Hi there, !
Today Sun 01/13/2013 Sat 01/12/2013 Fri 01/11/2013 Thu 01/10/2013 Wed 01/09/2013 Tue 01/08/2013 Mon 01/07/2013 Archives
Rantburg
531206 articles and 1854425 comments are archived on Rantburg.

Today: 71 articles and 172 comments as of 5:09.
Post a news link    Post your own article   
Area: WoT Operations    WoT Background    Non-WoT        Politix   
Taliban suspects arrested over Karachi polio killings
Today's Headlines
Headline Comments [Views]
Page 4: Opinion
0 [336076] 
1 20:25 trailing wife [336086] 
30 21:56 dacama [336092] 
1 01:14 tu3031 [336077] 
1 04:02 Threater Flusoper9823 [336076] 
Page 1: WoT Operations
0 [336076]
2 16:15 Besoeker [336078]
0 [336072]
4 17:00 Rob Crawford [336099]
3 16:12 Shipman [336077]
0 [336077]
0 [336082]
11 22:28 gorb [336106]
0 [336079]
0 [336074]
0 [336090]
0 [336083]
0 [336075]
0 [336075]
2 16:01 Pappy [336076]
0 [336119]
0 [336078]
0 [336080]
0 [336082]
0 [336077]
0 [336075]
Page 2: WoT Background
0 [336080]
4 16:47 Thing From Snowy Mountain [336085]
1 21:38 Orion [336086]
0 [336070]
0 [336068]
0 [336068]
0 [336068]
0 [336072]
2 10:39 Rjschwarz [336073]
1 13:04 Mullah Richard [336073]
0 [336073]
0 [336078]
0 [336074]
1 01:34 JosephMendiola [336076]
0 [336077]
0 [336074]
0 [336076]
0 [336078]
2 16:32 trailing wife [336074]
0 [336079]
1 09:52 Redneck Jim [336078]
1 14:29 swksvolFF [336079]
4 14:25 swksvolFF [336074]
2 16:13 Shipman [336078]
14 15:50 Muggsy Mussolini1226 [336078]
Page 3: Non-WoT
1 22:03 JosephMendiola [336089]
1 19:15 Thing From Snowy Mountain [336105]
0 [336074]
7 16:19 Shipman [336078]
7 15:02 ryuge [336070]
0 [336079]
0 [336075]
3 16:36 Ebbang Uluque6305 [336096]
12 21:15 swksvolFF [336092]
0 [336074]
0 [336073]
1 03:33 Threater Flusoper9823 [336070]
6 12:33 Duck Hunter [336073]
Page 6: Politix
0 [336078]
11 22:18 JosephMendiola [336108]
7 21:58 Pappy [336098]
3 16:26 Shipman [336072]
4 16:39 AlanC [336068]
13 21:06 Redneck Jim [336101]
8 21:10 Redneck Jim [336107]
-Short Attention Span Theater-
ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
From ChicagoBoyz and a hat tip to the Instapundit. There have been variations of this thought through the last century. What if every other Jew in Germany, Hungary, Poland and western Russia had been willing to kill a stormtrooper before his or her own death? And so on.

But we don't, we cower, we fail to believe that evil exists -- indeed, that it is rather common-place -- and thus sometimes evil wins. Mr. Solzhenitsyn understood this and refused to bow.

Food for thought.

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?

Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?

After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you'd be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria [Government limo] sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur -- what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked.

The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The GULAG Archipelago
Posted by: Steve White || 01/10/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || [336092 views] Top|| File under:

#1  You can really depend on Cowardice. Its as basic as bread.

The majority are cowards. There are only six men out of any hundred who will fight. Most of the rest will cringe, beg, and kneel.

Its practically dependably certain.

Let's give them our guns and then bend over. We might even get used to it after a while. All those people living in suburbia with cuddly Golden Labradors and children named Kimberly and Brad. Let's all sit in front of the TV and watch CNN and wait for "somebody" to "do something ".

