>> ^BoneRemake:

>> ^rottenseed:
I'm not a fan of downvoting music, because it's just a personal taste thing. That being clarified, this "song" really did bug the shit out of me.

EVERYTHING on here is voted on via personal taste, although I understand your meaning, its conflicting the the point of the up and down voting. how is it never a personal thought when you up or down vote anything on here ? its all relative, music or movie.



I mean it's cool if you have dislike for anything for whatever reason. However, the notion of down voting is sort of silly in my opinion because it's akin to the banning of a film, book, or idea for some reactionary ulterior motive. I'm not trying to say that this video or song is profound at all (it simply isn't but I do think it's good) like an important book or film (Battle of Algiers?). I think with a down vote should come an up vote because everyone should be interested in what someone else is trying to subvert.

If those cities are anything like Algiers Point, where white people are not even investigated, let alone arrested and prosecuted, for murder, I can see why those cities are "safe", meaning no arrests for violent crime.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'murder, america, uninvestigated, euphemism, vigilante, hate' to 'murder, uninvestigated, euphemism, vigilante, hate, katrina, algiers point, new orleans' - edited by kronosposeidon

^
>> ^mharvey42:


Absolutely.

Most first person accounts I've heard include tales of how the blacks started to pillage stores and sell their loot for inflated prices. After the stores were empty, they'd make their way to private residences.

Robbery and murder weren't the only problems. There was a huge RAPE epidemic as well. You need to protect yourself and your family in a state of emergency.

The police certainly weren't helping as they were too busy emptying the shelves at WalMart and even took a vacation in the middle of the crisis.

These people were simply ensuring that the chaos and carnage that happened in NO wouldn't find its way to Algiers Point. You've got to be firm in this circumstance and show them the neighborhood is in control.

whoa, whoa, whoa... i never said that YOU said that the us aided the taliban - read more carefully -- i also was not the first to bring it up... jon did with his graphic innuendo at 3:25 in the vid - when my correction of this misinformation was subsequently challenged by nebosuke, i reiterated the mistakes in the initial premise - then you came in chiding me for not providing references

but if you check carefully, you'll see that what i said to you in regards to the taliban was prefaced with:

'your cites also continue to claim...'

and

'basically what your skewed sources are claiming...'

so, am i offbase? not at all - your cites did indeed misrepresent...

'Backed by Pakistan’s military intelligence, which in turn was controlled by the CIA, the Taliban Islamic State was largely serving American geopolitical interests.'

'These organizations or movements, such as the Taliban, often foment “opposition to Uncle Sam” in a way which does not constitute any real threat to America’s broader geopolitical and economic interests. Meanwhile, Washington has supported their development as a means of disarming social movements, which it fears may threaten US economic and political hegemony.'

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/americawarterrorism/americawarterrorism02.htm

so either you don't read your own sources, or you don't believe them -- nice

a. your cites, my cites - yeah, who cares? i at least carefully read both mine and yours -- what follows in this post should satisfy your need for a higher (both in number and quality) degree of sourcing than you've provided - speaking of which, bergen doesn't provide his sources because HE is the primary source -- your cites' quotings from the likes of abdel monem said ali and ahmed rashid are what are called secondary and tertiary sources -- finally, i think when you fully peruse the citations i'll provide, you'll see that the sourcing of the state dept webpage belies your opinion of it

b. lol - if you think i agree with you, then you are pretty dense -- you probably blame hurricanes on butterfly wings

c. 'And prior history notwithstanding, without the ISI's, and through them the US, insistance on bringing in Arabs to fight with the mujahideen there would LIKELY be no Al Qaeda.'

lol, again - what makes you think that the us and isi insisted on bringing in arabs to fight? you're very misinformed -- first of all, if they did insist, then why the hell didn't the arabs fight? heh --- what both the us and isi DID want was SUPPORT, re. cash and logistics

unfortunately, along with the cash, the arab states sent us their fundamentalist troublemakers and criminals given early parole to fight for islam in afghanistan, e.g. the folks who assassinated anwar sadat, etc -- the trouble came about after the afghans won and the arab states didn't want their 'jihadists' back - lol

but anyway, here are the cites and sources for you...

