Stay mad
September 11. This fucking day again.
My boss went to ground zero about a week later. Yeah, you wouldn’t think so, but the art department is among the second responders. Somebody has to take pictures of the damage and make PowerPoint presentations about where the bodies were found.
I kid, I kid. There were no bodies. The ‘morgue’ was a bunch of five-gallon buckets under a tarp. As workers filled them with gobbets of meat, they were taken away to the geneticists and new buckets were brought in.
The scene was heavily controlled. Access credentials were placards they wore around their necks, like backstage passes. My boss said the hardest thing was walking the blocks from the inhabited parts of the city to the cordoned area wearing his pass, knowing what he knew. Hundreds of people desperate for news mobbed him, pressing bubblejet prints into his hands. Graduations pictures. Wedding pictures. Smiling, blurry faces. Secretaries, janitors, junior managers.
Yeah, the fatcats aren’t in at eight in the morning. The dead were working doofuses like you and me. In fact, a bunch of our guys were in the building that morning for a meeting; a few didn’t make it out (nobody I knew; I’m not trying to horn in on that kind of celebrity).
He’s a stoical, Scandihoovian type, my boss. I was surprised a few months ago when he told me he still has nightmares. The smoke and the stink and the thick, pervasive, clinging dust of burned paperwork and vaporized modular cubicle furniture and office worker. There was paper, perfectly intact, everywhere. Like drifts of snow.
He brought back thousands of pictures (including some he wouldn’t let us see). I didn’t know about emergency worker graffiti. There was a symbol for “plane parts found here” and another for “body parts found here” and another for “unsafe inside” — warning marks and numbers left on all the buildings that had been searched (and they all had to be; bits were scattered far and wide) in colorful spraypaint.
That stupid fat cunt up there is a bzillion times more likely to die a ghastly terrorist martyr’s death than I am, and yet she celebrates this thing. That’s fucked up. That’s too fucked up to learn better. That’s fucked up beyond all fixing.
Why do they hate us? It’s what they do. It’s what they are. It’s all they have. They don’t have the adult temperament and the simple skills required to be office workers, so they kill and die and dip their hands in the blood and ululate in the streets. Savages.
They have to go, every last one of them that can’t learn better.
Stay mad. We aren’t finished.
September 11, 2008 — 8:09 am
Comments: 13
Clown wars
“When she was arrested in Afghanistan last month, Aafia Siddique allegedly had in her possession maps of New York, a list of potential targets that included the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, the subway system and the animal disease center on Plum Island, detailed chemical, biological and radiological weapon information that has been seen only in a handful of terrorist cases, as well as a thumb drive packed with emails, ABC News has learned.”
Seriously? She was carrying all that around in her purse? Was the thumb drive labeled “Shhhh…Super Secret al Qaeda Plan to Take Over the World”? Was she wearing a little black mask and pants and a striped shirt with “TERRORIST” written on it? Has any nation ever faced an enemy more cartoonishly slap-dash, underripe and just plain bug-fuck crazy?
Let’s take just one datum and think it through a little. The Statue of Liberty has symbolic importance to Americans, so I’ll give them that. But it’s on an island and access is controlled by the Parks Service. A search is involved, so you couldn’t carry much in the way of explosives. Not sure what explosives would do, anyway; the statue itself is a thin skin of copper stretched over a steel framework. Hard to damage. Maybe you could fly a plane into it (I accidentally did that all the time with Microsoft Flight Simulator). Might or might not work. Plus, small body count. In sum, not a very good target. So why even put it on a list, let alone walk around with it?
These fuckers are always being picked up with “maps of the subway system” or “lists of targets” — stuff that’s easily Googlable, perfectly innocent in isolation and make NO sense to be carrying around, unless the whole purpose is to buy yourself a world of hurt and look menacing in a headline. Honestly, when you’re just blue-skying your evil plans, it’s really, really not a good idea to write it all down and carry it on your person.
An earlier ABC News article quoted the Afghanistan National Police as saying she was carrying materials from the “Anarchist’s Arsenal” — bet you anything that’s our old friend the Anarchist’s Cookbook, helping angry Americans blow themselves up since 1971. How terrorized am I supposed to be by a pack of bozos getting their doomsday weapons out of a book you can buy on Amazon for twenty bucks? I think MIT ripped this chick off.
