Be curious, not judgmental.

Walt Whitman

May 31, 1819 – March 26, 1892



So In Love- Jill Scott & Anthony Hamilton

this video makes me smile

Happy Birthday Gladys Knight

Gilbert "Gil" Scott-Heron April 1, 1949 – May 27, 2011

Gil Scott-Heron, the poet, singer and author who rejected the title often given him as the "Godfather of Rap" because he said rap "is aimed at the kids," has died in New York City. He was 62.
He had spent much of the last two decades battling drug addiction and in and out of prison before releasing an album last year, "I'm New Here," that brought him something of a comeback.
Doris Nolan, a friend of Scott-Heron's told The Associated Press, "We're all sort of shattered."
From his first album, "125th and Lenox," released in 1970, Scott-Heron was a unique and powerful voice in American music.
At a time when popular music was moving away from the anthems of protest of the '60s, Scott-Heron, with his hard-edged yet somehow tender, aching voice, gave an unflinching yet poetic look at the realities of inner-city life at a time when the hopes of the civil rights movement were battered in the anger of riots and the ravages of spreading drug addiction.

That album and the follow-up, "Pieces of a Man," resonated with college students hanging on to the activist ideals of the '60s, but he never matched the popular success of those early songs, even though he continued to make powerful music.
His poetic, jazz fused songs influenced generations of hip-hop artists and became part of the first group of conscience-based rap songs, which he often referred to as "bluesology."
Scott-Heron's most influential songs, including "The Revolution Will Not be Televised," in which he criticized mass media, and "Whitey on the Moon," influenced rappers such as A Tribe Called Quest and Public Enemy.
Veteran rap artist Chuck D, one of the founders of Public Enemy, paid tribute to the artist in a tweet: "RIP GSH...and we do what we do and how we do because of you. And to those that don't know tip your hat with a hand over your heart & recognize."
Mos Def, who was on the same bill with Scott-Heron at the JVC Jazz Festival in 2008, told New York Magazine that he was an inspiration.
"He's one of my heroes, an incredible source of energy, power, and truth in the world," Mos Def said. "It's an honor to be able to finally work with him this closely."
Scott-Heron released more than 20 albums, and his work was included in more than 10 compilations. Also an accomplished author, Scott-Heron published six novels, one of which -- a mystery called "The Vulture" -- came out when he was just 19.
He became part of televison history as the musical guest during Richard Pryor's debut on "Saturday Night Live" as its first black host.
Scott-Heron's website features his most recent album, "I'm New Here," his first album in 13 years.

This is the link to his website.

RIP

He who dies with the most toys is...   still dead.

Just a thought.

t G i f !!!

Happy Birthday Pam Grier

Happy Birthday Miles Davis

In need of some inspiration?

I know I am

This is what I told the storm-

Shadrach,  Meshach and Abednego  were thrown into a fiery furnace but God protected them so that they wouldn’t  burn even a hair on their heads.   Daniel 3: 8-30

The good Lord made us all out of iron. Then he turns up the heat to forge some of us into steel.
                                        --Marie Osmond

"There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved: It is God's finger on man's shoulder."
- Charles Morgan

In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back. 

~Charlie Brown

My response to Dr Satoshi Kanazawa's racist comments about black women, Pt 3

this is a repost.

Those who do wickedly against the covenant he shall corrupt with flattery; but the people who know their God shall be strong, and carry out great exploits.

   --Daniel 11:32

Movin' down the line

....See, this love just keeps getting sweeter
Year after year
You know you're something like a miracle
Always knew you would appear...

Am I missing something?

*The N-word came up during a press junket held this week for “The Hangover Part II.”

