From The Mirror, by the Learned Mr Pilger. I couldn't resist...
Since last October, Afghan leaders have reported American aircraft destroying villages "too small to be marked on any map" with "more than 300 people killed" in one night. In a family of 40, only a small boy and his grandmother survived, reported Richard Lloyd Parry of the Independent. We used teeny-tiny bombs, too small to be seen with the naked eye to destroy the villages that were too teeny-tiny to be marked on any map. They were inhabited by teeny-tiny people, too, so small that munchkins used to come by and beat them up. It was really a mercy...
Out of sight of the television cameras "at least 3,767 civilians were killed by US bombs between October 7 and December 10...an average of 62 innocent deaths a day", according to a study carried out at the University of New Hampshire in the US. This is now estimated to have passed 5,000 civilian deaths: almost double the number killed on September 11. It's Marc Herold again. If you repeat a lie often enough, some people will come to believe it. It's not dead yet?
There is no evidence that a single leader of al-Qaeda has been captured or, to anyone's knowledge, killed. Neither has the leader of the Taliban. The change in Afghanistan is minimal compared with the murderous feudalism that ruled during the 1990s, and before the Taliban came to power. Who's the Abu Zubaydah fellow we have? Something about him being Binny's successor? Howcome he doesn't count? And then there's that bunch of dead guys who were impersonating al-Qaeda. Really, they should sue.
For all the cosmetic changes in Kabul, the capital, women still dare not go unveiled. "The Taliban used to hang the victim's body in public for four days," quipped the new American-installed regime's Minister of Justice. "We will only hang the body for a short time, say fifteen minutes, after a public execution." So how can you claim that's not an improvement? Surely you're not claiming there's no one in Afghanistan worth hanging?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 12:44 pm ||
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"Y'know... I can't help but feel a certain "Hue Massacre" sentimnet underlying Pilger's screed.
No doubt about it--the quality of this propaganda is beyond me, and it's obviously useless to attempt to argue against it or even discuss it.
But--I do feel a certain "Hue Massacre" mentality underlying it. And I find it frightening. I can easily picture him clubbing "evil" Yanks (or even "Yankee puppets" [to use ancient, slightly-dated Leftist jargon])to death and dumping the bodies contemptuously in mass graves. Pilger--and anyone who takes him seriously--is beyond moral hope.
Be warned, however--the Communist perpetrators of the Hue Massacre (committed during the 1968 Tet Offensive) have thus far eluded justice. And most of the Western Leftists and Anti-Americans who bear [at least] moral responsibility for the success of the Communists remain unrepentant, and guys like Pilger (and his fanbase) are a part of this longrunning phenomenon. These guys "won" once--and there's no reason to think they won't "win" again. In a sense, Al-Qaeda, the Jihad-fascists, and the Masssacre of 9/11 are bastard children of their's.
I must confess I'm at a loss on suggestions of how to deal with these people. While the "Pilgers" of this world consititute a "community" whose members always reinforce each other's mindset, they still reach out [unceasingly] to the mainstream. From what little I can see, most of us on the blogosphere only seem to be talking to oursleves, preaching to the choir so to speak. There is no use trying to argue--or even mock--the Pilgers; but their propaganda memes are deadly cultural viruses that must somehow be quarantined. The good thing about LGF and other blogs is that they provide a way to survey the spread of the epidemic, but what about quarantine? Treatment? Cure?"
Posted by: Jay ||
07/07/2002 14:14 Comments ||
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Sure there are folks worth hanging in Afghanisan. Look at all them Merkuns! Peace-loving peoples at the Mirror and Guardian would love to hang Merkuns. And only Merkuns.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/05/2002 13:03 Comments ||
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At the tail end of the recent war, Northern Alliance principals chose to deliver Taleban parties, an armistice. In other words, the nominal "allied" indulgence of an armed peace, has allowed the same enemy to continue its aggression by other means. I don't think that people will ever learn that winning a limited war means: you put yourself in a position where you will have to wage total war on the same enemy.
