You know you're a Taliban when

You own a $3,000 machine gun and $5,000 rocket launcher, but you can't afford shoes.

You can't think of anyone you HAVEN'T declared Jihad against.

You were amazed to discover that cell phones have uses other than setting off roadside bombs.

You've often uttered the phrase, 'I love what you've done with your cave.'

You've ever had a crush on your neighbor's goat.

You refine heroin for a living, but you have a moral objection to beer.

You think vests come in two styles: bullet-proof and suicide.

You bathe at least monthly whether necessary or not.

You wipe your butt with your bare left hand, but consider bacon 'unclean.'

You consider television dangerous, but routinely carry explosives in your clothing.

You have nothing against women and think every man should own at least one.

Many still have doubts' over 9/11

Many still have doubts' over 9/11
By Alex Sehmer

More than 50 per cent of people reject the official belief that the attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001, were carried out by al-Qaeda, a new survey has revealed.

The findings, released late on Wednesday, suggest that the official version of events - that the attacks, which killed more than 2,900 people and sparked the US so-called "war on terror", were carried out by al-Qaeda - is still a long way from being generally accepted.

Only 46 per cent of respondents named al-Qaeda, while 25 per cent said they did not know and 15 per cent said the US government was behind the attacks.

Steven Kull, the director of WorldPublicOpinion.org, which carried out the survey, told Al Jazeera: "Broadly what this says is that there is a lack of confidence with the United States and so people mistrust the narrative the US puts forward."

Officially, hijackers took control of four passenger aircraft in the September 11 attacks. Two of the aeroplanes crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York and the "Twin Towers" subsequently collapsed, bringing down two other buildings nearby. The third aircraft hit the Pentagon while the fourth is said to have crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

Kull's organisation asked more than 16,000 people world wide "Who do you think was behind the 9/11 attacks?", leaving the question open-ended.

Blaming Israel

While a substantial number of those polled believed the US government was in some way behind the attacks, seven per cent point the finger at Israel.

Of the countries surveyed, Egypt and Jordan had the highest percentages of people who believed Israel was behind the attack, polling 43 and 31 per cent respectively. Nineteen per cent of those polled in the Palestinian territories claimed Israel was in some way responsible.

"In Muslim countries - where we've carried out a number of focus groups - it's clear there is a feeling that the US had some kind of motivation, such as invading Iraq," Kull said.

"There are also some difficulties with the idea that Muslims carried out attacks on civilians - which is widely seen as wrong and contrary to Islam... And there are plenty of people in Muslim countries who say it would have been too technically difficult [for al-Qaeda] to pull off."

In Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, a majority 57 per cent said they did not know who was behind the attacks. Only five per cent said that Israel had been involved.

'Conspiracy theorists'

In 2002, the US government set up the 9/11 commission, chaired by Thomas Kean, a former governor of New Jersey, to investigate the event. It published its report in 2004, concluding that the 19 hijackers were all members of al-Qaeda. It also concluded that there had been intelligence failures on the part of the CIA and the FBI, the US's spy agencies.

But the World Trade Centre attacks quickly proved fertile ground for "conspiracy theorists" and sceptics have a wide range of alternative theories to choose from - including that US military personnel were involved in the attack or that the towers were brought down with the help of a controlled explosion.

"There are people who are saying that US soldiers were flying the planes ... or people who say simply that the US government turned a blind eye to the threat or that they somehow got them to do it through some means," said Kull.

One of the proponents of an alternative version of the events has been Willis Carto, editor of the American Free Press newspaper, which frequently points the finger of blame at Israel.

He told Al Jazeera the attacks were "perpetrated by the Israeli Mossad [secret service] in conjunction with the American government".

"There's no real evidence whatsoever that the official story of the planes smashing into the building was true. It's impossible to believe that a few furtive little characters armed with box cutters who had no idea how to fly ... could have manouvred the planes like this," Carto said.
"There are so many holes in the story that no one in his right mind can believe it."

