AlFrankenWeb

The news organizations may have forgotten to tell you that...

The term "Al Qaeda" was invented in the United States to refer to a largely imagined enemy. This bolstered Bin Laden's pride to be thought of as so vicious, so Bin Laden too then decided to call the group (for which he neither runs nor has much control over) "Al Queda" AFTER 9/11.

The militant Islam movement which was extremely violent in the 80s and early 90s was largely marginalized and rejected by 2000.

Osama Bin Laden was only loosely connected to 9/11, and did not "plan" the action in any way.

There are no sleeper cells in the United States or Western world that we know of.

The estimated death toll of a dirty bomb is zero.

And there is no structured, international network of "Al Qaeda" operatives.

You have nothing to worry about. Sleep tight!

If the above is true, it only reaffirms the disrespect the government of the United States has for it's consumer/citizens.

At the birth of our nation we killed 16 million Native Americans. And now at long last we're led into a never ending war in the cradle of civilization with an enemy of our own creation. Sounds downright poetic.

Or, just as sinister, the Bushites wired the whole thing up, there are enough people in the world who have legitimate cause to not like us, and it wouldn't take much time to find some of them and hype them up with promises of glory.

If al Qaeda is as badass as their press makes them, we still wouldn't be in more danger from them than from our own economy.

There is, right upstream from me, and incidentally from the Arkansas/Ouachita/Red river/sabine system, and Pueblo Colorado which is the second seat of government in the US, a stream which flows down the backside of a very large gold mine.
These guys have pumped mercury into the water supply many times in the past 150 years. People pour tons of petrochemicals onto the roads from their exhaust pipes, every day. Which washes into our water supply. There are socially retarded animated sphincters who dump toxic metals, solvents, any kind of poison you want to name and some you just don't want to call their names...

Cause they might hear you calling and show up...

into our water supplies.

But we spend uncounted (literally, they don't release actual numbers to us, for Security Reasons) millions of dollars to post armed guards at our reservoirs to keep al Qaeda from tossing in a few hundred pounds.

al Qaeda doesn't have to do anything to America, except maybe invest in our greedhead economy.

It's like heroin, you know? Death on the installment plan, and the dealer convinces you to pay for your own execution.

Not really. It's part of the idealistic neo-conservative goals of creating enemies that the US can fight so the citizens can view American as good fighting evil. In this way, as Leo Strauss put it (he's the philosopher behind neo-conservativism), we could battle the nihilism that is created by liberal individualism.

It's part of a noble, albeit in my opinion misguided, goal that uses religion and government policies to create a false reality to create cohesion as an American society. In other words, it counters individualism by creating a shared value system all Ameriicans can buy into - even if it's all made up.





Paul Wolfowitz, which handled the Iraq invasion, directly studied under Strauss.

Philosopher King Daddy Knows Best?

Call me a liberal-conservative if you like, but I am skeptical of any group, left or right or centre, which professes to tell individuals or society as a whole what will make them happy because the poor slobs can't figure it out for themselves. I can't bloody well stand pep rallies, much less bossy parties. Dr. Phil should eat dirt and die--better yet, make it drink bromine since he is a dispenser of moronic bromides. Church ladies and doctrinaire vegans alike can bite me.

If the neo-cons want to line up to kiss my liberal ass I will happily have the words "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness"* tattooed on my left buttock and "peace, order and good government"** tattooed on my right buttock.

The "liberalism" which fails to provide a coherant and meaningful system of values for individuals and society is economic liberalism, aka capitalism, aliases include consumerism, materialism and

As I have pointed out before and any philologist or constitutional expert can confirm, the "pursuit of happiness" doesn't mean the chase after or the hunt for the Bluebird of Happiness but is a typically eighteenth century use of the word meaning something more akin to "activity" "condition".

Art is a pursuit. Science is a pursuit. Religion is a pursuit. Leisure and business are pursuits.

It is the human business to be happy. Not to pursue mere pleasure or amusement but to be happy in the philosophical sense.

Epicurianism, the Stoics and Skepticism are my intellectual guiding stars.

Leo Strauss is just another frightened reactionary with the hubris to suppose that, like Doestoyevski's*** Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov, he can play Plato's Philospher King.

Doestoyevski had an excuse. The Czarist police marched him and other political prisoners out naked into the freezing Russian winter under the misapprehension that they were to be shot for their "Liberalism". That does something to the brain.

