Kathy Kinsley links to a BBC piece on starvation in Afghanistan and the Oxfam NGO. "So now Oxfam is in a position of trying to get enough food up there to let the bosses have their share, plus enough food to let the people give the bosses back 'lent' food and have enough for themselves too." She goes on to ask how it was that the bosses got the food they lent in the first place, which seems a fair question without an answer. Somehow it's all our fault. I'm not sure how, but I'm sure it is...
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02/05/2002 ||
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Christopher Johnson punctures the bag of Norman Mailer and lets the wind out. Loaded with chuckles. I'm becoming more religious as I get older. I had a nightmare once about dying and going to hell and having to spend eternity with Mailer and Jimmy Breslin.
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02/05/2002 ||
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Iraq has said it is ready to hold talks with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan without preconditions. The offer of a "dialogue" came in a message from Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to Mr Annan. It was conveyed by the Secretary General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa. Mr Annan said he would meet an Iraqi delegation to discuss the issue of UN Security Council resolutions, which may include the return of UN weapons inspectors to Iraq after a three-year absence. Talks between the UN chief and Iraqi officials broke off a year ago after Baghdad laid down conditions for resuming discussions, including an end to sanctions imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990. This is pre-game maneuvering. It should hold off any imminent US attacks, at least until it becomes clear the talks are fruitless propaganda exercises. It gives Sammy time to bury his tanks before the bombing starts.
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02/05/2002 ||
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Iraq's vice president said America's overbearing and "dirty" foreign policy could prompt attacks worse than Sept. 11. Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan railed against what he called "unjust" U.S. foreign policy since the attacks. "Since Sept. 11, they (Americans) have further strengthened the course that led to the events in New York and Washington, their policies have become even more dirty," Ramadan said. "If things continue like this, I believe that America will draw an even stronger backfire. Something more terrible than Sept. 11 will happen... It would be a very, very tough response. American despotism concerns more and more nations every year." That sounds like vaguely like a threat. An "even stronger backfire" would result in something that makes our treatment of the Taliban - and our handling of the Iraqi army in the Gulf War - look kind and gentle.
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02/05/2002 ||
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"Four Iraqi civilians were killed in bombing by enemy planes of civilian installations in the city of Mosul," the state INA news agency reported. The US military said earlier that US warplanes had struck Iraqi air defenses in northern Iraq after coalition aircraft came under fire while patrolling a no-fly zone. Yeah, yeah. They worked at the local Baby Milk Factory. And they had puppies and kittens and baby ducks. Zzzzz.
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Israel has no plans to attack Iran, an Israeli Cabinet minister said Tuesday, a day after Iran's defense minister warned of heavy retaliation for any Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear reactor. And they probably won't attack Mexico, either.
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Iran sought help from arch-foe the United States to arrest al Qaeda fighters who may have fled to Iran from Afghanistan, in a conciliatory gesture to Washington after days of angry exchanges. Foreign Minister Kamal Kharrazi strongly denied U.S. charges that Tehran had helped Taliban and al Qaeda Muslim militants to flee a U.S. military assault on neighboring Afghanistan. "We have smashed many rings involved in human smuggling and reinstated visas for Persian Gulf Arab states," he said. "We are also making a lot of arrests, among whom could be members of Taliban or al Qaeda. We will deal with them and hand them over to their respective countries." Oh ho! Light begins to glimmer, possibly at the end of the tunnel. No, wait. That's fire!
Suspected genesis on this shift: Iran's been piddling along, with tension between the fundos, who are really in charge, and Khatami's moderates (You can tell they're moderates; they don't beat their wives, just a slap now and then to get their attention). Even though the fundos are the ones in charge, they've set up the rules so that they have to defer somewhat in public to the mods, because of some stoopid elections they managed to lose. The Fundos know what they're doing because they talk to God on a regular basis and know what He thinks even better than He does. (If you're a Mede or a Persian you probably don't take MENE MENE TEKEL UPHARSIN to be a Bad Thing.)
The mods have been sitting around scratching their heads over Bush's Axis of Evil remarks, saying "What the hell set him off?"
