Believe The Al Qaeda Myth And Surrender Your Liberties
Why is it that you so often see journalists in the UK claiming Al Qaeda doesn’t exist? Or at least, Al Qaeda doesn’t exist in the all powerful, worldwide way we are told it does by BushCo and the NeoCon fear-mongers.
That is, Al Qaeda as the New Nazis.
In the US and Australia, few if any journalists are brave enough to speak out on the ‘Al Qaeda’ truth their intelligence and secret services sources have been telling them for years. Why is that? What are they afraid of?
So here’s yet another example of an extremely well known British journalist smashing the Al Qaeda mythology, this time in the Daily Mail :
…we’re talking to the Taliban, one of the twin bogeymen with which the Government has sought to frighten us into acceptance of an entanglement of ’security’ measures which have yet to prevent a single outrage.
No doubt we would talk to ‘al Qaeda’ too, if such an organisation existed, but - as all intelligence men know - it is a vague collection of rival factions, lumped together to scare the ill-informed into surrendering their liberties.
So much for the Great War on Terror, which has neither saved our way of life nor defeated Islamist extremism. What did you expect from the very same people who surrendered to the IRA, a genuine threat that really did exist (and still does) and which we could have beaten? What a lot of hogwash we are fed.
Amen to that.
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For more than a year, the British government has been quietly phasing out the use of the ridiculous term ‘War on Terror’ to describe suicide bombing attacks and police and military action to track down and prosecute those responsible, before and after the events.
(England’s chief prosecutor) Sir Ken Macdonald said terrorist fanatics were not soldiers fighting a war but simply members of an aimless “death cult.”
The Director of Public Prosecutions said: ‘We resist the language of warfare, and I think the government has moved on this. It no longer uses this sort of language.”
London is not a battlefield, he said.
“The people who were murdered on July 7 were not the victims of war. The men who killed them were not soldiers,” Macdonald said. “They were fantasists, narcissists, murderers and criminals and need to be responded to in that way.”
The term “Islamic terrorist” will also no longer be used. Officials believe it is unhelpful because it appears to directly link the religion to terrorist atrocities.
Sir Ian McDonald is also opposed to the push by ministers to extend the 28 day period in which a terror suspect can be held without charge or trial.
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They’re known in banking circles as “black swan sightings”. We’d probably call them worst case scenarios. They are the ‘outrageous predictions’ some banks make as part of their general forecasting of the economic road ahead.
How bad can regional economies get in a 12 month period? How high could oil prices go? Will world credit dry up? And what will be the fallout if such predictions come true?
Copenhagen-based Saxo Bank’s black swan sightings for 2008 are indeed grim, and in some cases absolutely mind-boggling. Ron Paul winning the presidency of the United States would come about, predicts Saxo, in the event of a massive self-immolation of the American stock market and the beginning of a new Great Depression.
Saxo claims they have recent form on black swan sightings, with “almost a quarter of our outrageous predictions for 2007 were close to or 100 percent accurate” :
“Our outrageous predictions are not a science, but are meant to incite thought and debate in the market…”
Media Claims Two Snipers, Five Bullets, One Suicide Bombing
Pakistan TV has aired footage which reportedly shows a gunman near Bhutto’s vehicle shooting her
Benazir Bhutto escaped at least four assassination attempts in only ten weeks, including the one that ‘welcomed’ her back to Pakistan, killing more than 140 people, injuring hundreds more, in October.
Whoever put the contract out on Bhutto made sure she wasn’t going to escape again.
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, 54, was shot at and killed by at least two snipers before a suicide bomb attack on the periphery of her carcade.
Police confirmed that the snipers fired five bullets from AK-47 assault rifles. Two of the bullets hit Benazir in the neck, while a third hit her forehead. No one was near her car when the shots were fired at her. Two of her key political aides, including PPP leader and spokesperson Sherry Rehman and her security aide, were also grievously injured in the attack.
This report could simply be more purposeful disinformation aimed at adding to the general confusion of what happened. Is there enough contradictory versions of what happened floating around in the media now? Take your pick. The assassin in the crowd did it. The sunroof did it. The suicide bomber did it. The two snipers did it.
The only version of events that makes next to no sense is that of the Pakistan government officials. What were they thinking claiming The Sunroof Did It? Even if they believed it was true, they must have known they were going to be mocked? Reporters at a press conference where ‘The Sunroof Did It’ explanation was announced reportedly yelled and abused the Pakistan government official who had to unfurl this extremely dubious explanation.
