In a civilized society, one would send a certified letter. "Kandahar blasts were warning to US and Nato - Taliban," from BBC News, March 14:
Saturday's bomb attacks in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar were a warning to US and Nato forces, the Taliban say.
A Taliban spokesman said the attacks were in response to a planned major offensive by international forces against militants in the region.
At least 35 people were killed and some 57 injured in the blasts in Kandahar, Afghanistan's third largest city.
The main target appeared to be Kandahar's prison, officials said, though no prisoners escaped.
'Sabotage'
Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi said the blasts were retaliation for comments made by the commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, that the Kandahar region would be targeted to wipe out the Taliban.
"This was an answer to Gen McChrystal," Mr Ahmadi told the AFP news agency.
"This was to sabotage the operation and to show we can strike anywhere, any time we want," the spokesman said....
the blasts were retaliation for comments made by the commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, Gen Stanley McChrystal, that the Kandahar region would be targeted to wipe out the Taliban.
Maybe it's not a good idea to let the enemy in on your plans...
After the attack by 4 Islamikazes on people in Kandahar yesterday, another Islamic jihad attack in Kandahar today, in a further attempt to terrorise.
"Kandahar rocked once again"
http://www.military-world.net/Afghanistan/3499.html
Now, they ain't nothing stupider than a Yale Law graduate, but what must Hillary think about this?
Lest anyone be confused about where Geert Wilders and the Freedom Party stand, I thought I would relay the information that it is against the Afghanistan effort, believing it to be a waste of Western resources -- men, money, materiel, morale, and of course attention, for attention cannot be given to everything.
Remember this: the people in Europe who understand the meaning and menace of Islam best are those who are least impressed with the American efforts in re-fashion Iraq, or to get stuck to the new Tarbabies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They don't want any new Tarbabies created. They want the historic West to protect itself; it really doesn't matter what happens in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and we are likely to come out ahead if those countries begin to suffer more than they ave from sectarian and ethnic rivalries. If the Sunnis do not -- and they will not -- accept their diminished power and wealth in Iraq, and the Shi'a refuse to give up what the Americans made possible by removing (largely after high muck-a-mucks in Washington were sweet-talked by various Iraqi exiles, who promised the moon, and who deflected any attention -- why, it never seemed to have occurred to anyone to figure it out -- from the fact that they were almost all Shi'a, never Sunni, much less Iraqi Christians, who were fearful of losing their seeming protector, Saddam Hussein) this could have repercussions for Muslim countries with significant Shi'a popoulations -- Bahrain, Yemen, Lebanon, Kuwait, Pakistan, and perhaps even in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia.
And if the Kurds manage to hold fast to their new autonomy, including control over the local oil wealth (which both Peter Galbraith and possibly Bartle Bull devoutly wish, and no doubt will write articles on policy that will promote that interest)in northern Iraq, and manage to keep striving for independence, any display by the local Arabs of indifference to the desires for independence by a non-Arab Muslim people will resonate, if properly handled, among the 80% of the world's Muslims who are not Muslim, and could cause more of them to recognize what some, such as the late Answar Sheikh, an apostate who lived and wrote in Wales, long ago recognized: that Islam is a vehicle of Arab supremacism. And the wider that recognition spreads among non-Arab Muslims, the better.
"..the 80% of the world's Muslims who are not Muslim,...
You, of course, meant to say "who are not Arabs".
regards,
Thomas
OT Richard Holbrooke was on GPS today, he said the Taliban don't stand for anything they're Nihilists.
It sounds like he won't be staying around much longer.
Yes. Sometimes Hugh types too fast for his own brain...he is, I think, at least a couple decades older than some of us (and I'm in my forties, with fifty coming up fast on the horizon).
DDA, you young thing. I remember, faintly, when I was your age...
Oh, those were the days...
Thank you for the compliment. Now you make me feel young! (I have reached the point where if my husband tells me I am beautiful, I choose to believe *him*, and the rest of the world can think what it likes).
Here, most of the time, we (I exclude from this 'we' the Mohammedan boggarts and dementors) all seem to manifest sub specie aeternitatis. We cannot show our faces and we cannot hear voices, and yet I suspect that were we to see each other's faces, few of us would be surprised by what we saw (I know that when I saw the self-portrait of 'gravenimage' I was struck by how exactly her face, or the expression or aura of the face, matched her 'voice'; Mr Spencer, too, matches his 'voice' - I had read at least two of his books before I came across a picture of him, and when I did see the picture, I thought, well, he looks just right).
I wouldn't have pegged you as elderly.
Do you have grandchildren? Or failing that, grandnieces and grandnephews? Do your family, if you have family, share your perception of Islam?
(I have reached the point where if my husband tells me I am beautiful, I choose to believe *him*, and the rest of the world can think what it likes).
For me that’s unmistakably an indication of youth! Good for you AND your husband AND the entire body of JWatch posters excluding of course, the “Mohammedan boggarts and dementors “, as you call that despicable pack.
(I am not really sure what boggart, or dementor exactly means , but since I can’t find the terms in my Random House dictionary I suspect and hope it is something really offensive.)
I wouldn't have pegged you as elderly.
Neither would I. My lady friend tells me that is because I am “in denial” which, she thinks, is typical for the elderly. Sometimes I doubt she really means it when she tells me I’m beautiful.
“Do you have grandchildren? Or failing that, grandnieces and grandnephews? Do your family, if you have family, share your perception of Islam?”
I have two grandchildren: Rebecca - 8 and Sarah - 5.
Having only one child (son) I doubt I will have more grandchildren.
I also have half brother and sister. They have two grown up children each, but they haven’t managed yet to produce a progeny. (As if that were some kind of rocket science)
Their view on Islam? They think it stinks, but very seldom express it publically. They don’t think mohammedans will ever assimilate in the West, but can’t conceive of a solution based on their forcible deportation from the West.
Maybe one day...
Take good care of your young self. And keep on writing your intelligent and always beautifully composed comments. You do care and you show it. I only wish more young people were like you...
Thomas
you will find boggarts and dementors in the Harry Potter books: for boggarts, see particularly book three, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Boggarts have no particular shape in and of themselves; they hide in dark places, such as cupboards, in order to then pop out and try to frighten people by assuming whatever shape they think represents their victim's greatest fear. They are banished by mockery: the "Riddikulus!" charm. I think of the cruder kind of Mohammedan poster here - the kind that openly boasts and threatens, often in ill-spelled rants, and which is best dealt with by ruthless ridicule - as being similar to a boggart. (The word 'boggart' is - I think - Rowlings' borrowing from Lowland Scots, referring to something like the 'bogeyman').
Dementors are much nastier, they are icy soul-destroyers - they also are dealt with at most length in the third book - and can only be banished by the use of the 'expecto patronum!' (lit. 'I await [a] defender!') which (if the summoner's faith is strong) invokes a dazzling form of pure and immortal joy. J K Rowling seemingly thought of the 'dementors' after she'd suffered a bout of depression. The name is a portmanteau word combining 'dement' and 'demon'; something that seeks to drive you out of your mind. I apply it - the analogy is not completely exact, I admit - to the more subtle and nasty kind of Mohammedan visitor to this forum, the kind who may not openly identify as a Mohammedan at first, and whose aim is to cause confusion and despair.
'Defenderofislam' is a 'boggart'.
The late unlamented Abdullah Mikail, and '45ch' (if you remember him?), are more what I mean by dementors.