"Mehsud had built a vast financial empire on drug and weapon smuggling, donations from al-Qaeda and wealthy Arabs."
More on this story. Again, opportunity knocks for Pakistan to press the advantage against the Taliban while they are surprised and disoriented. It is also a tremendous chance to disrupt the Mehsud syndicate and gather evidence about its sources of funding. Otherwise, the Pakistani Taliban will return to business as usual before long. "Pakistan Taliban fight for control of dead leader's millions," by Dean Nelson and Emal Khan for the Telegraph, August 10:
Mehsud, who took the Taliban's jihad into the heart of Pakistan's major cities with suicide bomb attacks, is believed to have been killed last week in a US drone attack on his father-in-law's home in south Waziristan.
Pakistani government officials and some Taliban sources said Mehsud, his father-in-law, wife, brother and seven of his fighters had been killed in the attack in the remote village of Zagara. Tribal rivals said 40 of Mehsud's fighters had also died in the attack.
Reports of a violent struggle to seize control of his empire emerged over the weekend after a pro-government Taliban leader claimed two rival commanders had been killed in a shootout at a meeting of senior figures to choose his successor.
According to Haji Turkistan Betani, Wali Rahman and Hakimullah Mehsud, were killed at the meeting in the Sra Rogha district of South Waziristan, while the group's notorious head of its school of suicide bombers, Qari Hussein, was seriously injured.
Betani's account was challenged yesterday by a respected local journalist who told The Daily Telegraph that Wali Rahman had called him on Sunday evening to deny there had been a clash in the meeting. Alamgir, a Pushto-language journalist for a Peshawar-based radio station, said Rahman had denied Hakimullah Mehsud had been killed, but declined to comment on the fate of Baitullah Mehsud.
Hakimullah's failure to issue his own statement has fuelled a widespread belief that, despite Rahman's denial, he is dead, while Taliban sources say the two men had been bitter rivals before Baitullah Mehsud's death. [...]
Sources close to the local Taliban leadership said Wali Rahman will now be the favourite to take control of Baitullah Mehsud's vast fortune.
They said Mehsud had built a vast financial empire on drug and weapon smuggling, donations from al-Qaeda and wealthy Arabs. Haulage and transport bosses paid substantial "tolls" while wealthy businessmen from Waziristan living in other Pakistani cities were warned their relatives would be beheaded if they did not pay up.
Re-posting, from my (dumbledoresarmy's) records, comments that were made to this article while we were resident at IntenseDebate.
Part the first.
TANSTAAFL said - "Money, money, money, money, money
It makes the world go round
World go round."
SAXONLANDS said - (quoting) "Mehsud had built a vast financial empire on drug and weapon smuggling, donations from al-Qaeda and wealthy Arabs."
HA HA HA! This is liquid GOLD!
Ya Muslimeen! Fain entkum ya Muslimeen???
Do you not now see your courageous mujhaddeen, your heros, were nothing but common criminals and petty thieves? And now they squabble over the ill gotten gains of a mere brigand!
-GRAVENIMAGE said - (quoting Saxon) "And now they squabble over the ill gotten gains of a mere brigand!"
.....................
But SaxonLands, this is a venerable Muslim tradition. Don't forget, there is an entire sura of the Qur'an, Al-Anfal (Booty) which deals with just that. Basically, that great verse boils down to Muhammed being the head brigand, and setting the rules as to who gets what pillaged goods and slaves.
Nothing much has changed in 1400 years."
Dumbledoresarmy's record of the original comments made to this article: part the second.
GOZAN said - With all the military and financial aid Pakistan has received in recent years, I have a hard time believing they couldn't control their northern provinces if they wanted to. Unless, of course, those funds were "appropriated" for other purposes...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/28/pakis...
UNDHIMMI said - The Religion of Organised Crime... with its 'Profit' as exemplar.
-IPSOFACTO said - Dont´t you dare insult Al Capone:
"My rackets are run on strictly American lines and they're going to stay that way.
You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone." ;-)
EPISTEMOLOGY said - (quoting) "Mehsud had built a vast financial empire on drug and weapon smuggling, donations from al-Qaeda and wealthy Arabs."
