Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

December 16, 2014 By Fausta

Elsewhere

‘Revenge’ for Malala’s Nobel Peace Prize…

126 killed, mostly children…

‘Burn teacher alive in front of pupils and behead children’…

————————————-

‘Lone Wolf,’ or ‘Known Wolf’? The Ongoing Counter-Terrorism Failure
An extensive report shows how U.S. law enforcement missteps and dangerous policies keep getting people killed.

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Filed Under: Islam, Pakistan, terrorism Tagged With: Fausta's blog

May 13, 2011 By Fausta

Bin Laden supposedly had no internet, but kept p*rn in his house

Where there’s a will, there’s a way,
Exclusive: Pornography found in bin Laden hideout: officials

A stash of pornography was found in the hideout of Osama bin Laden by the U.S. commandos who killed him, current and former U.S. officials said on Friday.

The pornography recovered in bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, consists of modern, electronically recorded video and is fairly extensive, according to the officials, who discussed the discovery with Reuters on condition of anonymity.

The officials said they were not yet sure precisely where in the compound the pornography was discovered or who had been viewing it. Specifically, the officials said they did not know if bin Laden himself had acquired or viewed the materials.

Reports from Abbottabad have said that bin Laden’s compound was cut off from the Internet or other hard-wired communications networks. It is unclear how compound residents would have acquired the pornography.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if the couriers that were been tracked were the ones who did the shopping?

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Filed Under: Osama bin Laden, Pakistan, terrorism Tagged With: Fausta's blog

May 2, 2011 By Fausta

Bin Laden dead, and buried at sea

Osama bin Laden Killed: ‘Justice Is Done,’ President Says

Osama bin Laden, hunted as the mastermind behind the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, has been killed, President Obama announced tonight.

The president called the killing of bin Laden the “most significant achievement to date” in the effort to defeat al Qaeda.

“Justice has been done,” Obama said.

Bin Laden was located at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which was monitored and when the time was determined to be right, the president said, he authorized a “targeted operation.”

President Obama’s speech,

Richard Fernadez asks,

The location of Bin Laden’s hide-out and the use of a U.S. raiding team on settled Pakistani territory raises a number of questions. First, has Pakistan been hiding Osama Bin Laden all along? Second, did the U.S. independently discover the location of Bin Laden? Third, was the information shared by some elements of Pakistani intelligence, assuming that his location was known to them, in exchange from some quid pro quo which has not yet been revealed? Or was the discovery of Bin Laden simultaneous, the result of the mutual and cooperative investigation of the ISI and U.S. intelligence?

If highly placed persons in Pakistan have been instrumental in hiding Bin Laden these ten years, it suggests that some of the real masterminds of September 11, far from lying dead, are still at large.

The chances that Pakistan was wholly innocent were somewhat thrown into doubt by the possible location of the safe house. “President Barack Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed in Abbottabad.” What must have been the raid was reported on Pakistani media, putting Osama’s safe house very close to the Pakistani Military Academy

Crowd celebrates Bin Laden’s death for hours outside the White House (h/t Instapundit)

The body of Osama bin Laden has been buried at sea after he was killed by US covert forces in Pakistan.

Burying bin Laden’s body at sea would ensure that his final resting place does not become a shrine and a place of pilgrimage for his followers.

Michael Yon doesn’t think that was a good idea. Expect conspiracy theories to flourish, too.

Huge string of articles and posts at Memeorandum

UPDATE:
A guy in Pakistan live-tweeted the raid.

More photos and video at FreedomTorch.

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Filed Under: 9/11, Barack Obama, Islam, Osama bin Laden, Pakistan, terrorism Tagged With: Fausta's blog

October 5, 2010 By Fausta

Oprah, Agroisleña, Rahm, Pundita, and trouble

How Oprah Winfrey Can Get Her Brand Back

Please, Oprah, don’t send me a car. Just less Marianne Williamson and more Halima Bashir.

Michael Moynihan says this article by Richard Cohen is The Worst Column of the Year. I think Michael’s an optimist; the year is not over yet, by a long shot, and elections always are a fountain of poor writing, faulty logic and senseless rhetoric.

My friend John Hawkins made more friends at the Smart Girl Summit, The 2010 Smart Girl Summit In Pictures (42 Pics)

Good-bye, Agroisleña: Defiant Chavez orders land takeover of British food giant

Since 1999, when Chavez took office, the government has taken over some 2.5 million hectares (6.2 million acres) of land

More on Geert Wilders:Tear Down This Wall!

