Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts

Friday, September 24, 2021

I'm Pretty Sure The CIA Never Tried To Overthrow Any Foreign Governments, But Some People Have Other Ideas

I'm humble to say that my readers and I are unflinchingly patriotic, outrageously smart, and fully aware that the United States would never meddle in the internal affairs of any foreign country, especially a friendly one.

Otherwise, we might be deceived by a new article at Covert Action Magazine which does a superb job of documenting a series of outrageous, deliberate, and mostly successful attempts by the CIA to interfere with the democratically elected governments of two Southern Hemisphere nations which most of the world would consider "friends and allies" of the United States.

The nations to which I refer are Australia and New Zealand, both of which supported Great Britain, the US, and their allies in both World Wars, and suffered horribly in the process.

And the article in question was written by Murray Horton, who provides more than enough links and photographs to make his presentation utterly compelling.

In other words, it is strong enough to convince all but the unflinchingly patriotic, outrageously smart readers who come to this cold blog seeking refuge from the "fake news" which crept in around the edges some time ago, and now has us nearly surrounded.

Murray Horton himself is introduced as "organizer of the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA)", "Aotearoa" being the indigenous (Maori) name of the country we would otherwise call "New Zealand". In other words, he's biased!

He's also described as "an advocate of a range of progressive causes for the past four decades", and it's not difficult to imagine that foreign intelligence services meddling in domestic politics may have been one of those causes for most (or even all) of those decades, because the reseach represented here is exhaustive and extremely detailed.

It's just too bad for him that we're all too smart to believe any of it.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Pass The Cheese: Iraqi Soldier Kills Two American Soldiers

An Iraqi soldier shot and killed two American soldiers and wounded several others yesterday on the outskirts of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, according to various sources. Details are sketchy, except in Australia.

Reuters published a very mysterious report by Tim Cocks:

Iraqi soldier kills two U.S. soldiers
An Iraqi soldier went on the rampage at a joint security station in northern Iraq on Wednesday, shooting dead two U.S. soldiers and wounding six, the U.S. military said.

The U.S. military said the soldier opened fire on the Americans at the station -- one of many in which Iraqi and U.S. troops operate side by side -- in the city of Mosul.

"The soldiers were in the courtyard ... an Iraqi soldier entered and shot two soldiers, killing one, mortally wounding another, and then spraying the others," said U.S. army spokeswoman for northern Iraq Major Peggy Kageleiry.

"He was engaged by counter-fire and killed," she added. A local morgue said it had received the body of the Iraqi soldier, riddled with bullets.
Here's the mysterious part:
Two local police sources and an Iraqi army source, all of whom declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject, said a quarrel had broken out between the Iraqi and U.S. soldiers at the joint station.

But Kageleiry denied there was any altercation between the soldiers before the shooting.

"The U.S. soldiers had no conversation with this soldier and there was no interaction of any kind before they were murdered," she said.
And that was that. Sources who declined to be named said a quarrel had broken out, but the Pentagon spokesman denied it.

So what caused the incident?

CNN gave some indication of what might have sparked it, but not until the fifth paragraph of this story:

Spokesman: Shooter in Iraqi uniform kills U.S. troops
A man in an Iraqi army uniform opened fire on U.S. troops in Nineveh province Wednesday, killing two soldiers and wounding six others, a U.S. military spokesman said.

The six soldiers were in stable condition as of Wednesday night, the U.S. military said.

The U.S. military has not confirmed the identity of the shooter, but initial reports indicate that he was an Iraqi soldier, the military said in a statement.

The gunman, identified as Barazan Mohammed of Mosul, was killed in the ensuing exchange of fire.

An Interior Ministry official said an Iraqi soldier in a joint U.S.-Iraqi patrol opened fire on a group of U.S. soldiers in the same convoy after one of the American troops slapped an Iraqi soldier.

But the U.S. military disputed that, saying in a statement, "there was no altercation between the U.S. soldier and the Iraqi soldier."
Where is CNN journalistically on this one? Reuters hints at three sources but gives no details of the cause of the incident; CNN hints at one source and gives one sketchy detail, but isn't sure whether or not the killer was an Iraqi soldier. The US military line is prominent in both stories, and not much else ...

James Hider of The Australian takes a different approach, disregarding the Pentagon statement entirely:

Slapped Iraqi soldier shoots dead two US troops
AN Iraqi soldier on foot patrol with US forces in the northern city of Mosul shot and killed two American soldiers and wounded six more, the worst such case yet of US-trained local troops turning their guns on their allies.

The Iraqi soldier, identified as Barzan al-Hadidi, was part of a joint daytime patrol on the streets of the dangerous city, considered to be one of the last strongholds of Al-Qa'ida and its local allies in Iraq. He was quickly gunned down by other members of the patrol, officials said.

The Iraqi Interior Ministry said the soldier opened fire after he had been publicly slapped by an American colleague. Many Iraqi men, especially in the military, are intensely proud and conscious of any perceived slight to their honour.

“Two soldiers were killed and six wounded in a small-arms fire attack in an Iraqi Army compound in Mosul today. Initial reports indicate the attacker was an Iraqi soldier,” the US military said.

“The situation is fluid and still under investigation, so the casualty figures may change,” it added. A local morgue which received the Iraqi soldier’s body said it had been riddled with bullets.
Hider even provides some historical context!
There have been instances of Iraqi soldiers opening fire on their US mentors and comrades in the past, but never to such a deadly extent. Insurgents have also used Iraqi army uniforms to infiltrate joint bases in the past. One of the worst cases was in Mosul in 2004, when a suicide bomber dressed as an Iraqi soldier blew himself up in an American army mess hall, killing more than dozen US soldiers.

Today’s severe breach of discipline highlights the dangers of joint patrols with an Iraqi army still being shaped by the US military, and on to which Washington hopes to shift the burden of security [sic] as it draws down its forces [sic] in Iraq under the future presidency of Barack Obama.

Those security challenges have loomed larger in recent days, with a spate of bombings and shooting recalling the dark years that Iraqis had hoped were finally behind them.

Two dozen people were killed in attacks across the country yesterday, 12 of them in a combined car bombing and roadside booby trap in eastern Baghdad. In what is becoming a familiar pattern, the first explosion targeted a police patrol and the second concealed device cut down those who ran to the aid of the stricken security forces.

Sixty people were wounded in the twin blasts.
And so on. It's a style of reporting you just don't see in the USA.

Clearly, James Hider or his editor or both have had enough of the Pentagon denying everything, even in the face of overwhelming evidence. To them, the US military spokesman's statement denying any quarrel was not even worth mentioning. And it's easy to see why. The US military has a long tradition of lying about "conditions on the ground", covering up evidence of atrocities, and attempting to control the public's perception of the world through pressure on (or ownership of) the people who report the news.

None of this is new; it's been going on for decades. The techniques may be more sophisticated now, but the goal is still the same, and the effort is larger than ever. So it's not hard to see it: it's hard not to see it. That's not the problem.

The problem is: if you mention it, you don't work anymore. And everybody knows it.

An unidentified Pentagon spokesman says the moon is made of Parmesan cheese. The Iraqi Minister of Science and Technology says no, it's made of rocks and dust. Who are you going to believe?