'Assess for me the role of Osama bin Laden and his fellow Afghan Arabs in the victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.
The Arab element of the ten year engagement in Afghanistan was fundamental to its success, but within the context of fund-raiser.'

'The Saudi Arabian government, and rich, wealthy princes ... contributed and matched dollar for dollar the US government's money in the Afghan war?

That was within the context of the program that CIA was managing. And that's the way it was funded. And that is known. Beyond that, you had Saudi Red Crescent and all forms of Gulf Arab organizations who were drawn to the only operative jihad at the time, a very major event within the world of Islam. And they were fund-raisers. And they brought additional moneys into the Afghan program, into the resistance from their own sources, and did good works.

They built orphanages, they built homes for widows of martyrs, and brought in, after the war turned to the advantage of the mujahedeen, some ... 20 to 25 million dollars a month. ... So in that regard, they played a very major role. Now, part of your question is what about the combat role. Minimal. There were some Arabs that fought with some mujahedeen groups, but not many. At any given time, inside Afghanistan, [there were] maybe 2,000 Arabs. ... But the people of Afghanistan fought that war, they bled, they died, they were driven out of their country. To suggest that others were engaged in the combat activity to any extent is just simply wrong.'

'Who were the Afghan Arabs?

Muslims from all over the world: North Africa, Persian Gulf, but from all over the world. Other than that, you had a rag tag bunch of Muslims that were taken from one jail or another, whether it's in Cairo or in Algiers or any other country in the Gulf, and put on an airplane and flown to go do the jihad with the fondest hope that they not come back. They didn't die in great numbers. They died in tiny numbers, and they did come back. And my bet is that even the Saudis were terribly happy to see the son Osama bin Laden go off to war. And some might have thought wouldn't it be nice if he didn't return.'

'Because so much of what we hear about Osama bin Laden comes out of his Afghanistan experience, I'm trying to get this straight, he was mostly a philanthropist and a financial contributor, and a minor combat figure, who happened to dabble in combat?

... I can possibly give him credit for having been present and accounted for at one major battle in ... Baktia Province in 1987. Beyond that, I simply cannot say that there is any war record at all. What I can say is that the hype that surrounds Osama bin Laden--most of it generated by the US media and backed up by statements that verge on hyperbole from the United States government--that this man was literally swinging through the valleys of the Hindu Kush with a dagger in his teeth and single-handedly driving out the Soviet army, this did not happen. The Afghan people did that. The Arab role in the combat situation on the ground was minimal to nonexistent, period. And to suggest otherwise is simply to either gloss over history or to create history for your own reasons.

I can imagine someone out there watching saying. "This is the CIA talking." You're not going to admit that you created the most dangerous public enemy in the world.

You bet I would. If I could look you in the eye and say, "Trust me, Osama bin Laden was my guy. If it wasn't for the CIA he wouldn't be anything then, he wouldn't be anything today," if I could say that with a straight face, I think that would speed up the process of removing Mr. bin Laden as a source of great, great concern for the United States. I can't say that because it's simply not true. You can find nobody who is familiar with the situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan in those years that would say bin Laden played any role other than the fund-raiser.'

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/binladen/interviews/bearden.html

'MILTON BEARDEN, AUTHOR; FORMER STATION CHIEF, CIA: That's what it was. It was a jihad, and it was a jihad for ten years. There were a million Afghans killed, a million-and-a-half wounded or maimed, and five million driven into exile. That's -- it's awfully close to 50 percent of the population of the country. So it was in fact a jihad, and our role was pretty much tandential to what everybody else was doing. The Afghans were doing the dying and the fighting. The Saudis and the Americans were paying the freight. The Chinese were ordinance. They provided an awful lot of weaponry. The Egyptians provided a lot of weaponry. And bin Laden and a lot of young Gulf Arabs and other Arabs came to do the jihad.

ADAMS: It was quite a cause for them.

BEARDEN: Of course, it was.

ADAMS: Did you meet bin Laden then?

BEARDEN: No, no. Bin Laden was one of many. Bin Laden is becoming a myth that I'm a little uncomfortable with. When bin Laden was in Peshawar in Pakistan where he spent almost all of the war, but he was a fundraiser. We are talking about money that came from Gulf Arabs in a given month could have been $20, 25 million in a given month.

