Taliban Execute Two Afghan Women

This video sucks. The Taliban have captured two women in Afghanistan. The woman are accused of being prostitutes. As if that were not bad enough, they are accused of selling their bodies to US soldiers, so they are more or less spies or traitors. They put the women on the ground where they cry and plead for mercy. Then they shoot them to death with automatic weapons. The women crumple and die on the ground.

Fucked up to the max.

Robert Fisk in Kandahar, Afghanistan

Things don't look so good.

Fisk is a great writer, and even where I disagree with his POV, his analysis is generally right on the money. He's one of our finest foreign correspondents writing in English today.

The Taliban are winning, at least in Kandahar. The Afghan "Army" leaves the Kandahar streets by 4 PM every day. The Afghan Police are lethargic and barely even check passengers anymore at the Kandahar Airport.

Everyone is against the occupation and the extremely corrupt and shitty Afghan government, but no one will say a word against the Taliban.

Ominously, there are rumblings that indicate that forces other than the Taliban, such as the Taliban's old Islamist enemies, may also take up arms against "the foreign occupiers" soon. Fighting the foreign infidel occupiers. In Afghanistan, a tradition as old as dirt.

If it's still on sale, check out the latest Rolling Stone, with an article by Israeli expat (now living in the US) journalist Nir Rosen (one of the fast-moving runners' up behind Fisk). This leftwing anti-Zionist Israeli-American Jew (an Iranian Mizrachi) has a lot of balls.

He goes to South Lebanon after the Lebanon War in 2006, to Fallujah right before the US devastates the town, and then to the Andar District in Ghazni Province, for all intents and purposes controlled by the Taliban. The last time, he gets captured and comes close to getting executed. He's got his nerve all right.

I hate the Taliban, but they aren't losing this war.

Hindutvas, Thieves of History

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated August 23:

This will continue a series of posts opposing the Hindutvas in India and the abject horror of (objectively fascist) Indian nationalism in general.

First of all, in its present form, the state of India has no right to exist. Prior to 1947, there was no India. Prior to British colonialism, there was no India. There was really no Hinduism either.

It was British colonizers who made note of the varying Indian forms of religions and collated them into a supposedly univariate object called "Hinduism". It was British anthropologists, colonizers and cartographers who invented this thing called "India".

The whole blasted Hindutva lie is based on the ludicrous notion of a "Bharat India". This Bharat India is a fake nation that has supposedly existed for at least hundreds and usually thousands of years. Its borders vary, but always include all of Pakistan and Bangladesh, not to mention the entirely to the failed state of India.

Yes, you have it right, Hindutvas and Indian nationalism in general rejects the right of either Bangladesh or Pakistan to self-determination. Both are "organic" parts of the Indian nation torn loose from the bosom of the bloody soil of Bharat, in need of a fascist irredentist war of national consolidation to bring them back into the fold.

Surely they claim Sri Lanka too.

There are many other places that lack an independent history. Hindutvas claim Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia and sometimes the Philippines. Bharat India extends past Pakistan, through Afghanistan to Iran and all the way to Azerbaijan. Why Iran and Azerbaijan, you ask sensibly? Because "Hindu" fire temples have been found there, that's why. Everyone else seems to think that these are Zoroastrian fire temples, but whatever.

One theory of the name of Azerbaijan is that jan is a word in Urdu, Farsi and Turkic meaning "fire". In many Middle Eastern cultures (except Semitic), fire symbolized life. A burning fire meant a full, living life, and a dead fire meant death.

Azerbaijan had abundant oil and gas deposits even back before drilling was known. Apparently, the oil and gas bubbled to the surface and caught fire in places. Azerbaijan was "land of the fires". This is also the area where Zoroastrianism was said to have originated.

None of these lands have a history of their own. Hindutvas, thieves of historical dreams, claim their histories for them.

In fact, it incredibly extends even further. Hindutvas actually claim to have built Greek and Roman civilization! Yet somehow these brilliant Indians were unable to transport this great knowledge back to India where it could have done some good.

Hindutva lies and propaganda are nasty things. There are over 1 billion people in India, and if the most brilliant of them fall for the Hindutva crap (And they do!) you can imagine what fertile soil the minds of average ignorant Indian is for this garbage.

Pakistan was created by Britain, the evil colonist, they scream. It must be returned to the bosom of Bharat! But no, Allama Iqbal coined the name and the idea, and Ali Jinnah pushed for it. But these two were Islamic fundamentalists, the Hindutvas screech, ready to put 50 million more Hindus to the flames and finish the job the Moguls started.

But no again. Jinnah, the whiskey-loving Muslim, and Iqbal, were secular men. Jinnah was committed to equal rights for all, especially the Hindus of Pakistan. That his successors shat on his dreams is no fault of the great man. Instead of being an evil British plot to tear the heart of Bharat from its bloody chest, the notion of Pakistan was opposed by the sober and worried British.

Yes, Pakistan is a new state, but it is an old civilization. Italy was formed in the 1800's, but it is the inheritor of Roman civilization. The Greeks were not freed from the Ottoman yoke until the same century, yet they are children of Socrates and Plato. Iran did not become a state until 1935, yet it is properly recognized as the descendant of ancient Persian civilization.

Pakistan had a history before 1947 and even before Islam, and it was not necessarily entirely cognate with India's history (however defined!) at all.

Let us keep in mind that in 1947, the colony of India was freed from the British. As a fake new country with no history at all, the parts of that country had a right to self-determination.

At that time, India was composed of about 3,000 princely states. This was the nature of the Indian region before British colonialism, and the British never entirely dismantled it. 3,000 princely states were never incorporated into any kind of non-colonial entity remotely called "India" at any time.

A number of these states refused to join India, and India immediately dragooned an army together and attacked every one of these states full force, causing many deaths and injuries. All recalcitrant states were dragged into the fake new state kicking and screaming.

Kashmir, 90% Muslim, wanted to go to the new state of Pakistan, but it's governor was a Hindu who told the people to go to Hell and ordered Kashmir to stay in India. Kashmir had never been an integral part of any non-colonial entity called "India".

In 1947, the UN ordered India to hold a plebiscite on Kashmir so the people could have the right to self-determination. To this day, India has refused to implement this resolution. India must be placed, alongside Turkey, Israel, Indonesia and Morocco, as a colonial international scofflaw.

The entire Northeast of India is made up for the most part of Asians or Mongoloids. Many are Buddhists and same are animists. In neither race, nor culture, nor history, nor religion do they resemble most Indians. The no-man's land of the Northeast was forcibly incorporated into India by British colonialists in the late 1800's, long after they first colonized India. The area is not even an original colony.

From the start, the entire northeast has refused to join India, and most of the region has been up in arms ever since. It's clear that India has no right whatsoever to this entire region. I include the states of Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura and even parts of Assam.

As the fascist Jewish nationalists run amok, turning their corner of Wikipedia into Judeopedia, so their fascist Hindutva allies run amok in their corner of Wikipedia, transforming it into Hindupedia. See this article on the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh for example. Who knew that the tracts, not to mention all of Bangladesh, are really part of India?

As Pakistani nationalists seek to assert their right to construct their own national identity free from fascist Hindutvas, so too to Bengalis from Bangladesh seek to assert their own history. Pakhub is a good spot for young Bangladeshi and Pakistani patriots, mostly secular, seek to ownership of their national narratives from Hindutva hegemony.

The liars of the Right are so wrong to marry fascism and Communism. The Left has always been about national sovereignty, cultural and linguistic freedom and even at the extreme, the right of self-determination.

The Bolsheviks were the originators of these themes, which now play out across our world, especially in Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Colombia, where indigenous peoples and linguistic minorities are granted freedom ranging from cultural and linguistic freedom all the way to tracts of land where they have significant political rights of governance.

On the other side is the Right and fascism and imperialism. All nation-building and wars of national consolidation are objectively imperialist or fascist. Where the Left seeks autonomy of nations, the fascists and imperialists wish to consolidate them all into a single land, crush everyone but the most numerous, and force everyone into one organic nation-state, eradicating centuries of linguistic and cultural history.