Staunch righty that I am, it would cross my mind that the government is making all this stupid shit up, until I remember how much of it there is. Like, remember this guy? Mohammed Taheri-Azar, former University of North Carolina student. Pleaded guilty yesterday to nine counts of attempted murder. Avenged Muslim deaths around the world by driving his SUV into a crowd of UNC students. Really, Mo? That’s your evil plan?
You know, you can give ’em all the education you want, but someday they’ll break loose and fly off down the road waving their arms and going “ULULULULULULULU!”
It’s like we’re fighting the Global War against Angry Pinwheeling Retards.
August 13, 2008 — 9:57 am
Comments: 21
I am indebted to Christopher Hitchens
Torture is any experience so horrible that no-one would consider trying it out simply for the purpose of writing a Vanity Fair article about what it’s like.
There! I feel better.
Article via Ace who pinched it from The Drawn Cutlass.
July 2, 2008 — 1:26 pm
Comments: 83
Kids! Be the first one on your block…!
Sometimes, listening to NPR pays off.
In 1933, Leo Szilard patented the idea of a nuclear chain reaction. Szilard was a physicist and his patent was highly theoretical, but he tried to use it to gain clout in the Manhatten Project later. The government faced him down, but the issue was worrying. What if other scientists tried to control the project through the patent office? What about scientists in other countries?
So the government decided to file patents on the components of the bomb in the name of the individual inventors as the project progressed.
That presented a different set of problems. The whole project was extra-super-double-dog secret. Plutonium was called “copper,” the bomb was called “the gadget.” But patent applications are as clear and as explicit as the applicant can make them.
So the government invoked an obscure rule already in place: an application marked “secret” would be looked at by no-one in the patent office and filed away in a vault un-approved, forever pending.
Harvard grad student Alex Wellerstein has been looking up these old patents. Turns out, as individual components are de-classified, the individual patents have been granted and published. A lot of it is still secret, but thousands of techniques and methods and bits of hardware are now public.
One patent was issued 60 years after the application; that’s the longest he’s found so far. The applications are still reviewed annually. A lawyer for the Department of Energy told Wellerstein:
“Our feeling has been that a significant taxpayer investment was made to create the inventions and to prosecute the patents so that payment of the issue fee finalizes the effort to provide a property right arising from the government funding. Of equal merit is the recognition provided to the inventors. When the patent issues we make a small good faith effort to find the inventor or a surviving spouse and notify them of the issuance of the patent. When notify someone, they are usually deeply moved by the recognition provided for their long ago secret efforts.”
That’s kind of…touching. Of course, a lot of the old coots are dead now, but a tribute is a tribute.
You know what else is kind of touching? Right in the middle of the Big One, dubya-dubya-deuce, the government didn’t write any special laws or invoke any extra-legal war powers. The department that makes war knuckles under to the rules of the department that files papers. They’re building this huge fucking doomsday weapon in the middle of the bloodiest war in the history of man, and they’re worried about violating international patent law.
I don’t care what the lefties say, the American government makes a lousy supervillain.
March 28, 2008 — 9:23 am
Comments: 11
Three old coots and a big hole
About three months ago, the old coot on the left, whose family owned Badger House once upon a time, met up with the old coot on the right, who lived in it during the war. You know, The War. They fell to talking, as coots are wont, and Coot #2 asked who was living up at the old Badger place and whether anybody had “found the machine gun.”
!
Seems Coot the Second, who was a teenager during the war, watched an American Dakota bomber go down in the field behind the house, then crept out and nicked one of its machine guns. He balanced the barrel against our back fence and popped a few rounds across the field, to make sure it was in good working order, then wrapped the whole business in an oilcloth bag and buried it beside the hedge.
I shit you not.
Given the heartbreak of Tulsarama, I wasn’t hopeful there would be anything left, but I’m damned if I’ll wantonly crush the dreams of old coots. So we invited them both ’round for tea and hole digging.
No, we didn’t find it. Not yet, anyway. My nice new metal detector was no use at all; the whole yard lights up like a Christmas tree when I ask it to find iron. That’s what four centuries of tossing stuff out the back will do. An experienced bloke with a bigger metal detector and awesome hole-digging skills is coming out next.
