"No justice, no peace"
very true
U.S. expanding the Afghan war into Pakistan
Sun, 2009-03-08 12:57
#52
Sun, 2009-03-15 12:17
#53
Soon we will be longing for the good ole days of Musharraf
I'm already longing for the good ol' days when babblers didn't quote editorials from right-wing US newspapers as if they were gems of progressive thought...
Some folks need to chill once in a while and get a sense of humour. 
Sun, 2009-03-15 12:18
#54
Pakistan’s Sharif Defies House Arrest to Join Protest
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=agIypNAOF_OE&refer=home
Sun, 2009-03-15 12:29
#55
Our skewed world view won't let us see the real Pakistan
The west can no longer afford to impose its values and notions of democracy on countries that neither want nor need them
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/mar/15/jason-burke-pakistan
We face a related problem in Afghanistan where we are still hoping to build the state we want the Afghans to want, rather than the state that they actually want. Ask many Afghans which state they hope their own will resemble in a few decades and the answer is "Iran". Dozens of interviews with senior western generals, diplomats and officials in Kabul last week have shown me how deeply the years of conflict and "nation-building" have dented confidence in our ability to transplant western values. Our interest in Afghanistan has been reduced to preventing it from becoming a platform for threats to the west. In Afghanistan, as in Iraq, the west has glimpsed the limits to its power and to the supposedly universal attraction of its values.
The west's dreams of a comfortable post-Cold War era have been rudely shaken. We have been forced reluctantly to accept the independence and influence of China and Russia. These are countries that we recognise as difficult international actors pursuing agendas popular with substantial proportions of their citizens. Other countries, particularly those less troubled than Pakistan or Afghanistan, are likely soon to join that list.
This poses a critical challenge in foreign policy. Worrying about the imminent collapse of Pakistan is not going to help us find answers to the really difficult questions that Pakistan poses.
Sun, 2009-03-15 14:52
#56
Pakistan diary: Round one to Sharif
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/03/200931516183336870.html
Then something extraordinary happened.The police moved out of the way. Sharif was free to drive to the high court.
Hameedullah Khan, Al Jazeera's producer, managed to get on the Sharif convoy. He says what he saw was incredible: "The police just left their posts."
As the news of Sharif's escape from supposed house arrest broke, thousands (at least according to his party) came out onto the streets.
At the high court, where hours earlier there were violent clashes between police and protesters, the scene was now a riot of colour and song.
Tue, 2009-03-24 18:06
#57
CIA Drone Attacks Working Well Against Al-Qaeda
http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20090323_6664.php
The stepped-up use of U.S. drone aircraft to attack al-Qaeda operatives in Pakistan over the past six months has seen great success, including the killing of the terrorist network's top chemical and biological weapons expert, the Los Angeles Times reported yesterday (see GSN, Aug. 11, 2008).
No fewer than 38 attacks by Predator aircraft since the end of August have killed many key terrorists, said one senior U.S. counterterrorism official.
"This last year has been a very hard year for them," the official said. "They're losing a bunch of their better leaders. But more importantly, at this point they're wondering who's next."
The CIA-run campaign has also led to distrust among militants as they try to understand security leaks.
"They have started hunting down people who they think are responsible" for the breaches, the official said. "People are showing up dead or disappearing."
Included in the death toll are Abu Khabab al-Masri, the WMD specialist; Rashid Rauf, leader of a defeated plot to plant explosives on a group of trans-Atlantic airliners in 2006; Khalid Habib, a suspected al-Qaeda operations chief; and Usama al-Kini, a suspected participant in the planning of the September Marriott hotel bombing in Islamabad, the Times reported.
The intensified campaign followed the departure of former Pakistani Pervez Musharraf, when CIA officials stopped seeking Pakistani permission for the airstrikes. The officials had suspected that elements of Pakistan's intelligence service were tipping off al-Qaeda to CIA activities.
Tue, 2009-03-24 18:44
#58
What sort of fool believes that nonsense? It's right out of a video game.
With stories like that, one gets the sense that the aren't even trying anymore.
Tue, 2009-03-24 19:18
#59
Excuse me, but al-Qaeda, the database and perennial boogieman, has always been a “Pakistani phenomenon,” that is with the good grace of the CIA and MI6, with a bit of collaboration from the Mossad and German intelligence.How long before we are told the U.S. has to send an infusion of soldiers, pronto, the fight the evil al-Qaeda in Pakistan?
[url=http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12874][color=red][...'s Democracy Movement Flexes its Muscles[/b][/color][/url] 2009
America's Role
It is no secret that the United States, first under Bush, and now under Obama, view Pakistan as the "central front" in imperialism's oxymoronic "war on terror." For decades, the U.S. has viewed Pakistan as little more than a "strategic asset" to advance America's geopolitical goals in Central- and South Asia.
While "terrorism" and "stability operations" in Afghanistan are the pretexts for increased military intervention across the region, resource extraction and pipeline politics are the unspoken reasons for military escalation. Amid a backdrop of global capitalist economic meltdown and crisis, imperialism is playing a desperate hand to gain control over the region's vast oil and gas reserves from their geopolitical rivals, Russia and China.