Look at it this way: The Iraqis are a primitive and spiteful people who barely know enough to wash themselves, who would never tell you the truth about anything, and who would be better off if we liberated them, even if it meant we had to destroy their country and give all their oil to the vice president.

And maybe we're not perfect, but we're damned close, and anybody who says different is a lousy terrorist.

So the moon is made of Parmesan cheese. And even if you can prove that it isn't; even if it's obvious that it isn't; so what? You'll never see anyone say that on TV. You'll never read it in a major newspaper. The best you can do is write a letter to the editor that will never get published, and if you're lucky you'll only wind up on the no-fly list.

Or else you can write it on a blog that only a handful of people will ever read. Go right ahead. Shout into the hurricane.

But in the meantime, your fellow Americans will be grating that cheese, eating it on spaghetti, putting it in their salads, and never even noticing that they're eating rocks and dust...

... because if they ever stopped and looked at what they were eating, they would begin to understand that they've been eating rocks and dust all their lives, thinking it was food -- just as their parents taught them. They'd have to come to grips with the fact that they've worked their entire lives to buy rocks and dust, and they'd realize that they've been feeding rocks and dust to their children, and their grandchildren ... and they can't do it. They just can't do it. They'd rather keep eating rocks and dust, pretending it's cheese, and talking about how good it tastes.

It takes courage to ignore the Pentagon line entirely. Three cheers for James Hider and The Australian. It's not exactly difficult to put American journalism to shame. But it's a good thing somebody's doing it.

On the other hand, Hider didn't remind his readers that the US invaded Iraq on false pretenses, in an act of war that is clearly a crime against humanity and punishable by death under the Geneva Conventions. He didn't even hint that American trooops in Iraq are a destabilizing force, or that the talk of a draw-down might simply be campaign rhetoric.

He didn't mention the pressure Iraqi collaborators are under, as their friends and neighbors see them as traitors. And he didn't ask any potentially damning questions, such as: If the American administration is so concerned about the security of Iraq, why did they invade in the first place?

Hider even managed to slip in a bit of thinly veiled racism, noting that
Many Iraqi men, especially in the military, are intensely proud and conscious of any perceived slight to their honour.
Of course, American men aren't intensely proud and conscious of any perceived slight to their honour. Especially in the military!

And being slapped in public by a soldier from the country that destroyed your country wouldn't be a real slight to your honour, would it? Only a perceived one, right?

Maybe it was enough to say the dead Iraqi soldier was slapped.

Pass me some of that cheese, will you?

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Saturday, November 24, 2007

Howard Out! Gandhi Gone!

The war criminal Australian government led by the war criminal John Howard has been soundly thrashed in parliamentary elections.

Now, George Bush's Australian ally and his band of blood-drenched swine should proceed directly to The Hague for a free and fair trial before their mass execution for crimes against humanity.

But of course that will never happen.

In related news, one of my favorite bloggers has shut down all his blogs, or so he says (for what appears to be the final time).

The Australian writer known as Gandhi began with a blog called "Bush Out", and later shifted his focus to Australian politics and "Howard Out" (and he's been "Riding The Juggernaut" along the way, too).

He's called it quits before, and he has quit -- for a day or two, or even a week -- but this time seems different.

Howard really is out now -- finally! And "Howard Out" is all done too, as of Thursday -- apparently. I'll keep the links to Gandhi's blogs on the sidebar, but I may move them from "news" to "resources" if he really does keep himself away from the blogs.

Somehow I get the feeling that this retirement is more permanent, since rather than just trying to quit blogging, Gandhi's begun work on a book.

It's tentatively called "Gandhi's War", and he says it's
based on my blogging experiences here and at BushOut. It explores the human cost of blogging news that is relentlessly depressing. I know I am not the only one who has suffered these "bloggers blues", and I think it's a story that should be told.

If anyone wants to contribute their own stories, or knows a good publisher, please email me: gazo a@t dodo dot com dot AU.
He gives us a sneak preview, which is definitely worth a read, but we may have to wait quite a while for the rest.

But in the meantime:

Good riddance to Howard!

Best wishes to Gandhi!

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

It's Come To This: Hand Over The Loot Or We'll Leave You Alone!!

Good news for Iraq, courtesy of the UPI via Earth Times dot Org:
BAGHDAD, Aug. 13 Australia's leader has told Iraq's prime minister that he'll withdraw troops from the coalition if Iraq doesn't approve a draft oil law.
That's the idea! I've been pulling for this all along; now all we need is for John Howard to talk George Bush into doing the same thing.
Howard meets with President Bush this week in Sydney.
Perfect! The war could be over before the congressional recess.

Well of course I'm kidding about that ... but in all semi-seriousness, UPI actually has some slightly half-decent reporting about the oil law itself, although it -- like all other mainstream media accounts -- skirts the point nicely:
The law, which is highly controversial, is being promoted by the Bush administration as a way toward reconciliation in the highly factionalized country. The thought is if political and other leaders can decide how to compromise on sharing the wealth from Iraq's vast oil reserves, they can also compromise on issues that are leading the country toward fracture and civil war.

The oil law Bush, and now Australian Prime Minister John Howard, are begging for, however, doesn't divvy up the revenue from oil -- that will be handled in a separate revenue-sharing law. The draft oil law actually decides the extent of federalism in exploration, development and production of the third-largest oil reserve in the world, as well as how much access foreign oil companies will have, among other issues that are proving hard to find agreement on between the competing demands of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
Right. And it also says the oil companies get 87.5% of the revenue. And the rest will be divvied up according to whatever system comes of the much-ballyhooed "federal / provincial / regional squabble", but that's not the main issue, is it?

Well, let's put it this way: It's the main issue in Iraq, where seven eighths of the money is slated to go somewhere else! But in the sleepy living rooms of America (and Australia), the public perception is so warped that people actually buy this utterly ridiculous story of this utterly ridiculous threat.

It's almost as if a gang of thieves broke into your home and trashed it, trashed every other home in the neighborhood too, raped your wife and your daughters, took your sons away to who knows where and did who knows what to them, kept all this up for four years!, and then backed you into a corner and said "If you don't give us all the rest of your money, we're leaving!"

Of course that's not the real story. That's only a glimmer of how absurd the real story is.

The real story is about the Iraqi parliament and the precarious position in which it finds itself, especially with respect to the occupying armies. The armies in effect put the politicians in power, by securing the country so that it could have three democratic elections, the first two having been insufficiently democratic as their results failed to please the occupiers. Don't snicker! This is how democracy works in an occupied country.

Now those politicians are in power and they see the occupiers as protectors. For many reasons, including this self-same belief, the rest of Iraq sees its parliamentarians -- just like everyone else who has been working for the occupiers -- as "traitors", "collaborators" and "spies".

So when the occupying armies threaten to leave, the politicians, instead of thinking "Good! Now perhaps the violence will settle down", tend to think "What will happen to me?" They may see handing over the county's vast natural wealth as preferable to the bullet in the back of the head that most certainly awaits them -- or would, in the absence of the occupying protectors.

They can't afford to see the occupiers leave just yet: they need to get themselves out of the country, safely ensconced someplace nice and friendly, before they can allow that to happen. Now: how to find a nice safe friendly place? Hmmm. You think passing a little bit of legislation might help?

Now you're starting to think like a puppet ... um, I mean, a Parliamentarian.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Gandhi: Why Are We Over There Again?

