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<PRE>THE HOFFMAN WIRE
Dedicated to Freedom of the Press, Investigative Reporting and Revisionist History
Michael A. Hoffman II, Editor
<A HREF=" http://www.hoffman-info.com/news.html
">http://www.hoffman-info.com/news.html</A>
*******************************************</PRE>
January 6, 2002
Contents:
1. With Taliban Gone, American-Installed Thugs Launch Crime Spree in
Afghanistan
2. Korean Dog-Eaters Outraged at Bardot's Campaign to End Consumption of
Delicacy
3. Hollywood Movie About Boxer Ali Censors His Black Separatist Past
----------------------------------------------------------
1. With Taliban Gone, American-Installed Thugs Launch Crime Spree in
Afghanistan
Editor's Note: Don't tell me there's no justice in the world. It's just
that, sometimes, justice is where you find it--in the cracks and
crevices. The Establishment media--complacent mouthpieces for the most
recent US government massacres--are now themselves coming under fire
from the gangs of criminal warlords George Bush has imposed on
Afghanistan.
These rapists, thieves and murderers are what brought about the rise of
the Taliban in the first place, to put an end to their depradations. Now
the corrupt ones are back in power, courtesy of our heroic President and
his patriot legions. With poetic justice, the US news media's minions
are among the first to feel the rifle-butts of these glorious
"liberators."
Afghan City, Free of Taliban, Returns to Rule of Thieves
New York Times January 6, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/06/international/asia/06GRAF.html
EXCERPT: "...as the Taliban enforced their severe brand of Islamic law
with public executions or dismemberment for criminals, crime declined.
Now the Taliban are gone, and the city and the surrounding Nangarhar
Province is run once again by warlords ...whose enterprising rackets
have almost instantly turned the place into ...the land where almost
everything is corrupt."
THE middleman with the dark sunglasses and beard met the Afghan soldiers
at the gate and was allowed access inside the provincial security
station. He reappeared minutes later with a bag containing two
videotapes, an Albanian passport, a Moroccan identification card and
nine computer disks.
He set the prices: $1,600 for the videotapes, $400 each for the passport
or identification card, and $400 for each disk. All were terrorist
materials taken from Al Qaeda caves in nearby Tora Bora, he said, or
from terrorist houses in the city. He said they were being offered for
sale by a local intelligence chief, who would have to remain hidden for
now.
"If you buy all of these today, then he will have the very important
passports to sell," said the middleman, who identified himself as Dr.
Kamran, a surgeon who works for Jalalabad's senior warlord, Hajji
Hazarat Ali. "Two passports of jihad men from Saudi Arabia. They can be
yours, too."
When Dr. Kamran found no takers, he returned to the station and came out
empty-handed. "Maybe tomorrow?" he asked, with a conspiratorial smile.
This is Jalalabad, a city in the hands of thugs and crooks.
The city � Afghanistan's first stop on the Grand Trunk Road, which links
the nation to India � had been a smuggler's den for centuries, providing
shelter and like-minded company for the bandits, traders and thieves who
traveled the soaring mountain passes nearby. But in recent years, as the
Taliban enforced their severe brand of Islamic law with public
executions or dismemberment for criminals, crime declined.
Now the Taliban are gone, and the city and the surrounding Nangarhar
Province is run once again by warlords and guerrillas, whose
enterprising rackets have almost instantly turned the place into
Afghanistan's version of Shakedown Street, the land where almost
everything is corrupt.
Markets here sell bootlegged copies of Hollywood releases ("The Lord of
the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" is already available), pucks of
brown hashish and in one shop the skull of a snow leopard, one of the
world's most endangered cats. The corruption runs unchecked through what
counts as local government, which is essentially a group of ill-tempered
guerrilla brigades.
The guerrillas welcome outsiders with threats and extortion, steal food
from aid convoys and simultaneously insist that they are helping Green
Berets gather intelligence materials in the mountains while trying to
sell the same items on the street. "Everywhere people are trying to sell
these Al Qaeda things," said Abdul Ghaffar, 44, the city's newly
appointed interim mayor. "Some of it is real, some of it is fake. It is
all a great shame."
Green Berets continue to work with the Eastern Shura. But it is not
clear whether they are paying the guerrillas for their assistance.
