It's a fairly predictable early 21st century tale of five Uighurs, natives of Xinjiang province of China, who had hopped over to Afghanistan then Pakistan to get themselves some of that freedom of religion stuff being as they were muslims and therefore not exactly flavour of the month with a lot of powerful chinamen.

These chaps were not in the least seperatist, jihadist, terrarist or even egoist, just blokes going about their business. When they fronted into a town in Pakistan and asked for directions to a mosque, such institutions being rather thin on the ground back home in sunny Cathay, some local sport decided to sell them to the septic tanks as terrarists, just for the fun of it and of course, make hisself a dollar or three.

These chaps then languished in Gitmo for several years. The fact that their innocence was apparent to all who investigated them was irrelevant since BushCo were concerned about what may happpen to them if they return to China ( Uighurs being an oppressed minority in China) couldn't send them back there and no one else wanted them. Yeah I know there's something not quite rational in that line of BushCo thinking. Irrational but certainly not suprising.

Then Canada said they would to take them . . . but their lawyers who had been trying every trick in the book also had another iron in the fire in the form of an appeal in the federal courts which was coming up for it's date.

Senor Gonzales must have been concerned about one of those nasty all encompassing precedents being created by those liberal activist judges that he keeps appointing from the Federalist society via John Birch at al, because quick as a wink the 5 friends were whisked out of Gitmo in shackles, blindfolds, and buttplugs then awarded a free vacation for the rest of their lives in sunny downtown Albania, from whence they will never escape.

Somehow that salutory tale of being an un-whitefella backpacker reminded me of a chapter in Fear of Flying whence young Erica finding herself bereft of psychiatrists and footloose in Germany hoofs it over to the Nuremburg stadium where adolf and the gang used to party.

Erica is a bit off her feed since Laing has pulled the old existentialist con and gone back to his wife, therefore when her Jewishness kicks in she finds it impossible to look at Germans without wanting to scream in their faces. "where you you when the nazis were dragging your neighbors off to the camps? why did you do nothing?"

Is that what Uighur people will be thinking in the not too distant future?