Biden is your friend ? And Nancy Pelosi has your best interests at heart. They are just doing their job.
Fuck that shit, Mr. Threater Flusoper9823. Or "Stuff and nonsense", if my previous bluntness shocks you. I'm leaving your post up so everyone can see exactly to what I am responding.

The majority of humans are sheep, the minority split unevenly between sheepdogs and wolves. This has always been so, and is not changed by propagandist terms like cowardice. But as we saw on Flight 93, American sheep are a different breed, well able to turn and trample wolves to death when roused, freeing the sheepdogs to track the wolves to their lairs.

And about those surbanites you so despise, sneering like the black turtleneck-clad, French clove cigarette-smoking pseudo-intellectuals of my oh-so-callow youth: Those denizens of the sterile 'burbs are living out the bourgeois values that make America so much more worth living in than, say Pakistan. They work hard, improve their homes, make sure their childen do their homework and get to enriching activities like soccer and piano lessons that will make them better people and better citizens. They vote as a matter of principle, and tend to vote Republican -- it's the cities, after all, that house the Democratic party machines which ensure regular 110% turnouts.

The sturdy country yeomen Jefferson praised have mostly moved to the suburbs, where they quietly continue to create and maintain the nation our sheepdogs find worthwhile to stepping forward to protect. These people are the backbone and heart of the country, paying the taxes, caring for the aging parents, and trying to put kids through college and started in life. It is they who are the majority of gun owners and TEA partiers and the retired military folk. They have already organized themselves to fight, Mr. Threater Flusoper9823. They have, in fact, been fighting. They didn't bother to wait for you to lead them.

And you dare sneer at them.

Most sincerely yours,
trailing wife at 6:31 ET
Posted by: Threater Flusoper9823 || 01/10/2013 3:48 Comments || Top||

#2  TW I think that you're over reacting. The only thing wrong with TF's comment is that his percentage is exaggerated.

In those oh so intellectual, elite 'burbs of Mass or DC for example I think that the majority (aka 51 of a hundred) are cowardly in the face of assertive gov't.

The caveat is that they may not be cowardly, but they may be conspirators (not mutually exclusive). Afterall they consider themselves the elite and destined to rule. Why would they fight those who will place them in power?
Posted by: AlanC || 01/10/2013 7:08 Comments || Top||

#3  Our New Years Update:

Kimberly has graduated from UCLA and is now working at a law firm in the Bay area supporting the Code Pink movement. Brad is in his sixth year at William and Mary and is on an academic sabbatical hiking in the Himalayas with his fiancé Greg. Sadly, we had to put Ginger down last year. She began to make threatening gestures at Shyntranda the mailperson. Tom's mother is doing better, (hikes the mall every day with her group from Glenmanner) but she still insists she doesn't know any of us and wants to come home, which we all know is impossible. We suspect mom may have been watching Fox and tutoring Ginger behind our backs.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/10/2013 7:50 Comments || Top||

#4  Most of us suburbanites don't live in those elite communities, AlanC. We here in flyover country have elected Republican governors, for the most part, who are balancing budgets, refusing to get involved in Obamacare, and not talking of confiscating legal guns.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ (molon labe), the title of this article, translates as "Come and take them." It was the answer King Leonidas gave to the Persian demand that the Spartans surrender their weapons.
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/10/2013 7:59 Comments || Top||

#5  Hurrah, Hurrah, Hurrah TW for allowing the "don't trifle with me' fury to vent! Evidenced before you Gentlemen is a demonstration of this nation's foundation of greatness, rightous indignation.
AlanC, voting (51:47) is a pale shade of the Solzhenitsyn rebellious rant. TF's 94:6 count is much closer to the number found on the killing field.
Posted by: Skidmark || 01/10/2013 8:15 Comments || Top||

#6  "Come and take it" was also the motto on the home-made silk banner flown by the militia of Texas, when the stout citizens of Gonzales (aided by other volunteers from across the Anglo settlements of Texas) refused a request from the military governor to return a little 6-pound cannon that they had been loaned for protection. The citizens feared that it would be used against them. This defiance kicked off the Texas war for independence in 1835. Whole story here.
Posted by: Sgt. Mom || 01/10/2013 8:21 Comments || Top||

#7  TF's 94:6 count is much closer to the number found on the killing field.