Not all of Afghanistan is so corrupt. In several northern provinces,
ethnic Tajik generals have tried to craft a responsible government and
are sending signals that they want a society based on fairness,
tolerance and rights. In Jalalabad, however, the unsettling games begin
from the moment visitors arrive.
Upon crossing the city line, new visitors are informed that they must
reside in hotels controlled by the Eastern Shura, the loose coalition of
three warlords who rule the province. And visitors at the Spin Ghar
Hotel, run by Mr. Ali, the region's most powerful general, are not
allowed to leave the grounds unless they use a driver selected by Mr.
Ali. The charge is $100 to $150 a day, even if the drive is only 100
yards.
Similarly, Mr. Ali recently circulated a note in his hotel that
contained a veiled threat: it warned visitors that they must also hire
his translators, or else their safety could not be assured. Those
charges also begin at $100 a day, and rise as high as $250. (Two
exceptions were made this week for journalists who arrived with their
own Afghan drivers and translators, but then the local bosses demanded
25 to 50 percent kickbacks from the Afghans already in the journalists'
employ.)
New rules are introduced almost daily. For instance, once inside the
Spin Ghar Hotel, visitors cannot change residences, as was made clear
last week when a New York Times translator who had tried to help an
Associated Press photographer move into a rival hotel was struck in the
head with a rifle butt.
Mr. Ali, who properly bears the title of provincial security commander,
now and then appears to speak. On Thursday, for instance, he said he did
not know who was stealing the rice from the local Red Crescent Society,
even though the sacks were somehow being used to feed his own troops in
their garrisons throughout the city.
With something like comic timing, eight sacks bearing the Red Crescent
logo showed up Friday at his hotel, where the security commander is now
in the position of charging his Western guests to eat the food his men
have seized from the poor.
"All of our soldiers are the same � robbers," said one sorrowful hotel
employee, who was ordered by the soldiers to carry the big sacks into
the hotel kitchen.
The corruption also continues in the neighborhoods and countryside,
where soldiers flagrantly steal. Atiqullah Mohmand, the local program
director for the United Nations refugee agency, said he kept his
personal car several provinces away, in Logar, because it would not last
here.
"If I came into the city with it, I would have to watch the armed men
get in and drive it away," he said.
Mr. Mohmand has enough problems already: a band of local soldiers has
moved into the United Nations compound, living like bored and listless
squatters among the relief agency's staff.
The guerrillas also try to sell access to news. In one case late last
month, a commander at Tora Bora sent notice to network television crews
that they could interview wounded prisoners, if only they would pay
$5,000. "It seems to be an increasing problem," said Ned Colt, a
correspondent for NBC News, which declined the offer on ethical grounds.
"To do much in this area, the soldiers want you to pay."
NBC News left the province today.
In another case last week, a group of guerrillas on the road to the
ridgeline near Tora Bora demanded $1,000 to let vehicles pass.
"You've got these mujahedeen on the roads around here using their power
and guns to demand money or denying you access to information," said
Jacob Sutton, 47, an Associated Press television cameraman who politely
declined to pay the toll and turned his truck around. "I personally
resent this blatant corruption, and I can't help thinking this is an
eye- opener for how this country has been run in the past. And it does
not bode well for the future."
The examples go on and on. One CNN crew member left his tent at Tora
Bora and returned to find an Eastern Shura soldier wearing his leather
jacket. In another, a photographer for The New York Times had two
digital camera disks stolen by soldiers, one of whom later made the
rounds in the photographer's hotel, offering to sell them back for $500
each, an offer that was declined each time.
Tensions have escalated as journalists have departed, in disgust or for
other assignments, shrinking the supply of fresh dollars and making each
Westerner an even richer target for shakedowns and threats. The scene
today as a CNN team left for Pakistan was particularly menacing.
As the crew packed its gear, the hotel management summoned a group of
about 50 armed soldiers, who gathered outside the door or took posts on
the steps. Then the hotel manager began to list his demands before the
team could exit: in addition to paying the hotel bill, plus one extra
night for each guest, CNN would have to leave behind a color television,
a refrigerator, a satellite dish and an encoder.
Ingrid Formanek, the CNN producer, negotiated with the manager for more
than hour, and was finally allowed to leave for the price of the extra
night and the television set. No stranger to the peculiarities of
corporate accounting in a war zone, she managed to extract a signed
receipt from the manager that even included a $220 charge for "pure
extortion."
She was furious. "It's thuggery," she said. "It's everyone for
themselves and God against all."
