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Saturday, June 11, 2016
Outrage Over Executive Order 13603
A young man is skinned alive, a sign of new Taliban brutality
A young man is skinned alive, a sign of new Taliban brutality
A member of a breakaway faction of the Taliban guards a gathering in the Shindand district of Herat province in Afghanistan on May 27, 2016. (Allauddin Khan/AP)
Local officials in Ghor province said one of Ahmad’s distant relatives was suspected ofkilling a former Taliban commander. In December, militants dragged Ahmad from his house and cut out his eyes in retaliation.
Ahmad was still alive and screaming when the attackers began carving the skin off his chest, leaving his heart exposed. Then they threw the 21-year old laborer off a 10-story cliff, officials said.
“They skinned him alive,” said Ruqiya Naeel, a member of parliament from the area.
The Taliban denied involvement in the grisly crime, the aftermath of which was documented in a recently circulated video and photograph.
But even so, Ahmad’s death is the latest in a string of violent acts across Afghanistan over the past six months. Rattled officials say the 15-year war is taken an increasingly brutal turn.
“The amount of casualties, particularly with civilians, is a crime — a crime against humanity, a crime against Afghanistan, and a crime against our people,” a somber Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said in a meeting with reporters last week.
Since 2001, the United States has invested more than $100 billion building Afghan military and police forces, a judicial system and schools in hopes of moving the country closer to normality. But all that spending appears to have done little to slow a cycle of rage and revenge that has made Afghanistan one of the world’s most dangerous countries.
Horrific violence is nothing new in Afghanistan.
Public executions were common when the Taliban ruled the country in the 1990s, and tens of thousands of Afghans have been killed during the post-2001 Taliban insurgency. Afghanistan, like neighboring Pakistan, also has a long history of cultural and religious conservatism associated with violent retribution.
But analysts say the scale of the brutality continues to evolve as the Taliban becomes more fragmented and pushes out into additional areas of Afghanistan. Younger Taliban commanders also now operate more independently and are increasingly inspired by other brutal acts easily viewed on the Internet, the say.
Over the past month, after a U.S. drone strike killed Taliban leader Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, militant groups have hijacked at least five buses, dragging passengers into the road to execute dozens of them, especially if they or members of their families were suspected of being police officers or soldiers.
There also have been three recent deadly attacks on Afghan courthouses or judicial employees. Last month in Jowzjan province, a reported Taliban militant armed with an assault rifle shot and killed a burqa-clad woman for alleged adultery, according to a video of the crime posted to YouTube.
“There are now tens of examples of public lashings, executions, and killings,” said Abdul Jama Jama, a provincial council member in Ghazni province.
In recent days, the United Nations, Amnesty International and the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission also have expressed concern over what they view as a hardening culture of violence here.
Brig. Gen. Charles H. Cleveland, chief spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said some of the recent reports of violence “looked like the days pre-9/11.” But he cautioned that “the base line is pretty high” for sweeping assumptions about whether brutality generally is worsening.
Still, Afghan officials and analysts are worried as the violence also expands into areas of Afghanistan that until recently had remained relatively safe.
A push by the Taliban, dominated by ethnic Pashtuns, into northern and central Afghanistan, where large populations of ethnic Tajiks and Uzbeks reside, has proved especially destabilizing, officials said.
Once the Taliban settles into an area, its fighters often begin aggravating historical rivalries among ethnic groups as well as stoking more-localized feuds that in some cases have simmered for decades. That is another reason for the growing brutality, officials said.
“They are changing their war tactics,” said Shah Waliullah Adeeb, a former governor of Badakhshan province. “They are trying to show people that the government is weak . . . and show that they are in charge.”
But some analysts say that more fundamental — and dangerous — changes within the Taliban may be leading to greater upheaval.
As the original leaders of the insurgency die, they are being replaced by younger commanders who appear less interested in maintaining ties to the local areas in which they are fighting. These fighters also are more connected through the Internet to the global ambitions of militant Islamic groups, which is resulting in some Taliban commanders’ attempting to borrow the fear tactics used by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
This month, for example, local officials said a group of Taliban fighters killed a high school student in Ghazni province by cutting off his nose and ears after accusing him of being a spy.
“The Taliban had always been the village homeboys, but I think that is changing quite dramatically,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior security and intelligence fellow at the Brookings Institution. “But the younger generation is more accepting of violence, less remembering of the horrors of the civil war [of the 1990s], and much more socialized to the global agenda.”