Here's one of Gandhi's latest, in full:

Qui Custodiat Custos? Custos Ipsum!

[Latin: "Who guards the guard? He guards himself!"]
The latest reason why UK troops have to stay in Iraq: to protect themselves:
Hopes of a rapid British withdrawal from Iraq appeared to diminish yesterday after a minister said the present force level was needed for the safety of the troops.
Bloody hell.

Meanwhile our brave Aussie diggers have murdered another innocent man in Afghanistan. Oh, sorry - he couldn't have been innocent, because they shot him. So he must have been guilty. Of something.

Why are we over there again?
I know that's a rhetorical question, but here's a simple answer:

Client Regime. Oil Law. Permanent Bases.
Client Regime. Oil Law. Permanent Bases.
Client Regime. Oil Law. Permanent Bases.
Client Regime. Oil Law. Permanent Bases.

Saturday, April 28, 2007

FOX Just Can't Stop Spinning, Even With Cricket

The World Cup final between Australia and Sri Lanka was scheduled to start at 9:30 this morning but it was raining in Bridgetown, Barbados, and they didn't even get the coin tossed until 10:00. And then a very strange thing happened.

In a one-day match such as this, each team bats once. They toss a coin to decide who bats first; if you win the toss, you choose. Normally the teams know whether they'd prefer to bat first or second. (I like to bat last, but there are two schools of thought on this.)

In bad weather, conditions are likely to deteriorate throughout the day, and there's a possibility of a rain-shortened match, so what to do if you win the toss becomes a whole different question. (I like to bat first if it's wet, but again there are two schools of thought.)

Things were so uncertain today that the online experts at Cricinfo were saying they weren't sure whether this would be a good toss to win or not.

Australia won the toss and chose to bat first.

FOX didn't show the coin toss live. Instead they went to their "experts" who "speculated" that if Australia won the toss they would choose to bat. And then they showed the coin toss, and what do you know? Their experts were right.

Funny how that worked out, isn't it?

Two weeks ago I gave "two thumbs up" to FOX for their online coverage of this tournament and suggested that perhaps they were trying to build credibility by doing a good job on sports, in order to make their "news" seem "believable".

Funny how that worked out, too. Isn't it? I think maybe they were trying a little bit too hard.

Batting first turned out to be a good idea, and Australia had the better team too. Adam Gilchrist [photo] scored a quick 149 and that didn't hurt the Aussie chances either. In truth, the outcome was never in doubt.

So Australia are celebrating, having gone undefeated in a tournament in which every other team lost at least three matches while winning the World Cup for an unprecedented third straight time.

Clearly the best team won. But of course this does not excuse Australia for its crimes against humanity, nor for its failure to oust (and guillotine) the outrageous war criminal John Howard, but that's another story.

As for FOX, if they'll spin about a little thing like the coin toss in a cricket game ...

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Bridgetown Officials Say English Collapse Was Caused By Fire, Deny Any Explosives Were Planted

BARBADOS -- Terror rocked Bridgetown's Kensington Oval on Tuesday morning, when the middle of the English order burned briefly and then collapsed utterly, turning to powder while the eyes of the cricket world looked on in disbelief. Early reports made no mention of survivors.

The English batsmen were always in trouble in their must-win match against South Africa, scoring only 9 runs in their first 7 overs, and taking an additional 19 overs to reach the century mark.

But the real tragedy struck in the 33rd over. England were 111 for 3 when Andrew Strauss was hit by what appeared to be a hijacked airplane. He crashed and burned with a fire so intense it razed Paul Collingwood to the ground as well.

A general collapse ensued, with Andrew Flintoff [top photo], Paul Nixon and Sajid Mahmood disappearing in short order. Mahmood made a particularly awful mess when he collapsed at free-fall speed after watching the only ball delivered in his direction crash into his stumps.

Rescue and recovery workers should have been warned that the scene would be toxic and that survivors were unlikely to be found, but apparently no such warnings were issued. So it goes.

Officials who claimed to represent the host committee said the collapse was caused by a catastrophic weakening of the English side, due to the velocity of the object that hit Strauss and intensity of the ensuing fires. They blame Australian bowler Andrew Hall [lower photo] for the collapse. Hall, who took 5 wickets while allowing only 18 runs, could not be reached for comment. He is said to be hiding in a cave on an unspecified Caribbean island, communicating with his teammates only via cell-phone.

In Barbados, officials vehemently denied any hint of pre-positioned explosives contributing to the utter destruction of the English side.

But the so-called "collapse" -- in fact a total disintegration -- was so explosive that fragments of England's remains have been found embedded in buildings hundreds of metres from the scene.

Bridgetown officials have denied rumors of molten steel under the rubble, but relief workers continue to appeal for more boots, saying their soles are melting from the intense heat of the disaster.

The official collapse theory has attracted the inevitable skeptics who claim that gravity and heat alone could not have thrown such heavy fragments such huge distances with such force, let alone leaving boot-melting heat to bedevil the cleanup efforts.

Defenders of the official story laugh and call the skeptics crazy. So it goes.

But the question remains: What indeed did take England down?

Some critics of Tony Blair's so-called foreign policy maintain that the English side will never again compete on anything like even terms with the world's cricket powers until Tony Blair is removed from office, and either hanged for treason or impaled for war crimes and crimes against humanity. They site the USA's failure to reach the final 16 -- shut out by powerhouses such as Canada and Bermuda -- as well as Canada's failure to reach the Super Eights, as further evidence in support of their assertion.

Most cricketologists ridicule the notion that karmic intervention could be responsible for the English collapse, pointing to the seemingly unlimited success of the Australians, who having pasted England 5-0 for the Ashes, now seem on their way to yet another glorious international triumph.

Were Australia not complicit in the very same war crimes, these experts say, the cricket-karma hypothesis might be be worthy of serious consideration. Instead they call it a wacky conspiracy theory.

But other cricketologists dispute this assertion and claim the seeming mystery of Australia's success can be explained by the Coriolis effect, which may cause karma to spin backwards in the southern hemisphere.

New Zealand won't win this tournament, they claim, because the Kiwis don't cause enough death and destruction overseas.

Who am I to say they're wrong? We'll find out in less than two weeks.

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Australia, New Zealand, Sri Lanka Reach World Cup Semis; Thumbs Up For FOX

With a week to go in the Super-Eights stage of cricket's World Cup, Australia, New Zealand and Sri Lanka have already clinched three of the four semifinal spots.

South Africa and England have the best chances of claiming the fourth semifinal berth, and their match Tuesday in Barbados may prove decisive.

A win Tuesday by England would keep both teams alive as well as the West Indies and possibly also Bangladesh, setting up interesting possibilities for later in the week. But if South Africa win in Barbados then the final four would be set, the remaining Super-Eight matches would be virtually meaningless, and the hosts would be left with no chance to advance in the tournament, guaranteeing the West Indian organizers less-than-expected revenues to go along with their greater-than-expected expenses.

But this would be no surprise; it would be in keeping with a tournament which saw two of the world's top teams, Pakistan and India, shut out of the final eight, a pair of failures which could well be called "tragic" if they were not overshadowed by the strangulation of Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer [photo] amid whispers of possible match-fixing.