Zack Galifianakis’ character Alan drops the racial epithet in the film, and fiercely defended it’s use – as did director Todd Phillips and co-screenwriter Craig Mazin – saying it underscores just how much of “an idiot” his character really is.
“For someone to say that word so cluelessly, it’s funny because it comes out of a place of ignorance,” Galifianakis explained. “And Alan doesn’t know any better; he’s just an idiot. Anyone who would say that so loosely is an idiot. That word can be very inflammatory but Alan is such a dimwit, it’s not excusable at all but you’re making fun of people that would say that word.”
Phillips chimed in: “For me it’s really an illustration of how left-footed Alan is with the world. It’s just what you do as writers, as a director, and as an actor. You exhibit these qualities and have certain tools with which to work. I think that moment there just highlights how out of step and out of rhythm he is.”
Mazin clarified the thought that went into it using such a controversial word: “You don’t casually type that one into a script.”
“The Hangover Part II,” this time set in Bankok, arrives in theaters May 26.

--courtesy eurweb.com

The N-word and “humor” are wrapped together-being used in a “humorous” way again, or to indicate someone highly ignorant or out of step with contemporary mores? For real?
I have never used the word, and personally I find it offensive, but that's my opinion. I know that some black people find it okay. My mom uses that word about black people that she doesn't like. My nephew says 'nigga as a term of endearment for his closest friends. In my presence and his mom's, he refers to his friends as his friends. People who know me- they know not to even think the word ( except my mom- I'm not going to tell her what or what not to say) A white friend of over 10 yrs once, while in a drunken stupor, called me the N word- I forgave him but I ended the friendship immediately and permanently.
What is your opinion of the word?

Friday Flashback- Method Man

It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the treads of that tapestry are equal in value no matter their color.

--Maya Angelou

The things we take for granted

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says "Morning, boys. How's the water?" And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes "What the hell is water?"
- David Foster Wallace

My response to Dr Satoshi Kanazawa's racist comments about black women, Pt 2



Selita Ebanks



Yaya DaCosta

 

Kenya Moore



Julia Pace



First Lady, Michelle Obama



Naomi Campbell



Diana Ross




Diahann Carroll



Taraji P Henson



Queen Latifah

  I intentionally chose dark-skinned women for this blog entry to prove a point. Neither accept nor allow anyone to feed us their image of beauty. We know who we are. We know how beautiful we are. Nothing more to say.







Meagan Good

 

My response to Dr Satoshi Kanazawa's racist comments about black women, Pt 1

Dr Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, claims to have analysed results from an online poll that proves they are rated generally less good looking than women with different coloured skins.
Using findings from a study of physical attractiveness by Add Health, he claims the results show that 'black women are... far less attractive than white, Asian, and Native American women.'
But his comments on a blog for the website of the journal Psychology Today caused a storm of outrage with hundreds of people writing to the magazine claiming his comments are racist.
The blog was removed but irate readers are demanding a retraction form the scientist - believed to be of Japanese origin - and the magazine.
Dr Kanazawa based his assertions on analysis of a website that asked people to assess the relative attractiveness of various people on a scale of one to five.
He claimed that the results show that while black women scored on average 3.5 out of five, other races including European, Asian and native American scored 3.7.
In contrast black men, he said, were more attractive than their other males.
He then attempts to justify the findings, claiming that black women are on average heavier than non-blacks and that because they are an older race, they have more mutations in their genes.
He finally argues that they have more of the male hormone testosterone which suggests they will have more manly features.
"Black women are on average much heavier than non black women," he said.
"However, this is not the reason black women are less physically attractive than non black women.
"Because they have existed much longer in human evolutionary history, Africans have more mutations in their genomes than other races."
"But since both black women and black men have higher mutation loads, it cannot explain why only black women are less physically attractive, while black men are, if anything, more attractive.
"The only thing I can think of that might potentially explain the lower average level of physical attractiveness among black women is testosterone.
"Africans on average have higher levels of testosterone than other races... women with higher levels of testosterone have more masculine features and are therefore less physically attractive."
But his comments created a barrage of criticism.
One comment said it was "so outrageous that we almost thought it was a hoax of some sort".
Another writes: "Justifying racism using 'science' isn't new, by any means.
"Every few years, it appears that someone needs to provide a rationale for bigotry, so they publish some sort of madness and hope most of the readers suffer from scientific illiteracy.
The post has since been removed from the Psychology Today amid a backlash.
Kaja Perina, Psychology Today's editor-in-chief, said: "Our bloggers are credential[ed] social scientists and for this reason they are invited to post to the site on topics of their choosing.
"We in turn reserve the right to remove posts for any number of reasons. Because the post was not commissioned or solicited by PT (in contrast to a magazine article), there was no editorial intent to address questions of race and physical attractiveness."
Dr Kanazawa has an online column on Psychology Today called "A Look at the Hard Truths About Human Nature".
It includes posts with titles such as: "Are All Women Essentially Prostitutes?', "If Beautiful People Have Daughters, Why Do Posh and Becks Have Three Sons?", "More Intelligent People Are More Likely to Binge Drink and Get Drunk" and "Girls Are More Intelligent Than Boys, But Men Are More Intelligent Than Women".
A spokesman for the LSE said they had launched an investigation into the blog.
"The views expressed by this academic are his own and do not in any way represent those of LSE as an institution," he said.
"The important principle of academic freedom means that authors have the right to publish their views – but it also gives others the freedom to disagree."
Dr Kanazawa was unavailable for comment.

