Author: Mick Hartley

Some images of refugees from Darfur taken by Don McCullin.

This is just what the world needs (via Metafilter):

Michael Jackson is in discussions about creating a 50-foot robotic replica of himself to roam the Las Vegas desert, according to reports.

The pop legend is currently understood to be living in the city, as he considers making a comeback after 2004’s turbulent child sex case.

It has now been claimed that his plans include an elaborate show in Vegas, which would feature the giant Jacko striding around the desert, firing laser beams.

Justice in a theocracy:

Iran’s Supreme Court has acquitted a group of men charged over a series of gruesome killings in 2002, according to lawyers for the victims’ families.

The vigilantes were not guilty because their victims were involved in un-Islamic activities, the court found.

The killers said they believed Islam let them spill the blood of anyone engaged in illicit activities if they issued two warnings to the victims…

Up to 18 people were killed in just one year, but only five of the murders were tried in court.

According to their confessions, the killers put some of their victims in pits and stoned them to death. Others were suffocated. One man was even buried alive while others had their bodies dumped in the desert to be eaten by wild animals.

The accused, who were all members of an Islamic paramilitary force, told the court their understanding of the teachings of one Islamic cleric allowed them to kill immoral people if they had ignored two warnings to stop their bad behaviour.

The group even killed a young couple they thought were involved in sex outside marriage, but media reports say the couple were either married or engaged to be married.

Lawyers for the victims’ families say the Supreme Court has five times overturned the verdict of a lower court that found all the men guilty of murder.

Now the Supreme Court is reported to have acquitted all the killers of the charge of murder on the grounds that their victims were all morally corrupt.

There’s always a poignancy about old photographs. What, we wonder, happened to those people? How did they die? We search those happy innocent faces for clues, but of course it’s in vain. They didn’t know their fate any more than we know ours.

The poignancy is all the greater in a case like this: photos from just before the Holocaust, of a Jewish family in Poland, hidden away in a chimney wall for over 60 years.

Here’s the full collection.

(via)

rank and in line. Following a signal, you must march rhythmically in one perfect line. As you pass the grand stage you must yell in a loud voice “horray!” while performing a very high kick. If you are out of line in the slightest, you are pulled aside, placed on the ideology podium, insulted and ridiculed. No matter how hard we university students tried, we were of no match to the military schools. Students from Kang Kun Military School or Kim Jong Sook Naval University, somehow displayed the utmost perfect order.

General training still occurs in the winter, there are many days where the fields are covered in snow. During these times, we would all be mobilized to sweep the snow and habitually say, “We detest the Americans bastards, but second to that is snow”. […]

As the big day drew near, all participants were given a uniform for the day, shoes and belt. A commemorative parade medal was also presented. In addition, each division held meetings where participants took an oath to ensure “a successful event for the dear leader’s love”.

The trainees undergo even greater hardship as the actual practice begins. You are expected to make greater stamping sounds with your feet but the quality of shoes distributed by the nation is so low that the nails fixing the sole to the shoe often penetrated into our feet. Within our division, there was only 2 out of 25 people who did not suffer these pains.

Finally, the big day arrived. Though it was “the day” we were not allowed to polish the buckles on our belt or our gold buttons. The sunlight may reflect off these gold colored items if they were too shiny, and hence discomfort our leader’s vision. On the day prior to the big event, we practiced until 3 in the morning at Kim Il Sung Square but were only given porridge soup the following ‘grand’ day.

On the day of the big event, officers came to inspect and confirm our participation in the event. We waited until 9AM for the event to commence and to enter the field with the military division. We waited in angst as the deafening sound of the microphone blockaded even the breath of tens of thousands of people. Prior to the event, we were given a sedative and three tablets to calm our nerves but there were still some people who fainted…

I never did believe the training would end. After the big event, we had to write a “devotional diary”. We were also inspected on this. On re-reading my diary, I discovered that on entering the 4.25 center, I had trained at Kim Il Song Square on 556 different occasions. In the end, we had spent whole year training for 1min 40sec and had accomplished 556 rehearsals…

When I completed my presentation and returned home, my parents were placed in an awkward position as the neighbors asked, “What did the son bring home as a gift?” All I had received for participating in the event was a uniform, belt and shoes that poked the sole. In addition to that, I was rewarded arthritis in the knees and symptoms of indigestion.

I do not have any real memories of my time as a freshman in university. Once a healthy and strong student, the gymnastics training only filled me with sickness. All that remained was my instincts to dance, instincts of heat, hunger, lethargy and pain. In the end, I was only left with shame.

