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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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CentralCali
Joined: 17 May 2007
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 Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 2:16 pm Post subject: |
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Your first mistake was in buying into nut-job conspiracy theories. The next thing we know, you'll be telling us that the US government blew up the World Trade Center and there was no airplane that crashed into the Pentagon*.
Your second mistake was in going to just the one entry on the Wiki. Had you gone to this other entry, you could have gained some knowledge (check the references).
*I grew up a few blocks, literally, from the Pentagon. I know some of the people involved--as victims--in that attack on the building. I have zero respect for the moronic creation and imbecilic spreading of nut-job conspiracy theories. I was also under the impression that in the Western countries, universities provided an education. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 2:48 pm Post subject: |
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Osama bin Laden's parents and the larger Saudi context created and nurtured Osama bin Laden.
As far as today goes, by the way, he gets his information on things like "American foreign policy" from the likes of William Blum and the rest of America's radical left. |
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jinju
Joined: 22 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 3:11 pm Post subject: |
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Really? Was he genetically engineered at Langley?
IGTG keeps getting dumber and dumber. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 3:41 pm Post subject: |
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| CentralCali wrote: |
| I was also under the impression that in the Western countries, universities provided an education. |
Not a little indoctrination is what goes on there, as it should, according to many professors' (usually unarticulated but very real nevertheless) mission statements. |
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CentralCali
Joined: 17 May 2007
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| Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 3:46 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Not a little indoctrination is what goes on there, as it should, according to many professors' (usually unarticulated but very real nevertheless) mission statements. |
Well, I'm happy to say at least one professor got canned for touting the fake science used to support stupidity...er, 9/11 conspiracy theories. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 3:57 pm Post subject: |
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Here is a taste of what has gone into shaping bin Laden's worldview, incidentally...
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The Author Who Got A Big Boost From bin Laden
Historian 'Glad' of Mention As Sales of Book Skyrocket
By David Montgomery
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Twenty-four hours after Osama bin Laden told the world that the American people should read the work of a little-known Washington historian, William Blum was still adjusting.
Blum, who at 72 is accustomed to laboring in relative left-wing obscurity, checked his emotions and pronounced himself shocked and, well, pleased.
"This is almost as good as being an Oprah book," he said yesterday between telephone calls from the world media and bites of a bagel. "I'm glad." Overnight, his 2000 work, Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, had become an Osama book.
In gray slacks, plaid shirt and black slippers, Blum padded around his one-bedroom apartment on Connecticut Avenue. A portrait of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the '50s hung on his kitchen wall. Bookshelves bowed under the weight of secret histories of the CIA. The cord on his prehistoric phone let him roam across the living room. He'd already done CNN and MSNBC. A guy from the New York Post knocked on the door to take pictures. The BBC rang, then Reuters and Pacifica Radio stations on both coasts.
From Blum's end of the conversations, you could tell the reporters were expecting him to express some kind of discomfort, remorse, maybe even shame. Blum refused to acknowledge feelings he did not have.
"I was not turned off by such an endorsement," he informed a New York radio station. "I'm not repulsed, and I'm not going to pretend I am." He patiently reiterated the thesis of his foreign-policy critique -- that American interventions abroad create enemies.
You could almost hear the ticking of a stopwatch. These were Blum's 15 American minutes, brought to him by a murderous zealot on the other side of the world who had named him to a kind of Terrorists Book-of-the-Month Club. The CIA duly verified the audiotape from bin Laden, and there it was: Blum had a bona fide book blurb from the evil one.
Now it was time for the soft-spoken, bespectacled radical son of Brooklyn to look thoughtful for the cameras -- "I don't have a good smile" -- and sound pithy for the microphones. Better known in radical circles and on the college lecture circuit than he is among most readers of American history, Blum is a former underground journalist who specializes in sharp critiques of foreign policy. Published by a small outfit in Maine, he also sells his books over the Internet and issues a free monthly e-mail newsletter called the Anti-Empire Report.
What bin Laden said was this, as translated from Arabic by the Associated Press:
"And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book Rogue State, which states in its introduction: 'If I were president, I would stop the attacks on the United States: First, I would give an apology to all the widows and orphans and those who were tortured. Then I would announce that American interference in the nations of the world has ended once and for all...'" |
Washington Post |
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deadman
Joined: 27 May 2006
Location: Suwon
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| Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 5:11 pm Post subject: |
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I think it's a bit of a stretch to say they created him - enabled him, assisted him, perhaps, in the pursuit of their anti-soviet goals in Afghanistan.
There were a couple of interesting bits in the first link, which suggest the US had a hand in creating the particularly murderous form of islamic fundamentalism we see today:
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Washington's policy in Afghanistan was shaped by US President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and was continued by his successors. His plan went far beyond simply forcing Soviet troops to withdraw; rather it aimed to foster an international movement to spread Islamic fanaticism into the Muslim Central Asian Soviet republics to destabilize the Soviet Union.
