Bangladeshi Mutineers Demand that UN Adopt Them

The Bangladeshi mutiny that has curiously overtaken news outlets ended yesterday evening as the mutinous Bangladeshi Rifles (BDR) surrendered after being surrounded by the army. The death toll is anywhere between 8 and 23.

One of the grievances of the BDR besides low pay and the command structure, whereby officers came directly from the army rather than from the BDR's own ranks, was their inability to participate in lucrative UN peacekeeping missions. Bangladeshi soldiers are often desperate to be called up for UN service, since it means much higher pay, decent working conditions, and the chance to wear a uniform that isn't stitched up from a porn film's wardrobe rejects (pictured above).

The UN should not be accepting, let alone encouraging soldiers from destitutely poor and completely inadequate states like Bangladesh to participate in their peacekeeping missions. The soldiers are poorly trained and clearly more needed at home. Whatever semblance of multi-lateralism gained from having 5 Bangladeshi soldiers, 2 Ugandan medics and 3 Moroccan monkeys watching street corners in the Congo is obviated when it becomes an incentive to leave your own country to decompose.

Bangladesh is a country of 140 million people, about 60 million of whom are living on under $1 a day. Every monsoon season easily manageable floods kill thousands.  It is tragic and pathetic that Bangladeshi soldiers are literally fighting over who gets to leave the country and scrape a better salary in a UN mission. The UN is clearly not in need of Bangladeshi expertise or manpower in its peacekeeping missions. Their continued use of troops from countries as debilitated as Bangladesh is both disingenuous and counterproductive.

NGO Unable to Make its Peace with Global Oppression

Human Rights Watch, a New York based NGO you may have heard of, has been hitting the news pretty hard lately with two of its particular brand of well-researched, voluminous condemnation.

The organisation firstly condemned Syria's Supreme State Security Court, set up in 1968 to assist the regime in wiping out Communism. The court has since been used the court as an instrument to try people on behalf of the state, rather than the people, and the HRW accuses it of gross violations of justice including torture and limited access to lawyers. 

Another high profile condemnation, at least in the African press, has been that of the Angolan electoral system. Angola has just had parliamentary elections this past year, which many (notably the HRW) criticised for being if not rigged, then severely problematic. The HRW has optimistically called on the Angolan president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, to fix the problems prior to the presidential elections in 2009.

The HRW does stuff like this literally all the time. They have a broadly symbiotic relationship with Amnesty International, which handles human rights as well but focuses more on mass mobilisation. When reactionary dictators and their apologists clamour that Amnesty International is a poorly researched mouthpiece that is exaggerating the condition of oppressed peoples, Human Rights Watch is there with a 270 page report evincing in excruciatingly monotonous detail that things are really, seriously, verifiably shit.  

If you want to peruse their reports on Syria's SSSC or the Angolan electoral system, go here and here, respectively. They both have pretty concise executive summaries, which makes it a bit easier for all of us.

Politic Blunder takes Asia by storm, claims Politic Blunder

A Politic Blunder has temporarily relocated to Hong Kong to celebrate the 80th birthday of one of its original investors, my old and bitterly cantankerous grandmother. So, dear reader(s), feel free to imagine the next couple of posts in a keening multi-tonal shrill that swaps all it's "r's" for "l's".

Also maybe look forward to some posts relating to Hong Kong. I will definitely be buying a digital camera, so I might be able to post some of my own pictures of the place where I am, rather than getting them off some spanish travel-blog via Google.

Obama portends grim future for cash-strapped CEOs

The decision by the Obama administration to unilaterally cap the salaries of executives from companies that ask the government for money at $500,000 has caused much controversy among the country's super-rich, who are worried that they may no longer be able to afford caviar baths and solid gold whores.  

The plan, which would be enacted by the US Treasury and thus would not need Congress approval, only limits the cash salaries of executives, not their stock benefits, which form a much higher proportion of their total remuneration. The only caveat is the stocks cannot be cashed in until the money the firms ask from the government has been paid back.  

All this has caused American executives to literally shit all over the faces of the poor and unemployed in America and beyond (metaphorically). James F. Reda of James F. Reda and Associates has been the most flagrant diarrhoetic, calling the $500,000 pay limit "draconian". Meredith Whitney of Oppenheimer & Co. complained that

"no one goes in to Wall Street to save the world(...) compensation is the motivating factor (...) if you can't compensate your employees, they're going to go somewhere else. You're going to get a different variety of folks who are going to come in."

Presumably Whitney means that people like John Thain (pictured above), who spent $1.2 million renovating his office, including an $87,000 area rug (presumably made from derision and greed spun into cloth), will leave if their pay is capped and their ability to cash in their stocks delayed. 