The thuggery had not yet ended. CNN had left behind two large boxes of
dried and canned food for the team of Afghans who had assisted their
news gathering in the mountains. As the Afghans tried to leave with
their reward, Eastern Shura soldiers stole that, too.
<End quote>
-----------------
2. From the "We are All One" file: Korean Dog-Eaters Outraged at
Bardot's Campaign to End Consumption of Delicacy
Sunday Telegraph (London) Jan. 6, 2002
"...6,000 (Korean) restaurants...thrive on a mixture of dog stews...
washed down with alcoholic drinks flavored with pulverised cat."
An international campaign led by Brigitte Bardot to use this year's
soccer World Cup to stop the eating of dogs in South Korea has provoked
outrage in Asia. A bi-partisan group of South Korean legislators has
introduced a bill to legalize the sale and export of dog meat... The
legislation, which is expected to be passed next month, will pitch the
authorities into a showdown with international soccer chiefs, who fear
that a dispute over Asian eating habits will become an unseemly sideshow
during the World Cup.
Brigitte Bardot, the French actress turned animal rights activist, has
led condemnation of Korean dog-eating, calling it "barbaric". Sepp
Blatter, the head of soccer's governing body, Fifa, which fears that the
controversy could harm its showpiece competition, entered the fray when
he urged South Korea to be sensitive to foreign feelings.
Keith Cooper, Fifa's director of communications, said Mr Blatter had
only raised the matter after the organization received thousands of
calls and letters condemning the treatment of dogs in Korea. "South
Korea's subsequent response is entirely their own business," he said.
Kim Hong-shin, an opposition parliamentarian, said: "Foreign criticism
of dog meat reflects lack of understanding of our nation's ancient
culture. It is blasphemy, not criticism." The legislative backlash by 20
members of the Korean parliament from the ruling party and main
opposition party proved enormously popular last week on the streets of
Seoul. Support, not surprisingly, was strongest among patrons of the
6,000 restaurants that thrive on a mixture of dog stews, soups and
satays washed down with alcoholic drinks flavored with pulverised cat.
The stench and the yelps of caged dogs may be stomach churning, but Lee
Wha-jin happily slaps down dishes of dog-meat stew on the white plastic
tabletops of his restaurant in the notorious Moran night market in
Seoul.
At the rear of shop after shop, eight-month-old puppies - considered to
be the prime age for eating - are packed into tiny cages welded together
in rows three or four high.
Customers choose which of the live animals they want. The dog is then
taken to the back of the shop where a flimsy curtain or a swinging door
obscures the sight, but not the sound, of a hideous death.
The sale and consumption of dog meat, third behind beef and pork in
Korea, is technically illegal but the authorities turn a blind eye to an
industry that aficionados claim has been a part of Korean culture for
more than 3,000 years. The bill is intended to legalise what has been a
common practice.
To many Koreans, the criticisms of outsiders smack of racism. "We have
built our food culture through thousands of years," said Mr Kim, a
member of parliament for the opposition Grand National Party.
"Criticising us as 'barbarians' for our food culture is tantamount to
criticising our culture itself."
A pro-dog meat lobby group accused "self-righteous" Europeans of
hypocrisy in singling out dog-eating for opprobrium. "We in Korea do not
understand the snail-eating, horse meat-eating Westerners," said the
group in a statement.
"None the less, we neither criticise those who enjoy such an unusual
diet nor do we demand that they stop eating it."
When the World Cup opens in South Korea on May 31, foreign soccer fans
who find themselves in Moran and other parts of Seoul will be offered a
variety of dog dishes, including Poshintang, the nation's favourite soup
(which literally translates as "body preservation stew"), soo yuck, (dog
slices) and jin-guk (dog casserole).
A pound of dog meat can cost up to $5.00 in Seoul, making it one of the
most expensive foods on the local market.
Before arriving in the grim array of cages behind restaurants, most dogs
have had to endure the misery of a Korean canine farm hidden in the
hills of the countryside. It is not unusual for puppies to grow up 10 to
a cage, covered in sores and lice.
It is estimated that more than 50,000 dogs - mostly crosses of the
Korean Huang-ju breed but increasingly pedigrees - are killed for
commercial purposes each year.
The dogs deaths are as inhumane as their rearing. The majority are
beaten to death, as it is thought to stimulate the production of
adrenalin that South Korean men believe will bolster their virility.