Classroom politics

Those who expound alternative versions of the events have themselves become the targets for debunking. Loose Change, a popular series of internet videos that counters the official version of events, has itself inspired a blog called Screw Loose Change.

Reports in engineering publications have sought to counter alternative theories that say the towers could not have collapsed as they did simply by being hit by an aircraft.

In 2007, research by Keith Seffen, a senior lecturer in Cambridge University's engineering department, used analysis of an engineering model to show the tower collapse had been "quite ordinary and natural".

The US has also seen the debate enter the university classroom. Both Ward Churchill, of the University of Colorado, and Kevin Barrett, of the University of Wisconsin, provoked a public outcry over the fact they professed to believe alternative versions of the events.

Their critics feared the academics might be tempted to bring there beliefs into the classroom. Their supporters said that even if they did, a university classroom was the place for alternative theories.

'Structural failure'

Michael Newman, from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Nist), which worked for several years on reports about how and why the World Trade Centre towers collapsed, told Al Jazeera the debate was unlikely to ever go away.

"Whenever we put out one of our reports, we get phone calls and emails from those with alternative views," he said.

"And you always get a lot of interest around the time of the anniversary - it's a part of history now.

The Nist reports say the towers' collapse was due to "structural failure" after the aeroplanes hit them. The reports have been welcomed by building code regulators and many of Nist's recommendations from its investigations have been adopted, but those with alternative viewpoints have continued to dispute the organisation's findings.

"We've heard opinions from all sides," Newman told Al Jazeera.

"At the end of the day, people are entitled to their own opinions and we probably won't be able to convince them otherwise."

American New Ethical Values

Regarding Abu Ghraib, testimonial evidence of abuse was reported by no fewer than half a dozen organizations, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Until photos were shown on "60 Minutes II," though, they were merely allegations and, therefore, not the subject of public concern and remedial action.So, what has been shown in Abu Ghraib that has not already been seen in the U.S.?

Electric Shocks - Abu Ghraib

In the shadow of the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs, it's easy to understand why much of the world looks upon Americans as craven and arrogant. In so many ways, the United States' interests and international image have been harmed on american aspirations and self-congratulatory beliefs instead of a cold, hard view of reality, including their own limitations.

No less a figure than Winston Churchill famously said that "treatment of crime and criminals is one of the most unfailing tests of civilization of any country." If Churchill is right, so, at the moment, are America's critics.

Prison culture reflects American culture
Not surprisingly, the prison culture, both in Abu Ghraib and the US, reflects the values of the people who run the prisons.

LA Times, 5/10/04

The rest of the world is not having it. From Paris to Riyadh to New Delhi, commentators are insisting that these acts are not exceptions but part of a pattern of American arrogance and brutishness.

"The torture is not the work of a few American soldiers," a columnist in the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper wrote. "It is the result of an official American culture that deliberately insults and humiliates Muslims." Over and over, American acts in Iraq have been equated with those of Saddam Hussein — a comparison Americans find absurd and infuriating.

The photos out of Abu Ghraib have finally pierced the screen of american complacency and self-regard. They have forced us to confront the fact that war brutalizes — and not only the vanquished. The guards who shackled and stripped the Iraqi prisoners may be bad apples, but they are the predictable fruit of an expanding American imperial. We must recognize that those smirking grins and sadistic leers are not simply expressions of some alien breed — they are the face of America at war.

A Wretched New Picture of America
Photos From Iraq Prison Shows Americans Are their own Worst Enemy

Among the corrosive lies a nation at war tells itself is that the glory — the lofty goals announced beforehand, the victories, the liberation of the oppressed — belongs to the country as a whole; but the failure — the accidents, the uncounted civilian dead, the crimes and atrocities — is always exceptional. Noble goals flow naturally from a noble people; the occasional act of barbarity is always the work of individuals, unaccountable, confusing and indigestible to the national conscience.

This kind of thinking was widely in evidence among military and political leaders after the emergence of pictures documenting American abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. These photographs do not capture the soul of America, they argued. They are aberrant.

