how stupid are we???

[Rog]

come to the uk on a fake passport whoever you are and we'll give you everything......:(:mad::rolleyes:...you brits know what i'm saying.....human rights?....fuckin shite....

and whats this 'british resident' shite?..........oooh, i visited the uk once afew years back so i'm british resident........fuck off

i'm fuckin fed up with all of this asylum seeker bollox

the only people who are benefiting from this are the fuckin lawyers. i'm sorry but its getting out of hand ....if you disagree thenlets talk about it

[BeautifulBurnout]

Rog You are completely wrong.

I am not even going to begin to tell you why because I will be here all day, and it won't make the blindest bit of difference.

[Sean]

Now you guys have gotten me curious.

[chuck]

I married a woman from Norn Iron. In Belfast.

Then moved back to NZ. Have been here since 2003.

Once we've been married 7 years, I almost auto-magically get British residency. But I don't think I get the passport. Would love to raise the child here in NZ, then come back to UK/Europe for experiencing the old world - when it's teenaged - and I can walk to the Tate and hang out - or wander down the South Bank looking at old books together.

Don't know if I'll ever take up a UK passport though - my child will have the option - the missus has kept hers, but has NZ residency.

Or maybe I'm not the type of resident-seeker that Rog is referring too.

[BeautifulBurnout]

Sean

I think Rog was prolly drunk when he posted this - and I think he is talking about Binyam Mohamed being released from Guantanamo and returned to the UK.

But he has some basic facts wrong - he didn't arrive in the UK on a fake passport, but at the age of 15 with his family as an asylum seeker. Although his asylum claim (or rather his family's asylum claim) failed, he was given Exceptional Leave to Remain in the UK for a period of 4 years, after which - provided you keep your nose clean - it becomes Indefinite Leave to Remain and thereafter you can apply for citizenship should you want it.

For whatever reason, in 2001 he decided to go to Afghanistan - he had recently converted to Islam. For whatever reason, he then went over the border into Pakistan. For whatever reason, instead of using his Convention travel documents (as a refugee he would not have had a passport and would have had to use temporary travel documents to leave and enter the UK) he decided to try and use a friend's passport to leave Pakistan for his return journey.

He was picked up by the Pakistani authorities and rendered first to Afghanistan, then Morocco and was held as an enemy combattant (I presume) in "black sites" and tortured. He was then rendered to Guantanamo in 04 and has been there since.

He is supposed to have admitted to researching the preparation of a "dirty bomb" on the basis of a satirical website set up in 1979 by Barbara Ehrenreich (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/feb/21/barbara-ehrenreich-guantanamo) and others. It is alleged that he was tortured by having small cuts made to his genitals, amongst other things.

Charges were never brought against him. He is one of the 5 people whose cases were so appallingly bad that it led to the resignation of Military Prosector Darrel Vandeveld (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7761315.stm) in disgust at the whole process.

Prior to his release, Binyam Mohamed's military-appointed defence lawyer Yvonne Bradley (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/11/binyam-mohamed-guantanamo-torture) was trying to secure the release of documents which were deemed vital to the defence case, which apparently not only prove that torture took place, but also show British M15 involvement (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/aug/22/uksecurity.guantanamo)in interrogating him in the "black sites". An application to the High Court led to a ruling in which David Milliband, the British Foreign Secretary, alleged that the release of the documents would mean that there would be a breakdown in co-operation on intelligence between the UK and the US and produced a letter confirming this threat from the US. The Judges reluctantly had to concede that it was not in the interests of national security to release said documents, and thus ruled against their release.

What Milliband had neglected to mention, however, was that it was the Foreign Office that solicited the letter (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/16/miliband-torture-us-guantanamo) from the US in the first place - in other words, they created their own evidence to cover their own arses. Our government have been complicit in this man's torture and a government minister has perverted the course of justice at best and committed perjury at worst. Has he been arrested? Of course not.

And as if by magic, Binyam Mohamed is now to be released and returned to the UK in the vain hope that the question of British collusion in the torture of a person to whom we had offered refugee protection will go away. And all the right-wing nutters, tabloid consumers and, I am sorry to say, even Rog, are all saying that this man is a terrorist and shouldn't be allowed back in the UK on the basis of allegations made as a result of "confessions" obtained from torture where charges were eventually never even laid, where the British government were involved in that torture, and where the Prosecutor was so disgusted with the whole process that he resigned. Guilty until proven innocent, as always.

On the other hand, I could be completely wrong, and Rog is complaining about an immigrant family who has moved into his house, taken his job off him and got his daughter pregnant.... but I doubt it.