Despite the crisis inside the country, CIA drones killed 24 people in tribal area of Kurram March 13, in a demonstration that come what may, the United States will do as it pleases. 50 other people were wounded in the attack, said to have targeted a "training center" run by the Taliban. The World Socialist Web Site reports,
Gilani is a US stooge. The goal is to destabilize Pakistan and prevent that country's pro-democracy movement from coming to power. And "al Qa'eda" is just another terrorist wing of the CIA with ISI field offices in Pakistan. [url=http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8001][color=red][b... - Death Plan For Democracy[/b][/color][/url] 2008
Tue, 2009-03-24 21:34
#60
The fools that run our planet, that's who. There must be some drone defense contractors licking their chops at the thought of making quite a few greenbacks on their upcoming sales.
What sort of fool believes that nonsense? It's right out of a video game.
With stories like that, one gets the sense that the aren't even trying anymore.
Tue, 2009-03-24 21:54
#61
Canada should get out of this war now. Our government can't make up its mind what it wants to do so therefore it should get out. soldiers can't be expected to fight in an atmosphere of uncertainty.
At least when we fought the Nazis, the government was committed to the war effort so the soldiers understood why they were there.
Mon, 2009-05-25 21:47
#62
[url=http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/pakistani-townsfolk-take-on-ta... townsfolk take on Taliban[/url]
Clashes illustrate desperation of residents trapped in northern Swat Valley
Trapped behind the front lines and feeling abandoned by their military, the desperate residents of the Swat Valley town of Kalam decided to take matters into their own hands: They took on the Taliban themselves.
There are conflicting accounts of the two-day gun battle that ensued, but the clash highlights the increasingly dire plight of the estimated 200,000 people stuck in the northern part of the Swat Valley as the army battles farther south to wrestle the area back from the Taliban. . . "We are completely trapped here between the army and the Taliban," said Zahoor Shakir, a school principal, speaking from Bahrain, another town in the area, over the intermittent cellphone service available. "They [the authorities] don't give us any rations or allow us to leave." . .
Local uprisings against the Taliban during the past two years have found little or no backing from the army.
"In Kalam, people did resist for two days but they got no support from the authorities," said Khan Saeed, a local mayor from Bahrain. "This is a tragedy. Where are they [the army] when they are needed? That's how trust is damaged."
Is this the same vaunted Pakistani army that took on the Indian colossus in the 1990's? Who is orchestrating this phony war?
Wed, 2009-05-27 19:22
#63
The U.S. is never gonna leave Iraq or Afghanistan.
They did not spend 3 or 4 trillion dollars because it was "Kind-To-Animal Week".
And, as always they will do it all for the sake of the women in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
They use that American "Myth" .... Damsel In Distress ....
Every day the U.S. is going to hide behind the skirts of women in order to justify expanding wars.
Every day, the U.S. media will find some poor ol' Afghan who is unable to go to school.
I collected a few references concerning this topic.
I would of opened a new thread but I keep getting only a preview button and no submit button.
I hope you don't mind.
Calm
The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America
By Onnesha Roychoudhuri
November 03, 2007
[SNIP]
....
SUSAN FALUDI: What also struck me was that the ending was a reprise of The Searchers. That started me wondering about why we were returning to the Western. At the same time, there was all this media commentary that kept referring to how the war on terror was a return to our Indian wars, back to taming the frontier. John Wayne kept coming up. That led me to our frontier mythology and captivity narratives. Our frontier mythology drops about the first 200 years. This frontier mythology that we live by, that we replay over and over again, is in direct contradiction to the actual experience of our original frontier trauma of Northeastern colonies. We sort of covered that all up with the triumphal Great Plains tale that is 75 percent concoction.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: For the first century and a half, all our bestsellers with the exception of Pilgrim's Progress, were captivity narratives. They by and large were told from the woman's point of view and were stories of how women taken captive grappled with it, not by being rescued by a man, but by rescuing themselves through a greater awareness of God, human weakness and dependency on God. It was a worldview shared by men and women and while women predominated in these early captivity narratives, these narratives were read avidly by both men and women. The Mary Rowlandsons were held up as an archetype for both men and women to emulate.
But ultimately, with the passing of Puritanism and with the repeated inability of male leaders and male husbands, to protect families in frontier towns, and with the society falling into a crisis over their inability to enact real security and protection, we begin to see the rewriting of these narratives into a fantasy narrative. In this narrative, the male hero comes to the rescue of the helpless and grateful maiden. The story is rewritten so that women taken captive are in danger of that most female of jeopardy's -rape--and the white man comes to the rescue. This is in the face of the reality that most Northeastern Native American tribes rarely raped captives. Though you couldn't say the same for the white settlers who raped Native American women.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: Over and over again in periods where we feel threatened, or penetrated on home soil, we reflexively reenact this drama. So, for example, after the civil war, the ceded South in its humiliation over not being able to protect its home soil from Yankee incursions, puts on this rescue drama in which the Klan restores its honor by fighting a mythical epidemic of rape of virginal southern white women by black freed men.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: What we're seeing is a consumer culture that devours itself institution by institution. Educating an arm a citizenry with real knowledge, information and analysis was once a counter to cultural myth is now just another arm of commercial culture. Its role is basically to entertain and sedate us and not ask any questions. We don't really have much in the way of journalism; we have media. Media is a medium, the terms itself is content-free. It's suggesting a delivery system, not a rigorous eye on the world.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: I hope against hope, knowing how our culture is and knowing how difficult it is to spark a meaningful discussion in this era, that it will be one of many contributions to launching an honest examination and confrontation of this myth system we live by to our own detriment and peril. I would hope that we begin to grapple honestly with the set of cards we have in our hands instead of painting them over with 10-gallon hat heroes and cringing bonneted girls on the prairie.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: There were plenty of men and women rushing to the site to see how they could help. There were plenty of female first responders. There weren't a lot of female firefighters, but that's because the New York Fire Department is perhaps the most misogynist fire department of any urban fire department in America. Women fought a very bitter lawsuit in the late 70s to get the fire department to even begin to consider admitting. Then, women were treated in ways that just make your jaw drop. Their safety equipment being purposefully damaged, sexual assault, fellow firefighters urinating in their boots. So there's a reason why the NY fire department had .3 percent female profile.