Of course, all of this confusion doesn’t mean Musharraf did it, but perhaps the world is supposed to be convinced that Musharraf was involved.
It’s impossible to imagine how Pervez Musharraf can hold elections on January 8. But if delays the elections, the streets protests and the standard military crackdown on such protests, will spark exactly the kind of chaos, death tolls, media coverage and general outrage that will likely see him driven from power. With US special forces already set to increase their numbers inside Pakistan, there is the likelihood that China, Iran, Russia and India will also get involved in the aftermath of Musharraf’s downfall.
This is only going to get even uglier.
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According to this story from the Associated Press, 2007 will go down in history as the year of record-breaking, ‘normal’-shattering, totally bizarre weather events.
January 2007 was the hottest January worldwide since such record-keeping began.
2007 is likely to be the hottest year on record for the Northern Hemisphere.
More than 260 highest all-time temperature records in the US were broken or tied.
April 2007 was the warmest April in England since the mid-1600s.
New York City was hit by a tornado.
Oman and Iran were hit by extremely cyclonic events.
US lakes were found to be shrinking.
South Africa had the first notable snowfalls in more than two decades.
Reunion Island recorded 155 inches of rain 72 hours, an historical record.
The Arctic dramatically warmed, with new records for the volume of ice found to be melting.
In August, 60 percent of the United States was under drought, or found to be “abnormally dry”.
Los Angeles recorded its driest year in decades.
Australia continued suffering through the worst drought in a century.
China, Wales and England clocked up historical levels of rainfall.
Southern California saw severe winds, snow, hail and torrential rain all in the same day, back in March.
The Northwest Passage through the Arctic opened up enough to allow ships to pass through.
And that’s just for starters. There are more plenty stunning record weather events detailed in the story here.
Just from where I live in Sydney, the number of fast-forming freakishly large storms has been amazing to witness. In one week, last month, I think I saw something like 9 big storms sweeping in over the city from my balcony, busting open, dumping huge amounts of rain and then disappearing, usually within a matter of minutes. Then there were the storms that hit during the night.
During long drives through Western Australia, I heard countless stories from locals about how horrifically dry the farm lands had become. The wheat fields were crisp and barren. Town after town had removed public taps due to water shortages. I found a town on the coast that was almost totally sustained by bottled water, which was piled in pallets in a stack ten feet high and forty feet long in the front of the local supermarket. Then there was the morning I woke up in a camp ground near Margaret River when the temperature was supposed to 33 Celsius. By 11am it was heading past 45 Celsius. Truly scary stuff.
On the plus side, I went to visit friends in the outer western suburbs of Sydney and saw a landscape transformed. The local bushland I had roamed as a kid had always been tinderbox dry and scrubby. On Christmas Day, the bush was lush and kangaroos were gorging on the greenery. The scrubby old bush I had bashed through on motor bikes as a kid looked like it was seriously considering becoming rainforest.
Now here comes 2008. Normal weather would be a nice change.
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Have you ever had a baby look at you like you’re a complete idiot?
It might not be your imagination, after all. New research indicates that babies are more than capable of forming critical judgements of adults, particularly their parents :
Interpersonal interaction is a major survival feature of the human species and so it’s not surprising that we come hard-wired with the mental power to track relationships. The big news is that we also start very early to track how others play out those rules, even when the interaction has nothing to do with us.
Babies have far more social smarts than we give them credit for.
Babies are also adept social butterflies, born with the rules of engagement etched on their brains.
Pediatrician T. Barry Brazleton has shown that there is a certain set rhythm to the social interactions of mothers and babies. They engage (what we often call “play”), then the baby cuts out and has down time, and then they start up again. The baby is designed to participate in this inter-personal tango (and so are adults), and mothers quickly know that something is wrong if the baby doesn’t connect with her.
Psychologist J. Kiley Hamlin and colleagues of Yale University recently showed 6- to 10-month old babies various social situations using triangles, squares and circles that play acted helping or hindering each other. The babies clearly disliked the objects that didn’t help out. The psychologists concluded that babies are good judges of character, even when they’re not directly involved in the action.
This research is a surprise because no one thought babies were paying that much attention to the acts of others. And no one realized baby judgments were so harsh.
If the story of how Benazir Bhutto died was not already confusing enough, a close aide to the Pakistan opposition leader is claiming hospital staff and Pakistan government officials are lying when they claim she was not shot and that she died from a head injury resulting from her ducking back into her vehicle during the assassination attempt.