Def Poetry-- Jill Scott

Listening to...J * Davey

equilibrium

i moved on.

there's always been something
special
about this.
even when i didn't know it
some part of me
must be realized
here.
i find myself
in the space
created by distance,
space
&
time.
i wonder what will come,
what will break,
what will be given life-


i told her that i felt the falling away of one place equal in part to the arrival of another...


--Alexgeorge

songs in my head

song in my head...

Question of the day

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

  --Mark 8:36

Happy Birthday, Janet !

           this year so far has been a whirlwind of...opportunities, roadblocks, of friendships, of balance, and imbalance, of change, of new skills and assets, of obtained vision- and of vision lost. if it must be characterized by something than let it be by the momentum which carried it. nothing went "unmoved". and, as shocking as that is...and was, change is good. when we learn to face it, embrace it, and pursue it (in good qualities) we have overcome the fear of it.

            i have a lot of questions. i always have. i won’t stop asking them. that would be a dis-service, to my local influences but mostly to myself. accepting an answer i don't like is far easier than accepting silence. and accepting that you're destined to live a easy cornered life is far more complacant than eminent callings, but i seek to understand; i need to able to explain it if i am asked who, what, when, where, how, and why.

**********

            i want a party; a period at the end of a sentence; water after working out; a woman i love to whisper to me that she loves me and i am her man. at age 19 with raw skills and talents- i was ok with shooting myself in the foot, sitting down and saying "that was fun." yet a hunger growled...if i missed the mark by this much i'd miss the moon.

thus, with a BS in management and finance, twenty-plus years of employment in the banking and insurance industry and a resume that would cause most to question my sanity- i have admittedly accepted that perhaps, i will not emerge from this life at the oh so pearly gates clear of charge. instead, full of scars, a single man with a thick body, grey hair, and eyes that gleam & sparkle of abundant passion and hidden loves. i can accept that. i can accept and await the joy hidden in that path. God-willing, i have a long way to go. with lots to do. and i need more answers.
          --alexgeorge

I know you so well

I know you so well,

that every tear you shed

falls from my eyes.

Every breath you take

comes from my lungs.

I never want to cause you pain:

making you feel better

makes me feel better.

I always want to see you smile.

I know you so well,

it’s like being selfish.

                              --alexgeorge

T.D Jakes Admonishes Rev. Franklin Graham for Questioning Pres. Obama’s Faith

Jakes tells Roland Martin that Graham needs to apologize to the president

*Coming off the success of his hit film “Jumping the Broom,” Bishop T. D. Jakes appears on TV One’s “Washington Week with Roland Martin” Sunday at 11am Eastern.

