I saw Yellowjackets in Halifax, Nova Scotia once and it was one of the best concerts I have EVER seen!

In reply to this comment by Haldaug:
Yey, I'm going to see them live here in Bergen tomorrow.

Yey, I'm going to see them live here in Bergen tomorrow.

>> ^Unaccommodated:
Man, I've studying Norwegian for a year and living in Bergen since January and I can't understand any of it.


I have friends I visit from time to time over in Norway, whenever I'm stuck - "Kan du snakke engelsk?"

Man, I've studying Norwegian for a year and living in Bergen since January and I can't understand any of it.

Ya know what QM? You will never be a highdileeho.

My karma is different from his. I respect his decision to serve and he has to live with his life decisions like everyone else. Same with Corporal Twinkie, who is doing his brothers and sisters a grave disservice, even if he is sincere. If any of you think the war against this SCUM is anywhere near over, guess again. Jihadists don't give up until they're dead. Or you're dead. Or both.

He put his life on the line for his country, and will never have the same bloodthirst that you spout here.

My "bloodthirst" is mostly limited to jihadist fktards who want to kill Americans and other civilized peoples. That's the price I gladly pay for not being a moral relativist: recognizing there is real evil in the world, and that this world has real consequences for appeasement stupidity.

I'm a non-combat veteran...now, I don't know if that meets the high standards liberals set for everyone but themselves, and I've never had to shoot anyone, but the US GOV could've sent me into the fire and I would've gone. Unlike in Congress, military oaths to defend the Constitution mean something.

- Article 3 of Geneva conventions requires humane treatment of all persons held. Furthermore on June 12, 2008, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that the Guantanamo captives were entitled to the protection of the United States Constitution. International and American rights apply to them.

Well, guess what, the dumbshts in the legal system have been wrong plenty of times before. They tried this bullsht with captured Nazi spies, that is, attempting to give them Constitutional rights, but the country was more sane in the 1940s and instead they were dealt with properly.

"The ones that have been released quickly rejoin [...] their jihad."

National security expert and CNN analyst Peter Bergen, states that some of those "suspected" to have returned to terrorism are so categorized because they publicly made anti-American statements, "something that's not surprising if you've been locked up in a U.S. prison camp for several years." If all 18 people on the "confirmed" list have "returned" to the battlefield, that would amount to 4 percent of the detainees who have been released.

Ah, so that's acceptable to you, those "small" numbers? How many a-holes did it take to bring about 9-11? Oh, that's right, that doesn't count, because the 9-11 jihadist scum were from Country X and not Country Z. Brilliant reasoning, libs.

The US looked for legal loopholes to justify its detention program at Gitmo, nor could it trail them as it had torture testimony which is inadmissible in a court of law.

Well, given the choice of calling this a real war against a real enemy or "Bush's Game" I'll gladly err on the side of real war. Let the animals run wild and free over some "clever" legal ACLU wrangling and before long you won't have a society to defend.

Wouldn't you rejoin? I mean if this group of jihadists captured you and put you in a shitty hole with crappy accommodations, when you were released wouldn't you come running back and join military...well you wouldn't cause you're a pussy, but somebody with balls would...

LOOKIT ME EVERYONE!...I'M TALKIN' TOUGH...ON THE INTERNETS. I CALL YOU NAME!

It's not some alien we're dealing with...it's people. So I don't know why you act so surprised when humans follow their own nature to feel hatred when they're mistreated.

I understand the "feelings" of Gitmo detainees and nothing they do surprises me. Go to any prison in America and you'll find plenty of the same resentment, since every one of those guys is ALSO not guilty! They'll tell you so! They were set up!

Why do liberals act surprised that there is real hatred towards jihadist animals sawing off heads, homicide bombing, beating women, honor killing, etc.

Liberals are always angry and ashamed of America first and "the oppressed" last. They just don't see this, the way a fish can't see the water. Maybe they're too fking far gone to notice, who knows. NYC could be suitcase nuked tomorrow and they'd use Gitmo to justify it.

"Gitmo detainees are not prisoners of war nor enemy combatants fighting under any nation's flag, so American and International rights don't apply to them."

- Article 3 of Geneva conventions requires humane treatment of all persons held. Furthermore on June 12, 2008, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that the Guantanamo captives were entitled to the protection of the United States Constitution. International and American rights apply to them.