Skidmark, what is the ratio of those Americans suffering a home invasion? The killing fields of external war (the only kind we Americans have fought post 1865) are a different circumstance and a different sector of the population.
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/10/2013 8:37 Comments || Top||

#8  If Obama goes for firearm confiscation (which is the ultimate goal of the left), he may just see what the American people are made of. I suspect that he may "misunderestimate" them and have his hands full.
Posted by: JohnQC || 01/10/2013 9:32 Comments || Top||

#9  I once knew a Cambodian gentlemen who escaped the "Killing Fields" of the Khemer Red by fixing small electric motors, fans, etc. Others who were summoned to the task and failed.... were executed. I suppose we should all study up on our electronics and home repair skills. Repair and LIVE!
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/10/2013 9:36 Comments || Top||

#10  @TW

In Bill Whittle's blog I read that one day when he was a child after seeing a picture of people being led to the gas chambers by a ridiculous number of guards without automatic weapons he asked to his father: "Why is that these people didn't revolt? Do you think Americans would have reacted like that" And his father said, that no he didn't think so.

I think that people used to be armed don't fel defenceless in front of a an armed man even if they happen to be unarmed at this moment. They will try to find means to knock him out and grab his weapon while people who have become used to be unarmed will feel powerless and will fail to exploit opportunities to reverse the tables. Look at that Norwegian who roamed an island for several hours shooting people without anyone (and most of the people were either in theur early tewnties or in their late teens ie the best age for a soldier) trying to ambush him despite the numerous opportunities in an island who was mostly covered by woods. That is what you have most to fear by Obama's projects of disarming America, it will not be merely because you will be at the mercy of his thugs but because it will make sheep of you.
Posted by: JFM || 01/10/2013 9:45 Comments || Top||

#11  They aren't going for confiscation right now; just floating the idea to establish the negotiating window (see Overton Window), such that the eventual laws will seem less onerous/more acceptable than they 'would have been'.
Posted by: Glenmore || 01/10/2013 9:50 Comments || Top||

#12  picture of people being led to the gas chambers by a ridiculous number of guards without automatic weapons. JFM

There was no media (as we know it) available at the time. "Guards without automatic weapons" were the message.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/10/2013 9:56 Comments || Top||

#13  Sorry TW, my work is in crimes of the mind, not of the neighborhood. I don't have a number for that.
Posted by: Skidmark || 01/10/2013 10:27 Comments || Top||

#14  Bravo TW! While these people slowly turn us into criminals their fasism will eventually turn on them.
Posted by: 49 Pan || 01/10/2013 10:37 Comments || Top||

#15  Maybe everyone is afraid of the Tiny Dot.
Posted by: tipper || 01/10/2013 10:55 Comments || Top||

#16  Fuck that shit, Mr. Threater Flusoper9823

I've been buried at work and am just getting to the Burg for the first time today. Otherwise I would have said it first.

Enough of the sneering crap.
Posted by: lotp || 01/10/2013 11:57 Comments || Top||

#17  No compromise!
Posted by: JohnQC || 01/10/2013 12:28 Comments || Top||

#18  Bravo, Bravo TW!

The key to understanding elites of all types is that they leave the dirty work to others. They live off the design margin created by others and hand out goodies from that design margin to those who leave the task of working to others. As such, the elites have an inflated opinion of themselves because all they have to do is "pass a law", "make a regulation", or "sign an executive order", and VOILA, 'tis done!

Our advantage is that gun owners are VERY aware of the history of guns in Nazi Germany and in communist countries. There is no ignorance of what is in store. There is no excuse for not knowing. Ignorance and unknowing cannot be imposed by the MSM upon an unwilling and ungullible listener/viewer.

ÌÏËÙÍ ËÁÂÅ is the phrase bringing their little fantasy world crashing down on their heads. It's saying "No. YOU WORK FOR IT!"

Then SHOOT while their Maynard G. Krebs manifests itself.

