Thursday, June 23, 2005

Does anyone remember Ari Halberstam

The media highlights certain stories and burries others. I just want to know if any of my readers can tell me who Ari Halberstam is and why he died ? No looking at the internet.

17 comments:

Esther said...

Was that his name? Doesn't ring a bell with me, I'm afraid. But i have a lousy memory. Blame lack of sleep over last 4 years.

beakerkin said...

Yoish the fact is many of us have forgotten. Ari Halberstam was machine gunned in a van in NYC by a Muslim. We have also forgotten about the El Al ticket counter in LA . Never forget that this happens here as well.

Anonymous said...

Sorry Beak dont remember the Ari story I do however, remember the El Al incedent.

Beak it is unfortunate but the media insures that the American people forget these things by down playing them and then telling the American People we have to understand these people were making a political statement.

If it were up to me we would see the scenes from 9-11 everyday to insure we never forget just who these people are and what they stand for. Sorry to say but the news media with their freedom of press have done their dead level best to destroy this country every since the 1960's. Who was it that changed the word terrorist to militants, insurgents,freedom fighters.

No we should never forget any one of these incedents.

Jason Pappas said...

Of course, I remember the Avi Halberstam story since the media at first tried to claim it was road rage. It was clearly a terrorist act as the facts eventually showed overwhelmingly. The ramp from the FDR to the Brooklyn Bridge is now named the “Avi Halberstam Ramp” but I often wonder how many people notice that and know why.

I’ve written in the past about how I used to walk across the World Trade Center plaza into the Marriot Hotel on a regular basis. When I did so I wondered how many people noticed the memorial to the ’93 WTC attack tucked away in the corner. Obviously, most people forgot just like most New Yorkers drive on the ramp but never think about the life that was lost there.

But, Beak, you knew I might have remembered?

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

Halberstam was the victim of one of the 16 or so Islamic terrorist attacks on American citizens that went unanswered during that long, dark period of counter-terrorism bungling and bureaucratic ineptitude that history will forever call "the Clinton Administration."

beakerkin said...

The proxy wars were the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan and the Contras. Greneda was not a proxy war as we did it ourselves.

The media did a terible job on the Halberstam story and the El Al ticket counter. I assure you had the roles been reversed you would see a tele movie .

Warren said...

Drew, are you on drugs?

"Whether or not you consider the Sandanistas reasonable philosophically is irrelevent: they were popularly supported.

Yea sure, thats why they were voted out and never regained substansive power.

Even the damned Marxists didn't think the Sandanistas had real popular support. socialistworld.net

Warren said...

Drew said:
"The Sandanistas were deposed in an election, hence clearly indicating that the illegal and vile US interference in Nicaragua was certainly not pro-Democracy."

Oh, clearly! And e-vile teams of CIA agents swarm their polls and cast illegal ballots in their elections to this day, swamping the polls.

How could I have missed that.

LMAO

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

Its pretty incredible to here you praise the support for the mujahedeen... considering the fact that such characters developed into the most thoroughly undemocratic and oppresive regime, one that in fact was the force behind the 9/11 attacks. Note the fact that you always 'drop' the fact that you are from New York City and you have seen what these terrorists can do... the mujahedeen ARE those terrorists.

Try again. None of the 9/11 hijackers were Afghans. Osama Bin Laden's "Al Qaeda al Subah" mercenary group was a co-op between Saudi Arabian Wahabbist charities and Pakistani intelligence services, comprised of mostly Arab and entirely non-Afghan fighters.

The United States rather openly supplied weapons and training to anti-Soviet Afghans in the northern sectors of Afghanistan, where they could effectively disrupt Russian supply and communication lines while Osama Bin Laden and his Arab "mujahedeen" mostly hoarded poppy heroin in caves to the south, never really engaging the Russians as much as the local Afghans resistant to Wahabbi Islam.

This is why when we returned to Afghanistan in 2001, we had tactical allies on the ground already, the Northern Alliance, Afghans we had previously helped against the Russians who were already fighting the Wahabbist Taliban and their al Qaeda fighters and had been for years since the Soviet withdrawal.

As far as bashing Clinton, what else would you say about a President that cut off assistance to anti-communist, anti-Arab terrorist militias in Afghanistan, recognized the ultra-religious (and foreign) Taliban backed by Arab terrorist muscle as the de facto governing body of an entire country split by civil war, and watched, rather disinterestedly, as over 120,000 mostly Arab anti-American Muslims came through Afghanistan to train for terrorism in OBL's camps over a period of 5 years (1995-2000) before settling tehmselves in over 60 countries poised to strike? While people trained in these camps or affiliated with the organizations that ran these camps struck Americans or American interests, not once, not twice, but 16 fucking times during the Clinton years?

If you're a Democrat, you're likely to believe capturing Osama Bin Laden (after passing up several offers to have him extradited from the Sudan and Saudi Arabia during the Clinton years) will result in little candy chews falling from rainbows in the sky as we skip hunky-dory down streets of gold towards the Emerald Palace.

But if you're not a Democrat, a little thing called common sense kicks in and says "what about the literal army of terrorists spread through 60 countries poised to strike?"