Still, we had merry tales of the old days. At the turn of the (Nineteenth to the Twentieth) Century, Badger House was so derelict the shepherds refused to stay in it. It was nearly knocked down, but somebody driving by spotted it and offered Coot #1’s dad £200 for it. By WWII, the house still had no electricity or indoor plumbing (the tall roof is to maximize collection of rainwater). It sounds as though it has stood empty and overgrown much of the time. We’ll have a lot of tightening up to do.
Coot #3 is, of course, Uncle B…who stands just off camera, shamed by the hole-digging prowess of Coot #2. And you would be, too, if an 81 year old coot KICKED YOUR ASS.
EDIT: Uncle B says the Dakota was a transport plane. The bomber that went down in the lower forty was a Boston. Also, he adds that he is wounded in the arm, so there!
January 2, 2008 — 7:19 pm
Comments: 72
See the happy Nazis
Did y’all see this? A new photo album has turned up showing the staff of Auschwitz at play. There are few other pictures of Auschwitz before it was liberated, most notably the so-called Auschwitz Album which shows the death camp side of the death camp. The contrast is contrasty.
Included are eight new photos of Joseph Mengele, my own personal choice for Evillest Nazi. Hitler may have run the show, but he was pretty squeamish about getting his hands dirty. Mengele, on the other hand, just loved his work. Kids really responded to him, too…right up to the moment he dripped acid in their little eyes, trying to turn brown eyes blue.
The whole album is online at the Holocaust Museum.
Kind of a downer of a post, sorry. It is Monday. So very, very Monday.
September 24, 2007 — 12:15 pm
Comments: 82
Take your candlelight vigil and shove it
You know, I meant to do a proper September 11 post today, but I don’t have the spit.
Every year this damn anniversary rolls around and I get more and more wadded up and pissed off about it. I’m going to feel prickly and impossible all day. The memorials make me fucking insane. They’re all “boo hoo” and tinkly piano music and kumbafuckingya and it all Could Not Be Farther from the way I feel about what happened that day.
I’m ashamed at the body count. We didn’t do right by those poor bastards in the towers. Not much to do about the people who were vaporized on contact (except prevent the whole damn thing in the first place), but they were the lucky ones, anyhow. We should’ve gotten it together and evacuated the whole area the moment the North Tower was hit. It was bound to collapse eventually; that was reason enough to clear the block even before a plane struck the second tower and cut off hundreds more.
Have you listened to the 911 calls? It’s hard to take. Like the scared secretary who hides under her desk and whispers into the phone while the heat and smoke sneak up on her. An angry man tries to get some straight answers, right up to the moment the floor crashes away under his feet. “Hold tight. Help is coming,” the operators said over and over, knowing that help damn well wasn’t coming. No help could possibly come. But what else could they say?
There were as many as two hundred jumpers. Cubicle dwellers who went in early on a Tuesday morning to catch up on some paperwork found themselves smashing their ergonomic swivel chairs through the glass to suck in a little cool oxygen. They leaned out the windows for a moment and then launched themselves straight into the thin September sky. How awful was the thing behind them to make a hundred storey fall look better? How bad does it have to hurt to work up the nerve?
Jesus Christ.
Spare me your moments of silence and .gif files of crying eagles. Osama loves your tears; to him they are like sweet, sweet candy. You don’t answer evil with a Hallmark Card. This calls for an ugly black cloud of vengeance and death to roll over our enemies — and anyone unlucky enough to be standing too near our enemies. It calls for wildly and crazily disproportionate response, so that even the dimmest cave monkey gets the idea Uncle Sam is a little too bad and too crazy to fuck with. Why not? The ‘international community’ hates us as hard as it can already. Only…the moment passed and we still send millions in aid to that ugly ululating Palestinian cow with the glasses.
For maybe a week after the story of Flight 93 went around, people realized that government isn’t always going to be around to protect us, and we have to grow up and butch up and look out for each other sometimes. And then everyone gradually fell back into a government-issue haze of Czar this and identity card that and pointless, humiliating airport security rituals.