Saddam Hussein's stepson remained jailed on immigration violations Thursday for enrolling at a U.S. flight school without applying for a student visa. Mohammed Nour al-Din Saffi, a citizen of New Zealand, had planned to attend a Miami-based flight school used by one of the Sept. 11 hijackers. Authorities in New Zealand said there was no evidence Saffi, 36, was connected to any terrorist group. The Iraqi leader's stepson was traveling as a tourist under a visa waiver as a citizen of New Zealand, INS officials said. The violation is that he entered the United States without applying for a student visa that would have allowed him to take courses. He is being processed for deportation. Except for the vague association with Sammy, there's nothing to this story. Book closed. I feel sorry for the guy.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 12:39 pm ||
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Taiwanese police announced Wednesday they had impounded a fishing boat the 'Sheman 18' for carrying 79kg of heroin in 198 packs and firearms, which the crew had picked up from a North Korean navy vessel in North Korean waters. The police said the Sheman 18 belonged to a drug syndicate and that officials from the North were highly likely involved as a North Korean warship had escorted it. The nine-man crew has been placed under arrest. According to defectors, North Korea has been growing poppies to make opium in the northeast of the country since 1997, in a bid to earn foreign currency by exporting drugs. They say Thai chemists worked at a factory there to produce the narcotics, and the bags used the Thai language to disguise its source. The People's Workers Party and the military apparently run the operation. That explains a lot, doesn't it? Those suckers are sampling their own recreational medication...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 04:35 pm ||
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Police looking for possible links to terrorism searched the apartment of an Egyptian who opened fire at Los Angeles' airport, killing two people at Israel's El Al ticket counter before being shot to death by a guard. Al Qaeda couldn't make it because they had to wash their hair on the 4th...
The shootout came on the Fourth of July, when the possibility of terror attacks had put security on high alert around the country. The FBI, however, was withholding judgment on whether to label the attack as terrorism. "We've never said it's not terrorism," FBI spokesman Matt McLaughlin said. "We can't rule that out, but there's nothing to indicate terrorism at this point." McLaughlin also suggested it might be a hate crime. A hate crime that involves the deliberate assassination of random people at the El Al counter. And the difference between that and terrorism is...?
The shooter was identified as Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, a 41-year-old limousine driver. He opened fire in Los Angeles International Airport and was shot dead by an El Al guard. Hadayet, who also went by the last name Ali, had California driver's licenses listing two different birth dates â April 7, 1961, and July 4, 1961 â according to the FBI. You could tell he was an Arab from the multiple IDs and the assumed name...
Ticket agent Victoria Hen, 25, and Yaakov Aminov, 46, a jeweler and father of eight who was dropping off a friend, were fatally shot before two El Al guards overwhelmed Hadayet. The guards and a woman were wounded; another woman suffered heart problems. The FBI released the gunman's name late Thursday as police in suburban Irvine, 35 miles southeast of the airport, searched his apartment. Police Lt. Sam Allevato said they were looking for his wife and two sons. Neighbors said they went to Egypt for the summer. Convenient, wasn't it?
Neighbors said Hadayet was quiet but became incensed when an upstairs neighbor hung large American and Marine Corps flags from a balcony above his front door after Sept. 11. The flags remained there Thursday night. That neighbor declined to talk to reporters, but another neighbor, Steve Thompson, said Hadayet "complained about it to the apartment manager. He thought it was being thrown in his face." How offenseive of those infidel neighbors: flying the national flag after a national tragedy perpetrated by Arabs, many of whom had false IDs and all of whom felt nothing but contempt for this country...
Hadayet's car was found in a nearby parking structure, triggering an evacuation there until a bomb squad found nothing unusual in the black Mercedes. Guess that's something, anyway...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 04:36 pm ||
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The difference between a hate crime and terrorism?
Numbers.
Posted by: Steve White ||
07/05/2002 13:06 Comments ||
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Dawn reported today that efforts by Pakistan to secure the release of its citizens had been turned down by the Afghan warlords. Abdul Rashid Dostum has been cooperative, but other warlords want money in return for releasing the Pakistanis. "We have yet to ascertain the exact number of Pakistanis languishing in different private jails in Afghanistan," a source said. Islamabad has procured the release of some 300 Pakistanis who were arrested by the Northern Alliance forces during the US-led operations against the Taliban regime. Most of them have reached Peshawar and would be set free after interrogation, the source said. Golly, that's too bad that their families have to pay to get them out of the calaboose. I wonder if any of them have had second thoughts about whether they should have gone into somebody else's country and lorded it over the natives, beating their wives for them, and trying to impose their beliefs on them whether they wanted them or not.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 12:39 pm ||
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Three people, including a former leader of the Taliban, were killed in different incidents in Bajaur on Wednesday. Maulvi Ghulam Syed Haqqani, former Taliban leader, was shot dead by unidentified assailants while he was going to a nearby mosque. He died on the spot. Sources said Maulvi Haqqani had also been attacked several times in the past. In one such attack some months back, his son was gunned down, they added. Maulvi Haqqani had held important positions in the provincial administration of Kunar during the Taliban rule. The sources said the deceased was accused of having sold arms and ammunitions and vehicles after the Taliban were ousted from power. So it probably wasn't even our guys who bumped him off. A pity.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 09:14 pm ||
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The police conducted raids in various localities on Thursday and recovered the remains of the Al Qaeda men killed in an encounter with the security agencies on Wednesday. Fingers, hair, and parts of the brain of the Al Qaeda men were recovered from Jangle Khel, KDA and Jarma localities. These pieces of bodies were taken away by the sympathizers of Al Qaeda from the scene of encounter. Ouch. Sounds like they really did shoot them to pieces...