[Deckard]

That's as good an explanation as I've read BB, thanks for that.

I wondered if that was what Rog was referring to.

Rog don't go getting all Daily Mail on us now, will you? I'll whip your arse...
(on the other hand, feel free to elaborate if you've been misunderestimated ;) )

Chuck - seeking asylum from a shortage of old books and decent galleries - that's a good 'un.....

[Sean]

Ah...thanks for elaborating - both about the story and about Rog's lack of sobriety. :)

I can totally understand why the actions of Mohamed could raise some suspicions, travelling with another person's passport after wandering the Afghanistan/Pakistani border, but doing what they've done according to your telling of it is completely unjustified. I'm so glad we're making a clear turn away from indefinite incarceration and torture with the new President.

[sola sistim]

oi, i been to da uk, can i get a residency rog?

lolol

[Rog]

:oi was drunk when i posted the above which is far too ranty. i wqas refering to 'bin laden's right hand in europe' who is STILL hanging on here and the other 8 or 9 who should not be in our country. They could have left prison anytime if they left the country. The other fellow referred to who released last week has only very tenuous ties to the uk and has not been a 'british resident' for a number of years. Now, 'for whatever reason he went to afghanistan' -the reason he gave for being in afghanistan was to 'kick his heroin addiction' which to me is like buggering off to columbia to kick your coke habit or down the pub to kick your alcohol habit.....it just don't follow. 'He decided to use anothers passport to try and enter the uk' - why would anyone who had nothing to hide try such a thing? I don't think his motivations are as inocent as you seem to think. However, i would not EVER condone torture at any time or being held without trial and he should have been tried or released a long time ago along with many others. The thing i ask is why does he want to come back here? this is not his home nor ever has been.....

[BeautifulBurnout]

:oi was drunk when i posted the above which is far too ranty. i wqas refering to 'bin laden's right hand in europe' who is STILL hanging on here and the other 8 or 9 who should not be in our country. They could have left prison anytime if they left the country. The other fellow referred to who released last week has only very tenuous ties to the uk and has not been a 'british resident' for a number of years. Now, 'for whatever reason he went to afghanistan' -the reason he gave for being in afghanistan was to 'kick his heroin addiction' which to me is like buggering off to columbia to kick your coke habit or down the pub to kick your alcohol habit.....it just don't follow. 'He decided to use anothers passport to try and enter the uk' - why would anyone who had nothing to hide try such a thing? I don't think his motivations are as inocent as you seem to think. However, i would not EVER condone torture at any time or being held without trial and he should have been tried or released a long time ago along with many others. The thing i ask is why does he want to come back here? this is not his home nor ever has been.....

Has it ever occurred to you why they want Binyam Mohamed here? I bet he knows something that would be very damaging to our govt. and they want him to stfu, personally...;)
(It was his home between the ages of 15 and 23, though, in all fairness.)

[Rog]

Its possible i suppose but if he knows something that damaging i would have thought the govt. would have refused him entry at any price as he will be guaranteed to 'spill the beans' once back here.

[myrrh]

the reason he gave for being in afghanistan was to 'kick his heroin addiction' which to me is like buggering off to columbia to kick your coke habit or down the pub to kick your alcohol habit.....it just don't follow.


I am not sure if you are aware but the Taliban eradicated the production of poppy from their country while they were ruling. Interestingly enough, since the US 'liberated' Afghanistan, the whole production is back in action. And it is even mentioned here (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/25/mccain.afghan.war/index.html?iref=werecommend) that the Taliban is once again using the money from the poppy to fund itself. I can't help but take this as an absolute lie put out by the US government to brainwash the people into making the Taliban look like the 'badguys'.

From 8 years ago:

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (February 15, 2001 8:19 p.m. EST)

U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has nearly wiped out opium production in Afghanistan -- once the world's largest producer -- since banning poppy cultivation last summer.


A 12-member team from the U.N. Drug Control Program spent two weeks searching most of the nation's largest opium-producing areas and found so few poppies that they do not expect any opium to come out of Afghanistan this year.


"We are not just guessing. We have seen the proof in the fields," said Bernard Frahi, regional director for the U.N. program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He laid out photographs of vast tracts of land cultivated with wheat alongside pictures of the same fields taken a year earlier -- a sea of blood-red poppies.


A State Department official said Thursday all the information the United States has received so far indicates the poppy crop had decreased, but he did not believe it was eliminated.