ADAMS: Had you heard about this man, though, that had $250 million of his father's money from Saudi Arabia to bring to the cause?

BEARDEN: Had I heard of him? I knew bin Laden was out there. I knew that the Saudi Red Crescent was out there. I knew that all of the Red Crescent organizations of the Gulf Arab states were out there. But did I take a look and say that this tall thin ascetic-looking Saudi was special? No. To be perfectly frank, the money that they brought in relieved the United States and Saudi Arabia of going deeper into their own national treasuries for more money.'

'ADAMS: When the Gulf War starts and bin Laden says never has Islam suffered a greater disaster than this invasion, meaning the presence of U.S. forces there to defend Kuwait and to support Saudi Arabia, and you hear this, and you know these are the guys that you helped -- the CIA helped fight against the Soviet Union -- what do you think? What's your reaction at that time?

BEARDEN: Well, a couple of reactions. One, CIA, CIA as the executive instrument of the United States government, you know, three presidents beginning with Jimmy Carter were helping the Afghan people resist the Soviet invasion. It's a real stretch in my opinion to say we helped bin Laden or even cared about him. That he participated in it most certainly -- it was OK with us. It was his business and all that.

Now on the one hand, it was fundamentalist Islam that defeated the Soviet Union, and it set in play or set in motion the history that played out through 1989. November 9th, the Berlin Wall is breached, and it's all over.

Now that some of the Arabs that went to that jihad have remained problematic, sure. Am I shocked? Not really. You know, war brings strange allies together, doesn't it? I mean, if you had to worry about unintended consequences, then would we have ever helped Joseph Stalin deal with that other great acute evil, Adolph Hitler? Sure we would, even though 200 million people get subjugated for 50 years; and we spend our nation's treasure for half a century dealing with the Soviet Union.'

http://www.asms.net/facultymanaged/srou/osamabinladen/real%20Articles/Interview%20with%20CIA%20agaent.htm

'Most of the leadership and the whole ideology of Al Qaeda derives from Egyptian writer Sayyid Qutb (1906–66) and his progeny, who killed Anwar Sadat and were arrested in October 1981. President Mubarak generously allowed them to be released in 1984.

Many of the released men, harassed by the Egyptian police, migrated to Afghanistan. With the end of the Soviet-Afghan War, they continued on to jihad. These Arab outsiders actually did not fight in the Soviet-Afghan War except for one small battle at Jaji/Ali Kheyl, which was really defensive: the Arabs had put their camp on the main logistic supply line, and in the spring of 1987 the Soviets tried to destroy it. So they were really more the recipient of a Soviet offensive, but they really did not fight in that war and thus the U.S. had absolutely no contact with them. I heard about the battle of Jaji at the time, and it never dawned on me to ask the Afghans I debriefed who the Arabs were. They turned out to be bin Laden and his men at the Al-Masada (Lion’s Den) camp.

After the war, a lot of these foreigners returned to their countries. Those who could not return because they were terrorists remained in Afghanistan.'

http://www.terrorisminfo.mipt.org/Understanding-Terror-Networks-Sageman.asp

'REPORTER: Mr. Bin Ladin, tell us about your experience during the Afghan war and what did you do during that jihad?

BIN LADIN: Praise be to God, the Cherisher and Sustainer of the worlds, that He made it possible for us to aid the Mujahidin in Afghanistan without any declaration for jihad. It was rather the news that was broadcast by radio stations that the Soviet Union invaded a Muslim country. This was a sufficient motivation for me to start to aid our brothers in Afghanistan. I have benefited so greatly from the jihad in Afghanistan that it would have been impossible for me to gain such a benefit from any other chance and this cannot be measured by tens of years but rather more than that, Praise and Gratitude be to God. In spite of the Soviet power, we used to move with confidence and God conferred favors on us so that we transported heavy equipment from the country of the Two Holy Places (Arabia) estimated at hundreds of tons altogether that included bulldozers, loaders, dump trucks and equipment for digging trenches. When we saw the brutality of the Russians bombing Mujahidins' positions, by the grace of God, we dug a good number of huge tunnels and built in them some storage places and in some others we built a hospital.'

http://www.anusha.com/osamaint.htm

'Was this the origin of al Qaeda?

