Bush’s SOB: Uzbeks Say Troops Shot Recklessly at Civilians

May 16, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses

Clashes between security forces and protesters in eastern Uzbekistan have left several people dead after supporters of people jailed on charges of Islamic extremism stormed a prison and freed inmates, reports say. ... Later, more confrontations were reported by Galima Bukharbaeva, country director of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in Uzbekistan, and the Russian news agency Interfax when Uzbek forces moved on people demonstrating in a public square. ...

Thousands had been demonstrating in Andijan, calling for the resignation of Uzbek President Islam Karimov and his government, who are allies of the United States. The president's office described them as criminals and extremists. ...

Radical Islamic militants have fought with Uzbek soldiers in the area for several years, but Bukharbaeva said the mostly young protesters, who have spoken over loudspeakers in the city center, denied they are connected to that rebel movement.

"They say they are not Islamic extremists. They are just ordinary people who are tired of unemployment, who are tired of injustice and they just want better living conditions," Bukharbaeva told CNN.

Even as Uzbekistan's government maintained that it had acted cautiously and minimized the use of force in putting down a prison break and demonstration late last week, survivors said Monday that government security forces had fired indiscriminately at unarmed civilians and struck women and children. ... Details of the crackdown and the violence that has intermittently occurred in its aftermath have been sketchy and contradictory, and movement through the areas where the most intense violence occurred has largely been restricted. Telephone and Internet service have been inconsistent or not operating.

The Uzbek government has blamed those who stormed the prison for the violence, and described the heavy response as necessary. But unverified accounts have said hundreds have been killed in several outbreaks of violence, mostly instigated by government action. ...

Mr. Karimov placed blame for the unrest on Islamic extremist groups, a label that he has used to describe political opponents in recent years and that his critics say is used as a pretext for maintaining a repressive state.

"Not a single civilian was killed by government forces there," Prosecutor-General Rashid Kadyrov told reporters in the capital Tashkent. "There are absolutely absurd statements that troops opened fire on peaceful demonstrators. A number of news organisations focused on the shooting and used made-up facts on the number of casualties such as the number 500 (of dead)." He branded the people who took part in the rebellion "terrorists" and said almost all of those killed either had guns in their hands or were nearby. "Only bandits were killed," he said.

"We listened to the statements for a long time. No one wanted to leave the demonstration. There were no police forces to be seen. But at around 4 pm everything changed. Suddenly armoured troop carriers appeared in the central square and started shooting randomly at people. "There were a lot of children and youngsters near the demonstrators, and many of them were the first to be hit. Panic broke out, people started running in different directions to escape the bullets.

Uzbekistan is different. Other post-Soviet dictators could see when the game was up. The autocrats of Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan were unwilling to plunge their countries into full-scale civil war; faced with populations in open revolt, they surrendered. But Islam Karimov, the tyrant of Tashkent, shows no sign of going quietly. ... Living standards have collapsed since the days of the USSR, while restrictions on travel have been imposed to prevent the population from picking up dangerous ideas. Karimov's men have already massacred dozens of protesters, and are evidently ready to carry on shooting.

The president's implacability is partly explained by the attitude of the US State Department. The Americans sponsored opposition movements in Georgia and Ukraine, and Congress recently voted a $40 million grant for pro-democracy activists in Belarus. But when it comes to Uzbekistan, Washington is shamefully equivocal. The Administration is calling for restraint on both sides, even though there is ample evidence that the security forces have been firing into unarmed crowds.

Uzbekistan sits oddly with the rest of George W. Bush's foreign policy. Elsewhere, his Administration has taken the view that the best way to advance American interests is by spreading freedom. Yet Karimov is indulged in an old-fashioned, Cold War sort of way: "He's a son-of-a-bitch, but he's our son-of-a-bitch".

