I am becoming quite fond of my little corner of Schiphol airport. I have put up my Christmas cards and a few bits of tinsel. I now have a boarding card for the 0800 to Manchester. This is the sixth boarding card I have had. It is very hard to understand why, time after time, they don’t know a flight is cancelled until some time after it was due to leave and all the passengers have queued at the gate for hours.
Of course, Manchester is a lot further from Ramsgate than Schiphol is, so even if the flight atually goes, this represents rather dubious progress.
Happy New Year everybody.
Remarkably, KLM delivered my lost luggage, including my laptop, at 9.30 pm on New Year’s Eve. At that time a pretty lively party was already in full swing,much improved by the presence of a great many beautiful young women, mostly from Latvia. I am not sure why; my life as ever consists of a bewildering succession of chance encounters with really nice people. I am in the fortunate position of being able to say that Nadira was the most lovely of all, without indulging in dutiful hyperbole.
It was an extremely happy Christmas. Having my mum, both my brothers and all my three chidren together was as great as it was rare.
We have been through the laptop in lost luggage discussion before. The problem is that my shoulders dislocate at the drop of a hat, and I travel without hand luggage to avoid an accident.
2011 is going to be a very important year for me. particularly the first quarter. A number of crucial events are going either to set me up financially for the rest of my life, or result in real distress and failure. At present I have reason to be very optimistic. I am also very absorbed in my life of Alexander Burnes, which I hope will help establish a serious academic reputation.
The Portuguese edition of Murder in Samarkand has sold unexpectedly well in Brazil. The translation of the Turkish edition has just been finished.
I hope to do a Wikileaks retrospective in the next couple of days. Just a quick thought on the case of the poor young gardener in Bristol. Of the Jill Dando case, long before Barry Bulsara’s succesful appeal I blogged that this appeared to be a miscarriage of justice in which the police had fitted up the local weirdo.
Despite not being enamoured of landlords in general, I fear the same dynamic is at work in Bristol, albeit Chris Jefferies is much more intellectually capable than Bulsara. My instinct is that the police have picked up on Jefferies for being camper than a boy scout jamboree and archer than Trajan.
Jefferies’ release on bail has me worried that there was nothing against him other than the “He’s a weird one, guv” instinct of some not very bright cop. The case needs to be closely watched as history shows that the powers of the police to make the evidence fit the suspect are considerable.
Teabagger from St. Larry: You’re losing really badly. Now just go and discharge that bullet into the worthless space in your skull – quickly, before the year expires. Time is short. If you have no gun available (shame on you, as a teabagger you should one to hand!), just follow these instructions:
1/ Find a sturdy beam, and throw a noose around it, well above your height
2/ Stick your head through the noose
3/ Kick away the support
C’mon Larry, you know it’s for the best.
Glenn – no doubt when Clark wakes up tomorrow he’ll have some stern words for you for suggesting violence.
Just to remind you – as a 911 Truther, you have far more in common with the Teabaggers than I do. You’re a right-wing nut.
1) There is a real problem, both in Muslim majority countries and in other countries, with fundamentalist Islam. This cannot be denied and it is silly to deny it. There are two aspects here, one relates to social/ legal issues, the other to matters of criminality. The two overlap (eg. in Pakistan) because the second is a prerequisite of, and serves to maintain, the first.
2) We know – but sometimes won’t admit the historical/geopolitical provenance of this problem. Most of the Muslim fundamentalist leaders were CIA assets. As were the so-called ‘Muslim Generals’ (Suharto et al) who, aided by the CIA, slaughtered a million of their own people in Indonesia. History is crucial and we ignore it at our peril. But it is ignored and distorted for imperialist reasons. This is NOT to blame everything on America; that’s too simple.
We’ve been here before, many times, with these arguments.
3) Most people who scream about ‘Islam’ are not interested in displaying solidarity in either word or action with people within Muslim countries/ communities who are against fundamentalist Islam and this is for the specific reason that those anti-fundamentalists often are anti-imperialist as well and so they do not serve imperial ends – and make no mistake, imperial ends are, and always have been, the prime aim. They, however, will use individuals who seem uncritically to further the ‘Western’ imperial agenda. So, one decade, fundamentalist Islam is ‘good’, the next, it’s ‘bad’. Democracy (Iran, Pakistan) is deemed ‘bad’ (“they need a strongman to fight our wars for us!”), then it’s ‘good’. Ba’ath Party in Iraq good, then bad, the good. Whatever serves imperial ends, goes. Everything else is used as justification – psy-ops for the masses.
