BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Best of the Web Today
United Press International reports that the Afghan Defense Council, a pro-Taliban group in Pakistan, "has pledged to 'provide lifetime financial support to those who die fighting the Americans.'" Put me down for a contribution, too.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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Washington Times
The Northern Alliance's Washington spokesman, Haron Amin, tells the Washington Times that Pakistan's Inter-Services Security agency is "continuing to resupply the Taliban with weapons and other goods" even though Islamabad has joined the anti-Taliban coalition. Welcome to the wonderful world of treason. Musharraf is actually very brave, since at least one Pakistani leader ended his term in office dangling from a rope. He's got a large and vicious contingent of Taleban sympathizers in his country and an intelligence "service" that's obviously gone rogue -- with no means of bringing it back under control.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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Straight Goods by Ken Hechtman
The refugee camps are staging areas for Afghanis returning home to fight the Americans. Maulana Gul Achmad Zai, principal of the camp's girls primary school ("but in the way of Islam, not the Western way") is one such expatriate mujahid. He explained, "This is a war between America and Islam, not between America and Osama. Why? Because Osama is not in the villages [being bombed]." Like many here, he looks forward to the end of the bombing campaign and the start of the mountain war saying, "There, one Afghan is worth one hundred, one thousand Americans." Yeah. The Paks said one Pak was worth a hundred Hindus when they fought their little war over Bangladesh. The Hindus tromped them flat. And the Japanese had kinda the same idea about 50 or 60 years ago about the USA. And the Confederacy, let's not forget them.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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Reuters
The Pentagon confirmed that U.S. B-52 bombers were dropping very heavy loads of bombs, a tactic known as "carpet bombing,'' on Taliban troops and other military targets in Afghanistan. The acknowledgment that "sticks'' of unguided bombs were being dropped followed eyewitness reports from northern Afghanistan of the heaviest raids yet against Taliban troops protecting Kabul and Mazar-i-Sharif. Bombs from one eight-engine, Vietnam-era B-52 sent up a wall of orange flame and clouds of dust in Taliban positions overlooking opposition-held Bagram airbase north of the capital Kabul, according to a Reuters photographer.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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(dpa) The Taliban militia accused the United States of carrying out genocide in the war-battered country, saying U.S. and British military had hit civilian targets including a clinic. "It is clear now that America is committing genocide in Afghanistan to achieve its political goals,'' Taliban ambassador in Pakistan, Mulla Abdul Salam Zaeef, said at a press conference in the Pakistani capital. "If America thinks it will subjugate the Afghan people by resorting to genocide of innocent people, they are wrong,'' he declared. Golly. That's really too bad. But we had 5000 Americans killed for no reason than the aggrandizement of the Afghans' "guest." Either hand over Bin Laden and all the Al Qaeda bully boys, or tell your kids not to touch the cluster bombs.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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Lucianne.com
Perfect Pitch by a Class Act: Here's the local New York paper's take on W's sterling appearance at the Yankee game last night. New Yorkers overlooked his not being a Yankee fan and roared with approval. On ABC, Peter Jennings commented that W shouldn't be surprised if he got booed. If he was, no one heard it for the cheers. W is happy in his own skin. What's Jennings problem? Jennings still hasn't made a connection to 9-11.
He's very 9-10, probably always will be. He's like a man standing in the middle of a stampede of buffalo talking about the weather.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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Lucianne.com From White House Press briefing Tuesday, October 30, 2001
Q----Since nationally syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg has described Ms. McKinney as "aggressively stupid, pugnaciously ignorant, moronic and dim-witted," surely you won't dismiss this with a no comment evasion because that would suggest that you agree with Goldberg, wouldn't it? How do you and the President feel about her statement?