Posted by: Ptah || 01/10/2013 12:53 Comments || Top||

#19  Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, TF. But you really hit a nerve. In the future you may want to use the /sarc tag on such comments. Er, that is, unless you really mean it. But I'd rather avoid the wrath of folks like TW who can shred you with a very few well chosen words and make you look like a fool for the whole wide web to see. They don't call it Rantburg for nothin'.

I myself never had a gun. I never felt the need for one until now. It's ironic that all these hysterical calls for gun control have created such a great demand for guns.

As for the downstairs hall, can I bring my machete? Or would a baseball bat be better? Oh, I know, how about if I bring 'em both?
Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 || 01/10/2013 13:00 Comments || Top||

#20  Once they prosecute a list, eventually everyone will end up on a list.
Posted by: swksvolFF || 01/10/2013 13:45 Comments || Top||

#21  No Tea for U!
Come back 1 year.
Posted by: Shipman || 01/10/2013 16:21 Comments || Top||

#22  Living in one of those "elite" 'burbs of Mass for the last 30 years I've gotten a jaundiced view of too many of my fellow burbites.

This will not be a philosophy based totalitarian takeover like Naziism or Fascism or Communism. This will be a slow subtle, bit by bit, assault on freedom a wearing away of liberty little by little. So far I've seen nothing that leads me to think that the constant drip will not win over the granite.
Posted by: AlanC || 01/10/2013 16:37 Comments || Top||

#23  @#18: Our advantage is that gun owners are VERY aware of the history of guns in Nazi Germany and in communist countries. There is no ignorance of what is in store.

I had to stop and think a moment to realize how powerful a statement that is.

You are exactly right: it is because I know what happened in Germany, and Russia, and elsewhere, that I know what gun confiscation (e.g., "forced buy-backs") really portends. It's not about preventing violence per se, it's about preventing violence being done to the government officials who will then take the next step to oppress us.

Our Founders understood this, and they didn't even know what a Nazi was (but King George III, him they knew well, and he wasn't nearly a Nazi).

I am much like Ebbang Uluque6305: I do not and have never owned firearms. I'm a doctor; I don't think about taking lives, and I've almost always lived in communities and neighborhoods where I've felt (and where my family felt) safe. I don't hunt, I don't shoot skeet, and I am not a collector. I've never had the urge.

Now for the first time in my life I'm contemplating buying a pistol. Not just to spite the government, and that's a statement in and of itself, but precisely because if, if, if it's going to come down to a midnight breaking down of my front door, I'm going to be prepared.

ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ.
Posted by: Steve White || 01/10/2013 16:55 Comments || Top||

#24  Steve: I can't be there in person. But I'm sending along some pistol hand grip tips for your upcoming purchase.
Posted by: Besoeker || 01/10/2013 17:49 Comments || Top||

#25  There was recently an article on Pravda.ru saying, "Don't let them take your firearms!"

Who'd imagine 25 years ago?
Posted by: twobyfour || 01/10/2013 19:15 Comments || Top||

#26  Huzzah, tw! Give 'im hell. :-D

Dr. Steve, I think you're making the right choice - for your family and your life. Too bad it's come to that. Damn Leftists. :-(
Posted by: Barbara || 01/10/2013 19:20 Comments || Top||

#27  Now for the first time in my life I'm contemplating buying a pistol. Not just to spite the government, and that's a statement in and of itself, but precisely because if, if, if it's going to come down to a midnight breaking down of my front door, I'm going to be prepared.

Then you better buy a shotgun. Preferably a 12 gauge. Look at the Remington 1100 TAC-4, semi-auto. Has an extended magazine tube. Holds 8 in the pipe and one in the spout.

Properly used it will stop a lot of trouble. If you have to shoot a certain type that might be wearing a vest, shoot for the groin. Slugs or heavy buck, bleed outs are quick and you break a pelvis they go down and stay down.
Posted by: Secret Asian Man || 01/10/2013 19:27 Comments || Top||

#28  --#20. In regards to lists. As the blogger in New York showed the world when a newspaper published a map of registered gun owners and he reponded by publishing a map of the homes of the newspaper's employees. Lists work both ways.