"The ones that have been released quickly rejoin [...] their jihad."

National security expert and CNN analyst Peter Bergen, states that some of those "suspected" to have returned to terrorism are so categorized because they publicly made anti-American statements, "something that's not surprising if you've been locked up in a U.S. prison camp for several years." If all 18 people on the "confirmed" list have "returned" to the battlefield, that would amount to 4 percent of the detainees who have been released.

The US looked for legal loopholes to justify its detention program at Gitmo, nor could it trail them as it had torture testimony which is inadmissible in a court of law.

More reading material - http://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-americanpower/article_2110.jsp and http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/02/12/detainees.documents/index.html

The description is slightly wrong. The band is from Stavanger, Norway, not Bergen.

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

Oh Diogenes you need to go find a lantern. The usinfo web site is nothing more than Bush's mouth piece Karen Hughes. And why should I believe Bergen without any citations by him?

Did bin Laden receive funds, weapons or training directly from the CIA? No, but all mujahideen benefited in one way or another from the CIA's support of Pakistan's ISI. And bin Laden would not have any reason to go to Afghanistan and become a freedom fighter if not for the United States' prodding that led to the Soviet invasion in the first place. Directly or indirectly the CIA's meddling in that part of the country had a hand in creating Al Qaeda.

My citations?

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.html
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/americawarterrorism/americawarterrorism02.htm
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1113164
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1000554

ok, bamdrew, though i won't say fair enough...

the daily show really shouldn't have it both ways - it's either a comedy show or it's a news program -- jon stewart on crossfire intimated that the show shouldn't be taken seriously because they followed a program where puppets make crank phone calls

if this is the source of other people's beliefs or 'what they've absorbed' then i can only shake my head - too many people are not sufficiently circumspect of what they accept as a source for their understandings

so, with no idea of why, what, or from where they draw their beliefs...

yes, i'll try to help in providing what they apparently can't or don't want to find

osama / taliban:

http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jan/24-318760.html

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/08/15/bergen.answers/index.html

as to saddam, well, your contention and mine aren't specifically at cross purposes...

the tds clip appears to claim that our military sales to saddam made him too powerful to easily remove in any subsequent regime change

to this you bring up rumsfeld and intel - both of which, i'll wager, did very little to strengthen saddam vis a vis the tds claim -- the military sales / aid i already clarified in my first post here

only the most obtuse of revisionists will fail to remember the context of realpolitik of the early '80s -- the ayatollah's islamic revolution having just seized control of iran--as well as their taking and holding us hostages for 444 days (and finally releasing them just two years before the rumsfeld photo), and providing hezbollah support with which they kidnapped more americans in lebanon--meant that the us was pleased to have a secular foil on the arab street

you may find it interesting that, in speaking of the infamous photo op of saddam and rumsfeld shaking hands, for every such photo, i can provide you with at least five of jacques chirac and saddam

In order - Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Gloria Swanson, Marlene Dietrich, Norma Shearer, Ruth Chatterton, Jean Harlow, Katharine Hepburn, Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck, Vivien Leigh, Greer Garson, Hedy Lamarr, Rita Hayworth, Gene Tierney, Olivia de Havilland, Ingrid Bergman, Joan Crawford, Ginger Rogers, Loretta Young, Deborah Kerr, Judy Garland, Anne Baxter, Lauren Bacall, Susan Hayward, Ava Gardner, Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, Audrey Hepburn, Joanne Woodward, Shirley MacLaine, Natalie Wood, Angie Dickinson, Janet Leigh, Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Ann-Margret, Julie Andrews, Raquel Welch, Tuesday Weld, Jane Fonda, Julie Christie, Faye Dunaway, Catherine Deneuve, Jacqueline Bisset, Candice Bergen, Isabella Rossellini, Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon, Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sigourney Weaver, Kathleen Turner, Holly Hunter, Jodie Foster, Melanie Griffith, Sharon Stone, Meg Ryan, Demi Moore, Julia Roberts, Uma Thurman, Sandra Bullock, Julianne Moore, Diane Lane, Nicole Kidman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Angelina Jolie, Charlize Theron, Reese Witherspoon, Gwyneth Paltrow

Wikipedia:
Röyksopp (sometimes misspelt as 'Royksopp' or 'Røyksopp') is an electronic music duo based in Bergen, Norway composed of Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge. The group formed officially in 1998 and released their debut album Melody A.M. in 2002.