The bottom line in Uzbekistan is simple and obvious. The people of the Ferghana Valley have Kyrgyzstan next door, just as Wahhabi-ruled Saudi Arabia has newly liberated Iraq next door, and just as 25 years ago, the Soviet Union had Poland next door. Uzbekistan is the most populous and developed of the former-Soviet Central Asian republics. Of all these states, it has the most in common with Ukraine and Georgia, even more than Kyrgyzstan had. The appeal of radical Islam in Uzbekistan is highly overrated; the resentment of local bazaar merchants against unjust taxation and other abuses in the Ferghana Valley is not. It's time for the Uzbeks to definitively join the democracy movement and leave the Soviet era, with its bloodshed and lies, behind.

Mr. Karimov, an inaccessible and aloof autocrat, has long been criticized for persecution of opponents, intolerance of freedom of religion and expression, and the use of the police and torture, including the sexual assault and boiling of suspects. His control had been almost absolute. He was last re-elected in 2000, with 91.7 percent of the vote, an election generally regarded as fixed.

His style has also fueled worries about the government's conduct. The reported violence over the past three days, emerging from a near information vacuum, has been chilling in part because Mr. Karimov has long made clear that in maintaining order, he has a high tolerance for blood.

"I am prepared to rip off the heads of 200 people, to sacrifice their lives, in order to save peace and calm in the republic," he told reporters in 1999, after a bus hijacking ended with a shootout that left nine people dead. "If my child chose such a path, I myself would rip off his head."

Mr. Karimov also has strengthened his relationship with the United States, as the interests of two nations have increasingly intertwined.

Hardened elements of his opposition, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, collaborated with Al Qaeda and trained in camps in Afghanistan. After the attacks in the United States in 2001, the Karimov government presented itself as a Bush administration partner in counterterrorism efforts, and the Pentagon opened a base in southern Uzbekistan. ...

Nonetheless, signs of strain in the relationship have emerged since 2003, as uprisings have toppled corrupt post-Soviet governments in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, isolating the Uzbek president.

Mr. Karimov, speaking at a news conference on Saturday as journalists reported seeing blood-stained streets and full morgues, made an oblique but unmistakable reference to American interference.

"Attempts by some countries to plant democracy in Central Asia can be used by a third force," he said, according to RIA Novosti. He added, "This force is radical Islam."

Uzbekistan acknowledged Tuesday that its crackdown last week on an antigovernment demonstration and a prison break had been far more violent than it previously described, saying 169 people had been killed, including 32 government troops. ... Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the Bush administration had raised its concerns about the crackdown on dissidents with the Uzbek government.

"Nobody is asking any government to deal with terrorists," she said Tuesday evening at a news conference in Washington. "That's not the issue. The issue, though, is that it is a society that needs openness, it needs to reform, and again, I think if you look at the record, we have raised that with the government of Karimov for quite some time." ...

Mr. Karimov has said the violence and public actions were planned by Islamic extremists and coordinated from outside Uzbekistan, a characterization that survivors have said is an argument of convenience to justify the crackdown.

The two sides ultimately clashed on Friday, witnesses said, when troops moved on the central square in Andijon to disperse the crowds, and a battle began. There were then reports that Uzbek refugees had been shot at as they moved northward to the border with Kyrgyzstan on Saturday.

Hundreds of Uzbeks fleeing the violence have sought shelter in Kyrgyzstan. A United Nations official said 490 refugees had registered for asylum so far. ...

"There is not one world leader who would shoot at an unarmed populace," he said. "I consider this a tragedy for Uzbekistan. Our people have died."

He said that he felt pain no less than that of parents who had lost children, but that he was also very proud that stability was returning to Andijon. "In Andijon today there is full order," he said.

One by one the women gave their tally. Chased by gunfire, Mokhidilla Muladzhanova left behind three children, ages 15, 8 and 6. Noila Jumabayeva left behind two, ages 2 and 1. Rano Redzhapova left behind five, including 12-year-old twins. Perhaps the most agonizing bit of ill fortune befell Zulkhumar Muminova and Nasibullo, her 3-year-old boy. He almost made it.

