Will get my head down now for the night, will wake up in a few hours and I'm gonna break my fast, i.e., breakfast, with hot home-made baguette served with my very own confiture de mirabelle along with a cup of espresso or a steaming cup of tea!
Video footage of Michael Jackson rehearsing for the London concerts that never happened. He looked energetic in the pictures taken two days before he died, Sky News reports.
If we were to go by what Hilary Clinton has been saying (watch You Tube video below, H/T Marina Mahathir), America indeed has acknowledged its role in empowering the Talibans, and by extension, Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.
Stalwarts of the US Republican Party seem to have been suffering from memory loss these last few years but this space has never forgotten that the rise of the Talibans in the terrorism power realm was a result of America's aggressive, almost vindicative but short-sighted forward defence policy that was a cornerstone of the Reagan administration.
The short sighted approach that was America's, in its desire to defeat the Russians at all costs, inevitably led to the formation of a fundamentalist-extremist terrorism oriented movement inspired by the Talibans, the Al Qaeda.
There were two real major factions in Afghanistan fighting against Russia's occupation of the country in the late 70s until the late 80s, the Talibans and the Northern Alliance. America supported and heavily funded the Talibans and encouraged the recruitment of fighters from fundamentally Islamist countries.
France, on the other hand, was supporting, financing and advising the Northern Alliance, led by Ahmed Shah Masood, popularly known as the “The Lion of Panjshir” (shown), the coalition that eventually became the West's real major ally in the run up to America's war against the Talibans.
The rest is history -- the Talibans turned against America leading to the infamous 9/11.
August 2008 picture above shows Dad with Sam's Dad talking on the gangplank in front of the Davies' family boat where Sam was raised. Taken at the Tabarly Center Port, L'Orient, Brittany.
From Yahoo news: A display of French newspapers showing front page coverage of the inauguration of U.S. President Barack Obama in Washington D.C., in Paris, Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2009. Obama ushered in a new era for the United States, becoming the first black leader of the country. (AP Photo/Bertrand Combaldieu)
Crédits photo : Le Figaro
Meanwhile, Le Figaroplayfully pits the French president against the new American leader: Sarkozy's American "buddy" will be a rival. I don't see why they should be rivals; they can and should be partners? For starters, they share a similar background, family, education and politics wise, i.e., both were abandoned by their foreign-born fathers and raised by their mothers; both grew into politics as community organizers and both are trained lawyers. Secondly, as they say, in unity there's strength.
But as ever in politics, national or international, we say, there are no permanent friends, only permanent interests. Oh well...
Will get my head down now for the night, will wake up in a few hours and I'm gonna break my fast, i.e., breakfast, with hot home-made baguette served with my very own confiture de mirabelle along with a cup of espresso or a steaming cup of tea!
There were two real major factions in Afghanistan fighting against Russia's occupation of the country in the late 70s until the late 80s, the Talibans and the Northern Alliance. America supported and heavily funded the Talibans and encouraged the recruitment of fighters from fundamentally Islamist countries.
Photo from Sam Davies' website 
