Zanjabil is moving home to

Adamite

See you there, insha Allah.

Poppy Wars

Article by Craig Murray: Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time

The key question is this: what are our servicemen dying for? There are glib answers to that: bringing democracy and development to Afghanistan, supporting the government of President Hamid Karzai in its attempt to establish order in the country, fighting the Taliban and preventing the further spread of radical Islam into Pakistan. But do these answers stand up to close analysis?

There has been too easy an acceptance of the lazy notion that the war in Afghanistan is the 'good' war, while the war in Iraq is the 'bad' war, the blunder...

In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not?

The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen.
Our economic achievement in Afghanistan goes well beyond the simple production of raw opium. In fact Afghanistan no longer exports much raw opium at all. It has succeeded in what our international aid efforts urge every developing country to do. Afghanistan has gone into manufacturing and 'value-added' operations.

It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.

How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government – the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.

When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid, armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons – especially those grouped in the Northern Alliance – to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils. Then we made them ministers.

Our only real achievement to date is falling street prices for heroin in London.

Fear as a Weapon of Mass Hypnosis

"I do not believe for one moment that it is mere coincidence that the Bush administration just happens to uncover some plot or threat of attack whenever the administration is facing political troubles. Rather, I believe that we are seeing is an administration deliberately using terror management theory to deflect attention from scandals and manipulate public opinion to expand White House power in our increasingly, distressingly authoritarian society.

"What is terror management theory? If you are like the vast majority of people, you have never heard of terror management theory. In all the books I have read recently by various political commentators, I have seen plenty of talk about the White House’s use of fear and 9/11, but no mention of terror management theory. It has received surprisingly little attention from the mainstream media. Nobody talks about it outside of certain academic circles, mostly within the field of social psychology, and presumably certain government officials at the Department of Homeland Security and the White House, whose discussions I am not privy to.

"The DHS and White House officials are among those who know about terror management theory because they’re the ones paying for at least some of the research in this field. DHS and military officials have received briefings from some researchers in the field, and have presumably reported on those briefings to their superiors in the White House. Other research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and similar organizations.

"All this silence on the subject of terror management theory is striking, because the theory so thoroughly explains much of the Bush administration’s interactions with the press and the public that understanding the theory can change the way you interpret the news..."

The politics of terror management

The Health Risks of Vaccines

"A growing number of adults are investigating vaccines and discovering their contents. Vaccines are grown on monkey kidneys, chicken embryos and contain bovine (cow) serum. Vaccines contain particles of viruses, bits of bacteria and measurable amounts of aluminum, gelatin, polysorbate 80, MSG and other chemicals. A responsible adult who concludes this combination of pathogens and chemicals can be harmful is not a “countercultural type who views life through a prism of conspiracy theory” as Oshinsky reports from Allen’s book. Understanding that autoimmune reactions can be the consequence of injecting animal cells and foreign chemicals into the body does not require a medical degree or PhD."

Questioning Vaccines is not Fueled by Ignorance

Free World Enterprise

Chechyna’s Theatre of War

Interview with Akhmed Zakayev

Akhmed Zakayev is the Chechen Foreign Minister in Exile. He lives in London.

Zakayev has been pleading the Chechen cause in the West since being wounded soon after the second war started in 1999. It has been an uphill struggle, as all that most people knew about the Chechens when he arrived were the atrocities committed in the separatists’ name: six Red Cross workers butchered in their beds at a hospital in Chechnya in 1996; four telecoms engineers working for a British company beheaded in 1998, their headless corpses left by the roadside; the capture of a Moscow theatre in 2002 by Chechen separatists, including women wired as suicide bombs; and a massacre of innocents in September 2004 at a school in Beslan, near Chechnya.