....
SUSAN FALUDI: But the Bush handlers are more skilled in intuitively understanding the cultural script and they understood that at the heart of American mythology is not only a brawny and rescuing cowboy, but a woman in need of rescue. The story doesn't work without that female weakness to set off male strength.
http://www.alternet.org/story/66823
http://www.amazon.com/Terror-Dream-Fantasy-Post-9-America/dp/0805086927
The Ghost of Rambo
The vigilante soldier is back in theaters, dragging decades of cultural baggage with him.
By Jesse Walker
January 28, 2008
[SNIP]
....
Like the previous picture in the series, First Blood Part 2 owed a lot to the western. But where the first film resembles those existential stories where a stranger enters a corrupt frontier town, Part 2 is about a cowboy who rides deep into the wilderness to save white captives from savage Indians. Complicating the racial dynamics, Rambo is now a identified as a halfbreed, part civilized and part wild: We learn that he's half Native American himself (his other half-paging Gustav Hasford!-is German), and he has a brief affair with a Vietnamese woman. But you can still trace the core plot to the Indian captivity narratives that first flourished in 17th-century New England, and which have manifested themselves in the American imagination countless times since then.
....
In other words, Stallone has returned to the classic Indian captivity narrative. Here's how the historian Richard Slotkin described the archetypal captivity story in his 1973 book Regeneration Through Violence:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0806132299
a single individual, usually a woman, stands passively under the strokes of evil, awaiting rescue by the grace of God....In the Indian's devilish clutches, the captive had to meet and reject the temptation of Indian marriage and/or the Indian's "cannibal" Eucharist. To partake of the Indian's love or his equivalent of bread and wine was to debase, to un-English the very soul.
That story has appeared in hundreds of guises in the last three centuries. There are movies that intelligently explore the racial and sexual anxieties that underlie the tale. The most famous is John Ford's 1956 film The Searchers, in which the captive woman does not want to leave the Indian community; her would-be rescuer, a complex antihero played by John Wayne, would rather kill her than watch her become an Indian. The new Rambo, by contrast, merely adopts those old anxieties as its own. The lady prisoner is almost comically pure, kind, white, and blonde, while every Asian character except one-a thoroughly westernized mercenary who was obviously raised in the United States-is either a victim or a savage. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Slotkin writes, when the original captivity narratives enjoyed their peak of popularity, "It almost seems as if the only experience of intimacy with the Indians that New England readers would accept was the experience of the captive (and possibly that of the missionary)." Rambo gives us both, and little more. It doesn't seem to have anything to say about the country's scars, in Vietnam or in the Middle East. Or rather, it doesn't until the final scene, when Stallone does something unexpected.
The Searchers concludes with John Wayne's character, Ethan Edwards, turning his back on home and hearth and walking into the western landscape, unable to join the civilized world. Stallone's movie inverts that: Rambo returns to civilization, hiking down an Arizona road toward the house where he grew up.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049730
....
Everyone remembers Rambo's much-quoted soliloquy at the end of the film, the one where he complains about "maggots at the airport, protesting me, spitting on me, calling me a baby-killer." What isn't quoted as often is a conversation between Teasle and Col. Trautman, the Special Forces officer who trained Rambo. Trautman, played by Richard Crenna, describes his student's immense skills as a fighter, and he suggests the police should defuse the situation by letting Rambo escape, waiting a few days, then putting out a nationwide APB and picking him up later. Teasle refuses.
TRAUTMAN: You want a war you can't win?
TEASLE: Are you telling me that 200 men against your boy is a no-win situation for us?
TRAUTMAN: You send that many, don't forget one thing.
TEASLE: What?
TRAUTMAN: Plenty of body bags.
.....
Their rallying cry was the confrontation between the Branch Davidians and federal police at Waco, a conflict that was retold in two very different ways. For the authorities and most of the media, it was another version of the captivity narrative, with the ATF and FBI unsuccessfully attempting to rescue children from a sexually depraved death cult. In the alternative story, the police were the villains and the confrontation was a massacre, part My Lai and part Wounded Knee.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/124630.html
Wed, 2009-05-27 19:23
#64
Lynch 'N England: Figuring Females as the U.S. at War
By Anna Froula
Fall 2006
[SNIP]
Manufacturing the Face of the U.S. at War
The Captivity Narrative Unraveled
Over a century ago Frederick Jackson Turner (1893) observed that the captivity narrative is crucial to the production of the dominant U.S. culture. Its primary topos is the confrontation between "savage" Native Americans, and white non-Natives, who are depicted as enlightened and morally superior. In early U.S. literature, for example, captivity narratives textualized the Puritan mission to become the shining "city on the hill," a beacon of God's goodness in a wilderness of corruption. Furthermore, the genre's metaphorical contest between good, embodied in white, European, and often female captives, and evil, manifest as savage Native American captors, was used by ministers such as Cotton Mather to warn colonists about the temptations of "Indian" life. The captivity narrative also reinforces patriarchal gender roles. White male colonizers are depicted as selfless heroes battling evil for on behalf of civilization while white women display their femininity by performing vulnerability.
