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My roommate and I were talking and came to an impasse on the following point.
Are the news stations that show these videos (we saw another video last night of a British man begging Tony Blair for his life) merely acting in the best interest of their viewers by reporting the news in its entirety, or are the satisfying someone else by giving these films airtime.


Hey, how are things going there in Tunisia? Seriously.

I dredged this thread back up on the occasion of Bin Laden's most recent video. I was frustrated in my attempt to find a complete transcript, but this Reuters report seemed to capture the gist.

As I read it, I was struck by the plain-spoken, deliberate nature of U/OBL's Halloween message.

My anxieties about this situation are still influenced, for better or worse, by the writings of "Anonymous" (Mike Scheuer) in Imperial Hubris .

Scheuer spends a lot of time trying to disabuse his readers of the notion of OBL and Company as wild-eyed madmen. We may not agree, but he lays out a much more rational, internally consistent basis for Al Quaeda's terrorrist actions. He could almost say "Hey, you think flying a passenger jet into a skyscraper is *easy*?" "Do you think sawing off somebody's head in person (not from 18,000 feet) feet is *easy*?" From "Mike"'s point of viw, the theatrical carnage is a deliberately considered set of actions committed by people who are (in *their* universe) acting to defend their faith from the new crusaders. No choice. The 19 martyrs of 9/11 had to do it.

Mike posits that the West has deluded itself with the notion that the majority of Muslims just want to get along with -- live in peace with -- the non-Muslim Western world, and that OBL and troupe enjoy more support from the "Man-in-the-street" in Cairo, Tunis, Jakarta, Islamabad than we would like to imagine.

While Mike is extremely critical of Bush's mistaken f*ckup in Iraq, his prescriptions are unlikely to bring comfort to any Kucinich Democrats -- they are something not too far from "Well, dang, now that we have stuck our foot in it, we need to really kill 'em!"

Anyhow, any of that Bush*t about "They hate us because of who we are!" stuff is just that. Bush*t.

So, how's things there? Had tea with your censor lately? I hear that really helps!
_________________________
Jim


'Tis the exceptional fellow who lies awake at night thinking of his successes.