dedicated to Mike & Bob --"kill, kill, kill"
Jon Ford
jonmfordster@hotmail.com
Sun, 18 Nov 2001 17:56:50 -0800
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<P align=right><B><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=+1></FONT></B> </P>
<P align=right><B><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=+1>from www.counterpunch.org,November 15, 2001</FONT></B></P>
<H1><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=+4>Kill, Kill, Kill</FONT></H1>
<H1><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=+4><IMG height=252 src="http://www.counterpunch.org/kill.gif" width=352 align=bottom border=0 NATURALSIZEFLAG="3"></FONT></H1>
<P><FONT face="Trebuchet MS" size=+2>By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana color=#990000 size=+3>I</FONT><FONT face=Verdana>n a recent interview with the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, Osama bin Laden justified the killing of innocent Americans this way :</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>"If an enemy occupies a Muslim territory and uses common people as human shield, then it is permitted to attack that enemy. For instance, if bandits barge into a home and hold a child hostage, then the child's father can attack the bandits and in that attack even the child may get hurt. America and its allies are massacring us in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir and Iraq. The Muslims have the right to attack America in reprisal."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>That's the traditional justification for killing, isn't it?</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>They kill us, we kill them, they kill us, we kill them.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>What ever happened to "thou shalt not kill"?</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Equally unimpressive is President Bush's justification for killing: we are in a war with terror.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Okay, then what about terror committed by us?</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>We kill innocents, they kill innocents. It's all terror.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Last week, Bush said we don't target innocent civilians.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Oh yeah? What about the nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the fire bombing of Dresden? What about U.S. support in the 1980s for the contra war in Nicaragua, and the CIA mining of Nicaraguan ports -- actions which killed thousands and led to a judgment against the United States at the World Court?</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Civilian targeting, and terror, pure and simple.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Most despicable are those in our media, who sit comfortably in their modern offices, staring at their computers, and hit the keys advocating more killing of innocents thousands of miles away.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Here's our short ten worst list, in order of repulsiveness:</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Michael Kelly (Washington Post): "American pacifists are on the side of future mass murders of Americans," they are "objectively pro-terrorist," "evil" and "liars."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Jonathan Alter (Newsweek): Wondered whether torture would "jump-start the stalled investigation into the greatest crime in American history." Urges pacifists to shut up because "it's kill or be killed."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Bill O'Reilly (Fox TV): "The US should bomb the Afghan infrastructure to rubble -- the airport, the power plants, their water facilities, the roads. The Afghans are responsible for the Taliban. We should not target civilians, but if they don't rise up against this criminal government, they starve, period."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>A.M. Rosenthal (Washington Times): In addition to Afghanistan, wants to bomb Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Iran, and Syria.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Ann Coulter (ex-National Review): Her response to terrorism is to "invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Steve Dunleavy (New York Post) " "The response to this unimaginable 21st-century Pearl Harbor should be as simple as it is swift -- kill the bastards. A gunshot between the eyes, blow them to smithereens, poison them if you have As for cities or countries that host these worms, bomb them into basketball courts."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Rich Lowry (National Review): "If we flatten part of Damascus or Tehran or whatever it takes, that is part of the solution."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Charles Krauthammer (Washington Post): "We are fighting because the bastards killed 5,000 of our people, and if we do not kill them, they are going to kill us again."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Thomas Friedman (New York Times): "We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules." And the perverted "give war a chance."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>George Will (Washington Post): "The Bush administration is telling the country that there is some dying to be done. ... The goal is not to 'bring terrorists to justice,' which suggests bringing them into sedate judicial settings -- lawyers, courtrooms, due process, all preceded by punctilious readings of Miranda rights. Rather, the goal is destruction of enemies."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Of course, the peace voices have been shunned by the big media corporations.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>After September 11, Clear Channel, the nation's largest owner of radio stations, sent out an internal memorandum with a list of songs the stations were not to play, including John Lennon's "Imagine."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>In response, Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, took out a full page ad in the New York Times with eight words from the song: "Imagine all the people living life in peace."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Then she took out a billboard on Time Square that said: "Give Peace a Chance."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>"What John wrote is a very strong and beautiful message," Ono said. "I think they (Clear Channel) wanted everyone to be in a kind of attack mode."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>John Lennon: "Give Peace a Chance."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>Thomas Friedman: "Give War a Chance."</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>You decide.</FONT></P>
<P><B><FONT face=Verdana>Russell Mokhiber</FONT></B><FONT face=Verdana> is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. <B>Robert Weissman</B> is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor. They are co-authors of <A href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567511589/counterpunchmaga">Corporate Predators: The Hunt for MegaProfits and the Attack on Democracy</A> (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press, 1999).</FONT></P>
<P><FONT face=Verdana>(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman<BR></FONT><BR><BR><BR><BR><BR></P>
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<DIV></DIV>
<DIV></DIV>>From: Roger Baker <RCBAKER@EDEN.INFOHWY.COM>
<DIV></DIV>>To: austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net
<DIV></DIV>>Subject: Now what?
<DIV></DIV>>Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 14:33:08 -0800
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>Try this link. Trust me you'll like it.
<DIV></DIV>>For example I found the story below there.