The raids were ordered after the intelligence agencies got wind of the plan of the local Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal's leaders to bury the remains. The police arrested two leaders of a local religious group who wanted to organize a gathering at the scene of the encounter to offer prayers for the Al Qaeda men. The police, however, freed them after their supporters warned the administration that they would attack the police post where the two were being kept in a lock-up. It's obvious who's in control in that area, and it isn't the coppers...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 09:17 pm ||
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So the MMA wanted to bury remains of al-Qaeda. Yet another reminder: the MMA was created by the Jamaat-i-Islami which controls the Islamic Society of North America whose leaders are paid consultants to the State Department. I wonder if George Washington is watching that fact go through people like crap through a goose? People: please put your brains in drive.
A bomb in a crowded market outside Algiers killed at least 30 people today and injured many others. It was the worst killing of civilians in a single attack in civil strife-torn Algeria this year. The bombing came as the violence-torn North African nation celebrated the 40th anniversary of Independence from French colonial rule after a savage war. It also occurred three days after the Army Chief-of-Staff Lieutenant-General Mohamed Lamari declared that the government had won its war against Islamic guerrillas. Missed a few, did he? We guessed that...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 12:39 pm ||
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A bomb blast at the office of Nepalese Prime Minister Sher Bahudar Deuba's newly-formed party here this morning left seven injured, three of them seriously. Vice-chairman of the party and Minister for Works and Physical Planning, Chiranjibi Wagle, was on the first floor of the building at the time of the explosion, but he escaped unhurt. Immediately after the explosion, a security team rushed to the scene and cordoned off the area. No one has claimed responsibility for the explosion, but it is believed that the Maoists could be behind it. No one has been arrested so far. It's either Maoists or, much more important in the PM's mind, political rivals.
Prime Minister Deuba later visited the office to assess the damage. After breaking away from the Nepali Congress, Deuba had floated a new outfit and opened the party office recently, ahead of elections due in November. That's certainly more important that a few rebels, no matter how much of the country they're already in control of...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 12:39 pm ||
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In continuation of the brutal campaign against members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, another of the partners in the "War Against Terrorism", the Egyptian government, continues to detain dozens of Hizb ut-Tahrir members, including three from Britain. Reza Pankhurst, Ian Nisbet and Majid Nawaz continue to be harshly treated and have endured torture at the hands of the Egyptian security services - including the use of electric shock treatment. Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain plans to further intensify its campaign to put the spotlight upon the West's unscrupulous allies in the "War Against Terrorism" , by holding a march to the Uzbek Embassy in London on Saturday 20th July. Simultaneous marches will take place in Europe, Australia and Indonesia. It is undeniable that the real motive for waging "War Against Terrorism" is not to counter terrorism. The real motive is clearly to establish and strengthen US hegemony and influence over the Islamic lands, their people, and their resources in order to repress any semblance of Islamic political resurgence. Everyone knows the War on Terror is directed at all Muslims, everywhere, and the only reason for it is that we just don't like them. They're icky and they wear those things on their heads, and we're jealous because their women are so good-looking. We want to destroy them out of pure jealousy, when you come right down to it, because we know we can never be as holy as they are. We pretend it's because we're opposed to barbarism, sadism, brutality, and inhuman cruelty, but the truth is that we just can't take the purity of Wahhabi Islam. Those airplanes crashing into our buildings, all those dead people, that's just a pretext.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 09:21 pm ||
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Three police officers and a suspected Islamic militant were killed Friday in a shootout during a raid on an apartment in the southeastern Turkish city of Elazig, a news agency reported. Police suspected the apartment was being used by the Turkish militant group Hezbollah. Two officers were killed when shooting erupted between the police and a man in the apartment. The suspected militant also was killed and a third police officer was shot and later died of his injuries. Turkish Hezbollah isn't related to the Lebanese group of the same name. It's made up of Islamists who want to establish an Islamic state in Turkey. They're notably more sadistic than the run of the mill thugs, having a liking for videotaping themselves as they torture the occasional victim to death.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 09:36 pm ||
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Chanting "Death to Israel", thousands of Palestinians vowed to avenge the death of a senior militant leader as they marched at his funeral in the Gaza Strip on Friday. Jihad Al Omarin, the local leader of an armed group linked to Fatah, was killed when his car exploded Thursday night in what Palestinians called an Israeli assassination. Al Omarin is known by Israeli intelligence to be a colonel in one of the Palestinian security apparatus. His assistant, 33-year-old Wael al-Namara, was also killed in the blast. G'bye, boys. Enjoy the 12-year-olds. Say hello to Himmler for us...
