Violence and Repression in Western Afghanistan. "A man who was severely beaten by Ismail Khan's forces described to Human Rights Watch the effect of the repression: 'At any time I feel that I am in danger. When I leave my house, I do not know if I will return. I do not know whether something will happen to me, if there will be some car crash, or that I will be hit in the back of the head.' Another witness talked about how his community's hopes after the hated Taliban regime was ended have been deflated: 'What has changed in Afghanistan? All our hopes are crushed. We are completely disappointed. Look-all the same warlords are in power as before. Fundamentalism has come into power, and every day they strengthen their power.'
The light of liberation and liberty descends upon Afghanistan.
posted by fold_and_mutilate
on Nov 6, 2002 -
31 comments
''Am I proud to have served my country? Hardly. On September 11, I will awaken at dawn. I will retrieve all my variously colored medals from their little box in my dresser drawer. I'll put my robe on, go into my daughter's room and tell her I love her. I will unlock the deadbolt (my homeland security), and proceed out the front door, remove the lid to the trashcan, and throw my medals in the garbage, where they belong."
(via yellowtimes.org)
Napoleon once said he could make men fight and die for brass, and bits of colored ribbon. There will be no more fitting memorial for September 11 than destroying the symbols of a way that contributed so mightily to the terrible events of that day....an American Waterloo.
posted by fold_and_mutilate
on Sep 4, 2002 -
87 comments
"Before There Was Terrorism ...there was land confiscation...settlements...occupation...checkpoints..."[and retreating a little further in time, the Holocaust, repeated
pogroms, the Diaspora, etc.] "In late March, responding to the Seder massacre - a suicide bombing that killed 27 Israelis gathered for a Passover meal - President Bush said that 'justice and cruelty have always been at war, and God is not neutral between them.' He had used this same phrase in his speech to Congress after September 11....Bush believes justice lies entirely with Israel, cruelty with the Palestinians, and that God is therefore on Israel's side. Interestingly enough, Elie Wiesel wrote in his novella Dawn that God is a terrorist. Dawn is Wiesel's story, said to be at least partially autobiographical, about a young man who fights against British control of Palestine in the 1940s by joining the Irgun, Israel's pre-state terrorist organization led by Menachem Begin. Wiesel calls the organization a terrorist organization, without embarrassment, throughout the novella, and about midway through, by way of justifying his hero's actions, he declares that 'God is a member of the Resistance movement, a terrorist.'"
Huh?
God? Has Ashcroft been notified of this? It gets so damned
confusing these days to pick out the
terrorists.
posted by fold_and_mutilate
on May 3, 2002 -
16 comments