Other analysts caution that the recent violence is more a symptom of the broader Afghan culture, where a pattern of revenge and killing has been common and disputes among families or villages often have little to do with the war.
“People want to settle old scores,” said Najib Mahmood, a law professor at Kabul University. “You can hardly find any house that does not own a gun because of the war, and people use a gun even for a minor issue.”
That historical inability to break the cycle of revenge is one reason that human rights groups and European ambassadors were angered by Ghani’s recent decision to resume executions of Taliban figures.
Last month, after a truck bomb killed 64 people in Kabul, the government hanged five Taliban prisoners. Since then, the Taliban has pointed to the executions to justify its attacks on the Afghan judiciary.
Some analysts also worry that President Obama made a mistake in ordering last month’s drone strike that killed Mansour, the Taliban commander.
They note that violence in Afghanistan escalated last summer after it was announced that the Taliban’s other former leader, Mohammad Omar, had died two years earlier.
They now fear that the trend will accelerate as new Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada seeks to consolidate his power.
Akhundzada is an Islamic cleric and the Taliban’s former top judge. But many analysts consider him to be even more rigid than Mansour, who was a former Taliban government minister who witnessed the carnage of Afghanistan’s civil war in the 1990s.
“Mansour believed a terrible outcome for Afghanistan would be a protracted civil war in Kabul and the north,” Felbab-Brown said. “Many of the younger commanders don’t have that restraint.”
Akhundzada, in contrast, in the past issued religious edicts authorizing suicide bombings as well as Taliban-on-Taliban executions to deal with dissenters, according to Western intelligence assessments.
“The Taliban under Haibatullah will become even more dangerous,” said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a Pakistan-based expert on militancy.
“It will take decades to see Afghanistan become a normal country again,” he said
Thursday, June 9, 2016
IN THE WAKE OF SAN JOSE, PATRIOTS MUST STEP UP TO PROTECT ALL AMERICANS AGAINST ASSAULT BY VIOLENT THUGS
IN THE WAKE OF SAN JOSE, PATRIOTS MUST STEP UP TO PROTECT ALL AMERICANS AGAINST ASSAULT BY VIOLENT THUGS
An article posted in the morning hours of June 09, 2016, [HERE] is titled:
San Jose Undercover Cops: “Trump Supporters were running for their lives – We were unable to help”…
In light of several key factors arising from the article at Conservative Treehouse, Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes wishes to issue a statement, which I will post below. However, let us first set the tone by viewing a video clip from YouTube:
Under Cover San Jose Officer #1:
[…] Throughout the afternoon and evening I watched several individuals
wearing “Trump” articles of clothing getting punched, kicked and pushed.
Under Cover #2: […] I
was assigned to the Covert Response Unit and dressed in a plainclothes
capacity. … As time came closer to 18:00 more protesters arrived; mostly
younger males and females between the ages of 14 to 25. … some began
burning the United States flag in the middle of the street. It became
inherently dangerous for anyone wearing a hat or T-Shirt in support of
Trump. I observed Trump supporters being spit on, objects being thrown
at them, punched, kicked and even robbed of their personal belongings.
In these instances I observed victims running for their lives because
protesters began adopting the mob mentality and attacking people. I was
unable to make contact with any of these victims due to my undercover
capacity and fear for my own safety as well.
I strongly recommend going to the original article and following
their embedded links, where readers will learn about the Mayor’s
complicity in the police stand-down and the official policy for police
to allow this to take place outside a Trump for President rally on June
02. Example:
San Jose Police Chief Garcia admitted
his officers were instructed not to stop violent protesters from
beating the Trump rally attendees. In addition the San Jose Mayor has
openly admitted to approving the San Jose police departments plans, and
blamed Donald Trump for having the audacity to have a rally in “his city“.