I stared at my clock radio this morning and fantasized about lobbing it out the window when some random Rhode-Islander-on-the-street whined into the microphone “Iraq, Afghanistan…when will the killing end?” This is a neighbor. Somebody — however blessedly remote the prospect — I might need to watch my back some day.
God, I hate September 11. It gets harder every year…
September 11, 2007 — 1:33 pm
Comments: 17
Hmmm…
Osama Bin Laden’s widely publicized video address to the American people has a peculiarity that casts serious doubt on its authenticity: the video freezes at about 1 minute and
3658 seconds, and motion only resumes again at 12:30. The video then freezes again at 14:02 remains frozen until the end. All references to current events, such as the 62nd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan, and Sarkozy and Brown being the leaders of France and the UK, respectively, occur when the video is frozen! The words spoken when the video is in motion contain no references to contemporary events and could have been (and likely were) made before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.The audio track does appear to be in the voice of a single speaker. What I suspect was done is that an older, unreleased video was dubbed over for this release, with the video frozen when the audio track departed from that of the original video.
Emphasis in the original. That’s the observation of a lefty blogger, by the way, but credit where credit is due…assuming it’s due. It would be a pretty amazing thing for the supposed armies of analysts to have missed, wouldn’t it?
Anybody sat through the actual tape? Is it true? I just read the transcript and I can’t do video from work. Excuse my obsession with this dirtbag. The British half of Team Weasel is in London at the moment and I don’t like it one bit.
September 10, 2007 — 12:51 pm
Comments: 8
Complete transcript of Osama bin Laden’s September 7, 2007 message
This is just a straight up transcript. I didn’t know how many places would run the full thing without excerpting, so I figured I would, long and windy as it is. I found it fascinating.
“All praise is due to Allah, who built the heavens and earth in justice, and created man as a favour and grace from Him. And from His ways is that the days rotate between the people, and from His Law is retaliation in kind: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth and the killer is killed. And all praise is due to Allah, who awakened His slaves’ desire for the Garden, and all of them will enter it except those who refuse. And whoever obeys Him alone in all of his affairs will enter the Garden, and whoever disobeys Him will have refused.
“As for what comes after: Peace be upon he who follows the Guidance. People of America: I shall be speaking to you on important topics which concern you, so lend me your ears. I begin by discussing the war which is between us and some of its repercussions for us and you.
“To preface, I say: despite America being the greatest economic power and possessing the most powerful and up-to-date military arsenal as well; and despite it spending on this war and is army more than the entire world spends on its armies; and despite it being the being the major state influencing the policies of the world, as if it has a monopoly on the unjust right of veto; despite all of this, 19 young men were able – by the grace of Allah, the Most High – to change the direction of its compass. And in fact, the subject of the Mujahedeen has become an inseparable part of the speech of your leader, and the effects and signs of that are not hidden.
“Since the 11th, many of America’s policies have come under the influence of the Mujahedeen, and that is by the grace of Allah, the Most High. And as a result, the people discovered the truth about it, its reputation worsened, its prestige was broken globally and it was bled dry economically, even if our interests overlap with the interests of the major corporations and also with those of the neoconservatives, despite the differing intentions.
“And for your information media, during the first years of the war, lost its credibility and manifested itself as a tool of the colonialist empires, and its condition has often been worse than the condition of the media of the dictatorial regimes which march in the caravan of the single leader.
“Then Bush talks about his working with al-Maliki and his government to spread freedom in Iraq, but he in fact is working with the leaders of one sect against another sect, in the belief that this will quickly decide the war in his favor.
“And thus, what is called the civil war came into being and matters worsened at his hands before getting out of his control and him becoming like the one who plows and sows the sea: he harvests nothing but failure.
“So these are some of the results of the freedom about whose spreading he is talking to you. And then the backtracking of Bush on his insistence on not giving the United Nations expanded jurisdiction in Iraq is an implicit admission of his loss and defeat there.
“The fact is that the Americans have no option but to continue the war. This tone is in fact an echoing of the words of neoconservatives like Cheney, Rumsfeld and Richard Pearle, the latter having said previously that the Americans have no choice in front of them other than to continue the war or face a holocaust.
“I say, refuting this unjust statement, that the morality and culture of the holocaust is your culture, not our culture. In fact, burning living beings is forbidden in our religion, even if they be small like the ant, so what of man?!