You can’t make this up: Rahm Emanuel: Experts say not a legal resident of Chicago, cannot run for mayor, so of course he has a video titled “Glad to be home”…which was made in Washington, DC. There is no “there” here.

On Pakistan and the US: Pundita explains reality to Rachel Maddow and the Pakistanis to Gen. Petraeus, Part 1

Washington defense policymakers are the only people on Earth who whap themselves on the back of the head then yelp, ‘Who hit me?’ So before strategy must come the ability to chew and walk.

Go read every word.

How Much Trouble Are We In? This much trouble:

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Filed Under: Islam, Pakistan Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Rahm Emanuel, Smart Girl Summit

September 9, 2010 By Fausta

Cuban riot police quash Pakistani student protest VIDEO; updated with podcast

At the Latin American School of Medicine in Jaguey Grande, Pakistani Muslim students protested and went on strike over their living conditions for the second time this year. The newly-formed riot police in full gear and assault rifles with bayonets repressed the protest:

Cuban Riot Police quash protest at university

The Pakistani students have been protesting over the inferior education they are receiving from the Cuban government and the lack of hospital facilities at the university. The students feel that the quality of education they are being provided in Cuba is not sufficient for them to be able to pass the exams required to be licensed physicians back home in Pakistan.

So much for the excellent Cuban healthcare.

UPDATE
Val Prieto of Babalu joined me in this morning’s podcast; you can listen to it here.

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Filed Under: Communism, Cuba, Fidel Castro, Pakistan Tagged With: Fausta's blog

July 26, 2010 By Fausta

The Afghan war document dump UPDATED

Wikileaks has the Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010,

an extraordinary compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010.

The Wikileaks link doesn’t seem to work all the time, so here’s the NYTimes,

The reports — usually spare summaries but sometimes detailed narratives — shed light on some elements of the war that have been largely hidden from the public eye:

• The Taliban have used portable heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft, a fact that has not been publicly disclosed by the military. This type of weapon helped the Afghan mujahedeen defeat the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

• Secret commando units like Task Force 373 — a classified group of Army and Navy special operatives — work from a “capture/kill list” of about 70 top insurgent commanders. These missions, which have been stepped up under the Obama administration, claim notable successes, but have sometimes gone wrong, killing civilians and stoking Afghan resentment.

• The military employs more and more drone aircraft to survey the battlefield and strike targets in Afghanistan, although their performance is less impressive than officially portrayed. Some crash or collide, forcing American troops to undertake risky retrieval missions before the Taliban can claim the drone’s weaponry.

• The Central Intelligence Agency has expanded paramilitary operations inside Afghanistan. The units launch ambushes, order airstrikes and conduct night raids. From 2001 to 2008, the C.I.A. paid the budget of Afghanistan’s spy agency and ran it as a virtual subsidiary.

There’s also evidence that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants (or as Stacy puts it,

The White House has denounced the leaks as “irresponsible,” but what about the facts revealed? For $1 billion a year, we’re paying for Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency to help kill our troops in Afghanistan.)

and that Iran is giving weapons, training and funds to the Taliban.

I was listening to John Batchelor last night while driving home, who compared these documents with the Pentagon Papers from the 1960s. Doug Mataconis is wondering about that, too.

But, haven’t we heard about these during the past years? Haven’t we read about all of this – or at least most of it – at Long War Journal?

Ed Morrissey drives the point home,

Like many, I prepared myself to read through the reports on the Wikileaks’ massive document dump from the classified military files of the Af-Pak theater, expecting to find something exotic and new.  Like many today, I suspect, I’m underwhelmed by the reality.  The Washington Post reports that the main takeaways are that Pakistan’s intel forces continued their contacts and support of the Taliban, that the war effort was underresourced, and that the Taliban had heat-seeking missiles that could attack our helicopters … which the US provided Afghan fighters during the Soviet occupation.

In short, it’s the Long War Journal, only less detailed

I’ll be reading through the documents and will post more on this story; while the documents per se may not be as scandalous as the Pentagon Papers, we shouldn’t be surprised if the Obama administration a. blames Bush as it always does, and b. uses them as a pretext for pulling out of Afghanistan.

