#1
Very cool! I just returned from a week in London and the topic of this poster came up in in conversations.
Wish I had more time for the Imperial War Museum too, one of the best military collections I have ever seen.
Like a State media arm (CBS) supports Republicans?? Get a grip Dan.
Dan Rather, former "CBS Evening News" host and current star of Mark Cuban's HDNet, has been out promoting his new book, "Rather Outspoken."
In an interview with Piers Morgan on Tuesday, Rather recalled the last conversation he had with George W. Bush after his controversial 2004 CBS News report on the former president's Air National Guard service record.
"I was at the White House for a briefing for reporters, and I asked him a couple of questions and he answered the questions," Rather said. "And then afterward he said to me, 'I hope you'll be happy retired in Austin.' That's my home. I had no intention of retiring in Austin. I have a passion for my work and I plunged myself back into doing work. But that's the only conversation I've had with him since."
Rather also defended the report that led to the end of his network news career.
"We reported a true story," he said. "That's why I'm no longer with CBS News." The End
#2
It may or may not have been a true story; the documentation presented to support the story was flat-out fraudulent, and destroyed all credibility of the story itself. Either the Bush team was way smarter than anyone thought, and created the fake documentation, or Rather's team was way stupider than they (not we) thought...
#3
What's the frequency, Kenneth? Dementia and rabid partisan hate in a perfect storm
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/03/2012 21:15 Comments ||
Top||
#4
I think someone on Rather's team cooked it up but Rather believed them until his heels were so dug in his career was on the line. Even now he's just hoping to sell books to the usual idiots who will believe his story.
[Dawn] A year after his liquidation in Abbottabad, ... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden.... the late Osama bin Laden ... who was laid out deader than a mackerel, right next to the mackerel... is as irrelevant today to the welfare of millions of starving and suffering Mohammedans as he was when alive. The same holds true for almost all Islamist political movements who are singularly concerned with enforcing their ideologies on the often unwilling Mohammedan populace, while these movements have no plans for alleviating poverty, hunger, and disease.
Last year when I learnt of Mr. bin Laden's liquidation, I headed straight to the Parliament in Islamabad to report on the mass protests that many had predicted would erupt in case of such an eventuality. I walked up and down the Constitution Avenue but did not spot a single protester. I visited the Lal Masjid, the fundamentalist hotbed in the centre of Islamabad, hoping to capture some action there. Again, there was nothing to report. After walking through the capital for hours I realised that there may not be any mass demonstrations to protest against Mr. bin Laden's sudden demise.
In the weeks following Mr Bin Laden's death hardly any protests were witnessed anywhere in the Mohammedan majority countries. Unbeknown to most political pundits (especially in the west), Mr. bin Laden had gradually become a nonentity to the ordinary Mohammedans who have been busy fighting a losing battle against food price inflation, violence, and hunger. Whereas the majority of Indonesians and Paks held a favourable view of Mr. bin Laden during 2002-2005, his popularity declined significantly in most Mohammedan majority countries by 2011.
In the recent past, religious (Islamist) parties active in the political arena have advocated using force to impose their ideologies on the populace and have evoked religion to mobilise the society against the 'heretics' within and the infidels elsewhere. Osama bin Laden followed the same approach. He evoked Islam to mobilise the Pashtun and Arab youths to fight first against the Soviet Union and later against America and its allies. His protégés, including the Afghan Taliban, followed the same ideology while brutally enforcing their puritan version of Islam where gunnies entrusted themselves to hold sway over matters regarding vice and virtue. The Islamists projected public executions and flogging of men, women and kiddies as the 'true' face of Islam.
Similar to the Taliban, the Islamists, regardless of being in Pakistain or elsewhere, are almost always busy creating mass hysteria about the 'infidel' killing and pillaging through the Mohammedan lands. Hence, the Islamists are found campaigning for pan-Islamic movements to raise Mohammedan armies for the doomsday Armageddon between the Mohammedans and the rest. Islamists not active in the electoral politics propagate this through sermons delivered from the pulpit, whereas those active in the electoral politics propagate the same on the floor of the House.
The Islamists' political philosophy almost always is focused on first wrestling the control of governments and militaries from the 'heretic secularists' before the Islamists would be able to offer any relief to the populace. Their political manifestos therefore seldom list any policies about what is needed by the masses in the short run. One therefore knows a lot about where the Islamist parties, such as Jamaat-e-Islami ...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores... Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam ...Assembly of Islamic Clergy, or JUI, is a Pak Deobandi (Hanafi) political party. There are two main branches, one led by Maulana Fazlur Rahman, and one led by Maulana Samiul Haq. Fazl is active in Pak politix and Sami spends more time running his madrassah. Both branches sponsor branches of the Taliban, though with plausible deniability... (JUI) and others stand on Kashmire, Israel and President B.O., but one knows almost nothing about how these parties would address the immediate challenges, such as dengue fever, power shortages, poor water supply and sanitation, and generating employment opportunities for millions of unemployed youth.