Last year, Afghanistan produced nearly 4,000 tons of opium, about 75 percent of the world's supply, U.N. officials said. Opium -- the milky substance drained from the poppy plant -- is converted into heroin and sold in Europe and North America. The 1999 output was a world record for opium production, the United Nations said -- more than all other countries combined, including the "Golden Triangle," where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet.


Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, banned poppy growing before the November planting season and augmented it with a religious edict making it contrary to the tenets of Islam.


The Taliban, which has imposed a strict brand of Islam in the 95 percent of Afghanistan it controls, has set fire to heroin laboratories and jailed farmers until they agreed to destroy their poppy crops.


The U.N. surveyors, who completed their search this week, crisscrossed Helmand, Kandahar, Urzgan and Nangarhar provinces and parts of two others -- areas responsible for 86 percent of the opium produced in Afghanistan last year, Frahi said in an interview Wednesday. They covered 80 percent of the land in those provinces that last year had been awash in poppies.


This year they found poppies growing on barely an acre here and there, Frahi said. The rest -- about 175,000 acres -- was clean.

taken from: http://opioids.com/afghanistan/index.html

I really find it extremely difficult for the Taliban to have turn on their heals now, and allow poppy to be grown again.

[Strangelet]

I am not sure if you are aware but the Taliban eradicated the production of poppy from their country while they were ruling. Interestingly enough, since the US 'liberated' Afghanistan, the whole production is back in action. And it is even mentioned here (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/25/mccain.afghan.war/index.html?iref=werecommend) that the Taliban is once again using the money from the poppy to fund itself. I can't help but take this as an absolute lie put out by the US government to brainwash the people into making the Taliban look like the 'badguys'.


So then saying you're going to wander around the afghani/paki border with false documents to kick a heroin habit is more like saying you're going to a ku klux klan rally because you're feeling like socializing, or going to a gay bath house to take a shower.

What happened to this guy is reprehensible, and is a drop in the slop bucket of the moral standing that the u.s. has shown in Iraq and afghanistan. but I really get Rog's ire.

Regarding the opium trade. The "islamist" growers may not be taliban, but they are still thugs running as drug lords in tandem with the CIA. And I suppose that the taliban not being part of this means they deserver a perfunctory three second golf clap. clap clap clap.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

... I can't help but take this as an absolute lie put out by the US government to brainwash the people into making the Taliban look like the 'badguys'...




Have you noticed the abundance of the term "Hydro" everywhere?

And I think it sucks, even when tagged to a bar of soap.

[Rog]

I am not sure if you are aware but the Taliban eradicated the production of poppy from their country while they were ruling.

I really find it extremely difficult for the Taliban to have turn on their heals now, and allow poppy to be grown again.

Maybe they did but the poppy production is back in full swing and from what i can gather the taliban are using heroin to finance themselves.......

oh, and the taliban were not good guys in the first place the way they treated people - especially women.

[myrrh]

I am not in anyway saying that the Taliban were ever the good guys. I am just pointing out some facts.

And just because we hear that the opium trade is back and that the Taliban are using it to fund themselves, doesn't mean that it is truth because we are hearing it from Western media sources, who no doubt paint the Taliban to be straight up evil.

Why can't the run Afghanistan? Just because they don't have a democracy that is approved by the US and it's allies? Look at China. Look at all the South American governments, etc etc. Why can't people of their country run their country however they want, without the Western countries stepping in and trying to dictate 'how' they should be run.

The typical thing people say (this is not directed to you Rog) is about the women, but look how women are treated in the US. Sure they are not forced to wear a burka but really they are treated like complete sex objects. They are portrayed this way in the media, they are used to sell everything from sex to cars, to whatever.

I am not trying to debate the treatment of women, but lets be fair here, when we say that the while the Taliban took the women issue to one extreme, in the West we have taken it to the other.

[Rog]

Why can't the run Afghanistan? Just because they don't have a democracy that is approved by the US and it's allies? Look at China. Look at all the South American governments, etc etc. Why can't people of their country run their country however they want, without the Western countries stepping in and trying to dictate 'how' they should be run.

I am not trying to debate the treatment of women, but lets be fair here, when we say that the while the Taliban took the women issue to one extreme, in the West we have taken it to the other.

they did run afghanistan, and were ruthless at it........but i agree with you totally about the western style democracy thing, it would never work and is an alien concept for afghani,s. i also agree in part with your assessment of the treatment of women in the east and west.

[IsiliRunite]

And I think it sucks, even when tagged to a bar of soap.
I can think of one commodity where the word "hydro" is always a good thing..