Ms. Muminova said she and the child survived hours of violence last Friday when the government of Uzbekistan used gunfire to disperse a prison break and antigovernment rally in the city of Andijon. And she said she managed to keep together with the boy and her four other children during an all-night trek toward the Kyrgyz border.

But just short of safety, she and several witnesses said, the Uzbek authorities fired on them anew. "All the people ran in different directions," she said. "And I lost him, my son. I have not seen him again."

Flushed: Newsweek Apologizes for Misleading Report (Sort Of)

May 15, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses

Newsweek magazine on Sunday said it erred in a May 9 report that said U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article. ... [Editor Mark] Whitaker said the magazine inaccurately reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the Koran down the toilet. The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza.

Two points: (1) If they had wrongly reported the race of a criminal and produced a lynching, they'd feel much worse -- which is why they generally don't report such things, a degree of sensitivity they don't extend to reporting on, you know, minor topics like wars; and (2) If a blogger had made a similar mistake, with similar consequences, we'd be hearing about Big Media's superior fact-checking and layers of editors. People died, and U.S. military and diplomatic efforts were damaged, because -- let's be clear here -- Newsweek was too anxious to get out a story that would make the Bush Administration and the military look bad.

A group of Afghan Muslim clerics threatened on Sunday to call for a holy war against the United States in three days unless it hands over military interrogators reported to have desecrated the Koran. ... The clerics in the northeastern province of Badakhshan said they wanted President Bush to handle the matter honestly "and hand the culprits over to an Islamic country for punishment." "If that does not happen within three days, we will launch a jihad against America," said a statement issued by about 300 clerics, referring to Muslim holy war, after meeting in the main mosque in the provincial capital, Faizabad.

Newsweek magazine backed away Sunday from a report that U.S. interrogators desecrated copies of the Quran while questioning prisoners at the Guantanamo Bay naval base -- an account blamed for sparking violent riots in Afghanistan. ... [Newsweek reporter Michael] Isikoff found two other references to Qurans being tossed into toilets or latrines, the magazine reported. U.S. military officials said such claims are standard terrorist tactics. "If you read the al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels," Army Col. Brad Blackner told Newsweek.

Newsweek magazine issued a retraction Monday of a May 9 report on the alleged desecration of the Quran at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The White House earlier in the day expressed puzzlement over why Newsweek did not fully retract the story in its current issue, released Sunday.

One day after retracting a story that said U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran (search), a top Newsweek editor acknowledged the magazine made "serious mistakes" but suggested to FOX News that no one would be fired over the incident.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said American embassies in the Middle East would be tasked with spreading word of Newsweek's admission in an effort to convince Muslims that the report was wrong. Still, "the electrons are out there," Boucher said. Some officials worried that the Newsweek article, even after the news agency's retraction, would nonetheless continue to fuel the view in the Middle East that the United States has little to no regard for Muslims and Arabs.

The Good, The Bad, The Media

May 10, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses

This cartoon first appeared a year ago on May 11, 2004, when the video of Nick Berg's murder was released and much of the media were, and remained in, full Abu Ghraib mode.

This Associated Press report (via ABCNews) appears to be the only major news marking the anniversary of when Islamic terrorists in Iraq began targeting American civilians for video taped beheadings (following that of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan): Family of Beheaded American Seeks Solace.

Michael Berg [Nick's father] holds President Bush chiefly responsible for his son's death, blaming what he sees as Bush's abuse of power. Sara Berg [Nick's sister] neither holds Bush responsible nor considers Nick's death a result of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Instead, she considers it the premeditated work of terrorists.

"Somebody who gets killed in war, that is not murder, legally. That is a killing," she said. "By calling (Nick's death) an act of war, it gives a certain legitimacy to it that I don't choose to give."

Meanwhile, a year later, we're getting stories like this one from The New York Times: 'Great Crime' at Abu Ghraib Enrages and Inspires an Artist.