The rhetorical effectiveness of these myths of white superiority and Native barbarity depends on suppressing disquieting anomalies such as evidence of white brutality and feminine militancy. Indeed, despite their patriarchalism, captivity narratives are replete with performances of extreme violence and savagery by white women. For example, one seventeenth-century female captive, Hannah Dustan, steals hatchets from her Abenaki captors and kills four adults and six children in order to escape (Slotkin, 1973). Later she trades their scalps for bounty (McAlister, 2003). Significantly, Mather recounts this episode in a manner that celebrates Dustan's brutality, suggesting that it is inspired by divinely endowed, righteous motherly love. Dunstan, Mather says, was moved to maternal rage because her kidnappers had bashed her newborn's head against a tree before they carried Dunstan away. Such manipulation of the narrative suppresses its anomalous representation of female violence and realigns it with white, Eurocentric cultural values.
Putting Lynch in the Captivity Narrative
The Pentagon's initial story about Lynch exhibits many of the elements of the traditional U.S. captivity narrative. It associates barbarism with dark skinned characters-Iraqi captors-and pits them against Lynch, a white, female U.S. soldier who represents goodness and civilization. It also cultivates patriotic sentiment and in so doing reinforces the dominant U.S. society's view of itself as a redeemer and liberator of inferior others.
Lynch, in her role as captive, is an analogue for the U.S. Terrorized by Iraqis, she figures the U.S., which purportedly had been terrorized by a non-existent anti-U.S. alliance between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. As Kumar argues, "Lynch represents the nation" and simultaneously "highlights all that is 'good' about American society" (2004, p. 302).
But just as Dunstan's brutality is anomalous to the captivity narrative's valorizing of whiteness and European culture, the Pentagon's representations of Lynch as a damsel-in-distress is contradicted by its simultaneous depiction of her as a female Rambo: "Official and unofficial Pentagon statements say Private Jessica Lynch fought until the last bullet after her 507th Maintenance Company drove into an ambush in the Iraqi town of Nasiriyah on March 23" (Sun-Herald, 2004).
This, of course, was not accurate, but the Pentagon long refused to correct its misrepresentation of Rambo Lynch; hence, government and media mythmakers were challenged to reconcile this image of Lynch with patriarchal ideals of womanhood. One strategy they used was to soften Rambo Lynch in numerous depictions of her vulnerability, as noted previously in this paper. Another maneuver was the Pentagon's staging of the Hollywood-like rescue described by Uday. This sleight-of-hand theatricality suggests that female violence embodied in the subversive image of the woman warrior, when employed in self-defense against "savages," doesn't threaten patriarchal institutions when an authoritative male rescues the woman and restores traditional distinctions between women and men.
This pattern of suppressing anomalies parallels Mather's sanitization of Dunstan's savagery toward Native Americans and it is amplified in Rick Bragg's biography of Lynch, I Am a Soldier, Too, which was released on Veterans' Day in 2003, months after media critics had debunked the Pentagon story. In this book Bragg depicts Lynch as the metaphorical successor of the U.S. frontiersman and associates her with the imperialist ideology of Manifest Destiny, which is the notion that the U.S. has an obligation to expand in order to spread its form of democracy and freedom. The term "Manifest Destiny" was coined in the nineteenth century when this doctrine was invoked to justify the U.S.'s westward expansion and, of course, it is grounded in the same set of beliefs articulated in captivity narratives-that white and European peoples are superior to Native Americans and that white non-Natives have a moral obligation to impose their values on others, especially uncivilized, dark skinned others.
Bragg associates Lynch with Manifest Destiny by relying heavily on her Appalachian roots. For example, Bragg records that Elizabeth, West Virginia, which claims to be Lynch's hometown, was named for a pioneer woman and that the town is the site that one early colonizer, Christopher Gist, would have "settled" if he had not been stopped by the French and Indian War (2003, p. 17). Here Bragg links Lynch to the white, European heroes of the Manifest Destiny movement and heightens the "rhetoric of nationalism"4 already present in the Pentagon version of her extraction from Nasiriyah. This in turn reinforces the audience's prosthetic memory of Iraqis as uncivilized and barbaric.
http://lass.calumet.purdue.edu/cca/gmj/fa06/graduatefa06/gmj_grad_fa06_froula.htm
Wed, 2009-05-27 19:27
#65
Manifest Destiny - American Exceptionalism
The imperialist ideology of Manifest Destiny, which is the notion that the U.S. has an obligation to expand in order to spread its form of democracy and freedom.
The term "Manifest Destiny" was coined in the nineteenth century when this doctrine was invoked to justify the U.S.'s westward expansion and, of course, it is grounded in the same set of beliefs articulated in captivity narratives-that white and European peoples are superior to Native Americans and that white non-Natives have a moral obligation to impose their values on others, especially uncivilized, dark skinned others.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rogers/rogers179.html
This rich and wonderful country--the progress of which at the present time, is the wonder of the old world--was until recently, inhabited exclusively by the lurking savage and wild beasts of prey.
