By Fred Reed

I find a loutish American general, James Mattis, martial feminist, talking about the fun he has killing Afghans. Yes, fun, wheeee-oooo! and ooo-rah! too. He says, “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil,” adding “guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyways. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.” What must he do with prisoners?

A joyous killer, possibly orgasmic. Note mandatory flagly background, pickle suit, and stupid colorful gewgaws so he looks like a goddam stamp collecton. Stern gaze is necessary to become a general. From defending the Constitution to the pleasure of watching Afghans die: The military has come a long way.

I’ll guess he fell just shy of graduating from third grade. He sure ain’t much of a general, no ways, I reckon. Just the fellow I want representing me in the world.

Does General Dworkin-Mattis speak of manhood? Odd, since his military is being badly outfought by the unmanly Afghans that are fun to kill. By the Pentagon’s figures the US military outnumbers the resistance several to one. The US has complete control of the air, enjoying F16s, helicopter gun-ships, transport choppers, and Predator drones, as well as body armor, night-vision gear, heavy weaponry, medevac, hospitals, good food, and PXs. The Afghans have only AKs, RPGs, C4, and balls. Yet they are winning, or at least holding their own. How glorous. Continue Reading »

By Anwaar Hussain

There is something wrong with me.

I see the everyday killing of Shias, Ahmadis and Christians in my fatherland and something in me recoils in horror. While the gruesome acts of these killers are met with a mute applause by most of my countrymen, why is it that these revolt me?

They tell me I am a heretic.

I tell them to please open their eyes and look around. That they will find every city, town, village and family now infested with these bigots. That these pious killers appeal to the worst passions of the human heart. That they sow the seeds of dissonance and hatred wherever they go. That sectarian hatred is only the beginning and a time is not very far when, in the name of God, they will get brother to denounce brother, wives to inform on their husbands, mothers to accuse their children and neighbors to spy on their neighbors. I tell them that given the power these extremists will punish dissent with whip, chain, and slaughter.  They laugh at me and tell me scornfully that I am a heretic. They say why should mercy be shown to someone whom God will burn in eternal fire? They promise me dark dungeons as my ultimate abode where my flesh will rot in the clasp of chains and flames will devour me forever. Continue Reading »

By Anwaar Hussain

While the American colonial goliath lies wheezing at the callused feet of its adversaries in Afghanistan, its commander General Stanley McChrystal has been fired by President Obama for his indiscrete comments to the media. Not many tears are being shed on the general’s fall. Almost everyone who is any one in Washington agrees with the President, with Maureen Dowd of The Times going so far as calling McChrystal a ‘serially insubordinate’ officer.

There is a storm on in Washington after the firing of the general regarding the Afghan imbroglio. Obtuse statements are flying every which way. We are not going to withdraw but, we are going to withdraw but, we are going to stay on but, we are going to partially start withdrawing but, we are winning but, we are not losing but, we are talking to the Taliban but, we are not talking to the Taliban but…etc. etc.  Regardless however, the deniers of America’s huge Afghan pratfall continue trying to flog new life into the panting behemoth.

But for its arrogance, one would have taken no pleasure in the humbling of the titan. After all, it is supposedly the ‘moral leader’ of the world. Yet so far gone was the giant’s haughtiness in the Neocon’s era–taking on the weak, bombing them back to stone age and announcing sneeringly to the world, ‘we don’t do body count’–that one awaits the occasion with a wincing anticipation. For the event will scatter near and far, bits and pieces of the legend of American supremacy and the mirage of an empire. Continue Reading »

By Anwaar Hussain

Despite incessant interludes of chaos, Afghanistan was not always this rough, blood splattered land of wild hordes charging their steeds in its desolate stretches. When Europe was backwards, impoverished and irrelevant territory, the region today called Central Asia, with Afghanistan at its southern tip and ancient trade routes interweaving it, was a land of much wealth, culture, scholarly attainment and prized international trade.

Writing way back in the year 1900, poet James Elroy Flecker summed up the view the Western world held of the region at the time;

Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells,
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly through the silence beat the bells,
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.

Dating back over 6000 years, some of the earliest indications of mining anywhere in the world come from Afghanistan.  Afghanistan, for example, has always been a well-known source of precious and semi-precious stones and above all its lapis lazuli. The blue lapis lazuli stone in the famous funeral mask of the Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen was reportedly exported from Badakhshan in Afghanistan to Egypt in 1300 BC. Continue Reading »

By Anwaar Hussain

So what do we have in the aftermath of the Lahore massacre in Pakistan? No protests against the killings, no joint condemnation from the flag bearers of Islam who foam at the mouths at a mere hint of any ‘danger to Islam’, no conciliatory gestures towards the victims, no nothing.

We have this instead.

According to a BBC Urdu report, a gathering of the leaders of 13 religious and political parties in Lahore claimed that the attack on Ahmedis on May 28 was part of a conspiracy to repeal the laws against them. The meeting also condemned Nawaz Sharif, the twice elected ex-Prime Minister of Pakistan and now the leader of the opposition, for having sympathized with the Ahmadis and calling them his ‘brothers’.

The gathering was attended by the leading divines of the Jamaat-i-Islami, Jamiat-i-ulema-i-Islam Fazlur Rahman group, Jamaatud Dawa and Markazi Jamaat-i-Ahl-i-Sunnat among others–almost the entire cast on the honor roll of divinity’s who’s who in Pakistan.

Click here to read the report first and then reach for the nearest sick bag.

Let us see what the report means in plain English. Continue Reading »

By Masood Hasan

The Goddess of Despair and Despondency has taken up permanent residence in this 63-year-old-country which lurches from crisis to crisis every single minute of the day. She has spread her shroud of death over this land and watches from afar as we implode within and impale without on poisoned spears that inject venom into our cancer-ridden system-less systems. It is so clear now that we do not need any enemies. No one could do a better job than us on ourselves.

Surely amongst the country’s metros, Lahore must particularly occupy a throne of shame for first allowing the bloodiest carnage one can remember and then the well-perfected act of passing the blame, looking perplexed and all the while ensuring that no one is held responsible. Were they to do that, the skies would cave in and which government wants that? So, as per script, while the government bluffed its way through another set of well-honed lies, the great custodians of law and order were the last to arrive on the scene – an inexplicable hour and a half despite frantic calls from the trapped people who continued to beg the fast asleep 1122s and 15s and then waited in growing panic for succor to arrive. Any succor. When it did, the shameless Punjab Police then let off a volley of gunfire to celebrate their ‘victory’ setting in motion more panic amongst the survivors and the wounded. What victory indeed? In another country where human beings live they would have been charged and dismissed. Not here. Continue Reading »

By Anwaar Hussain

Hate has struck yet again this Black Friday. Hundreds of innocent human beings have been killed and maimed by the hate mongers in the name of God—a God in whose praise, worship and flattery, the killers doused themselves with the divine perfume of innocent blood. I have thought and thought and thought about this god of the killers but I still don’t know which god sanctions such ghastly bloodbath.

Yet, I think and think and think about the god of the killers.

None know whether this god has a thousand arms, or a hundred heads, or is adorned with garlands of living snakes, or is armed with clubs, or with swords, or whether he inhales air, or vacuum or exhales fire or brimstone. But what everyone now does know is that the god of the killers is a most vengeful, savage and ruthless deity and craves the blood and flesh of innocent people. Continue Reading »