4) Of course there is fundamentalism in all religions and we see the bloody results every day in India, Israel and the USA. But the only fundamentalists at the present historical juncture who are attacking ‘the West’ seem to be the Muslim ones. That’s one of the reasons why they seem of greatest relevance to the West. Sadly and ultimately pointlessly (in my view), they seem to have become the surrogate vehicle for anti-imperialism.
5) The reason self-declared ‘anti-Muslims’ are often conflated with racists is because they often – by no means always – are racists and their arguments issue from the same source.
6) The ‘Muslim threat’, based in very old European historical tribal fears, is being used to fuel the psychological aspects of imperial war, aspects which aim to impede the questioning by the people (or at least by sufficient people) of their ‘ruler’s actions.
7) If we are not careful, we will cultivate a Kristallnacht situation again in Europe. The Jews never in a million years thought the Germans would do what they did. That was one the reasons why they were so placid going to the concentration camps – basically, they couldn’t believe it. And in the end, it didn’t matter whether someone was an ‘Orthodox, practising Jew’ or an educated, cultured atheist.
Thanks, technicolour, for taking the time to dissect that ‘Daily Telegraph’s propaganda.
Please note, before anyone accuses me of this, I am not posing as a victim here. I am not a victim; I am a fighter (with words and spirit); the more idiocy is flung in my direction, the stronger I grow.
But it’s really amusing – hilarious, in fact – that more-or-less continuously for the first two to three decades of my life (1960s and 1970s), we got slammed (literally assaulted physically and mentally) in the public arena for being brown and now (1980s to 2010) we get slammed in the public arena for being Muslim. Perhaps, some day, I will be slammed only for wearing hats.
http://www.legitgov.org/
CIA black prisons in Poland and US imperialism in Europe: let’s get real and remove the plank form our own eye.
The USA should get its filthy illegal prisons off European soil. Of course, our own SIS is subservient to the CIA and is fully complicit in these illegal prisons. Who is being held in these jails and on what basis? Why is there no due process. On what basis can we claim to be ‘bringing democracy and the rule of law’ to anyone, anywhere? It’s rubbish, clearly. We bring, not liberty, but black prisons and depleted uranium.
A manifestation of the rise of the police state tactics which is a product of the continuous ‘war footing’ mentality and the focus – to the deliberate exclusion of everything else – on terrorism – is the smashing of the students in London a few weeks ago. That was a just a flavour, an aperitif.
This is linked. What we allow to happen to others will one day be visited upon us.
“are you really saying that there is no one like the character that Larry presents? That there are no ordinary Americans, who broadly believe in the US, believe the mainstream 9/11 account, were personally affected, and are very angry and scared by terrorism? ”
Of course there are such people. I know many, including some in my own family in the States. However they present very differently from Larry and I think your attempts to ‘connect on a human level’ with a character who is no more than a few disjointed sentences of abuse are noble but naive. He should be ignored, except on the very rare occasions when he has something to say. Do you know Thurber’s ‘Fables for Our Time’? There’s one tale about a bear which has as its moral: you might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backwards. You’re leaning over too far backwards, Clark.
Larry is not necessarily paid. There are also ordinary Americans, who broadly believe in the US, believe the mainstream 9/11 account, were personally affected, are very angry and scared by terrorism (and Islamism, which they believe is the same thing), and are complete fuckwits. I know some of them, too.
“Perhaps, some day, I will be slammed only for wearing hats.”
That, though, you will deserve.
preview.tinyurl.com/2up58oh
Larry from St Louis, I’m very sorry that Glenn has apparently resorted to calling for your suicide.
“Is X a religion of peace?”
I don’t think religions are “of peace” or otherwise. I lived in Bradford for a few years. The Asians in the community observe religion more than the English, on average. Most Muslim people just get on with their lives, just the same as the non-Muslims. When there was trouble, it was sparked by racist demonstrations and bad policing. As a rule, I’d say that I felt less threatened in a crowd of Muslims than in a crowd of non-Muslims.
Something that generally isn’t recognised is that when there is trouble from “Muslims”, it’s mainly young men that are involved, who not the most devout section of the community.