On the show, taped on Friday, host Roland Martin asked Bishop Jakes to respond to comments made by conservative preacher Franklin Graham:
Roland Martin: Rev. Franklin Graham has made some comments on several occasions as recently as three weeks ago really questioning, if you will, the faith of the President. He said the President has told him he’s a Christian, but he basically said that going to church does not make you a Christian. But the President is on record as saying that he walked down that aisle, he gave his life to Christ, so what do you say to folks like Rev. Graham who, frankly, are muddying the water but other people who are questioning the Christianity of this President?
Bishop T.D. Jakes: I find it insulting. We didn’t question the Christianity of President Bush when he said he accepted Christ, and I’m disappointed in Rev. Franklin Graham in that regard. I wish he had the diplomacy of his father, who brought the gospel to people without being nuanced by politics because when you do those things you offend people that you are actually called to save and to serve. And I would hope that he would see the rationale in apologizing for such statements – because if the President’s faith is suspect then all of our faiths are suspect, because the Bible is quite clear about what it takes to be saved and the President has been quite open about his accepting Christ and him openly confessing it before men. And if it’s good enough for the Bible it ought to be good enough for the rest of us.

--courtesy eurweb.com

It's good enough for me.

Happy Birthday, Steveland Judkins

AKA   Stevie Wonder

Note to self

Don't forget to love yourself.

                                                                     --Soren Kierkegaard

                                                                               

                                                                    

Note to self

true

nothing more to say.

F Y I (check my french)

If you get between me and the things I love, I will ask you politely to move.

If you get between me and the people I love, you will move.
           --Alex Al-Ouadim

They told Vincent Van Gogh,
"hey, you cant be a great artist, you only have one ear." and he said "I can't hear you."

song in my head- Natalie Cole

Happy Mother's Day Weekend!

Have a great mother's day weekend! It's a great day to honor and appreciate mom. Make sure you also give thanks to the "mother figures" in your life too!


I don't need mother's day to honor my mom, but I do honor her on that day. I honor her 365 days a year. She knows it, and she will  brag to anyone who will listen, how good her son is to her. People tell me  that all the time.
My mother didn't bring me into this world. I've been her son since I was 11 months old.  She chose me. She said I was ill as a child, and that no one wanted me, but she did. 
If I ever meet the woman that gave me life, I might ask her why she wouldn't or couldn't raise me, but only after telling her thank you for having put me up for adoption. 
Alot of people have and raise kids that they don't want, which is unfortunate because I know at least 5 couples that are spending fortunes on fertility treatment, on articificial insemination in  order to become a dad or mom.  

I thank God for my mom

Friday Flashback - N'Dea Davenport, The Brand New Heavies

The Beginning and The End Of Everything

"...The only reason I tried to be as still as I could, while lying underneath my father’s body was because I was playing dead. While trying to make sure that my breathing wasn’t noticeable, I was trying to be as conscious as I could be under the circumstances. As much as I wanted to scream, as much as I wanted to ask why this was happening, I figured that, as long as I didn’t move, then whoever was shooting would think he had killed everyone in the car and would leave as quickly as he had come upon us..."   

The Beginning 
and 
The End 
Of
Everything  

  Check  this out

Jamawn Woods’ Wins NBC’s ‘America’s Next Great Restaurant’

*Soul food lovers in New York, Minneapolis and Los Angeles – get ready for a new restaurant from the winner of NBC’s premiere season of “America’s Next Great Restaurant.”
The reality show – described as a cross between “The Apprentice” and “Top Chef” – gave its crown to  Jamawn Woods for his restaurant Soul Daddy during Sunday’s season finale.
Soul Daddy beat The Brooklyn Meatball Company and Spice Coast in the final challenge which was had the finalists test their food with actual diners giving reviews on their meals.
The judges, including Bobby Flay, Curtis Stone, Steve Ells, and Lorena Garcia, agreed that Soul Daddy’s concept of healthy soul food was a success.
They thought the concept of fellow finalist Spice Coast (modern Indian food) was too similar to Chipotle Mexican Grill, and Brooklyn Meatball Company made them wait too long for their food, causing a backup.
“This is definitely the biggest moment of my life. I can’t wait to see the opening of my new restaurant,” Woods said upon winning.
The 34-year-old — whose fulltime job is driving a forklift at Chrysler’s Sterling Heights assembly plant — had been running a part-time catering business from his home, making chicken wings and waffles for friends, and became a contestant almost by accident after a network scout saw his food photos on Facebook.
“He’s come a long way,” said Flay in the final episode, who, as one of the judges, is also an investor in the restaurants. In an earlier interview he said, “Jamawn is doing it for all the right reasons: for a better life for his family.”

