Taliban Propaganda Win

Afghan President's Brother, Ahmad Wali Karzai - Assassinated

The half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been assassinated in Kandahar, officials say.

Ahmad Wali Karzai, a leading power broker in the country's south, was shot dead at his home in a blow to Nato's battle against the Taliban in the area.

He was shot twice by his long-time head of security Sardar Mohammed, was also killed .

The Taliban said they carried out the attack, calling it one of their top achievements in 10 years of war.

Sardar Mohammed's motives remain unclear, but the killing will raise questions about securing Afghanistan's top officials.

Read more ....

He was a very corrupt man, involved heavily in the heroin trade. But he was NATO's little buddy. And if they can' protect their friends, how are they going to help anyone else?

A Tale of Two Assassins

Two terrible stories...

A US congresswoman is in critical condition after a gunman shot her in the head and killed six people in an Arizona shooting spree.

Democratic Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot at close range at a public meeting in a Tucson supermarket.

The 40-year-old is under sedation, but the doctor treating her said he was "very optimistic about her recovery".

A 22-year-old man has been arrested and police are hunting for a second man in connection with the shooting.

The suspect in custody, who was wrestled to the ground at the scene of the shooting, has been named locally as Arizona resident Jared Loughner, who is described as having a troubled past.

Various former classmates have described him as "obviously disturbed" and a loner who had posted a number of anti-government videos and messages on social networking websites.

Continue reading the main story
Shortly before the attack he had posted: "Goodbye friends. Dear friends, don' be mad at me."

The suspect, age 22, lives with his parents in Tucson. He's been described by former class-mates as "disruptive" drug-user and a loner. Reportedly posted series of rambling messages on social networking websites. Online messages show deep distrust of government and religion, calling US laws "treasonous" and calling for creation of a new currency. He attempted to enlist in US Army but was rejected.

Some have already pointed out that Giffords was on Sarah Palin’s gun-sighted “hit list”, but, though the gunman is reportedly in custody, their motives are not known at this time.

Giffords’s husband, Astronaut Mark Kelly, says his wife is still alive.

Sarah Palin via Facebook:

My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today’s tragic shooting in Arizona.

On behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice.

Of note, her controversial crosshairs map [see top of this story] was scrubbed from SarahPAC sites.

Also, a note worth mentioning, 9-year-old shooting victim Christina Taylor Greene, who was born on September 11, 2001. Expect her to be used by gun-control advocates and new legislation that is inevitable after this event.

Meanwhile, half a planet away, the governor of Pakistan's most dominant province was shot and killed Tuesday allegedly by a bodyguard who authorities said was angry about his opposition to blasphemy laws carrying the death sentence for insulting the Muslim faith.

Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer, regarded as a moderate voice in a country increasingly beset by zealotry, was a close ally of U.S.-backed President Asif Ali Zardari. He is the highest-profile Pakistani political figure to be assassinated since former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto three years ago, and his death underscores the growing danger in this country to those who dare challenge the demands of Islamist extremists.

Taseer was riddled by gunshots while walking to his car after an afternoon meal at Kohsar Market, a shopping center in Islamabad popular with Westerners and wealthy Pakistanis. He was shot in the back, said Shaukat Kayani, a doctor at Poly Clinic Hospital.

Initial reports indicated the suspected gunman, a police commando guarding Taseer, unloaded up to 26 rounds from a Kalashnikov automatic rifle. The gunman could have fired that number of rounds in a matter of seconds.

Other guards then forced the police commando to the ground, according to police and hospital officials.

"It was one shot first and then a burst,'' said R.A. Khan, a witness who was drinking coffee at the time. "I rushed and saw policemen over another police commando, who was lying on the road with his face down.''

An intelligence official interrogating the suspect said the commando had been planning the assassination since learning three days ago that he would be deployed with the governor. Police were trying to determine how he was assigned to Taseer's security detail Tuesday and whether he'd had any help.

Taseer's admirers called the governor a profile in courage in a fight for the soul of Pakistan, which in recent years has increasingly swung away from South Asia's Sufi-influenced moderation to the more fundamentalist approaches to Islam found in some areas of the Middle East.

"Taseer showed himself to be a rare politician, willing to risk his life in espousing an unambiguous position against discrimination and abuse,'' said Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch.

"He was the most courageous voice after Benazir Bhutto on the rights of women and religious minorities,'' said Farahnaz Ispahani, a fellow leading member of the Pakistan People's Party, who wept as she spoke. "God, we will miss him.''

The U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, called Taseer "a champion of tolerance.''

