US Marines urinating on Taliban corpses

From childhood we read and watch fairytales and Disney films which usually go something like this; beautiful boy is born, beautiful girl is born, at least one is elite or from royalty in order for the pauper to eventually get lucky and also become royal or rich, and if we readers and watchers are really lucky (Sleeping Beauty) both will be of the blue blood variety. Even when the beautiful and slim girl is also rich and unfortunate, she will inevitably suffer some hardship. This hardship is caused by someone ugly, monstrous, usually another woman. This suffering may last for years, no matter how long its duration, the girl will never have the initiative or strength to do anything about it herself. The evil forces head for a duel, ending in a climactic scene in which the prize, the beautiful helpless girl, is rescued by the handsome and valiant young buck.

Then you hit puberty and watch Hollywood movies with explosions and real life beautiful and skinny people, so much of the same happens except the point is driven home more clearly; that vengeance and violence is OK as long as you are the GOOD GUY. So you tell me who is the good guy?

'Kill Team Afghanistan' In the photo, Morlock grins and gives a thumbs-up sign as he poses with 15-year-old Mudin’s body. Note that the boy’s right pinky finger appears to have been severed. Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs reportedly used a pair of razor-sharp medic’s shears to cut off the finger, which he presented to Holmes as a trophy for killing his first Afghan. - Rolling Stone magazine

Afghanistan - The Diamonds in the Dirt

Just wanted to spread this beautiful blog about Afghanistan, it's on Tumblr http://watanafghanistan.tumblr.com/ this is their latest blog

The US and their bluffs; 10 years of lies

They came to Afghanistan 10 years ago to fight Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, They fought endlessly and killed 29,007 and more civilians in 10 years. In the same 10 years they achieved nothing of what they had initially planned to do except for killing Osama bin Ladin after 10 years & that also in PAKISTAN!

After 10 years of fighting and killing Afghan civilians, bombing their houses, damaging what others they didn’t bomb by night raids and manually destroying everything their foots set on. Capturing and imprisoning civilians without evidence, torturing them, humiliating them, depriving them of their rights. All this without any proof what so ever!. So after 10 years of all that in the name of getting rid of Al Qaeda and Taliban, the US say Talibans are not our enemy.

If so, then WHY did you kill those thousands of people in the name of Taliban? If they were not your enemy why did you kill them? this further increases the civilian death rate by their hands to even 100,000s!.

If they are not the enemy then why is there still hundreds of Taliban imprisoned in Guantanamo bay?

If talking to the Taliban was an option then why they did not talk to them years ago, that they are nowmaking office for them in Qatar and trying to do reconciliation?

What was that 10 years of war for? didn’t you come here to rid the country of Taliban as you claimed? The US reasons as to why they are in Afghanistan changes every now and then!. What does this tells us of this corrupt government?

“There was so much confusion about why we were there, whether it was to get rid of the poppy fields, or for national security. It seemed to change all the time. - While I was there millions of bullets passed through my hands. I can’t account for where those bullets went. We were supplying more and more, and I didn’t know where they were going. It haunts me. When I came back after my first tour I just couldn’t see what we had given to the country. I felt ashamed. They were dark days. When I joined the army I was lean, green and keen. I was proud of being a soldier. But now, as a serving officer, I want my feelings to be known. I want the government to consider the welfare of the guys out there, and the welfare of the Afghan people. People are suffering and it shouldn’t be allowed.”Lance Corporal Joe Glenton

Their war is fake, so are their reasons. They are in Afghanistan only for their personal matters, This war is for making profit for all those who invest in it. This war is not to help Afghan people as many are convinced to believe. Their Soldiers are not dying to protect them, they are not dying to serve their country.

Imagine what a shame it is, When your government makes you send your son/father/daughter/mother to fight off the Taliban the so called “terrorists” and then in the end the same government tells you that they are not the enemy. If so then what for did all those NATO/US soldiers die for?

For nothing, that’s the point. They died so that the War mongers get richer and richer, they died so that the business who invest in these war make more and more profit. But somehow the people are made to believe they died to save their country.

“Our real enemies are not those living in a distant land whose names or policies we don’t understand; The real enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable, the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it’s profitable, the Insurance Companies who deny us Health care when it’s profitable, the Banks who take away our homes when it’s profitable. Our enemies are not several hundred thousands away. They are right here in front of us”
- Mike Prysner

I’m amazed and I wonder why do these soldiers enroll in such military actions in first place. Your country is not at danger and specially not from Afghanistan at all. You are not saving your country by killing civilians in Afghanistan( well since Talibans are not enemy anymore and Al Qaeda is not in Afghanistan anymore so who else but civilians are left?) . 