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>> http://www.SmirkingChimp.com/
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>War & Terrorism
<DIV></DIV>>Robert Fisk: 'Forget the cliches, there is no easy way to sort this
<DIV></DIV>>out'
<DIV></DIV>>Posted on Sunday, November 18 @ 09:28:54 EST
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>------------------------------------------------------------------------
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>By Robert Fisk, London Independent
<DIV></DIV>>Afghanistan - as the armies of the West are about to realise - is
<DIV></DIV>>not a country. You can't "occupy" or even "control" Afghanistan
<DIV></DIV>>because it is neither a state nor a nation.
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>Nor can we dominate Afghanistan with the cliches now being honed by
<DIV></DIV>>our journalists. We may want a "broad-based" government, but do the
<DIV></DIV>>Afghans? We may regard cities as "strategic" - especially if
<DIV></DIV>>reporters are about to enter them - but the Afghans have a different
<DIV></DIV>>perspective on their land.
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>As for the famous loya jirga, a phrase which now slips proudly off
<DIV></DIV>>the lips of cognoscenti, it just means "big meeting". Even more
<DIV></DIV>>disturbingly, it is a uniquely Pashtun phrase and thus represents
<DIV></DIV>>the tribal rules of only 38 per cent of Afghan society.
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>The real problem is that Afghanistan contains only tiny minorities
<DIV></DIV>>of the ethnic groups which constitute its population. Thus, the 7
<DIV></DIV>>million Pashtuns in the country are outnumbered by the 12 million
<DIV></DIV>>Pashtuns in Pakistan, the 3.5 million Tajiks in Afghanistan are
<DIV></DIV>>outnumbered by the 6 million Tajiks in Tajikistan. The 1.3 million
<DIV></DIV>>Uzbeks are just a fraction of the 23 million Uzbeks in Uzbekistan.
<DIV></DIV>>There are 600,000 Turkmens in Afghanistan - but 3.52 million in
<DIV></DIV>>Turkmenistan. So why should the Afghan Pashtuns and Tajiks and
<DIV></DIV>>Uzbeks and Turkmens regard Afghanistan as their country? Their
<DIV></DIV>>"country" is the bit of land in Afghanistan upon which they live.
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>Indeed, Afghan Pashtuns have long disputed the notorious Durand line
<DIV></DIV>>- the frontier which divided Afghanistan from British India and
<DIV></DIV>>which now forms the Afghan-Pakistan border. In 1897, Sir Mortimer
<DIV></DIV>>Durand took no account of the fact that the Afghan Empire once
<DIV></DIV>>included much of what would become present-day Pakistan.
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>Hence, today, the constant fear for Pakistan's leader, General
<DIV></DIV>>Pervez Musharraf, is not so much an Islamic revolution but a rebirth
<DIV></DIV>>of the notorious demand for "Pushtunistan" in the North-West
<DIV></DIV>>Frontier province.
<DIV></DIV>>A remark by a victorious Northern Alliance official - that his men
<DIV></DIV>>might push on to "the Pashtun city of Karachi" - caused a minor
<DIV></DIV>>political heart attack in Islamabad. In similar fashion, the
<DIV></DIV>>journalistic idea that Taliban leaders might "flee over the border
<DIV></DIV>>into Pakistan" seems a lot less odd to the Taliban themselves - who
<DIV></DIV>>would merely be moving across an artificial British-made border into
<DIV></DIV>>another part of the Pashtun tribal area.
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>Of course, it's not difficult to see how we Westerners like the idea
<DIV></DIV>>of a loya jirga. All we have to do is supervise a massive congress
<DIV></DIV>>of Afghan tribesmen - forgetting that the loya jirga is totally
<DIV></DIV>>unrepresentative because women are banned - in order to produce a
<DIV></DIV>>power-sharing government of the kind that the British created in
<DIV></DIV>>Northern Ireland.
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>Only it's not like that. The loya jirga became part of Afghan
<DIV></DIV>>tradition when, in 1747, Ahmed Abdalli took 4,000 soldiers to
<DIV></DIV>>Kandahar - which was then just two small towns - and brought
<DIV></DIV>>together the leaders of the eight major Pashtun tribes. They chose
<DIV></DIV>>Ahmed Durani as the king. But since then, despite the inclusion of
<DIV></DIV>>Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, Pashtuns have ruled Afghanistan for all
<DIV></DIV>>but three brief periods of the 20th century.
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>It's easy to see why. The Uzbeks never had loya jirgas. The Tajiks
<DIV></DIV>>are an urban, non-tribal group. How can they obtain equal or
<DIV></DIV>>proportionate weight in such a meeting when they do not have tribal
<DIV></DIV>>leaders? Will the Tajiks have one representative for the Pashtuns'
<DIV></DIV>>eight or more?
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>Nor can history be excluded. The Shia Muslim Hazaras - who may or
<DIV></DIV>>may not owe their origins to Genghis Khan's invading hordes - were
<DIV></DIV>>the victims of savage repression at the hands of Pashtun forces
<DIV></DIV>>under the "Iron Emir", King Abdur Rahman, in 1880. Abdur Rahman, it
<DIV></DIV>>should be added, repressed his own Pashtun people as well. He had
<DIV></DIV>>been invited to rule Afghanistan by - you guessed it - the British
<DIV></DIV>>government.
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV>>Reprinted from The London Independent:
<DIV></DIV>>http://www.independent.co.uk/
<DIV></DIV>>story.jsp?story=105385story.jsp?story=105385
<DIV></DIV>>
<DIV></DIV></div><br clear=all><hr>Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at <a href='http://go.msn.com/bql/hmtag_itl_EN.asp'>http://explorer.msn.com</a><br></html>