Glasgow City College student Majid Ali faces torture and death if returned to Pakistan. Majid Ali’s brother and other members of his immediate family have been taken and I am afraid very probably murdered by the Pakistani authorities as part of their relentless persecution of the Baloch people and desire to wipe out Baloch national identity. The UK Home Office intends to deport Majid. The people of Scotland must defend him.
There will be an emergency demonstration at the Scottish office, 1 Melville Crescent, Edinburgh at 13.00 tomorrow. I shall be going along. NUS Scotland are organising a letter-writing campaign to Scottish MPs to get them to put pressure on the Home Office. This is important.
It is appalling that London can seek to rip Majid from a Scottish community which values him, from a nation which respects its immigrant communities and their contribution, as part of Theresa May’s campaign to pander to the corporate media induced racism which regrettably has been introduced into many communities in England. It is a further example of why independence is essential to build a more ethical state.
The persecution of the Baloch has received little attention in the West. Peter Tatchell has done admirable work in trying to raise its profile in the UK, but with little traction. Like so many dreadful abuses, it is a direct result of wrongdoing by the British Empire. Baloch or Beluchistan was formally known as the state of Kelat, which Britain first invaded in 1839, destroying the city of Kelat in 1840 and murdering the ruler Mehrab Khan on the pretext he had given insufficient support to the British invasion of Afghanistan. Britain’s relations with Kelat thereafter were an appalling litany of broken treaties, culminating into the forceful and unwanted incorporation into Pakistan.
A few years ago I met the current Khan of Kelat at his home in exile in Wales and learnt a great deal about the dreadful persecution the Baloch suffer. In the course of my researches into British responsibility for the situation I cam across the crime of the massacre of Kotra. After the killing of Mehrab Khan, fighting continued until a truce was agreed with Mehrab’s 15 year old son Nasir. While the truce was in force, British forces silently surrounded Nasir’s mountain camp at Kotra and attacked before dawn, massacring 500. It is reminiscent of Glencoe, though this was a much larger massacre. In the National Archives of India I trembled as I held the manuscript order for the massacre in my hands.
We should do everything we can to save Majid Ali out of common decency, wherever he is from. But the knowledge of Britain’s historic responsibility for the situation should broaden and deepen our understanding of his plight.
“Anyway, out at sea or on a lake, who cares, it still seems to be staged.”
There’s a guy called Joseph Carter who has put a lot of videos showing his training of his mink(s) to hunt. Might be him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeo5moeV254
“It’s not uncommon for weasels to boldly hunt other animals here you can see a weasel jump on the back of a woodpecker and remain on it during flight”
That was photoshopped to death on Twitter and was really funny. One version had Putin on its back, riding it like a horse.
Dreoilin
“I’m not that curious, to be honest.”
________________
Good!
I’m not curious about fellow-commenters either, in the sense of wishing to know who they are.
But I admit to a certain curiosity when they themselves give out a story containing various inconsistencies and even contradictions……
And I do believe that people should have the courage to not consistently have recourse to aliases with the intention of giving a false impression of support.
“Dreoilin Do not comment about what I say”
Excuse me??
Dreoilin
Thanks for that info on photoshopping, etc.
If you have watched the video, would you not agree that there is something suspicious about it.
A dodgy video, brought to us by an equally dodgy commenter, one “Republicofscotland”
🙂
“If you have watched the video, would you not agree that there is something suspicious about it.”
Well it’s odd that it’s happening just at the back of the boat. Perhaps he brought his weasel/mink with him, and set it on the seagull.
I didn’t watch it all. I couldn’t. Too upsetting.
If you are concerned about the advance of TTIP through the EU, please contact your MEPs by tomorrow. Enter your postcode and the list of your MEPs comes up. I have 10! including Farage. Only one or two usually respond. The EU is remote and undemocratic.
Tell your MEP: oppose TTIP
On Wednesday, all of our MEPs get a chance to vote on a TTIP resolution. That could include scrapping some of the most dangerous parts of the deal, like the secret courts that will let corporates sue the government.
Please can you send your MEP a quick email asking them to vote for people, not big business?
http://speakout.38degrees.org.uk/campaigns/97
The message reads:
‘I’m concerned about the TTIP trade deal, and in particular, the right for corporations to sue our government if our laws dent their profits – the part of the deal known as the Investor State Dispute Settlement – ISDS. Will you show your opposition to TTIP at the resolution vote on June 10th? Will you also vote for Amendment 27 to scrap ISDS from TTIP?
