Month: June 2008

Pakistan Protests too Much

What were Pakistani troops doing in such close proximity to Taliban Troops?

While the Chaudry / Sharif backed long march goes on in Pakistan, it’s been somewhat occluded by the recent confrontation between Pakistani and Nato forces. 11 Pakistan forces are dead, but a lot of questions remain.

Syed, mouthpiece of the Taliban, points this out as well in the Asia times, and I would rather he tell us who “Syed Sheikh” is and where he’s at. (“Syed Sheikh” is rumored to be the new AQ #3) I disagree with Syed on his article’s premise btw, Musharraf is great at tap dancing along the razor wire of Pakistan’s political schisms, but he will not be a force to be reckoned with in Pakistan Politics anytime in the near future. (I won’t say never since Pakistan has a history of recycling politicians as soon as one post-colonial feudal faction gains over another.)

Continue reading “Pakistan Protests too Much”

American Innovation

Here’s the stuff of science fiction in practice – in Vernor Vinge’s latest book Telepresence is a key part of the narrative along with wearable computers and virtual communities. Here you see John Chambers of Cisco talking to Marthin Debeers through Telepresence.

I once had to wake John up at three am a few years back, so this is my way of apology since he was quite pleasant considering the circumstance and he got things straightened out very quickly.

 

*disclaimer: I own a small lot of stock in Cisco and I work for a company that does a lot of business with Cisco, but on the other hand, how many companies are there anymore who don’t do business with Cisco? Normally I don’t post telecom stuff, but this was too fun not to post. H/T to Publius Pundit.

My Barack Obama Website’s Fly is Open

We’ve talked about populist candidates here in the past, and how they seem to attract strange bedfellow alliances of crazies, hate-groups, and kook-pundits – they do it by making speeches full of sweeping general statements without specifics. The attractant is that crazies can see anything they want in the candidate, while a specific stance is not really there; instead you see populist charicature or posture on almost all issues.

Charles at Little Green Footballs has been running a series of posts on hateful, terrorist aligned, and anti-semitic groups that have pages at the official My Barack Obama website, and some of the pages have since come down. Overnight he found more pages, and the wisdom of unmoderated web forums for a presidential candidate is really called into question. Along with all of that the web designers seem to have left their fly open at the site, with everything hanging out.

We’ve talked about populist candidates here in the past, and how they seem to attract strange bedfellow alliances of crazies, hate-groups, and kook-pundits – they do it by making speeches full of sweeping general statements without specifics. The attractant is that crazies can see anything they want in the candidate, while a specific stance is not really there; instead you see populist charicature or posture on almost all issues.

Continue reading “My Barack Obama Website’s Fly is Open”

Laura Bush in Bamiya

Laura Bush revisited Bamiyan province in Afghanistan this weekend to raise more money for reconstruction and to showcase the progress made since her previous trip there. This is her third trip, but the press tends to ignore these calls for aid; doing the requisite one story and not examining in detail what Laura is trying to point out to the world. She’s been highly active in social causes such as education for Afghanistan, Democracy for Myanmar (Burma,) and aid for Africa for much of her stay in the white house, but to the mainstream press she doesn’t exist except for the required one story per event per outlet. Most of the general public has no clue that she’s been to Afghanistan three times. A quote from the story:

In a prelude to her trip to the Afghanistan donors conference this week in Paris, Mrs. Bush visited a construction site of a learning center for youngsters that will double as an orphanage. She marveled at how women, who just a few years ago were being forced by the Taliban to shroud themselves from head-to-toe, are now Afghan National Police trainees. She celebrated the halfway point of a project to pave a road from the airport to the town center in Bamiyan Province

 

Al Qaeda Genocide Against Muslims

Fareed Zakaria takes umbrage at the word Terrorism in the Khaleej Times, so I thought I would reply to the semantic game. He quibbles over whether the civilians killed in Terror attacks in Iraq should be counted as terror victims in an attempt to downplay terror. These are word games, because whether you call it genocide or terror, people who shouldn’t be dead still are.