The finale was held several weeks ago and Woods’ restaurant opens its doors today at the Hollywood and Highland complex in Los Angeles, the Mall of America in Minneapolis and in New York’s South Street Seaport.
The show, which competed against “The Amazing Race” for many of its episodes, was watched by an average of 4.1 million viewers weekly.
-- courtest eurweb.com

I watched this show every sunday night, and the finale was to have come on last night but was preempted by President Obama announcing that Osama bin Laden was dead. I wasn't disappointed.  That monster is dead, and  Jamawn Woods, my favorite cook of the show, won.

Blast from the past- Mother's Finest

My sight, my heart, my life. All three words I have woven into one. LOVE
                 --Rumi

I know I've used this pic quite a few times, but every time I google pics of  'black couples in love', for quoes that I find, pertaining to love, this pic of the President and the First Lady  always pops up, and is always the classiest, and most romantic of the bunch. And I have to use it.

Note to Toupee Fiasco ( also known as donald trump)

President Obama on Death of Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden. World Hide and Seek Champion. 2001-2011

Well done US Military - Well done.   AND NO US MILITARY PERSONNEL WERE KILLED IN THE PROCESS.   I'M GLAD THIS HAPPENED ON  PRESIDENT OBAMA'S WATCH!     Today is the 8th anniversary of Bush saying Mission Accomplished. But that mission wasn't accomplished until today!

The most prominent face of terror in America and beyond, Osama Bin Laden, has been killed in Pakistan, U.S. officials said Sunday night.

