What's Happening In Pakistan?

[Winstonm]

Chaos gripped the streets of Karachi yesterday as gun battles left at least 31 people dead and hundreds more injured, threatening a complete breakdown of law and order in Pakistan's largest and most volatile city.

 

With plumes of black smoke billowing over the city of 12 million people, there were extraordinary scenes as gunmen on motorbikes pumped bullets into crowds demonstrating against Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, while police stood by and watched.

 

 

Pakistan already is a nuclear power, and Musharraf came to power with backing of the military. If the military deserts him, it will be Iran all over again it looks like - except this time with nukes ready.

[pbleighton]

Musharraf *is* the military, a garden variety, corrupt, incompetent military dictator. The kind we apparently love to support.

 

Peter

[mike777]

This seems to not have made our newscasts but missing 4 year old Brit girl in Portugal is all over the news. Parents left her alone with baby sister in room while they went out.

 

I guess you need many more than 31 dead to make the USA news.

[Winstonm]

This seems to not have made our newscasts but missing 4 year old Brit girl in Portugal  is all over the news. Parents left her alone with baby sister in room while they went out.

 

I guess you need many more than 31 dead to make the USA news.

If news does not fit the "agenda" it doesn't make the airways here. What makes the propaganda of the American "Tass News Agency" so powerful is it presents itself as an unbiased and fair free press. If it's fair, why did it lobby so hard to eliminate the "fairness doctrine"? If it's unbiased, why did it "call" Florida and the 2000 election for Bush when the data showed it was clearly ompossible to know who had won?

 

Of course, there is a simple way to strike back - don't watch. So far, 2.5 million fewer viewers this spring. It won't be long until MSM is left preaching to ony the choir, and when that happens the all-powerful Oz will be exposed as a simple snakeoil salesman hiding behind a curtain, using gimmicks to invoke fear and awe.

[mike777]

:America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy."

 

Yes John Adams and Jefferson fought the USA's first war against terror.

 

See Barbary Pirates.

 

What did you think of our tactics and ethics?

 

In fact we did go abroad to destroy monsters.

[Winstonm]

What did you think of our tactics and ethics?

 

When you say "our", to whose tactics and ethics do you refer?

 

In fact we did go abroad to fight monsters.

 

Not according to what I read. Brittain bombarded Tripoli, not the U.S. Notice also these "pirates", although using the Quran as justification, were actually just thieves who could be bribed. Hardly terrorists - more like Mafioso.

 

This seems like an extreme stretch to try to compare the U.S.A.'s attempted protection of its infant merchant fleet from a bunch of thugs/thievs/pirates, intent on collecting booty and bribes, to an invasion and war with a sovereign nation.

[hrothgar]

:America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy."

 

Yes John Adams and Jefferson fought the USA's first war against terror.

 

See Barbary Pirates.

 

What did you think of our tactics and ethics?

 

In fact we did go abroad to destroy monsters.

I don't think that anyone would dispute that the United States fought against the Barbary Pirates.

 

However, I don't see any relationship between these actions and the "war against terror".

[mike777]

:America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy."

 

Yes John Adams and Jefferson fought the USA's first war against terror.

 

See Barbary Pirates.

 

What did you think of our tactics and ethics?

 

In fact we did go abroad to destroy monsters.

I don't think that anyone would dispute that the United States fought against the Barbary Pirates.

 

However, I don't see any relationship between these actions and the "war against terror".

None? Wow.

[Winstonm]

:America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy."

 

Yes John Adams and Jefferson fought the USA's first war against terror.

 

See Barbary Pirates.

 

What did you think of our tactics and ethics?

 

In fact we did go abroad to destroy monsters.

I don't think that anyone would dispute that the United States fought against the Barbary Pirates.

 

However, I don't see any relationship between these actions and the "war against terror".

It seems they were "terrorists" because the Barbary Pirates were Muslims (in name only, methinks).

 

Meanwhile, the good guys are always "freedom fighters" and "traders".

 

 

The U.S. merchants, on the other hand, were "traders" when they brought back to the U.S. "undocumented immigrant workers" (slaves) from Africa - after all, the merchants were christian, don't you know, and as such can never enslave or be "terrorists", no matter how much terror they inflicted on poor African villages, and no matter how many slaves they chained in the holds of ships.

 

This is elementary - neo-con 101 - if you watched The O'Reilly Factor I wouldn't have to spell it out.