Another crime against humanity: Protecting the Cairo museums

1700 year old Buddha in Afghanistan before the taliban

Remember when the 1700 year old statue of Buddha, in Afghanistan, was blown up by the Taliban? This was not just an attack on a religion by the taliban. It was a crime against all humanity.

After the taliban dynamited the Buddha

It was sickening last week when the Cairo museum had been broken into, but the world was assured that the damage and theft was minimal. And the Egyptian people locked arms to protect the museum until the army could get there and take up posts. It says a lot about the Egyptians that they stood against possible criminals to protect these treasures. It’s sinful, as well as criminal that anyone would do damage to the Cairo museums and landmarks.

When I heard yesterday that there was a possible fire at the museum, I was heartsick.

These people are behaving like barbarians. Even during WWII there were religious and historical sites that were protected and off limits to bombing and damage. For too many of these people, nothing and no one deserves respect.

Cairo Museum of Antiquities

The death mask of King Tut, in the Cario Museum

Ban ROTC from colleges – get a BA in peace instead

ROTC insignia

McCarthy compare’s our soldiers and the ROTC with the Taliban and encourages more studies of peace on college campuses.

Yeah — that’s the ticket! Peace through apologetics and submission!

From Colman McCarthy/The Washington Post

[…] At Notre Dame, on that 1989 visit and several following, I learned that the ROTC academics were laughably weak. They were softie courses. The many students I interviewed were candid about their reasons for signing up: free tuition and monthly stipends, plus the guarantee of a job in the military after college. With some exceptions, they were mainly from families that couldn’t afford ever-rising college tabs.

To oppose ROTC, as I have since my college days in the 1960s, when my school enticed too many of my classmates into joining, is not to be anti-soldier. I admire those who join armies, whether America’s or the Taliban’s: for their discipline, for their loyalty to their buddies and to their principles, for their sacrifices to be away from home. In recent years, I’ve had several Iraq and Afghanistan combat veterans in my college classes. If only the peace movement were as populated by people of such resolve and daring.

Taliban Stimulus Plan Offers Cash for Kills

From the TimesOnline:

“It’s a lot of money for us. We don’t care if we kill foreigners: their blood allows us to feed our families and the more we kill, the more we weaken them. Of course we are going to celebrate this,” said a [Taliban] commander from Ghazni province.

TALIBAN rebels are earning a bounty of up to 200,000 Pakistani rupees (£1,660 [or $2400 USD]) for each Nato soldier they kill, according to insurgent commanders.

The money is said to come from protection rackets, taxes imposed on opium farmers, donors in the Gulf states who channel money through Dubai and from the senior Taliban leadership in Pakistan.

So far this year 213 Nato soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, including 41 British troops, bringing the potential rewards for the Taliban to £350,000.

from thepublicinterest.freedomblogging.com

Taliban commanders said the bounty had more than doubled since the beginning of last year.

The insurgents, who employ “hit and run” tactics against foot patrols and convoys, use paid informants, media reports and the local population to confirm the deaths of Nato soldiers.

“We can’t lie to our commanders: they can check to see if there was a fight in that area. We get money if we capture equipment too. A gun can fetch $1,000 [£690],” said a commander from Khost province who controls about 60 fighters.

The money usually reaches commanders via the traditional hawala transfer system found in many Muslim countries. They then share it among their men and sometimes celebrate with a feast.

Most Taliban commanders deny any financial motive. In a dozen interviews over the past four months, low and midlevel Taliban commanders from provinces where the insurgency is fierce have set out their conditions for ending the violence.

“We are not fighting for money or power. We are fighting to end government corruption, to rid this country of foreign troops, and we want a return to sharia law,” said a Kandahar commander.

Okay, we get it already. WE ARE RACISTS and TERRORISTS for disagreeing.

Julian Bond

by Tonia Moxley

RADFORD — In a speech Wednesday, NAACP Chairman Julian Bond called on defenders of civil rights to support the country’s first black president as he faces what is expected to be tough second year in office.

Bond’s remarks at Radford University’s fourth annual celebration of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday came a day after the Democratic Party lost the late Ted Kennedy’s Massachusetts Senate seat to Republican Scott Brown, and with it, the party’s filibuster-proof majority.

The election puts Obama’s health care overhaul in jeopardy and has caused speculation that public opinion may be turning against the president.

While “black faces in high places” give reason for hope, Bond, the 70-year-old founder of the storied Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, argued that “racism is alive and well for every nonwhite American, including the president.”

Obama’s historic election has ironically caused complacency among some civil rights supporters, who see it is a sign that racism in America is dead.

But that same election has energized “the Taliban wing” of the Republican Party, Bond said, from anti-government groups such as the “birthers,” who challenge Obama’s citizenship, to “tea party” members who call for the dismantling of much of the federal government.

Bond cited a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center that found “the number of hate groups operating in the United States continued to rise in 2008 and has grown by 54 percent since 2000 — an increase fueled last year by immigration fears, a failing economy and the successful campaign of Barack Obama.”

While the recession has hurt all Americans, blacks still suffer more than their white counterparts. Today the unemployment rate for blacks stands at 15.7 percent, compared with 9.5 percent among whites, Bond said.

Infant mortality and murder rates are up in black communities across the country, Bond said. Black homeownership is declining rapidly, and with it, the wealth of the black middle class.

“This didn’t happen by accident,” Bond said.

He accused mortgage lenders of targeting black neighborhoods with high-interest subprime loans and pointed to discrimination suits recently filed by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People against some of the country’s largest banking firms. Bond has led the NAACP for 11 years.

Obama “is paying a high price today for not solving in one year the problems it took eight years to create,” Bond said. “He needs time and support.”

Bond drew parallels between the civil rights movement and Obama’s battles for reform. He called for a return to the values of the struggle against segregation: “Litigate. Organize. Mobilize. Coalition,” Bond said.

“King did not march alone.”