For decades Mr. bin Laden lived in countries where poverty, hunger, and disease were the biggest concerns of the poor and disenfranchised. However, man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them... despite having access to millions of dollars of his own money and billions more that others would have readily donated, he did not initiate any mentionable projects to address poverty, hunger or disease in Afghanistan, Pakistain, or Yemen. He could have founded hospitals, schools and vocational training institutes. Instead he sponsored military academies in the most deprived parts of Afghanistan and Pakistain.
If one were to look back at the communities today where Mr. bin Laden had lived in the past 25-odd years, would one see a transformed people with improved access to health and education facilities, or would one see more hunger, disease and hardship. Had Mr. bin Laden used his celebrity to address poverty, hunger, and disease, he could have transformed the very communities, which hosted him for years.
This lack of imagination also ails most Pakistain-based Islamist parties. Consider JUI, which is an astute Islamist party that has often outsmarted non-religious parties in political maneuvering. JUI does not have a policy for sanitation, water supply or primary healthcare. Apart from claims that if elected JUI will fix all of the above, it offers no blueprints or hosts expert panels to debate the same. JUI's central leadership comprising the Rahman brothers could be seen active in Parliament's standing committees for foreign affairs (Maulana Fazlur Rehman Deobandi holy man, known as Mullah Diesel during the war against the Soviets, his sympathies for the Taliban have never been tempered by honesty ... is a member) and Kashmire/religious affairs (Mr. Atta-ur-Rahman is a member) thus conforming to the ideological bend of the most Islamist parties that see all threats being exogenous and the only internal concerns are reserved for vice and virtue.
Jamaat-e-Islami ...The Islamic Society, founded in 1941 in Lahore by Maulana Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi, aka The Great Apostosizer. The Jamaat opposed the independence of Bangladesh but has operated an independent branch there since 1975. It close ties with international Mohammedan groups such as the Moslem Brotherhood. The Jamaat's objectives are the establishment of a pure Islamic state, governed by Sharia law. It is distinguished by its xenophobia, and its opposition to Westernization, capitalism, socialism, secularism, and liberalist social mores... also champions issues that fail to address the immediate challenges faced by the poor in Pakistain. Jamaat's recent drive against obscenity is one such example of using a red herring to demonstrate street power, command airtime, control political discourse, yet offer no relief to the masses on poor job prospects, or inadequate healthcare and education opportunities.
Jamaat is also a smart political enterprise whose leadership is intimately aware of its limited vote bank in Pakistain that is not sufficient to put the Jamaat in control of the federal government either by itself or in a coalition. The Jamaat uses this almost certain lack of a possibility of a Jamaat-led government to its advantage and spoils the governance for others by promising the world to the electorate. Jamaat's manifesto is therefore filled with promises that other parties with a shot at forming the government cannot match. Since the Jamaat knows it will never have to deliver on its promises, its electoral commitments include an unsustainably high minimum wage in a welfare state that will provide for the basic needs of all. Nowhere in Jamaat's manifesto is any mention of how these projects, requiring hundreds of billions of dollars, will be financed.
On the other hand, political, social, and religious reformers in the subcontinent have remained relevant to the masses even decades after their death. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's final resting place in Garhi Khuda Bakhsh is always alive with visitors who shared Bhutto's political philosophy. The mausoleum of Bulleh Shah in Kasur and Data Darbar in Lahore are evidence of lasting legacies of the reformers who have remained relevant to their followers.
A few decades from today few will remember, if at all, that on May 2, 2011, Osama bin Laden was assassinated in Abbottabad. However, there's no worse danger than telling a mother her baby is ugly... most will remember the several thousand victims of religious cut-throats who followed in Mr. bin Laden's footsteps.
[Dawn] THE compound has been demolished and the wives shipped off to Soddy Arabia. ...a kingdom taking up the bulk of the Arabian peninsula. Its primary economic activity involves exporting oil and soaking Islamic rubes on the annual hajj pilgrimage. The country supports a large number of princes in whatcha might call princely splendor. When the oil runs out the rest of the world is going to kick sand in their national face... In the one year since the late Osama bin Laden's ... who walked in the Valley of the Shadow of Death and didn't make it out... death the physical evidence of his presence, his home and household have all but been eliminated from Pak soil.
If these demolitions and departures were indicators of the end of an era, the dislocation of terror and its tentacles in Pak soil then Paks could all have heaved a collective sigh of relief on this day and marked it as the moment when they kissed terror and its bloody legacy good bye.
As history or fate would have it, such sentimental scenes are not destined for Pakistain. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, the country saw 476 major incidents of terrorism (major classified as involving three or more deaths) in 2011.
The worst of them came not before but after the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound, when 90 people, paramilitary and non-combatants were killed as two jacket wallahs attacked an FC training centre in Charsadda.
The year and a half period from 2011 to the middle of 2012, has seen more people die of terrorist attacks in Pakistain than Americans in the whole decade since 9/11.