Bin Laden was the leader of al Qaeda, the terrorist network behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. U.S. officials said that their forces have the body of bin Laden.
The enormity of the destruction -- the World Trade Center's towers devastated by two hijacked airplanes, the Pentagon partially destroyed by a third hijacked jetliner, a fourth flight crashed in rural Pennsylvania, and more than 3,000 people killed -- gave bin Laden a global presence.
The Saudi-born zealot commanded an organization run like a rogue multinational firm, experts said, with subsidiaries operating secretly in dozens of countries, plotting terror, raising money and recruiting young Muslim men -- even boys -- from many nations to its training camps in Afghanistan.
He used the fruits of his family's success -- a personal fortune estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars -- to help finance al Qaeda in its quest for a new pan-Islamic religious state. How much bin Laden got in the settlement of the family estate is still a matter of contention. Estimates range from tens of millions to hundreds of millions.
Even before September 11, bin Laden was already on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
He had been implicated in a series of deadly, high-profile attacks that had grown in their intensity and success during the 1990s.
They included a deadly firefight with U.S. soldiers in Somalia in October 1993, the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa that killed 224 in August 1998, and an attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 sailors in October 2000.
Bin Laden eluded capture for years, once reportedly slipping out of a training camp in Afghanistan just hours before a barrage of U.S. cruise missiles destroyed it.
On September 11, sources said, the evidence immediately pointed to bin Laden. Within days, those close to the investigation said they had their proof.
Six days after the attack, President George W. Bush made it clear Osama bin Laden was the No. 1 suspect.
"I want justice," Bush said. "There's an old poster out West that said, 'Wanted, dead or alive.'"
Osama bin Laden was born in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1957, the 17th of 52 children in a family that had struck it rich in the construction business.
His father, Mohamed bin Laden, was a native of Yemen, who immigrated to Saudi Arabia as a child. He became a billionaire by building his company into the largest construction firm in the Saudi kingdom.
As Saudi Arabia became flush with oil money, so, too, did the bin Laden family business, as Osama's father cultivated and exploited connections within the royal family.
One of the elder bin Laden's four wives -- described as Syrian in some accounts -- was Osama's mother. The young bin Laden inherited a share of the family fortune at an early age after his father died in an aircraft accident.
The bin Ladens were noted for their religious commitment. In his youth, Osama studied with Muslim scholars. Two of the family business' most prestigious projects also left a lasting impression: the renovations of mosques at Mecca and Medina, Islam's two holiest places.
As a young man attending college in Jeddah, Osama's interest in religion started to take a political turn. One of his professors was Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian scholar who was a key figure in the rise of a new pan-Islamic religious movement.
Azzam founded an organization to help the mujahedeen fighting to repel the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
Bin Laden soon became the organization's top financier, using his family connections to raise money. He left as a volunteer for Afghanistan at 22, joining the U.S.-backed call to arms against the Soviets.
He remained there for a decade, using construction equipment from his family's business to help the Muslim guerrilla forces build shelters, tunnels and roads through the rugged Afghan mountains, and at times taking part in battle.
In the late 1980s, bin Laden founded al Qaeda, Arabic for "the base," an organization that CNN terrorism analyst and author Peter Bergen says had fairly prosaic beginnings. One of its purposes was to provide documentation for Arab fighters who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, including death certificates.
Al Qaeda, under bin Laden's leadership, ran a number of guesthouses for these Arab fighters and their families. It also operated training camps to help them prepare for the fight against the Soviets.
In the early 1990s, with the disintegration of the Soviet Union, bin Laden turned his sights on the world's remaining superpower -- the United States. War-hardened and victorious, he returned to Saudi Arabia following the Soviet retreat from Afghanistan.
In a 1997 CNN interview, bin Laden declared a "jihad," or "holy war," against the United States.
The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait provided the next turning point in Osama bin Laden's career.
When the United States sent troops to Saudi Arabia for battle against Iraq in the Persian Gulf War, bin Laden was outraged. He had offered his own men to defend the Saudi kingdom but the Saudi government ignored his plan.
He began to target the United States for its presence in Saudi Arabia, home to the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina. With bin Laden's criticisms creating too much friction with the Saudi government, he and his supporters left for Sudan in 1991.
There, according to U.S. officials, al Qaeda began to evolve into a terror network, with bin Laden at its helm. Tapping into his personal fortune, bin Laden operated a range of businesses involved in construction, farming and exporting.
Although the U.S. government was unaware of it at the time, bin Laden was already actively working against it.
According to court testimony, he sent one of his top lieutenants, Mohammed Atef, to help train Somalis to attack U.S. peacekeeping troops stationed there. Bin Laden would later hint, during an interview with CNN, of his involvement in the deaths of 18 U.S. Army Rangers in 1993 in Mogadishu.
Also in 1993, terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in New York, killing six and wounding hundreds. Eventually, bin Laden would be named along with many others as an unindicted co-conspirator in that case. The mastermind of the attack, Ramzi Yousef, would later be revealed to have close ties to al Qaeda.
In 1996, bin Laden took his war against the United States a step further. By then, he had been stripped of his Saudi citizenship and forced by Sudanese officials, under pressure from the United States, to leave that country. He returned to Afghanistan where he received harbor from the fundamentalist Taliban, who were ruling the country.