Please represent the views of your constituents next week.
I look forward to hearing from you’
Read the WIKI page and try not to nod off. If it goes through, it will be the end of OUR NHS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_Trade_and_Investment_Partnership
Phil: Refreshing tho it always is to read your counterblasts I was pretty grateful for both this post and the follow-up nudge. I know there are so many in Majid’s position, and I agree that the whole issue, and the system which supports it, needs challenging, which was why I posted the report of campaigners against detention and deportation tearing down the fences at the iniquitous Yarl’s Wood. But at the same time, if I were Majid, or his friends, I would be very glad of this support, and asking for it – as indeed, they are.
How about Sorrell’s £43m salary? Obscene.
Shareholder Anger At Sorrell’s £43m Pay Deal
Excessive pay awards for FTSE 100 bosses come under fire again, with Martin Sorrell the latest to feel the wrath of shareholders
http://news.sky.com/story/1499052/shareholder-anger-at-sorrells-43m-pay-deal
More than 20% of WPP investors refuse to back Sir Martin Sorrell’s £43m pay
Marketing giant faces another rebellion at its AGM after its chief receives the biggest package at a British public company
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jun/09/wpp-investors-sir-martin-sorrell-pay-package
The Medialens editors have just posted this.
Pakistan: Don’t execute Aftab Bahadur
Posted by The Editors on June 9, 2015, 5:03 pm
From Reprieve:
Aftab Bahadur was sentenced to death as a child. He made a false confession after being brutally tortured. He is set to be hanged at 4.30am tomorrow, despite both of the witnesses against him recanting their evidence.
The plans to execute Aftab come just hours after a last-minute stay of execution was granted to Shafqat Hussain. It is a scandal that just hours after one juvenile is given a last minute stay of execution, Pakistan prepares to hang another – both Shafqat and Aftab were sentenced to death as children after being brutally tortured into making a false confession.
Aftab has now been on death row for nearly 23 years, well over half his adult life. The execution of this innocent man, arrested and tortured as a child, should immediately be halted.
President Mamnoon Hussain has the power to stop this execution. Email and ask him to grant mercy to Aftab.
https://reprieve.bsd.net/page/speakout/don-t-execute-aftab-bahadur
Email from Reprieve
“Shafqat’s execution stayed, Aftab still set to be hanged at 4.30am”
https://reprieve.bsd.net/page/speakout/don-t-execute-aftab-bahadur
Craig, I’m not sure the break-up of Pakistan would be a good thing for any of the provinces which currently make up the country. The one thing worse than an oppressive and dysfunctional state is a failed state splintered into warring segments each ruled by tribal or ideologically extremist warlords and subject to puppethood in relation to neighbouring, or regional, states. I’d have thought we’d have learned something of that from watching what has happened to Iraq, Libya, Syria, Congo, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Somalia…
In fact, in my view, the worst thing to happen to Soputh Asia in the past 100 years was the Partition of India in 1947. But that is not reversible. As I said, then as now, we will find that such divisions assiduously have been cultivated by those in power. What people – when not diverted into pointless and self-defeating tribalism and various forms of religious/ethnic fascism – tend to want throughout the country is economic justice, solid, working infrasructure and the fair application of the rule of law. All of this applies to the whole country. People in the bonded labour brick kiln villages of Punjab, for example, are every bit as oppressed as those in any other part of the country. The primary oppression in Pakistan is economic; everything else is a means to that end. So any kind of real oppositional forces need to unfy aorund the singleminded goal of changing that. Pie in the sky, I know.
” Perhaps he brought his weasel/mink with him, and set it on the seagull.”
______________
That’s what I meant when I said it looks staged.
AND (re your comment about upsetting)
staged or not, what sort of a commenter links to videos like that just to make a silly little non-point?
“Remarkable video, but I suspect it’s a mink not a weasel, despite the Youtube title. A weasel has white on its chest, plus this one seems a little too big.”
_________________________
Yes Node,you may well be correct,but to make sure I’ll refer you to Dreoilin and Habb,who appear to have become not only wildlife experts but,experts in spotting a hoax.
In hindsight though best not take advice from David Bailey (Dreoilin) and David Attenborough (Habb).
“You are wrong in any case.”
Maybe you don’t still think he’s Charles Crawford, but you certainly did at one stage, because you said so. And you said he “had his knife in you” because he quoted a comment you made here about his “blogoir” — among 47 other people’s comments on his blogoir that he collected from hither and yon.
