Ghosts in the Machine

While we're on the subject of peace, it is worth mentioning how digital evidence circulates to demonstrate both its surveiling and its whistle-blowing properties. Recently the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace provided video of the Uzbek Andijan Uprising to the New York Times, which described the images as a "haunting, complex view." This footage, which had been seized by the police from at least two different cameramen, was also used by the authorities to identify participants in the popular uprising. State law enforcement added subtitles and pointed out that some of the speakers, who had been released from custody by the crowds, were actually drug dealers rather than political prisoners.

The official website of the Republic of Uzbekistan, which you can click the above image to read, may have one of worst-translated English pages in all of Eurasia for the "Portal of the State of Authority." Yet the site boasts of its alliance with America on the counter-terrorism front:

Only after tragic events in USA on 11 of September 2001, more exactly – on 28 of September 2001 by the resolution #1373 (2001) UN Security Council created Committee on the fight against terrorism (CFT), vested with the wide power in the scope of prosecutions of financing international terrorism. Concept of the ICFT is reflected by this committee’s activities.

The President's "I"-statements are pretty amazing, which include an explanation of his election by "alternative" means. If you dig their web work, you can "add to favorite" or make it your home page by clicking choices on the upper right hand corner. And while you are bookmarking, check out the websites of other repressive and corrupt former Soviet republics for more web-surfing from a Virtualpolitik perspective.