Uponnothing.co.uk

If you are lucky enough to employed in job that slows down on a Friday, and you have some spare time for reading, then why not try some of these articles. Each article has been handpicked from bloggers all across the globe for your enjoyment and/or education.

Musings from Middle England: Blood On Our Hands - Remembering Hussein and Israfil

Hussein, 26 years old, was a gay man who fled Iran and came to Britain. He had already spent three months in prison in Iran for being gay and feared execution if he was sent back.
In June 2004 the Home Office refused to grant him asylum and was going to send him back to Iran.
So he killed himself.
A private death in an Eastbourne car park was preferable to a public hanging in an Iranian square.
The Coroner said the asylum refusal was the ‘obvious motive’ for his death.

The year before, Israfil Shiri, another gay Iranian, died six days after setting himself alight in the offices of a refugee charity in Manchester. His asylum application had also been rejected. Unlike the mythical asylum seekers described in the tabloids, living the high life on state handouts, Israfil was both homeless and penniless, often sleeping in a wheelie bin. He was also in constant pain because, following his asylum refusal, he was unable to get medical treatment for a bowel complaint.

A must read article aiming much anger at Tony Blair’s supposed dedication to human rights.

Adventures of Mr Behi: Blogrolling filtered!

Iranian Telecom is famous for the filters it imposes over websites/weblogs that are containing what the government considers as “against morals of the society” or “against national security”. This costly activity has already cost Iranian government many million dollars to become reality and there is a little care about the legitimacy of the reasoning that should be there behind the filtering of each URL that is swept away from the sight of Iranian web surfers.

A little look at how filtering of blog sites seemed to have been stepped up after the election of the new president, in case anything negative was posted…

Iran Hopes: This Regime is Getting Bolder and Bolder

Yesterday, they hired a number of bullies to march in front of European embassies in Tehran “in protest against Europeans policies towards Iran’s nuclear program”. The mob burned the flags of France, Germany, and Britain. State News agencies, and newspapers (Kayhan, Jomhuri, etc.) claim that the protesters were ’students’. BUT THEY WERE NOT! They might have been pupils at regime’s schools of violence and hatred, but they certainly were not students in the proper use of the term. They were Basijis from Ashura squad (Gordan-e Ashura). They get money to do these things. One day they are ’students’, another day they are ‘volunteer suicide bombers’, the next day they are ‘law enforcers’, enforcing their law upon women who do not observe rules of their version of Islam.

Iranian regime enforces a very strict version of Islam upon the populace, something that is now happening in Iraq as well.

The Minority Report: Yesterday and Today: Nazis and the Righteous Right

If we take a look at pre-WWII Germany, we notice it has some things in common with the United States now. Start with the concept of exceptionality. Nazi ideology grew out of Germans’ belief that their country was uniquely privileged because it was uniquely valuable. This made them an exception to rules and norms. The average “Proud to Be an American” bumper-sticker-buyer believes the same thing. (I’m still waiting for some churchgoing patriot to notice that being born American is a gift of grace and to begin marketing “Humble to be an American” decals.) A belief in your country’s exceptionality takes you way out beyond the warm self-appreciation of patriotism; in naming your heritage “exceptional,” you cut your ties to the family of nations and set yourself above the rules. Our belief in our own exceptionality erodes the walls that hold back human greed, fear of otherness, and violence. Exceptionality makes the unthinkable possible, even reasonable.

An interesting look at how America is flirting with a racial ideology similar to that of Nazi Germany.

Raed in the Middle: Deadline: The Iraqi Constitution

Another two weeks!
Another two hours!
Another two minutes!

The Iraqi constitution committee is begging for another last minute, as if the world is ending tomorrow. With all the internal pressure (i.e. the daily insurgent attacks) and the external pressure (the US administration’s imposed deadlines), the committee finds itself between a rock and a hard place. The US ambassador to Iraq attends all the constitution meetings and gives the Iraqi stakeholders some printed “suggestions” to break the deadlock, while the Iraqi resistance’s assassinations and attacks are getting stronger and more effective.

The Iraqi “governments”, established and supported by the occupation, has spent the last couple of years collapsing. Every new day is a worse day; every yesterday is brighter than any tomorrow.

An Iraqi’s opinion on the stuttering formation of the Iraqi Constitution, and the general situation in Iraq, and the picture painted is very different to the brave new Iraq being touted by George Bush and Tony Blair.

Hell is other people: Menezes Exclusive: Police issue false statement against the de Menezes family and Menezes: Blair still spinning to save his job

Met officers placed ‘bulky jacket’ story in the press

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair is continuing an aggressive PR campaign in the face of his growing isolation and calls for his resignation over his officers’ killing of Jean Charles de Menezes. Interviews with Sir Ian appeared yesterday on BBC radio, and today in the News of the World, while Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, and the Deputy Leader of the Greater London Assembly publicly smeared the campaign by the dead man’s family and supporters.

Some general news on one of the biggest stories of the week.

Don’t Shoot: May I recommend

I have a confession to make. I am a book addict, I love books. Here are some of my favorite books that I would like to share with the rest of you.

Some books recommendations.

Tell Me a Secret: I found myself…

Sleeping in a grave-size space, defined by two walls touching both my head my and feet, and surrounded with human bodies touching me from both sides, in a way that hardly leaves any chance to move at all during the long… long night, in a 12 square meters room stuffed with 35 people trying to sleep, and to hold themselves together in order not to fight…
The whole thing started when I went to the university to pay my tuition fees…

The true story of an innocent person being arrested in occupied Iraq, he happens to be a blogger.