"Idealism" is what cynics call their cynicism. "Idealists" call their idealism "cynicism". They mean "disappointment". It is not a coincidence that Plato's philosophy is called "idealism" or that American "realists" and "neo-cons" love Plato. Nor is it a coincidence that some have argued that Jesus (alias The Nazarene) was influenced deeply by Greek philosophy and can therefore be considered a Cynic philosopher.

Renounce Leo Strauss and all his works. Be especially wary of his intellectually corrupt and morally bankrupt "disciples".

Using religion and "patriotism" to lie is the worst possible use you can make of it. I prefer outright pyschotics to those hypocrites.

Liberalism to my mind remains close to its latin root in the word liberalitas--the generosity befitting a lady or gentleman of liberal education and liberal means.

As Sam Slick defined a gentleman--"one who is knowin' enough and rich enough to do the job proper when it wants doin'"

We're not talking a totalitarian ideology here. You can be a liberal Catholic or a liberal Protestant, a liberal Muslim or a liberal Atheist. You can be a liberal-conservative or a liberal radical. You can also be a liberal capitalist or a liberal socialist.

If there's a Hell, Leo Strauss is in the same ditch as the authors of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion--with their "idealistic" aim to herd the masses and make them happily delusive by uniting them against a fictitious common enemy through the mendacious abuse of political and religious frummery. And it isn't a coincidence that Hitler, Stalin, Torquemada, and the Jesuits are all in the same fecking ditch.

Sophistry, casuistry and con artistry. To be a first rate con artist, you must first con yourself. Believe your crap enough to really sell it. Fortunately, this is easy to do. Self-delusion is built in to the monkey part of the brain.

*The Declaration of Independance
**The Preamble to the British North America Act (1867)
*** Spelling varies.

Suggested Reading: Voltaire's Bastards by John Raulston Saul; On Liberty by John Stuart Mill; the Grand Inquistor's speech from The Brothers Karamazov. Macchiavelli's The Prince AND The Decades of Titus Livy.

And read Plato very carefully. The name Euthyphro should come up eventually. If that's too much for you, there's Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s short story, "The Euthyphro Question" and KITH's Brain Candy. And I hate to say it, The Matrix.

I think we have a moral duty not to delude ourselves or others excessively, even if it makes us "happy", because true happiness can take a whole lot of pain. The political prisoner is happier than the dictator. Better to be a Nelson Mandela than a Saddam Hussein, a George Bush or a Grand Ayatollah.

TRN, I don't think your argument negates mine. All you said can be true, plus they have no respect for the American citizen. Any ideology, by definition, is disrespectful of others.

I wasn't negating your statement, I just thought some clarification was needed as to their motives.

Yes, they are liars, but it's important to understand why, and that they honestly believe they have our best interests at heart.

Well, I disagree there. I don't think they believe they hae our best interests at heart. I think they have a vision of using the power the U.S. has garnerd over the 2 centuries it has existed to hold on to power and to do it in a way as to placate Israel, as well as line all the right pockets.

The American consumer is not a factor.

Wiki?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Qaeda



So there's debate as to where the name came from, and no doubt that the group does NOT use the name now.

But here's a myth busted. The myth was that Isaac Asimov's series of books starting with "Foundation" translated as "al-Qaida" (meaning the foundation, or the base, in Arabic). This page, however, says:



But as the "people fed into a plastc shredder" story pre-Iraq invasion shows, a good lie beats a true fact to the minds of people.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet."

In this case, there is no rose to begin with.

Great post brant and I also TRNs one preceding.
They may not have intended for me to seek the bluebird of happiness but I have anyhow, ha ha suckas/
I got a whole flock!!!
KNowledge is my bird food THat and a million other things that are positive vibrations.....................!

But you argue over a "word".

In this case, could it smell much worse?

Do you deny a scent in the air?

We are not arguing over a word. Al Qaeda, any way you look at it, never existed as it has been presented to the American people.

We're not calling it something else, we're stating what it is - or rather what it is not.

Al Qaeda (or at the very least, what you think you know about Al Qaeda) is a phony-baloney institution built on flat-out lies by the news media and the administration.

I'm not saying Osama isn't a terrorist, but the popular notions of Al Queda are probably more phony than the Soviet threat of the 80s.

In other words, Al Qaeda, while based on a sliver of truth, has been mythologically presented to the American people.

what would surprise me is if the administration lied. you know they're telling the truth 24/7.