Yes. al Qaeda wasn't an outgrowth of Adbullah Azaam's "Office of Services," as has been suggested elsewhere. al Qaeda grew in opposition to Azzam's organization, not out of it. Azzam's organization had been becoming something like an NGO, which provided education and the like. Bin Laden didn't want to do that. He wanted to fight the Soviets by forming his own group. But this is also an early example of an interesting trait of bin Laden's: He acts on impulse and doesn't follow good advice. Azzam didn't think the Arab jihadists in Afghanistan were all that important to the anti-Soviet effort. So Azzam wanted to pepper them among different Afghan units and use them as morale-boosters. Bin Laden didn't listen. And at the end of the day Azzam was right: It was the blood of Afghans that won the war against the Soviets, along with lots of money from the United States and Saudi Arabia.'

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/31205/

'Peter, what is the--you talk a little bit in the book about this notion of blowback, the fact that the CIA really created al-Qaeda or the entire--this sort of Muslim fundamentalism network that we're now facing and more or less put lie to that, or at least minimized the impact of the CIA and say that Osama bin Laden had a bigger part in that.

Mr. BERGEN: Well, I mean, I--just for clarity's purposes, the CIA, you know, obviously had a big role in the Afghan resistance, $3 billion they supplied, but they were basically signing checks. And it's interesting--it's a widely held view on the left that somehow CIA was involved in the founding of al-Qaeda or helped bin Laden, and conspiracy theorists around the world believe this, but there's just no evidence for it. Surprisingly, there are very few things that the US government and bin Laden agree upon, but Ayman al-Zawahiri has released statements that there was no backing from the United States. Other people within al-Qaeda--there really is just simply no evidence for that. The real story is not that the CIA knew who--you know, was helping out bin Laden 'cause they had no idea who he was until about 1995 when they first set up a unit in--specially looking at him directly in January of 1996. So really the story is not one of CIA complicity in the rise of bin Laden; it's actually ignoring the problem before it was too late.'

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=5151657

d. i have a very open mind, but it's also quite critical - i try to check the facts that i choose to believe very carefully, and if i ever see a source that intentionally tries to deceive, well, they lose all credibility with me - that's why all these CT nuts with their tongue-in-cheek logical fallacies and faulty syllogisms hold no truck with me -- if that means i have a closed mind, in your opinion, so be it - i'm more than fine with that

Cheers on your response, your arguement certainly makes sense. However I believe that the US can ill afford another combat operation failure on the scale of Iraq, even a shift to plan B, not because of the implications in political shift but towards the American image over the last 60 years on the world stage. This would just deepen the US position in Iraq to one of long term occupation, already the military has plans for 11 or so permanent bases across the country with the Baghdad green zone being the heaviest developed.

It's interesting that you mentioned Battle of Algiers, yes the fact is the the French forces managed to stop the terrorist activities, however you fail to mention that through out that same time a political shift was taking place that ultimately countered the military successes achieved. This is the same thing that is happening right now at Congress, House and Senate.

The fact is yes, force deployment will end this situation because US forces are the best trained, the best equipped and are actively seeking new ways of countering the insurgency. But this is only the response now, there was no solid plan post capture of Baghdad because the administration in same ways probably hoped for a stand off with a limited Iraqi army not expecting the force collapse that occurred, a replay of Gulf War 1. There was no plan, well there was one but it got thrown out by the politicians.

However this would come at a severe political cost, the entire shift will change, the political process will paralyzed to use the same force responses if another event on 9/11 occurs because you will have those who will recall Iraq and Vietnam in the same breath, we cannot afford such a position with the American people who might not understand the wider implication of keeping a stabilized American presence in the Gulf.

I do not believe in pursuing a war that was put in motion by people who do not understand the local play out of the area. Bush Senior knew the country was too unstable to go into outright, his failure was not keeping up US force support in the same way that the Taliban goverment was toppled by support of the Northern Alliance.