Surprisingly, perhaps, some of the world's best neutral (non-specialized) coverage of this very slow and drawn-out sporting event may be coming from FOX Sports.

Their coverage is accurate and timely; their pages of standings and schedules are easy to read and easy to verify. Those who mostly follow sports, and who find much to appreciate in FOX coverage, may have trouble grasping just how much -- and how blatantly -- FOX lies about the news.

A more cynical writer may venture to suggest that this is all part of an elaborate deception. But not me; I'm busy watching Bangladesh and Ireland fight it out for 8th place at CricInfo.

Why? The French educator Jaques Barzun was probably right when he said, "Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball." He could well have added, "Whoever wants to understand the rest of the English-speaking world had better learn cricket!"

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Solomon Islands Hit By Tsunami, Northern Afghanistan Rocked By Earthquake

Twelve people have been killed by a tsunami which hit the Solomon Islands on Monday. Early reports also indicate extensive damage, especially in Gizo, a town of 10,000 and the second largest town in the Solomons, which was swamped by waves said to be 10m (30ft) tall.

We have coverage from the BBC as well as the Scoop news service from New Zealand, which has this:
The Solomon Islands Government has issued this account:
"Waves crashed islands in the two provinces [Monday] morning after an earth tremor measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale hit.

"Reports from Gizo police said the lower lying areas in the tourist town of Gizo have been completely covered, while the nearby towns of Noro and Munda including surrounding villages continued to receive huge waves.

"The main wharf at Noro ports in Western Province is reported to have “cracked in the middle”, and the small wharf completely dismantled with all timbers washed away.

"The Noro cannery has been affected and all residents have been evacuated up the hills on the island.

"People reporting from rural email stations in the two provinces also reported continuous waves traveling at least 500 meters inland."
At least two people were confirmed dead and several others missing in Sasamunga village in South Choiseul as 10 meter waves move 500 meters inland, destroying villages, food gardens and domesticated animals and a hospital.

Choiseul Premier, Jackson Kiloe confirmed from Taro Island at midday today that 10 meter high waves continue to hit the Southern part of Choiseul Island.

He said people are now rushing inland to higher ground as fear griped the entire Western and Choiseul provinces after an earth quake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale hit the Western part of Solomon Islands at 7 am this morning.

Premier Jackson Kiloe described the sea changes on the western coast of Choiseul as “strangely frightening”.

He said the present sea activities involving huge rolling waves which repeatedly caused dry seas deeper into the ocean have exposed fish and other marine lives.

He said the earth quake that hit the Western Solomon’s this morning was strongly felt twice in Choiseul province.

“We are currently evacuating Taro Island residents and others in coastal areas to higher ground.

“The huge wave rolls are stronger than floods.

“They are causing large areas of ocean to dry up exposing fish and other marine lives,” Mr Kiloe said by phone from Taro Island.

Radio New Zealand International reports: In Solomons Islands there are reports of damage in the township of Gizo and the whereabouts of several people is unknown after this morning’s earthquake. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii put the strength of the earthquake at 7.8 but Geosience Australia has upgraded the quake to 8.1.
Here's a slightly different sort of report from the BBC:

Gizo at centre of tsunami fears
When a magnitude 8.0 tsunami crashed ashore on the western Solomon Islands, it hit a remote, poverty-stricken region.

Made up of volcanic islands and coral atolls, sitting on the notorious Pacific "Ring of Fire", the area is so isolated that even many hours after the disaster, it was still very difficult to assess the extent of the damage or the number of people who lost their lives.

But there were reports of extensive damage to Gizo, the second largest town in the Solomons, which has an estimated 10,000 residents.

Known to tourists as the country's main diving centre, much of the town - which is located on a relatively small volcanic island called Ghizo - is barely above sea level.
...

Many of the houses are on or near the seafront, giving the buildings little chance of escaping the huge waves that hit the coastline on Tuesday morning.
...

Initial reports said the town's hospital had been inundated with water, and government offices had also been damaged. Little was known about the damage to the nearby coral reefs.

Thousands of people are thought to have escaped up a steep hill which forms a backdrop to the town.

According to the charity World Vision, which operates in the area, many people have now been left homeless and without clean drinking water, as many of the town's water tanks - based on the hill - collapsed due to the force of the earthquake.
...

Residents of nearby Simbo, Choiseul and Ranunga islands have also reported deaths and widespread destruction, and there are many other areas which could well have been affected although details are still sketchy.

Approximately 85% of the Solomons' 500,000 population live in rural areas, and the western province - where the disaster occurred - is one of the most remote parts of the country.

Receiving accurate information from villages - many of which are in low-lying coastal areas - is difficult at the best of times, mostly reliant on two-way radio links and satellite communications.
Scoop has considerably more, including these links ...
World Vision International - World Vision to help in Solomons after tsunami
Caritas - Caritas responds to those affected by tsunami
ChildFund - Solomon Islands Tsunami
Oxfam - Assessing needs of communities affected by tsunami
Elsewhere, and even more recently, Quake strikes north Afghanistan
A strong earthquake has struck northern Afghanistan, shaking cities in neighbouring Pakistan and Kashmir.

Residents fled homes in Kabul, Jalalabad and Kashmir when the 6.2 magnitude quake struck in Afghanistan's Badakhshan province.

There is no word yet of any damage in the areas close to the epicentre.

The US Geological Survey said [it] was about 200km (125 miles) underground in the Hindu Kush.

It struck at around 0800 (0300 GMT).
Relief efforts, as far as I can tell, are just getting organized.

If I may...

I've never asked for money here -- never asked for anything, actually, at least not for myself -- and I hope I won't have to. But I can't help thinking that, if you have any at the moment, you might consider helping some of the many very unfortunate people who have recently lost everything, in the Solomons or Afghanistan or elsewhere, somewhere, somehow.

Something tells me this would be a good week to re-connect with humanity, and that this might be a good way to do it.

Thank you very much indeed.

Monday, April 2, 2007

On The David Hicks Case And The Mainstreaming Of Modern American Insanity

Under the insane headline Some Bumps at Start of War Tribunals at Guantánamo, William Glaberson writes even more insanity for the New York Times (and the emphasis is mine):
As the first of the war crimes cases under a new law began here a few days ago, a military law specialist said it was a test run “to show that this plane will fly.”
If I'm writing it, I'm asking: What sort of nonsense is this? Is this your new public diplomacy "proving ground"?

You notice the pentagon never has "testing" anymore, just "proving". They never want to find out whether the plane will fly, only to show that it will.

And sometimes it won't, of course. What insanity! But it's a traditional military insanity, and of only slight import compared to the horrendous new insanity initiated in the immediate wake of 9/11.
From the start, Guantánamo, its detainees and the legal proceedings here have provided enough grist to support the competing views of the detention center: a necessary mechanism for dealing with a new kind of enemy, or the embodiment of the war on terror gone awry.

What a bald-faced lie!

From the start?? Guantánamo has never provided any "grist" to support the view that it is "a necessary mechanism for dealing with a new kind of enemy", if by "grist" one means actual legitimate palpable and/or verifiable evidence.