“The holocaust of the Jews was carried out by your brethren in the middle of Europe, but had it been closer to our countries, most of the Jews would have been saved by taking refuge with us. And my proof for that is in what your brothers, the Spanish, did when they set up the horrible courts of the Inquisition to try Muslims and Jews, when the Jews only found safe shelter by taking refuge in our countries. And that is why the Jewish community in Morocco today is one of the largest communities in the world. They are alive with us and we have not incinerated them, but we are a people who don’t sleep under oppression and reject humiliation and disgrace, and we take revenge on the people of tyranny and aggression, and the blood of the Muslims will not be spilled with impunity, and the morrow is nigh for he who awaits.
“Also, your Christian brothers have been living among us for 14 centuries: in Egypt alone, there are millions of Christians whom we have not incinerated and shall not incinerate. But the fact is, there is a continuing and biased campaign being waged against us for a long time now by your politicians and many of your writers by way of your media, especially Hollywood, for the purpose of misrepresenting Islam and its adherents to drive you away from the true religion. The genocide of peoples and their holocausts took place at your hands: only a few specimens of Red Indians were spared, and just a few days ago, the Japanese observed the 62nd anniversary of the annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by your nuclear weapons.
“And among the things which catch the eye of the one who considers the repercussions of your unjust war against Iraq is the failure of your democratic system, despite it raising of the slogans of justice, liberty, equality and humanitarianism. It has not only failed to achieve these things, it has actually destroyed these and other concepts with its weapons – especially in Iraq and Afghanistan – in a brazen fashion, to replace them with fear, destruction, killing, hunger, illness, displacement and more than a million orphans in Baghdad alone, not to mention hundreds of thousands of widows.
“Americans statistics speak of the killing of more than 650,000 of the people of Iraq as a result of the war and its repercussions.
“People of America: the world is following your news in regards to your invasion of Iraq, for people have recently come to know that, after several years of the tragedies of this war, the vast majority of you want it stopped. Thus, you elected the Democratic Party for this purpose, but the Democrats haven’t made a move worth mentioning. On the contrary, they continue to agree to the spending of tens of billions to continue the killing and war there, which has led to the vast majority of you being afflicted with disappointment.
“And here is the gist of the matter, so one should pause, think and reflect: why have the Democrats failed to stop this war, despite them being the majority?
“I will come back to reply to this question after raising another question, which is: Why are the leaders of the White House keen to start wars and wage them around the world, and make use of every possible opportunity through which they can reach this purpose, occasionally even creating justifications based on deception and blatant lies, as you saw Iraq?
“In the Vietnam War, the leaders of the White House claimed at the time that it was a necessary and crucial war, and during it, Rumsfeld and his aides murdered two million villagers. And when Kennedy took over the presidency and deviated from the general line of policy drawn up for the White House and wanted to stop this unjust war, that angered the owners of the major corporations who were benefiting from its continuation.
“And so Kennedy was killed, and Al-Qaeda wasn’t present at that time, but rather, those corporations were the primary beneficiary from his killing. And the war continued after that for approximately one decade. But after it became clear to you that it was an unjust and unnecessary war, you made one of your greatest mistakes, in that you neither brought to account nor punished those who waged this war, not even the most violent of its murderers, Rumsfeld. And even more incredible than that is that Bush picked him as secretary of defence in his first term after picking Cheney as his vice president, Powell as secretary of state and Armitage as Powell’s deputy, despite their horrific and blood history of murdering humans. So that was clear signal that his administration – the administration of the generals – didn’t have as its main concern the serving of humanity, but rather, was interested in bringing about new massacres. Yet in spite of that, you permitted Bush to complete his first term, and stranger still, chose him for a second term, which gave him a clear mandate from you – with your full knowledge and consent- to continue to murder our people in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Then you claim to be innocent! This innocence of yours is like my innocence of the blood of your sons on the 11th – were I to claim such a thing. But it is impossible for me to humour any of you in the arrogance and indifference you show for the lives of humans outside America, or for me to humour your leaders in their lying, as the entire world knows they have the lion’s share of that.
“These morals aren’t our morals. What I want to emphasise here is that not taking past war criminals to account led to them repeating that crime of killing humanity without right and waging this unjust war in Mesopotamia, and as a result, here are the oppressed ones today continuing to take their right from you.
