what a bunch of crazy conspiracy theorists, those Pakistanis….
hmmm?
oh, that’s kinda weird, wonder what this org does…
Arabella Advisors? what’s that?
oh, ok… wait, what’s that bit about being in the Soviet Union and Middle East as an “advisor”? that’s kind of vague, but unfortunately none of his corporate bios list what kind of capacity he was in. i wish there was another way to look at someone’s employment history…
aaaaaand there it is. the NDI is the Democratic wing of the National Endowment for Democracy (there are Republican and labor equivalents, too — managed by the AFL-CIO no less).
NED was supposed to provide an alternative (to the CIA) by means of encouraging democratic institutions in formerly repressive states. Unlike the CIA, NED’s extensive operations abroad create opportunities for political operatives who need not assume underground lives and identities. However, even without engaging in the dirty work of the CIA, “In a multitude of ways, NED meddles in the internal affairs of foreign countries by supplying funds, technical know-how, training, educational materials, computers, faxes, copiers, automobiles, and so on, to selected political groups, civic organizations, labor unions, dissident movements, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, other media, etc.” By one estimate, the camouflaging of its imperial purposes while maintaining a benevolent image makes the NED a far more effective instrument of state policy than the CIA ever was—a soft imperialism.
See Also: http://zcomm.org/zmagazine/ned-targets-venezuela-by-bill-berkowitz/
Her shooting definitely happened. the Taliban took responsibility for it and everything. but again, look at that original NYT article about the “crazy conspiracies”:
As Mr. Haque reported, another formulation of the same theory was posted on Facebook by the Pakistani nationalist blogger Ahmed Quraishi, who wrote:
“Fact is, the U.S. is partially responsible for Malala Yousafzai’s plight. The killers of Malala are a bunch of criminals known as ‘Swat Taliban.’ This terror group was roundly defeated by Pakistan Army in 2009 and flushed out from northern Pakistan. That action by Pakistani military was a lesson to American commanders in Afghanistan in how to successfully defeat terrorists.
But Pakistani officials have discovered last year to their horror that the entire leadership of this terror group, the ‘Swat Taliban’ is alive and well and thriving in terror ‘training and resting’ camps inside Afghanistan under the watch of U.S. Army.”
Although it requires a deeply conspiratorial mind to believe, as Pakistani nationalists do, that the American military has the power to choose which Islamist militants operate from areas of Afghanistan under the control of the Afghan Taliban, every good conspiracy is woven from scraps of the truth. As the journalist Ahmed Rashid explains in a post for The New Yorker, the Pakistani Taliban’s leader, Mullah Fazlullah, described as the mastermind of the attack on Malala, does appear to be based in Afghanistan.
Fazlullah’s forces were defeated by the Pakistani Army in 2009 after the public was incensed by a video showing Fazlullah’s gunmen flogging naked women. The army, also under enormous American pressure, moved some 2.5 million people out of the Swat Valley and sent in eighty thousand troops to clear Swat of militants — except that Fazlullah and his commanders escaped across the border into Kunar province, in northeastern Afghanistan. From Kunar, which is under the control of like-minded Al Qaeda affiliates, the Afghan Taliban, and multiple other groups from Central Asia, the Caucasus, China, and Europe, Fazlullah has recently relaunched his movement, attacking army posts inside Pakistan’s tribal belt and then retreating back to Kunar, where Pakistan cannot touch him.
While Mr. Rashid, who is based in Lahore, does not embrace the theory that Mullah Fazlullah is an American agent, he notes: “Afghan officials have quietly admitted to me that Fazlullah’s actions are being backed by the Afghan intelligence services. (Officially, Afghanistan denies all such charges.)” He adds:
Afghan support for extremists like Fazlullah is, in a sense, return pay. Pakistan’s army has done exactly the same thing for the past twelve years — allowing Afghan Taliban to launch strikes into Afghanistan against United States and Afghan forces and then retreat back into Pakistan. Now both countries are more evenly balanced in this dangerous, brutal, bloody proxy war — one that is leading to open war, with Pakistan’s army shelling Fazlullah’s camps and Afghan villages in Kunar almost every day, angering the Afghan public.
Late last year, when Afghan forces became involved in a nighttime firefight along the disputed and thinly guarded border between Pakistan’s Mohmand tribal region and Afghanistan’s Kunar Province, they called in American airstrikes on positions that were only identified later as Pakistani Army posts. Two dozen Pakistani soldiers were killed, and Pakistan’s government responded by closing NATO supply routes into Afghanistan and ordering the Central Intelligence Agency to vacate an air base in Pakistan used for drone operations.
it takes some a lot of gall to say “only the conspiratorially minded could believe” in the same article talking about a web of governments and militant groups so thick that Alex Jones couldn’t sort it out
and then further note that a lot of sources, both in the NYT and CNN articles, are from Twitter. it’s really irresponsible to use Twitter accounts considering how the US has developed massive programs using fake social media profiles to do COINTELPRO in the Middle East
yeah, sometimes people latch onto some genuinely crazy stuff. but it’s hard to blame people for seeing spooks everywhere when they actually ARE everywhere
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