The Fundos, meanwhile, have been funneling assorted Bad Guys from Afghanistan through Iran to the Middle East, since the Ends Justify the Means and You Can't Make an Omelette without Breaking Eggs. In the same vein, they've been shipping boatloads of arms to the Palestinians, firing up the Hezbollah in Lebanon, trying to replace Afghanistan's mullahs with ayatollahs, and dreaming about a surprise launch of the nuclear missiles they don't have yet on Israel and then on the USA. They just haven't bothered telling the mods about it, because What You Don't Know Won't Hurt You. Can it?
Now the mods find themselves on the sharpened horns of a dilemma. Do they stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the fundos and make faces at the Great Satan despite the evidence that the fundos have been doing just what the USA said they were doing? Or do they take this as the occasion to grab off a little more power from the religious loons? Khatami is probably, even as we speak, trying to figure how to get the egg on their faces, rather than all over the country, and still avoid both civil and external war. Somebody is Washington is very smart.
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02/05/2002 ||
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Natalie Solent carries a BBC story on three Palestinian defendants who were beaten to death by Brownshirts an angry mob in court. As the Brownshirts angry crowd besieged the building, gunmen, some masquerading as policemen, (somehow - we know not how!) managed to get hold of the defendants. They then beat and shot dead the three men, who had been convicted of killing a Palestinian security official, Osama Qmeil, last week. The defendants were killed in the court's bathroom, where police had tried to hide them after about 500 thugs people stormed in. Heartwarming. Simply heartwarming. "We are all Palestinians," as the kiddies so succinctly put it during the New York gathering last weekend.
A good indicator that any government is better than anarchy, or as Hobbes described man's natural state of violence:
"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no
place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
Which is the reason why Arafat and the current PA is and has been irrelevant.
After lynching them, the mob then dragged their bodies through the street.
In Palestine, the fun's just starting when they're dead! Posted by Charles Johnson [littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/] 2/5/2002 8:55:51 PM
let me see; would I prefer my neighbour to be a suicide bomber, a lyncher, or just a rabid anti-semite who spouts the doctrines of Joseph Goebbels. Gee, so many choices. Posted by Mark 2/5/2002 10:21:38 PM
Yet the left continue to coddle the Palestinian cause no matter what they do? What will it take for the left in the west to suddenly stop taking the side of the terrorists? If 9/11 didn't do the trick, what would? A bomb at a university, a bomb at the UN, what would it take? Posted by Andrew Ian Dodge [dodgeblog.blogspot.com] 2/6/2002 10:44:00 AM
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An Israeli Arab was wounded when Palestinian gunmen opened fire on his vehicle near Palestinian Authority-controlled Jenin. Raslan Mahajna, 40, suffered multiple gunshot wounds to the stomach. He reportedly works as a field investigator for the B'tselem human rights organization. Local Palestinians said that al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade has been ambushing Israeli cars in the area. Oops. Never mind. Somebody'll probably send flowers or something.
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02/05/2002 ||
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Islamic extremists killed 24 people in three attacks in northern Algeria. Nine people were shot dead on the road linking the capital Algiers to Oran in the far northwest. The assailants were wearing military uniforms and had set up a false checkpoint along the road. Another 13 people were shot or hacked to death with knives in the same area when an armed group targeted the family of an armed civilian guard, using an explosive device to break into their home. Two others were killed in the northeastern Kabylie region, where an armed group killed two guards and injured three others in an ambush on their patrol near Tizi Ouzou. Sounds like the boys are making it home from Afghanistan safely.
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02/05/2002 ||
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Pakistani police named three suspected kidnappers of US journalist Daniel Pearl. Police said two militants, Mohammad Hashim Qadeer and Mohammad Bashir, were the "prime suspects so far" believed to have kidnapped Pearl in this southern city. "We will only come to know the extent of their involvement once they are arrested," police said. Investigators also named Imtiaz Siddiqui, who was supposed to have met Pearl on the day he disappeared, as a third suspect. Three other men were detained in Lahore for questioning. But hopes for a breakthrough in the hunt were tempered by Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar, who said the search was not progressing very far. When you're afraid of what you're going to find, you don't look as hard as you might otherwise.