Once dead, or nearly dead, the dogs are dropped into boiling water,
skinned and hung by the jaw from a meat hook. Many cooks then use a blow
torch to glaze the carcass.
South Korean dog eaters, like their counterparts in China and Vietnam,
where the dishes are also extremely popular, believe that the meat
contains medicinal properties.
A curb on restaurants serving dog meat, such as the one that preceded
the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, would bring forth protests from many
Koreans against a "national capitulation". Mr Lee said: "As long as dog
meat makes people healthy, the government should not try to ban it to
pacify Westerners."
Bardot has threatened to distribute pictures showing horrific treatment
of dogs bred for food during the World Cup. Outraged South Koreans have
responded with thousands of abusive telephone and e-mail messages to her
foundation and by bombarding French companies in Seoul with angry
calls...
<End quote>
Brigitte Bardot Foundation: http://www.fondationbrigittebardot.fr/uk/
-----------------------
3. Hollywood Movie About Boxer Ali Censors His Black Separatist Past
Editor's Note: I have always savored one sentence Muhammad Ali spoke in
the course of his career. When asked why he wouldn't travel 10,000 miles
to fight Vietnamese for Lyndon Johnson, Ali said it was due to the fact
that, "No Vietcong ever called me nigger."
At the time I lamented that some white farm boy draft-dodger from the
Beech Mountains of North Carolina had not said something as
class-perspicacious and racially-conscious, such as, "I will not fight
in Vietnam. No Viet Cong ever called me redneck."
Unfortunately, the pugilistic politics of race and Ali's bellicose,
black separatist convictions have been air-brushed out of "Ali," the
latest Hollywood fantasy epic:
A new Hollywood life of Muhammad Ali ignores the boxer's controversial
stance on politics and race
by Michael Shelden
ON the night in 1964 when 22-year-old Cassius Clay defeated heavyweight
champion Sonny Liston, the brash newcomer did a victory dance in the
ring and claimed that he was not only the greatest boxer in history but
also the prettiest. In a sport dominated by hulking men with battered
faces, the sleek young fighter was indeed as pretty as they come. "Don't
have a mark on me!" he boasted, and stuck out his smooth jaw as proof.
Four decades later, that jubilant kid - who soon remade himself as
Muhammad Ali - is a quiet, seemingly gentle figure hobbled by
Parkinson's disease and those afflictions common to old boxers who have
taken one punch too many. But so potent is the legend of the "Louisville
Lip" that his career is now the subject of Hollywood's biggest "biopic"
in years... to quote the published screenplay - "the warrior saint in
the revolt of the black athlete". This very expensive, very long and
very uncritical film is the kind of reverential tribute that Hollywood
used to reserve for statesmen, war heroes and nuns.
The young champ's big smiles and funny rhymes ("You want to lose your
money, bet on Sonny") are as entertaining as ever, but there is a darker
side to him that is anything but pretty. You won't see much of it in
this new film, however, because in the sanitised factory of Hollywood
myth-making only sweetness and light prevail.
Director Michael Mann downplays, for example, Ali the ruthless
self-promoter, and glosses over the fighter's devotion to the thuggish
cult leader Elijah Mohammad. He also ignores the egregious race-baiting
that Ali typically used to taunt boxing rivals.
At the height of his fame, Ali loved to portray himself as the true
black man whose faithfulness to his race made him superior to other
fighters. Sonny Liston was an ugly bear, Ali ranted, who lived in a
white neighbourhood and didn't like his own people. Joe Louis was a
shuffling Uncle Tom. Floyd Patterson was "a white man's Negro, a yellow
Negro", and George Foreman fought for "White America, Christianity, the
flag and pork chops."
Under the influence of Elijah Mohammad - who preached that blacks should
refuse to integrate with "white devils" - Ali made a point of dating
only black women and lashed out at men and women who engaged in
interracial sex. In an interview with Playboy, he declared: "A black man
should be killed if he's messing with a white woman." When the
interviewer asked about black women crossing the colour barrier, Ali
responded: "Then she dies. Kill her, too."
It's unlikely that a white athlete who made such remarks would receive
the praise that Michael Mann heaps on Ali. He says that the fighter
"personified racial pride and self-knowledge". The Playboy journalist,
who interviewed the boxer, was closer to the mark when he observed of
his subject: "You're beginning to sound like a carbon copy of a white
racist."