UPDATE
Wikileaks Hath Spoken
Now Step Aside Or Get Stampeded By Journalists Seeking Pulitzers

When Wikileaks becomes an equal opportunity leaker and starts thumbing its nose at Vlad Putin, for instance, then maybe we’ll talk. The thing is, journalists and intelligence folks who run afoul of Vlad have a strange habit of getting dead. (One would think there would be a story to be leaked in there somewhere to the industrious folks at Wikileaks.)

But stand clear. There’s a Pulitzer at stake, and it’s being pulled violently by teams in New York, London and Berlin.

ShrinkWrapped believes the war is over; I agree up to a point – what if the Wikileaks was timed in order to preempt Petraeus from extending the US troops stay in Afghanistan, when, prior to Petraeus taking his post, was scheduled for July next year?

—————————————-

Due to personal business that needs to be attended this morning, there will be no podcast today and the Carnival of Latin America will be posted in the afternoon.
Thank you for your patience and support.

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Filed Under: Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan, Taleban, terrorism Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Pentagon Papers, Wikileaks

May 16, 2010 By Fausta

Pakistani charged in Chile for explosives, not terror

X Muhammad Saif-Ur-Rehman Khan, the Pakistani who showed up at the American embassy in Santiago with traces of explosives, has been charged and released by a judge, in spite of the government’s intent to keep him in custody:
Pakistani charged in Chile for explosives, not terror

A Pakistani who was charged with illegal explosives possession was set free pending the investigation, but may not leave Chile and must check in with a judge every two weeks, a court source said.

Mauhannas Saif ur Rehnab, 28, had been detained since Monday under terms of Chile’s anti-terror law after officials detected traces of TNT on him when he visited the US embassy in Santiago.

On Saturday however he was not charged with violating the anti-terrorism law.
…
“He was charged with illegal possession of explosives, but not with breaking the anti-terror law,” a court source told AFP.

Then “he was released, but while the investigation is under way, ahead of a final ruling, he must appear before a judge to sign in every two weeks, and he may not leave the country,” the source added.

The Left spoke out on his support,

Rehnab’s fate has stirred controversy in Chile, with leftist opposition members complaining that he had been held without charge, although under the provisions of the anti-terror law this is legal.

The government did not want his release:

“We would have liked to see this person remain in preventive detention,” said Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter. “We don’t believe that his checking in and not leaving the country is sufficient, so we do expect that public prosecutors will appeal.”

And now his parents are coming,

Opposition lawmaker Alejandro Navarro said he had learned from the interior ministry that the suspect’s parents would receive visas and would arrive in Chile on Monday.

What could go wrong?

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Filed Under: Chile, Pakistan, terrorism, USA Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Muhammad Saif-Ur-Rehman Khan

May 16, 2010 By Fausta

Pakistani charged in Chile for explosives, not terror

X Muhammad Saif-Ur-Rehman Khan, the Pakistani who showed up at the American embassy in Santiago with traces of explosives, has been charged and released by a judge, in spite of the government’s intent to keep him in custody:
Pakistani charged in Chile for explosives, not terror

A Pakistani who was charged with illegal explosives possession was set free pending the investigation, but may not leave Chile and must check in with a judge every two weeks, a court source said.

Mauhannas Saif ur Rehnab, 28, had been detained since Monday under terms of Chile’s anti-terror law after officials detected traces of TNT on him when he visited the US embassy in Santiago.

On Saturday however he was not charged with violating the anti-terrorism law.
…
“He was charged with illegal possession of explosives, but not with breaking the anti-terror law,” a court source told AFP.

Then “he was released, but while the investigation is under way, ahead of a final ruling, he must appear before a judge to sign in every two weeks, and he may not leave the country,” the source added.

The Left spoke out on his support,

Rehnab’s fate has stirred controversy in Chile, with leftist opposition members complaining that he had been held without charge, although under the provisions of the anti-terror law this is legal.

The government did not want his release:

“We would have liked to see this person remain in preventive detention,” said Interior Minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter. “We don’t believe that his checking in and not leaving the country is sufficient, so we do expect that public prosecutors will appeal.”

And now his parents are coming,

Opposition lawmaker Alejandro Navarro said he had learned from the interior ministry that the suspect’s parents would receive visas and would arrive in Chile on Monday.

What could go wrong?

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Filed Under: Chile, Pakistan, terrorism, USA Tagged With: Fausta's blog, Muhammad Saif-Ur-Rehman Khan

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