America and the world would be better off with people in banking who consider $500,000 salaries an achievement, rather than an outrageous slap in the face. $500,000 plus corporate benefits plus stocks is more than enough incentive to motivate students to pursue an MBA or financial accreditation. 

America needs to stop being in awe of the rich, and realise that success beyond a certain point is a social failure if there are still the afflicted and poor scraping a living on curbs.

Who Will Monitor the Monitors?

Luis Herrero, a Spanish member of the EU Parliament, has been detained and will be expelled from Venezuela following critical remarks he made concerning Hugo Chavez's continuing electoral bid to get everyone in Venezuela to agree that he's a great guy and should remain in power for the rest of his life. 

Chavez (pictured above demanding another cookie), had previously invited Herrero to monitor the referendum that would allow Chavez to legally rig elections for the rest of his life. 

Chavez has done this exact same thing with Jose Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch, who was also called to monitor conditions in Venezuela, leading experts to wonder why Chavez keeps inviting people to check him out when he insists on acting blatantly dictatorial all the time.

Wen Urges Leniency for Cambridge Shoe-Thrower: "Leave His Family to Mourn"

Wen Jiabao, China's premier, was the target of a German Cambridge student Martin Jahnke's shoe on February 2nd, while he was giving a speech on economic cooperation. In the aftermath, Mr. Wen has asked for leniency in the treatment of Mr. Jahnke. 

Mr. Jahnke has since been arrested, and after a few hours of prevarication, the Chinese media decided that the story would not sully the incandescent glory of the Chinese father-leaders, and released the facts surrounding the shoe-throwing.

Mr. Wen (pictured above with children he has forced to participate in his famous Mother Teresa impressions) has asked for Jahnke to be treated with clemency, stating that Mr. Jahnke's family need not be exterminated, and suggesting a brief 18-year stint in dissentor's prison for the unlucky Mr. Jahnke. 

Chinese Ambassador to London Fu Ying later moderated the Chinese premier's statement, adding that:

"Education is best for a young student, and I hope he will have the opportunity to continue his education. The return of a prodigal is worth more than gold."

Needless to say, these moralistic aphorisms do not apply to Chinese citizens, who can expect the harshest justice, courtesy of the hundred thousand effulgent fists of the Communist Party's august overmasters in the Politburo.

Own Ass Handed To British Judges, Used

British judges today agreed not to divulge details of the treatment of Guantanamo detainee and British resident Binyam Mohamed contained in an earlier court opinion on his case, following explicit threats by the US State Department to sever intelligence flows on terrorism should the UK not comply. The decision by High Court Judges Thomas and Lloyd Jones to bow to the USA's threats has caused something of a diplomatic stir, since the US government is being especially hostile on this issue.

The onus will fall on President Obama to patch things up, even though the threats were actually issued by the Bush administration. This should be a fairly perfunctory task, given how ridiculous the threats were. 

There is no strategic reason to obfuscate evidence of torture or other maltreatment of prisoners in Guantanamo. It doesn't give the terrorists an edge to know that some cock in the US Navy is going to shit on a Koran if they get caught. Additionally, the threat to sever intelligence links with the UK if the passages are released is completely unrelated, and is a mere act of spite. 

In response to this quarrel, the US State Department issued a reassurance:

The United States investigates allegations and claims of torture, and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment such as those raised by Binyam Mohamed.

We're just not allowed to know when, how, and if it actually does. But we should trust that it definitely does.

Dolls and Their Evil

An insane mother from Indiana recently caused a minor ruckus in the USA over Fisher-Price's Cuddle & Coo baby doll (pictured left), which she claimed said "Islam is the light". Tellingly she also claimed a DS game, Baby Pals, said the same thing to her daughter, and quickly dispatched both the offending toys from her righteous, Christian house. In her house, she would later claim, toys can either proclaim that Jesus is the saviour or shut the hell up.

Fox jumped on the story with their characteristic unthinking gleeful hatred, and quickly printed a story titled "Doll pulled from shelves for spouting hate". They've pulled the article now, realising how incredibly retarded it is to call a doll on "spouting hate" for cooing garbled babblings that could be misconstrued by unfit mothers as "Islam is the light". 

What's sad (but unsurprising) about this whole affair is that it's actually controversial if a baby is cooing "Islam is the light", when it obviously wouldn't be controversial if the baby started saying "I love baby Jesus". Americans (and bigots around the world) will be at pains to tell you that they don't hate Islam, but ultimately they still view it as unfortunate, and possibly problematic that someone is Muslim, though they grudgingly accept his or her right to be.

A similar conception colours the arguments made against gay adoption that run along the lines of "There's absolutely nothing wrong with being gay, but we're concerned that gay parents adopting a child could turn it gay. Not that there's anything wrong with being gay."