Zakayev has responded by arguing that this has always been a conflict in which reality is kept backstage and illusion presented for public view. It is common knowledge that Russia, which doesn’t like to let journalists and aid agencies near Chechnya, has been economical with the truth about what its troops are up to in the region. Moscow is shy of calling its Chechen operations ‘wars’ – the Kremlin’s line is that its troops are simply stopping a crimewave emanating out of Chechnya, and it always refers to separatists as “criminals” and “armed bandits”. Since 9/11, Russia has also tried to present what Zakayev defines as essentially a nationalist conflict in religious terms, trying to win Western approval for what it presents as an attempt to contain Islamist fundamentalism in its own Muslim territory.

Zakayev goes further by saying that Russia’s secret services – the FSB, which Putin himself used to head – has actually financed, planned or manipulated many of the attacks popularly blamed on Chechen terrorists. This belief is shared by the coterie of London friends he has been closest to since moving to the capital in 2002 – among them Berezovsky, Russia’s negotiator between the wars when Zakayev was Chechnya’s, and Anna Politkovskaya, who until her assassination in Moscow last autumn was Russia’s only investigative journalist to visit Chechnya regularly and follow up the stories behind the rumours. It has become harder to brush aside these eye-popping tales since the unsolved murder last November of Litvinenko, the ex-FSB man who became Zakayev’s London neighbour after escaping Russia, and wrote extensively detailing what he said was insider knowledge of the Russian secret services’ hidden role in several attacks blamed on Chechen separatists. Despite suggestions from Moscow that Berezovsky poisoned Litvinenko, British opinion has coalesced behind the police view that two ex-FSB colleagues are the likeliest suspects.

The Essence of Peace

Peace is not the absence of tension, it is the presence of justice.
Martin Luther King

The Islamic concept of peace is a spiritual one, namely that we are only truly at peace when we submit to the Truth, to the Eternal, to a Higher Reality, rather than to our own illusory folly.

Hands off the Holy Quran!

The repression of Muslims in Russia grows and grows. Many classical Islamic texts have been banned by the authorities. This ban even includes Russian translations of the Noble Quran.

Last year, in Dagestan Russian language editions of the Quran were banned. The expert council of the Spiritual Directorate of the Muslims of Dagestan (STMD) banned “the sale and distribution of any literal translations of the Quran, beginning with Krachkovsky’s translation and ending with Valeria Porokhovaya’s translations”. In the specially published edict they also announced that the ban extends to the distribution of “audio, video, and photo material on a religious theme without the STMD’s approval”. The STMD explains such steps as a strengthening of measures taken in the war against “Wahhabism”. This proves that the Spiritual Directorate of the Muslims of Dagestan is working together with the punitive system of Moscow’s Kremlin against the Muslims of the Caucasus.

And say: “Truth has (now)
Arrived and Falsehood perished
For Falsehood is (by its nature)
Bound to perish.”
17:81

We send down (stage by stage)
In the Qur'an that which
Is a healing and mercy
To those who believe:
To the unjust it causes
Nothing but loss after loss.
17:82

Chechen Press

Islam in Russia

"No less than 20 or 30 young people have disappeared over the last two to three years, no one knows where," Gasanaliyev said. "There are people like that in every mosque. The most worthy, respectable young people are the ones who disappear."

Twenty-five-year-old Abdul-Qodr, an Uzbek immigrant to Moscow, was not disheartened. The whole world is moving closer to Islam, he said, and Russia is moving along with it.

"Just a few years ago we were amazed when Russians or Americans or French people converted to Islam. No one's amazed anymore," he said.

Islam's rapid rise giving Russia growing pains (Middle East Times)

Fear and Loathing

"There was nothing on him, no photographs, no letters, or identification. That would disappoint the boys at intelligence, but it was fine with me. I wanted this boy to remain anonymous. I wanted to think of him not as a dead human being with a name, age, and family, but as a dead enemy. That made everything easier."

Phillip Caputo
A Rumor of War

"Love adds and multiplies. Hate divides and subtracts."
Sandor McNab

Orwellian Glossary

Michael Greenwell has some lovely definitions in his guide to political Newspeak.