The attacks have continued unabated since, the period from January until April of this year 2012 already having witnessed 201 kabooms with hundreds killed and injured. The year and a half period from 2011 to the middle of 2012, has seen more people die of terrorist attacks in Pakistain than Americans in the whole decade since 9/11.
Pakistain's casualties from terror are not simply those who have died in the attacks themselves. Every dying man and woman to fall in the unfortunate path of the suicide bomber or automated blast has left behind him or her an unseen mourning horde of those that must live on, lives forever interrupted, inexplicably and unjustly.
The conflict between security forces and gunnies has wreaked its own havoc in the enactment of Pakistain's terror tragedy. A few weeks ago, UNHCR, the UN refugee agency, announced that 208,000 internally displaced people are now living in the Jalozai camp in Nowshera since January of this year, a number said to represent only 15 per cent of the actual people displaced from their homes.
Many of these wandering victims of terror, homeless and hungry, are just as hapless as the dead According to Oxfam, nearly half a million people are in dire need of humanitarian assistance, with a recent influx of 63,000 families putting tremendous stress on the resources available. Nearly 80 per cent of the displaced families have no access to healthcare or medicines.
When the death of Osama bin Laden was announced a year ago today, those assessing the success or defeat of the war on terror from the safe distance of faraway lands rejoiced and believed. A poll conducted in Pakistain days after found Paks unsure.
Conducted by YouGov, in collaboration with Polis at Cambridge University, the poll found that 66 per cent of educated Paks did not believe that Osama bin Laden was killed in the attack.
Another poll, conducted by Gallup International also conducted in the immediate aftermath of the raid, found that only 25 per cent of Paks actually believed that the person attacked in Abbottabad ... A pleasant city located only 30 convenient miles from Islamabad. The city is noted for its nice weather and good schools. It is the site of Pakistain's military academy, which was within comfortable walking distance of the residence of the late Osama bin Laden.... that day was Osama bin Laden.
When asked whether terrorism would increase, decrease or remain unchanged, nearly three-quarters of Paks believed that it would increase or at best remain unchanged.
As the ensuing year's numbers have shown, they were right. Counting casualties, direct and indirect, dead or almost dead, maimed by bombs or bullets delivers a prognosis that shows terror living well and claiming much, hiding in cities and towns and felling young and old with hate or hunger. But the doubt over Osama bin Laden's death amid the continuation of the very disease it was supposed to cure points to another casualty.
The first decade of the war on terror, punctuated by today's anniversary of the death of the criminal mastermind most visibly associated with it, has produced not only casualties of flesh and blood but also of truth and belief.
Paks did not doubt Osama bin Laden's death because the crystal balls or nocturnal visions indicated no cessation in bombings and killings, or because of secretly nursed sympathies that venerated a mass murderer, or any of the other explanations bandied about by those who would magnify the death of the man into an epic victory.
Paks did not believe in the death of Osama bin Laden, because the most tragic, heartrending and invisible casualty of terror in Pakistain has been the death of truth itself.
With the proliferation of terror has come the elevation of secrecy, a new creed practised by governments and intelligence agencies, foreign governments and spymasters, beturbanned goon outfits that change names with the seasons and all those who shelter them. This intricate web of the unknown that weaves through every event and breathes souls into the corpses of doubt has meant the end of fact in Pakistain. The kaboom at a train station, the murder of a journalist, the verdict of a court nothing can be solved or explained or predicted because nothing can be believed.
There are many scars inflicted on the suffering by conflict, this one cast on one and all bleeds everyday and is never bandaged, draining drop by drop the spirit that sustains a nation.
Bleeding internally and externally, one year after Bin Laden's death, Pakistain is not misunderstood and the truth more so. As the reason for deaths, the causes of catastrophes, the elusiveness of justice or accountability present day-after-day new tableaus of anarchy, it seems laughable and even cruel to consider that many in the world thought and still think that the death of a single evil man could mean much or anything when the deaths of so many innocent others have meant absolutely nothing.
Posted by: Fred ||
05/03/2012 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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Top|| File under: al-Qaeda in Pakistan
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.
[Dawn] A year after his 
Maulana Fazlur Rehman
...the creepy-looking former dictator of Pakistain. Zia was an Islamic nutball who imposed his nutballery on the rest of the country with the enthusiastic assistance of the nation's religious parties, which are populated by other nutballs. He was appointed Chief of Army Staff in 1976 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, whom he hanged when he seized power. His time in office was a period of repression, with hundreds of thousands of political rivals, minorities, and journalists executed or tortured, including senior general officers convicted in coup-d'état plots, who would normally be above the law. As part of his alliance with the religious parties, his government helped run the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, providing safe havens, American equipiment, Saudi money, and Pak handlers to selected mujaheddin. Zia died along with several of his top generals and admirals and the then United States Ambassador to Pakistain Arnold Lewis Raphel when he was assassinated in a suspicious air crash near Bahawalpur in 1988...
[Dawn] THE compound has been demolished and the wives shipped off to 