“I was actually part of the party which bathed her body before the funeral,” said Ms Rehman, who added that her car was used to transport Ms Bhutto to hospital.
“There was a bullet wound I saw that went in from the back of her head and came out the other side.
“We could not even wash her properly because the wound was still seeping. She lost a huge amount of blood,” she said.
Ms Rehman accused the Government of mounting a cover-up over Ms Bhutto’s death.
“The hospital was made to change its statement. They never gave a proper report,” she said.
“I believe the interior ministry is saying that she died from some concussion that may have taken place against the sunroof.
“This is ridiculous, dangerous nonsense because it is a cover-up of what actually happened.”
The details and conjectures over Bhutto’s assassination will be picked through for years to come. Just like JFK’s assassination, there is grainy footage, conflicting reports about the injury and controversy about who carried out the assassination, and who ordered it.
You think it’s going to be gruesome, and you think you just can’t stand to watch it any longer, because you think you know what the mess is going to look like. But keep watching, right to the end.
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A blood-chilling interview with Benazir Bhutto only weeks before her death. She works her way through a list of those she knows want her dead, and have threatened to kill her. Bhutto mentions Omar Sheikh, who she clearly states “murdered Osama Bin Laden.”
Did she say too much?
As the Jazz From Hell blog points out, a new ‘coming soon’ video from Osama Bin Laden is being pumped in the mainstream media. Just in case you thought Bhutto was telling the truth. Or that she said too much.
Osama Bin Laden’s non-living status is regarded as a fact by many in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Editorialists in Pakistan newspapers occasionally mock Western leaders for living in fear of a terrorist who has already been killed.
If that is so, who’s making all these ‘new’ Osama Bin Laden videos?
And who is Omar Sheikh, the “murderer” of Bin Laden? The London Times ran a remarkable story linking Sheik to Pakistan’s security services (ISI) in April 2002. The story claims that Sheik was a hired gun for the ISI and was involved in the murder of reporter Daniel Pearl.
“Sheikh was their (the ISI’s) man and he was brought in to deal with Pearl. The ISI knew everything.” The Karachi police, who deeply distrust the ISI, leaked details of their interrogation of Sheikh in which he talked about his ISI connections. As a result, ISI operatives broke into the newsroom of The News, Pakistan’s largest English language newspaper, in February in an apparent attempt to prevent publication of a leak in which Sheikh was reported to have said that the ISI helped him to finance, plan and execute last December’s attack on the Indian parliament.
The News is edited by Shaheen Sehbai, the first local journalist Pearl contacted when he arrived in Pakistan. Failing to prevent publication of Sheikh’s confession, the ISI demanded an apology from Sehbai, who has fled to America fearing for his life.
M J Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a security and terrorism policy assessment group that has been researching Pearl’s murder, said: “Sheikh is a vital key that can open all the doors to the Al-Qaeda network, to the links between the Pakistani military intelligence establishment and the terror groups, and can destroy General Musharraf’s credibility with Washington.
He is a vital piece in the jigsaw and for that reason it is highly unlikely the US will ever be allowed to interrogate him.” The full story of the kidnapping of Pearl will probably never come to light. What is clear is that Sheikh has for long been very close to the ISI and that it regarded him as an asset. The whole affair has been a setback and embarrassment to Musharraf and has destabilised the country.
Small wonder that Musharraf is said to have told Wendy Chamberlain, the American ambassador, that he would rather “hang Sheikh myself than have him extradited”.
Pakistan has received more than $10 billion from the United States to supposedly fight the ‘War on Terror’. India claims that Pakistan has spent a great deal of that money re-arming, instead of hunting down terrorists in the tribal lands bordering Afghanistan.
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Eyewitness Photographer Says Bhutto Ducked Before Gun Fire And Bomb Blast
Pakistan Government : Bhutto Hit Her Head On Sunroof!
Totally contradicting a number of eyewitness reports, including members of Benazir Bhutto’s opposition who were with her yesterday, Pakistan government officials and hospital staff are now claiming Bhutto was not hit and killed by bullets fired by an alleged suicide bomber.
Reports yesterday claimed Bhutto was hit in the neck and chest (or back) by an assassin’s bullets, shortly before a suicide bomber allegedly detonated himself.
Mystery shrouds the death of former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto. In an explosive revelation, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz on Friday said that Bhutto did not die of bullet wounds.