A----MR. FLEISCHER: I've not discussed this matter with the President and I'm not familiar with the second person's statements.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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Media Research Center
The question during the October 30 briefing came from a male reporter... "You said that the air strikes are deliberately designed not to hit residential centers, but you also say that the Taliban is hiding weapons, stockpiling weapons in residential areas. Have you ruled out the possibility of dropping leaflets days in advance of an air strike to get residents out and saying, 'This could become a military target'? Is that something, without discussing future operations, could you see that possibly coming to fruition?"
Rumsfeld was dumbfounded. After a few seconds of silence, he repeated the recommendation: "We drop leaflets?" He then explained whatâs wrong with the idea: "The likelihood, of dropping those kinds of leaflets, of course, would tell the innocent people that they should stay out of mosques, but it would also tell the other people they should stay out of mosques. It is not quite clear to me how we would advantage ourselves." Proud winner of today's "Duh Award." While the media may not have a corner on stupidity, they appear to be working toward a corner on quality stupidity.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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Chicago Sun-Times, by DARLENE SUPERVILLE
The American Red Cross is halting its appeals for donations to a fund created to help victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, its interim chief executive said. The Liberty Fund held $547 million in pledges. Contributions received will be deposited in the charity's Disaster Relief Fund, a general account servicing all kinds of emergencies, unless donors specify the money is for the Liberty Fund, said Harold Decker, the organization's interim chief executive officer.
During a weekend meeting of the Red Cross' governing board, Decker was chosen to succeed Bernadine Healy, who resigned, until a committee finds a permanent replacement. In her resignation, Healy cited differences with the board, including her decision to keep those Liberty Fund dollars separate from the organization's main relief fund. I'll never contribute another nickle to the Red Cross. They took millions of dollars intended for specific recipients and they used it for themselves. Shame.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Best of the Web Today
"The FBI is searching for six men stopped by police in the Midwest last weekend but released--even though they possessed photographs and descriptions of a nuclear power plant in Florida and the Trans-Alaska pipeline," Knight Ridder citing a "senior law enforcement official," reports. "In addition to the photographs and other suspicious material, they carried 'box cutters and other equipment,' the official said. They appeared to be from the Middle East and held Israeli passports." Uh... Guys? You might want to get on this one right away. By the way, Janet Reno's not AG anymore, and Louis Freehe is gone, too. You can start acting competent again.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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BY JAMES TARANTO WSJ Best of the Web Today
James Bowman, movie critic for The American Spectator: I've always thought of myself as a First Amendment absolutist, but there is something ridiculous about people who would seize upon an occasion like this to insist on their right to be obnoxious to their fellow citizens. . . . Another professor cited by the Chronicle of Higher Education complained when, in giving voice to sentiments almost as outrageous as Jensen's, he had been heckled. But what about the hecklers' right to free speech? I agree that it's bad manners not to give even a loony-tune a respectful hearing, though it's not nearly such bad manners as priggishly informing someone who has just suffered a grievous injury that it's his own damn fault--even if it were his fault. The Constitution gives each of us the right to make as many stoopid remarks as we please. It also guarantees to those around us the right to hold their noses and point out the fact that we're stupid. Without this vital service, many of us would never realize just how vapid and depthless we are.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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Lucianne.com
Kiss Elton John's Instead: Scroll down through Jason Gay's New York Observer piece on Rupert Murdoch apologizing for a News Corps columnist calling Christiane Amanpour a "war slut," (we thought it was a cleverly accurate phrase) for news that CBS will rebroadcast the Concert for New York benefit and cut out the part where firefighter Mike Moran told bin Laden to "kiss my royal Irish ass." No word on whether they will cut Hillary being booed off the stage. Let's pay close attention and raise hell if they do. Golly. Let's not offend anyone. To tell the truth, it would probably amuse (rather than frighten) children to hear Moran remarking how he'd grab the Chief Bad Guy by the throat and bite his nose off.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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Sarah Wildman TNR On-Line