Where the Left fights colonialism and imperialism, the Right wages endless rhetorical and actual irredentist and revanchist wars to reclaim the lost lands of yore and subjugate or toss out the new owners.

Where Stalin and Mao crushed nations and imposed Russian and Han hegemony on languages and cultures, they were veering into fascist territory. There can be no progressive claim to such things.

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More on Wanat and the Waygal Valley

Updated August 23:

US forces abandoned their post at Wanat in the Waygal Valley of Nuristan after the major attack over the weekend in which the base was nearly overrun and 9 US troops were killed and 15 more were wounded.

The town's name is actually Want, according to Richard Strand, an anthropologist and linguist who has done a lot of work in the area.

Here is a blog full of excellent pictures of the area in question. It's written by Joel Bashore, a US Navy Physician's Assistant working with the troops in that part of Afghanistan. The town of Want is not shown in the photos, but Firebase Bela is. Firebase Bela is about 5 miles north of Want on the Waygal River where it meets with a tributary coming from the Aranas area.

This Youtube video made by US soldiers is all about Camp Bela and the 173rd Airborne Brigade, US Army. A soldier interviewed in the video, Team Leader Sergeant Jeffery Mersman, was killed along with five other troops in an ambush last year on 11-9-2007 in this very area. US forces also had a base at Aranas.

Here is an interesting description by Bashore of his trip from Camp Blessing at Nangalam up the Waygal Valley, fording the Waygal at Camp Bela, and on foot to FOB Aranas.

There have been a number of deadly attacks against US forces in this part of Afghanistan. The guerrillas here are some of the best in Afghanistan. I think they are protecting Osama bin Laden, because I think he hides in Nuristan at least part of the time. Clearly there are top-notch Al Qaeda fighters up here.

A map of Wanat is available on this blog ( map of Nuristan). The map also shows the Waygal Valley, Waygal River, Nangalam (where Camp Blessing is located), the location of Firebase Bela and Aranas. All are located in or near the Waygal District on the map.

In the past two years, there have been some major attacks in the Waygal Valley:

August 2006: Three US soldiers killed in an ambush between Aranas and Bella.

October 2006: Three soldiers killed by an IED between Want and Bella.

June 2007: The police station at Want was attacked and overrun by insurgents. At least one policeman was killed.

August 2007: Two ANA soldiers killed, 11 US wounded when insurgents entered the FOB at Aranas disguised as ANA soldiers.

November 9, 2007: Six US soldiers killed, eight more wounded in an ambush between Bella and Aranas. 11 Afghan soldiers were also wounded. All told, there were 6 Coalition forces killed and 19 wounded in this major attack. The video shows the troops being medevac'd out after the attack. This operation took 31 hours in all. The troops were being picked right off the edges of cliffs.

The FOB at Aranas has been eliminated.

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Afghan Guerrillas Kill 9 US Troops, Wound 15

A large force of Afghan guerrillas, numbering 400-500, penetrated a remote US combat outpost (COP) base in the remote town of Want.

Want is properly transcribed, Wâ˜t, or Wãt - the "a" is the "a" sound in "father", but it is nasalized, or said through the nose. There is no "n" sound in "Want". The "n" is written in the word because the nasalization of the "a" makes it appear that an "n" follows. Want is mistakenly identified as "Wanat" in press reports.

Want is located in the Waygal* Valley north of the Pech River in the Waygal District of Nuristan Province (mistakenly identified as the Pech District of Kunar Province) in the northeast of the country near the Afghan border.

The Nuristani tribe that traditionally lived in the area is called the Wãtä (the final "a" is the "a" sound in "bad"). But their traditional enemies, the Safi Pashtuns, have been moving up the Waygal Valley all the way to Want in recent years, and the situation has become pretty tense. The Wãtä speak a Nuristani language called Waigali, an unwritten language that has only 1,500 speakers.

The corrections are from David Strand, who has done excellent linguistic and anthropological work in the are. His homepage is fascinating.

The attack reportedly began late Friday night on July 12 and continued until mid-afternoon on July 13. It was the biggest battles of the war so far. Attackers used small arms, machine guns, mortars and RPG's during the battle.

They nearly overran the base, killing 9 US troops and wounding 15 more in a battle that began at dawn and raged until early afternoon. US forces called in planes and helicopters for air support and the attackers were eventually repelled.

The guerrillas lost about 40 men in the audacious attack, and another 60 were wounded. 4 Afghan troops were also wounded. The base had a force of 70, 45 US troops and 25 Afghan forces, so US forces suffered about a 55% casualty rate, and 20% of them were killed.

The base had been built only 3 days prior. The attackers were able to inflict such high casualties because they penetrated the base. Once inside, hand to hand combat ensued.

The attackers first warned villagers to leave the area, and about 20 families left, but many men stayed behind to fight with the guerrillas. Then they took up positions in homes, stores and a mosque. At dawn, they launched the attack on the base from all sides using automatic weapons. The area is very mountainous and forested. In many places, access is only by foot or mule. US forces actually travel by mule in this area.

US forces had launched an air strike on a caravan of vehicles in the area of this assault on July 4 that locals claimed killed 17 civilians. The US military said that they attacked insurgent vehicles, but locals said that the vehicles contained civilians.

That followed another airstrike that reportedly killed quite a few civilians in Nangarhar Province.

Tamim Nuristani was formerly the governor of Nuristan, but was just fired last week after criticizing the raid that killed civilians on July 4.

He said that the attackers were a mix of Pakistanis and Afghans, and that the Afghans had come from not just Nuristan, but also other provinces. They are angry at the Karzai government and upset over these latest instances where US forces killed civilians. Some are just locals, not even official members of armed groups.

Although US forces said the attack took place in Kunar, Afghan officials said it happened in the Waygal District of Nuristan. At any rate, Want is only 2 miles south of Nuristan on the maps that the government uses.

A Google Maps map of the area shows that the base is surrounded by peaks that tower 1000 feet above the base, at 4,200 feet, on three sides.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates was briefed early July 13 on the assault, reflecting its serious nature.

Only five days before, guerrillas had attacked US forces at the Want District Center with small arms, machine guns and RPG's, but they were repelled. The base had just been constructed. The other base had been across the border in Nuristan Province and US forces had abandoned that one to move across the border into Kunar and set up a new base.

This is part of a new strategy of setting up small bases in small villages so that US troops can be closer to the villagers. It looks like these small bases also run the risk of being overrun.

About 500 guerrillas were seen crossing the border from Chitral in Pakistan into Nuristan and Kunar just recently.

It was the worst loss of US life in Afghanistan since 16 soldiers died, also in Kunar, when their Chinook helicopter was shot down. It were shot down in Chichal, 9 miles to the south, also in the Pech River Valley.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami has a major presence around Want, and in addition to a large Taliban presence, there are many Arab, Chechen and Pakistani fighters in the area. Arab and Chechen fighters in that part of the world means Al Qaeda. I also think that Uighur and Uzbek Al Qaeda fighters are in the area.

Indeed, Kunar, and the Pech River Valley in particular, is a major base for Al Qaeda in the region. In my opinion, both Osama bin Laden and Hekmatyar are based across the Pakistani border in Dir Province. Hekmatyar probably moves back and forth into Afghanistan also, and I think he stays in the Pech River Valley a lot.

Bin Laden is also probably in Kunar at times, but is more likely to be found in Nuristan Province. In summers, I think he takes off deep inside Pakistan into caves in very high and remote areas. In wintertime, he comes back down to the Dir - Nuristan area.

A September 8, 2003 Newsweek Magazine article said that bin Laden was hiding in the area of this attack. The reporter interviewed an Afghan man who in the Pech River Valley whose daughter was married to an Algerian in bin Laden's praetorian guard, or Black Guard. He pointed north of the Pech Valley to where he said bin Laden was. The Algerian would come down from time to time to visit his wife.

Hezb-i-Islami Khalis, which is Yunus Khalis' guerrilla front, and Lashkar-e-Toiba, the Shia-hating, Al Qaeda-allied Pakistani group that fights in Kashmir, also have a presence in the area. A new group called Sword of Islam (Saif al Islam) also operates in that area.