In the mind set of the Arab people they draw parallels between this war and the Russian Chechen occupation that follows the exactly the same steps. There is a continuous force deployment by Russia, still peace and stability eludes them... they also occupy Chechnya because of it's importance to the oil supply.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Dispatches-The-Dirty-War-in-Chechnya

In response to your comment about there being no clear plan, the plan is for the additional troops to be a police force. This is right out of the counter-insurgency playbook. Look at successful counter-insurgencies throughout history and they all applied overwhelming force to police the populace, provide security, and prevent insurgent forces from operating freely. This may not be the dashing, clear mission objective such as "take Hill 317" or "defend this bridge until relieved" but again successful counter insurgencies have all used military forces in a police role.

To be honest I do not think 21,000 additional troops will be sufficient to establish the baseline of security necessary for an effective counter-insurgency. It is worth a try however because there is still a possibility it might slow down the escalation of sectarian violence, and if we cannot slow down said violence then nothing else we do will really matter. My key point here is that the additional troops for security purposes is straight out of the counter-insurgency playbook. Watch the movie Battle for Algiers sometime. Granted France eventually lost Algeria but they conducted a successful counter-insurgency against the FLN in Algiers several years prior to the mass uprisings that would eventually lead to independence. If you watch the movie, you will see that the French had a military presense on virtually every street corner. Attacks still got through, but the ability of the FLN to operate freely throughout the city was severely, severely limited.

"I agree that a force addition looks good on paper, but it looked good on paper back in Vietnam, the additional force elements there were just not enough to back out of what turned into a civil war. The same situation is being repeated here."

Except that Vietnam was a conflict between two sovereign nation-states. Granted both states were ethnically linked, but it was an external conflict between two states rather than an internal conflict in one state. In the event that the Soviet Union ever invaded Western Europe, US Special Forces teams would have been deployed throughout eastern Europe to make contact with dissident forces and train, equip and lead them on guerilla operations in the Soviet rear. In Vietnam, the North was doing the exact same thing to the South in preparation of a conventional invasion. The reason why we failed in Vietnam was because we treated the conflict as if the South had a domestic insurgency, rather a foreign infiltration by the North. Granted Iran is playing a part in supporting the Shiite militias, but such support pales in comparison to the guerilla combat operations that the PAVN was conducting in South Vietnam.

"If the 21,000 force commitment fails. What then?"

Then it fails and we try plan B, which I would hope would be a partitioning of the country.

"The US will have no maneuvering "

So are you saying we should hold said 21,000 troops in reserve for deployment in some later, alternative strategy? If not, then how does deploying the troops now limit our ability to maneuver? Look, the NIE makes it pretty clear that withdrawal in the next 12 to 18 months is not an option. In the face of that we either commit our available resources in one last push to make this thing work, or we can immediately turn to other options such as partitioning the country. Either way we will be in this for the long haul. With that in mind, giving the surge a try for 5-6 to months is worth a shot. If the security situation improves then we follow up on such success, if we see no improvement then we pursue the other less favorable options (i.e. partition). In the event it doesn't work, having additional forces on the ground gives us additional flexibility to pursue an alternate strategy. If said troops are not needed for an alternate strategy they can be redeployed, if they are then they are already in country availible for use.

"there will be another crushing morale plummet as US forces will pull out like they did in South Vietnam."

In the likely event that Iraq completely falls apart then such a moral plummet will occur regardless of whether or not the troop surge occurred.

Look, I am very pessimistic about our chances for success in Iraq. I think success would still be entirely possible were there still support for the War. I think the troop surge could possibly work, but probably won't. And I think if the surge fails we should look into a soft partition of the country, which is far less than ideal but will serve our interest of regional stability for better than a failed Iraqi state. In all likelihood I think the failed state is the outcome we're going to get however. The last three years in Iraq have basically been wasted, and I blame the bush administration entirely for that. If we are to succeed we basically need to start from square one. There simply isn't patience among the American people any more for such a long term commitment to Iraq however. I suspect that if the troop surge does not succeed, which is highly probably, patience for the war will be entirely over and a rapid withdrawal will follow leading to the collapse of the Iraqi government and a destabilization of the region. With that in mind what I think we should do is entirely a moot point because there will never be an opportunity to do any of it.

The Battle of Algiers (in Italian, La Battaglia di Algeri) is a 1966 black-and-white film by Gillo Pontecorvo based on the Algerian War of Independence from 1954 until 1962 against the French occupation. The film has been critically acclaimed for it's realistic and evenhanded portrayal of both sides of the conflict. It remains as one of the best cinematic discourses on struggles for independence.