But images are more powerful than words, and Ali's unfortunate remarks
do not diminish the mesmerising beauty of his moves in the ring...The
problem is that neither he nor his admirers can accept that he was the
"greatest" only in the ring. They want him to be a social hero who
changed the world by fighting injustice.
As he approaches his 60th year - his birthday is January 17 - Ali is
increasingly portrayed in the media as just such a hero, an icon of
courage and integrity. Michael Mann's film is meant to give this trend
an enormous boost and thus to propel Ali into the orbit of superheroes
who demand unquestioning admiration.
But - to be honest - outside the ring, what is there to admire? His
domestic life has been a shambles. During his heyday, he ran through
wives (four in all) and girlfriends (too numerous to count) with amazing
speed, never allowing his sex life to be impeded by his conversion to
Islam or his vows to be faithful to one woman.
His first wife, Sonji Roi, left him after little more than a year of
marriage, claiming that he had coerced her into adopting Muslim dress
and customs. After the divorce, she complained that Elijah Mohammad's
Nation of Islam had "stolen" Ali's mind and threatened her with
reprisals. "I wasn't going to take on all the Muslims. If I had, I
probably would have ended up dead."
When Elijah and his henchmen threatened Malcolm X with death for daring
to oppose the Nation of Islam, Ali stayed silent. In the early years of
his career, he and Malcolm X were very close - almost like brothers -
yet he kept his distance after Elijah turned against his friend and did
not break with the Nation of Islam after Malcolm was assassinated...
Joe Louis was also alarmed by the racist attitudes of the group and
warned Ali that he was being exploited. Like Patterson, he made a point
of calling the young fighter by his original name. "Clay is a good
enough fighter, but it's unfortunate that he's a Black Muslim. A
champion should represent all sects, not one."
It was apparently his devotion to his new religion that prompted Ali to
refuse military induction in 1967. He protested that he was opposed to
war in general and the Vietnam War in particular. It was a matter of
conscience, he insisted, and he claimed that he would not fight anyone
without good reason. He suffered for his stand, sacrificing three years
of his career while he fought his case with the American government...
The transformation of Ali from a great fighter to a celebrated man of
conscience and social purpose has succeeded so well because the actual
history of his career has been altered to reflect the kinder, gentler
man of today. Unpleasant remarks or facts from the past have been swept
away or excused.
In a kind of history-free zone, the contemporary myth-makers in
Hollywood and elsewhere blithely craft their heroes to suit some
political agenda or cinematic formula. And, then, endowed with the
smiling face of a film star, the retooled historical figure becomes
difficult to resist. It's one thing to criticise the real Ali, but who
wants to question the charming Will Smith?
At the end of Mann's film, we see an amiable Ali sparring with young
street kids after his "Rumble in the Jungle" with George Foreman.
Corrupt and impoverished Zaire is made to seem like the Holy Land, a
place where the great fighter has finally found his roots and a renewed
sense of purpose. Little effort is made to show that the local
strongman, President Mobutu, was a rapacious tyrant who robbed his
country blind and who exploited Ali with as much zest as Elijah
Mohammad.
Instead, as dawn rises over the Congo river, Will Smith walks off the
screen like a romantic hero from some ancient legend, triumphant and
secure in the knowledge that his legacy is safe. There are no questions
lingering in the air about Mobutu or even about the fight's unsavoury
promoter, Don King. Everything is washed clean in the blue dawn.
A more historically accurate appraisal of Ali would conclude that he was
far from heroic outside the ring and was pitifully misused by his
masters in the Nation of Islam. For his purposes, Elijah hijacked the
impressionable young man's career and filled his head with racist
nonsense.
By the time he finally broke free of the old Nation of Islam, in the
1970s, his career was in its last stages. He continued to fight long
past his prime, in part to recover the money and time he had lost in his
misadventures with the Black Muslims. Today, he is paying the price of
his mistakes, suffering from health problems exacerbated by overstaying
his time in boxing. Looking at the sad toll that his life has exacted
from his body, anyone should be able to see that his career was not that
of a Hollywood romance but of an old-fashioned tragedy. By exchanging
his "slave name" of Cassius Clay for the one that Elijah bestowed on
him, he merely exchanged one form of perceived servitude for another
form that was all too real and irretrievably damaging.
<End quote>
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<PRE>Hoffman is a former reporter for the New York bureau of the Associated Press
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