Media Watch
Pakistan has been helping North Koera with its nuclear program in exchange for North Korean "No Dong" missiles that have a range of 900 miles, they are able to carry nuclear warheads. These missiles are capable of hitting any city in India. What does the US do about it? The US slaps sanctions on the Pakistani nuclear lab that helped the North Koreans. These sanctions say that the lab, KRL, is not able to do business with the US government for two years. KRL is not dependent on foreign business, period, so it's not going to hurt them. Pakistan transported the missiles from North Korea on a plane that the US gave to them. The US, which gave Pakistan $920 million in foreign aid last year, will not reprimand the Pakistani government.

Let me get this straight: Pakistan can arm North Korea, a country that has missiles capable of reaching mainland US, with nukes. North Korea can arm Pakistan with missiles capable of delivering a nuclear payload to any city in India. India and Pakistan have gone to three wars over Kashmir, a number that could be changed to four if we aren't careful. Yet in this country, it's front page news when Syria gives night vision goggles to Iraq, and all I hear the hate radio hosts talk about is how France helped arm Iraq, the same country that now cannot fire a missile properly. Does anybody else feel that sinking feeling right now?

The Islamic Human Rights Commission has a report, issued this January, entitled "UZBEKISTAN - TORTURE, THE LANGUAGE OF REPRESSION". If that title seems blunt, then it's a good description of the contents of the report, discussing the repression, imprisonment, and torture of muslims in a country when 90% of the population is muslim, yet we are not threatening to goto war with that country. Why? Because, as this report points out, they are our good buddies in the OIL business, that's why! Since Uzbekistan is run by a dictator who is friendly to oil interests and the Bush Administration, not only will we not lift a finger to stop the man, but we will also send Uzbekistan $100 million in foreign aid, as part of an agreement between the US and Uzbekistan which the details to are secret. How can this NOT piss you off?

And in Iraq, the country is run by a dictator who does not agree with the US. Look at what happens. Economic colonialism: coming to a repressed land near you!

One gas station I passed during todays commute was charging $1.63 a gallon. Yowwzuhs! Another one still still charging $1.39 a gallon, and I hope that price sticks in time for my commute home tonight. Does anybody have the postal address for Donald Rumsfeld? I have a bill to send him...

Yahoo News in America is now serving the english wire for the AFP, Agence France Presse. Yahoo previously made the AFP available through their site in Singapore, but now it's on main news page for their American site. I enjoy reading AFP news, I'm just wondering how long this link will last if the rabid maniacs on the right see this and say that amoutns to support for France and boycott Yahoo, too.

If you have not been reading Warblogging on a regular basis, you should. The features from the past couple of days have been great, discussing how this war in Iraq and the small amount of troops we have there could be a test run for waging quick war with minimal troops in other countries, like Iran and Syria. They provide good evidence that Rumsfeld and his buddies have been gunning for these Middle Eastern states for quite a while now, and that could explain why the war games that the US Army staged with the blue side being them, and the red side representing Iraq, was exactly that -- staged. The retired Marine Corps general who they had playing Saddam Hussein for the red team kept on kicking the US Army's ass, so the military would stop the game and tell the red side that they cannot do that. So, after our military used the tactics they are using in Iraq now that got their asses handed to them in the war games, the blue side still "won" the war games, so that's the justification for sending a small force of troops into Iraq. Who knows how many people will die because of this.