“This war was entirely unnecessary, as testified to by your own reports. And among the most capable of those from your own side who speak to you on this topic and on the manufacturing of public opinion is Noam Chomsky, who spoke sober words of advice prior to the war, but the leader of Texas doesn’t like those who give advice. The entire world came out in unprecedented demonstrations to warn against waging the war and describe its true nature in eloquent terms like “no to spilling red blood for black oil,” yet he paid them no heed. It is time for humankind to know that talk of the rights of man and freedom are lies produced by the White House and its allies in Europe to deceive humans, take control of their destinies and subjugate them.
“So in answer to the question about the causes of the Democrats’ failure to stop the war, I say: they are the same reasons which led to the failure of former president Kennedy to stop the Vietnam war.
“Those with real power and influence are those with the most capital. And since the democratic system permits major corporations to back candidates, be they presidential or congressional, there shouldn’t be any cause for astonishment – and there isn’t any – in the Democrats’ failure to stop the war. And you’re the ones who have the saying which goes, “Money talks.” And I tell you: after the failure of your representatives in the Democratic Party to implement your desire to stop the war, you can still carry anti-war placards and spread out in the streets of major cities, then go back to your homes, but that will be of no use and will lead to the prolonging of the war.
“However, there are two solutions for stopping it. The first is from our side, and it is to continue to escalate the killing and fighting against you. This is our duty, and our brothers are carrying it out, and I ask Allah to grant them resolve and victory. And the second solution is from your side. It has now become clear to you and the entire world the impotence of the democratic system and how it plays with the interests of the peoples and their blood by sacrificing soldiers and populations to achieve the interests of the major corporations.
“And with that, it has become clear to all that they are the real tyrannical terrorists. In fact, the life of all of mankind is in danger because of the global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations, yet despite that, the representative of these corporations in the White House insists on not observing the Kyoto accord, with the knowledge that the statistic speaks of the death and displacement of the millions of human beings because of that, especially in Africa. This greatest of plagues and most dangerous of threats to the lives of humans is taking place in an accelerating fashion as the world is being dominated by the democratic system, which confirms its massive failure to protect humans and their interests from the greed and avarice of the major corporations and their representatives.
“And despite this brazen attack on the people, the leaders of the West – especially Bush, Blair, Sarkozy and Brown – still talk about freedom and human rights with a flagrant disregard for the intellects of human beings. So is there a form of terrorism stronger, clearer and more dangerous than this? This is why I tell you: as you liberated yourselves before from the slavery of monks, kings, and feudalism, you should liberate yourselves from the deception, shackles and attrition of the capitalist system.
“If you were to ponder it well, you would find that in the end, it is a system harsher and fiercer than your systems in the Middle Ages. The capitalist system seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations under the label of “globalisation” in order to protect democracy.
“And Iraq and Afghanistan and their tragedies; and the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes; and the abject poverty and tragic hunger in Africa: all of this is but one side of the grim face of this global system.
“So it is imperative that you free yourselves from all of that and search for an alternative, upright methodology in which it is not the business of any class of humanity to lay down its own laws to its own advantage at the expense of the other classes as is the case with you, since the essence of man-made positive laws is that they serve the interests of those with the capital and thus make the rich richer and the poor poorer.
“The infallible methodology is the methodology of Allah, the Most High, who created the heavens and earth and created the Creation and is the Most Kind and All-Informed and the Knower of the souls of His slaves and the methodology that best suits them.
“You believe with absolute certainty that you believe in Allah, and you are full of conviction of this belief, so much so that you have written this belief of yours on your dollar.
“But the truth is that you are mistaken in this belief of yours. The impartial judge knows that belief in Allah requires straightness in the following of His methodology, and accordingly, total obedience must be to the orders and prohibitions of Allah alone in all aspects of life.
“So how about you when you associate others with Him in your beliefs and separate state from religion, then claim that you are believers?!
“What you have done is clear loss and manifest polytheism, And I will give you a parable of polytheism, as parables summarize and clarify speech. I tell you: its parable is the parable of a man who owns a shop and hires a worker and tells him, “Sell and give me the money,” but he makes sales and give the money to someone other than the owner. So who of you would approve of that?
