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Rhinocrisy

23 May, 2006

Radios play this remix

The latest bin Laden tape (transcript here) is excellent reading. The official U.S. response was that he is merely trying to demonstrate his awareness of current events, a statement which insults all of us. I've never been one to write bin Laden off as a frothing madman - a murderous fiend he may be, but one can't dismiss his words as mere provocation. He is the representative (and, I might add, a fairly cogent one) of a philosophy that still has considerable currency. There's lots of talk about how bin Laden has failed - both the Sudanese government and HAMAS repudiated his messages on their behalf in April of this year. But there's still plenty of mujahideen in the world, and we ought to assume that, even if he doesn't speak for them, he speaks like them. I don't see how it serves us (Americans) to pretend that their ideas don't exist, or are no more meaningful than baboon screechings. Then again, our strategy seems to be pretty single-minded: "Keep firing, assholes!"

Comments

bin laden is fixated on the USA. this seriously screws up our local understanding of arabish politics because it leads us (as i'm sure is intended) to ignore arabish-europish relations as a political event, even after things like those cartoons. bin laden is clearly anti-labor. 

Posted by hibiscus


for that matter why do people continue to ignore arafat's death as a driver of events in and around israel-palestine. all the new political situations are credited to the toppling of saddam, as though saddam did  anything for anybody. 

Posted by hibiscus


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