But now we have photos that have gone to the ends of the Earth, an image of America that could remain with Americans for years, perhaps decades. An Army investigative report reveals that US Military have stripped young men (whom purported to liberate) of their clothing and their dignity; They have forced them to make pyramids of flesh, as if they were children; They have made them masturbate in front of their captors and cameras; forced them to simulate sexual acts; threatened prisoners with rape and sodomized at least one; beaten them; and turned dogs upon them.

These photos show us what Americans may become, as occupation continues, anger and resentment grows and costs spiral. There's nothing surprising in this. These pictures are pictures of colonial behavior, the demeaning of occupied people, the insult to local tradition, the humiliation of the vanquished. They are unexceptional.

Look at these images closely and you realize that they can't just be the random accidents of war, or the strange, inexplicable perversity of a few bad seeds. First of all, they exist. Soldiers who allow themselves to be photographed humiliating prisoners clearly don't believe this behavior is unpalatable. Second, the soldiers didn't just reach into a grab bag of things they thought would humiliate young Iraqi men. They chose sexual humiliation, which may recall to outsiders the rape scandal at the Air Force Academy, Tailhook and past killings of gay sailors and soldiers.

World editorial reaction is vehement. US military is under the suspicion of the International Red Cross and Amnesty International. "US military power will be seen for what it is, a behemoth with the response speed of a muscle-bound ox and the limited understanding of a mouse" said Saudi Arabia's English language Arab News.

We reduce Iraqis to hapless victims of a cheap porn flick; they reduce our cherished, respected military to a hybrid beast, big, stupid, senseless.

Media denial lets the U.S. military—and the U.S. incarceration industry—off the hook. Yet, it's significant that a man implicated as a ringleader in the Abu Ghraib crimes, Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick, "had also worked for six years as a guard for the Virginia Department of Corrections," according to Seymour Hersh's article in the New Yorker. A special agent in the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division, Scott Bobeck, testified that Sgt. Frederick and a corporal apparently "were put in charge because they were civilian prison guards and had knowledge of how things were supposed to be run."

While the Bush administration did little but yawn about evidence of torture and other abuses of Iraqi people at the hands of U.S. occupiers, such disinterest was largely replicated in the U.S. news media. "Ever since the war began, Amnesty International has been receiving reports of Iraqis who have been taken into detention by Coalition Forces and whose rights have been violated," said an Amnesty International press release dated March 18,2006. "Some have been held without charge for months. A number of detainees have been tortured and ill-treated. Virtually none has had prompt access to a lawyer, their family or judicial review of their detention."

In the Arab world, the photographs "have strengthened the feeling that there is a deep racism underlying the occupiers' attitudes to Arabs, Muslims and the Third World generally," Ahdaf Soueif wrote in a Guardian article (May 5). She contended, "the acts in the photos being flashed across the networks would not have taken place but for the profound racism that infects the American and British establishments."

American Indians said apologies would not erase the tortures in Iraq and President Bush should be held responsible for leading America into a groundless war.

"It seems like white people are the worst savages," said Bessie Taylor, Navajo from Ch'ooshgai Mountain on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico.

After viewing the photograph of a female soldier holding a leash tied around the throat of a naked Iraqi, Taylor said the female soldier should be dragged in the same manner. "She probably doesn't know what it feels like to be tortured."

After Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld apologized for the abuses in Iraq, Taylor said, "An apology is nothing. What does an apology do for you -- nothing."

Taylor said Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Rumsfeld should be held responsible for the tortures in Iraq. "They were so eager for this war, now look what has happened. President Bush is responsible for leading America into this war. He is responsible for this. This war was about oil and making Bush's friends rich."

American New Ethical Values

American Female Soldier

Symbol of American Enlightenment & Moderation

Sex manic US President, G.W Bush

Sex manic President & Sex manic US Army

What is a problem with them?

Save the humanity from these fools

We shall fight against them and save the humanity