A few months after i was there a lot of things weren’t going right for me, the command structure the missions we were getting didn’t make any sense, we were going after people the mujaheddin and they didn’t have any ideas which ones were the right ones we were kicking at the wrong doors terrifying children. Helicopters screaming over their heads at night, I was trying to calm down the women and children while the innocent men were dragged and separated out and completely humiliated in front of their families. if you are talking about all these people killing American soldiers in Afghanistan that they are terrorists. They are not terrorists they are wearing sandles and they got an AK and they got 14 years old building bombs to kill these American soldiers because we killed their family  - Grant Collins war veteran

For us, the US & NATO armies are the real terrorists. We are labeled as insurgents and terrorists when we are only defending our lands, dignity, and our homes. 


See also http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/

2011: We Care More About Kim Kardashian than the Arab Revolutions!

2011 is drawing to a close and what sums it up? According to Time Magazine it is the protester. Yet the REAL indication of anything in life apparently is Google. And the most Googled people are... Kim Kardashian and Rebecca Black. One a socialite turned sex tape star turned reality TV star, and the other a 13-year-old girl who put her music video on youtube and ended up receiving death threats due to the questionable quality of the song. I have nothing against these two people, they've done well in spite of their not so great beginnings of stardom. But the fact that in the UK the Arab Spring (or the economic crisis) did not feature is shocking but not surprising. 


The Middle East, 'what does that have to do with us?' A generation will claim. Well apparently a lot actually. We decided to fight alongside our ally, America after 9/11, by going to war in Afghanistan when Bin Laden had clearly already fled the country. We continued fighting there, but in order to justify this we then changed our tune and then were there because we were fighting the Taliban. Colonialisation apparently ended an age ago but there we were, in 2001 imposing regime change. What has the Afghan war achieved? They are the 2nd most corrupt country on earth, just after Somalia, a country which doesn't even have a government in most parts of the country. They remain one of the poorest countries on the face of this earth, despite billions having been invested/disappeared there. Thousands of Afghan civilians dead and livelihoods destroyed, did any of them hijack planes and fly them into anything?


Moron watch --->> To add insult to injury they have idiots like Ross Kemp (in Ross Kemp in Afghanistan) saying to them  that they should be grateful that we went in and rescued them from the villainous Taliban (when we didn't care before 9/11) and imposed democracy.


Then we have Iraq, one of the most disastrous wars of our era, obliterating the most ancient city in the world and creating sectarian strife which reverberated all over the Arab world. Putting aside the folly that was WMDs, Britain had everything to lose and nothing to gain from again, imposing regime change in a country that has nothing to do with us. Our foreign policies have many faults but it is my utmost belief that 7/7 would never have occurred had we not gone into yet another catastrophic war in Muslim lands. When Wikileaks exposed the devastating abuses of war that have happened, on top of what was already public knowledge e.g. Haditha, Abu Ghraib, the rape of a 14 year-old girl and then assassination of her, her 5-year-old sister and parents by US soldiers to name but a few, the things that made the news were the embarrassing diplomatic conversations, not the war crimes. Did any government even suffer for the war crimes committed under their watch? Did any of their children die? No. The only people apparently suffering judicially from exposing the people that are meant to be serving US are Bradley Manning and Julian Assange.


Moron watch --->> To add insult to injury, there was one American politician allowed to guest on Question Time claiming that the Arab revolutionaries would not have been inspired to revolt had Iraq not had the blessing of democracy imposed on them.


Next on George W. Bush's hitlist/axis of evil - Iran; the country ahead of its time in rejecting Western imperialism and corruption of their country. Do people not realise this is why America hates Iran? When I went to open a business account recently, what were the countries we were banned from trading with? North Korea, Cuba, Iran and Syria. Cuba - a harmless Caribbean country who had a revolution over 50 years ago, ejecting Batista and his American supported corruption. Syria, another non-Western puppet, funny that there are so many countries on the same level or worse as these countries yet conveniently, it is the countries that reject Western political influence that have sanctions imposed on them. A billboard I saw in New York ->>

We were quick to bomb Libya even though 2 minutes ago we were shaking hands with Gaddafi, all because Gaddafi was 'suddenly' going after civilians, so we bombed the civilians ourselves, going above and beyond the UN mandate of a no-fly zone and taking sides thus ensuring the political gains of the 'National Transitional Council'. Is that another regime change I sniff? Still it was the best PR war, we even had the privilege/puke-fest of a hall of Libyans apparently fawning over Cameron and Sarkozy. The media coverage of that war has a nice rosy tint despite there being protests at the new government already.