Nawaz said that Bhutto died from a head injury. At least seven doctors from the Rawalpindi General Hospital – where the leader was rushed immediately after the attack – say there were no bullet marks on Bhutto’s body.
The doctors have submitted a report to the Pakistan government in which they say that no post-mortem was performed on Bhutto’s body and they had not received any instructions to perform one.
“The report says she had head injuries – an irregular patch – and the X-ray doesn’t show any bullet in the head. So it was probably the shrapnel or any other thing has struck her…That damaged her brain, causing it to ooze and her death. The report categorically says there’s no wound other than that,” Nawaz told a Pakistani news channel.
A photographer, who captured the suicide bomb explosion in Rawalpindi on Thursday, today described his horror on seeing Benazir Bhutto being blasted to death less than 30 feet from him.
John Moore, 40, covering the rally for the Getty press agency, took the two stark images just seconds apart. In the first, Bhutto waves from her car. In the second, it is blasted apart by a suicide bomber.
According to The Mirror, the US-born photographer told how the crowd had begun to disperse after Bhutto appeared to leave the area before she reappeared to wave from the sunroof of her car.
He said: ‘I was shocked she would do that because she was obviously aware of the extreme dangers of all of her public appearances.
‘The way the crowd was standing, there was no clear way for the car to pass. So, it was moving very slowly with someone in front trying to clear a way.
‘I had taken a couple of frames, but the crowd was pushing me as people at the back tried to get closer and those at the front tried to move out of the way of her convoy.
‘I looked up to try and steady myself and get a proper footing, and as I did, I saw Bhutto ducked down in the car.
‘Knowing what I know now, she must have seen the bomber in the crowd and known she was in danger. Right then, I heard at least two gunshots, I think it could have been three.
‘Then the bomb went off.”
These contradictions in the original news stories and the Musharraf government’s official version of events will do little to appease Bhutto’s outraged supporters.
UPDATE : I was being unnecessarily sarcastic above when I said that the official story from the Pakistan government is that Benazir Bhutto died from hitting her head…but now that is exactly what Sky News is reporting :
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, whose funeral was held today, died from injuries she suffered when hitting her vehicle’s sunroof, it has been claimed.
An Interior Ministry spokesman said a post mortem found no bullets or shrapnel in her body.
He was speaking at a press conference at which video was shown of Ms Bhutto’s last moments.
It was previously announced Ms Bhutto had died as a result of being hit in the neck and chest by shots fired by an assassin.
Pakistan’s Interior Ministry has also blamed al Qaeda and the Taliban for the 54-year-old’s death.
At least an injury from hitting the sunroof fits in with the eyewitness account of the photographer quoted above and the footage of her vehicle yesterday that showed little substantial damage from the bomb blast.
120,000 Americans Murdered Since 9/11, But Not One Death From Domestic Terrorism
New Anti-Dissent, Anti-Free Speech Laws Disguised As ‘The Fight Against Terror’
The so-called ‘conspiracy theorists’ have been harping on about the coming ‘American Police State’ since the early 1990s, three White House administrations ago. Some, like Alex Jones, accurately predicted before 9/11 that a major domestic terrorism event would ease the passage of laws that constitute a police state of the mind and of the judiciary regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans controlled the White House.
Congress is perched to enact the “Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 20007 (Act),” probably the greatest assault on free speech and association in the United States since the 1938 creation of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).
Sponsored by Rep. Jane Harman, California Democrat, the bill passed the House of Representatives on Oct. 23 by a 404-6 vote under a rule suspension that curtailed debate.
To borrow from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, the First Amendment should not distract Congress from doing important business.
Denuded of euphemisms and code words, the Act aims to identify and stigmatize persons and groups who hold thoughts the government decrees correlate with homegrown terrorism, for example, opposition to the Patriot Act or the suspension of the Great Writ of habeas corpus.
The Act will inexorably culminate in a government listing of homegrown terrorists or terrorist organizations without due process; a complementary listing of books, videos, or ideas that ostensibly further “violent radicalization;” and a blacklisting of persons who have intersected with either list.
Political discourse will be chilled and needed challenges to conventional wisdom will flag. There are no better examples of sinister congressional folly.
The Act inflates the danger of homegrown terrorism manifold to justify creating a marquee National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Ideologically Based Violence (Commission) in the legislative branch. Since September 11, 2001, no American has died from homegrown terrorism, while about 120,000 have been murdered.