In the end the newspaper hired armed guards wich is much more expensive than a .38 Special.
Posted by: wr || 01/10/2013 20:07 Comments || Top||

#29  Most of us suburbanites don't live in those elite communities, AlanC.

We're not as worthy as Angleton9 Threater Flusoper9823, tw dear, because we've never swam in a Coachella Valley irrigation canal in our undies as 'youts', or get an intense erotic satisfaction with using lurid snuff-prose.

Frankly the 'just six men' is crap. Unless one believes that the six shrug off the bullets and the shrapnel and don't need the corpsman who gets the task of plugging the holes, pumping in the fluids and putting the body-parts in some semblance of order for the docs down the line to save, all the while dodging the same bullets and shrapnel or the other six that get the honor of hauling the broken bodies of the 'killer-hero' to the medevac.

Chocolate soldier. Pheh.
Posted by: Pappy || 01/10/2013 21:52 Comments || Top||

#30  Here is an exact copy of the Gonzales Flag.

http://www.galleryoftherepublic.com/txflags/gonzales.htm
Posted by: dacama || 01/10/2013 21:56 Comments || Top||


India-Pakistan
Lone rangers in the drone zone
[Dawn] FOR several months last year, I was at the receiving end of occasional emails that conformed to a particular pattern.

They all began with a reasonably uncontroversial critique of the political process in Pakistain, and they all concluded on the same note: that one man had all the answers.

His name? Maulana Tahirul Qadri. I'm sure many other journalists were bombarded with similar missives as part of what was clearly a well-orchestrated electronic mailing campaign.

Upon arriving in Pakistain just after the middle of December, I discovered there was a lot more to it. The vast majority of rickshaws in Lahore prominently bore the maulana's visage on their back-flaps, accompanied by an exhortation to flock to his Minar-e-Pakistain rally on Dec 23. Innumerable banners and hoardings bore his message: it's not the political process but the state that deserved to be preserved.

Qadri's statements on the eve of his public meeting provided some cause for concern. He noted, for instance, that there was a time when the United States was keen to provide aid to Pakistain for building dams, but the advent of terrorism had compelled it to resort to drone attacks. He uttered not a word about the circumstances, let alone the US role therein, that had spawned the terrorists.

It was also notable that he dated Pakistain's troubles back to 1989, thereby implicitly sanctifying the previous dozen years of ruthless military rule wherein lie the roots of so many of the nation's subsequent dilemmas.

He also took considerable pride in recounting that he had been invited to address US military graduates. Even more disconcertingly, he proclaimed himself a Nobel Peace Prize nominee who had barely been pipped to the post by the European Union
...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
. There was no clear explanation of why he might have been deemed a worthy recipient.

The Minar-e-Pakistain gathering was numerically impressive, even though the claim of two million attendees was, in all likelihood, a considerable exaggeration. Contrary to the impression Qadri might have given, though, he did not quite pull a rabbit out of his distinctive headgear. What he produced bore a closer resemblance to a red herring.

Equipped with a meticulously flagged copy of the national constitution, he read out a selection of provisions, allowing three weeks for a dispensation that would magically do away with exploitation, feudalism and corruption within 90 days -- or more. If not? Well, then the nearly-Nobel maulana would lead a march on Islamabad. And not just any march, but one four-million strong.

Qadri's deadline runs out tomorrow. The Occupy Islamabad stunt is scheduled for Monday. His votaries, it is threatened, will not disperse until the maulana's demands are accepted. Tahrir Square has been cited as an example. And it has lately been announced that half the flock could be diverted to Lahore in view of the Punjab government's hostility.

The Islamabad march will be peaceful, but Qadri has pre-emptively refused to take responsibility for the actions of his followers in the Punjab capital.

In his Dec 23 speech, he also endorsed a role for the military and the judiciary in setting up an interim government, never mind its unconstitutionality. Qadri subsequently suggested he might, if pushed, accept the post of interim head of government, but later recanted.