“You believe that Allah is your Lord and your Creator and the Creator of this earth and that it is His property, then you work on His earth and property without His orders and without obeying Him, and you legislate in contradiction to His Law and methodology.
“This work of yours is the greatest form of polytheism and is rebellion against obedience to Allah with which the believer becomes an unbeliever, even if he obeys Allah in some of His other orders. Allah, the Most High, sent down His orders in His Sacred Books like the Torah and Evangel and sent with them the Messengers (Allah’s prayers and peace be upon them) as bearers of good news to the people.
“And our holding firm to this magnificent Book is the secret of our strength and winning of the war against you despite the fewness of our numbers and materiel. And if you would like to get to know some of the reasons for your losing of your war against us, then read the book of Michael Scheuer in this regard.
“Don’t be turned away from Islam by the terrible situation of the Muslims today, for our rulers in general abandoned Islam many decades ago, but our forefathers were the leaders and pioneers of the world for many centuries, when they held firmly to Islam.
“And before concluding, I tell you: there has been an increase in the thinkers who study events and happenings, and on the basis of their study, they have declared the approach of the collapse of the American Empire.
“Among them is the European thinker who anticipated the fall of the Soviet Union, which indeed fell. And it would benefit you to read what he wrote about what comes after the empire in regard to the United States of America. I also want to bring your attention that among the greatest reasons for the collapse of the Soviet Union was their being afflicted with their leader Brezhnev, who was overtaken by pride and arrogance and refused to look at the facts on the ground. From the first year of the Afghanistan invasion, reports indicated that the Russians were losing the war, but he refused to acknowledge this, lest it go down in his personal history as a defeat, even though refusal to acknowledge defeat not only doesn’t do anything to change the facts for thinking people, but also exacerbates the problem and increases the losses. And how similar is your position today to their position approximately two decades ago. The mistakes of Brezhnev are being repeated by Bush, who – when asked about the date of his withdrawing of forces from Iraq – said in effect that the withdrawal will not be during his reign, but rather, during the reign of the one who succeeds him.
“And the significance of these words is not hidden.
“And here I say: it would benefit you to listen to the poignant messages of your soldiers in Iraq, who are paying – with their blood, nerves and scattered limbs – the price for these sorts of irresponsible statements. Among them is the eloquent message of Joshua which he sent by way of the media, in which he wipes the tears from his eyes and describes American politicians in harsh terms and invites them to join him there for a few days. Perhaps his message will find in you an attentive ear so you can rescue him and more than 150,000 of your sons there who are tasting the two bitterest things:
“If they leave their barracks, the mines devour them, and if they refuse to leave, rulings are passed against them. Thus, the only options left in front of them are to commit suicide or cry, both of which are from the severest of afflictions. So is there anything more men can do after crying and killing themselves to make you respond to them? They are doing that out of the severity of the humiliation, fear and terror which they are suffering. It is severer than what the slaves used to suffer at your hands centuries ago, and it is as if some of them have gone from one slavery to another slavery more severe and harmful, even if it be in the fancy dress of the Defense Department’s financial enticements.
“So do you feel the greatness of their sufferings?
“There is a message for you in the Mujahedeen: the entire world is in pursuit of them, yet their hearts, by the grace of Allah, are satisfied and tranquil. The true religion also puts peoples’ lives in order with its laws; protects their needs and interests; refines their morals; protects them from evils; and guarantees for them entrance into Paradise in the hereafter through their obedience to Allah and sincere worship of Him Alone.
“And it will also achieve your desire to stop the war as a consequence, because as soon as the warmongering owners of the major corporations realise that you have lost confidence in your democratic system and begun to search for an alternative, and that this alternative is Islam, they will run after you to please you and achieve what you want to steer you away from Islam. So your true compliance with Islam will deprive them of the opportunity to defraud the peoples and take their money under numberous pretexts, like arms deals and so on.
“There are no taxes in Islam, but rather there is a limited Zakaat (alms) totaling only 2.5 percent. So beware of the deception of those with the capital. And with your earnest reading about Islam from its pristine sources, you will arrive at an important truth, which is that the religion of all of the Prophets (peace and blessings of Allah be upon them) is one, and that its essence is submission to the orders of Allah Alone in all aspects of life, even if their Shariah (laws) differ.