Prior to September 11, homegrown terrorism consisted largely of Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, the Unibomber and the D.C. Metropolitan area snipers. The Act, nevertheless, counterfactually finds “homegrown terrorism … poses a threat to domestic security” that “cannot be easily prevented through traditional federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts.”
The commission’s Big Brother task is to discover ideas and political associations, including connections to non-U.S. persons and networks, that promote “violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States.” And “violent radicalization” is defined as “the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.”
Under the Act, William Lloyd Garrison would have been guilty of promoting “violent radicalization” for publishing the anti-slavery Liberator in 1831, which “facilitated” John Brown.
…Martin Luther King, Jr. would have fallen under the Act’s suspicion for denouncing Jim Crow and practicing civil disobedience….
The commission will certainly hold choreographed public hearings. Witnesses will testify that non-Christian ideas or vocal challenges to the status quo promote “an extremist belief system” that facilitates ideologically based violence. Internet communications, the media, schools, religious institutions and home life will be scrutinized for promoting pernicious thoughts.
Lengthy lists of persons, organizations and thoughts to be shunned will be compiled.
The lives of countless innocent citizens will be shattered.
If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about, goes the old refrain. But will you actually be told what thoughts and opinions and attitudes are ‘wrong’ or dangerous?
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Whatever President Bush was expecting to mark the beginning of his last year in the White House, it is hard to believe he was expecting a Pakistan civil war. During his brief, extremely tense statement today on the Bhutto assassination, Bush was clearly rattled, and he literally ran from the podium as soon as he finished speaking, without taking questions. He disappeared into what would have to have been one extremely tense and nerve-wracking security meeting.
Pakistan is alive with chaos, destruction and death tonight. Court houses and government buildings are burning, police are being shot, mass demonstrations are already beginning. ‘Revenge’ attacks will only increase the chaos and death toll. President Musharraf’s declaration of three days of national mourning is unlikely to do much to contain the fury and violence.
Russian government ministers are already warning of an onslaught of terrorism in Pakistan, and the United Nations Security Council is in an emergency meeting.
But how far will the Pakistan opposition go? How much revenge will they allow their supporters to unleash, and will opposition leaders even be able to rein in the blood lust of their own people?
They’ve already had spokesmen all over the cable news channels (Sky News in particular) blaming Musharraf directly for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, claiming that his military and security services ignored their pleas for help in keeping Bhutto safe and for failing to round up “known enemies” of the woman who was set to become prime minister after the January 8, 2008 elections.
Bhutto was the key for Bush to get his special forces established in Pakistan so they could work their way through the Taliban-aligned tribal lands, chasing out militant leaders, busting up isolated training camps and cutting off the flow of new recruits for the Taliban’s war against NATO forces across the border in Afghanistan.
Bhutto was the way into Pakistan for the US, in a way that was least likely to outrage Pakistanis in majority numbers. Now she is gone, the US will likely move in with force behind them, and above them.
Pakistanis were already learning that the US was planning to ramp up its special forces numbers inside the country, days before Bhutto was assassinated. It will be easy for the opposition to claim that Bhutto’s death was the work of someone else other than simply ‘Al Qaeda militants’.
Then there, is course, the fact that Pakistan is heavily armed with nuclear weapons.
If revolutionary actions by the opposition led to the fall of Musharraf, would they take over? Or would extremists inside the security services and military step in and try to stop the takeover?
Pakistanis lost the last vestiges of tolerance for Musharraf’s military dictatorship when he declared martial law in November. He must be only days, if not hours, away from announcing that martial law is back in force.
It’s all but impossible to imagine how Musharraf could allow the elections to go ahead in only 11 days time, and utterly impossible to imagine how he could win the election now even if he did.
The chaos and death to come between now and New Years’ Day may only be the start.
Pakistan will be the new front of the ‘War on Terror’ in 2008 and the US must already be scrambling to dramatically increase its special forces numbers inside the country, not just to go after the Taliban allies in the tribal lands, but to keep whoever is in control of the country in a month’s time, in place of Musharraf, well away from the nuclear triggers.
If it comes down to a question of who will control Pakistan should Musharraf’s regime falls, Russia and China will also feel duty-bound to get involved, along with India. The Great Game continues.
MORE TO COME…
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In the wake of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, a ’surge’ of US Special Forces for Pakistan’s remote tribal lands is unlikely to face heavy opposition from President Musharraf, who will be busy trying to stop his own name, and that of his political party, from being linked with Bhutto’s assassins.