Video: Science Underlying Kyoto Protocol Seriously Flawed

May 8, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses

I asked some routine questions at first: Did they have a letter of licence? Had they rolled a camera before they got permission? Had they talked to the big broadcasters? Did they have a "pitch" and a budget?

Then I found out what their documentary was about. The story was incredible: it documented scientists—from Canada—speaking out against the $10-billion scam known as the Kyoto Protocol. Yes, the very same Kyoto Accord that our government has committed Canada and Canadians to support.

I understood instinctively that getting two scientists to agree at what time the sun is coming up tomorrow is—at best—difficult. But here were tens of thousands, from around the world, all agreeing on one issue: that there is no scientific evidence of man-made global warming.

The numbers of scientists staggered me—17,100 basic and applied American scientists, two thirds with advanced degrees, are against the Kyoto Agreement. The Heidelberg Appeal—which states that there is no scientific evidence for man-made global warming, has been signed by over 4,000 scientists from around the world since the petition's inception. I strongly questioned these high numbers, since I've had benefit of the Canadian government's public relations machine on this issue. Dr. Leahey has since sent documentation to back his figures up.

All those scientists were in total agreement: the Kyoto Protocol was complete fiction. [Hat Tip: LGF]

OTTAWA, April 13 /CNW Telbec/ - Today, researchers at the University of Calgary, in cooperation with the Friends of Science Society, released a video entitled: Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What you're not being told about the science of climate change.

At a news conference held in Ottawa, some of North America's foremost climate experts provided evidence demonstrating that the science underlying the Kyoto Protocol is seriously flawed; a problem that continues to be ignored by the Canadian government. Scientists called on the Canadian government to delay implementation of the Kyoto Protocol until a thorough, public review of the current state of climate science has been conducted by climate experts. Such an analysis has never been organized in Canada despite repeated requests from independent, non-governmental climate scientists.

Carleton University Professor Tim Patterson (Paleoclimatologist) explains the crucial importance of properly evaluating the merit of Canada's climate change plans: "It is no exaggeration to say that in the eight years since the Kyoto Protocol was introduced there has been a revolution in climate science. If, back in the mid-nineties, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would not exist because we would have concluded it was not necessary."

Contrary to claims that the science of climate change has been settled, the causes of the past century's modest warming is highly contested in the climate science community. The climate experts presenting in the video demonstrate that science is quickly diverging away from the hypothesis that the human release of greenhouse gases, specifically carbon dioxide, is having a significant impact on global climate. "There is absolutely no convincing scientific evidence that human-produced greenhouse gases are driving global climate change", stated climatologist, Dr. Tim Ball. He added that the Canadian government's plan to designate carbon dioxide as a "toxic" under CEPA is irresponsible and without scientific merit. "Carbon dioxide is a staff of life, plain and simple. It makes up less than 4% of greenhouse gases and it is not a toxic."

IPCC assertions about the unprecedented nature of the past century's warming, or the widespread beliefs that we are experiencing an increase in extreme weather, accelerated sea level rise and unusual warming in polar regions are also shown in the video to be wholly without merit.

The idea for the video was initiated by the Friends of Science Society, a registered not-for-profit group of geologists, environmental scientists and concerned citizens, "in an effort to make the science of climate change available and understandable to the general public", stated Dr. Doug Leahey, President of Friends of Science Society. Commenting on his decision to get involved with the video project, University of Calgary's Professor Barry Cooper stated, "Universities are in the education business. In a democracy like Canada, education and informed discussion of public policy are tightly linked. The public, media and government would benefit by hearing from all sides on this important issue in order to make as informed a decision as is possible."

The video, Climate Catastrophe Cancelled: What You're Not Being Told About the Science of Climate Change, is available online here: http://www.friendsofscience.org/index.php?ide=3

Celebrate Earth Day–The Capitalism Magazine Way

Apr 22, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses

Remembering Elian Gonzalez

Apr 22, 2005 | Dollars & Crosses