Members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades said Omarin's death was a big blow to the group because of his vast experience. "It is a great loss. One thousand dead Israelis will not compensate us," one member, who declined to be named, said at Omarin's funeral in Gaza City. But, using a euphemism for bomb-makers, another added: "Palestinian breeding stock mothers will not stop breeding engineers." That's all the common folklemmings Heroic Paleostinian Mothers are good for, but they do it so well...
At least 30,000 people took part in the funeral march. Masked men had gun sex fired their rifles in the air. Some people wept.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 12:39 pm ||
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Had gun sex? ;-)
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/05/2002 16:10 Comments ||
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The IDF continued Friday its clampdown over most of the Palestinian cities in the West Bank, preventing access between them. The IDF shortened the duration of the curfew in most Palestinian towns.
On Friday morning IDF troops accompanied by tanks and bulldozers demolished two Palestinian police buildings in Khan Yunis, Gaza Strip, and left the area after the demolition was completed.
Early Friday morning Israeli forces arrested one Palestinian in Gaza and 18 others in the West Bank. An IDF statement said they were "suspected of terrorist activity." The Israelis have been conducting nightly arrest sweeps in the West Bank and less frequent operations in Gaza, operating in cities and towns where soldiers have imposed curfews and also entering villages.
The military said three suspects were arrested in Jericho, the only one of the eight main Palestinian population centers that has been spared an Israeli incursion in the past two weeks. Israeli forces continue to hold the other centers, enforcing curfews. Jericho seems to be the only Paleostinian city not populated exclusively by loons. Wonder why that is...?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 12:39 pm ||
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U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell reasserted Washington's position it would no longer deal with Yasser Arafat and said U.S. officials had embarked on a diplomatic effort to bring reluctant Europeans on board. Powell told Reuters he would soon meet fellow members of a "quartet" of Middle East peacemakers, and Arab leaders, for fresh talks aimed at ending 21 months of Israeli-Palestinian violence. The envoys are expected to address differences between the United States and its European and Arab allies over Arafat's future. The nursing home or... where?
Powell maintained the United States was not trying to dictate to other countries involved in peacemaking but said if they wanted to talk to Arafat they should deliver the same message as President Bush did. "This requires some change in the way that we're doing business and until we see that, we don't think we can work with the current leadership of Chairman Arafat," Powell said. That's diplospeak for "fugeddaboudit." I'm so proud...!
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 04:34 pm ||
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Palestinian Police opened fire in the air as Hamas supporters and residents of Rafah pelted the police station with stones and a home-made hand grenade on Wednesday. The demonstrators were calling for the authorities to condemn to death a man accused by Hamas of collaborating in the killing by Israeli forces of six people, including two Hamas officials, two weeks ago in a helicopter raid in southern Gaza. The man had reportedly been kidnapped last week by Hamas, who announced he would be executed. But members of Fatah negotiated his surrender Tuesday to the Palestinian Authority for trial, Palestinian officials said. The crowd who massed outside Rafah police station Wednesday included relatives of those killed in the Israeli attack, who wanted to ensure the alleged collaborator was executed. Well, that's certainly a nice sign. Sure hope we see more of it in the coming days...
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 08:54 pm ||
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The Israeli security cabinet decided on Wednesday to end daylight curfews gradually in seven Palestinian cities reoccupied by the Israeli army. "We will lift the curfew during the day so that normal life can be gradually restored," Raanan Gissin, a Sharon adviser, said. It would be left to Israeli commanders to determine when the security situation permitted an easing of restrictions. "We can't punish an entire people," Israel's dovish foreign minister, Shimon Peres, was quoted by a political source as telling the cabinet in making his case for an easing of restrictions. Within this framework, the Israeli ministers decided to permit five thousand Palestinian workers to be employed in Israel. That's a nice carrot to go with the sticks being rather deftly wielded lately. It's probably premature — it won't take too many "laborers" exploding to shut off the flow.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 08:56 pm ||
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Rebels in Indonesia's Aceh province said on Friday they had begun releasing some of the 18 people held captive from two separate abductions, including crew from a boat carrying supplies to an Exxon Mobil plant. The releases came after Indonesia's government on Thursday branded the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) rebels terrorists for the first time and hinted it might impose emergency rule in the province. They've already told the military to go ahead and tromp them...
The military accused GAM of being behind last month's abductions of nine crewmen of a boat chartered by oil and gas giant Exxon Mobil Corp. Nine local volleyball players were also seized in a separate incident last month. "Some have been released but I can't say how many, all will be out by tomorrow. All are in healthy condition," GAM spokesman Teungku Sofyan Daud told Reuters by satellite phone from Aceh. Asked why GAM took the 18 hostages, Daud said: "All of them were being used by the military. The boat itself has been often used to transport things for the military." He did not elaborate. It was unclear why the volleyballers had been taken hostage. They were looking for a good game?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
07/05/2002 09:27 pm ||
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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.
