I'm sure I can't be the first person to draw attention to the superb reporting of The Onion...

actually, Snopes notified me of the "Iran started 9/11 conspiracy" by properly drawing attention to al-Manar, which reported on the difference between the Israeli embassy first saying that over 4,000 Israeli nationals were working in and around the WTC that morning, and then, a few days later, withdrawing that statement and saying only a few Israelis died on the planes. Al-Manar made the leap (of logic, or whatever you want to call it) saying "Why did they not show up?" This, along with the 5 Israelis who were shooting footage in New Jersey (true, reported by Forward magazine and several other sources) and the story about text messages being sent the day before hand, Ariel Sharon cancelling his trip that week to New York only days before 9/11... these were concatenated into "Israel carried out 9/11" - and it's sort of unquestionable that Iran, even if it's not responsible for all the conspiracy theories in the Us, certainly promoted that one in the Middle East.

My Arab friends often liked this one, although sometimes disturbingly mixing it with arguments supporting the 9/11 attacks, but would defend the idea that Arabs didn't carry out 9/11 by saying "Are we competent enough to carry them out?"...

Arabs. Shit, the question is if the Bush administration was competent enough to pull off an inside job involving at least hundreds of people, when they couldn't even keep the Joe Wilson smear job under wraps.

Easy answers to easy questions: No. It's utterly daft or deranged to say otherwise. I have always taken the proliferation of idiotic conspiracy theories in the Middle East and the US to be signs of political immaturity.

In a moment I'm sure someone will point to a stat that says Europeans are just as bad...

Rather more worrying though, is that the Bush administration really does seem to believe the Iraqi "government" to not be beholden to Iran. The US leadership seems to live in a world of its own, internationally, but with an army at their disposal. Power + unreality = bad.

Arabs. Shit, the question is if the Bush administration was competent enough to pull off an inside job involving at least hundreds of people, when they couldn't even keep the Joe Wilson smear job under wraps.

Hah! Best 9-11 loon refutal so far. On the other hand, I've heard the flip side of that being applied on Iraq. As in, "what, you expect me to think the almighty USA couldn't bring back electricity and security to Baghdad in five years? Of course they planned the civil war all along to keep the Sunni/Shia/Kurds/Arabs/Muslims weak..."

And speaking of loons and flip-flopping, did anyone else notice Ayman al-Zawahiri criticizing Hamas for killing Israeli civilians the other day? What was THAT about?

And speaking of loons and flip-flopping, did anyone else notice Ayman al-Zawahiri criticizing Hamas for killing Israeli civilians the other day? What was THAT about?

PLEASE, find us a link.

My ironimeter blew out the mercury.

"Al-Zawahiri, soft on Israel, soft on Zionism. Would you let this man lead the anti-imperialist struggle? Vote Hamas for a strong stance against Zionism."

ah, I'll leave that to the onion.

oh, now I'm at it, how's about Hamas' endorsement of Obama.

McCain spokesman Brian Rogers called the supposed endorsement by Hamas, something that McCain hit Obama for earlier today, "a legitimate issue for the American people to think about," on the basis of Obama's call for negotiations with Iran.

If al-Zawahiri went for McCain, things could heat up.

alle, that argument has already been made to me by Iraqis, who while not fans of Saddam in toto, point out that the power systems in Iraq were back up 100 days after the first Gulf War, despite the insurgency by the Shi'a in the south - Gulf/swamp region. And their question is legitimate: "Saddam could do it in 100 days, his methods may be questionable - 'Raise that tower, or I blow your head off' - but are you saying that the Americans don't have more capability than to just protect the Oil Ministry while letting our country burn to the ground?"

I'd also be mind-blown to know that Zawahiri cares about Israeli civilians; given that he's expressed Rumsfeld-like casualness about Afghan and Iraqi civilians in the past ("We didn't intend to kill civilians, but if they got caught up in our operations, well, liberation is a messy business..." - although Rumsfeld's own words were, about numbers of dead Afghan civilians, "I'm not really interested in those numbers.") - that Zawahiri is now concerned with Israeli civilians, critiquing Iran for blaming Israel, and blowing up Arabs... err, is he trying to reinforce a conspiracy theory that he and bin Laden are actually MI6/Mossad/CIA puppets?

It'd be funny if it wasn't so damn tragic.

"History repeats itself: first time as tragedy, second time as farce..."

It seems Zawahiri's exact words were "We didn't intend to kill civilians, but if they got caught up in our operations, well, liberation is a messy business".

Or wait, that was someone else.

Zawahiri, by contrast: "I would like to clarify to the brother questioner that we don’t kill innocents: in fact, we fight those who kill innocents. Those who kill innocents are the Americans, the Jews, the Russians and the French and their agents. Were we insane killers of innocents as the questioner claims, it would be possible for us to kill thousands of them in the crowded markets, but we are confronting the enemies of the Muslim Ummah and targeting them, and it may be the case that during this, an innocent might fall unintentionally or unavoidably, and the Mujahideen have warned repeatedly the Muslims in general that they are in a war with the senior criminals – the Americans and Jews and their allies and agents – and that they must keep away from the places where these enemies gather."

...and...

"in turn, I ask [...] what is HAMAS’s justification for killing those whose killing is not permitted from the children in the Israeli colonies with the blessed Qassam rockets which don’t differentiate between a child and an adult, and moreover, perhaps [don’t differentiate] between the Jews and the Arabs and Muslims working in those colonies or in the streets and markets of Occupied Palestine, even though the Shari’ah forbids their killing."

It's all in his online Q &A transcript, but oh believers beware! For the scheming kuffar have laid you a Most Satanic trap by arranging it into a PDF document, the loading time of which will surely test your faith in the Almighty, subhana wa taala. And Allah knows best.

I was employing the infidel technique of irony, and beware, for the evil of the Hellenistic devices of logic and rhetoric may mislead those enthusiastic devotees of liberty to be swayed by internet miscreants...

seriously though, it's great to see that Zawahiri, in rhetoric at least, is concerned with Jewish and Israeli civilian innocents and cares about them. If his concern for the civilians of the entire Middle East was as profound as he suggests, perhaps he wouldn't be cheerleading terrorist acts whose admitted strategic intent is to draw the Western powers (America, Israel, the EU, Russia, etc) into over-reacting and killing such large numbers of muslims and Arabs that the latter see the 'light' of al-Qaeda's radical liberatory doctrine.

Sadly, I'm more and more persuaded by Adam Curtis's [ "Power of Nightmares" - BBC documentary ] drawing of parallels between neo-conservatives "freedom fanatics" and the Salafi-jihadist ideas of militant vanguardism. Just like Jacobins and Kemalists, they're all "for the people, despite the people" - and I'm kind of getting sick of this BS.

Anyone have suggestions for what to do when you feel like Mercutio calling for a "pox on both your houses"?

Vote Nader.

Power Of Nightmares is a fab documentary. Viewable here, for free. I do think, though, that the Montagues and Capulets were able to drum up this conflict only because the nineties were relatively problem-free. This entire terrorism discourse will, if not disappear, then take a backseat to more pressing problems that now have arisen, such as the credit crisis, food prices, peak oil, climate change, and nuclear proliferation. Is my theory.

At first glance, I read "Vote Vader", and it made as much sense as anything.