It is hardly surprising that most commentators have questioned his credentials as well as his motives. The Pakistain Army and US representatives have both denied backing the maulana -- but then they would, wouldn't they?

There is certainly little consolation to be derived from the fact that the initiative of this Canadian citizen, whose reputed moderation as an Islamic scholar and welcome fatwas against terrorism have evidently made him palatable to Washington, is being backed by a British citizen who has this week vowed to unleash a "political drone attack" to which "no one in the country will be able to respond".

The concern is not just that two swallows do not a spring make, but that at least one of them can be certified as a bird of prey while the other's intentions are open to interpretation as an attempt to revisit the interventions by khaki-clad would-be saviours of yore.

Hardly anyone would dispute that feudalism and exploitation -- much of it capitalistic -- are indeed offensive sores on the body politic. Barring a genuine revolution, however, it is hard to imagine them being stripped off outside the political process.

Whereas it may indeed be hard to commend the present government on any score other than that of its unprecedented survival for five years, there is little cause to doubt its commitment to elections. If Qadri can be confident of mobilising four million souls next week, why does he appear so hesitant in opting for the electoral route to change?

Apart from my encounter via television with the messiah-complex maulana, another highlight of my visit to Pakistain was the political coming-out ceremony of Bilawal Baby Bhutto Zardari
...Pak dynastic politician, son of Benazir Bhutto and grandon of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. As far as is known, Bilawal has no particular talents other than being pretty and being able to memorize political slogans, but he had the good luck to be born into the right family and he hasn't been assassinated yet...
on the occasion of his mother's fifth death anniversary. If it was stage-managed against his will, he tried his best not to let it show, as father and son repeatedly referenced the family ghosts in Naudero.

One can only wonder whether he, in quoting Faiz Ahmed Faiz on toppling thrones and tumbling crowns, was obliquely referring to Daddy Z, whom Benazir decreed as her successor "in this interim period until you and he decide what is best". It's unlikely the idea of offering her firstborn as a sacrificial lamb crossed her mind, but if it did, she evidently did not put it in writing.

There were plenty of lowlights, too, notably the liquidation of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
minister Bashir Bilour -- who, unlike his brother, was consistently unequivocal in his distaste for the Taliban -- and the murder of volunteer health workers involved in the campaign to eradicate polio
...Poliomyelitis is a disease caused by infection with the poliovirus. Between 1840 and the 1950s, polio was a worldwide epidemic. Since the development of polio vaccines the disease has been largely wiped out in the civilized world. However, since the vaccine is known to make Moslem pee-pees shrink and renders females sterile, bookish, and unsubmissive it is not widely used by the turban and automatic weapons set...
. Both acts, in only slightly different ways, bear witness to perverted mentalities. As John Lennon pointed out long ago, "You can live a lie until you die/ One thing you can't hide is when you're crippled inside."

The aphorism, unfortunately, does not apply exclusively to the Taliban.
Posted by: Fred || 01/10/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || [336077 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan

#1  OK, you know I had to do this...
Posted by: tu3031 || 01/10/2013 1:14 Comments || Top||


The women from Kohistan
[Dawn] FOUR women clapping and two men dancing appeared in a grainy cellphone video from a remote village said to be in Kohistan
...a backwoods district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa distinguished by being even more rustic than is the norm among the local Pashtuns....

The ill-fated gathering was said to have occurred somewhere at the end of May 2012. A few days later, a television channel reported that all four women had been killed, having been sentenced by a jirga for the crime of dancing, clapping and mixing with men of another tribe.

No one knows if the incident in the video actually took place. No one knows if the four women in the muted wedding finery of a village celebration were even present in the same room as the men. No one knows if they are alive now.

The two men in the video, Bin Yasir and Gul Nazar, who had also been sentenced to death by the jirga, were nominated in a police report for the crime of filming women in a conservative region. They fled from the village but were eventually apprehended and put in prison.

In the days immediately after, the video and its sordid aftermath were splashed across television screens all over Pakistain, the women and their naïve claps all underscoring the tragedy that every viewer knew was about to befall.

