Numéro 60--- ÉTÉ 2007 - Vho

GAZETTE DU GOLFE ET DES BANLIEUES / 60 / ÉTÉ 2007
out and drop powerful bombs over a populated area, and then learn that there have been a
number of "unintended" casualties, and then the next day drop more bombs and learn again that
there were "unintended" casualties, and then the next day you bomb again ... at what point do
you lose the right to say that the deaths were "unintended"?
During the US/NATO 78-day bombing of Serbia in 1999, which killed many civilians, a
Belgrade office building -- which housed political parties, TV and radio stations, 100 private
companies, and more -- was bombed. But before the missiles were fired into this building, NATO
planners spelled out the risks: "Casualty Estimate 50-100 Government/Party employees.
Unintended Civ Casualty Est: 250 -- Apts in expected blast radius."[11] The planners were
saying that about 250 civilians living in nearby apartment buildings might be killed in the
bombing, in addition to 50 to 100 government and political party employees, likewise innocent
of any crime calling for execution. So what do we have here? We have grown men telling each
other: We'll do A, and we think that B may well be the result. But even if B does in fact result,
we're saying beforehand -- as we'll insist afterward -- that it was unintended.
It was actually worse than this. As I've detailed elsewhere, the main purpose of the Serbian
bombings -- admitted to by NATO officials -- was to make life so difficult for the public that
support of the government of Slobodan Milosevic would be undermined.[12] This, in fact, is the
classic definition of "terrorism", as used by the FBI and the United Nations: The use or threat of
violence against a civilian population to induce the government to change certain policies.
Another example of how "the enemy" can't be trusted to act as nice as god-fearing regular
Americans ... "Defense officials said they believe at least 22 -- and possibly as many as 50 --
former Guantánamo detainees have returned to the battlefield to fight against the United States
and its allies."[13] The Defense Department has at times used the possibility of this happening as
an argument against releasing detainees or closing Guantánamo.
But is it imaginable, not to mention likely, that after three, four or five years in the hell on
earth known as Guantánamo, even detainees not disposed to terrorist violence -- and many of
them were picked up for reasons having nothing to do with terrorist violence -- left with a deepseated
hatred of their jailors and a desire for revenge?
Extract from The Anti-Empire Report Read this or George W. Bush will be president the rest of your life ,
July 9, 2007
http://members.aol.com/bblum6/aer47.htm
L'INTROMISSION DE LA DÉMOCRATIE PAR LES VOIES BASSES
Sodomy Returns to Afghanistan
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
The Taleban gone, the tradition of sodomy returns to Kandahar. Bearded men, accompanied
by their “ashna” (beloved boys) are again openly visible on the streets.
The Taleban had forbidden the Pashtun tradition of “ashna”, the grooming of favourite boys
for sexual pleasure. In one of his first acts in 1994, Mullah Omar freed a boy who was being fought
over by two Mujaheddin warlords in Kandahar, who had started firing artillery rounds at each other’s
positions, destroying part of the city. Called to mediate in other such affairs, the Taleban movement
quickly implanted itself in Kandahari society.
The Taleban quickly applied their medieval rules to those caught practising sodomy: they were
forced to stand under a stone wall, which was felled on top of them. Eye witnesses in Kandahar speak
of the change under the Taleban, and the subsequent return of the ashna.
One witness is the soldier Torjan. “In the later Mujaheddin years”, he told the British
newspaper The Times, “more and more soldiers would take boys by force and keep them for as long
as they wished. When the Taleban came, they were very strict about the ban”. However, the streets of
Kandahar are now full of bearded men (usually married with families), walking openly accompanied
by 15- or 16-year-old boys.
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