You can download a superb map of Kunar Province on this blog here. Find the Pech District at the north center portion of the map. Look north along the Pech River tributary that flows into the Pech at Mano Gai. It's not marked on the map, but it's called the Waygal River or the Waygal Valley.

Follow the Waygal all the way up to near the Nuristan border and you will see the town of Want (mistakenly identified as Wanat) about 1 mile south of the Nuristan border.

Actually, the map is wrong and Want is actually in Nuristan Province.

I also have lots of other excellent maps of other Afghan provinces, and I also have lots of good maps of Afghan districts. Just follow the links to the posts.

Photos of the Pech River are here. There are plenty of pics of the general Kunar and Nuristan area along with lots of good data here if you look around a bit.

*Also known as Waygul, Vaigal, Wâigal or Väigal.

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Where is Bin Laden in 2008?

Personally, I say Nuristan in Afghanistan and Dir District across the border in Pakistan, but what do I know. I've only been studying this for 6 years now. That's where he is in the winter-time. Right about this time, Bin Laden starts leaving his winter home in Dir and Nuristan and starts to take off inland towards higher ground.

He heads east towards Kohistan, or north up towards Chitral, and then maybe even way up along the Roof of the World up by where Pakistan, China and Afghanistan all come together, where hardly anyone ever even goes. Way up there, his party supposedly stays in caves. They may travel in convoys of SUV's, but usually Bin Laden just travels in donkey convoys that are very long and may contain large numbers of traveling men.

Bin Laden and company just kind of blend in. They move through the tribal lands, and no one really notices or cares all that much. Who knows if he ever gets recognized.

Most up there protect him anyway. In the past few years, a US patrol in Nuristan came close to bin Laden's winter headquarters, and the team that protects him (an inner circle called the Black Guard) was supposedly getting ready to kill themselves and Bin Laden if the US troops got too close and they were going to get captured.

As it was, the US troops either moved away or Bin Laden's band escaped, and there was no mass suicide. That's what no one ever understands about this Bin Laden thing. The guy is suicidal and so are all the maniacs around him, so he's never going to be taken alive anyway, although his head on a pole will look great to whoever nabs him.

Meanwhile, enjoy Osama Bin Laden On Top of the World, an older piece that did not get read too much. Lots of fantastic info and pictures, including repeated Bin Laden sightings in the area, and the dates when he was thought to be there. Be sure that the Pakistani ISI knows where the guy is most of the time though. Bet on it. Be nice if they would tell us. Some allies!

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Evolution of a Pakistani Patriot

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated February 20, 2008:

There are a lot of problems on this blog involving confusion between nationalism and patriotism. Further, there is confusion over this blog's stated opposition to nationalism. Nationalism, as a progressive movement in the context of self-determination, is potentially a good thing. There is a chauvinist, jingoist, racist type of nationalism that heads towards what we can call the fascist continuum.

Fascism is not something that either exists or does not exist. It, like so many other things in life, is a continuum. Fascism is just an extreme form of rightwing nationalism, usually tinged with lots of racism or at least xenophobia and repression of minorities. Fascism smashes all minorities down and demands that they assimilate to the singular ethnic nation-state.

Communism, on the other hand, is internationalist. At the same time, Communists and progressives in general have acknowledged the right to self-determination of ethnic groups. This basic right is held in serious ill-repute in our world today - a world that worships the state. Let us be clear: the progressive and even Communist mindset allows for self-determination of legitimate nations, within reasons.

While asking for some basic assimilation, this trend offers education, publishing, and even administration in the native language. At they time they undertook their national autonomy project, was there any nation on Earth that did more to advance the cause of ethnic autonomy than the early USSR? I think not.

Although much of this noble project was tragically reversed by Stalin in a wave or paranoia in the 1930's, the language policy of the Bolsheviks set an example for the world that is today mirrored as a progressive litmus test for linguistic rights.

Linguists fanned out all over the land to create alphabets, often the first alphabets ever designed, for obscure and widely-spoken minority languages all over the USSR. The principle of education in the Mother Tongue, a scientifically proven principle to this day, was upheld. The results were often haphazard, but the effort was made.

At the same time, the right to succession was granted to all nationally recognized minorities. None exercised it until Gorbachev, but even then, Gorbachev allowed 15 republics to secede from the USSR. This was a model for civilized behavior that has not been matched anywhere.

Let us say for the moment that granting the right of succession to legitimate nations within a state is one of the ultimate expressions of civilized behavior in our time. Tellingly, only Euro-White nations are even considering allowing the breakup of the state. Czechoslovakia split amicably after 1989, and the UK and Canada have granted the right to secede to established nations.

By this metric, let us say that any nation that does not allow secession of legitimate nations is uncivilized. It is interesting that by this metric, the only civilized nations today are the former USSR, parts of Europe and Canada. No other nation anywhere on Earth has allowed the right to secession, no matter how rich or poor they are.

Successful secessionists have won only battles drenched in blood. At the same time, the world has upheld a statist fetish in which the fake right of states to territorial integrity (any student of history must fall down laughing at this one) trumps the ultimate human right of legitimate nations to self-determination.

In this context, let us note that Communists and the Left tend to support self-determination or at least national rights in the state, while all fascists have tried to aggressively force all minorities to assimilate, often in the context of massive crimes and death.

Once again we see an important distinction between fascism and Communism, two philosophies that are increasingly married in ignorant popular discourse.

There is good nationalism and there is bad nationalism. Bad nationalism I will call the nationalism of the Right and good nationalism I will call the nationalism of the Left.

Rightwing nationalism fetishes "preservation of our rights and customs". Nothing wrong with that, but these nationalists usually want to go backwards and preserve or reinstate the most regressive, reactionary, backwards and stupid aspects of culture. Rightwing nationalism, in a word, opposes all progressive change.

The failures of the modern state are glossed over and excused as inevitable. That Indian capitalism kills 4 million of its own citizens every year by not adapting a Chinese model, that 200 million Indians live on the streets, that 14 million starve every year, mostly in the capitalist states of South Asia, is all excused away. All failures of the model will be cured with time. The backwardsness of society will gradually wither away with time.

A reflexive opposition to the West upholds the most backwards, cruel and Medieval aspects of the culture on the basis that if the West hates them, then they are wonderful. Rightwing nationalism is chauvinist and jingoist. Colonialism is hated not only as a usurpation of rights, but as an outside force that tried to force progressive change on a nightmarishly backwards system.

In this context, let us introduce a species called progressive Pakistani nationalism. It tends to be secular and relatively free from jingoism and chauvinism. It opposes most, if not all of the backwards, stupid and evil aspects of Pakistani religion and culture.

At the same time, it upholds the existence of its state and history in the face of a cruel menace called India that denies Pakistan the very essential right of its existence, culture and history. In its self-affirmation in the face of Indian threats, it is de facto progressive.

The post below was written by a young Pakistani friend of mine. I think he is a fairly secular fellow and he may have even left Islam for all I know. At best, he is a cultural Muslim. He opposes everything backwards, cruel, murderous and stupid about his land.

The patriotic and progressive Pakistani nationalism of him and his friends, which can be found at their website, Pakhub, stands in stark contrast to the reactionary and chauvinist nationalism of the Hindutvas.

Despite the horrible problems of Pakistan, progressive Pakistani nationalists should be supported by progressives the world over. These people, like the ill-fated Communists of Afghanistan in the late 1970's, are the finest of their generation.

Evolution of a Pakistani Patriot

The problem is while in the West people are aware of Islamist terrorism, they are unaware of Hindutva terrorism. Most of the funds these Hindutva fascist groups come from from Hindu expatriots in the West and many of the founders of these groups are citizens of these countries.

For instance, the founder of Hindu Unity was an Indian-American. This group has a website and a hit list in which president Musharraf is also in.

When my friend Waq first started Pakhub and invited me and others to it, a Hindutva Wikipedian posted a request on Hindu Unity forums to spam the hell out of our site. My friend even had the screen shot of that post saved.