There were many stories about each step of the incident. The men and women in the video belonged to different tribes, the Azadkhel and the Salekhel. It was the Azadkhel tribe, to which the women belonged, that condemned all six to death. Mohammad Afzal, whose younger brothers had appeared in and been accused of having taken the video, alleged that the four women had been killed in May last year according to the writ of the tribal jirga and that he had himself seen their fresh graves in the forest.In June, a commission sent to the village on the orders of the Supreme Court, which took suo moto notice of the issue, found otherwise. Farzana Bari, who headed the fact-finding inquiry team, confirmed that the four women were alive. However,
you can observe a lot just by watching...
she also said that she had met only two of them and that it was not possible for any of them to be produced in court.

Mohammad Afzal continued to insist that the women were in fact dead. The court believed the fact-finding commission and the case of the girls from Kohistan was closed.

Rumours of the women being alive or dead were not the only confusion on the issue; reports have also accumulated that assert that the video was fake, with the boys having edited it together as an ill-thought prank.

Regardless of the truth of that matter, the video was not done with taking the lives of Kohistani villagers. Just a few days ago, three brothers of the men in the video were also killed and several women of the tribe injured when men seeking to avenge the dishonour of their women being videotaped surrounded the house of the accused men and opened fire.

According to one of the survivors, the men who came to kill said that they would not rest until the entire family was eliminated. The day after, the Supreme Court issued a statement saying that it was considering reopening the case of the women from Kohistan.

In a country where the murders of prime ministers and presidents go unsolved for decades, it is uncertain whether the truth about the girls from Kohistan will ever be known. To hope for DNA analysis of the buried bodies or any sort of examination of the video itself to see if it is authentic seems, within the given context, a fantastic scheme.

It is, however, important to look at the case of the girls from Kohistan as an expression of just how modern technology collides with tribal mores in an explosive and deadly mix. The secret video camera, with its sinister ability to capture unwitting and perhaps unwilling subjects in acts of spying, represents a new tool for moral policing that far outdoes the human eye in surveillance.

The case of the women from Kohistan is hardly the first expression of this collision of the never-seen with the always-present. A year before the Kohistan case, a man of the Madakhel tribe in a district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
was killed allegedly for having a picture of a girl on his cellphone.

Mohammad Yasin had fled to Bloody Karachi
...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous...
but was apprehended by men of the tribe who killed him.

Unsurprisingly, no one knows what happened to the girl but a jirga met a few weeks after his death to ban cellular phones with cameras within their region. In other cases in the past year, blasphemy charges have also been levelled using cellphone text messages as a basis for accusations.

The point underscored by all of these cases is the same: in a country where public shame remains the backbone of morality and what is visible is the basis of sin and accusation, the arrival of the cellphone camera poses a big threat. As can be seen in the case of the Kohistan women, the very existence of the video indicts before a trial, shames before analysis and convicts without further evidence.

What it represents, however, is the constriction of private space even further and an extension of moral policing into realms that were never before visible -- and experiments (such as the piecing together of this image with that) suddenly possible.

In the coming days, the court might take the case up again. But the real question, likely to go unanswered in the morass of legalities, is the issue of privacy for the woman or the citizen or the wedding guest whose simple, helpless presence can be transformed, taped and broadcast with the cheap, sly surveillance of a camera on a phone.
Posted by: Fred || 01/10/2013 00:00 || Comments || Link || [336076 views] Top|| File under: Govt of Pakistan

#1  It is the Will of Allah. But.....

On the bright side though, they ARE killing EACH OTHER.
Posted by: Threater Flusoper9823 || 01/10/2013 4:02 Comments || Top||


Iraq
Iraq Protests Present Muslim Brotherhood With Opportunity
From 2010 until now, the Iraqi scene has grappled with a paradox that does not align with the Arab Spring protest movements. The Muslim Brotherhood, which rose to power in countries swept by the Arab Spring, found itself left out of the political game in Iraq since then. They lost the 2010 elections as their popular bases swept the al-Iraqiya list, which is led by a secular Shiite. Some of the leaders of this coalition are former members who withdrew from the Islamic Party, which represents the Brotherhood in Iraq.