If the rapid progress of the "Great West" has surprised our people, what will those of other countries think of the "Far West," which was destined at an early day, to be the vast granary [grain producing region], as it is now the treasure chamber of our country?...
In the foreground, the central and principal figure, a beautiful and charming Female, is floating westward through the air bearing on her forehead the "Star of Empire...."
On the right of the picture is a city, steamships, manufactories, schools and churches over which beams of light are streaming and filling the air--indicative of civilization.
The general tone of the picture on the left declares darkness, waste and confusion. From the city proceed the three great continental lines of railway.... Next to these are the transportation wagons, overland stage, hunters, gold seekers, pony express, pioneer emigrant and the warrior dance of the "noble red man."
Fleeing from "Progress"...are Indians, buffaloes, wild horses, bears, and other game, moving Westward, ever Westward, the Indians with their squaws, papooses, and "pony lodges," turn their despairing faces towards, as they flee the wondrous vision. The "Star" is too much for them.
http://www.colorado.edu/AmStudies/lewis/west/gastap.htm
American Progress
By John Gast
1872
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rogers/rogers179.html
Museum: American Progress
John Gast
http://www.cprr.org/Museum/Ephemera/American_Progress.html
John Gast
Wed, 2009-05-27 20:00
#66
Hiding Behind the Skirts of Women
By Jodie Evans
May 21, 2009
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/21-9
And Canadians are getting American news.
We forget that these journalists are "American's First".
They will say anything and do anything which they personally believe to in America's interest as a nation.
They never said that they felt like Canadians.
But they got us all believing what is "American Interests" are Canada's Interests.
I hardly think so.
Calm
"We're journalists, but we're American citizens first".
Interview with Tim Russert
Aired May 18, 2005
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0505/18/lkl.01.html
A conversation with Chris Matthews of MSNBC with Chris Matthews (Clip)
Chris Matthews on Charlie Rose makes the astounding pronouncement that he knew full well that what he was saying on the air about our invasion of Iraq was wrong but he didn't want to admit it since he felt it would have been bad for the country. He also takes a cheap shot at bloggers while he's at it.
May 25, 2009
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10314
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardball_with_Chris_Matthews
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/hardball-joan-walsh-smacks-down-george-bus
(Windows Media Presentation)
http://crooksandliars.com/medialoader/8422/d8664/wmv/CR-Matthews-Bloggers-052609.wmv
TIM RUSSERT: [W]hen I talk to senior government officials on the phone, it's my own policy our conversations are confidential. If I want to use anything from that conversation, then I will ask permission.
http://busharchive.froomkin.com/BL2007020801013.htm
http://charliedavis.blogspot.com/2009/04/note-on-going-off-record.html
Mon, 2009-06-01 14:48
#67
In Pakistan an Exodus that is Beyond Biblical:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/in-pakistan-an-exodus-that-...
"The exodus of people forced from their homes in Pakistan's Swat Valley and elsewhere in the country's north-west may be as high as 2.4 million, aid officials say...
"The very existence of Pakistan was at stake. We had to start the operation": Pakistan PM Yousuf Gilani
Tue, 2009-06-02 04:05
#68
Terrorists Killing Pakistanis with Indian/US Weapons
"Finally the military admits what Pakistan's pro-US government has been hiding for months. The weapons that the terrorists - the fake Pakistani Taliban - are using to kill Pakistanis are coming from U.S. and India. Some members of the Karzai puppet regime have privately confirmed to Pakistani officials that they are incapable of stopping Indian terrorist activities on Afghan soil. To avoid embarrassment, Washington quietly 'leaked' a story that US weapons given to Afghan security forces have reached insurgents. The timing of the leak conveniently coincided with the Pakistan army discovering the American double game. The Americans have been taking Pakistan for a ride for seven years..."
Tue, 2009-06-02 04:11
#69
Terrorists Killing Pakistanis with Indian/US Weapons
"Finally the military admits what Pakistan's pro-US government has been hiding for months. The weapons that the terrorists - the fake Pakistani Taliban - are using to kill Pakistanis are coming from U.S. and India. Some members of the Karzai puppet regime have privately confirmed to Pakistani officials that they are incapable of stopping Indian terrorist activities on Afghan soil. To avoid embarrassment, Washington quietly 'leaked' a story that US weapons given to Afghan security forces have reached insurgents. The timing of the leak conveniently coincided with the Pakistan army discovering the American double game. The Americans have been taking Pakistan for a ride for seven years..."
Fri, 2009-06-05 01:10
#70
[url=http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v5/newsindex.php?id=415369]Phony suspect in Mumbai terror released, India irked[/url]
NEW DELHI, June 2 (Bernama) -- India is fuming after a Pakistan court released the prime accused in the Mumbai terror attack, where over 170 people were killed last November. The Lahore High Court released Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, leader of the banned outfit Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), after he was kept under house arrest for 60 days. "We are disappointed at the release of Hafiz Saeed. (He) has a long and well-established background of planning and launching terrorist acts against India. His professed ideology and public statements leave no doubt as to his terrorist inclinations.
Fri, 2009-06-05 03:28
#71
Obama's "Af-Pak" War: Destabilizing a Nuclear Nation
"No one can deny that the Afghanistan/Pakistan theater of war now belongs to President Obama...Obama the candidate, vowed to make Afghanistan and Pakistan the focus of his efforts, and to disengage from Iraq. There is no evidence that Obama ever intends to leave Iraq, but he has put his stamp on Afghanistan and created a humanitarian disaster in Pakistan...