There is something that you should know about Hinduism that many people don't know. The concept of "Hinduism" being a religion was introduced by the British. Previously, this notion did not exist. The name comes from hind which came about form the word Sindhu (the Sindh province of Pakistan)

We have rare maps drawn by the Europeans on our site showing India known as hind while Pakistan was known as Sindh.

Anyway, the Indian subcontinent was filled with various cults throughout history, and never was there a concept of there being a common religion, much like pre-contact Africa and South America filled with various indigenous cults. I even have found a quote by Gandhi admitting that the Vedic people slaughtered cows, ate meat and buried their dead.

Declaring all the cults of South Asia as one "Hinduism" is the same as declaring the various cults in South America & Africa as one. This is the reason why "Hinduism" has so many "sects" and Gods. I learned this as recently as a month back.

The problem is Hindutvas have buried so much of actual history, while at the same time spending years creating their own pseudo-history and feeding western historians with false propaganda.

You'll notice many "ancient India" maps drawn by Indian "historians" are hand made and relatively new, while others are computer- generated graphic maps.

On our site we have copies of extremely rare maps drawn by European empires before the British prior to when the British declared the entire continent "India". Even the label "India" varied place to place on these maps.

Hindutvas also propagate the notion that Islam was "spread by the sword" in South Asia. That holds a lot of truth in it; there was a lot of conquest and killing done by the Muslims, but at the same time, it is not entirely true. For one thing, many lower-caste Hindus converted to Islam.

I became a Pakistani patriot when I noticed that Indians always associate everything about Pakistan to India. I was openly insulted by Indians only weeks after moving to Canada just because Pakistan chose not to join India.

I was also saddened that all countries could parade their culture as "Finnish dance" and "Finnish food" or "Chinese dance" and "Chinese food" but whenever it came to Pakistan it always had to be "Pakistani-Indian dance" or "Pakistani-Indian food".

When asked in front of an Indian where I'm from, the Indian would always have to butt in: "Same thing - Pakistani, Indian".

Even while living in the Middle East when Arabs would laugh at the Indian accent (particularly South Indian, Dravidian) they would always laugh at me cause they thought it's how Pakistanis talk. They would ask me about funny Indian songs they saw on TV, but no matter how I hard I tried to explain to them that it has nothing to do with me, I could not convince them.

A Sri Lankan Hindutva in my gym class in high school was spreading the same bullshit in the class that India is so "great" and "diverse" and is a powerful country like America which builds it's own weapons, whereas Pakistan buys from China, and Pakistan is always bothering India, and India is the friendly one, and so on an so fourth. I couldn't believe the ignorance of such an educated person.

An Indian friend asked me a stupid question "Why did Pakistan make nuclear weapons; it is copying India?" "Copycats?" I mean it's like him pulling a sword out on me and me pulling out my own sword and him accusing me of 'imitating' him.

When I lived in Pakistan I couldn't understand why people had an enmity towards India or Hindus. But after seeing the true face of these liars here in Canada, it all started to make sense to me.

I even found an Indian website with the Indian and Azerbaijani flag; a site claiming that India and Azerbaijan had the "same history" and "same identity" because a few ancient Hindu temples were found in Azerbaijan. I finally came closer to the realization that all this cultural imperialism by Indians is deliberate.

In Pakistani areas of Toronto where there are amazing restaurants with Pakistani flags on them. Indians move into the area and the first thing they do is place their banners right next to the Pakistani flags and imitate Pakistani cuisines, calling their restaurants "South Asian" cuisine.

Also, many things that constitute "ancient India" are really stolen Pakistani history, while everything about Pakistanis is portrayed negatively by the Indian propaganda machine. I finally decided I'd had enough. Every country on Earth is credited for it's contributions to humanity and is given the right to be proud of it's culture. All but Pakistan, a "terrorist country", while India is the "great", "shinning", "secular democracy".

I mean these people hate us and they are using our accomplishments. Our works. Our great history. Even the Jews don't try to steal Egypt's history, and Egypt is to this day given credit for it's works.

After I decided I'd had enough, I went on a quest to find other patriotic Pakistanis who were willing to work to reverse all the things Indians had twisted about us. I found Waq, Siddiqui and Szhaider on Wikipedia. Mr. Siddiqui was amongst the best contributors on Wikipedia; he'd gotten so many awards, but he got blocked so many times for edit warring with the Jews and the Hindutvas.

He was the most defiant of us all against the Hindutvas and the Zionists. But after all 4 of us got banned after the phony Wikipedia Arbcom case in which many Jews ganged up with the Hindutvas against us, he'd decided he's had enough and left for good.

Waq was on the same quest as me and he started PakHub forums which was dedicated to our cause. After we got banned, we found many other patriotic Pakistanis on Youtube such as Omer that we brought to our forums.

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Update to Races of Man Post

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated September 15. Note: This post has just been accused, as usual, of racism. See here for my position statement on racism.

My earlier piece, The Major and Minor Races of Mankind, has been given a major update. The previous incarnation was:

3 Macro Races

Caucasian (Caucasoid)
Asian (Mongoloid)
African (Negroid)

I left the three macro races intact. I have debated whether or not to include new macro races but I haven't been able to come up with anything. The main problem is that all of the potential splits - Kalash, Pacific Islander, Papuan, Amerindian and Aborigine are all part of the macro races. The Kalash are part of the Caucasian race and the rest are all indisputably Asians (yes, even Aborigines).

Previous version:

6 Major Races

Northeast Asian
Southeast Asian
Papuan
Aborigine
Caucasian
African

Revised version:

9 Major Races

Northeast Asian
Southeast Asian
Papuan
Aborigine
Caucasian
African
Kalash
Pacific Islander
Amerindian

The result looks something like this:

African Macro Race

General African Major Race

15 minor African races


Caucasian Macro Race

General Caucasian Major Race
Kalash Major Race

19 minor Caucasian races


Asian Macro Race

Northeast Asian Major Race
Southeast Asian Major Race
Amerindian Major Race
Papuan Major Race
Aborigine Major Race
Oceanian Major Race

53 minor Asian races

The last three above, Kalash, Oceanian and Amerindian, were added, giving me a 9-race theory in addition to the standard 3-race theory. Genetically, the Kalash are extremely bizarre. On one chart, they form a separate major race with Caucasians proper, East Asians, Amerindians, Melanesians/Papuans and Africans (chart here).

They are probably some sort of ancient Caucasian race - in fact, they may be some of the most ancient Caucasians of them all.

As you can see, very European looking phenotypes are not rare at all in the Kalash. This 2 year old girl could well be German, except for the strange "elf-ears", which supposedly are very common among these people. The elf ears are probably a consequence of genetic drift. Drift occurs when a population is isolated for a long time without many outside inputs.

The Kalash, unlike all other peoples in the region, have little or no South Indian or Asian genes. More than anything else, this indicates a West Eurasian origin for the Kalash. West Eurasia is a term that is hard to define, and some say that the region does not even exist. There are some hazy definitions of West Eurasia out there, but in the way it is most used by population geneticists, it appears to mean the Near East and the Caucasus.

As West Eurasia is in the area of the purported homeland of the Caucasian race (Caucasus), we once again deal with the question of the Kalash being an ancient Caucasian tribe, perhaps one of the most ancient Caucasian stocks on Earth.

I saw one genetic map that had all proto-Caucasians (and all proto-NE Asians for that matter) coming out of the Borogil Pass on the border of northern Pakistan and the Wakhan Corridor of Afghanistan 35,000 years ago. Originally the group was something like pre-Caucasian - NE Asian. The group went north and one line went to proto-Caucasians and the other went northeast to proto-NE Asians.

We don't have the foggiest idea of what these people may have looked like, but skulls from India 24,000 years ago look more like Aborigines than anything else.

The Borogil Pass in the area of Pakistan, Afghanistan and China. As you can see, it is pretty tough going. This is the lowest pass leading out of South Asia and up into the steppes, so it is logical that early men may have migrated in this way.