Or, as Chris Floyd points out,
Only a self-deluded fool [...] could believe that the hideous regime of concentration camps, secret prisons, torture, kidnapping and "extrajudicial killing" established by Bush is anything but "the embodiment of the war on terror gone awry."
But oh! no! the Times also tells us:
Military officers quickly began to refer to Mr. Hicks as the “convicted war criminal” in the not-so-subtle battle of competing words here.
...
To the prosecutors and the extensive public relations apparatus assembled by the military here, Mr. Hicks’s case proved, as one spokeswoman regularly repeated, that the military commission system offers a “fair, legitimate and transparent forum.”
...
The chief military prosecutor, Col. Morris D. Davis of the Air Force, told reporters ... it was ... a victory for a much maligned system that he said had been unfairly criticized before it was given a chance to prove it could deliver justice.

“There’s a notion that this is a rigged system,” he said when asked if he was disappointed by the outcome. “I think this shows that’s not true.”
But then you look at the case, and how it was settled, and there's just so much more nonsense, all interleaved with reasons why the David Hicks case shows exactly the opposite of what the five-sided demons claim. Listen:
The military commissions being convened here are special war crimes tribunals to try terrorists that do not offer the legal protections of civilian courts. One justification for the looser rules is that they will deal with the worst of the worst.

But the first man through the double doors of the heavily secured courtroom here was no Osama bin Laden. He was David Hicks, a 31-year-old Australian whose lawyer described him as a ninth-grade dropout and “wannabe soldier” who ran away when the shooting started in Afghanistan.
Glaberson doesn't quite get around to mentioning the fact that before the shooting started in Afghanistan, the Taliban and al-Q'aeda were supported by the Pakistani intelligence agency ISI, which in turn was supported by the CIA. Not for nothing is al-Q'aeda sometimes called "al-CIA-duh".

Of course the New York Times doesn't call it that.
In the somber, makeshift courtroom, the lead prosecutor of the Hicks case, Lt. Col. Kevin Chenail of the Marines, tried to portray Mr. Hicks as public enemy No. 1.

“Today in this courtroom, we are on the front lines of the global war on terror,” Colonel Chenail told a panel of military officers assembled from around the globe Friday to hear arguments on the appropriate sentence. Mr. Hicks pleaded guilty on Monday to providing material support to Al Qaeda. “The enemy is sitting at the defense table,” Colonel Chenail added, gesturing to Mr. Hicks. “We are face to face with the enemy” who was “trying to kill Americans,” he said.
Killing Americans how? By running away when the shooting started?
He admitted training with Al Qaeda, guarding a Taliban tank and scouting a closed American embassy building. But there is no evidence he was considering a terrorist attack or capable of carrying one out. Yet he was held five years and four months before he got his day in court. And at the end of a very long day at the tribunal Friday, his actual sentence was only nine months...
The worst of the worst? The first "detainee" to be tried? Held for sixty-four months before he could even get a sham hearing, and then sentenced to nine months more? Doesn't he get credit for time served? He's done the nine months already, plus fifty-five more. For what? For being tortured?
To some in the courtroom, the proceedings proved only that the system was rigged to show detainees that the only way out of Guantánamo was to give the prosecutors what they wanted. Not only did Mr. Hicks plead guilty, but he also signed a plea bargain in which he recanted his accusations about being abused in detention and promised not to speak to reporters for a year.

In the courtroom, the military judge had Mr. Hicks acknowledge each of the contentious provision[s] of his deal. Mr. Hicks, the judge read, agreed that he had “never been illegally treated” while in American captivity, including “through the entire period of your detention by the United States at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.” Mr. Hicks agreed to that statement.
Doesn't it all depend on what you mean by "illegal"? And if a twice-unelected president of a former democracy says some "interrogation technique" is "legal", then it's legal. That's the new rule, isn't it? So the statement Mr. Hicks agreed to is not so far-fetched after all.

It's the system that's far-fetched.
Mr. Hicks’s lawyer, Maj. Michael Mori of the Marines, said he was speaking for his client, who he said was too nervous to speak for himself. “He wants to apologize to Australia and to the United States,” Major Mori said during the proceedings, adding that Mr. Hicks wanted to thank members of the armed services who, he said, had treated him professionally.
OMG! This is too thick to scrape off your shoes without power tools! And the New York Times reports it straight.

Is this the same David Hicks who, according to another NYT article of less than two weeks ago,
alleges in court document that he was beaten several times during interrogations and witnessed abuse of other prisoners during more than five years in American custody; Hicks, an Australian seeking British citizenship, says abuse began during interrogations in Afghanistan, where he was captured in late 2001...
Sometimes I wonder whether the old grey bitch is afraid of being charged with treason or whether that's just a ploy to make it seem like she's a Bush opponent. After all, the wingnuts can't claim the media is left-biased if the NYT licks Bush's shoes all day every day, can they?

In fact they can and they do say anything they like, regardless of whether it has any truth to it at all, or just a smidgen.

But in reality, and as expressed by
observers from advocacy and human rights groups here to monitor the proceedings, the plea deal Mr. Hicks reached was fresh evidence of the coercive power of this place. The plea bargain included a provision that will get Mr. Hicks out of detention here and into an Australian prison to serve the rest of his sentence within 60 days.
It takes that long to arrange transportation? What are all the unmarked planes doing? Isn't one of them free sometime in the next month, or six weeks, anyway? Or is Mr. Hicks' accommodation down under a problem?

Actually the whole Hicks case has been a problem down under, and one can't avoid the thought that this is why they dealt with him first.
There had been growing diplomatic pressure on the Bush administration to return Mr. Hicks to Australia, where his case has drawn wide attention and where Prime Minister John Howard, one of President Bush’s most stalwart supporters, is facing a tough re-election fight.
David Hicks has become a cause celebre in Australia. How many prisoners are held hostage at Guantánamo? And how many of them have the weight of an entire country -- an allied country at that -- behind them? And it goes without saying that an allied country which happens to be a so-called democracy must be led by an insane warmonger who is facing a re-election bid soon. Ah ha ha!
Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who is one of the regular observers in the courtroom here, said the deal showed that the military commission was intended to bring cases to the conclusion the government wants. “A person here, in order to have any hope of going home,” he said, “has to play by whatever rules the government sets.”

Jennifer Daskal, an observer for Human Rights Watch, said after the sentencing that the unusual rule silencing Mr. Hicks for a year showed that the government’s primary goal was “the protection against the disclosure of abuse.”
The most sensible comment came from Hicks himself, through his attorney:
Other than a few muted words in court, Mr. Hicks was not heard from directly. But as developments unfolded, David H. B. McLeod, an Australian lawyer working with the defense, provided insight into Mr. Hicks’s thoughts.

“He says that if he is the worst of the worst, and the person who should be put before a military commission first,” Mr. McLeod said, “then the world really hasn’t got much to worry about.”
Well that's insane too because the world has a great deal to worry about.

If I were a worrier I would worry about the way the national discourse has been shifted so far into the pro-torture realm that anyone, anywhere -- much less the NYT -- could possibly write a "fair-and-balanced" piece on such a heinous subject.

Fair and balanced now appears to be everywhere -- except the blogs with axes to grind -- but what it means in practice is that the wingnut insanity: indefinite detention without charge or hearing, much less a speedy trial; various forms of torture -- up to and including murder; "military tribunals" where confessions obtained under extreme duress are considered acceptable, and this is not to mention the sort of debacle we saw with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, where the pentagon released a "transcript" of an alleged hearing, with no video, no audio, not even a current photograph, and a "confession" that reads like a laundry list.

