Aviation Safety and Investment Act of 2010 but it seems it is no longer about either taxes on bonuses or aviation investment.

Reported on techdirt
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100808/22161110540.shtml

[Ad]

Aryn Baker the reporter for this TIME pro war propaganda has been found to have a substantal vested interest which helps to explain a lot:

http://www.observer.com/2010/media/its-horrifying-cover-story-time-gave-war-boost-did-its-reporter-profit?page=0

'The piece lacked a crucial personal disclosure on Baker's part: Her husband, Tamim Samee, an Afghan-American IT entrepreneur, is a board member of an Afghan government minister's $100 million project advocating foreign investment in Afghanistan, and has run two companies, Digistan and Ora-Tech, that have solicited and won development contracts with the assistance of the international military, including private sector infrastructure projects favored by U.S.-backed leader Hamid Karzai.

In other words, the Time reporter who wrote a story bolstering the case for war appears to have benefited materially from the NATO invasion.'

[George Laird]

Dear Paul

I have been banging on about drug legalisation for sometime.

Add to the mix the financial argument of a regulated market.

The status quo keeps criminals rich and allows them to fund other criminal activities and build an empire.

Legalisation is the way forward.

http://glasgowunihumanrights.blogspot.com/2009/07/time-to-end-victorian-values-and.html

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

[Kay Tie]

George, you're pushing on an open door on this blog. And most of the people on blogs I read also agree.

It seems as if you can't find anyone who agrees with prohibition. Any minister doing so simply refuses to discuss it in detail, and will not be drawn into debate. A sure sign they know they are wrong.