After the Bradford riots, older, well respected members of the Muslim community cooperated with the police to identify offenders. The justice system completely failed those community leaders, by giving out disproportionate custodial sentences for crimes of property damage and throwing stones.
There’s violence, and there’s institutionalised violence.
Vronsky at 10:09am: And there are some – of UK and US origin – who believe it is their patriotic duty to work for empire. They will do such work for nothing because they are ideologically driven. Same with some journalists, those in business and academics, of course; some are on the payroll (they have what is known as, ‘dual careers’), others don’t need to be. The hard state has such assets in all walks of life. They even have ‘trusted doctors’ whom they use to look after their paid civilian agents (their dual career agents) when they get ill. In the UK, one also must differentiate b/w the staff case/ desk officers who run the paid (and unpaid) agents.
Vronsky, at 10:16am: Ha!!
What are the chances, to enable this blog only at certain times, (greenwich MT would be fine), enabling those with religious delusions to get up and talk when the majority of posters and watchers are aweake?
Although religion is increasingly used by failing politicians to justify their irate movements and moral state of their mind, enthuse them with aweinspiring settings and backgrounds…..
Non of these religions were able to build their own churches spires and vast self carrying vaults, it was not the pope, priests or gods, who build the Pantheon, the best ecxample in the world for early concrete technologies, cathedrals the blue mosque or the Maharadjas palaces; these were built by master masons, craftsmen, artists and labourers of the most determined and able kind working in unison for years, if not decades.
They achieved something extraordinarily.
When you look how old some of these excellent buildings are, the geo-cataclysmns, wars and floods they survived and how the structurtes and methods have informed and taught modern architecture, then you wonder yourselfs, looking at buildings like the ‘Gurken’, whether modernity can ever produce something like it, or whether humanity has lost its nous, its will to create something of real value and substance.
Societies have gone far too far in giving access to religious fervour in their schools, their parliaments, in Governments or society at large, sadly this experiment is failing for some time.
Our religions have not enabled us to live in harmony with what keeps us alive and sustained, we have plonked hedfirst into the most unsustainable practises ever possible, that of destruction and war. pristes have blessed millions of now dead soldiers, gave their sermon and blessings to massakers, whilst preaching peace and harmony, a two faced morality if there ever was one.
Centuries of religous fervour with all its inhumane excesses, have got us to this state of moral peril, whether its christian or muslim, they both have nothing to learn from each other.
We have given too much credence to preachers, popes and others who use fire and brimstone to deliver their fear and loathing messages to the adult masses, only to ‘relax’ with their children afterwards.
Hrrrprtui, let you figure out what colour spit this was, but thats how I feel. This insane wish to be guided by deluded holy men is incomprehensible to me, knowing full well what the impact of religion had on society.
Please tell me I’m not the only one who feels like it.
Shall refrain from posting until this blog has either demised, in which case we can all remember in glowing terms of ‘how it once was when we were able to talk freely, or is enabled so everyone identified can talk to the issue, without having their personality insulted by some freshling with uebermensch delusions.
That said this was not about rteligion but how to keep the quality up on this blog, it will take some work and drastic action, fine by me.
People who do not use their own name, and always want to push their hobby-whore-ses have something to hide, are led by the nose, or are out to divide, thats obvious. This blog should be ‘in your name only’for that reason alone.
How do you like that for a last fart?
don’t worry I will read your replies, just not argue over it, yet.
Suhayl @ 9:51 AM – excellent post, thanks.
I tend to find the “our religion (Christianity) is worse than your religion (Islam)” debate not to be worthwhile, to be honest. Is one religion more violent than the other? Over time, this dubious title has, surely, passed from one religion to another. Maybe it’s Islam now, maybe it’s not.
But if it is, consider the context. We invade countries against (fledgling and weak) international law, we bomb wedding parties in Afghanistan and barely acknowledge the ‘collateral damage’ afterwards, we (the West) tinker with working democracies we disapprove of, and we depose leaders that don’t fit into the capitalism-approved mould. The worst one, for me, is that we tolerate, obfuscate and lie about the deaths we cause in other countries; in Iraq, is it a few hundred thousand or, as some research has it, over a million? What would be a proportionate death-toll in the United Kingdom, and would the subsequent social unrest label Christians as a ‘violent religion’?
In sum, if the West kills lots of Muslims, and Islamic extremism is the result, if Western supporters then call Islam violent, that accusation is both disingenuous and hypocritical.