Their fears are still over, along with their futures, their hopes, their dreams, and their lives. It’s easy to downplay terror if you don’t live next to a CD store in Quetta, or pray in a mosque in Charsadda, or shop for dinner at a market in Baghdad, and I don’t believe Fareed does articles for Octane.

Whether you call them terrorists, takfirists, jihadis, murderers, criminals, Islamists, or genocidal maniacs really doesn’t matter to the Iraqi muslims, the Indian Muslims, the Algerian Muslims, the Pakistani Muslims, the Lebanese muslims, the Palestinian Muslims, and the Indonesian Muslims who are dead at the hands of Al Qaeda.

So let’s not quibble over words, we could stop calling it terrorism and instead call it Genocide, as Colin Powell and others did for the previous instances of genocide through terrorism that Fareed brought up in his opinion piece, but would it really make any difference?

Iranian Backed Hezbollah Captured in Iraq

Our forces captured a Hezbollah operative today Southeast of Baghdad, and it appears that they’ve opted to become actively and openly engaged in Iraq according to this article:

The U.S. military in Iraq has captured the deputy military chief of the Iranian-sponsored Hizbullah, coalition officials said.

Iraqi sources said the U.S. Army has arrested the No. 2 figure in Hizbullah’s military wing. The sources said the unidentified Hizbullah commander was responsible for training the Iranian-backed Mahdi Army in the Baghdad area.

“The arrest is a major achievement and could provide an intelligence bonanza,” an Iraqi source said.

The U.S.-led coalition has reported the capture of a senior Iranian operative south of Baghdad. In a coalition statement, the operative was described as a “primary weapons smuggler and financier for Iranian-backed enemy fighters.”

Hezbollah has also announced that they are “opening a front” in Iraq, as noted in this Mid East Times Summary of News from Arab Papers:

Al-Seyassah (Kuwait): Hezbollah decides to open front against Washington in Iraq – NATO sources in Brussels said yesterday that Lebanon’s Hezbollah has opened a military front against the Americans in Iraq, claiming that dozens of its members were now in Iraq training special Shiite and Sunni elements to fight the U.S. forces there. The sources also said that Hezbollah has a plan to subdue the U.N. forces in south Lebanon in the event of another confrontation with Israel.

The Quds force or Hezbollah capture is also noted here by Defense link:

WASHINGTON, June 6, 2008 – Coalition forces killed four enemy fighters and detained dozens of suspected terrorists in recent operations, military officials said.
The leader of an Iranian-backed “special group” surrendered to coalition forces today in Hayy, about 190 miles southeast of Baghdad.

Acting on intelligence information, coalition forces raided the presumed residence of the special group leader, who’s suspected of directing and ordering attacks against coalition forces in Wasit province, as well as attacks and kidnappings against civil authorities there. The man also is suspected of smuggling Iranian weapons — specifically, Katyusha rockets — into Baghdad.

In a separate operation in Hayy today, coalition forces raided the residence of another wanted special groups operative. The suspect attempted to flee, but coalition forces were able to track him, and he eventually surrendered.

In other news from Iraq, coalition forces captured 10 wanted men and 22 other suspects involved in al-Qaida in Iraq’s bombing networks in Mosul, Baghdad and the Tigris River valley yesterday and today.

Coalition forces detained more than 20 suspected terrorists believed to be responsible for car-bomb attacks and weapons smuggling, and killed four others June 4 during an operation targeting a major al-Qaida in Iraq terrorist network along the Tigris River valley in the western portion of the Tamim province.

In separate June 4 operations, Iraqi soldiers uncovered several weapons caches in Baghdad’s Sadr City district. The caches contained rocket-propelled grenades, explosives designed to pierce armor, machine guns, AK-47 rifles, AK-47 magazines, various-sized rounds, mortar fuses, two ski masks and special groups propaganda.

Multinational Division Baghdad soldiers discovered a cache and detained five suspects in the Rashid district of southern Baghdad on June 3-4.

With the known links and support from Iran to Hezbollah, if the statement in Mid-East Times is true, then this is close to the state of Iran openly declaring war on Iraq and the US.