The White Queen is dead, long live the Grey Eminence. Vote for the Crown Prince and you get the Prince of Thieves. Mister Tenpercent Zindabad!
So it looks like a few more years of General Badmash, till some other general decides to take over, or the CIA decides to terminate him "with prejudice", pace the unmourned Zia
ul- Haq. Tariq Ali once wrote a book called "Can Pakistan Survive?" A synthetic nation with a phoney name, a secular nation of Muslims, their religion being the only common denominator. Israel, another synthetic nation, will last as long as the US needs it. Will it outlast Pakistan?

"Television spent most of 2007 with its head in its hands, whining that the audience didn't love it any more because it had been making stuff up. But only a moron would believe anything they saw on TV in the first place ..." (Charlie Brooker, in yesterday's Guardian)

The image I display to represent my blogging persona has been declared invalid or illegal, or something, and has been disappeared. I should be angry, "incandescent", to use a spin doctor's term. But I'm just a little peeved at the prospect of having to find an image that is sufficiently unattractive without being grotesque. I have to record my dislike of the misuse of the term "avatar", but if I'm going to disappear, then return in another form, the word may be apposite.

O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem,

and bring your Uzis.

Dog Bites Man 5
"No action against Menezes officers"

“I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: that the Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence.

Further to yesterday's translation bulletin -
An article in today's Guardian G2 by Jon Hedley gives some CIA euphemisms for torture and kidnap. The phrase I quoted was by some British journalist who couldn't bring himself to describe American torturers as torturers, probably as a result of the bias imposed by his paymasters. He did, however, use the word "extreme", which in the British media is a description reserved for Left-Wingers, Irish Republicans, and Muslims. Tut-tut!
These are some of the terms preferred by the CIA:
Special methods of questioning
Enhanced interrogation techniques
Refined interrogation techniques
This last, Hedley informs us, was the preferred terminology of the Gestapo when referring to torture.

Well, the bloke got it wrong. It wasn't Jonathan Creek, it was Alan Davies, drunken thug.
They used to call it Grevious Bodily Harm, and you did time for it. Somehow I don't think the drunken thug will.

Dog Bites Man 4
"No charges for police officer filmed hitting woman"
(Headline in today's Guardian)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,2225940,00.html

STS, Bulletin no.7
"Extreme Interrogation Methods" - when used by non-Americans they are called "torture".

Poor old Gordon Brown (again!) - it turns out he wanted to go to Lisbon to sign the EU reform treaty but Murdoch wouldn't let him.

"In the past five months more than 40 women have been murdered and their bodies dumped in the street by militiamen, according to the Basra police chief. Major-General Abdul-Jalil Khalaf said that some of them had been killed alone, others gunned down with their children. One unveiled mother was murdered together with her children aged 6 and 11."

Now British troops can move out of Basra, their job is done.

On second thoughts they might as well, these things are happening while they are supposed to be patrolling the streets of Basra.

Poor old Gordon Brown, he told the European-African summit "It's me or Mugabe", and they chose Mugabe. If Mugabe is a pariah what does that make Gordon?

An interesting and informative essay on Pakistani political history, and Bhutto family feuds, by Tariq Ali.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n24/ali_01_.html#pagetop

The British government is very upset about the way the Russian elections were conducted, and has put its objections on record. It seems that they were as crooked as the recent Egyptian elections, and, as we know our government was very ... (Hang on! Back-pedal!) ... which were unlike the Russian elections and a triumph for democracy.
As for the canard about Bush stealing two elections in a row - that's a non-runner in Westminster. We simple folk don't understand that democracy sometimes needs a little help, a little tweaking, to get the right result. That's democracy, that rhymes with hypocrisy, that you spell with a D, as in D-vious.

AT LAST! Someone has mentioned the noble Lord Ashcroft in connection with dodgy donations.
prisonlawinsideout: Lord Ashcroft of No Fixed Abode#links