According to sources, the US investigators are working on a theory that the Pearl kidnapping was carried out by renegade elements of the ISI. The investigators demanded, and received, a list of ISI operatives who had served in the agency's Afghan cell in the past five years. As a result, several people have been detained, including an important former ISI official, Khalid Khawaja. The detainees are being interrogated by agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Khalid, the sources say, had been involved with the ISI's Afghanistan operations before his retirement. Even after his retirement, he had been in contact with Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. He may or may not be involved in the Pearl kidnapping, but it is said that he has information that, if divulged, would deal a blow to Pakistani secret service operations in Kashmir and their spy network still operating in Afghanistan. Didn't think it was run of the mill loons. Heard a report on FoxNews that Harkut ul Mujaheddin is suspected.
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16 policemen have been killed in the bloodiest attack by Maoist rebels since Nepal's government declared a state of emergency late last year. Seven guerrillas also died in the three-hour battle after the Maoists attacked a police post at Bhakundabesi in Kabhre district, 120 kilometres (75 miles) east of Kathmandu. A timely reminder that the love of death and destruction in the pursuit of "armed struggle" isn't confined to Muslims.
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02/05/2002 ||
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The largest Muslim separatist group in the Philippines was asked to demarcate its territories to avoid clashes with US and Filipino troops pursuing another Muslim guerilla group. Some leaders of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which has signed a ceasefire pact with the government pending peace talks, have warned they would fire on US soldiers who enter their zones of influence. US forces are in the Philippines on a mission to help their local counterparts eliminate the Abu Sayyaf. Two government soldiers were killed and a private doctor was wounded in two separate attacks by suspected MILF guerillas on Monday. No reason was given for the two attacks. Nor was one needed.
MILF? MILF?!! My lord, if they every becaome prominent in the American newsmedia, they'd be the laughing stock of the American Pie viewing public. Posted by Geoff [grasshoppa.blogspot.com] 2/5/2002 8:25:14 PM
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Abu Sayyaf is seeking a $2 million ransom for the release of American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham. On Monday, soldiers recovered the headless body of farmer Rolly Jul in Maluso town on Basilan, allegedly killed by Abu Sayyaf guerrillas who suspected he was a military spy. 950 Abu Sayyaf members have surrendered or were killed in clashes with the military in the last two years, and at least 142 soldiers have died. The guerrillas have seized 140 hostages over that period, including foreign tourists and Malaysian resort workers. There's a fine line between terrorism and banditti. Sometimes there's no line at all.
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02/05/2002 ||
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The suspected head of Osama bin Laden's European operations and three other Tunisians went on trial on charges of belonging to a terrorist group that crafted false passports and tried to obtain explosives. Prosecutors asked a Milan court to hand-down a six-year prison term for Essid Sami Ben Khemais, whom police believe was sent from Afghanistan to supervise bin Laden's terrorist operations in Europe, including a foiled attack on the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Lighter sentences were expected for the other three defendants whom lawyers said pleaded innocent to terrorism-related charges. There's probably another Head of European Operations by now. Jug time is one of those professional hazards, not nearly as romantic as achieving Paradise after 12 or 14 hours with a few bullets in the innards (which, keep in mind "hurts less than a mosquito bite") but moreso than not quite making it to Paradise and going through life so horribly maimed you scare children. (They don't really talk about that part of it much in Jihad School for some reason...)
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02/05/2002 ||
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French intelligence agents arrested three suspected Islamic militants who are wanted in connection with a foiled plot to attack a cathedral in Strasbourg. The three men of Algerian descent were "particularly dangerous" and suspected of roles in an operational network linked to the alleged plot against the cathedral. French anti-terrorism judges had ordered the arrests. The three men visited training camps in Afghanistan and Chechnya and had ties to Islamic networks operating out of Britain and Belgium and to a terror ring planning to attack U.S. interests in France, including the U.S. Embassy in Paris. The alleged plot to attack Strasbourg Cathedral was foiled in December 2000 after German police discovered video footage of the cathedral and marketplace during a raid on an apartment. Four people were arrested while others suspected of connections with the plot were arrested elsewhere in Europe. The fact that they were even able to conceive of bombing Strasbourg's cathedral is firm evidence that these thugs totally lack souls.