The death also is a blow to Zardari, Bhutto's widower whose ruling party is struggling to retain power after the defection of a key ally. The country's leading opposition party on Tuesday gave the government a three-day deadline to accept a list of demands to avoid collapse.

The renewed political turmoil bodes ill for military action against Muslim extremists that the U.S. believes is key to success in neighboring Afghanistan, analysts say. Pakistan's powerful army could use the lack of political consensus to avoid operations that clash with its perceived strategic interests.

Taseer, a 66-year-old businessman and media tycoon, took on the ceremonial role of Punjab governor in 2008.

Punjab is Pakistan's most populous province and is home to many of the country's wealthiest citizens. A number of militant movements thrive there, though not to the extent of the Taliban in the northwest.

Taseer publicly vented his opposition — even using Twitter — to Pakistan's harsh blasphemy laws that effectively order death for anyone convicted of insulting Islam. Although courts typically overturn convictions and no executions have been carried out, rights activists say the laws are used to settle rivalries and persecute religious minorities.

People accused of blasphemy are often killed by extremists or spend significant amounts of time behind bars. In some cases, the charges border on the ridiculous: A man was recently held because he threw away a business card of someone whose first name is Muhammad.

The laws came under renewed international scrutiny late last year when a 45-year-old Christian woman, Asia Bibi, was sentenced to death for allegedly insulting Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

Taseer called for granting Bibi a pardon, a stance that earned him death threats from Islamists.

"I was under huge pressure sure 2 cow down b4 rightest pressure on blasphemy. Refused. Even if I'm the last man standing,'' Taseer tweeted on Dec. 31.

The guards assigned to his security detail Tuesday were provided by the Punjab province government, which is headed by the rival Pakistan Muslim League-N party, according to Interior Minister Rehman Malik. The guards were apparently one of two squads protecting Taseer, who has a permanent group at all times but gets an additional, rotating squad depending on the district he is visiting.

Officials identified the suspect as Mumtaz Qadri, a 26-year-old from Rawalpindi. They said Qadri became a police constable in 2003 and transferred to an elite squad after commando training in 2008.

Jehangir Khan, a witness who saw the suspect after he was detained by the police, told The Associated Press that the man was boasting about the act, saying, "Hey, you all, come and see, I have killed a blasphemer. You come and join me. Chant Allahu Akbar [God is great]!''

The intelligence official said the commando said he was proud to have killed a blasphemer. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to media on the record.

Photos of Qadri show a bearded young man whose forehead bore bruises typical for Muslims who routinely rest their heads on the ground to pray.

His family members — including five brothers — were immediately detained for questioning, said police official Bisharat Chaudhry.

A childhood friend, Haseeb Ahmad, told AP that Qadri's family was religious and that he was an active member of an Islamic association called the Shahab-e-Islam Pakistan or the Star of Islam in Pakistan, a street level group that organized a recent conference on the issue of blasphemy.

"Mumtaz recited verses in the praise of Prophet Muhammad,'' Ahmad said. "He also wept while discussing the blasphemy issue.''

People's Party member Samiullah Khan said that he was surprised when he saw the attacker's appearance: "Look at his face, his beard. We are surprised how a man with such a religious appearance managed to be part of the squad meant for such a sensitive job.''

Pakistani political analyst Rasul Bakhsh Rais said the assassination signals the radical mindset that has crept into Pakistan's security forces. Punjab in particular is a major base and recruiting ground for Pakistan's military and security establishment.

Islamists also have significant political power, and their political parties have brought tremendous pressure on the ruling People's Party, a largely secular grouping. Facing protests by Islamists, for instance, the People's Party recently insisted it would not touch the blasphemy laws.

"This fear and the insecure environment will make political leaders in the mainstream parties extremely cautious to offend the religious sensibilities of the radical fringe, and that is not a good sign for democratic progress and liberal politics in Pakistan,'' Rais said.

People's Party supporters wept and beat their heads at the hospital where Taseer's body was taken. Outside his residence in the eastern city of Lahore, hundreds of supporters chanted slogans on his behalf, while in the central city of Multan dozens burned tires and demanded the attackers be punished.

"This is a war,'' Taseer said in a recent sessions with reporters broadcast Tuesday by Pakistan's Geo TV. "Whether we receive threats or not, it does not make any difference to us. I am a Muslim. ... God willing, life or death for a Muslim, we are not afraid of that. Whatever threats they give to us.''

Haseeb Ahmad currently has 500 lawyers working pro-bono for him in his defense. He is a hero to his neighbors and supporters.