In the very midst of describing the horrors, is it really necessary to include the defense department's mantra?
Mr. Hicks’s case proved, as one spokeswoman regularly repeated, that the military commission system offers a “fair, legitimate and transparent forum.”
Yeah, sure it does.

Hey spokesman: You ever hang from the ceiling by your wrists while the guards smash your legs with baseball bats? No? You should try it sometime.

The fact that we are even discussing such a thing would have come as a shock to most Americans -- I would hope -- not all that long ago. But now, as Chris Floyd reads the not-so-subtle message just behind the lines:
This view -- the open acceptance of concentration camps, indefinite detention and unconstitutional judicial processes -- can actually be "supported" by the workings of the kangaroo court thus far, the venerable Times informs us. Check out this classic case of accomodation with evil masquerading as journalistic objectivity: "From the start, Guantánamo, its detainees and the legal proceedings here have provided enough grist to support the competing views of the detention center: a necessary mechanism for dealing with a new kind of enemy, or the embodiment of the war on terror gone awry."

Only a self-deluded fool -- either blinded by the cowardly panic that is the hallmark of the Bootlicker Brigade (Malkin, Limbaugh, Beck, etc.) or dulled by the well-wadded cozy "insider" status of our media barons (recently on such sickening display at the Gridiron Club Dinner love-in with all the adorable Bushies) -- could believe that the hideous regime of concentration camps, secret prisons, torture, kidnapping and "extrajudicial killing" established by Bush is anything but "the embodiment of the war on terror gone awry." Yet these mindsets -- the bootlickers and the well-wadded barons -- control our national discourse...and will continue to do so, as we noted yesterday, long after George W. Bush has retreated to his bunker in the Texas scrub, leaving a scorched earth behind.
At this point I'm not sure which is more dangerous -- the hideous regime of concentration camps, secret prisons, torture, kidnapping and "extrajudicial killing" established by Bush or the extent to which it is being "mainstreamed".

This isn't hard to figure out, folks. If David Hicks is among the worst of the worst, the whole system stinks on ice!

And if William Glaberson gets paid for this bootlicking blather -- by the New York Times, no less -- while Chris Floyd blogs ...

Monday, March 19, 2007

Scattered Notes From Around The Internets

I don't have time to do much blogging today, so I thought I might post a few leads which you can explore, if you find them interesting...

Australian Gary Hicks talks about his experiences in captivity: Australian describes torture in U.S. custody
"It put me in such fear that I just knew I would 'cooperate' in any way with the US."

The US may talk to "individuals" in the new Palestinian unity government; Israel rejects the lot of them: U.S. and Israel split over new unity government. Among the stumbling blocks: by insisting on the Palestinians' "legitimate right" to resist occupation "by all means", the new Palestinian government has allegedly "failed to step up to international standards".

Carlotta Gall reports on Afghanistan's silent plague of AIDS in an article with a heart-breaking introduction.

A suspect in the failed 7/21/05 London "bombings" testifies that he was not trying to hurt anyone, just trying to make some noise: July 21 attacks planned year before, court hears

Secretary of Rogue State Condoleeza Rice says the "sacrifice" in Iraq was "worth" it even though mistakes were made early in the war: Rice: Iraq War 'Worth the Sacrifice'. The Washington Post leads with coverage of her remarks but dwarfs them with real news from the real Iraq. More heart-breaking stuff, as expected.

In Pakistan, unrest continues to spread 10 days after General President Pervez Musharraf sacked the country's top judge. (In the photo top right, a lawyer in a suit returns a tear gas canister fired into a peaceful gathering by Pakistani police.) As usual, how you see it depends on where you stand: Protests mount against Musharraf attempt to sack Pakistan’s chief justice and Is this Pakistan’s Democratic Revolution? Why does this matter halfway around the world? In Pakistan there are nuclear weapons, a ruthless "intelligence" agency, extensive terrorist connections (even within the government), intense animosity toward India as well as the USA and the GWOT, and now -- suddenly -- an unstable government. As the man says: "Add 'em up. Account for luck. You never know."

Finally, Edgar Steele cracks me up with his "nickel rant", Obama? Yomama!, but Brain Worms might be even better.

I'll be in a meeting all afternoon, hopefully back online sometime this evening. In the meantime, this is as Open a Thread as you'll ever see here without a cartoon.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

False Alarm: "George Claims Third Victim" Is Not About Iran

The story headlined "George claims third victim..." is from Australia and it's about a cyclone.
Cyclone George today claimed a third victim when a 42-year-old man died of head injuries in Perth's Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital.

Craig Allan Raabe, 42, of Gympie, in Queensland, was hurt when George's 275km/h winds tore through a railway construction camp south of Port Hedland in the Pilbara region in the state's north-west.

He was one of 22 injured people airlifted early on Friday from the Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) site after the category four storm smashed Rail Camp 1 on Thursday night, sending temporary accommodation buildings flying.

George was the most violent storm to strike the region in 30 years.
Not good news a-tall. But the headline looked a lot worse for a moment.