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02/05/2002 ||
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The early December Singapore and Malaysia arrests provided leads to a key arrest in the Philippines on January 15. Three hours before he was to board a plane from Manila to Bangkok, a joint operation by Philippines national police, the armed forces and immigration authorities nabbed a boyish 30-year-old Indonesian national named Fathur Rahman al-Ghozi, then rounded up four alleged Filipino accomplices and seized a ton of TNT, 17 M-16 rifles, 300 detonators and other bomb-making apparatus in a house rented by al-Ghozi in General Santos City in Mindanao. It has now been confirmed that al-Ghozi is identical to "Mike", who in October slipped into Singapore to help JI members prepare for the truck bombings. He is also "Randy Ali" of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) special operations group and, according to one of his four accomplices, Mohamad Kiram, the mastermind of a December 30, 2000 bombing at a Manila light rail transit station that killed 22 people. His involvement in bombings in Indonesia is still under investigation. This is excerpted from a much larger Asia Times article on the Indonesia-Malaysia-Singapore-Philippines axis. Good backgrounder.
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Since the ban imposed by Pakistan's government on radical religious outfits, a new jihadi organization called al-Saiqa has emerged. Al-Saiqa has declared Pakistan Darul Harab (the home of war) and Darul Kufar (home of infidels) and says it will carry out attacks on law-enforcement agencies. In the first armed assault in Pakistan since the ban, the new group hit a Frontier Constabulary (FC) patrol with rockets and sub-machine guns at Thakot in the North West Frontier province. Several of the constabulary were injured. Handwritten Urdu pamphlets bearing al-Saiqa's name were found after the attack. They are said to criticize the government's policies: "Stop meddling in the affairs of Deeni Madaris, the religious institutions are the fort of Islam and we are its soldiers ... the guerrilla war in Pakistan will continue till the Islamic revolution. Now the bullets will not stop. Every Muslim should know that initially every guerrilla war is taken in a casual way but it expands gradually. We take prior responsibility for every attack and killing of law-enforcement men in Pakistan ... it is our duty to wage jihad against this non-Muslim government." This would be the military arm of the indignant fundos opposing Musharraf, probably with the help of elements within ISI. Throw in some unemployed Talibs and some jihadis who escaped Afghanistan with intact skins, and you've got a force ready to roll. This gives the Pak government the opportunity to shoot as many of them as they find doorknob dead - if they want to take it. Show a few links between the wild-eyed killers and the maulvis, and they can be dismantled, too. And find who they're tied to in the intel services and Pakland could be thoroughly cleaned up. Of course, if they don't take the opportunity, Musharraf could end up with the country yanked out from under him and becoming the New Afghanistan. This should be a very bad time to go into the terrorism business - we hope.
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The Alliance
Charles at Little Green Footballs links to mental flatulence by the noted theologian Dr. Muhammad Al-Awain in Arab News and then goes on to discuss the reasoning behind giving people very short haircuts for converting from Islam to Brand X, lopping appendages off for shoplifting, and other quaint Islamic customs. A good read.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/05/2002 ||
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Exiled members of Xinjiang's Uighur population appealed to the international community to condemn China for violating human rights in the Muslim-majority region under the guise of anti-terrorism. Beijing had stepped up a campaign of repression against Uighurs in Xinjiang following the September 11 terror attacks. Using the "pretext" of fighting terrorism, more than 3,000 Uighurs were arrested on political charges in the three months after September 11. During that period at least 12 trials of "splittists and illegal religious elements" took place, with 20 people executed. "The Chinese government justifies its brutal oppression of Uighurs in East Turkestan by describing it as part of the international (anti-terror) campaign," the group said. If they hadn't shown up on jihad in Afghanistan the claim would be much more believable. Now they can take the consequences. China's human rights record makes a right handy club to beat them with, but, hey, ya can't be guilty all the time. Sympathy meter reading: Zero.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
02/05/2002 ||
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Leading intellectual Bernard-Henri Levy will travel to Afghanistan shortly on behalf of the French government to evaluate the needs and expectations of the Afghan population.
The dashing philosopher has traveled to the region several times in the past in support of the late Afghan anti-Taliban commander Ahmad Shah Masood. The 53-year-old Levy rose to fame as part of the generation of new philosophers in the 1970s. He is also celebrated in France as the thinking woman's sex symbol. Break out the Gauloises and the champagne that tastes like pee! Afghanistan is saved!
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