It’s true, more women are getting involved in violent crime nowadays:

An 18-year-old woman is due in court today accused of assaulting a police officer with breast milk.

Felicha Marin, of Palmerston Road, in Acton, was charged with shoplifting and assault after being arrested on March 29.

It is alleged she was detained for trying to steal shoes from Lizard, in Hill Street, Richmond. After being arrested for theft she sprayed an officer with milk from her right breast.

She is due to appear before at Richmond Magistrates’ Court today.

nds of troops launched a crackdown.

“I’m frightened every day,” says the 30-year-old driver who begins his daily round of the bins on the west bank of the Tigris River, picking his way through homemade but lethal booby traps and bursts of gunfire.

“No one taught me how to spot the roadside bombs but I’ve learned to pick out the trip wires that set them off,” confides the married father-of-two, already lucky enough to have escaped one explosion…

“Homemade bombs are often hidden under the bins or rubbish. So the insurgents don’t want us to clean up and they shoot at our workers,” explains 43-year-old Mohammed Nuri, an employee of Baghdad Municipality, who heads the rubbish collection in the district.

Another explanation left unsaid, however, is that at least many of Baghdad’s municipal dustmen, like Farhud, are Shiites and some of the districts that they steer their dumpster trucks through are predominantly Sunni…

“Five of our workers have died,” says Talal Karim, who is responsible for trucks and equipment used by a team of around 400 people. “Recently one worker was killed by a mortar round while he was working.”

“One of my colleagues was shot with four bullets six months ago,” says Farhud.

“Despite everything, we are the only service that has never stopped working from the fall of Baghdad until today,” says Nuri with pride.

Once the rubbish has been scooped up, the trucks head out to one of two main dumps outside Baghdad – Taji, 30 kilometers (almost 20 miles) to the north, and Husseniyah, 15 kilometers to the northeast.

“The road frightens us. When the situation is really too dangerous, there are temporary dumps where we dump the rubbish. But these days, with the security plan I have to say things have got a lot better,” says Farhud. “We hope things will continue that way.”

Iraqi and US military officials say that execution-style killings have fallen in Baghdad since the crackdown was launched February 14.

US military spokesman Major General William Caldwell said that such killings were down 60 percent between “the last week of March and first [week of] April”, compared to a similar period of the month before.

Iraqi Brigadier General Qassim Atta Mussawi has said that an average of eight bodies are found on a daily basis compared to the dozens of handcuffed and blindfolded corpses of men riddled with bullets found everyday on Baghdad’s streets before the crackdown.

a rut. This suits those who want to continue business as usual, including Sudan’s Military Intelligence. Those who care about solutions should take a new look at Darfur – and Sudan as a whole.

ntempt for American mercantilism, and the small-minded pursuit of wealth and liberty instead of a more Gallic pursuit of la gloire, is just an echo of that old “nation of shopkeepers” jibe. The French have been hating the English for far longer, and with greater venom, than they ever hated the Americans.

Indeed, the French in many ways love American culture, from jazz to Hollywood, even if that love sometimes takes a bizarre Jerry-Lewis-like form. And, witness de Tocqueville, they’re perfectly capable of celebrating the particularly vibrant style of American democracy.

As for the Avenue Franklin Roosevelt, well, there’s also an Avenue Winston Churchill, but I’d bet that most French would be more willing to pay generous tribute to the US role in their liberation than to the British role. As, come to that, would most Americans. The key figure in here is of course De Gaulle, who, having spent the best part of the war feeling humiliated in London, decided that the way forward for France was to set itself politically against les Anglo-Saxons. Not les Americains – les Anglo-Saxons.

A touch of Malaysian irony from Reuters:

Malaysian Islamic scholars have called for a halt to popular exhibitions billed as featuring ghosts, genies and other supernatural beings, saying they are forbidden and could undermine the faith of devout Muslims.

Many Malaysians are willing to suspend disbelief when dealing with the supernatural, and the exhibitions capitalise on a widespread fascination with the ghouls and goblins that populate Malaysia’s legends and folklore.

But supernatural beings should not be played up in exhibitions, state news agency Bernama quoted the chairman of Malaysia’s National Fatwa Council as saying.

“They are beyond the comprehension of the human mind as they involve the invisible world,” Abdul Shukor Husain said.

“We don’t want to promote a belief in the supernatural and in superstition…

Absolutely not.