Actually I think the genesis of NE Asians is more complex than that, but the article was interesting. The genesis of Caucasians is one of the least understood of all the major races. The homeland of the proto-Caucasians is either in the Caucasus or in Central Asia and the Middle East and North Africa seems to be a major staging ground. At this time, the most ancient Caucasians seem to be South Indians and Berbers.

South Indians go back about 15-20,000 years and have been evolving right there with few outside inputs for all that time. Before 20,000 years ago, the proto-South Indians are thought to have come from the Middle East. They probably bred in with or displaced an Australoid people resembling Aborigines who were the original people of India.

The Berbers may go back even further than that and there are suggestions that they may have had an origin in northeastern Africa near Ethiopia, Sudan and Eritrea. That area was the jumping off point for the human race to leave Africa 60-70,000 years ago, pointing once again to very ancient Berber origins. European-like skulls only go back 10,000 years or so and white skin only goes back 9,000 years.

All humans originally were dark-skinned. The people with the darkest skin evolved in the areas where the UV rays were the brightest. It was thought at first that dark skin was an adaptation to prevent sunburn and melanoma, but a there are problems with this analysis.

Sunburn does not usually kill you, and melanoma tends to hit older in life, after one has already produced offspring. A better explanation may be that intense UV rays cause destruction of folic acid stores in the body. Then pregnant women, with their folic acid destroyed, have a high potential of giving birth to deformed babies.

White skin was actually a depigmentation process to enable people to get more Vitamin D, which is scarcer at northern altitudes in Northern Europe due to weak UV rays. Lighter skin is necessary to grab all the Vitamin D that one can. An argument against this is that Vitamin D deficiency does not occur in areas of low UV radiation.

But this is not true. Even today, darker skinned people, such as South Indians, who immigrate to the UK are coming down with various Vitamin D deficiency syndromes, including rickets. It is probably necessary for darker-skinned people who live at high latitudes to take Vitamin D supplementation.

The proto-Caucasians may have split off as early as 35,000 years ago. Some NE Asians are quite close to Caucasians and vice versa. The groups straddling the Caucasian-Asian border form a sort of a line from Turkey to Korea and then up to the Chukchi Peninsula. Along the way we have Turks, Iranians, Jews, West Asians, Central Asians, Northern Turkics, Mongolians, Northern Chinese, Koreans and Chukchi.

West Asians include Punjabis and Pashtuns and live in Pakistan, NW India and Afghanistan. Central Asians include Kazakhs, Turkmen and Uzbeks. Northern Turkics include the Altai, the Yakut and other groups. Many of them live around where China, Mongolia and Russia all come together. Interestingly, this seems to be exactly where most Amerindians came from - the Altai Mountains.

The Chukchi are an Eskimo-like people who live on the Chukchi Peninsula on the far eastern end of Siberia where the Bering Straight separates Russia from Alaska.

What's curious about the Chukchi is that Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza's Principal Coordinates chart in his 1994 book The History and Geography of Human Genes (chart here) puts the Chukchi in with Caucasians. Yet by appearance and apparently also genetics, the Chukchi cluster with Asians.

So there are some groups that are really on the border. I had a hard time knowing what to do with Turkics, Northern Turkics and Central and West Asians, as the genetics was so hazy. I usually just dropped them in either NE Asians or Caucasians based on appearance.

The Kalash are a group of about 3,000 people living in Chitral Province in Pakistan on the border of Afghanistan.

The valleys of the Kalash. The villages are at about 6,000 feet and as the soil is very rich, they grow many crops. They also do a lot of herding, mostly of goats it seems. They do observe a menstruation taboo, where the women have to go off to special hut during that time, but this is a very old taboo in many human tribal groups. The Kalash bury their dead above ground in caskets. Burial of the dead above ground is a very ancient human tradition.

The Negritos of both Papua and the Andaman Islands, one of the most ancient human groups, bury their dead above ground in little tree houses. The Zoroastrians, one of the most ancient human religions, bury the dead on rooftops and let the vultures eat them. This is getting to be a problem in parts of India where they live as the neighbors are starting to complain!

They still retain an ancient pagan religion. The are remarkably egalitarian for that part of the world, and women work in the fields side by side with men. They have somehow managed to resist Islamacization for centuries, possibly due to the remote and multiethnic nature of the Chitral region.

Four Kalash students. The fellow on the right is a dead ringer for a European. He could be a German or an Englishman. The fellow on the right could easily be an Italian, a Greek, an Armenian, an Iranian or a Turk. The other two are awfully hard to classify. They almost look a little Amerindian.

There are some similar phenotypes across the border in Afghanistan in Nuristan amongst people called Nuristanis. They were converted to Islam at the point of a sword by a genocidal Pashtun maniac named Amir Abdur-Rahman during Afghanistan's nation-building process in the 1890's. His genocide of the Hazara was similar proportionally to the Jewish Holocaust.

A Kalash woman with some children, apparently her own. She and her kids do not look quite so Caucasian; they look more Asian. Actually the woman is hard to classify as belonging to any known race that we are familiar with. In California, you might think she was an Amerindian from Latin America.

The legend is that the Kalash and the Nuristanis were the remnants of Alexander the Great's army that invaded and conquered the region 2000 years ago. This was the reason for all the European phenotypes in the area. Recently, this was thought to be a legend with no basis in fact, but recent controversial genetic testing suggests that the Kalash may have up to 20% Greek DNA on the fathers' side.

Macedonian and Kalash female costumes compared - note the similarity in costumes. Also the Kalash continue to worship a creator God cognate with the Greek Zeus. I cannot help but think that some of those Macedonian phenotypes are also present in Kalash females. And the terrain looks rather similar too.

Maybe some of Alexander's men did stay here, thinking they were home away from home. This story is definitely widespread in that part of the world. I had an Afghan doctor from Nangarhar Province in Afghanistan who insisted it was true.

This has been challenged since although there is one Greek marker in the Kalash, the other major marker that ought to be there, since it is apparently present in all Greeks, is not there. One counter-suggestion is that the Kalash got the Greek marker by chance through genetic drift. This seems dubious. The question remains highly confused .

A Kalash man, possibly with his wife by his side. He could easily be an Italian, an Albanian, a Spaniard or a Portuguese. She's harder to classify, but could be an Italian.

The Kalash worship a God called Dezau, which is from the Indo-European sky God *Dyaos (reconstructed form), from which the Greeks derived Zeus and the Romans Jupiter . So the Kalash are the last practitioners of ancient Indo-European mythology.

A Kalash woman with Caucasian features and somewhat Asian eyes. It's hard to place her into a known ethnic group, but there are Kurds who look something like this. The Kalash probably originated in an area near Kurdistan, but no one really knows. The child looks more Asian. Love the costumes.

They have some odd customs.

One I particularly love is called the Festival of the Budulak. A strong teenage boy is sent up in the mountains for the summer with the goats. He practically lives on goat milk, which supposedly makes him even stronger.

When he comes back there is a festival and at the festival he gets to have sex with any woman he wants, even his own mother, a young virgin or another man's wife, but he only gets to rampage like this for 24 hours. Any child born of these encounters is considered to be blessed. They supposedly quit practicing this custom recently due to bad publicity, but many think that they still practice it in secret.

Definitely one of the world's greatest customs!

A beautiful Kalash woman who eloped with a man recently to get married. Although many times the couple who do this are single, in quite a few cases a married woman can elope with another man. The new husband just has to pay double the bride price. The cuckold just takes it all in stride, or at least he doesn't get homicidal. It's amazing the kind of rights women have in this group. Too bad so many of them convert out to Pakistani Islam where women are pretty much chattel.

This woman obviously resembles some European phenotype, but I don't know my European racial types a la Coon, etc, very well. I almost want to say Norwegian?

The Kalash are coming under pressure from radical Islamists recently and several villages have been converted by force (I thought Muslims never do this!) Also radical mullahs incite local Muslims to go into Kalash villages and smash their religious idols.

A Kalash shamaness or female shaman. It is amazing that in this misogynistic part of the world that women are granted such a high religious position. Druze women in Lebanon and Syria are also allowed to become high religious leaders. The costume is amazing. Shamans are one of the oldest aspects of human religions, characteristic of animist type religions.