Brand-name feminists have retreated to cliches about women and nonviolence. "Women are not more moral than men, or even intrinsically different from men," said feminist matriarch Gloria Steinem. "It's just that we have been raised without our masculinity to prove. We ... can come up with new and different solutions and end this cycle of violence and revenge." Sisterhood is Powerful Editor Robin Morgan urged women on the Internet to "[t]alk about the root causes of terrorism, about the need to diminish this daily climate of patriarchal violence surrounding us in its state-sanctioned normalcy." Barbara Ehrenreich and Alice Walker weighed in with similarly worded missives. And the Third Wave Foundation, whose praiseworthy goal is to "inform and empower a generation of young women activists," urged women to "unite in calls for a peaceful resolution to this attack." The ladies' historical anti-war stance is obtruding on what should be good sense and even enthusiasm. Women have the most to lose in this war; if the west loses, they get to start wearing burkas and go back to being breeding stock. And if we win the benefits to Central Asian women are obvious.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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Washington Times, by Ben Barber
America's Muslim allies are demanding a halt to the bombing of Afghanistan on Nov. 17 for the holy month of Ramadan... Leaders in Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia â all countries allied to the U.S. war on terrorism but all threatened by domestic Islamic fundamentalists â have called for a halt to the U.S. bombing campaign. Hmmm. Lemme think.
No.
At this point, with the exception of a part of the Pakistan government, "Muslim allies" is a contradiction in terms. If they're so concerned, why don't they jump in and help us achieve our aims?
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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WSJ On-Line BY SETH LIPSKY
Then yesterday, the Washington Post unloaded an editorial called "Words From Egypt." The Post had earlier warned of Arab governments contributing to Islamic extremism and cited Egypt, where, the Post said, President Hosni Mubarak "props himself up with $2 billion a year in U.S. aid while allowing and even encouraging state-controlled clerics and the media to promote the anti-Western, anti-modern and anti-Jewish propaganda of the Islamic extremists." It seems the Egyptians' response came via two government-controlled newspapers, Al Ahram and Al Akhbar, which railed against the Post in the usual fashion, with the editor of Al Akhbar, Galal Dewidar (a government employee, the Post points out), asserting that not only do "American media submit to the directives of the Jewish lobby," but their "identity is American in theory but Zionist in practice." The Post quotes him as adding: "We have begun to view these mouthpieces as a media apparatus in the pay of . . . the Zionist organizations and the apparatuses working clandestinely." Evil can paint its toe-nails and put on lipstick, but it remains evil. Anti-Semitism and -- let us admit its existence in the same category now -- anti-Americanism are both evil. Calling them "fascism," as some do, is doing a disservice to Mussolini; they are a new kind of naziism, pure and simple, and the purveyors should be called to task and treated like the nazis they are.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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#1
The only neo Nazis I see call themselves neo conservatives and rule through greed nationalism, and oppression. Wake up you killed 1 million civilians in Vietnam, hindered democracy in Algeria leading to more carnage, and wage constant wars built on lies and propaganda living in a myth of democracy and freedom and so called bravery with your war mongering and murder youââ¬â¢re the losers and the Nazis of the world if you could only see.
Moscow Times Robert Bruce Ware
More than 90 percent of Dagestan's 2 million plus people are Muslims. Yet while Islam has been an important social force in Dagestan for centuries, its practice is traditionally tolerant. Dagestanis are proud of their multicultural heritage, including Christian and Jewish minorities, and sexual equality is generally comparable to that in Western societies. Yet as Wahhabism began to take hold in Dagestan, Wahhabis demanded that fellow villagers uphold their puritanical strictures.
From 1996 to 1997, as Wahhabism spread through Dagestan, violent clashes between Wahhabis and traditional Muslims began near the village of Karamakhi. By the end of 1998, Dagestani authorities had lost control of this area in the heart of the republic. Throughout the next 18 months, as Dagestani and Russian officials sought to negotiate with Islamic separatists in the Karamakhi vicinity, violence between Wahhabis and traditional Muslims erupted elsewhere in Dagestan.