If you want to see a video of the doll in question definitely not saying "Islam is the light", go here. (link)

The World's Jonesin' for Lithium, and Bolivia is the Mack Daddy

Lithium has become one of the hottest new accessories for multinational automobile conglomerates, with Mitsubishi, Sumitomo and Ford all chomping at the bit to get to the mostly unexplored reserves of the substance, traditionally only used to power shit calculators. 

Bolivia happens to possess up to 54% of the world's Lithium deposits (pictured above in the hellish landscape of the Uyune Salt Flats), which caused the USA to freak out, as evidenced by this article in the Herald Tribune (link). 

The article is clearly slightly panicked at the fact that Bolivia's socialist leader Evo Morales doesn't really like the USA, and is also interested in ensuring that "indigenous groups here in the remote salt desert share in the eventual bounty". This is terrible news for Oji Baba of Mistubishi's glamorous Base Metals Unit, who worries that "if we want to be a force in the next wave of automobiles and the batteries that power them, we must be here".

Here's to hoping that Morales doesn't give in to the wave of threats and wheedling from the car manufacturers of the world, and fights for Bolivia's right to use its national resources to achieve equitable economic development (also, to party). 

The Miscibility of Stupidity, Racism and Incompetence

The Sri Lankan government's latest offensive into the rebel-controlled North and East of the island is nearly at an end, which could mean the extinction of the Tamil Tigers as a coherent political unit. 

The civil war between the Tamil LTTE, who want a separate state, and the government troops, who want to keep the Tamils within the Singhalese controlled state as second-class citizens, has been raging since 1983. It has spawned one of the most well-armed and well-organised rebel groups in the world (the LTTE had seven airstrips and a comprehensive air force), as well as spurring the invention of suicide bombing, which was eventually exported to the Middle East. This is the closest it has come to actually concluding. Or so the Sri Lankan President, Mahinda Rajapakse, would have you believe.

The civilian crisis is already becoming obvious, as the Sri Lankan government has made no promises about the safety of the 250,000 civilians trapped in the Northern regions of the island as the Sri Lankan army presses in for the kill. 

What is less obvious is the very real possibility that a Sri Lankan victory against the Tamils will severely injure prospects for actual peace. The desire for an independent Tamil Nadu obviously won't die with the last Tamil Tiger. By destroying the coherent and well-articulated movement of the Tamil Tigers, the Sri Lankan government is obviating any possibility of reaching a settled peace. Instead of having to deal with a political group with representatives, aims, and methodologies, Rajapakse is going to have to deal with a bunch of suicide bombers, guerrilla attacks, and a sullen Tamil minority that doesn't want to be integrated.

The Sri Lankan government is swapping a military conflict for a humanitarian catastrophe.

He's Really Not So Bad

In what looks to become one of the most ham-fisted diplomatic bungles of the decade, the Obama admin- istration has significantly toned down US pressure on Zimbabwe's batshit crazy military dictator Robert Mugabe by withdrawing a public demand for Mugabe to step down issued under the Bush administration. 

Reuters reports that anonymous US officials claimed that the move was because Obama had not yet picked his team of Africa experts, and thus felt that giving such a strong opinion would be unwise. This has led some Africans to wonder what kind of traumatic childhood Obama's soon-to-be high-level Africa experts had in order to conclude that Mugabe is actually a really swell guy. 

Another reason put forth by the administration's unnamed officials was to give Southern African officials "breathing space" in concluding a deal which would result in power-sharing. This amounts to overt appeasement. No one in South Africa actually wants to share power with Mugabe. Everyone and their mother realises that he's completely unfit to hold any kind of office, and the power-sharing deal is at best a grudging compromise extracted under extreme duress. What the USA needs to do is support Southern African countries in taking a harder line on Mugabe, not buttress their inability to do anything about him. 

Obama's administration may well change their line on this in the coming weeks, mostly because appeasing an 80 year old insane and murderous man to any extent is a really retarded thing to do.

SNOW DAY!

We interrupt A Politic Blunder's usual cutting edge reportage to bring you fantastic pictures of London completely covered in snow! Genuinely the prettiest the City has ever looked. Children have made a snow-man on my street that has a bowler hat! And a note thanking Russia for their winter snow!

The entire city seems to have shut down. LSE has cancelled all lectures and seminars, and I think the phone lines at SOAS have actually shut down cause I can't even get through to find out what's going on there.

And what's more, it's still snowing! Experts say that they love spending time with their loved ones on snow-days. So if you're reading this and it's actually still snowing outside, then go outside and make a fucking snow angel, or throw a snowball, or bury your dead. 

Seriously, a snow-day would solve all of Sri Lanka's problems.