As the world is full of spirits (or Gods in a polytheistic world) the shaman works via human psychology to manipulate the spirit world to the benefit of the patient. It is hard to say how much there is to it, but areas of the world where humans have been practicing this sort of thing for a long time can do some pretty amazing things.

There are reports out of the South Seas that whole villages would get together to cast evil spells on leaders of neighboring islands. In a number of cases, the leader died soon afterward. The cause of death was typically massive and multiple organ failure. It was as if he simply exploded inside. There are persistent reports that saying a prayer over water or a meal makes it taste better. There are many reports of dying people communicating over long distances with loved ones just before they die.

And there are also many reports of people sensing nearby tragedies as they are occurring. All of this needs to be investigated by science but there are good reasons to think that this sort of thing is compatible with modern science, especially particle physics where we are all part of each other. I am also convinced that clairvoyance and sharing of hallucinations are possible, having experienced both of these things. Of course, we were tripping on LSD-like woodrose seeds at the time, but still.

Pacific Islanders and Amerindians were also added, as there is good evidence that these two groups form valid major groupings. Cavalli-Sforza's eight-race theory listed Amerindians and a group he called Pacific Islanders that apparently also included Papuans.

Rosenberg et al's six-race grouping also included Amerindians and a group he called Melanesians, consisting of Papuans and Melanesians. Since other evidence indicates significant distance between Papuans and Melanesians and Papuans and Pacific Islanders in general, I decided to leave Papuans as a separate major group.

Yet a good case can be made to split off Polynesians, Micronesians and Melanesians in a compact grouping. The creation of the Polynesians is a result of the spread of the Lapita culture, one of the world's greatest sea journeys undertaken by Austronesian mariners, Taiwanese aborigines (Chinese people) who left Taiwan 1000's of years ago to settle Island SE Asia. First they went to the Philippines, then to Indonesia.

From Central Indonesia, they left and settled coastal New Guinea, bringing an advanced culture to New Guinea. They also may have settled as far east as the Solomons.

The Trobriand and Solomon Islands are said to be one of the centers for proto-Papuan culture in the region, and may have been settled as long ago as 35,000 years ago.

Later, a new wave of Austronesians came out of Central Indonesia (near the Wallace Line) and moved through Melanesia, picking up only a few Melanesian genes along the way. These mariners then went off to populate the entirety of Polynesia in the past 2000 years.

So, according to this theory, Polynesians are mostly Chinese (Taiwanese aborigines) with some Melanesian in them.

One interesting question is why the Polynesians got so huge. First of all, they are not all huge. I have taught a lot of these people in the LA schools and there are a variety of phenotypes, including one that is short and thin.

One theory is that the journey to populate Polynesia was so harsh that only the strongest survived and the weakest died. It may have been necessary to eat the dead for the survivors to go on. Perhaps they fought to the death for scarce resources. Anyway, on many Polynesian islands an extremely brutal culture of continuous, potentially genocidal warfare was the norm and this was probably the world center for cannibalism.

Finally, the last wave to move out was the Micronesians. This group consisted of Polynesians who moved out of Polynesia to populate Micronesia. According to the theory above, they are mostly Chinese (Taiwanese) with only a small amount of Melanesian in them.

The suggestion above was that both the Polynesians and the Melanesians are mostly-Chinese (Taiwanese) people. That conclusion is based on a recent paper that has not yet been widely distributed.

However, another paper that can be downloaded on this site here, suggests that the major Haplogroups in Polynesians - C and F - are indigenous to the region, meaning they are related to the original Melanesian and Papuan settlers.

That paper, and many others, suggests that Micronesians and Polynesians are about 50% Chinese and 50% Melanesian, with different percentages from each parent. This still seems the most reasonable solution to me.

Interestingly, the vast majority of the Chinese genes in Melanesians and Polynesians seem to have come from one group of Taiwanese aborigines - the Ami.

A group called the Alor in far eastern Indonesia clusters with Melanesians and a group called the Toba Batak of northern Sumatra in Indonesia clusters with Micronesians.

Alor of far Eastern Indonesia after a major disaster. They are Melanesians who speak Papuan languages. The languages are endangered and very poorly documented. There is a major undertaking underway right now to at least document these languages.


Some very interesting looking Alor women. Although they are Melanesians, they look a bit different from many other Melanesians. The woman on the left has some pretty Asian looking eyes. This may be because they speak an Austronesian language. Melanesians who speak an Austronesian language have some Chinese (Taiwanese) genes, but never more than 20%. The Alor have about 12% Taiwanese genes from the Ami, a group of Taiwanese aborigines, seen in Haplogroup L.

Both White Nationalist and Afrocentrist varieties of ethnic nationalist idiots keep trying to insist that these folks are either Black or closely related to Blacks.

These people are some of the furthest away from Africans on the planet. You can't go by phenotype or appearance or even behavior. None of that means much. You have to go by genes. As these people were some of the first to split off from Africans, they have been evolving away from them for the longest. Whites are much closer to Blacks than these Melanesians.


An Alor man who is working with a linguistic team that is documenting Alor languages. Alor is a major diving site for commercial recreational diving crews. The water is still nice and clear here and the coral reefs are still intact. The fish population is good too as there are not a lot of people living in this part of Indonesia. The famous Komodo Dragon lives near here on Komodo Island in far eastern Indonesia.

The reason these people, who are much less related to Black people than I am, are always called Black, is due to the color of their skin! But that has nothing to do with anything. A bobcat and coyote are similarly colored too. Truth is that if you evolved in the areas of the Earth with the highest UV radiation, you often ended up with very dark skin, which does resemble that of Africans.

But this is just convergent evolution and has nothing to do with relatedness. This guy is a lot more closely related to Chinese than to Black people. The Alor do seem to have about 25% Papuan genes via Haplogroup E.


The Toba Batak of Northern Sumatra. The guys in this photo actually do look Micronesian - I have seen photos of Micronesians. How these Micronesians ended up on the north coast of Sumatra is news to me. The Toba Batak live west of Medan in the area around Lake Toba, especially on Samosir Island. Their elaborately carved wooden houses are a popular tourist attraction.


A photo of a Toba Batak family. I had a hard time finding quality pics of the Toba Batak. You can see that they are extremely dark - much darker than most people living in this area. Also I think that some Micronesians may have wavy hair like that. The Toba Batak are Micronesians who somehow ended up in northern Sumatra.

This shows that Indonesians are not any particular race, although most are more general SE Asian types fairly close to Filipinos.

Classification of races is a tricky business. In my post, I went by genetic distance alone and not phenotype, culture, behavior, etc. I also treated very gingerly all contributions by ethnic nationalists, who are known to be profoundly dishonest about this stuff. Despite PC nonsense, there clearly are races of mankind. In fact, my classification scheme posits 87 minor races, and it is still undergoing revision.

References

Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., P. Menozzi, A. Piazza. 1994. The History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Jablonski, N. and Chaplin, G. (2000) The Evolution of Human Skin Coloration. Journal of Human Evolution. Available on this blog here.

Capelli, C. Wilson, J.F., Richards, M., Stumpf, M.P.H., Gratrix, F., Oppenheimer, S., Underhill, P., Pascali, V.L., Ko, T.M., and Goldstein, D.B. (2001). A Predominantly Indigenous Paternal Heritage for the Austronesian-Speaking Peoples of Insular Southeast Asia and Oceania. American Journal of Human Genetics 68:432–443.

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Benazir Bhutto: Pakistan's Cleopatra

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated February 5, 2008:

Via Joachim Martillo, we offer CIA: Mehsud behind Benazir killing? There's a lot of pretty interesting stuff here. When I wrote my post Benazir Bhutto Killed in Pakistan three weeks ago, I said that I thought that Al Qaeda did it. We still do not have a whole lot of evidence that this is true. I have now changed my mind; I think that the Pakistani ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence Agency) killed Bhutto.

But that is sort of like saying that Al Qaeda did it, since AQ, the Taliban and the ISI are all sort of interlocking entities in some ways. More precisely, the are individuals and even powerful factions inside the ISI that have very close ties with the Taliban and Al Qaeda. I am certain that the ISI knows exactly where Osama bin Laden is most of the time and is just refusing to turn him in to the US.