I've been told that all Mohammedan fighters are poor, disenfranchised, dispossessed, disadvantaged etc. I have to rewrite my books. I'm deeply shocked. My worldview is going down the drain.
This is obviously the religion of organised crime, as Undhimmi puts it, very good term, I'll include that in my books.
-LAKEVIEWPAUL said - Yes, Islam is a cult of war and organized crime.
Now, if only we could persude millions of attorneys that every Muslim who interacts with other Muslims for the purpose of furthering Islam, of cultivating piety, of carrying out its agenda, etc. is embroiled in a conspiracy to commit various crimes and, furthermore, is recklessly disregardful of the consequences of spreading Islamic doctrine...even if that Muslim is not aware of the conspiracy.
The lawyers will need to be persuaded that even believing that one believes Islam's doctrines has adverse consequences, and that to cultivate such state of mind in, say, a convert or youngling is recklessly disregardful of the rights of others if not also illegal per se. Such form of belief is enough to make this type of believer into a tool of a masjid's leader.
Of course, what crime prescribed by Islam and regularly engaged in by Muslims is not already illegal? I suspect that there is no need whatsoever to criminalize expressly Islam, as I have seen and heard called for elsewhere. Just get the DAs, states' attorneys, law school profs, etc. moving in the same direction.
Yet to complete this gargantuan project, we will need to cultivate a concord among attorneys, esp. those who will be tomorrow's DAs, states' attorneys, and law school professors. They are--or should be--familiar with the concept of "meeting of the minds" as used in contract law, and I suggest we speak in similar terms of the concord required here.
Another advantage of going straight to the bar is that we can avoid some, maybe most of the usual dependency upon politicians and the new rafts of laws that they, and many conservatives, would just love to pass. Instead, just get straight to the business of persuading the attorneys of the painful truth. In fact, we'd have persuade them anyway to enforce specifically antiislamic law, even if someone were successful in getting passed new statutes which expressly criminalize Islam.
How to do all of this? Good question. Think of yourself as a one-person inn of court. (Pls don't say "leaderless resistance".) Buy a law dictionary, brush up your thinking about how to overcome fallacious reasoning, and get ready for a storm of scurrilous objections like GerbilTea's to me, "[t]his [putting GerbilTea in prison] doesn't draw up any other parallels to you to anything else in history? People placed in camps, deported or executed for their minority Semitic religion... k."
-EPISTEMOLOGY replied - Very well put, Paul, a good way to proceed, but we have to stick together, we need more people.____
I've just watched a short video of a rallye in Munich I attended on Saturday. I posted the comment on Sunday morning, on the thread about demographic development in Europe.
But I'm afraid there weren't many people on JW who read it, because all the comments on that thread were deleted by some Mohammedan wankers.____
That rallye was on behalf of a woman who had converted from Judaism to Islam, her five daughters were taken away from her, because she seems to be mentally ill. She doesn't give the impression, but she must be mentally disturbed, nobody in their right senses would ever maintain that the 7/7 suicide bombings in London were orchestrated by Mossad and there wasn't any Muslim involvement.
Anyway, that rallye was organised by the biggest proselitising movement in Germany, and the message is chilling, indeed: "We are not some migrants who can be intimidated, we grew up in this country."__
Translates to we want to intimidate you, don't dare opposing us. There's a lot ahead in poor old Europe.
-LAKEVIEWPAUL told EPISTEMOLOGY - I can still understand some German and would like to watch the video.
To stick together, to cultivate the meeting of the minds I mentioned, is going to be the most difficult task, a supremely difficult one, and, I think, a requirement before one can expect tens of millions of principled, temperate antiislamists to be joined in something other than an authoritarian collective and to have a material, positive influence upon the situation. Make the minds meet before you fill the seats in your office, as I learned the hard way at prior jobs, including as a product manager at a web hoster and in bus. dev. at the biggest telecoms carrier to go bankrupt.
Consider just one potential area of friction: You, a "Jewish European" and me, a "nonsecular, godless, conservative liberal". The Christians, among whom I was once counted, being the most likely source of organized antiislamism, will accept you but the zealots among them will sneer at me until I move to the sidelines. After that you'll still have preposterous, divisive claims to drive you apart.