Vronsky, my points regarding Larry are:
(1) if he has an argument, engage with the argument, or ignore it. Calling him a paid troll resolves nothing and looks silly.
(2) If he introduces offensive imagery and/or makes violent suggestions, this is unacceptable in its own right – it’s unacceptable when Glenn does it, too. It doesn’t become acceptable so long as Larry is not a paid troll, so criticise it in it’s own right, not as the action of a paid troll.
In today’s (Scottish) Herald newspaper:
http://breakingnews.heraldscotland.com/breaking-news/?mode=article&site=hs&id=N0350101293498344177A
Doctors call for David Kelly inquest.
@ingo
It is very difficult to extract any mesasage of optimism from what we see around us in these times, but I occasionally have a go at it. I cling to this thought: nothing that we are seeing is new, what is new is that we are seeing it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIMNXogXnvE
Ingo, excellent post. Before I lived in Bradford, I lived in York, within sight of York Minster. The finished form that we see took over six hundred years to construct, and cost hundreds of lives. Ingo, if you haven’t read it, I recommend “The Spire” by William Golding, better known for “Lord of the Flies”.
Ingo, yours are amongst the best comments here, so keep them coming.
Suhayl: This is the PA Press Release
DOCTORS: OUR CASE FOR KELLY INQUEST POLITICS Kelly
Dec 28, 2010 4:21:34 PM
By Andrew Woodcock, Press Association Chief Political Correspondent
Embargoed to 0001
Wednesday December 29
Page 1
Campaigners for a full inquest into the death of government weapons
inspector David Kelly said today they believed they had presented
Attorney General Dominic Grieve with an “unanswerable” case.
A lawyer for the group of doctors behind the demand for an inquest said
they “hope and expect” that Mr Grieve will make his decision on legal
grounds only, and will resist any political pressure to reject their
application.
Mr Grieve has been considering the doctors’ case – set out in a 33-page
petition known in legal language as a “memorial” – since September and
is expected to announce early in 2011 whether he will comply with their
request for him to ask the High Court to order an inquest.
The doctors have taken the unusual step of publishing the memorial ahead
of Mr Grieve’s decision and Dr Michael Powers said today it set out in
the clearest and most powerful terms yet why the Hutton Inquiry into Dr
Kelly’s 2003 death was not an adequate substitute for the “full, frank
and fearless” investigation required by coroners’ guidelines.
Dr Powers said: “For several months now the Attorney General has been
considering the ‘memorial’ of the doctors. This legal document sets out
details of the insufficiency and irregularities of Lord Hutton’s
informal inquiry which, in our opinion, make the argument for a proper
inquest unanswerable.
“Although the senior government law officer, it is hoped and expected
that Dominic Grieve QC MP will put aside political considerations in
reaching his decision on the law.
“The circumstances of Dr Kelly’s death merit a detailed examination of
all the evidence in a coroner’s court. Many questions have been asked
which demand proper answers. It is in the public interest that
confidence is maintained in the due process of law.”
Dr Kelly’s body was found near his Oxfordshire home days after he was
revealed as the source of media claims that the Government had “sexed
up” its dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which was used
by then prime minister Tony Blair as a justification for the invasion of
the country.
Unusually for an unnatural death, an inquest was never completed, as
Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer declared himself satisfied with the
finding of the Hutton Inquiry that the scientist had committed suicide,
prompting the Oxfordshire coroner to abandon the inquiry which he opened
and adjourned immediately after the death.
But the five doctors, led by radiologist Stephen Frost, argue that Lord
Hutton – who devoted only half a day of his 24-day inquiry to medical
evidence and did not have statutory powers to require cross-examination
of witnesses – was not in a position to fulfil the duties of a coroner.
The memorial, available on the internet, says there is “serious doubt”
that sufficient evidence was available at the time of the “hastily
conducted” inquiry to reach the conclusion that Dr Kelly deliberately
killed himself by cutting his wrist and taking painkillers, as his death
certificate suggests. Scrutiny of medical evidence was “unacceptably
limp”.
And it highlights a press interview given by pathologist Nicholas Hunt
in August, which it claims was “inconsistent” with evidence he gave to
Hutton. The pathologist – who has himself said he would be happy for an
inquest to take place – reported “thick clots of blood” inside Dr
Kelly’s jacket sleeve in what he called a “textbook suicide”.