I couldn't give a shit about OBL. Hiding in a cave afraid to touch a satellite phone is a smaller threat to us than his legions of mostly autonomous terrorists that were allowed to be churned out of his camps while Clinton was dipping his cigars in fat chicks and providing air support to Al Qaeda in Kosovo.

Bash Clinton too much? Is there such a thing?

Jason Pappas said...

Viva beamish! Just a few facts when you need them most. Besides, we're still living with Clinton's legacy of inaction and ineptitude.

For me, the Islamist threat is the most important issue. “It’s the war, stupid.”

beakerkin said...

I want to add something that Mr Beamish left out. Ahmed Shah Massoud was the key figure in the Afghan resistance. He was assasinated by Bin Ladden on 9-10.

There were two groups of Contras. The second group was primarily Indians led by Eden Pastora. The left likes fictitious indigenous people ( Palestinians) but says zero when the Sandanistas massacre Indians. As for drug running FARC is financing its operations today via that method. Words said by John Kerry on the Subject. 0

beakerkin said...

Drew

Kindly remove your head from your tail. Shah Massoud was the key figure and headed the Northern Alliance. Bin Ladden did little or no fighting. Beamish is on the money again.

Warren said...

Drew said:
" Fighting aside, was bin Ladin and were many of his men trained and funded by the US?"

To you and Robert:
And exactly what does that have to do with anything?

Are you saying that we cannot afford to do anything because of unintended consequences?

If that's the case, then I suggest you two stay in bed the rest of your lives... Oh, wait a minute, that might have an unintended consequence!

You can call it ignored if you wish, just like the Democrats ignore the "FACT" that cutting off all military aid to Southeast Asia resulted in the deaths of millions.

So don't try and tell us you have the moral high ground or pretend you are all-seeing!

Jason Pappas said...

I am tough on Clinton for his foreign policy failures and weaknesses. (I’m not too displeased with his domestic policy).

However, I’m also a critic of Bush for not being tough enough. His relationship with Saudi Arabia is morally appalling and harmful. His failure to secure the borders and crack down on illegal immigration is gross negligence. I’ve said this in the past and I’ve never been called disloyal or a basher of anyone. Oh, but that’s not the kind of criticism you had in mind was it? Besides, the Dems are just as bad or worse.

While leftists distort our support for the Afghans fighting the Soviets (bin Laden wasn’t trained by us), it is a fair criticism to say the Republicans (and Democrats) didn’t understand the threat of Islam. As a matter of fact both still can’t come to grips with the nature of this supremacist warrior ideology. So who says we on the right can’t criticize our own? I’m tough on anyone who isn’t doing what’s needed to fight our enemy. But I’ll also give partial credit when due.

beakerkin said...

Rob and Drew what part of Shah Massoud don't you understand. Bin Ladden and Company were a tangent in the Afghan resistance.

What do you propose we let the Commies butcher the Afghans. They did it anyway but the policy was correct and I was an avid supporter of the mujahadeen .

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

Fighting aside, was bin Ladin and were many of his men trained and funded by the US?

In a word, no.

Bin Laden set up his "Al Qaeda Al Subah" jihadist networking group as a separate entity from any American assistance, funded by Wahabbist charities and coordinating training with Pakistan's ISI. Al Qaeda the terrorist group came later, after Ayman al Zawahiri merged his Egyptian Islamic Jihad group with Bin Laden's mujihadeen financial and logistical contacts within the Islamic world, coincidentally (or not) with a conference of terrorist groups hosted by Saddam Hussein in Baghdad that Zawahiri attended in that fourth year of Clintonian intelligence and military budget cuts that history will forever call "1996."

But during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Islamic unity in jihad being his rallying cry, Bin Laden wanted nothing to do with Americans, and further would not deal with Afghan resistance groups who "tainted themselves" by accepting assistance and friendship from non-Muslims (Americans). While lightly-armed Afghan men (and women) were busy making life hell for their communist invaders, Bin Laden, battle-shy coward that he is, was basically working a phone bank in Karachi.

Bin Laden wanted what Bill Clinton eventually later gave him - a lack of US intervention, by proxy or otherwise, in Afghanistan. This allowed al Qaeda to become basically the religious police of the Taliban, a sort of twisted version of Saudi Arabia's own brutal Mutaween.

As far as the Afghan heroin trade, just about every farmer in the land was a part of that, but the Taliban took that over, hoarding poppy harvests while forbidding others to grow, artificially escalating the cost of heroin for their own benefit by monopolizing control over the supply. Poppy production is on the rise in Afghanistan again, not because the Taliban were so good at stopping the drug trade before they were deposed as much as they were good at wiping out their competition, and now it's an open market, and Afghan farmers are going back to doing what Afghans have done for centuries - grow poppies for the smack trade. I want to stress that I didn't say the NA tribes weren't involved in the heroin trade. I'm just saying that the Taliban subsumed their own competitors in that trade under strict control. Our forces in Afghanistan in late 2001, early 2002 were finding shitloads of stashed poppy harvests in Taliban strongholds.

Warren said...

Thank you, Mr Beamish.