Do go to the original site and
check the other embedded links to get yet more insight into what
transpired, and did not transpire but should have. And if you want to go
up a level or two in your perception of today’s America, check out
Michael Shaw’s outstanding work on the Globalization of California.Message From Stewart Rhodes
No American, anywhere, whether you agree with their views or not, should be attacked for expressing their God given (and Constitution protected) rights of free speech and assembly, and their right to participate in our political process. And no police officer, who has sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution, should obey any order to not protect the rights of people to peaceably assemble and express their views, and should refuse any order to stand by and do nothing as violent, criminal thugs assault Americans who are simply exercising their rights. It is a disgrace to have the police obey such orders, and an act of treason for the politicians to give such orders.If officers are so outnumbered that they are concerned for their own safety, that is one thing, but to not intervene because some oath breaking, partisan scumbag politician orders them to stand down, so the politician’s thuggish foot-soldiers have a free hand to terrorize and assault other Americans, is inexcusable. Whatever happened to “Protect and Serve”? The fundamental justification for having police, or having government at all, is to protect people against predatory violence. These violent communist and La Raza racist thugs are the true “Brownshirts” of modern America, attempting to use violence and intimidation to shut down free speech and assembly.
If the police will not protect Americans from violent assault meant to punish them for their political views, and meant to silence them by force, then Americans will have to protect themselves, and each other, from such violence.
I call on all patriotic Americans to step up and protect the weak, the elderly, the vulnerable among them against these thugs, wherever they strike. Veterans, you have a particular obligation and duty, under your oath, to step up and protect your fellow Americans by stepping in between them and these thugs. In the absence of police protection, Veterans need to step in the gap and form up five to eight man security teams who can serve as escorts and rescue people from being beaten.
As anyone versed in defensive tactics or combatives will tell you, whenever anyone is sucker punched there is a very real and serious risk that they will fall and then hit their head on the concrete, on a parking block, on a curb, on a parked car, etc and that secondary impact can, and does, result in death. A person can also be stomped and kicked to death by a mob in short order. These are deadly threat mob assaults and must be treated as such.
Anyone attending any event targeted by these radical leftist extremists needs to realize they are in a tactical situation that requires them to prepare for the worst and to take steps to protect themselves. They should go in groups of four or more, and among them needs to be people who are fit enough, and trained enough, to hold their own in a melee. If you are a fit, strong veteran, you have a duty to be the “sheepdog” and walk with those who are less able to defend themselves. Go in groups, and be ready to defend yourselves and others.
Any Oath Keeper who goes out and protects people who are under such threat of assault is doing the right thing. And we need to be willing to do that for ANY American under such threat, even if we disagree with their political views (for example, even if you disagree with Democrats who will be attending the DNC, or any other Democrat gathering, you should be willing to protect them if they are assaulted by violent radicals, and the same for Republicans attending the RNC). This org is non-partisan for a very good reason. We must stand for the rights of all Americans, at all times, in all places.
When we stepped up in Ferguson, MO and protected Natalie, of Natalie’s Cakes and More (who happens to be a black woman), and her neighbors, we didn’t ask them what political party they belonged to, or what their politics were. It didn’t matter. We protected them because it was the right thing to do, and because no American should be assaulted, murdered by arsonists, or raped, robbed, or looted. Same here.
I will be holding an urgent Oath Keepers BOD and leadership call tomorrow night to discuss this situation and how we can help. But all patriots, regardless of what group they are in, need to step up and protect people against such violence and attempts to use force to chill their speech.
These are intolerable acts of thuggery that must be stopped.
For the Republic,
Stewart Rhodes
PS – the San Jose Police Department has issued a statement, defending their inaction, saying:
While several physical assaults did occur, the police personnel on scene had the difficult task of weighing the need to immediately apprehend the suspect(s) against the possibility that police action involving the use of physical force under the circumstances would further insight the crowd and produce more violent behavior.What a load of bull. I just got off the phone with veteran police officers and tactical trainers Greg McWhirter (former Indianapolis cop and current Montana corrections) and John Karriman (Missouri Police Academy Defensive Tactics instructor) and both of them stated that standing down is exactly opposite of what the San Jose police should have done, and only emboldened the thugs, producing more violent behavior, since the thugs could clearly see that the police would do nothing to stop them. The right answer was to drop a hammer on the first thugs to commit assault, including using less than lethal rubber baton shotgun rounds if needed (thugs hate and fear shotguns) and pepper balls. Make an example of a few, and the rest tend to back off (just like any gaggle of bullies). The excuse given by the department is akin to a cowardly husband saying “don’t resist Martha, or it will make them angry, just let them have their way” which usually results in rape and murder of both of them. It gives the thugs a green light and the thrill of doing as they wish right in front of the police. What’s next? Will “politically correct” cops let someone be beaten to death in front of them out of fear of inciting the crowd to more violent behavior? Given how fast someone can be beaten to death by a mob, that nobody was killed here was just blind luck, and certainly not because of anything the San Jose Police Department did.
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