Keep breathing, keep breathing, keep breathing...

~~~

Stop The Next War Before It Starts!

Friday, February 23, 2007

Cheney In Australia: Four Arrested In Violent Protests

Police and anti-war protesters clashed violently in Sydney during a massive security operation to protect the Vice-President [...] Four people were arrested during the two-hour protest outside Sydney's Shangri-La Hotel, where Mr Cheney was giving his speech.
This from Australia's The Age, which ran the above photo with the caption: "Love him or hate him, members of the public make their feelings about US Vice-President Dick Cheney known in Sydney yesterday. [Photo: Lee Besford]"

I'm still laughing at the picture.

Meanwhile, inside the hotel, Cheney spun out his ever-more-elaborate New Domino Theory for an audience strangely devoid of high-level Australians:
Mr Cheney said a withdrawal of troops before the Iraqis could properly defend themselves would allow violence to spread across the globe.

Many jihadists would head for Afghanistan and others would undermine moderate governments across the Middle East, while other terrorist groups sought victims on other continents, he said.

"We have a duty to stand in their way," Mr Cheney told a meeting of the Australian-American Leadership Dialogue, notable for the absence of most senior members of the Howard Government.

Mr Cheney [...] said terrorists wanted to seize a country in the Middle East and use it as a base for attacks on governments that refused to meet their demands.

Their ultimate aim was to create a caliphate ranging from Spain, across North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia to Indonesia. "It would not stop there," he said...
Of course not. It wouldn't stop at all. Not as long as Cheney's making millions of dollars every year from it. What does he care?

In diplomatic terms, his reception was strange indeed.
America was glad to be fighting alongside a country like Australia, which never abandoned its mates, he said.

But the Prime Minister, and other senior members of the Government, including Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, were not present to hear the praise, given during the only public engagement of Mr Cheney's three-day Australian visit.

Mr Howard, who did not meet Mr Cheney's plane when it arrived on Thursday night, put a higher priority on yesterday's water summit with state premiers. He will meet Mr Cheney today.
So instead of being greeted by his "mate" the Prime Minister, Cheney was welcomed by the leader of Australia's opposition Labor Party, Kevin Rudd.

And as The Age notes, there are very clear differences in opinion between the two:
It was clear yesterday that Mr Rudd and Mr Cheney differed in their views of the war in Iraq, with the Labor leader depicting the conflict as a religious civil war requiring a political solution rather than a fight against terrorism.
The Age also mentions:
During a visit by President George Bush in 2003, Government ministers lined up to shake the hand of the US President.
What a difference four years makes!

Perhaps Dick Cheney would have felt more comfortable with the state premiers at the water summit.

And why not? It was good enough for John Howard!

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Gwynne Dyer: If Bush Gives The Order, Pace Faces A Big Decision

Many people listen to the White House these days and conclude a United States attack on Iran is imminent: "To be quite honest, I'm a little concerned that it's Iraq again," as Senator John Rockefeller, the new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said recently.

But if President Bush gives the order, then General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will face a big decision.

Some senior US soldiers were worried about the strategic wisdom and even the legality of invading Iraq, but nobody resigned over it. It was obvious the US would win the war quickly and cheaply, and almost nobody worried about the aftermath.

But an attack on Iran is different, even though it would not involve American ground troops, because any competent general knows this is a war the US cannot win.
Who says there's a war the US cannot win?

Why, Gwynne Dyer, of course. He's a veteran of two navies and a respected military historian; he knows the difference between slogans and realities. Dyer's most recent column comes to us today from New Zealand.
Air strikes alone cannot win a war, however massive they are, and they probably could not even destroy all of Iran's nuclear facilities, which are numerous, dispersed, and often deeply buried.

Many Iranians would be killed, but what would the US do next? It would have very few options, whereas Iran would have many. Iran could flood Iraq with sophisticated weapons and volunteers to fight against US forces.

It could throw international markets into turmoil by halting its oil exports. It could try to close the entire Gulf to tanker traffic, and throw the world economy into crisis.

And any further US air strikes would simply harden Iranians' resolve.
So ... what to do about it?

How about NOT doing it?
So would General Pace attack Iran if Bush ordered him to? His only alternative would be to resign, but he does have that option.

Senior officers like Pace, while still bound by the code of military discipline, also acquire a political responsibility. Like cabinet ministers, they cannot oppose a government decision while in office, but they have the right and even the duty to resign rather than carry out a decision they believe disastrous.

The resignation of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - and possibly several of the other chiefs as well - would be an immensely powerful gesture. It could stop an attack on Iran dead in its tracks, for the White House would have to find other officers who would carry out its orders.

It would doubtless find them, but such a shocking event might finally enable Congress to find its backbone and refuse support for another illegal and foredoomed war.
But what would it say to the Terrorists?
My guess is both the Joint Chiefs and the White House understand that the option of resignation is on the table. Consider the dance that was done around the question of Iran and "Explosively Formed Penetrators" in the past couple of weeks. (EFPs are glorified shaped-charge weapons that can penetrate armour. Most major armies have had them for several decades.)

On 11 February, US officials claimed the EFPs that have killed some 170 American troops in Iraq since 2004 were Iranian-made, and supplied to Iraqi insurgents by "the highest levels of the Iranian government".

White House spokesman Tony Snow insisted they were being supplied by the Quds unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

Familiar stuff from the run-up to the Iraq war - but then something unscripted happened. In Australia, General Peter Pace said Iranian Government involvement was not proven: "We know that the explosively formed projectiles are manufactured in Iran, but I would not say by what I know that the Iranian Government clearly knows or is complicit." A day later, in Jakarta, he repeated his doubts: "What [the evidence] does say is that things made in Iran are being used in Iraq to kill coalition soldiers."
Methinks the General ought to know enough not to undercut his Commander in Chef while he's trying to catapult the propaganda!
There is a civil-military confrontation brewing in the US not seen since President Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War.

But this time, if the general acts on his convictions, he will be in the right.
There are some people around here looking for a much more serious civil-military confrontation than the president firing a General. And pulling for the military, too, unless I am very much mistaken.

The "thinking" goes: If we can't have gridlock in Congress then maybe we can get some mutiny in the Pentagon. Yesterday I wasn't sure whether that would qualify as thinking or merely wishin' and hopin' and prayin' ... but today, having read Dyer's most recent, I could almost be persuaded that there's hope for us yet.

Slim is always better than None.

Australia Prepares Welcome For Dick Cheney, War Criminal

From the New Zealand Herald:
Clashes in Sydney before Cheney's Australia trip
SYDNEY - Anti-Iraq war protesters clashed with police in Sydney yesterday ahead of a visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney, underlining divisions within one of Washington's firmest allies over the unpopular war.

Police detained about six people when up to 200 Stop the War Coalition protesters, demanding Australian Prime Minister John Howard pull troops out of Iraq, tried to march from Sydney Town Hall to the US consulate.

A heavy police presence, including officers mounted on horseback, ringed the protesters in an attempt to minimise disruption to peak-hour commuters, some of whom also squabbled with police.

Protesters held placards saying "Dick Go Home & Take John With You" and "Stop Cheney, Troops Out". Police later relented and shepherded protesters as they marched towards the consulate.
There's more where that came from, and more here too.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Pakistani Police Round Up 50 Suspects After Courtroom Bomb Kills 16

[UPDATED below]

Here's Carlotta Gall reporting for the New York Times with an assist from Salman Masood:
Suicide Bomber Kills Judge and 14 Others in Pakistani Courtroom

KARACHI, Pakistan, Feb. 17 — In the sixth suicide bombing in a month, a man blew himself up in a small district courtroom in the border town of Quetta on Saturday, killing 15 people, including a senior judge, and wounding 35, officials said.
One of the 35 people who were wounded died later, thus the discrepancy in numbers.
No group claimed responsibility, but the chief elected official of the province connected it to the string of suicide attacks that have now killed some 40 people and put security forces on alert across the country.

The Quetta blast could be linked to earlier suicide attacks in Islamabad and Peshawar, said Jam Mohammad Yousaf, the chief minister of Baluchistan Province.

Baluchistan has often been the scene of bombings, linked to Sunni and Shiite sectarian groups and, to a lesser extent, Baluch nationalists who are fighting an insurgency against the government. But Mr. Yousaf said local groups lacked the expertise for suicide bombing.

The recent string of bombings began after the military carried out an airstrike against suspected militants in the tribal area of South Waziristan on Jan. 16.

A militant leader, Baitullah Mehsud, vowed to use suicide bombers to take revenge. Pakistani officials have not directly implicated Mr. Mehsud in the bombings while the investigations are under way, and he has denied any involvement, saying that his threat was an emotional outburst.

Mr. Mehsud is believed to have trained suicide bombers and sent them into Afghanistan, where there were 127 suicide attacks last year.

Militants based in the tribal areas, who are sympathetic to the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda, are widely believed to be behind suicide bombings in Afghanistan, and have in the past been implicated in the more rare attacks in Pakistan.

Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and an Army Corps commander have all come under attack in the last few years, as have foreign targets like the United States Consulate in Karachi and a busload of French engineers.

Officials say the attacks are prompted by Pakistan’s pro-American policy since Sept. 11, 2001. Recent attacks have focused on softer targets, with bombers often on foot and often killing civilians.

The trend is a shock for Pakistan and a stark warning for the government, which has largely ignored Afghan pleas to go after militants in the tribal areas.

The target the bomber chose in Quetta was a small district court in the center of the city, where there was little security. The bomber pushed his way in at the court’s busiest time, about 11 a.m., saying that he was due at a hearing. He blew himself up at the door of the first room he came to.

Judge Abdul Waheed Durrani, who was hearing a case involving a property dispute, was killed, along with six lawyers and relatives of the defendants. Bodies and debris littered the room afterward, and shrapnel scarred the walls.

Prime Minister Aziz condemned the attack. “That is why we are against terrorism, because it kills innocent lives,” he told journalists during a visit to Peshawar. “It is against our religion and against humanity.”

A suicide attack in Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier Province, which also shares a border with Afghanistan, killed 15 people on Jan. 27. A day earlier, a bomber at a hotel in Islamabad killed a guard.

Another bomber killed a policeman in the town of Dera Ismail Khan on Jan. 29. And a car bomber killed two soldiers in the town of Tank, near the tribal areas this month.
I have it from very reliable sources that if you get your news from Carlotta Gall, you can be sure it's trustworthy. Thus my rather lengthy quote.

Here's a follow-up, from News24 in South Africa:
50 held after court blast

Quetta - Pakistani police have rounded up 50 suspects as investigations continue into a courtroom suicide bombing that killed 16 people including a judge and several lawyers, officials said on Sunday.

The detainees included members of sectarian outfits and some Afghan refugees, said police spokesperson Qazi Abdul Waheed.

The raids were conducted after the bomber blew himself up in a packed room during court proceedings on Saturday, killing 15.

About 35 people were taken to hospital, where one more died overnight, doctors said.

Lawyers here announced a three-day mourning period, during which they would boycott the courts.

The court compound is located near police and provincial government offices in Quetta - the capital of Baluchistan province - which borders Iran and insurgency-plagued southern Afghanistan.

Saturday's incident was the latest in a wave of recent suicide attacks in Pakistan blamed on pro-Taliban militants angry at President Pervez Musharraf's support for the US-led "war on terror".
~~~