Overheard at the Michael Jackson Death Parade

I was just at the car wash, and in the little room where they make you wait to get your car back. They were blasting the Michael Jackson death parade. I overheard this little exchange between Anderson Cooper and Larry King on CNN minutes ago...

"So, Larry, you were close to the coffin?

Yes, Anderson.

What was it like?

It looked like a coffin. An expensive coffin."

The Pew Research Center released findings last week indicating that "nearly two-in-three Americans say news organizations gave too much coverage to the story. At the same time, half say the media struck the right balance between reporting on Jackson's musical legacy and the problems in his personal life.

Anyone caught making fun of the media for giving too much air time to Michael Jackson are 'elitists'.

Okay, I'm an elitist.

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

For shame on the U.S. media for treating his death as if it were 9/11 and Martin Luther King Jr. getting assassinated at the same time. I can't wait to see them choked to death until they're all gone.

Obama assassination foiled by a Turkey

US authorities confirmed that Turkish police have arrested a man who claims to have plotted to kill US President Barack Obama when he visited Turkey.

The Secret Service in Washington said Monday night that Turkish National Police arrested the man last Friday in Istanbul. Secret Service spokesman Ed Donovan said the president was never in any immediate danger, as Obama arrived in Turkey on Sunday, two days after the man's arrest.

As standard procedure involving a threat against the president overseas, the Secret Service is following up with Turkish authorities regarding the case and is not releasing any information about the suspect, Donovan said.

On Monday, the Saudi daily Al Watan reportedm that Turkish security services has arrested a man of Syrian descent who was planning to assassinate Obama during his trip to Turkey.

According to the report, the man, who was arrested on Friday, was carrying a press card identifying him as an employee of Al Jazeera. He reportedly confessed to his intention to stab Obama with a knife and said that he was aided by three accomplices.

The report stated that Turkish authorities were still unsure as to whether the press card was a fake or whether it had actually been issued the man by the Qatari news network.

Al-Jazeera's Ankara bureau chief, Yussef al-Sharif, told the paper that news of the suspected assassination plot had come as an utter surprise to the network's staff in Turkey, adding that all of Al-Jazeera's employees in the country claimed that they were not acquainted with the suspect.

Sharif said that the ID card had "most certainly" been forged.

He said that Turkish authorities knew all of the employees of Al-Jazeera's Ankara offices.

Dear AIG - I Quit!

The following is a letter sent on Tuesday by Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G.

DEAR Mr. Liddy,

It is with deep regret that I submit my notice of resignation from A.I.G. Financial Products. I hope you take the time to read this entire letter. Before describing the details of my decision, I want to offer some context:

I am proud of everything I have done for the commodity and equity divisions of A.I.G.-F.P. I was in no way involved in — or responsible for — the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage.

After 12 months of hard work dismantling the company — during which A.I.G. reassured us many times we would be rewarded in March 2009 — we in the financial products unit have been betrayed by A.I.G. and are being unfairly persecuted by elected officials. In response to this, I will now leave the company and donate my entire post-tax retention payment to those suffering from the global economic downturn. My intent is to keep none of the money myself.

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down.

You and I have never met or spoken to each other, so I’d like to tell you about myself. I was raised by schoolteachers working multiple jobs in a world of closing steel mills. My hard work earned me acceptance to M.I.T., and the institute’s generous financial aid enabled me to attend. I had fulfilled my American dream.

I started at this company in 1998 as an equity trader, became the head of equity and commodity trading and, a couple of years before A.I.G.’s meltdown last September, was named the head of business development for commodities. Over this period the equity and commodity units were consistently profitable — in most years generating net profits of well over $100 million. Most recently, during the dismantling of A.I.G.-F.P., I was an integral player in the pending sale of its well-regarded commodity index business to UBS. As you know, business unit sales like this are crucial to A.I.G.’s effort to repay the American taxpayer.

The profitability of the businesses with which I was associated clearly supported my compensation. I never received any pay resulting from the credit default swaps that are now losing so much money. I did, however, like many others here, lose a significant portion of my life savings in the form of deferred compensation invested in the capital of A.I.G.-F.P. because of those losses. In this way I have personally suffered from this controversial activity — directly as well as indirectly with the rest of the taxpayers.

I have the utmost respect for the civic duty that you are now performing at A.I.G. You are as blameless for these credit default swap losses as I am. You answered your country’s call and you are taking a tremendous beating for it.

