Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Turkmenistan Blues
Tuesday
October 24, 2006
Odds are that you've never heard of Ogulsapar Muradova before. But her story is one worth learning.
Muradova worked as a journalist for Radio Liberty in Turkmenistan, a dictator-controlled former Soviet country that recently ranked lower than every nation but North Korea in a poll of journalistic freedom by Journalists Without Borders.
Jailed without charges in June of this year, Muradova was allegedly drugged and tortured while in Turkmenistan state custody. She lost her life in early September, apparently from the brutal treatment she received. The full story is here, if you'd like to learn more.
This has relevance here in the United States, where the so-called "War on Terror" is, in fact, a war on freedom. From Reporters Without Borders:
The United States (53rd) has fallen nine places since last year, after being in 17th position in the first year of the Index, in 2002. Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of "national security" to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his "war on terrorism." The zeal of federal courts which, unlike those in 33 US states, refuse to recognize the media’s right not to reveal its sources, even threatens journalists whose investigations have no connection at all with terrorism.
Issues like this are why I am a Libertarian -- and why I have the Bill of Rights listed on this website. Defend your freedoms and fight for them... or else risk losing them.
Is it such a stretch to look at Turkmenistan and then the USA? When our President speaks out against journalists for reporting the truth, and then tries to link that to the so-called "War on Terror", it infuriates me.
Don't mistake this as a jump on the Democrat bandwagon, though. No thanks; I'll pass on big government, tax and spend, social control from the left, just as I will from the right. Authoritarian Left is even more of a turn-off to me than Authoritarian Right, though with both sides pandering to the ill-informed of the voting blocks, there really is no winner.
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