By then, the United States had begun to recognize a growing threat from bin Laden, citing him as a financier of terrorism in a government report.
According to reports, however, the U.S. government passed up a Sudanese government offer to turn over bin Laden, because at the time it had no criminal charges against him. The Saudis, according to an interview with their former intelligence chief in Time magazine, also declined to take custody of bin Laden.
In Afghanistan in 1996, bin Laden issued a "fatwa," or a religious order, entitled "Declaration of War Against Americans Who Occupy the Lands of the Two Holy Mosques."
"There is no more important thing than pushing the American occupier out," decreed the fatwa, which praised Muslim youths willing to die to accomplish that goal: "Youths only want one thing, to kill (U.S. soldiers) so they can get to Paradise."
In his first interview with Western media in 1997, bin Laden told CNN that the United States was "unjust, criminal and tyrannical."
"The U.S. today, as a result of the arrogant atmosphere, has set a double standard, calling whoever goes against its injustice a terrorist," he said in the interview. "It wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose on us agents to rule us."
In February 1998, he expanded his target list, issuing a new fatwa against all Americans, including civilians.
They were to be killed wherever they might be found anywhere in the world, he decreed. This new fatwa announced the creation of the "The World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders" and was co-signed by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, head of Egypt's al-Jihad terrorist group.
Six months later, explosions destroyed the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing 224 people and injuring 4,000 more.
U.S. prosecutors later indicted bin Laden for masterminding those attacks.
By the time three hijacked airliners struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, symbols of the U.S. business and military might, bin Laden's terror network had become global in its reach.
The organization soon became America's prime target in Bush's war against global terrorism. Bin Laden, its founder, became the most-wanted man in the world.
Then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell explained al Qaeda's network this way: "Osama bin Laden is the chairman of the holding company, and within that holding company are terrorist cells and organizations in dozens of countries around the world, any of them capable of committing a terrorist act."
"It's not enough to get one individual, although we'll start with that one individual," Powell said.
In statements released from his hideouts in Afghanistan after September 11, bin Laden denied al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks.
A videotape of bin Laden later obtained and released by the U.S. government, however, showed him saying he knew the September 11 attacks were coming, chuckling and gloating about their toll. Even with his knowledge of the construction trade, he said with a smile, he did not expect the twin towers of the World Trade Center to collapse completely.
Speaking in an earlier video recording that was first broadcast over the Arabic-language television network Al-Jazeera, bin Laden said America is "filled with fear from the north, south, east and west. Thank God for that."
"These events have split the world into two camps -- belief and disbelief," he said. "America will never dream or know or taste security or safety unless we know safety and security in our land and in Palestine."
Bin Laden had taken advantage of his time in Afghanistan, cementing his ties to the Taliban.
He was particularly close to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar. He built a mansion in Kandahar but spent most of his time on the move around the country, according to intelligence sources.
Al Qaeda had a network of training camps and safe houses where recruits from around the world were brought for combat and weapons training and indoctrination.
As long as the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, bin Laden, his four wives and more than 10 children were able to avoid capture.
Before September 11, the Afghan government refused U.S. requests to turn over bin Laden. "Osama's protection is our moral and Islamic duty," one Taliban official was quoted as saying in July 2001.
As the United States bombing campaign helped the Afghan opposition drive the Taliban from power, however, bin Laden's days were numbered.
The reward on his head grew to $25 million. Countless leaflets advertising the bounty were dropped from U.S. airplanes, which flew with impunity over Afghan skies.
"We're hunting him down," Bush said on November 19, 2001. "He runs and he hides, but as we've said repeatedly, the noose is beginning to narrow. The net is getting tighter."
But he eluded U.S. and allied authorities during the war in Afghanistan, vanishing in December 2001, apparently fleeing during the intensive bombing campaign in the rugged Tora Bora region near the border with Pakistan.
"He's alive or dead. He's in Afghanistan or somewhere else," then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in April 2002 when asked about bin Laden's whereabouts.
No more videos showing bin Laden were released during the spring and summer of 2002 and there was speculation that he may have died during U.S. bombing raids in Afghanistan.
But audiotapes released in October and November 2002 and broadcast on Al-Jazeera were allegedly were from him. U.S. government experts analyzed the tapes and said the voice on the tapes was almost certainly bin Laden's.
On February 11, 2002, a new audio message purportedly from bin Laden called on Muslims around the world to show solidarity against U.S.-led military action in Iraq.
The tape was broadcast on Al Jazeera, which originally denied its existence. The voice on tape added that any nation that helps the United States attack Iraq, "(Has) to know that they are outside this Islamic nation. Jordan and Morocco and Nigeria and Saudi Arabia should be careful that this war, this crusade, is attacking the people of Islam first."

--courtesy cnn.com

My existence

"I live for good laughs, great friends, good family. I'm not a mere genetic accident of some sort. If someone questions my existence, I'm here for one reason -God wants it and I'll keep myself worthy of His decision."
-- alex george

Act like a cop did it