Brzezinski's grand plan coincided with Pakistan military dictator General Zia ul-Haq's own ambitions to dominate the region. US-run Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe beamed Islamic fundamentalist tirades across Central Asia (while paradoxically denouncing the �Islamic revolution� that toppled the pro-US Shah of Iran in 1979). |
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According to Ahmed Rashid, a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, in 1986 CIA chief William Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI proposal to recruit from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. At least 100,000 Islamic militants flocked to Pakistan between 1982 and 1992 (some 60,000 attended fundamentalist schools in Pakistan without necessarily taking part in the fighting).
John Cooley, a former journalist with the US ABC television network and author of Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, has revealed that Muslims recruited in the US for the mujaheddin were sent to Camp Peary, the CIA's spy training camp in Virginia, where young Afghans, Arabs from Egypt and Jordan, and even some African-American �black Muslims� were taught �sabotage skills�. |
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In 1986, bin Laden brought heavy construction equipment from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan. Using his extensive knowledge of construction techniques (he has a degree in civil engineering), he built �training camps�, some dug deep into the sides of mountains, and built roads to reach them.
These camps, now dubbed �terrorist universities� by Washington, were built in collaboration with the ISI and the CIA. The Afghan contra fighters, including the tens of thousands of mercenaries recruited and paid for by bin Laden, were armed by the CIA. Pakistan, the US and Britain provided military trainers.
Tom Carew, a former British SAS soldier who secretly fought for the mujaheddin told the August 13, 2000, British Observer, �The Americans were keen to teach the Afghans the techniques of urban terrorism � car bombing and so on � so that they could strike at the Russians in major towns ... Many of them are now using their knowledge and expertise to wage war on everything they hate.� |
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mack4289
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 6:27 pm Post subject: |
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| People who believe in these kind of theories make the same mistake that Bush made- they overestimate America's power. America doesn't have enough power to create or solve all the world's problems. The belief that we do have that kind of power leads to all kinds of stupidity. |
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Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee
Joined: 25 May 2003
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| Posted: Sat Sep 08, 2007 9:00 pm Post subject: |
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| jinju wrote: |
| IGTG keeps getting dumber and dumber. |
That is impossible. |
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jinju
Joined: 22 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 2:29 am Post subject: |
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| Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee wrote: |
| jinju wrote: |
| IGTG keeps getting dumber and dumber. |
That is impossible. |
Nahh its possible..look at keane |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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arjuna
Joined: 31 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 7:47 pm Post subject: |
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Interesting...
Did Osama dye his beard black? His left arm appears fine, too.
http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2007/9/9/61032/95401
Osama Bin Laden's widely publicized video address to the American people has a peculiarity that casts serious doubt on its authenticity: the video freezes at about 1 minute and 58 seconds, and motion only resumes again at 12:30. The video then freezes again at 14:02 remains frozen until the end. All references to current events, such as the 62nd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan, and Sarkozy and Brown being the leaders of France and the UK, respectively, occur when the video is frozen! The words spoken when the video is in motion contain no references to contemporary events and could have been (and likely were) made before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The audio track does appear to be in the voice of a single speaker. What I suspect was done is that an older, unreleased video was dubbed over for this release, with the video frozen when the audio track departed from that of the original video. |
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mack4289
Joined: 06 Dec 2006
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| Posted: Sun Sep 09, 2007 10:50 pm Post subject: |
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I thought Iraq and Vietnam were alarming examples of America's arrogance, but I didn't know we were so arrogant that even Jimmy Carter's national security advisor feels qualified to write a book about America's imaginary omnipotence. That is scary. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Sep 10, 2007 12:06 am Post subject: |
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Hmm.
A tinfoil-hat-wearing poster alleges -- no surprises -- that the American govt created bin Laden. Part of this poster's overall scheme to prove his X-Files, antisemitic worldview here.
Some of us are skeptical of this.
In any case, he responds by citing one of Brzezinski's books on geopolitics, the book's cover only, to be precise. And based on this book cover, taken at face-value, another poster concludes "we" are "so arrogant."
Case closed, Igotthisguitar...plus you get a bonus on this one: not only has the American govt created bin Laden. But "we" are also "so arrogant." Nicely done. Damn policymakers like Brzezinski for thinking strategically.
The lesson from this: American policymakers should not think strategically -- or publish books on foreign policy either, for that matter. Kissinger once published a book called White House Years and another called Diplomacy. Ominous. Oh yeah: and "so arrogant."
Meanwhile, Chalmers Johnson has titled his latest book Nemesis and has indicated that he sees himself as Classical Greece's goddess of retribution... |
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