"The people of Swat were ordered to leave their homes to create a free-fire zone for the Pakistani army. Anything that moves in the region is considered to be Taliban. Refugees in the camps tell stories of whole extended families being wiped out by government airpower and artillery...
"Pakistanis will at some point overthrow a government that is subservient to the country they hate most in the world besides India: the United States..
So once again we see an American President responsible for the mass murder and exodus from their Tribal Territories of millions of Indigenous people, Pashtun mainly, while simultaneously he announces that he intends to make nice with the Muslim world. We clearly have another monstrous US war criminal doing what they have always done best - killing people and pushing them off their lands. Sound familia?
I really am beginning to sicken of NDP press releases trying to hustle bucks with this bushdark devil's name or that of members of his "inner-circle,' "learning from the best" etc. Either they're ghouls or stupid ghouls (help I'm driiiiiffffftiiiing....)
Wed, 2009-06-10 03:24
#72
[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/world/asia/10pstan.html?ref=asia]Attacked, Pakistani Villagers Take On Taliban[/url]
More than a thousand villagers from the district of Dir have been fighting Taliban militants since Friday, when a Taliban suicide bomber detonated his payload during prayer time at a mosque, killing at least 30 villagers . . .
The uprising is not the first time that Pakistanis have formed their own militias to stand up to the Taliban, and previous efforts have often collapsed largely because the government and military did not come to their aid.
But the latest attempt is significant, revealing the determination of the people of Dir to keep out both the Taliban and the military and to prevent their area from turning into another war zone, like the nearby Swat Valley, where millions have fled fighting.
The rebellion, locals said, gives the government a chance to demonstrate to the Pakistani people that it is serious in supporting them this time.
Of course, the Pakistani army, elitist friends of the USA in that country, and army intel ISI controlling the Taliban and "al-Qaeda" are not serious in supporting ordinary people in this phony war on terror. The phony war continues.
Wed, 2009-06-10 10:15
#73
remind
meanwhile, another luxury hotel was bombed in retaliation
Wed, 2009-06-10 15:30
#74
meanwhile, another luxury hotel was bombed in retaliation
Ya Jeez, they'd better get a few more thousand US troops over there pdq before Balkanization of a sovereign country occurs. They cant have nuclear weapons falling into the hands of Zbigniew's Islamic gladios. Tough call. Sounds like a job for the Pentagon, and maybe even NATO intervention if things get out of hand for the well-armed Pakistani army with years of experience defending against an Indian colossus.
Wed, 2009-06-10 16:47
#75
Of course, the Pakistani army, elitist friends of the USA in that country, and army intel ISI controlling the Taliban and "al-Qaeda" are not serious in supporting ordinary people in this phony war on terror. The phony war continues.
Gunship backing for Taliban fight
Helicopter gunships have been sent to a district in north-western Pakistan to support hundreds of tribesmen fighting the Taliban, officials say.. . .
The army says that it did not come to aid the tribesmen earlier because they were engaged in close-quarter fighting with the Taliban and the military was worried it might hit them by mistake.
. . .
The government has encouraged local citizens to set up militias, known as lashkars, to fight the Taliban in the region bordering Afghanistan where al-Qaeda and the Taliban are known to have hideouts.
Wed, 2009-06-10 17:43
#76
[url=http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7746]Pakistan and the "Global War on Terrorism"[/url] 2008
These various "terrorist" organizations were created as a result of CIA support. They are not the product of religion. The project to establish "a pan-Islamic Caliphate" is part of a carefully devised intelligence operation.
CIA support to Al Qaeda was not in any way curtailed at the end of the Cold War. In fact quite the opposite. The earlier pattern of covert support not only extended, it took on a global thrust and became increasingly sophisticated.
The "Global War on Terrorism" is a complex and intricate intelligence construct. The covert support provided to "Islamic extremist groups" is part of an imperial agenda. It purports to weaken and eventually destroy secular and civilian governmental institutions, while also contributing to vilifying Islam. It is an instrument of colonization which seeks to undermine sovereign nation-states and transform countries into territories.
It's a phony war waged between phony enemies. Brits and US have been provided covert support for separatists in oil and gas-rich Baluchistan for several years. More great game colder war bullshit.
Wed, 2009-06-10 21:25
#77
It's a phony war waged between phony enemies.
Yet you have no quarrel with the Canadian Crusader army, as long as it's killing "Taliban".
Wed, 2009-06-10 21:41
#78
It's a phony war waged between phony enemies.Yet you have no quarrel with the Canadian Crusader army, as long as it's killing "Taliban".
No I'm an NDPer. Canadian troops have no business over there period. Our's are not leaders in the Tory and Liberal Parties when in power in Ottawa. They are vicious toadies and lap poodles for Uncle Sam and the supranational corporate agenda. Our largest trade partner's economy is based largely upon war. Any war will do.
Two things to consider here which our newz media are careful never-never to mention:
1. Pakistan's army intelligence, the ISI, has been a long-time appendage of the American CIA and maintained close ties in the weeks leading up to 9/11 and continuing
2. "al-Qaeda" is a creation of the CIA. The ISI provides covert support to al-Qaeda as well as the Taliban and other radical Islamic groups in Pakistan and abroad.
