Swiss jewelry maker Chopard is launching a new line created by Gulnara Karimova, oligarch and daughter of brutal Uzbek dictator/president "Boil 'em Alive" Islam Karimov.  Proceeds from the line are supposed to go to benefit...wait for it... Uzbek children's charities.  Could the Karimov family be working to burnish their image in light of US pressure to clean up their act, so it can reopen its military base there?

Slate: "On Feb. 3, Kurmanbek Bakiyev, the president of the Central Asian country of Kyrgyzstan, announced that he would close a U.S. air base that the United States opened in October 2001 to supply the campaign in neighboring Afghanistan. Two days after the Kyrgyz announcement, the AP reported that Washington is looking to reopen its air base in neighboring Uzbekistan, which had been shuttered in 2005, to take up the slack.

The question of reopening the U.S. base in Uzbekistan is no small matter. The U.S. State Department calls Uzbekistan an authoritarian state whose human rights record is poor and getting worse; Islam Karimov, president since the country's independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, holds power through a combination of arbitrary arrest, torture, and forced psychiatric treatment. A number of political prisoners have died in custody, including two members of a religious sect who were boiled to death in 2002. There is no freedom of the press or religion, no right to free assembly. By any measure, the regime is among the world's most oppressive."

So, to recap, from Uzbekistan, we have:

• a potential US military ally in the War on Terror, or, rather, overseas contingency operations
• a Harvard-grad rock-star socialite who designs her own high-end jewelry and hangs out with Rothschilds
• an oligarchical structure in which the Karimov family, especially Ms. Karimova herself, owns most of the nation's wealth
• torture of its political opponents including boiling to death
• thousands upon thousands of political prisoners

These are the people Chopard are getting into bed with in the name of "giving back".  Looks like "blood diamonds" can come from anywhere.