But you also are aware that most of the employees of your financial products unit had nothing to do with the large losses. And I am disappointed and frustrated over your lack of support for us. I and many others in the unit feel betrayed that you failed to stand up for us in the face of untrue and unfair accusations from certain members of Congress last Wednesday and from the press over our retention payments, and that you didn’t defend us against the baseless and reckless comments made by the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut.

My guess is that in October, when you learned of these retention contracts, you realized that the employees of the financial products unit needed some incentive to stay and that the contracts, being both ethical and useful, should be left to stand. That’s probably why A.I.G. management assured us on three occasions during that month that the company would “live up to its commitment” to honor the contract guarantees.

That may be why you decided to accelerate by three months more than a quarter of the amounts due under the contracts. That action signified to us your support, and was hardly something that one would do if he truly found the contracts “distasteful.”

That may also be why you authorized the balance of the payments on March 13.

At no time during the past six months that you have been leading A.I.G. did you ask us to revise, renegotiate or break these contracts — until several hours before your appearance last week before Congress.

I think your initial decision to honor the contracts was both ethical and financially astute, but it seems to have been politically unwise. It’s now apparent that you either misunderstood the agreements that you had made — tacit or otherwise — with the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, various members of Congress and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo of New York, or were not strong enough to withstand the shifting political winds.

You’ve now asked the current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. to repay these earnings. As you can imagine, there has been a tremendous amount of serious thought and heated discussion about how we should respond to this breach of trust.

As most of us have done nothing wrong, guilt is not a motivation to surrender our earnings. We have worked 12 long months under these contracts and now deserve to be paid as promised. None of us should be cheated of our payments any more than a plumber should be cheated after he has fixed the pipes but a careless electrician causes a fire that burns down the house.

Many of the employees have, in the past six months, turned down job offers from more stable employers, based on A.I.G.’s assurances that the contracts would be honored. They are now angry about having been misled by A.I.G.’s promises and are not inclined to return the money as a favor to you.

The only real motivation that anyone at A.I.G.-F.P. now has is fear. Mr. Cuomo has threatened to “name and shame,” and his counterpart in Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal, has made similar threats — even though attorneys general are supposed to stand for due process, to conduct trials in courts and not the press.

So what am I to do? There’s no easy answer. I know that because of hard work I have benefited more than most during the economic boom and have saved enough that my family is unlikely to suffer devastating losses during the current bust. Some might argue that members of my profession have been overpaid, and I wouldn’t disagree.

That is why I have decided to donate 100 percent of the effective after-tax proceeds of my retention payment directly to organizations that are helping people who are suffering from the global downturn. This is not a tax-deduction gimmick; I simply believe that I at least deserve to dictate how my earnings are spent, and do not want to see them disappear back into the obscurity of A.I.G.’s or the federal government’s budget. Our earnings have caused such a distraction for so many from the more pressing issues our country faces, and I would like to see my share of it benefit those truly in need.

On March 16 I received a payment from A.I.G. amounting to $742,006.40, after taxes. In light of the uncertainty over the ultimate taxation and legal status of this payment, the actual amount I donate may be less — in fact, it may end up being far less if the recent House bill raising the tax on the retention payments to 90 percent stands. Once all the money is donated, you will immediately receive a list of all recipients.

This choice is right for me. I wish others at A.I.G.-F.P. luck finding peace with their difficult decision, and only hope their judgment is not clouded by fear.

Mr. Liddy, I wish you success in your commitment to return the money extended by the American government, and luck with the continued unwinding of the company’s diverse businesses — especially those remaining credit default swaps. I’ll continue over the short term to help make sure no balls are dropped, but after what’s happened this past week I can’t remain much longer — there is too much bad blood. I’m not sure how you will greet my resignation, but at least Attorney General Blumenthal should be relieved that I’ll leave under my own power and will not need to be “shoved out the door.”

Sincerely,
Jake DeSantis

Assassination Acerbation

Afghan President Hamid Karzai literally dodged bullets today in Afghanistan during a parade. (Video from BBC)

Which got me thinking of a couple things, first, how many world leaders have been taken out by parades? More than I can count on one hand. Really. I'm also counting political rallies too. Pakistani reform candidate Benazir Bhutto is the first to come to mind. Even George W. Bush avoided assassination from a live hand grenade at Freedom Square in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2005 - because of a faulty detonator.

But if Mr. Karzai's would-be assassins had any sense of history, he would know that...
Political Assassination rarely ends in the way they were intended.

"Great political changes do not take place as a result of specific personal interventions," said Franklin Ford, the Harvard University historian who investigated assassination throughout history in his book, "Political Murder." "The historical record seems to me pretty impressive that people who killed other people for political advantage were almost always disappointed."