-LAKEVIEWPAUL said to EPISTEMOLOGY - For example, it was claimed on one comment stream that Jesus did not incite malice or violence, or something to this effect. Of course, I can read my Bibles, find, say, Luke 19, and read the parable of the Minas. Jesus portrays hisself as a nobleman who must go away to a far country to receive kingly power. The nobleman, once crowned, returns to his realm and, among other things, solicits the homicide (Lk 19:27) of those who did not want him to reign over them. Anyone in a hurry to bring people together will not want much time devoted to debating this matter, but there it will be lurking on the sidelines and waiting for its opponents to take the field.
We'd better get back to basics, fast. Dare we promote the three laws of thought and bivalence (albeit modified by what's learned from the liar's paradox)? This, too, could prove divisive. Just look at the state of what Westerners call philosophy. Shortcutartists will sniff trouble, and then it's the old demand, "we need to come together!" which means a topdown, command-and-control type of movement.
-CJK told LAKEVIEWPAUL - You don't understand the parable of the talents........Also, 'sneering' , even at an enemy is prohibited behavior according to the scriptures.
-LAKEVIEWPAUL said - As for that woman's {i.e. in epistemology's linked video} mental disorder: The Roman Christians have a cannon [sic: canon], #99, in their Codex Iuris Canonici. Paraphrase: "Anyone who habitully lacks the use of reason is held to be incompetent and equated with infants."
-EPISTEMOLOGY replied - This is the link:
http://dawa-news.de/2009/08/trailer-zur-kundgebun...
Unlike Tariq Ramadan in Switzerland who posts in newspapers like "Le monde", Pierre Vogel in Germany is not an intellectual and he doesn't claim to be one. He's a guy from the Rhineland, you can easily tell from his accent. He's a homeboy, that's how he tries to attract people, he's the Pied Piper of Islam in Germany. He's got a simple mind, but never underestimate the influence of the likes of him. I have no idea about the exact figures, but he's converting a lot of people. Don't ask me why, that's beyond me.
GMCCAL said - (quoting) "They said Mehsud had built a vast financial empire on drug and weapon smuggling, donations from al-Qaeda and wealthy Arabs. Haulage and transport bosses paid substantial "tolls" while wealthy businessmen from Waziristan living in other Pakistani cities were warned their relatives would be beheaded if they did not pay up."
Typical mob behavior - extortion, mayhem, and murder. Is there any difference between Islam's bosses and mafia bosses?
"I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse." The Godfather.
MRSJ said - Mafia bosses have more honour.
-KAFFIRKANUCK said - Hi MrsJ.
Glad to see Britons are waking up and finally doing something about the enemy within.
I caught a story broadcast on BBC radio about the protests in Birmingham.
They had some clown from “Unite Against Fascism” going on about calling the British Defence League Fascist (which I found truly amusing coming from someone obviously muslim who’s ideology is pure fascism in itself), leveling accusations of riotous behaviour (which I discounted out of hand immediately knowing that deception is what islam practices out of hand, and you just have to watch any “protest” by muslims to know that their the first ones to break the bounds of civil disobedience) by your organization.
Further, the BBC alluded that it couldn’t get anyone from your organization to counter-point this “Asian” man’s explanation of events (“Asian,” again, what a laugh, middle eastern people might be Eurasian, but certainly not Asian) and of course, failed to correct the accusations of “islamophobia” as the made up word that it is, as the lefty accusatory rhetoric muslims use every time someone calls them to task on their actions or simply tries to tell the truth about their actions.
-MRSJ asked KAFFIRKANUCK - Which organisation? The only one I belong to is the National Trust, lol.
-DUMBLEDORESARMY told MRSJ - You could always join The Society of St George. They really do exist, and their patron is the reigning monarch, no less. Churchill made a speech to a meeting of the Society, in the 1930s, which is how I heard their name, when someone quoted part of the speech and mentioned to whom it was made.
