It has everything to do with it. Years previously the Taliban held an 'Islamic' trial of Bin Laden and America submitted evidence. The Taliban court accepted the evidence and dismissed the charges against Bin Laden anyways. Now the important note you all are ignoring is the court didn't dismiss the charges claiming Bin Laden never did what was claimed. No, instead the court deemed that his actions were in keeping with proper Islamic law. The Taliban had accepted documentation proving Bin Laden's guilt ages ago and said they thought his actions acceptable.

To still, to this day, insist that everything would've been so different if only the US had submitted evidence all over again that the outcome this time would've been any different is insanity and I can't believe anyone honestly is willing to expect others to share such a delusion.

@bcglorf
@Yogi is correct.
the US refused to provide evidence that bin laden was responsible for 9/11.

your counter with the 90's interpol has nothing to do with his statement.

they are two separate instances which have nothing to do with each other.

the reason why the US refused to provide any evidence that bin laden was responsible for 9/11 was because he wasnt.

the best that the state department could produce was a possible monetary contribution.

do me a favor. Remove yourself from the conversation if your just going to spout idiotic crap. The first Interpol warrant for Bin Laden's arrest was issued in the 1990's. If you want to protest a lack of evidence and proof you are choosing to live in a dream world. I won't debate fiction with you.

No this isn't true. The US started a War with Afghanistan refusing to give any evidence against Osama Bin Laden. They said hand him over or else, and they didn't have any evidence against them which the CIA admitted 8 months after the War was launched.

The US doesn't present evidence, they don't go to the World Court and they don't even tell the Pakistani Military or Government when they are going to attack someone. They do what they want.

Also there is plenty that you CAN do when a country simply refused to hand over criminals. We don't do them, we simply kill now. Bush Jailed people without evidence, Obama kills them and innocent civilians.

This isn't really new, except that Snowden's documents confirm what everybody strongly suspected.

All of the encrypted communications mentioned use SSL, or TLS, and although strong crypto is supported it's more likely that weaker variants will be used almost all the time. This is partly from wanting to support older browsers, partly from not upgrading server keys and config when older ciphers are broken.

There are additional problems protecting communication from the NSA if they are really after you and not just indiscriminately gathering your data.

I would point out that Usama bin Laden did a rather good job though.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-06/new-snowden-documents-say-nsa-can-break-common-internet-encrypt/4940138

The 20th?? Oliver Stone says Rumsfeld ordered the invasion plan of Iraq drawn up on 9/11 while Dubya was still reading about little goats.
He is supposed to have told them to "Sweep it all up".

By the time Bush got on the megaphone at ground zero and told a cheering crowd he was going to get even he'd already told his Daddy's business partners the Bin Ladens they were letting Saudi Arabia off.

@lantern53 Where were Bush's apologies? Didn't he say that history would be the judge hence no need to apologise? Also, the government is not some mythical separate entity from 'the people". America is the bastion of democracy, don't you agree? How are we to separate the actions of its people from its government? Democracy, especially one as purportedly strong as your own, implies consent if not endorsement.

@bcglorf The first point just restates what I said which I think we both agree on.

The second point about Pakistan has been over simplified to the point of misdirection. There are 3 domains of power in Pakistan; the ISI (Intelligence), the military and the government. The ISI largely controls the madrassahs and although there is a huge amount of violence in Pakistan at the moment (something you won't hear about in Western news broadcasts) the main area of contention there is about Kashmir. It has little if nothing to do with the USA. In fact the USA aids the Pakistan cause by their alliance with Pakistan in an attempt to oppose Chinese backed India. Further, charities does not automatically mean state-based endorsement. Its quite a stretch.

Plus, I can name many muslim nations that did not have spontaneous celebrations. Afghanistan for one. Sure maybe a few in Kabul got wind of it but as a nation they are still pretty much in the dark about the whole thing. Some more, Turkey (secular yes but muslim by demos), Azer Baijan, Sudan, Bosnia-Herzogoznia, Burkina Faso, Chad, Comoros, Gambia, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritania, Somalia.... I'm sure there were lots of other countries that had spontaneous displays of celebration after 9/11... France, Cuba, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Venuzuela, Russia, Guatemala, Vietnam, Philippines, Laos, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Mexico, Serbia.

To paint any display of celebration with the brush of enemy eliminates any nuance or desire for understanding complex issues for the sake of post hoc raltionalisation of ones own immediate intuitions. Does the Westboro Baptist Church mean that America is no better than any of the Muslim nations you list? Of course not. To say as much as absurd. To see brown people doing the same is merely convenient.