Wed, 2009-06-10 23:31
#79
howardbeale
Ok, so the bombing of the mosque was a reichstag fire?
Bombing their mosque wouldn't naturally piss the locals off?
Wed, 2009-06-10 23:57
#80
Iraq was levelled by the neocon's lies. And before that, US "Liberal Democrats" created a militant Islamic state in Bosnia before NATO levelled Yugoslavia with bombing. What's one mosque in Pakistan? And who cares about the locals? Apparently not the Pakistani army who've left people in outlying villages to their own devices. Half a million man army versus 10,000 or so Taliban? Come on!
Thu, 2009-06-11 00:44
#81
howardbeale
Yes, yes, its all just a yanqui monolith
Thu, 2009-06-11 01:07
#82
They used to be considered just braggarts where er they went. Now theyre murdering braggarts.
Thu, 2009-06-11 01:08
#83
howardbeale
Use Gladio again. That always works
Thu, 2009-06-11 02:18
#84
Well so far all youve nailed up are personal insults, which is generally not encouraged here. And there are lots of pro-USA forums out there for apologetic toadies of the vicious empire to nod up and down in rapid agreement with one another. But we dont do that here.
Thu, 2009-06-11 09:52
#85
howardbeale
I'm not pro USA. You have to pour that into my posts. I'm more interested in how the tribes people might be pissed enough, of their own free will, as opposed to simply being dupes and stooges, to fight the taliban. I find your analysis can be repetitive and over simplified. I dont think that makes it 'personal,' but I guess I was abrupt. Sorry.
Sat, 2009-06-13 13:50
#86
New US Commander in Afghanistan Assembles Team of Assassins
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/mcch-j12.shtml
"McChrystal's military career and those of the chief officers he is selecting as his aides, however, suggest that what is being prepared is a dramatic escalation of the killing in Afghanistan, through the utilization of the type of methods employed during Operation Phoenix in Vietnam or the death sqaud killings during the US intervention in El Salvador.."
And of course Canada will do its level best to play the satan's-little-helper- role it does so well and against which there is little protest, least of all from the so-called "representatives"
Sat, 2009-06-13 14:24
#87
I'm not pro USA. You have to pour that into my posts. I'm more interested in how the tribes people might be pissed enough, of their own free will, as opposed to simply being dupes and stooges, to fight the taliban. I find your analysis can be repetitive and over simplified. I dont think that makes it 'personal,' but I guess I was abrupt. Sorry.
The way I understand it is that people around the Islamic world and otherwise want social democracy. They dont want neoliberal ideology forced on them by capitalist Draculas in Pakistan with help from the west. And at the same time, Pakistanis and Afghans dont want fundamentalist Frankensteins ruling them either. Imagine for a minute that Pakistanis are ordinary people whove had democracy dangled infront of them like a carrot but never a reality. Talibanization or religious radicalization of Pakistan and Afghanistan during the 1980s and 90s was never a democratic process - it was forced on them by Saudi royals with massive covert aid from the west. Iranians wanted social democracy in the 1970s and 80s, and what they got was militant Islam and war fueled by arms dealers around the west and with federal approval in Washington and London. That was done on purpose, too. There's always a method to their madness.
Sat, 2009-06-13 19:58
#88
howardbeale
I know and agree with all of that. I'm having a hard time seeing the room for individuals to make decisions in your posts. Everyone, from the President to the peasant seems lashed to the rolling wheel of history.
Sun, 2009-06-14 04:06
#89
I know and agree with all of that. I'm having a hard time seeing the room for individuals to make decisions in your posts. Everyone, from the President to the peasant seems lashed to the rolling wheel of history.
It would certainly seem to be the case with clear patterns established and recorded in recent history. And the results for covert and direct US military interventionism have become somewhat predictable by now. Former US mil. General Robert McNamara says today that Gulf of Tonkin incident was basically a lie, a false pretext to go to war and cost more than 50 thousand American lives in VietNam not to mention the criminal loss of life and destruction for the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laosians etc. And surprise-surprise - today [url=http://www.thevillager.com/villager_319/talkingpoint.html]there are many in the US and around the world[/url] who now believe that the Bush administration and other departmental officials lied constantly throughout the 9/11 commission hearings. The motive for mass murder ie "war" is always money and projecting imperial-like power around the world. Colonization is now achieved with much smaller military occupations than was true of traditional empire building, dollarization or Eurofication, indebtedness to the banking cabal, IMF etc
The US military and NATO are cold war era relics and for which the purpose of is lost on even their own military leaders. Some US military advisors have suggested that the the post-cold war window of opportunity for US unilateralism is over and that the west should be dealing directly with newly formed Asian SCO and perhaps encourage those countries to secure their own international borders and combat terrorism. Obama isnt running that country today anymore than Bush was in control or Clinton before him and so on. US congress has gradually become irrelevant to democracy since the national security act was signed in 1947. It's a vicious empire, and I think the whole world understands that now.
Sun, 2009-06-14 09:53
#90
Boom Boom
US Drones (and bribes) kill Pakistani civilians
excerpt:
WASHINGTON (IPS) - The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's refusal to share with other agencies even the most basic data on the bombing attacks by remote-controlled unmanned predator drones in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region, combined with recent revelations that CIA operatives have been paying Pakistanis to identify the targets, suggests that managers of the drone attacks programmes have been using the total secrecy surrounding the programme to hide abuses and high civilian casualties.