Some of my regular readers may have been wondering why I keep covering stories from Pakistan; partially it's because I want you to realize how different Pakistan is from what you probably imagine. Do you have any idea what it's like to live in a country where the average number of terrorist attacks is about two and a half per day? Sometimes we lose sight of things beyond our own borders, and I think it's good to be reminded of what's happening in other countries.

I also want you to think about the sort of reaction would we see in our own countries if a bomb ever exploded in a courtroom. Pakistan, the only government in the world that officially recognized the Taliban, is now our closest ally in the so-called war against so-called terror, and losing people to suicide bombings every week.

How very sad!

And we think we're under attack because of something that happened more than five years ago

~~~

[UPDATE @ 10PM ET]: This just in! A report from Australia says Pakistani police claim to have arrested two teams of would-be suicide bombers. Here's that report, with a bit of cold emphasis added:
Pakistan catches suicide bombers

TWO more teams of would-be suicide bombers from an organisation linked to al-Qa'ida were arrested in Pakistan yesterday, capping 48 hours of violence.

Foreign diplomats in Islamabad were warned to limit travel around the capital after a suicide bomber struck a courthouse in Quetta, capital of Baluchistan province, killing 16 people, including a top judge, and wounding 30 on Saturday.

Abdul Ghani, a government surgeon in the Bajaur region who was trying to eradicate polio, was killed on Friday by a bomb under his car, which was planted by militants who believe the vaccination program is a conspiracy to stunt the population growth of Muslims.

Senior government officials said yesterday that security had been reinforced and the violence was under control.

But Benazir Bhutto, exiled leader of the main opposition Pakistan People's Party, said the country was in crisis because of the military operations in Baluchistan and the rise of the Taliban in tribal areas.

One team of three suicide bombers belonging to the al-Qa'ida-linked and Taliban-supporting Sunni militant Lashkar-e-Jhangvi organisation was seized yesterday after a gunbattle in Karachi.

Another team of three was arrested on a train at Sukkur, in the interior of Sindh province, of which Karachi is the capital.

"We found explosives, splinters, circuits and jackets used in suicide bombings, as well as jihadi literature on them," a senior police officer was quoted as saying.

Both teams were allegedly part of the suicide-bomb campaign across Pakistan to avenge actions by the country's armed forces in the region neighbouring Afghanistan.

The wave of suicide attacks, including an attempt to blow up the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, was launched after the Pakistan army and air force struck a suspected al-Qa'ida base in the South Waziristan region bordering Afghanistan last month.

The Quetta court bombing was the worst attack. The bomber reportedly raced into the court building, telling bystanders he was giving evidence in a trial.

He detonated the bomb in the building's licence branch. Judge Abdul Wahid Durrani died in the blast, with senior lawyers and other officials.

"Initially, we suspect nationalist extremists as well as Afghan Taliban (supporters) could be behind the attack," said a spokesman for the Baluchistan Government, Razak Bugti.

Investigators said the two teams of suicide bombers seized in Karachi and Sukkur were planning to feed sectarian strife with attacks on Pakistan's Shia minority at the end of the holy month of Muharram.

Extremists are using suspicions about the drive against polio in Pakistan -- one of the few countries still afflicted with the disease -- to stir rebellion in tribal regions.

Retired Pakistani general Ali Jan Mohammad Aurakzai -- regarded by Western diplomats as one of the best-informed about sentiment among tribal militants on the Durand Line frontier with Afghanistan -- said the conflict in Afghanistan was becoming a "war of liberation" against foreign invaders.

The Taliban were winning popular support, he said.

Referring to Taliban claims that 10,000 jihadi fighters are poised to launch a (northern) spring offensive, General Aurakzai warned they would take years to defeat.

The Kabul Government and the coalition forces had no alternative but to negotiate with the Taliban, he said.

"Eventually, all issues will have to be resolved through dialogue on the negotiating table," General Aurakzai said.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Too Much Going On

There's so much going on, I can't decide which story not to cover next.

Both of the so-called "liberal feminist bloggers" hired by John Edwards to blog for his campaign, and kept on by him after some wingnut attacks, have resigned their positions following even more attacks. FOX News is having fun with the story:

Catholic Leader Urges John Edwards to Fire Second Blogger After One Quits

Second Blogger Quits John Edwards Campaign

~~~

In the alleged kidnapping / beheading plot which we mentioned las week, six of the nine men arrested in Britain last week have been charged, and the other three have been released. I hope to have more details and some analysis later ... but not too much later.

~~~

Pro-war propaganda concerning Iran has been skyrocketing lately. Um. Pardon the expression. Larisa's blog has had some really good coverage of this aspect of the current SNAFU -- here's her latest.

~~~

I've noticed a recent agreement whereby North Korea will supposedly, eventually, desist from the deveopment of nuclear arms ... is that too good to be true? And suppose they say "Look, ma: No weapons. Honest!" ... How would we know whether they were telling us the truth or not? Stay tuned.

~~~

There's been a bit of a dust-up between Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Senator Barack Obama, which began when Howard said a few ignorant things about what would happen if Obama became president. Had Obama been following news from Australia closely, he would have known that saying offensive and ignorant things is about the only thing Howard does really well, and like all politicians, he plays from his strong suit as often as possible. I hope to have more to say about this later as time permits.

~~~

But I'm working on yet another story ...