The third point you seem to provide your own refutation. Drones etc do indeed fuel Al Queda. You admit as much. If the AL Qaeda aim is indeed about Pakistan and India (which I think you may be very confused about Al-Qaeda and its Pakistani brethren, two very separate entities with almost no commonality bar what we grant them). Al Qaeda in the Bin Laden days cared nothing for Pakistan. It was almost entirely focused on Saudi Arabia and only went to Afghanistan as a sort of Boys Own adventure club. They were the laughing stock of the Mujahaddin.

Well, I'm about to get down voted into oblivion, but I have to state this as bluntly as possible.

This is the most perverted kind of propaganda that can be trotted out by someone, and it sickens me to see it. Glen is absolutely correct in every fact he points out, and is in that respect, doing nothing but telling the truth and educating his audience with things they likely didn't know before, and should have. It would seem that should be an unqualified good thing then, but it's not.

What makes this offensive propagandizing to me is the absolutely deliberate omission of equally true, relevant and significant facts that Glen can't help but be aware of. His sole purpose for the omission is that it suddenly shifts things from black and white into the gray that audiences don't like as much.

I'll start from the most important point, and the very premise of the talk, why do they hate us? There is a bigger question though that is even more illuminating, and it is why to they(jihadist terrorists) hate and kill their fellow Islamic countrymen and neighbours? The fact here is that jihadi terrorists before 9/11 and even more so since, have killed tens and hundreds of times as many middle eastern muslims than they have white western infidels. Glen points out plenty of reasons people can have to be upset with America over it's past actions, which is legit in itself, but NONE of those reasons explain why these jihadists target there own fellow middle eastern muslims for the exact same violence and retribution America faced on 9/11. The fact this makes plain is that the jihadi terrorists will hate not only us, but everyone who is not willing to join them unconditionally. They are not the misunderstood, historically slighted and unjustly maligned people Glen's talk might lead people to think of them as. They(jihadi terrorists) do not deserve our sympathy or apologies, their countrymen and neighbours that are their biggest victims do.

Glen also goes on to list the deaths from sanctions on Iraq as an American crime. Apparently Saddam's horrific(then American approved) war on Iran, his genocide of the Kurds, his extensive use of chemical weapons in both, his complete seizure of Kuwait and his genocide of Iraqi Shiites are not relevant to the discussion of placing sanctions on his country. In Glen's discussion, despite this laundry list of crimes against humanity, Saddam is entirely innocent and not in anyway to blame for the children starving in his country while he continued to build himself new palaces and kept his personal guard and secret police forces well equipped and well fed. How is one to take this seriously?

Finally, Glen omits a terrifically important American crime in East Timor that Bin Laden listed. No, sadly it's not our tacit support for the pro Islamic genocide of the people there in the past, but it was America's support for an end to that genocidal repression and support for a free and independent East Timor. This was listed near the very top of American crimes. When Zarqawi blew up the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, he was very clear that it wasn't for Iraqi children dead at the hands of American sanctions. It was because Sérgio Vieira de Mello(killed in the blast) helped over see the transition to a free East Timor.

I'm afraid I am beyond disappointed by talks like this, I find them offensive and contemptible.

Drone strikes in northern Pakistan are not indiscriminate. Count how many of the Taliban and Al Qaida's top leadership has been killed off by them. That's some pretty impossibly lucky indiscriminate fire to so frequently end up taking out major jihadist leaders.

Do you have an alternative proposal for dealing with militant jihadists in Pakistan? They are killing civilians, and in particular women, children and students daily. During Pakistan's elections, the Taliban killed multiple candidates, including candidates lobbying extremely hard for an end to drone strikes, an end to military action in the tribal regions, and for talks with the Taliban. Even those candidates were declared enemies by the Taliban for taking part in elections and were killed by them. This isn't about protecting white christians from muslims, it's about jihadists killing off muslims and trying to stop them.

America can't take more precise policed action to arrest or capture militant leaders in Pakistan either. Killing Bin Laden led to even greater outrage than the drone strikes, but boots on the ground are the only method left with less risk of collateral damage. Even if Pakistan's military is finally persuaded to do so instead, it is guaranteed that it will again increase civilian deaths over the short term as any campaign to retake control of the tribal areas is put into action.