The shock of Bhutto’s death, so close to the January 8 elections which were tipped to see her elected prime minister, is also likely to lessen public opposition to the increase of US troops inside Pakistan.
This report, published today in The Australian newspaper, appeared on the Murdoch media portal news.com.au within half an hour of the confirmation of the announcement of Bhutto’s death (excerpts) :
US Special Forces are to increase their presence in Pakistan amid assessments that the country is to become the central battlefield for al-Qaida as it is driven from Iraq.
“Pakistan should be carefully watched because it could prove to be a significant flashpoint in the coming year,” US think tank Strategic Forecasting said in an evaluation of al-Qaida’s tactics as the Islamist group comes under mounting pressure in Iraq.
With the “rapid spread of Talibanisation” in Pakistan’s insurgent northwest, the country would become “especially important if the trend in Iraq continues to go against the jihadis and they are driven from Iraq”, the assessment said.
“As the global headquarters for the al-Qaida leadership, Pakistan has long been a significant stronghold on the ideological battlefield.”
The Stratfor assessment coincided with reports from Washington suggesting US Special Forces would expand their presence in Pakistan in the new year.
The boost in US forces was part of an effort to train and support Pakistan’s army in its fight to stem the al-Qaida and Taliban-linked insurgency.
The Washington reports reflected Pentagon frustration with the Pakistani counter-insurgency effort, and said the head of the US Special Operations Command, Admiral Eric T. Olson, had made a series of visits to the country for discussions with senior military leaders.
“The first US (Special Forces) personnel could be on the ground in Pakistan early in the new year”, the report said.
US Central Command chief Admiral William Fallon said the US forces would provide training and mentoring based on the US experience with the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
…the US reports coincided with the disclosure of an ambitious 15-year “anti-terror investment plan” for Pakistan that has been high on the agenda of US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte in recent visits to Islamabad.
Bhutto’s murder is set to lead to the opening of a new front in the ‘War on Terror’ inside Pakistan, which has the potential to be as deadly, and terror-ridden, as the current wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia.
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Co-Ordinated Assassinations Aimed At Bhutto And Another Opposition Leader
A few minutes before she was attacked by a gunman and suicide bomber, Benazir Bhutto praised a crowd a supporters at a rally.
This Daily Mail report claims Benazir Bhutto was shot twice, in the neck and the chest, as she entered a vehicle shortly after giving a speech. Seconds later, a suicide bomber detonated himself next to her vehicle :
A reporter at the scene said he saw body parts and flesh scattered at the back gate of the Liaqat Bagh park where Bhutto had spoken.
He counted about 20 bodies, including police, and could see many other wounded.
Bhutto returned to Pakistan in October after eight years self-imposed exile.
She had been running for parliament and hoped to become prime minister if her party won enough legislative seats.
At her homecoming reception in the port city of Karachi, suicide bombing attacks killed 140 people.
This Wednesday, at a rally in Peshawar, police stopped a would-be suicide bomber with explosives around his neck.
Another, far more fierce critic of Pakistan’s President Musharraf was also targeted by assassins a few hours earlier, with snipers shooting into the crowd at a speech by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif. At least four were killed in that attack.
Some reports are now claiming that President Musharraf was sitting by Bhutto’s hospital bed shortly before she died.
Bhutto’s dream of a new, more democratic Pakistan, free of military rule, is over. She has given her life trying to set her people free. Here are her words on her return to Pakistan in October, after eight years in exile :
“The people that you see outside are the real image of Pakistan.
“These are the decent, hard-working, middle classes and working classes of Pakistan who want to be in power so that they can build a moderate modern nation where everybody has equality.
This is the real Pakistan, and if we get democracy, this is the face of Pakistan the world will see, not the face of extremists who have thrived under dictatorships.”
“I hope I can live up to the great expectations which people here have.
“…certain people who have gained a lot through dictatorship….They have presided over the rise of extremism, they have created safe havens in the tribal areas of Pakistan for the Taliban and other militants, and they fear my return.”
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Opposition Blames Musharraf Government For Terror Attacks
Musharraf : ‘Terror Is Destroying Pakistan’
Terrible. What an horrific way for Pakistan to start 2008, a year that was supposed to mark the end of pseudo-military dictatorship and the beginning of real democracy. Elections that may well have seen Benazir Bhutto elected were to be held on January 8. Russian government ministers are warning her death will mark the beginning of a new storm of terror attacks, aimed at President Musharraf.
Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday in a suicide bombing that also killed at least 20 others at a campaign rally, a party aide and a military official said.
“At 6:16 p.m. she expired,” said Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Bhutto’s party who was at Rawalpindi General Hospital where she was taken after the attack. A senior military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment, confirmed that Bhutto had died.
Her supporters at the hospital began chanting “Dog, Musharraf, dog,” referring to Pakistan’s president Pervez Musharraf. Some of them smashed the glass door at the main entrance of the emergency unit, others burst into tears.
The Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was killed in a gun and bomb attack after a rally in the city of Rawalpindi yesterday, her party said.
A official from the Pakistan People’s Party, Rehman Malik, said: “She has been martyred.”
Russia’s Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Alexander Losyukov, predicted a “wave of terrorism” would result.
“An act of terror is a bad sign,” Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov, Russia’s most senior Asia diplomat, told Itar-Tass news agency. “We hereby offer our condolences. This will for certain trigger a wave of terrorism.”
Police said a suicide bomber fired shots at Bhutto, 54, as she was leaving the rally in a park before blowing himself up.
“The man first fired at Bhutto’s vehicle,” said a police officer, Mohammad Shahid. “She ducked and then he blew himself up.”
At least 16 people were killed in the attack, which occurred on the same day gunmen killed four supporters of another former Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, in Islamabad, police said.
Sharif was several kilometres from the shooting and was on his way to Rawalpindi after attending a rally. He blamed supporters of the pro-Musharraf party for the violence, but a spokesman for the party denied that its workers were involved.
“This all happened at the behest of the Government,” Sharif told supporters on the outskirts of Rawalpindi. “They are 100 per cent responsible, but we are not scared of such actions.”
Earlier Sharif, who was overthrown by Mr Musharraf in a 1999 coup and allowed back into the country last month after seven years in exile, had called for a revolution to unseat the pro-Musharraf party.
“You have to bring about a revolution,” Sharif told a crowd of about 10,000 supporters in Gujjar Khan town in Punjab province.
Musharraf will face enormous pressure to launch a real war against extremists and terrorists in Pakistan now, particularly in the tribal lands bordering with Afghanistan.
In recent weeks there have been a growing number of reports that the US has wanted to deploy hundreds of special forces troops into Pakistan’s tribal lands to round up militants and Islamic extremists. Musharraf, and the majority of Pakistanis, were deeply opposed to seeing US special forces ‘officially’ sent into their country.
Benazir Bhutto’s death is likely to further the US case for sending troops into Pakistan, as Musharraf will be widely claimed now to be unable to deal effectively with the plague of terrorism.
…in an apparently warm atmosphere before Musharraf was to host a state dinner for Karzai, he underlined the need for intelligence cooperation with Afghanistan to fight the militant threat.
He said the neighbours had to stop “this menace of extremism and terrorism which is destroying both our countries” and called on their respective intelligence agencies to work hand-in-hand.
Terror attacks have killed more than 770 people in Pakistan during 2007.
Bhutto would have clearly understood the great danger she faced from terrorists, considering they almost killed her during the worst terror attacks ever seen in Pakistan when she returned home in October.
Musharraf will find it all but impossible to deny his supporters are responsible for the assassination of Bhutto, though he will likely ramp up his earlier claims that terrorism in Pakistan is mostly the responsibility of “foreigners”.
* The Thatcher Government concocted a plan to search for the Loch Ness monster using a team of dolphins
* Foreign diplomats – who have diplomatic immunity – were accused of rapes, sexual assaults, child abuse and murders while working in Britain
* Politicians are spending £2.2bn a year of taxpayers’ money on private management consultants
* Tax inspectors are routinely offered bonuses to encourage them to collect as much money as possible
* Tony Blair spent nearly £2,000 of taxpayers’ money on cosmetics over six years
* Killings carried out by strangers have increased by a third since Tony Blair came to power
* A clandestine British torture programme existed in postwar Germany, “reminiscent of the concentration camps”
* Britain helped Israel to obtain its nuclear bomb 40 years ago, by selling it 20 tonnes of heavy water
* The NHS has been giving girls as young as 13 contraceptive injections and implants that make them infertile for up to three years, in an attempt to cut teenage pregnancies
* Police in England and Wales spend £21m a year on interpreters
* Six British military policemen died at the hands of an Iraqi mob in Majar al-Kabir because nearby reinforcements decided it was too dangerous to rescue them
* Robert Maxwell was being investigated for war crimes and was to be interviewed by police just before he drowned
* Countries with poor human rights records and those on the front line in the War on Terror, including Iraq, were targeted by the Ministry of Defence as the most lucrative places for British arms companies to sell weapons
* Police were instructed to let off offenders with a caution if they commit any one of more than 60 types of crime, ranging from assault to some types of theft, criminal damage and underage sex.
