Uzbek Cotton Slavery Campaign 1094


I am delighted that a new canpaign has started today against the state enforced child slavery in the uzbek cotton industry, especially as this campaign originates in Germany, where a significant portion of society appears to have finally woken up to the reality of the German government’s appalling complicity in the Nazi style regime and atrocities of Karimov.

However in the UK it remains the case that since the coalition government came to power, there has not been one single government statement on the human rights atrocities in Uzbekistan or – even more damning of our sham democracy – one single statement or question from New Labour.


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1,094 thoughts on “Uzbek Cotton Slavery Campaign

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  • nevermind

    having posted this on the wrong thread, I best give it an airing here as well.
    Israel rebuked, once again, by the world community for its appalling internal affairs and settlements policies and land grabs, a nice word for stealing and occupying.

    if the connotations weren’t so sinister, what chemicals were spread by this attack on a sovereign country?
    Or was it a distraction from the UN human rights commissions ruling, to capture the news world with an ‘exciting attack on Assad’ rather than comment on a ‘dull UN ruling’. Take your pick…

    http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/news/international/U.N._human_rights_inquiry_says_Israel_must_remove_settlers.html?cid=34875276

  • Habbabkuk

    @ David (22h04 yesterday)

    “I didn’t think he { ie, Avram Shalom } was talking about the holocaust”

    No, of course not, David,of course you didn’t. You just posted it for fun, right?

    LOL

  • David

    Habby

    Hardly for fun. I posted it because he compared the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians to the German treatment of the Jews, and there are quite a few Israeli apologists who like to pretend that there’s not much to see in the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians.

    The holocaust hadn’t been mentioned, until you arrived along invoking, inventing and distracting, which seems to be all you’re good for.

    Much as you’re doing now, actually. Much as you invoked the holocaust over Sacks’ hypocrisy and humbug over rather more mundane matters.

    That reminds me. Have you apologised to Mary yet for your errors in that clutch of posts?

  • David

    Oh look!

    “We are making the lives of millions unbearable, into prolonged human suffering, [and] it kills me,” Carmi Gillon says in the film. “[We’ve become] a brutal occupation force similar to the Germans in World War II,” adds Avraham Shalom.”

    “AMY GOODMAN: Now, these aren’t the words of Israeli peace activists or even of soldiers who have refused to serve in the Occupied Territories; they’re the words of the former heads of the Shin Bet, Israel’s secret service and the agency responsible for the country’s internal security. And in The Gatekeepers, by Israeli filmmaker Dror Moreh”

    http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/29/the_gatekeepers_in_new_film_ex

  • Habbabkuk

    Yes, Davy boy (since we’ve moved onto familiar terms), what a pity that in your origianl post of a few days ago you didn’t give the above quotation from the film rather than the following quotation (which is not even from the film itself) :

    “We treat the Palestinians as the Germans treated the Jews”

    Not quite the same thing, eh? Only question – did you lie or where you just being careless? Did you choose the ‘wrong’ quotation deliberately or where you just being careless?

    So, far from me apologising to Mary, I feel it’s for you to apologise to her,ie for barging into the exchange and making her look dishonest by association with you and your lying (or perhaps just careless) post.

  • Habbabkuk

    Davy boy, as an after thought for your future posts (assuming you’re posting in good faith, of course) : when you barge into an exchange in order to support one of the parties, you should try to use any quotations honestly; otherwise, once you’ve been found out, your dishonesty could (unfairly, I admit) somehow rub off onto and tarnish the reputation of the party you’re trying to support, and that would be a pity. Discussions should be carried out honestly and in good faith on this blog.

    Think about it and do consider apologising to Mary, please.

  • David

    The original quote comes from site cited which was an interview with the director and is accurate.

    The only inaccuracy is yours, in pretending you thought it referred to the holocaust, then tripping yourself up by subsequently revealing that you’d never thought any such thing at all.

    Your only motive was distraction, invention and the usual bullshit in which you engage.

    But still you haven’t apologised to Mary for wrongly claiming that there was no hypocrisy and humbug in the Sacks’ piece.

    You’re quite simply a charlatan and fraud and a pretty poor one at that.

  • Habbabkuk

    And you gave the original quotation to lend authority to the claim that what the Israelis were doing to the Palestinians was equivalent to what the Nazis did to the Jews during the war.

    You only came clean when I flushed you out. Making a genuine mistake is always excusable, but deliberate deception (I hesitate to say lying through your teeth) is not. At least not if you want to be taken seriously.

    So I think you should man up, admit your attempted deception and while you’re at it, apologise to Mary for tainting her by association.

  • David

    Continually repeating your strawmen and distractions doesn’t make them any more true than when you first uttered them.

    One of the problems for trolls like you is of course that regular readers will be well used to the fraudulent tactics you employ and quite easily see through them. It’s the price you pay for posting in bad faith.

    I’ll let readers judge for themselves.

  • Habbabkuk

    and the same goes for you, Davy boy.

    Have you followed up on my suggestion for an apology?

  • Villager

    Happy to bring this thread back on topic, may i contribute this from the NYT:

    As NATO Prepares for Afghan Withdrawal, Uzbekistan Seeks War’s Leftovers

    Some extracts:
    MOSCOW — With planning for the Western military withdrawal from Afghanistan in full swing, officials in Uzbekistan want to make a deal: we will provide the roads out if you leave some of those extra vehicles and supplies behind for us.

    Uzbekistan is ranked as the sixth most corrupt country in the world by Transparency International and has been banned from most arms purchases in Europe and the United States since political prisoners were discovered to have died in detention a decade ago from scalding water — from, in fact, being boiled alive.

    But what Uzbek officials are offering, however, has value. Over the next two years, NATO forces are expected to remove about 70,000 vehicles and 120,000 shipping containers from Afghanistan, and the way out will require rail lines and well-surfaced roads.

    A British delegation passed through in July. On the diplomatic agenda between the two countries, according to Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and now a critic of British policy in the region, is the handover of used Land Rovers or other military vehicles as partial payment for shipping out other items.

    Such talks have alarmed members of the German Parliament, who requested clarification from their government.

    “Either the Uzbeks want money, and quite a lot, or they want weapons,” Viola von Cramon, a member of Parliament, said in a telephone interview. “What I’ve heard from informed sources is they are not interested in civil assistance, or anything progressive like university exchanges. It’s really hard in that respect. They really prefer the military sector.”

    Human rights groups harbor apprehensions at the thought of a second life for Western military hardware in Uzbekistan.

    “Uzbekistan has one of the most abysmal and atrocious records of any of the countries we work on here at Human Rights Watch, which is well over 100 countries,” Steve Swerdlow, the group’s Central Asia researcher, who was expelled from Uzbekistan in 2010, said in a telephone interview.

    In one horrific episode, the Uzbek military fired on protesters in a public square in Andijon in 2005, killing as many as 745 people, according to an opposition party. And the nation’s economy depends heavily on the forced labor of children and adults in cotton fields.

    While Western militaries still deal with Uzbekistan, more than 100 apparel brands, including H & M, Gap and Walmart, have signed a pledge not to buy Uzbek cotton.

    NB mention of Craig within

  • nevermind

    habbakuk, what a saintly name for a real man, Thatcher could not have chosen such a moniker.

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