Afghanistan, the CIA, bin Laden, and the Taliban (tags)
The U.S. government was well aware of the Taliban's reactionary program, yet it chose to back their rise to power in the mid-1990s. The creation of the Taliban was "actively encouraged by the ISI and the CIA," according to Selig Harrison, an expert on U.S. relations with Asia. "The United States encouraged Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to support the Taliban, certainly right up to their advance on Kabul," adds respected journalist Ahmed Rashid. When the Taliban took power, State Department spokesperson Glyn Davies said that he saw "nothing objectionable" in the Taliban's plans to impose strict Islamic law, and Senator Hank Brown, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia, welcomed the new regime: "The good part of what has happened is that one of the factions at last seems capable of developing a new government in Afghanistan." "The Taliban will probably develop like the Saudis. There will be Aramco [the consortium of oil companies that controlled Saudi oil], pipelines, an emir, no parliament and lots of Sharia law. We can live with that," said another U.S. diplomat in 1997.
The Second American Revolution : Washington and Iran (tags)
A repeat of that Terri Schiavo business from a while back, as once again Washington takes on a great humanitarian cause to save the life of a vegetable.
The Second American Revolution : Revolutionary Proverbs (tags)
A short collection of proverbs
STOP THE COUP IN HAITI! (tags)
The counter-revolutionary thugs who have named themselves, the "Haitian National Revolutionary Liberation Front" are directed by commanders like Guy Philippe - a U.S.-trained former Haitian soldier who has attempted at least three coups in the last four years. Commander Louis Jodel Chamblain, the #2 ranked leader of the notorious CIA-backed FRAPH death squads that terrorized Haiti in the 1990s. Chamblain was convicted in both the assassination of Antoine Izmery, a pro-democracy businessman in 1993, and the 1994 Raboteau massacre of innocent civilians. These are the so-called "rebels" the press lauds as leading the "rebellion" in Haiti. What we are witnessing is a U.S. backed coup against the twice democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.