As far as me commenting on your contributions here is concerned: Get it into your thick head that you have no dispensation here. I will comment on anything you say that I feel like commenting on. Is that clear?
Shemndrik: English Night, etc – I’d ignore, Habbakuk.
Incidentally, Dreoilin, since apparently we can all make this stuff up, can you:
a) comment on every third comment *or* every comment with more than six five syllable words in it
b) insert the word ‘purple’ into your concluding sentence (you can choose where)
c) use Ancient Norse frequently, but not to ridiculous extremes.
Thank you!
“staged or not, what sort of a commenter links to videos like that just to make a silly little non-point?”
I don’t know. Someone short of material?
(me gone now)
Schmendrik’s style (cf his latest at 17h15) seems strangely familiar…….
Any ideas, anyone?
Incidentally, Dreoilin, since apparently we can all make this stuff up, can you:
a) comment on every third comment *or* every comment with more than six five syllable words in it
b) insert the word ‘purple’ into your concluding sentence (you can choose where)
c) use Ancient Norse frequently, but not to ridiculous extremes.
Thank you!
————————
Whew! That’s a tall order. But I can try! 🙂
Bwahahahahahaha!
Tech
“Shemndrik: English Night, etc – I’d ignore, Habbakuk.”
________________
You’re right, of course. I corrected him once and that’s all he gets – we busy people can’t waste too much time to a waste of space, can we now.
But I don’t think Schemdrik is yet another manifestation of English Knight, aka…
Yesterday 48 years ago Israel attacked Amerika. It’s called kicking the gift horse in the teeth.
Remembering USS Liberty: When Israel attacked America
Thirty-four died and over 170 were injured in Israeli attack on US warship during 1967 Arab-Israeli Six-Day War.
09 Jun 2015
http://www.aljazeera.com/blogs/americas/2015/06/israel-uss-liberty-attack-150608204015123.html
Israel pleaded pilot fatigue.
‘But Brooks doesn’t buy the Israeli apology. Standing next to the graves of his shipmates in Arlington National Cemetery he tells me “It wasn’t a tragic accident, It was a deliberate attack. They knew who we were. They tried to sink us. They wanted us out to either bring the Americans into the war by blaming the Arabs or we picked up some information about their war plans”.’
“But anyway, I do approve of people on here posting videos of wild animals killing other wild animals, it’s so sexually arousing, isn’t it (posting them, I mean).”
_______________________________
Habb.
Re your above comment, 1604 pm,I linked to the wildlife video to show that it was a insult to the weasel to compare it with you.
But I’m pretty shocked that you appear to get your jollies off watching wild animals kill each other.
Technicolor’s right, ignore it. You’re hopelessly outclassed. Stick with the nervous flurry of trivial chit-chat. That’s safer and easier than defending genocide.
On a similar vein, Habbakuk, when you’re using something complex like sarcasm, please could you make it clear, perhaps by adding the word ‘sarcasm’ in brackets after your comment. You might like to add a footnote with the definition of sarcasm, as well.
Here’s someone who went beyond posting images of animals killing each other on public websites, an equally brave, brave man (NOTE: ‘sarcasm’)
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/environment/tory-donor-kills-lion-but-still-fails-to-get-full-erection-201109124291
Learnt the difference between the State of Israel and the IDF yet? 🙂
Technicolour
Of course I hope Ali gets the outcome he wants. In fact I want far more than his freedom.
My comment was questioning things closer to home: a wannabe politician, engaged in a political act, getting all fruity that we were not singing to his tune. Especially when it’s a pretty lame tune. Copy and post. Give me a friggin break.
Craig’s confused approach to national socialism would never solve the immigration problem. He wants to sustain borders. The state is at it’s core exclusive of outsiders by definition. And in practise it is overtly racist. That’s every state. Writing ineffective letters whilst supporting the system that inevitably gives rise to this misery is half baked.
Nationalism is the problem. Craig is a nationalist. He needs to think this through more.
I loudly applaud those pulling down fences.
[Refreshing the parts other comments cannot reach. :)]
Tech
That wouldn’t be a spoof, would it?
Disclaimer: I am able to state whether the above is sarcasm or not.
The report from USS Liberty Veterans…
http://www.usslibertyveterans.org/files/War%20Crimes%20Report.pdf
“I watched Unlawful Killing about a week ago. It’s very interesting. Raises a lot of questions.”
________________________
Apologies Dreoilin for missing your above comment,what questions? tell me surely you don’t think it was photoshopped to death do you?
Or did the weasel do it,no not you Habb.