Afghanistan One Year After Taliban Took Control

Taliban: We brought “freedom and independence” and rid Afghanistan “of foreign occupation, injustice and oppression.”

The man whom the Al Jazeera journalist interviews, Anas Haqqani — the youngest son of a jihadist commander who fought the Russians and the Americans — is a known terrorist with direct ties to al-Quaeda, and is in the direct lineage of a group of Afghan Islamist guerrilla insurgents known as the HAQQANI NETWORK. For 20 years, the HAQQANI NETWORK has been responsible for the most brutally horrific terrorist attacks throughout the world, often, but not always, using suicide bombers.

Encyclopedia Brittanica writes this about the HAQQANI NETWORK:
The “Haqqani network [is a] Pashtun militant network based in eastern Afghanistan and northwest Pakistan. The Haqqani network originated during the Afghan War [following Russia’s invasion] (1978–92), and, after the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, it participated in an insurgency against U.S. and NATO forces and the Afghan government.”

Person (relationship to Anas Haqqani)
• Mawlawi Jalaluddin Haqqani (DECEASED father, founder of the HAQQANI NETWORK)

• Khalil Ahmed Haqqani (uncle — AKA Kahlil ur-Rahman The United Nations sanctioned him for association with al Qaeda & Taliban.) NOTE: THE UNITED STATES TREASURY HAS A $5M BOUNTY ON Kahlil Haqqani.

• Sirajuddin Haqqani (brother) NOTE: THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT HAS A US$10M BOUNTY ON Sirajuddin Haqqani.

The website of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has a page dedicated to the terrorist group known as the HAQQANI NETWORK.

ODNI writes this, in part, about the group:

“The Haqqani Network is a Sunni Islamist militant organization founded by Jalaluddin Haqqani, who emerged as a top Afghan warlord and insurgent commander during the anti-Soviet war; he was a member of the Hezb-e Islami faction led by renowned mujahedin commander Younis Khalis. Jalaluddin later allied with the Afghan Taliban as that group’s Minister of Tribal and Border Affairs when the Taliban held power in Afghanistan during the mid-to-late 1990s. He was a known associate of Usama Bin Ladin and was recognized as one of Bin Ladin’s closest mentors during the al-Qa‘ida founder’s formative years in the 1980s Afghan war. Sirajuddin Haqqani, Jalaluddin’s son, currently leads the day-to-day activities of the group, along with several of his closest relatives. Sirajuddin in August 2015 was named as a deputy to newly appointed Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Mansur—cementing the alliance between the Haqqanis and the Taliban.”

For his part, in a July interview with German news magazine Der Spiegal this year, news of which was published by Ariana News, Afghanistan’s only 24/7 news network and the nation’s leading independent news station, Haqqani said that

Minnesota State Fair New Foods for 2013

The Minnesota State Fair is just a few months away!

The MSF is the Granddaddy of ’em all. Not only is it one of the oldest state fairs – since 1859, the only years it missed were 1861, 1862, 1893, 1945 & 1946 – it’s also the most well-attended, and the land where it all occurs is quite large. In fact, it’s ginormous!

The good people in Texas claim theirs has the highest attendance, and I suppose if the Minnesota State Fair was TWO WEEKS LONG like the TSF is, it’d put the Lone Star State to shame. However, the MSF is a 12-day event, and for that time, it draws a bigger crowd than the TSF.

Minnesota State Fair – Thursday August 22 Labor Day, through Monday September 2, 2013

Apologies to those Longhorns.

I’ve been to the MSF once – just once –  and, I’d like to go again.

Yes, I would. It’s HUGE!!

Of course, in all fairness – yes, it’s a bad pun, but hey! It works! – I’d also like to go to the Texas State Fair, as well.

I happened to see the menu for the “new” foods appearing this year at the 2013 Minnesota State Fair. It’s

Suicide, Libertarianism, and Religion -or- Why “No man is an island.”

FACT:
Las Vegas has the highest metropolitan suicide rate in the U.S.

“I’ll add that there’s one more feature here, of Las Vegas, which I think bears mentioning. And that is what I kinda’ think of as a sort of “frontier culture” mentality among residents, and I think, even among visitors.

“That Las Vegas is this sort of place of place of total license. You know… its the ‘Wild West,’ it’s an open frontier for all kinds of immorality and exploration of vice, and… the entire self-branding of Las Vegas as this place where that is not only tolerated, but actually sanctioned.

“You know, the “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” kind of mentality – produces, I think, a kind of… sort of libertarian ethos of ‘go it alone, do it yourself.’ And help seeking in this sort of framework is perhaps not accepted or valorized the way it is other parts of the country.

“These kind of cultural arguments are always very hard to make. They always sound deeply unscientific. But, in a lot ways, I think that’s exactly where a lot of the explanatory power comes from… is in this understanding the culture and values underlying people’s behavioral sense.”

– Matt Wray, sociologist, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, and co-author of a 2008 paper entitled “Leaving Las Vegas: Exposure to Las Vegas and Risk of Suicide” / excerpted from Freakonomics Radio, episode #92 “Gambling With Your Life,” released April 27, 2011

Of late, attention has been increasingly given to the suicide rate of veterans returning home from the horrors of war in the Middle East, specifically, from their numerous extended tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

While in retrospect, many acknowledge that

U.S. officials: Attack on consulate in Libya may have been planned

By Karen DeYoung, Michael Birnbaum and William Branigin, Published: September 12

U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said Wednesday that an attack that killed four Americans at a U.S. Consulate in eastern Libya may have been planned by extremists and inspired by al-Qaeda.

The U.S. Ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans were killed Tuesday in an assault on the consulate in the city of Benghazi. President Obama strongly condemned the attack and pledged to bring the perpetrators to justice, vowing that “justice will be done.”

The attack followed a violent protest at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo over

Osama bin Laden’s Corpse Rotting on Ocean Floor

Osama bin Laden - 10 March 1957 -2 May 2011 - formerly the World's Most Wanted Terrorist

Obama Declares ‘Justice Has Been Done‘

By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 2, 2011 – “Justice has been done,” said President Barack Obama in announcing the death of Osama bin Laden in a U.S. military operation in Pakistan.

An American counterintelligence and counterterrorism team killed bin Laden yesterday during a firefight near Islamabad, the president said during a short statement from the White House late last night.

“Tonight I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida, and a terrorist who is responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children,” the president said.

The attack ends a manhunt of almost 10 years. Bin Laden and his henchmen