Dr Hunt’s post-mortem report, published in October following pressure
from the campaigning doctors, was widely seen as a final judgment on the
reason for the scientist’s death.
But the doctors insist it has not laid to rest key questions, such as
how Dr Kelly obtained a packet of coproxamol painkillers, why his blood
and stomach contained only a non-toxic dose of the drug, why he was not
spotted by a police helicopter with thermal imaging cameras which flew
over the wood where his body was later found, why no fingerprints were
found on the knife apparently used to slit his wrist and whether he in
fact intended to kill himself.
The doctors highlight the dual role of Lord Falconer, who ordered the
Inquiry as Constitutional Affairs Secretary and then declared himself
satisfied with its findings in his role as Lord Chancellor.
And they declare themselves “astonished” that Lord Hutton should have
been entrusted with the job of determining the cause of Kelly’s death
despite having no experience as a coroner.
“The Hutton Inquiry was manifestly relatively powerless and lacking
investigative bite when compared to its statutory equivalent or coronial
proceedings,” argues the document.
“The evidence provided by witnesses was not tested in the normal way
through cross-examination by the representatives of other properly
interested persons to the proceedings.
“Evidence was accepted, with minor clarifications only, at face value
and without challenge – just one flaw in the procedural framework of the
Hutton Inquiry which had the consequence of rendering the Inquiry
insufficient in its breadth, reach and thoroughness.”
The memorial states: “It is submitted, in light of the procedural
deficiencies and insufficiency of the investigation of the Hutton
Inquiry, the rejection of evidence by the coroner… and the compelling
new evidence provided in the form of the expert view of Dr Frost and his
colleagues… that the conclusions reached by Lord Hutton and adopted by
the coroner are not safe.”
The failure to provide a proper inquest has put the UK in breach of
duties under the European Convention on Human Rights, argues the
document.
And it concludes: “It is necessary and desirable in the interests of
justice for there to be a fresh, full inquest into Dr Kelly’s death
before a different coroner.”
This email is from the Press Association. For more information, see
http://www.pressassociation.com.
Also on BBC Website under ‘Politics’ and Sky News have been carrying it too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12085257
Guardian Letters 29 December 2010
Tariq Aziz still faces execution in Iraq
As the US and UK accuse Russia of a “politically motivated sentence” and the pope accuses China of lack of freedom for Christians, former deputy prime minister and foreign minister Tariq Aziz sits in Iraq awaiting execution (Report, 30 November). A Christian and victim of a politically motivated trial, he knows the truth of western duplicity over Iraq.
The silence of the pope, archbishops, the Foreign Office (despite William Hague claiming to put human rights firmly at the centre of his policies) has been woeful. All have been approached by anti-death-penalty campaigners, including many eminent people, such as bishops. None has even replied to correspondence. Tariq Aziz is a symbol of the “democracy” brought to the new Iraq. His trial was condemned by Human Rights Watch ?” which had called for it consistently ?” as “fundamentally flawed” and they said that the “court should overturn the verdict”.
Tariq Aziz at least had a show trial ?” he is a symbol of the hundreds awaiting death in Iraq who have not even had that. He was also a nationalist who begged the former pope not to allow Iraq to be destroyed by an invasion ?” and refused to leave the country which, for all his failings, he had devoted his life to. Under Saddam Hussein, those over 70 could not be executed. Tariq Aziz is a 74-year-old stroke victim. It looks to many as if what the US and UK have wrought in Iraq continues the excesses of the former regime. One can only hang one’s head in shame. Saddam was executed ?” some say lynched ?” on 31 December. Let us hope history does not repeat this shame ?” in our name.
Felicity Arbuthnot
London
a
Well said.
Yes, Suhayl, your choice of hats. Better than a Smithfield butcher and on a par with your countryman Karsai. Why don’t you don an Afghani amamah to really keep your braincells warm and flowing?
I see alan campbell has been sugaring his tea with the daily telegraph. The Tear-up-socialism party is preparing for G.P.s to privatise the NHS. They have consolidated the power of usury, by forcing students to mortgage their brains before they reach 18. They have clawed VAT into the level of PAYE.
Craig Murray’s position is now looking more like a Scottish castle than a gatekeepers toll-house. When politicians make gross errors of judgement by avoiding the obvious pitfalls of backing a spineless politician like Nick Clegg, they try, Blair-like, to defend their position by whingeing on about hindsight being a wonderful thing.