Tue, 2009-06-16 07:07
#91
howardbeale
It would certainly seem to be the case
I find that worldview dehumanizing. There's no room for people in it. I also think it enters the realm of metaphysics.
Tue, 2009-06-16 14:44
#92
It would certainly seem to be the case
I find that worldview dehumanizing. There's no room for people in it. I also think it enters the realm of metaphysics.
Oh dont get me wrong, Howard. [url=http://www.funkiness.com/dictators]Uncle Sam has made many friends[/url] over the years. Military General Kayani is their new friend in Pakistan. He's so friendly they think he should be running the country, like several US-backed military dictators in Pakistan before him. You must understand that Uncle Sam has worked diligently to spread democracy around the world for most of the last century to now. And there's been lots of room made for ordinary people in places like football stadiums in Santiago de Chile, football stadiums in Kabul through to real people places like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay naval base. Uncle Sam has been very people oriented for a long time. My god, after the doctor and the madman were finished with Cambodia, they ran out of places to bury the people.
Wed, 2009-06-17 11:15
#93
Obama's Gift to Pakistan - A Civil War
http://www.counterpunch.org/khan06172009.html
"A civil war is brewing in Pakistan. Thanks to President Barack Obama, who is shifting the American war from Iraq to "the real enemies" operating from Afghanistan and Pakistan. With a willful caricature of the Pashtuns, who are successfully resisting the occupation of Afghanistan, Obama's advisors are forcing Pakistan, a subservient ally, to help the war in Afghanistan. This help is suicidal for Pakistan..'
The Pashtun are indigenous tribal peoples, Canadian and US Crusaders have repeatedly referred to areas attacked as "Indian territory", how ironic and disgusting that we are again attacking and invading indigenous peoples and their lands at home and abroad. Maybe that explains the relative acquiesence of the North American public to this war, especially in Canada - From Afghanistan to Akwesasne!
Tue, 2009-06-23 13:48
#94
Pakistan Military Begins Offensive in Waziristan
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jun2009/paki-j23.shtml
More Eurasian Obamawar
Thu, 2009-06-25 05:16
#95
Not only is the war expanding to Pakistan. It is spreading to other Central Asian (oil rich Caspian Basin) countries as well.
http://news.antiwar.com/2009/06/24/nato-chief-afghan-surge-could-drive-t...
Sun, 2009-07-05 11:10
#96
Afghan Offensive to Destabilise Balochistan: PM
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/international/...
Miners bank $3B on Baloch project
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/KG03Ae01.html
"Canada's Barrick Gold and Chile's Antofagaste plan to invest up to US$3 billion in a copper and gold mine at Reko Diq in Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan..poor and sparsely populated Balochistan, already home to native insurgent groups seeking a greater say in local affairs, has also recently become a new focus of the US "war on terror" as it spills over from neighbouring Afghanistan."
Once again Canada is front and center in the genocide of Indigenous peoples for purposes of ripping off their resources
Thu, 2009-07-09 14:42
#97
South Waziristan Tribal Territories: US Drones Kill Nearly 80 in Two Days
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jul2009/paki-j09.shtml
Thu, 2009-07-16 12:21
#98
Thu, 2009-07-16 12:48
#99
Blood and Oil in Central Asia
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/07/16
"In the past month, two seemingly unrelated events have turned central Asia into a potential flashpoint: an aggressively expanding North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a nascent strategic alliance between Russia and China. At stake is nothing less than who holds the future highground in the competition for the world's energy resources."
Thu, 2009-07-16 14:10
#100
Will Canada join the Drone War in Pakistan?
http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=170447
"Amid recent reports that Obama Democrats are quietly lobbying the Tory government to keep troops in Kandahar province beyond 2011, Stephen Harper is finding himself in an increasingly akward dilemma.."
Fri, 2009-07-17 00:24
#101
[url=http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14360]CIA linked to Benazir Bhutto's assassination?[/url] July 14
Washington is caught up in a political scandal centering on former Vice President Dick Cheney. It follows a move by the new CIA director Leon Panetta to cancel a secret plan to find and kill Al-Qaeda leaders.
He says that, while in office, Cheney ordered the agency to withhold information about the anti-terror program from Congress.
According to investigative journalist and RT contributor Wayne Madsen, "This assassination team may have targeted politicians in other countries. One name mentioned was former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who may have been a victim of this program.
[url=http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14382]Is Obama Continuing the Bush/Cheney Assassination Program?[/url] July 15
Back in 1967, the CIA's own Inspector General produced a 133-page internal report that implicated "every living CIA officer who has served as chief of the clandestine service----Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell, Richard Helms, and Desmond FitzGerald---in conspiracies to commit murder," writes investigative journalist Tim Weiner in his book "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA"(Anchor Books). That was 40 years ago, and the CIA's path has been downhill ever since.
Now House Intelligence committee Democrats have revealed CIA Director Leon Panetta's comments that "top CIA officials have concealed significant actions...and misled" Congress since 2001. Actually, the Agency's been misleading Congress since President Truman authorized it in 1947. CIA lying isn't news, it's tradition. So is murder.
After Truman departed, the CIA often took its orders to "terminate" foreign leaders directly from the White House, as when President Kennedy authorized it to kill Castro.
A little insight into US shadow government and sometimes referred to as the new Murder Inc.