The CIA blamed Baitullah Mehsud, a major Pakistani Taliban leader in South Waziristan, for the killing. But Mehsud himself is generally considered to be an ISI asset. The only evidence that the Pakistani government has against Mehsud is a phone call after she was killed. The call supposedly takes responsibility for the killing, but instead it is more congratulatory than anything else.

The Pakistani government says that at the time of the call, Mehsud could not have known about the killing, but that is ridiculous, since it was all over the TV screens of most of the nation by that time.

The Pakistani government called Scotland Yard in to determine the cause of death, but not, notably, to investigate who did it. The investigation proved that the Pakistani government lied after she was killed when they said she fell and hit her head on the shaft of her limousine cover.

Scotland Yard proved that she was killed by a gunshot, as was clear from some of the videos released later, which showed the gunman firing a gun and Bhutto's body jerking backwards right afterwards, whereupon she fell into the limo. That the Pakistani government deliberately lied about how she died is telling.

So is the fact that they immediately washed down the street afterwards, destroying all evidence, supposedly because it was a main street that got hit and it needed to be open for traffic immediately.

What garbage. I assure you that if Hilary Clinton of John McCain was hit by a closeup gunshot followed by a suicide bomber that killed 20 supporters on Madison Avenue in New York, that street would be shut down for a bit, possibly even days. The press would be dogging all over LE to not miss a thing as the conspiracy theories immediately sprouted all over the Internets.

So, she was shot several times by the shooter, apparently from only a 5-10 feet away. That right there suggests it in not Al Qaeda, since Al Qaeda usually does not use a single asset like that, or if they do, they have him blow himself up with a sui-bomb, destroying both evidence and the chance that he will be interrogated and spill.

A single shooter is more like the ISI - this is one of their favorite ways to kill people. Bhutto pretty much deserved to be killed anyway, but not by the ISI. She deserved to be killed by the supporters and relatives of her very own brother, whom Benazir had murdered because he was a threat to her feudal-like dictatorship at the head of her Pakistani People's Party.

Yes, in 1996 under Bhutto's reign, a shooter killed her own brother while he was surrounded by 200 Pakistani police and security forces in front to a home. By the way, all of the surrounding streets were sealed off by the same security guys, who of course had nothing to do with the killing.

Well, anyway, the shooter somehow penetrated the cordon blocks around the area, then mingled inconspicuously with army of 200 cops, then he shot Bhutto's brother and close range, and then, get this! He escaped! He escaped from a 200-cop crowd and made his getaway through the locked-down security cordon! I mean, these Pakistani killers are positive Houdinis.

Well, of course, Benazir, who hated her brother, denied having anything to do with the killing. Benazir is just as nasty as the Ptolemaic Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt, of which Cleopatra was a member. This glorious dynasty consisted of inbred and racially pure Macedonian Nazis.

The Afrocentric fools who say that Cleopatra was Blacks are silly - the Ptolemaic line guarded their Macedonianness better than Nazis guarded Germanness - and they hated all other races like good little Nazis too.

The Egyptian city Alexandria, of which the Macedonian Queen Cleopatra held sway as Queen of the Macedonian colony of Egypt, was a racially pure Macedonians-only city, and the despised Egyptian "niggers" were not allowed entry, or perhaps only as slaves.

So despised were the dark-skinned Egyptians that it was inconceivable that any Macedonian monarchical supremacist would father a child by one. It is true that in the declining days of the Egyptian Empire, say the last 100 years - imagine the collapse of Rome in the Lower Nile - Black, or actually Mulatto Nubians, ruled Egypt. But this is a far cry from the Black Egypt the Afrocentrists pitifully claim.

Cleopatra's Ptolemaics spent most of their time having wild incestuous sex with each other and then, Praying Mantis-like, killing their own brothers, sisters, Moms and Dads to grab the loot. This is who Cleopatra was! Nice person! an exhaustive review of the non-Blackness of Cleopatra via Black author Eugene Stovall, see here.

If you haven't noticed, this excursion was intended to obliquely compare these Ptolemaic animals with the various feudal clans (called politicians) that have ruled and poisoned Pakistan since its founding, and to compare Benazir to Cleopatra. Like the Ptolemaics they are addicted to offing the opposition - its positively a Pakistani pastime, like tea and cricket.

The only Ptolemaic thing I guess the Pakistani elite doesn't do is have tons of incestuous sex with each other, being good Muslims and all. Benazir has the equivalent of slaves in the debt peonage farmers on her feudal estate. And like Cleopatra, Benazir is being preposterously eulogized and virtually worshiped in her demise.

Immediately after the shots that killed Benazir, there was a suicide bombing to kill the shooter and destroy the evidence in the shooter and everything around him. This once again is more ISI style, as Al Qaeda usually doesn't do it this way.

Scotland Yard was only there to tell us that the Pakistani government lied about how she was killed, not to investigate who done it, because it's the Pakistani government that done it. Scotland Yard detectives, off the record of course, said that the Pakistani government, possibly the ISI, killed her. CIA guys are saying the same thing off the record.

The investigation of who done it will be done by Pakistan itself, which means they will never find the true authors of the crime. But it's kind of like asking OJ to find "the real killer" anyway.

Prior to this, the Pakistani government tried to kill her as soon as she got off the plane. Her welcome home rally on a major street in Karachi was hit by several simultaneous blasts, apparently suicide bombers and then multiple bomb cars or suicide bomb cars.

Once again the Houdinis and the most incompetent police on Earth were skillfully utilized by the would-be assassins. This attempt killed about 140 of Bhutto's supporters, a horrible crime, but I guess they deserved it for supporting her, right?

You think penetrating a mob of 200 cops takes skill? Forget it. In this attack the devious little assassins penetrated ~7000 security forces. These 7000 security forces were deliberately chosen from the dumbest classes of all, because all 7000 decided to go on dinner break simultaneously right before the killing!

Then someone screwed up and all of the lights "accidentally" went out. It was one darn thing after another. Then the bomb cars and sui-bomb dudes all went off one after the other.

Of course the government had absolutely nothing to do with this attempt either. These opposition candidates just have the darnedest luck! The Pakistani government first said it was those evil jihadi dudes that done it, then noted that there will be no investigation of the attempt. Why no investigation? Who knows, probably a practical joke of some sort. Wow, what a madcap bunch these Pakistani government guys are.

Right after the Bhutto killing, there was a serious attempt on the life of Nawaz Sharif, also running against Musharaff. The government had nothing to do with that either, of course.

What's clear is that the Pakistani government is trying to kill of lots of its most threatening opposition candidates, and with the article below showing how the CIA is outrageously supporting the Pakistani government in these nefarious deeds, the US is behind the project. Would anyone sell life insurance to any Pakistani opposition politician.

So, get this. The US is backing up the ISI-Al Qaeda-Taliban as they try to Final Solution all of the opposition candidates to Musharaff. Why? God knows. Probably another of those cases where the US just blindly supports an ally no matter what they do, because the alternative is considered to be so much worse.

It's said the US government supported Bhutto, but that is not really true. It's more like they wanted her to be some figurehead in Musharaff's dictatorship, but not to unseat him.

It's said that Bhutto is the champion of women's rights in Pakistan. Well, maybe today, but yesterday she was as bad as the Saudi monarchy. Under President Zia and Bhutto, there was an Islamization campaign, mostly to build up a fundamentalist guerrilla base to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980's.

This had the effect of littering Pakistan with idiotic madrassas that now churn out fundamentalist cretins by the busfull, ready to go fight for Osama bin Laden. It also set off the Sunni-Shia wars in Pakistan, which had been relatively quiescent before.

This is because Saudi Wahhabi preachers were brought in to teach Saudi Islamo-Nazism to the gullible ignoramuses in the "schools", where religion only was taught, all else being the work of the Devil and all.

As the Saudis are the main force in back of the mass slaughter of Shiites around the world that has been going on for decades now since the Iranian revolution, Shia-hatred was spread in these schools, morphed into the usual Sunni Shia-killing death squads, and Shia Sunni-killing death squads formed in retaliation.