It's a mess and simply saying leave them alone is naive and stupid. The Taliban are actively working to topple a nuclear powered state that is particularly vulnerable to them. More over, we are not even sure just how removed from each other key leaders in Pakistan's ISI and military leaders are from jihadist leaders. This instability doesn't play out with a nuke thrown our way in the opening, it comes as jihadists getting enough influence to instigate sending one into India.

If all you pay attention is the idiotically simplistic, war is bad lets not fight pseudo commentators you miss the entire picture.

"I believe wiretaps are an important tool for law enforcement/counter terrorism..."

This is not Counter Terrorism, this is simply terrorism. Do I have to remind you of how COINTELPRO was used over 4 administrations to intimidate and assassinate those who fought for social justice?

"Contrary to media hysteria, Obama can't listen in on your phone calls or read your sexts without a court order."

A court order doesn't stop them, they don't listen to the courts. They use them to cover their ass but if they think my friends are organizing to protest they can read all about it in our emails and take steps to have the FBI Focus a crackdown on us. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy

Now on to your direct questions.
"Do you all think that surveillance should be a legal tool in criminal investigations?"

Yes, but the government has never been interested in counter terrorism being called or assessed as a criminal act. When we started the War in Afghanistan it was to get Osama Bin Laden and we ordered them to give him up. They asked rightly for the evidence against him. We decided that it didn't matter, let's fucking kill as many people as possible and destabilize the region to get this guy, risking the deaths of up to 4 million people and increasing the threat of terror. The worst part is WE KNEW we were increasing the threat of terror, we did it anyway.

This is just one example there are countless others, even a worse one by Obama himself, it's a travesty. So no this isn't about Criminal Investigation, we have NEVER been interested in that.

"If yes, what changes do we make to current policy without rendering surveillance toothless?"

We address legitimate grievances with the nations and peoples we are wronging, and fall in line with international law. We increase terrorism on ourselves by our actions.

I've got tons more but this is getting long. The point is I'm not going to give this government anything. I'm not willing to, they've proven that they cannot have any sort of power whatsoever.

You specifically need to read up on some things because apparently you woke up today and believed you were dealing with rational people who are just trying to protect us. You're not, these guys don't work for us, they hate us.

Worth noting that the US created the Muslim threat by deliberately arming and radicalizing the Afghani Taliban in order to give the Russians 'their own Vietnam'? Bin laden & 911 come directly from there and so the current iteration of the Red threat (Brown threat) is a direct construction of previous US governments which included the senior management of Fox news..

All this noise about the constitution is like a madman stood over a pile of murdered bodies refusing to give up his gun because he is terribly afraid people now want to shoot him. So he kills more out of fear. And Fletch is right and can join the Fremen.

@Kofi Did you find any yet?
Oh and I think Shineyblurry was more just trying to educate you Messenger, not just answer your questions. So here's my answers for you:

"1) Which part of, "Palestinians in Gaza are the prisoners of Israel, and Hamas is fighting against Israel because Israel has taken away the freedom of Palestinians in Gaza," do you disagree with?"
All of it. Hamas is a globally recognized terrorist group. Hamas has done more to take away the freedom of it's people than it has good. By continuing to push an antisemitic world view and continually calling for the outright destruction of Israel they have done nothing for their people over the last 40 years. If Hamas would actually accept one of the many peace agreements that have been laid forth over that time, we would not be having this discussion. Instead they kill civilians and place launch pads next to playgrounds.
"2. Do you think that Hamas would continue fighting Israel if Palestine returned to its 1946 borders?"
Absolutely. like Bicyclerepairman said, even if the borders went back to the 1946 borders the goal isn't borders it is the elimination of Israel entirely and the death of Jews worldwide.
"3. Do you think Hamas would stop fighting if all Israelis in the world were killed, but some other country kept Palestinians confined in Gaza and continued the embargo?"
Bicyclerepairman hit the nail on the head here. But I think that if all the Jews were dead and France ran Israel and kept Palestinians in Gaza they would have a much more difficult battle as it is a lot harder to identify "French" as a race and that diffuses their Nazi themed marketing machine of "BLAME THE JEWS". But I'm sure they would find a way, or slowly push Muslim and Islamic law to become the law of the land in France (Or other European countries for that matter). Something you can not do in Israel currently.
"4. Are there any rules against celebrating after killing your enemy?
5. Is killing someone worse than celebrating the killing?"
These were civilians. Not enemies. Where we can celebrate the death of Osama Bin Laden in the United States, we morn when innocents die. Especially children. And if a US soldier kills civilians while in active duty he is prosecuted and sent to jail or possibly even executed. So killing is worse than celebrating, but celebrating the killing of an innocent makes you a terrorist and a blight on humankind. That's not to say that killing of innocents is off the table, lord knows plenty of it happened during World War 1 & 2 and as a measure of war, while I personally find it a disgusting tactic and something to be avoided you can reach a point where drastic actions must be taken.
For example, North Korea. If they should ever get aggressive, with the overwhelming amount of brainwashing that goes on in that country it is very likely that many of the civilians will wind up being killed in any conflict.
But Israel and Palestine should NOT be at that point.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

