"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle." ~ 
Any world is an illusion, but within illusion, another world, a better world, seems possible. In the material world, the one we think is real, the divide between the 'left' and 'right' is an artificial one. This divide serves to keep us separate from each other and prevents us from seeing clearly that we in fact have shared interests and a common enemy. A better way to approach economy, politics, culture and society would be to take note of the ways in which our societies are divided horizontally: the interests of the few (the elite) and the many (ordinary people). The elite wants to oppress and exploit the rest of us. In a material sense, they are our enemy. They are working to establish a One World Company, aka a totalitarian New World Order. World government is the last thing ordinary people need. We need free and open communities with equal rights for everyone and a profound respect for the many differences between us. We want freedom rather than security. We want peace, not war. Above all else, we want truth, dignity and justice. ~ The Editor
XML FeedsUzbekistan: drifting West
Aleksandr Shustov
Uzbekistan’s foreign policy is becoming more West-oriented. In late October the EU removed the sanctions it had imposed on Uzbekistan after the massacre in Andijan in May 2005. Uzbekistan is one of the US’ key partners of the US and Central Asia again.
Also Uzbek economic partnership with Japan is quite successful. But it is also obvious that Uzbekistan is drifting away from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), EuroAsian Economic Community (EurAsEC) (Uzbekistan withdrew membership a year ago), from the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.
The sanctions the EU imposed on Uzbekistan included the embargo on supplies of all types of weapons to the country, banned the entry to the EU for 12 Uzbek officials involved in the riots in Andijan, cut financial assistance introduced restrictions in trade. Last November the EU removed most of these sanctions despite the protests of rights activists. According to the EU, by that time Uzbekistan had made significant progress in human rights protection. On October 27, 2009, during a meeting of the EU Foreign Ministers it was decided to remove the last sanction, which was the ban on weapons supplies. But the real reason behind this decision was Brussels’ plan to establish oil and gas supplies from Uzbekistan to Europe bypassing Russia.