Multiculturalism - respecting the symbols, values and idiosyncrasies of all colours, creeds and religions - provided that is, that they can be co-opted into a neoliberal economic order and packaged in plastic and sold off. If it is not possible to do this then the adherents of whichever ideology it is must be considered to be “depraved opponents of civilisation itself.”

Hearts And Minds - These days we are often told that the battle for “hearts and minds” is more important than the physical battle with weapons. This seems a little confusing - presumably the western armies are hoping to pick up the pieces of these hearts and minds from the towns and villages where they have blown them up? Any other explanation seems unlikely, as it is difficult to convince people of your good intentions when you are bombing them.

Or perhaps it relates to what Chuck Colson, former aide to Richard Nixon said, “When you’ve got them by the balls their hearts and minds will follow”.

Check out the full piece: Politician-Speak Translated

The Greater the Lie

An Interview with Abdul-Halim Sadulaev, President of Chechnya, Subsequently Murdered by the Kremlin

Q: The Muslim world today does not show such active interest in the Chechen struggle for independence. What in your opinion is the reason?

A: The situation in the world has changed. If earlier, Jihad was waged mainly on our territory, then many of the world's countries are engaged in this holy struggle today -- Afghanistan, Iraq, in the first instance Palestine. Many Islamic countries have become frontlines. So the support of the Muslims is now divided. But we never felt that ordinary Muslims took no interest or didn't help us. On the contrary, not only the men help us, our Muslim sisters support the mojaheddin too by sending us their personal valuables. We know that a great many Muslims make duas to Allah for us . And that too is support.

Q: The Chechen mujaheddin are criticised for carrying out operations targeting civilians. What do you day to such criticism?

A: "The greater the lie, the more they'll believe it." The Russians spread propaganda, claiming that all we are interested in is killing civilians. They try to plant this propaganda across the world. However, everyone knows full well in reality who is killing civilians and who gives out orders to murder. Everyone knows that Putin gave his troops the order to kill ten innocent civilians for every dead soldier, declaring that it was the only way to acchieve victory.

Last year Russian troops savagely killed the six-month-old child and wife of one of our mujaheddin. And there are hundreds of such cases. The world's press says nothing about this, nothing about the fact that the Russians have killed fifty thousand Chechen children. Or are the children of Chechen Muslims not considered innocent civilians?

Source: Chechen Press (2006/03/27)

The Chimeric Debate

The comments on Craig Murray's excellent blog are always worth reading. Here's one which chimes with my thoughts:

"I have to say that I find it frustrating that the discussion continues, even on your blog, into the whys and wherefores of terrorism. This is exactly as designed, and the longer it goes on the further we will be from the truth. There is no solution to the problem being discussed because it is a chimera, that was created to justify all the murder, looting and tightening of security."

Source: Craig Murray post

Indeed, the debate continues to be manipulated.

Picnic in Chechnya

Photographs of Grozny (Dzhokhar), Chechnya

"Minutka Square. Few remained to live in the bombed apartment blocks. These men collect metal to sell."

Junk and Custard Pies

Al Qaeda puts on big shoes, red nose, takes custard pie

Continued

Lewis Page "was an armed forces bomb-disposal operator tasked in support of the UK mainland police from 2001 to 2004". He offers his professional analysis of the latest "Al Qaeda Terror Threat". Read it, and compare with the junk in your newspaper...

Infinite Thirst

In one of his verses Rumi says, "What is love?" And he replies to his own question, "Infinite thirst." "So,"he says, "let me explain the water of life." He's trying to explain the water of life in his poetry so that your thirst will increase, so that you'll feel this pull towards water and recognize that you are infinitely thirsty, that it is human nature to be infinitely thirsty. That is what we have to awaken in ourselves. Rumi says, "Don't look for water, look for thirst." It's thirst you have to find; then, if you become thirsty, you'll see water bubbling up everywhere. But it's thirst you have to strive for before you're going to find any water. So don't look for God, endeavor to become thirsty; awaken that thirst in your soul and then you'll find God everywhere.