As is the case in most of the Muslim World, Shia bodies piled up more than the reverse. The Pakistani government, mostly Sunni, has more or less supported the mass slaughter of Shia due to the common Sunni Nazi-like hatred of Shia Muslims.

During the Islamization campaign, a set of laws called Hudood Laws were put into place, which were horribly anti-woman. Women were imprisoned after they had been raped, a sort of an honor killing reaction cultivated by the Arab woman-hating, male chauvinist values of family honor that marinated the Islamic stew in Pakistan for centuries.

This is part of a larger cultural area infected with the negative aspect of Arab cultural values, possibly extending to what Carroll Quigley called the Pakistani-Peruvian Axis. It's more sensible to see this area as a crucible of Arab culture than as one of Islamic culture, as the two are not the equivalent. Pakistani feminists protested these evil laws, but Bhutto refused to amend them during her term. Some feminist.

Although the PPP was formed as a socialist and secular party and is a member of the Socialist International, that was mostly campaign fodder to get elected. Once they got in, they didn't do much of anything to redistribute wealth in this semi-feudal land, Benazir being a feudal lordess herself and all.

She also helped form the Taliban that took over Afghanistan and horrified the world. Under Taliban reign, Pakistan was one of only three countries on Earth that recognized the Taliban.

After she returned to Pakistan this year, this histrionic political actress had morphed into a fighter for secularism and her former Taliban buddies were now her worst enemies. All the socialist talk had been dropped long as per US demands during her administration of the 1990's.

So why was she killed? Well, because she said that several high-ranking members of the Pakistani government wanted her dead, and she pledged to go after the ISI's "jihadi asset" option. More to the point, Pakistani Islamic nationalists saw her as bringing the US into Pakistan in the form of a large US land invasion, from Afghanistan, of the Pakistani tribal territories in the West.

Along with this was the fear that USreal (the US and Israel joined at the hip) would concomitantly conspire to neuter Pakistan's prize atomic weapon arsenal. A US invasion of the Territories, not necessarily such a bad idea in theory, is deadly in terms of Pakistani Islamic nationalism - the public will not support such an affront to their sovereignty.

The neutering of the nuke option is also deadly to Pakistani nationalists in the military, as it castrates their best defense against the Indian enemy - the principal enemy around which most Pakistani foreign and military policy revolves. So Bhutto was seen as an agent of the US neoconservatives and probably Israel at a more remote level. A good argument then is that the Pakistani military itself had her killed.

Robert Fisk and Juan Cole (here, here and here ) have both suggested that the Pakistani government killed Bhutto, and that's expert testimony enough for me. An essential website for inside dope about Pakistan, especially the Al Qaeda-infested Western Territories, is here.

On January 18, dozens of Islamists were killed in battles right inside Dera Ismail Khan, a major city which is outside of the FATA agencies where the problems are worse and into the much more civilized NWFP districts.

A recent NY Times article talked about how the Tehrik-e-Taliban (Mehsud's grouping of all of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and allied Islamists in the West) now controls some of the outer suburbs in Peshawar itself, and stages one attack a week in this major Peshawar District city.

Here is a very nice copy of the Northwest Frontier Provinces and the Federally Administered Tribal Agencies. In FATA, the Pak Taliban now control the North Waziristan, South Waziristan, Mohmand and Bajour Agencies. They have de facto control over the Tank, Bannu, Swat, Dir and Shangla Districts in the NWFP. The Kyber, Orakzai and Kurram Agencies are threatened in the FATA.

In the NWFP, the Dera Ismail Khan, Larki Marwat, Karak, Hangu, Kohat, Peshawar, Charsadda, Nowshera, Mardan, Malakand, Chitral and Kohistan Districts are all threatened.

Click on the map for better resolution.

That the Pakistani Taliban are deep into these two major cities is terrifying, and indicates there is a real insurgency in Pakistan, somewhat akin to the Sendero Luminoso insurgency in the 1980's in Peru in intensity. There's been some very heavy fighting in the NWFP and especially South Waziristan Agency lately, with ~120 jihadis being killed on January 19 alone. Great up-to-date details of this war are on Roggio's site, Long War Journal - no one does it better.

Martillo's title below suggests that the CIA killed Bhutto. It's always a blast to accuse the CIA of killing someone, but in this case it's a bad call. The CIA had absolutely no sane reason to eliminate Benazir Bhutto. Recent anti-Semitic claims that nefarious US Jews called Zionist neoconservatives had Bhutto killed are even more absurd. As Martillo's piece notes, Bhutto was the neocons' best hope for Pakistan.

CIA: Mehsud Behind Benazir Killing?
The CIA Had More Reason!

by Joachim Martillo

The January 19, 2008 issue of the Boston Globe published a CIA claim that South Waziristan tribal leader, Baitullah Mehsud, who maintains strong ties to al-Qaeda and an alliance with the Taliban, was behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The article is entitled CIA Says Pakistan Tribal Head Behind Assassination.

Because Neocons want the CIA to have a free hand to operate in South Waziristan fingering Mehsud serves the interests of at least some US government officials even if there are many reasons why assassinating a possible opponent of Pervez Musharraf or Nawaz Sharif is not obviously in the interests of either al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

The politics of Pakistan and of the assassination of Benazir are no clearer today than they were when Who Killed Benazir Bhutto? appeared on Jan. 1, and the apparent attempt of Fatima Bhutto to reach out to other factions of her family (Fatima Bhutto: Farewell to Wadi Bua*) seems to have failed (Fatima Bhutto Breaks Her Silence, Questions Benazir's Will, Bilawal Being the PPP Chief).

Not only is the intra-family conflict deep and complex (The Other Bhutto), but there is also an Islamic sectarian aspect to the national politics of the Bhutto family, which has Shiite origins. (Zulfikar, which is Benazir's father's name, is the name of Ali's famous sword and is rarely found as a name among Sunni Muslims. Benazir was, in fact, half-Iranian through her mother.)

In majority Sunni Pakistan, the Bhutto's were almost forced into secularist politics, and naturally the Saudis favored Nawaz Sharif over Benazir.

In terms of her international politics, Benazir was directly involved with Neoliberals as Benazir and the Jews: A Love Story from The New York Jewish Week reports. She was also indirectly involved with Neoconservatives through Husain Haqqani, who served both as spokesman and also as top aide to her for over a decade.

Haqqani is an important figure at the Hudson Institute, which is a fanatic Neoconservative think-tank associated with racist ethnic Ashkenazi American ideologues and subversives like Norman "Bomb-Iran" Podhoretz. (See Poverty Fuels Extremism by Husain Haqqani [War on Terror in Pakistan].)

Notes

* Fatima was probably sincere. Sometimes it is hard to remember that the Bhutto clan are actually a real family.

From Daughter of Destiny, An Autobiography, by Benazir Bhutto, pp. 257-8.

The phone rings constantly from Los Angeles, London, Paris -- my mother's friends and relatives calling to congratulate her on my release [in 1984 from prison in Pakistan]. I wasn't ready to talk to anyone yet, and only spoke to Yasmin and Dr. Niazi in London. Ardeshir Zahedi, a friend of my parents and Iran's former ambassador to the United States, arrived with caviar.

My mother, Sunny, and I stayed up talking through the night. It all seemed so unbelievable. Yesterday I had been a prisoner. Today I was free, with my mother and sister. We were together. We were all alive.

Mir! A little brown-haired girl pulling at my coat! "Meet your niece, Fathi [Fatima]," Mir told me, standing in my mother's flat on my second day of freedom. Was my brother really standing in front of me? I saw his lips moving, heard my own voice responding. The noise of our reunion must have been deafening, but I can't remember a thing we said.

At twenty-nine, Mir looked so handsome, his dark eyes flashing one minute, gentling the next as he lifted his eighteen-month-old daughter to give me a kiss. "Wait till you see Shah," Mir laughed. Shah had been eighteen the last time I'd seen him, just a boy. Now he was twenty-five with a longed-for mustache.

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