One can argue that the political assassin achieves the most fundamental goal simply by removing his or her target from political life. Look at Sirhan Sirhan, whose family fled Jerusalem in poverty after Israeli independence, deeply hated Robert Kennedy for his allegiance to Israel. "His intent was to deny the Presidency to a powerful pro-Israeli politician on the brink of the nomination," wrote James W. Clarke, professor of political science at the University of Arizona in his 1982 book "American Assassins." But RFK's death did nothing to stop U.S.-Israeli increasing ties. In fact, Richard Nixon airlifted American military equipment to Israel in the 1973 war. Oops.

Let's look at some classical case studies A great example of a lofty death-goal not achieved would be that of Julius Caesar. Caesar's assassins - the Senate - sought to destroy an ambitious general -- and, instead, helped destroy the Roman republic. Dang.

Henry II ordered the death of Archbishop Thomas a Becket to end his problems with the clergy, but was forced instead to do penance at Becket's tomb on the Pope's orders. Embarrassing.

John Wilkes Booth loved the Confederacy and hated Abraham Lincoln. But by the time he and his co-conspirators acted, the South had already lost the war. He couldn't fathom why he wasn't lionized. "A country that groaned beneath this tyranny, and prayed for this end, and yet now behold the cold hand they extend me," he wrote in his diary before his capture. Lincoln's death only made it worse for ex-Confederates. Without him, Northern Republicans brought vengeance down on the South with a ferocity that was alien to Lincoln, putting it under military rule. But in the end, John Wilkes Booth may have gotten his revenge, in the ultimate failure of Reconstruction? Well, that's a little fuzzy.

...and not every assassin's motive is clear. And fuzz opens room for Conspiracy theories or simple insanity. For instance, take James Earl Ray, the petty thief who killed Martin Luther King Jr. He was probably motivated more by money than by obsessive racist rage when he shot and killed the civil rights leader in 1968. He may have just been paid off to prevent riots in Memphis. Obviously, Dr. King's death virtually ended the non-violent tone of the civil rights movement and sparked a "few" riots that some cities still have not yet recovered from.

Then there's World War I

Talk about unintended consequences. Sure Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip's assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian throne, in Sarajevo in 1914 may have helped end Austrian domination of the Balkans, but at the cost of sparking World War I.

King Abdullah of Jordan was assassinated while entering Al Aksa mosque in Jerusalem in 1951 by a Palestinian who feared Abdullah might make peace with the new state of Israel, with whose leaders he had conducted secret talks. His death might have slowed that process but obviously didn't end it. Abdullah's 16-year-old grandson, Hussein, escaped injury, was crowned king and went on to meet secretly with Israeli leaders before making peace four decades later. D'oh!

President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt was gunned down while reviewing a military parade in Cairo in 1981 by anti-American Islamists after he made peace with Israel at Camp David. But Egypt is (still) at peace with Israel, is still the recipient of more than $2+ billion a year in American aid, is still autocratic -- and still largely excludes the Islamic opposition from power.

More Fuzzy Consequences

Other fuzzy consequences lead us to JFK - which gave Lyndon Johnson much more room to push through an aggressive domestic social agenda than Kennedy probably would have. Which has always made me wonder why a hard-core Communist would kill a Democrat pushing for Socialistic branded agendas? Then when LBJ implemented the "Great Society" and expanded the power of the Federal Government - ultimately, it looks like a success for Oswald afterall? Who killed Kennedy then? There were so many people who wanted him dead that all you had to do was print the parade route... which is exactly what they did.

Sure there are cases where the assassin achieved his political goal -- but only because his victim did not die. France's Emperor Napoleon III was just grazed by a fragment of a grenade thrown at his carriage in Paris in 1858 by FeliceOrsini , an ardent Italian nationalist. But the Emperor felt so guilty that he had abandoned the pro-Italian sentiments of his youth that he led France into battle against Austria the next year, a war that resulted in the creation of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.

Then there's all those CIA attempts on Castro. He's still alive - after TEN US Presidents have left office. You're doing great work, guys.

There were two unsuccessful attempts on Gerald Ford. In fact, there were 12 unsuccessful US Presidential assassinations - and, unfortunately, 4 successful ones. Taylor and Harding are still just rumored to be successful assassinations. I think Taylor was... Harding? I don't care.

Bottom line - if you're a world leader, you might want to skip your next parade invitation. An excuse? I don't know - Tell 'em you have to wash your hair or something.