“And did you know that the name of the Prophet of Allah Jesus and his mother (peace and blessings of Allah be on them both) are mentioned in the Noble Koran dozens of times, and that in the Koran there is a chapter whose name is “Maryam,” i.e. Mary, daughter of ‘Imran and mother of Jesus (peace and blessings of Allah be upon them both)? It tells the story of her becoming pregnant with the Prophet of Allah Jesus (peace and blessings of Allah be upon them both), and in its confirmation of her chastity and purity, in contrast to the fabrications of the Jews against her. Whoever wishes to find that out for himself must listen to the verse of this magnificent chapter: one of the just kings of the Christians – the Negus – listened to some of its verses and his eyes welled up with tears and he said something which should be reflected on for a long time by those sincere in their search for the truth.
“He said, “verily, this and what Jesus brought come from one lantern”: i.e., that the magnificent Koran and the Evangel are both from Allah, the Most High; and every just and intelligent one of you who reflects on the Koran will definitely arrive at this truth. It also must be noted that Allah has preserved the Koran from the alterations of men. And reading in order to become acquainted with Islam only requires a little effort, and those of you who are guided will profit greatly. And peace be upon he who follows the Guidance.
Kennedy assassination? Noam Chomsky? Kyoto treaty and the people of Africa? Separation of church and state? Fuct if bin Laden wrote that. Got to be Adam “Pearlman” Gadahn, that little wiggler. It’s just the sort of mish-mash of vague leftist bullshit a teenager would absorb growing up in California in the Nineties.
September 8, 2007 — 6:29 am
Comments: 23
Richard Johnson: Postings from Afghanistan
Small Dead Animals — but do please check out the National Post of Canada blog Postings from Afghanistan.
Of course, you have to admire a guy doing it old school and flying his own ass out to Kandahar to sketch his country’s troops. That’s a given. But I have to tell you, this man is seriously good.
Yes, I know you’ve seen drawings in this general style, but they’re often not quite the quick, spontaneous sketches they seem. There’s a whole ‘nother art to laboring over a drawing and making it look like you didn’t. This guy, on the other hand, is the real deal; he’s doing these drawings on the spot, in one take, with very little underdrawing (preliminary sketching) or overdrawing (correction after the fact).
How do I know? I’m a professional artard, dammit. I can draw, but I’ve never been good at quick and fluid life drawing like this. I’m deeply envious of people who are, and I’ve made a study of them.
Like, check out the boots on the kneeling guy in the sketch above. Boots and shoes are tough (I had to draw a pair as part of my entrance exam to art school; it’s harder than drawing Binky, I can tell you). Not only does he do them well, he shows them at slight angles, natural to the pose. Novices need to draw things from clean angles: directly in front, directly from above, directly from the side. The ability to render objects slightly tilted is a sure sign the artist has grokked a shape so completely that he can rotate it in his head, three dimensionally. In other words: damn.
I traded email with him Saturday; I was lucky that his connect was good that day and he was sitting by a computer in Kandahar. He confirmed that he draws, as much as possible, quickly and from life. He takes photos as well, but refers to them sparingly. I believe it. As a technical illustrator, of necessity I’ve done a lot of drawing from photographs. It always gives itself away. Even experienced draftsmen can’t avoid a certain a stiff, flat, mechanical look when relying heavily on photos. You look at a photo and tend to think there is a dark shape next to the eye instead of there’s an indentation next to the eye. The difference shows.
His words are good, too, but I haven’t finished reading them. I hate reading a blog from the beginning; the format is so damned uncongenial. New entries are on top. You have to go to the bottom, look up until you find the top of the unread entry, read down to the end of it, then go up above that until you find the unread entry above the one you just read…well, you know what I’m talking about. It’s a pain. It’s fun to see his drawings get better over time, though. That’s natural — you gotta draw every day to get good at it, and the more the merrier.
Anyway, I think he’s over there for two months this time (he went in 2003, as well) and he looks to be about halfway through. There’s a link from the top of the Post, but I don’t think he’s getting the attention he deserves. Wander over and check it out.
July 23, 2007 — 6:24 am
Comments: 5