* In one year hundreds of 10»year»old children were charged with crimes including serious sexual offences, robbery, actual bodily harm and assaulting a police officer
* The Elgin Marbles were damaged by two schoolboys fighting in the British Museum in 1961. One of the boys fell and knocked off part of a centaur’s leg
As well as being just about the funniest movie ever made, ‘Life Of Brian’ is also one of the most beautifully filmed biblical epics, as the opening scenes more than prove.
Have a great Christmas dedicated readers and occasional viewers. I hope you get to spend Christmas with the people you love, and those who love you.
2008 is going to be one of the best years of our lifetimes. I’ll tell you why after New Year’s Day.
Because this isn’t work, there will be no holiday taking here. The updates through the next week should be about as regular as always, and there’ll be a new chapter or two of the free online serialised novel ED Day going up over the Christmas ‘break’, in case you’re stuck for something to read. And feel free to leave a comment over there telling me what you think of the story.
If you’re not already reading ED Day, you can begin with Chapter One here.
Love to you and yours.
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Stealing the baby Jesus from Nativity scenes won’t be so easy from now on. At least in Miami. Baby Jesus has been fitted with a tracking device, as have his mum and ‘dad’ :
A statue of the infant Jesus on display near Miami in Florida is being fitted with a Global Positioning System navigation device, according to U.S. media reports on Sunday. ?
?The high-tech replacement was donated by a Cincinnati attorney who read the story that the original figurine was stolen in early December, said the reports.
“I don’t anticipate this will ever happen again,” said Dina Cellini, who oversees the display, “but we may need to rely on technology to save our savior.”
The statues of Mary and Joseph were also expected to get GPS devices installed in them.
Moreover, a plexiglass screen was also planned to be set up around the nativity scene to help keep the statues from disappearing.
Reality is always so much more strange than fiction.
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While in New York City recently I visited with several old brokerage friends. During that visit we all discussed the market and what may potentially be on the horizon.
One broker, whom I respect and consider quite sharp [even when I disagree], had an interesting comment on my predictions. I believe that the move to junk rating of ACA, the probable $6 - 12 billion loss at JP Morgan [significantly higher than expected], eventual losses from Citigroup – which reinsures itself, oil breaking $100 a barrel, and the multiple overseas investments will all hit the market in mid-January 2008. Thus I think a move to 11,000 is more than probable.
My friend disagrees. His view is that if I am correct in these outcomes, then the Fed will be forced to lower rates further immediately. He feels that this is the only way to stem the problem that is the mortgage crisis. This is especially true when you consider the increase in credit card debt.
“All the people with million dollar homes that would be refinancing and getting an extra $200,000… They find it hard to change their lifestyle quickly. That says nothing about most people who are feeling deflation. And add those paying the mortgage with their credit card and you have a market that needs the Fed to cut.” – Paraphrase
Sound reasoning. But I don’t think a bear market is avoidable.
The fact that the mortgage crisis is far closer to its beginning than end. I expect that there are far more homes in danger than has been seen to date. Even with the highly selective mortgage bailout stated by President Bush, many are going to be at risk. Credit card debt can only float for so long. With the added pressure of oil at or above $100 per barrel, which I expect mid-January as I stated above, more will fail even if rates are lowered (less than 2 points).
Add to this the fact that financials are at high risk. The early infusion of foreign capital may look good now, but this does nothing for future and continuing losses. It’s window dressing. With re-insurers like ACA in trouble and Japanese banks are unwilling to help bailout the shortfall (due to very limited exposure to this risk), the sector will be weak. Historically if financials are stagnant or falling so goes the majority of the market.
That says nothing of the potential of a Democrat becoming President. Again historically a negative pressure on the market. It is even graver with several prominent Democrats nearly promising to increase corporate taxes (or outright take their profits – especially oil companies).
The Fed can lower rates, but that will not stop the general malaise I see coming. At the least the first half of 2008 will not be good. A move to 11,000 seems inevitable. If I am correct then the question is this.
Will those experiencing deflation outweigh the inflation fears? And if more people lose their homes how much of our financial institutions are we willing to sell to avoid the harshest realities of a crash?
