Uzbekistan

Recently Time Magazine published a list of significant novels of the last 75 years. It included the novel Ubik by Philip K. Dick. This is a "science fiction" novel written in 1968 and is, well, how can I put this? It is not a good read. It is set in a dystopian 1990's. I always think of that novel when I hear of Uzbekistan, that State that truly epitomizes Orwell's 1984.

Everyone has now been appraised of the current disclosures by the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan concerning the use of torture in Uzbekistan. The U.S. has also "rendered" prisioners there too. They like boiling people alive. If you haven't discoverd this, the Guardian will update you. I was particularly struck by the following:

In one memo, Murray said he was told by Foreign Office legal adviser Sir Michael Wood that it was not illegal to use information acquired by torture, except in legal proceedings. Intelligence officer Matthew Kydd had also told him the intelligence services sometimes found such material "very useful indeed, with a direct bearing on the war on terror," he said. (emphasis added)

This, of course, is straight out of the mouth of Albert Gonzales and shows how the two countries that one had always considered at the forefront of progressive society, Britain and America, have now fallen to the bottom.

Fac me cocleario vomere!