Not only does this scene reveal the state of frustration plaguing the Brotherhood in Iraq after they dimmed while their counterparts rose in the Middle East, but it also largely explains why the party is clinging to the demonstrations that recently broke out in the Sunni cities. These protests started to demand specific rights, but they soon started to include slogans and ideas that took on a sectarian dimension. Tribesmen and politicians stopped addressing the protesters, and cleared the way for clerics who, for the most part, belong to the Iraqi Brotherhood.

The year 2009 was a turning point in the political fate of the Islamic Party. That year brought signs of the end of the party’s influence in Sunni cities, which the party used to represent in local governments and parliament.

Posted by: tipper || 01/10/2013 10:12 || Comments || Link || [336076 views] Top|| File under:


Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Analysis: Study shows rise of al Qaeda affiliate in Syria
A jihadist group with links to al Qaeda has become the most effective of the different factions fighting the regime, according to a new analysis, and now has some 5,000 fighters.

The group is Jabhat al-Nusra, which was designated an al Qaeda affiliate by the United States government last month. It is led by veterans of the Iraqi insurgency "and has shown itself to be the principal force against Assad and the Shabiha," according to the study.

CNN obtained an advance copy of the analysis, set to be released Tuesday by the Quilliam Foundation, a counterterrorism policy institute based in London.

"The civil war in Syria is a gift from the sky for al-Nusra; they are coasting off its energy," the lead author of the report, Noman Benotman, told CNN.
Posted by: tipper || 01/10/2013 10:07 || Comments || Link || [336086 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Oh goody.
Posted by: trailing wife || 01/10/2013 20:25 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
41[untagged]
7Govt of Pakistan
5Arab Spring
4Govt of Syria
3al-Qaeda in North Africa
1Commies
1Govt of Iran
1Govt of Iraq
1al-Qaeda
1Ansar Dine
1Hamas
1Lashkar-e-Islami
1Lashkar e-Jhangvi
1Salafists
1Thai Insurgency
1TTP

Bookmark
E-Mail Me

The Classics
The O Club
Rantburg Store
The Bloids
The Never-ending Story
Thugburg
Gulf War I
The Way We Were
Bio

Merry-Go-Blog











On Sale now!


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.
Click here for more information

Meet the Mods
In no particular order...
Steve White
Seafarious
tu3031
badanov
sherry
ryuge
GolfBravoUSMC
Bright Pebbles
trailing wife
Gloria
Fred
Besoeker
Glenmore
Frank G
3dc
Skidmark

Two weeks of WOT
Thu 2013-01-10
  Taliban suspects arrested over Karachi polio killings
Wed 2013-01-09
  Indonesia Foils Terror Plot on Tourist Spots
Tue 2013-01-08
  US drone attack kills four in North Waziristan
Mon 2013-01-07
  Syria Opposition Rejects Assad's Reconciliation Plan
Sun 2013-01-06
  Dronezap in South Wazoo send 18 TTP Jihadis to their rewards
Sat 2013-01-05
  Syria jets, troops wage offensive on rebels near capital
Fri 2013-01-04
  New U.S. Drone Strike Kills Three Qaida Suspects in Yemen
Thu 2013-01-03
  Iran to Citizens: Flee Isfahan
Wed 2013-01-02
  Fourteen Killed as Nigerian Troops Clash with Islamists
Tue 2013-01-01
  Pakistan: Six charity workers shot dead
Mon 2012-12-31
  Qaeda in Yemen offers bounty for killing US ambassador, troops
Sun 2012-12-30
  Pakistan reports 21 tribal policemen kidnapped, found dead
Sat 2012-12-29
  At Least 15 Killed in Sect Attack in North Nigeria
Fri 2012-12-28
  Militants kill two, kidnap 22 Pakistani soldiers
Thu 2012-12-27
  Somalia sets 100 days for Al Shabab militants to surrender

Better than the average link...



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.
54.224.52.210
Help keep the Burg running! Paypal:
WoT Operations (21)    WoT Background (25)    Non-WoT (13)    (0)    Politix (7)