Meanwhile Akhtayev became a religious authority in Chechnya. In April 1999, he helped to organize the Caucasian Conference in Chechnya, where Chechen warlords, such as Shamil Basayev, called for the "liberation" of Dagestan. In August and September 1999, Basayev and Khattab led militant extremists in invasions of Dagestan. Many Dagestanis were slaughtered, villages were destroyed and 32,000 people were displaced. The Dagestanis spontaneously organized citizen militias and appealed to Moscow for military assistance. The invaders were driven out of the republic, Karamakhi was leveled and Wahhabi leaders were killed, imprisoned or forced into hiding. Unless we destroy the Wahhabi sect now, we'll be seeing more and more of this occurring throughout the world -- starting in Central Asia.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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#1
The Dagestanis should form an independant malitia free from goverment control as specified in the the American constitution and recriut fighter from Russia, China and Central Asia to fight the Islamist enemies.
Posted by: D Brown ||
12/10/2003 11:03 Comments ||
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This Is London
Prime Minister Tony Blair has learned at first hand and in the bluntest of terms the extent of Arab anger over the bombing campaign against Afghanistan. At the start of a bruising Middle East diplomatic mission, he stood next to President Bashar Assad as the Syrian leader denounced the raids for causing "hundreds" of civilian casualties - to applause from local officials and reporters. It was Mr Blair's first face-to-face confrontation with the controversy caused by the US and UK campaign, although aides insisted later he had expected President Assad to restate his well-known hostility to the bombing. Mr Blair acknowledged he had risked controversy by beginning his latest round of talks in Damascus, the capital of Syria, a state accused of harbouring some of the most extreme terror groups in the region. At the moment, Syria isn't a part of the central objective; it's a side issue to us in the same sense that al Qaeda is to the Israelis. Bush and Blair would be well-advised to put all the Arab countries, and especially the secular Arab countries, further down their list of concerns.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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NY Daily News, by Leo Standora
Fifteen of the 19 men who hijacked four airliners Sept. 11 got their U.S. visas in Saudi Arabia, where obtaining the travel document is a pushover, it was reported yesterday. State Department records show that the 15 listed themselves as Saudi citizens, although some may have used phony identification, according to a story on The Washington Post Web site today. Just 3% of Saudi visa applicants were rejected by U.S. consular officers during the past two fiscal years, while about 25% were nixed worldwide. Saudis seeking visitors visas usually go through travel agencies, and U.S. diplomats call in only a small number for interviews. By contrast, travelers from countries like Iran or Iraq â listed by the U.S. as terrorism sponsors â often must wait weeks or months while their applications are scrutinized. Oh, golly. Wotta surprise. The sad part is that we've been at war with Saudi Arabia for 30 years and we're only just now starting to realize it.
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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This Is London
Historian Sir Michael Howard: "To 'declare war' on terrorists, or even more illiterately, on 'terrorism' is at once to accord them a status and dignity that they seek and which they do not deserve. It confers on them a kind of legitimacy. Do they qualify as 'belligerents'? If so, should they not receive the protection of the laws of war? This was something that Irish terrorists always demanded, and was quite properly refused. But their demands helped to muddy the waters, and were given wide credence among their supporters in the United States.
"But to use, or rather to misuse the term 'war' is not simply a matter of legality, or pedantic semantics. It has deeper and more dangerous consequences. To declare that one is 'at war' is immediately to create a war psychosis that may be totally counter-productive for the objective that we seek. It will arouse an immediate expectation, and demand, for spectacular military action against some easily identifiable adversary, preferably a hostile state; action leading to decisive results. Bet Bush, Powell and Rumsfeld wish they could be as 'brilliant' as this pedant. It must be really difficult to be an arm-chair general. If you have nothing to offer but quibbles over whether we're "at war" or "in an emergency" then shut up and get out of the way. At the moment we're "war psychotics."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt ||
10/31/2001 ||
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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.