In 2003, the film again made the news after the US Directorate for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict at The Pentagon offered a screening of the film on August 27, regarding it as a useful illustration of the problems faced in Iraq. A flyer for the screening read:

"How to win a battle against terrorism and lose the war of ideas. Children shoot soldiers at point-blank range. Women plant bombs in cafes. Soon the entire Arab population builds to a mad fervor. Sound familiar? The French have a plan. It succeeds tactically, but fails strategically. To understand why, come to a rare showing of this film."

According to the Defense Department official in charge of the screening, "Showing the film offers historical insight into the conduct of French operations in Algeria, and was intended to prompt informative discussion of the challenges faced by the French." The 2003 screening lent new currency to the film, coming only months after U.S. President George W. Bush's May 1, 2003 "Mission Accomplished" speech proclaiming the end of "major hostilities" in Iraq. Opponents of President Bush cited the Pentagon screening as proof of a growing concern within the Defense Department about the growth of an Iraqi insurgency belying Bush's triumphalism. One year later, the media's revelations regarding the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal lead critics of the war to compare French torture in the film and "aggressive interrogation" of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison.

Journalist: M. Ben M'Hidi, don't you think it's a bit cowardly to use women's baskets and handbags to carry explosive devices that kill so many innocent people?

Ben M'Hidi: And doesn't it seem to you even more cowardly to drop napalm bombs on defenseless villages, so that there are a thousand times more innocent victims? Of course, if we had your airplanes it would be a lot easier for us. Give us your bombers, and you can have our baskets.

Journalist: The law's often inconvenient, Colonel.

Col. Mathieu: And those who explode bombs in public places, do they respect the law perhaps? When you put that question to Ben M'Hidi, remember what he said? We aren't madmen or sadists, gentlemen. Those who call us Fascists today, forget the contribution that many of us made to the Resistance. Those who call us Nazis, don't know that among us there are survivors of Dachau and Buchenwald. We are soldiers and our only duty is to win. Should we remain in Algeria? If you answer "yes," then you must accept all the necessary consequences.

dotdude, I lived in Algiers Point (across the river from the quarter) when Katrina hit! My wife and kid and I evacuated to Philadelphia. It's nice here: above sea level. Hope your family did okay in the storm.

Two years ago I saw "The Battle of Algiers" at our film festival.

You haven't seen The Battle Of Algiers I reckon

You have to watch the film InvaderSil, for the Hollywood romp it was there was some thin vague criticism of the Gulf War.

And Theo47, you can't hate war movies. Watch Battle of Algiers.

I think the Bush Administration is fine with rules so long as they can contextualize the rule to the point of absolute meaninglessness.

Case in point: Torture defined as that which "shocks the conscience" and subsequently defended by Rove, Bush, and company as a "clear" standard. Shocks whose conscience? Dick Cheney's? the Abu Ghraib wahoos? My conscience? Noam Chomsky's?

peretz:

Your argument reminds me of the French colonel's speech in The Battle of Algiers. If anyone has not seen that movie, drop the Sift and go get it.

If the top 15 of us submitted three videos each day, that would be 45 in the que daily. But there are a lot more of us than just 15. Summer may mean additional participants since some folks are not in school. The growth of membership and videos is going to mean more constraints.

Maybe the limit of 2 will need to be reintroduced. Maybe the time in the que will need to be reduced. Maybe a cap on the number of videos are in the que will encourage more aggressive voting up or down.

As for the tagging discussion, I would like to suggest an increase in the maximum for tags. There have been times when I wanted to have more than the limit because of what was in a video. This might help in tracking videos down and encouraging folks to better label what is submitted.

I am sucker for Monty Python sketches, but there are other comedy troops and individuals out there. I had completely forgotten about “The Two Ronnies” – although I don’t remember where or when I used to watch them eons ago.

Whatever y’all decide, don’t turn this into a drudgery yourselves. I’m reminded of restaurant in Algiers Point (across the river from the French Quarter) - it closed because it became too successful.

Anyway, I need to quit thinking so I can wind down this annoying artist mind of mind . . .