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Is The Independent really concerned about the plight of the Afghan women?

martin | 02.10.2006 23:19 | Anti-militarism | Anti-racism | Gender | World

comparing The Independent and Mail on Sunday's front page articles on Afghanistan

Where speaking out is murder for women_26 Sep 06
Where speaking out is murder for women_26 Sep 06

Britain's Vietnam_1 Oct 06
Britain's Vietnam_1 Oct 06


The first picture below is from The Independent's front page on September 26. In light of the recent developments in Afghanistan, one wonders whether Independent's real concern is to cover up for a humiliating military defeat rather than caring for the well-being of Afghan women. In fact, the rabidly right-wing Mail on Sunday's front page on Afghanistan on October 1 paints a much less deceptive picture (see picture 2).

martin

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Point?

03.10.2006 11:16

Martin, do you think it would be a good thing is the Taliban secured a military victory and were therefore able to stone women to death in football stadiums again?

Qwerty


Are you serious?

03.10.2006 12:15

The question may as easily be asked of you. What is your position on women's rights in Afghanistan? If the gains that have been made are to stand any chance of not being completely rolled back, then you and many others will have to support the war in Afghanistan rather than just gloating about the prospect of British military defeat by the Taliban.

The Independent is all over the place regarding Afghanistan. It bemoans the failure there but is quite happy at other times to use the very fact of UK troops in Afghanistan as evidence of unjust UK foreign policy (as in a cartoon by Glen Brown last week, associating it as a Blair-shaped bomb with Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza and Lebanon as its victims). The main purpose of its coverage is merely to blame the UK government. If there were no way to tie the suffering, however tenuously to the uK, US or Israel it would simply not be interested - as its paltry coverage of Sudan compared to Israel demonstrates.

There are criticisms to be made over the strategy in Afghanistan, I have no doubt. But if you opposed and opposed the war against the Taliban then you are in no position to feign concern for the rights of women there. Real gains had been made in the past few years, and they are under severe attack there. Do you care about that? Do you appreciate that the Taliban will not be stopped by a peace protest in Britain or a letter to the Guardian?

Robert Stanfield
mail e-mail: roberttstanfield@hotmail.com


the New Reich responses from 'qwerty' and 'Robert Stanfield'

03.10.2006 17:23

After Blair's massive victory over his opponents on the 23 Sep, and the New Reich conference afterwards, his thugs are loud and proud here once again.

Every piece of propaganda used to justify Blair's war of extermination in Afghanistan has since been exposed as a lie, most of all any concern over so-called 'rights for women'. However, the relatively closed nature of Afghanistan serves Blair well, allowing his goons to make any claim about the situation there. No problem, just consider Iraq.

Prior to Blair's genocide, Iraq was a secular nation with excellent rights for women. Blair's deal with Iran (for both were partners in the invasion) was that the rights of women would be rolled back, albeit not so far as in Blair's, Bush's, and Israel's favorite muslim state, Saudi Arabia.

Women have suffered the most horrific fate as a consequence of Blair's invasion of Iraq. There is no dispute about this, so Blair's goons have been ordered to focus on Afghanistan, where life for women across the vast majority of the land has changed no one iota (the goons always focus on life in the ex-soviet city region). Of course, the goons fail to point out that the puppet administration of Afghanistan has passed numerous laws AGAINST women's rights since gaining power.

The taliban, of course, were a western creation put together by our proxy, Pakistan. The idea was to breed a super-strain of extremist 'muslim' that would be genetically designed to keep our 'enemies' out of Afghanistan. However, requirements changed, and our interest in Afghanistan moved to other priorities. The taliban were invited to the US, and there given the same deal as Pakistan- namely co-operate on your knees, or be "bombed back to the stone age". They lacked the central authority that allowed a happy response to Blair and Bush's threat, and the rest is history.

The Independent serves the self same purpose as The Guardian, namely dishing out carefully targetted propaganda to liberal 'dribblers'. If the 'bleeding heart' liberals refuse to back 'our boys', then maybe they'll back 'rights for muslim women'. After all, it is assumed (correctly) that those that choose to read these papers have the memory of a goldfish.

Blair wants a war based world. Every problem to be solved with cluster bombs, nukes, and genetic weapons. He cannot do this alone. We have to be the morons to empower him.

The coming genocide of Iran (where millions will die) will be justified to each distinctive sector of the populace according to their mental weaknesses. What does 'pirate' push here on a regular basis? And how quickly do recent horrors get expunged. Blair and Israel desroyed a whole nation with their holocaust in Lebanon. The chain of events for this extermination began with the vile racist Israelis exterminating families relaxing on the beach, but when I wrote a comment at the time detailing the evil of the Israeli action, this was deleted by the Blair-supporting censors of Indymedia UK, along with many comments from others.

The people that write and publish The Independent experienced orgasms of joy when Israel cluster bombed all human habitation areas of Southern Lebanon, ensuring that generation after generation of muslim mothers will watch their children die the most horrible deaths. Zionist terrorists (like the ones seen signing, and singing and dancing over the cluster bombs being prepped for use on Lebanese children) control every major newspaper, radio station, and TV channel in the UK. 'Master race' ideologies are nothing new for the Human Race, and have been responsible for the very worst crimes agains humanity for thousands of years.

At any time of significant war on the Earth, look to the people in power on the exterminating side, and see how they justified the mass slaughter of non-tribe humans. Today is no different. TODAY IS NO DIFFERENT.

YOU are told that the muslims are our enemy. YOU are told that the muslims are stupid. YOU are told that the muslims are backwards. YOU are told that the muslims are uncivilised. YOU are told that the muslims mistreat their women and/or children. YOU are told that the muslims are planning for our destruction. YOU are told that the muslims don't value life like we do. YOU are told that a muslim life is of MUCH lower value than ours (FACT- when a muslim kills a jew or christian, compensation is in the tens of millions, but when a jew or christion kills a muslim, compensation is in the hundreds of dollars).

Learn what 'red flags' are. Blair, and his media goons, raise dozens of red flags every day. Now compare our time with that just before ANY war of extermination seen in Human History. You will find an identical match.

You KNOW that Blair is going to attack Iran, but you lack foreknowledge of the circumstances. Now, with Blair sending a massive proxy US fleet to Iran for 'exercises', more scenarios seem possible, including the old 'escalation' tactic where the US 'accidently' shoots down more civilian Iranian airliners (but The Independent tells you this is OK, because the US always says "sorry"), and then fakes an Iranian attack on the fleet (which The Independent tells you gives Blair the right to genocide Iran).

So expect the usual New Reich thugs to howl in favour of every piece of pro-war propaganda produced by The Independent, The Guardian, Channel 4 News, and every marxist outlet. Wait for the usual suspects like Noam Chomsky to pronounce "I'm usually against US wars, but people we have no choice when it comes to Iran". World Wars are a product of their times, NOT the direct will of one person. However, one evil person, like a Hitler, Stalin, or Blair, can work to shape the thinking of people to such an extent, that their will imprints the will of hundreds of millions.

In other words, this will truly be Blair's World War, but we are the ones that enabled it to happen.

twilight