William Chittick

Putin, Litvinenko and Heroin

Craig Murray has a fascinating post on murky goings on in Russia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan...and Western complicity.

Insofar as people remember anything Litvinenko said, it is his alliance with Anna Politkovskaya on the issue of the apartment bombings in Russia in 2000 which were almost certainly the work of the FSB. One - in Ryazan - failed to go off because local residents found it and local bomb disposal defused it. That was indubitably planted by the FSB, who admitted it when their agents were caught, and claimed the bomb was a dummy. The bomb disposal team said it was a real bomb, and had the same chemical signature as the other, "Chechen" bombs.

But that wasn't actually what led Litvinenko to quit. I have a great interest in this, as he was working on a problem on which I was working from the other end. Vast amounts of heroin come from Afghanistan, in particular from the fief of (now) Head of the Afghan Armed Forces General Dostum, in North and East Afghanistan. Dostum is an Uzbek, and the heroin passes over the Friendship Bridge from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan, where it is taken over by President Karimov's people. It is then shipped up the railway line, in bales of cotton, to St Petersburg and Riga.

Litvinenko uncovered the St Petersburg end, and was stunned by the involvement of the city authorities and local police and security services, at the most senior levels. He reported in detail to Putin. Putin is of course from St Petersburg, and the people Litvinenko named were among Putin's closest political allies. That is why Litvinenko, having miscalculated badly, had to flee Russia.

Read further: Murky Murder

The Intelligent Heart

The Quran uses the word heart repeatedly, 100 times or so, normally as a noun, except in some stances where other forms of the word are used. The word itself (qalb) is used in the Quran to mean 'heart', and if one reads all the verses in which the heart is mentioned, it becomes very clear that 'heart' is the center of consciousness, the center of human awareness. Qalb is closely associated with intellect or understanding, as it is with all of the functions of the mind. The emotions are also located in the heart, but this is a secondary meaning. A sound heart is the mark of a human being who is in proper relationship with the Divine. And it is illness in the heart that is the cause of human difficulties and human problems.

William Chittick

The Mystery of Truth

Of what can we be certain except this—that we are fertilized by mysterious circumstances? Where is man's truth to be found? Truth is not what can be demonstrated by the air of logic. If orange trees are hardy and rich in fruit in this bit of soil and not that, then this bit of soil is what is truth for orange trees. If a particular religion, or culture, or scale of values, if one form of creativity rather than another, brings self fulfillment to a man, releases the prince within him unknown to himself, then that scale of values, that culture, that form of activity constitutes his truth.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Australia
Wind, Sand and Stars

Being Logical

Mr Brown, the new UK Prime Minister, declared in his first interview from 10 Downing Street that "Terrorism is not an act of faith; it is an act of evil."

I agree. The use of terror against civilian populations is evil. Whether in London or Baghdad, Glasgow or Jenin.

As for so-called "Islamist terrorists", I remain yet to be convinced that they really exist. And aren't merely the invention of certain interested organisations. If these Muslim fanatics love their religion so ardently, why would they flout its basic tenets so grossly? It simply doesn't make sense. Why target women and children rather than the government or military?

Make no mistake. The calculated murder of women and children brings no benefit to Islam. But it is too good to be true for Mr Brown and his ilk. Who gains?...

Womanly Beauty

For attractive lips
Speak words of kindness.
For lovely eyes,
Seek out the good in people.
For a slim figure,
Share your food with the hungry.
For beautiful hair,
Let a child run his or her fingers through it once a day.
For poise, walk with the knowledge that you will never walk alone.
The beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears,
The figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair.
The beauty of a woman must be seen from in her eyes,
True beauty in a woman is reflected in her soul.
It is the caring that she lovingly gives, the passion that she shows.
And the beauty of a woman, with passing years, only grows.