These are tough lose-lose decisions. Yemen will not allow the US to capture Al Qaeda on the ground, but gives consent to drone strikes. This leaves two options, 1) Attack Al Qaeda with drone strikes that kill innocents along with military targets, or 2) allow Al Qaeda to continue with their own violent operations unfettered. Are there better options?


Maybe they won't let them because of how we handled Afghanistan. We told them we were going to bomb them into oblivion unless they did whatever we said. We also refused to provide any evidence Bin Laden had done anything, even 9 months after the war started we still had nothing.

What this is about is we think we own the world and can do whatever we want. These aren't tough lose-lose situation, you are responsible for the shit you create. There are diplomatic ways of doing things, we refuse to do any of those, we just kill people.

Fixed. These debate videos have been a bit squirrely for some reason.

>> ^Fantomas:

"This video is private."

The issues here are all wrong.

He's right about "Innocence of Muslims" looking like it was made by "Rank amateurs in a basement studio, no doubt it was. It's so bad that no one would ever have seen or heard of it, if it wasn't for the hoopla it caused. I never would have. Once I did, I sought it out and watched it. Well sort of.

First of all, the quality is garbage, something less than what we would expect from a YouTube video. Past that, The editing, the writing and the acting is terrible. It's confusing and hard to follow. In all honestly, I ended up skimming large parts of it because I didn't get the point. It's that bad.

What I don't understand is why the Muslim community felt this piece of crap video was worth killing people over? What they did was promote the film, and in doing so, brought fame to it. They are just as much to blame in the distribution of said offensive material.

So, some no name, never heard of before Egyptian born person (Nakoula Basseley Nakoula) creates a 14 minute anti-muslim video. Naakoula is a graduate of the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University. Born and educated over seas, he comes to the US and creates a video called "Innocence of Bin Laden" After the film is finished, in post production, he over-dubs all the audio and changes the title to Innocence of Muslims and changes the meaning of the film altogether.

Nakoula has been arrested for the "intent to manufacture methamphetamine" for which he did prison time. Then he pleaded no contest to federal charges of bank fraud as he opened fake bank accounts in order to defraud the banks out of as much as $800,000. He was a criminal with no scruples or morals.

He went out of his way to create this movie just to piss people off. He even claimed it was funded by $5 million collected from 100 Jewish donors, and that he was an Israeli-Jew.

So, what is my point? This piece of scum set out to create an incident and he succeeded.
The Muslim world over reacted and went "Bat-shit insane" (my words). In a fit of rage, they misplaced the blame on everyone associated with the West. They held protests in almost every major country in the world. They killed people and turned this into an international state of panic. "Oh poor us, don't criticize our Mohammad." (insert screams of "oh how could you" here) and ("The western world hates us - kill them now")

Now as a result, we, the people that didn't do anything, are being told we need to be more tolerant of the bat-shit crazy people and start educating ourselves more on their religion and watch more of their movies.

Now I have no issue educating myself on other cultures, in fact I find it interesting. But what I don't like being told is that us Westerners are part of the problem and that if we'd only have educated ourselves, this insensitivity wouldn't have happened. This is so absolutely false and absurd.

I know not all Muslims are "bat-shit crazy," but I didn't see any of them standing up and pointing their finger in the right direction (at some scumbag from Egypt).

As far as I am concerned this is what I see:
1). A scumbag needs to be deported for succeeding in inciting riots causing death.
2). People should be able to have their own opinions and be able to speak them in all areas concerning religion or their lack of faith in them.
3). the Muslim people who took part in the riots and killings should all be punished to the full extent of the law and be shamed by the rest of the people.
4). Muslim people need to get over themselves, learn to accept that their way isn't the only way and learn to "turn the other cheek". (And I use the term "their way" loosely because I don't think even they can even decide and agree on what the rules of their religion are.)