In my sister's access to business class in college, the class was assigned an essay on the Arab Spring and the role of women, most of her classmates lamented this subject, it dared to stretch their horizons beyond their X-Boxes and X-Factors*. Due to this essay alone, many dropped out and/or failed the course, they did not even WANT to research what was going on in the world, one even remarked that he could not care less if all these Arabs all blew themselves up. 

Even though the average British person may not give a tiny piece of bird shit about Arabs/the Middle East/North Africa/Muslims, you only have to look at our foreign minister's twitter @WilliamJHague to see that our politicians are absolutely obsessed with all things Middle East! But of course it's not just a one-way street, when a corruption investigation was launched into Saudi weapons dealing they blackmailed us not to go any further, lest they pull out of their anti-terrorism initiatives. Remember the reason we went into Afghanistan? Yet all but one of the 9/11 hijackers were actually Saudi.

I say in 2012 our foreign policy should reflect the will of the British people, just as Cameron defied all logic to pander to the anti-EU brigade of Britain, which is the majority of the country to be fair, perhaps we should keep our beak and money out of the Middle East. At least that's one thing I can agree with the right-wingers on.   

*see http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/2011/12/brain-dead-people.html

God versus Atheism

*Inspired by http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=402381*


This topic sparks such furious debate and contrary to what some may think, as a believer in God I do like to hear different points of view! Furthermore, I do not hear the 'other side's' point of view in a jaded way simply in order to reinforce my own views like both sides do. I have watched a documentary by perhaps the most famous champion of atheism, Richard Dawkins and found it very interesting. He is certainly articulate and makes good points, just to drive the point home, that religion is shit, much of the documentary was centred on Palestine/Israel. There are many feuds all over the world in which it can be said that religion is the root cause. To use the above example however would be to trivialise this issue at best, and pandering to ignorance at the worst. I digress...

What I do not appreciate in this never-ending argument is the bitterness of some atheists and the way in which they belittle believer's arguments instead of counteracting it.

"Though my email address is BibleL7, I was not always a believer. Most of my life I was in fact Atheist. I had no reason to doubt that believers were foolish and thus less intelligent. However at the age of 37 I found out different."

One response was to say that they did not believe that the above commenter was an atheist based on the fact that he had capitalised 'atheist'. You cannot win an argument by telling people what they used to or currently do believe, in fact that sort of talk sounds fairly Taliban-esque. This type of militancy devalues their argument, and they become just as bad as religious extremists who see other points of view as nothing other than ridiculous. In any healthy debate, emotions should be checked at the door. Furthermore, it is probably one of the only debates in which the sides are extremely unlikely to change their mind, and both would also NOT agree to disagree. Others included,

"Thanks... for that sermon. However, your "They teach evolution as fact instead of a theory" comment only supports the findings, which is that low intelligence people are more likely to believe in a god / fairy / dragon etc."


The thing is that unintelligent people, who are often religious, will not look at the facts. They have little utility to understand the scientific method and will dismiss study after study that shows the relation between low intelligence and religion. 


How a person of intelligence can generalise huge swathes of people in this manner, is again, very much in the same vein as the Taliban/Hitler/Militant Communist. The person of faith also contributed,


"It answered questions that no evolutionist or big bang theory believers ever could. And that was just the first chapter."


To which someone responded,

"Anyone can answer questions by 'making up' answers. If the bible had claimed that the universe was sneezed out of the nose of the 'Great Green Arkleseizure' would you also live in perpetual fear "The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief"?"

Although the analogy is crap and patronising, this point is fair enough as I always say, check your sources, and if you do not want to believe in a thousand+ year old book made and probably altered over the years, please do not think that many studies and stories you read today are not made and perpetuated by hidden and sometimes not so hidden agendas. With regard to the study in the article itself, I would seriously question their definition of intellectuals. This itself panders to elitism which is all about titles and formal education, which many impoverished yet highly intelligent people have not had the opportunity to pursue. According to Mensa, intelligence is mental agility, or quickness of mental comprehension, note that it is not attributed to self-important titles. The debate will rage on I am sure but conveniently so, my thoughts are summed up by some other comments,

"Thanks... for the drive-by sneers... Such disdain is a typical reaction of some "intellectuals" to arguments they disagree with but cannot refute."


"Even if it were true that intelligence is correlated with atheism, it only provides more proof that intelligence is not the same as wisdom."


"Sad isn't it? When we don't understand something much bigger than us we call those who believe in it un-intelligent."


The existence of God can only be put to rest once we die and get to see if there is indeed an afterlife, a punishment, judgement etc. so actually none of us, not intellectuals nor dummies nor religious or atheist zealots, know whether there is a God for a fact. Let's put our faith in that.

See also http://anbarrockny.blogspot.com/