I don’t trust the Tories because I saw what they did last time. Anybody who was stupid enough to vote for them or for an alliance with them should be sectioned, in my opinion. The only reason why the Muslims are living in this country is because the benefit system makes life easy, if you shut up and refuse to criticise UKUSIS policy.
Don’t worry Alan, these Con-Vince trash will dump the welfare state within the five years the stupid Liberals have agreed not to rebel against them. Then the good little Muslim Tories will be model citizens to the rest of us, and the good little Muslim New Labourites who refused to speak out against the dismantling of Iraq and Afghanistan for fear of losing their benefits, won’t have a country to go back to anyway.
Do people really believe that in these straitened times the security services pay people like Larry to write comments to wind others up? I imagine if they really cared about the site of an obscure ex-ambassador, they could close it down no problem. Its just that many bloggers on here hate to think that people disagree with them in droves and think they’re nutters. Easier to pretend to be fighting against the Man and just call everyone with a different opinion a troll. You are the minority, friends.
Yes, they actually believe this. It’s part of the sad conspiracy mind.
Once, as a very minor exercise of speech, I stood outside the exit of a Loose Change movie and handed out little sheets of paper encouraging people to visit the websites that answer every single claim in that silly “movie”.
As you can imagine, 90% of the true believers there believed that I had to be CIA / FBI / NSA / Secret Service or with some other outfit. And they ended up knowing where I lived, and they followed me around some. I found it all amusing.
They just can’t imagine that people can have a rational disagreement with them. Secret agents have to fill that void.
I’m not sure if Alan is correct to say that we are in the minority in the US/UK, but he may be. There have been many really excellent passionate yet civil debates b/w people like Stephen-the-businessman (sadly long-vanished), redders, Stephen-the-cop, angrysoba, nextus, vronsky, evgueni, KingofWelshNoir, Mike Cobley, (sand)crab (hey, are you out in the deeps right now?), Brian Barder, Charles Whathisname, Sabretache, Ruth, Clark, jon and techicolour… and many more (I’ve missed many out, sorry for that)! That’s not say we don’t all ‘lose it’ occasionally. But with the above, some of whom argue for (what I would call) imperialism, others, against, it is the exception rather than the rule.
Whether or not trolls are paid is irrelevant; they perform the same task. Some will be just people who disagree and enjoy sowing provocation and disruption, or simply insulting people. Remember the ‘Barker’ team? Others will be self-annointed ‘patriots’ who defend imperialism because they think it’s patriotic to do so. And there will be some who are paid to do this sort of work, possibly across various ‘oppositional’ websites. It doesn’t matter – and my view is that we have debated all this long enough. Those who behave as trolls ought to be treated like trolls. Period. We all disagree on different matters, don’t we – but that doesn’t mean we behave like trolls. And that’s it.
Remember that my original post on this thread, yesterday, was really to do with the various journalists and business-persons who have experienced and written about harassment by the security services; it was not about trolls. I merely predicted that my raising of the subject of security services harassment would result in a bust of hyperactivity – for whatever reason – from a certain type of troll – and sadly I was proved absolutely correct on that point. Let that speak for itself. End of story.
Once again Suhayl is creating excuses for mass murderers.
Among so many problems with his inability to think, there is this point – what does Suharto have to do with the failed Strasbourg bombing?
screwloosechange.blogspot.com
http://hurryupharry.org/
Suhayl Saadi = http://www.legitgov.org = HAARP nutjobs = Jessie Ventura = Ron Paul = nutjob right-wing Americans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZOt29NR0FY
From a Chicago-based website:
http://kasamaproject.org/2008/01/28/suharto-monster-of-the-cia-and-us-empire/
Santa Claus is coming to town…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Afghanistan
And Santa is bringing his elves with him…
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/CorruptionCovertActions.html
Zia ul Haq, the General whose rise to power in Pakistan in 1977 the USA allegedly facilitated, was the prime catalyst for the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism as a military, legal and mass political force in South Asia and beyond. The ignorant laws which continue to apply in Pakistan were passed during his junta; they have not yet all been repealed – quite the opposite – because the military-business conglomerate remains in control.
So, the USA has itself to thank for the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism. It was a deliberate policy.