I googled them up - they were founded in the 19th century, they're a charmingly old-fashioned patriotic society, open to all lovers of England (I doubt they'd reject a Hindu, Sikh or Afro-Caribbean English citizen who truly loved the Sceptred Isle and admired and wished to promote the best of English law, language and literature), and they seem to me to have all kinds of interesting possibilities.
I didn't see any Muslim names anywhere in the list of office-holders...indeed, they have an official Chaplain, a Christian priest, which fact ought to help to deter Muslim infiltrators.
If I were living in England, I would be joining up so fast...along with every jihad-resisting sharia-rejecting friend I could find. And *then* let the fun begin.
For if one belongs to the venerable, highly traditional Society of St George, under the patronage of Her Majesty the Queen, no less, why should not one show the St George Cross?
-KAFFIRKANUCK told MRSJ - Sorry, that’s what I get for not fully vetting the information mined from an e-mail to the org. What I meant to say was “the”, not “your” organization. But the impact of the public offensive remains the same. Has it made the local papers/blogs/airwaves at all?
AND THEN, this UAF wanker called the BDL persons racist (of which their website says, “an alliance of NORMAL BRITISH PEOPLE of various different colours/races who have come together in order to create a massive, but peaceful protest group to force our Government to get their act in gear”).
As we all know, religion is not a “race.”
If they follow their playbook, they’ll be blaming the western aggression, the Jews and everyone else but themselves for their own actions next.
Has this been getting the media attention it deserves in your corner of the world?
-LAKEVIEWPAUL told KAFFIRKANUCK - "BDL persons racist": The accuser may have confused British Defense League with Nick Griffin's British National Party , the constitution of which you can download from their website. When I last read it they, the BNPers, were not only woefully welfare statist but also racists.
"islamaphobia": Some of the usual suspects have a website dedicated to the pesky, well-poisoning, ad hominem nonsense. http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/
They are "Documenting the war against Islam".
And what text is quite nearly at the very top of the page? That's right, you guess correctly: "ISLAMOPHOBIA: Anti Muslim Racism".
CORNELIUS said - "Did he [Mehsud] get more rich than Arafat or bin Ladin? A nice table of untaxed incomes is missing in the media.
They did it for their kids...not for islam exactly."
Original comments for this article: part the third.
HUGH (Hugh Fitzgerald) said - Find the money, seize it, and use it to compensate all the Christian survivors of the various massacres that Al Qaeda and similar groups have committed in Pakistan. What more just use of such money can there possibly be?
IPSOFACTO said - Like The Godfather of all Godfathers Arafat Mehsud used most of his money to buy loyalty:
"How popular is Arafat among Palestinians? At times of crisis, television crews show cheering Palestinians demonstrating and greeting their leader outside his Ramallah headquarters. In better days, Palestinian television regularly broadcasts pro-Arafat rallies across the West Bank and Gaza Strip. But rallies aren't always what they seem. PA funds are used to buy loyalty and drum up support. The PA hires crowds, stages promotional media campaigns, and distributes Arafat's pictures in the streets and alleys of the Palestinian territories. Rather than build a viable state, Arafat sought only to amass wealth and power. I myself heard his entourage and close associates refer to him as al-Arrab, meaning "the Godfather."
http://www.meforum.org/645/arafats-swiss-bank-acc...
DUMBLEDORESARMY said - "Hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats"....
And anyone who read 'Millions of Cats' knows how the story ended.
-DUMBLEDORESARMY added - And while on the subject of cats (and I should add that I am in fact a cat person more than a dog person, and have two cats in the house), as one contemplates these Mohammedan thieves fighting over the swag, one is irresistibly reminded of the well-known nursery rhyme:
"There once were two cats of Kilkenny
each thought the other was one cat too many
so they fought and they fit
and they scratched and they bit
till instead of two cats
there weren't any."
CJK said - A true follower of the illustrious profit mo'
NORSKE said - 'While scripture states that "God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked," justice was done in the death of this evil man, who brainwashed little children to be suicide bombers--Jesus said, that whoever causes one of these little ones to stumble, it would be better for him to have a millstone put around his neck and be thrown into the sea.... (as this man was).'
END OF RECORD OF ORIGINAL COMMENTS as kept by me, dumbledoresarmy.