spinbadz own

Elsewhere in the Hitchens piece (see blog entry below) he compares Bin Laden's pre-election anti-Bush bash with the dogma of Michael Moore:

"... The Bearded One moved pedantically through Moore's (Fahrenheit 9/11)... bill of indictment, checking off the Florida vote-count in 2000, the 'Pet Goat' episode on the day of hell, the violent intrusion into hitherto peaceful and Muslim Iraq, and the division between Bush and the much nicer Europeans...

"The blood-maddened thugs in Iraq, who would rather bring down the roof on a suffering people than allow them to vote, (are) pictured prettily ... by Michael Moore, as the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers..."

Bin Laden's US election intrusion was probably about as welcome and effective as Moore's. It seems that the Hollywood and media impact on his al-Jazeera speech extended beyond that of the self-parodied Stupid Fat White Man.

There were, for example, Osama's repeated Godfatherly reminders to America-and-friends of the need for "Security", and of his big-hearted capacity for...protection. Vito Corleone couldn't have said it better.

Then there were the left-narrative keywords and concepts that Hitchens refers to: Bush's real aim of stealing Iraqi oil, dubious Halliburton and it's dubious contracts, monster Israel as the root cause of 9/11 and Islamic terrorism, falsified elections in Florida 2000, multilateralism and the huge effectiveness of the former Iraq inspection regime, Iraq as quagmire.

Finally, and most explicit of all, were Bin Laden's direct references to CNN and Time and his endorsement of The Independent's "unbiased" Robert Fisk.

"Would those ... in the White House and in the TV stations that answer to them, would they conduct an interview with him [Fisk] so that he might convey to the American people what he has understood from us concerning the causes of our fight against you?" queries Bin Laden.

What a laugh. Well, not so funny really. Rabid Robert Fisk would probably lap up that endorsement. As many know, he is a highly emotional and talented writer who has constructed a journalist career out of bashing and demonising Israel and its supporters (especially its patron-in-chief USA) week-in and week-out.

Fisk's vitriolic Jew-microscope extends even to tepid sometime Israel supporters on the left like Tom Friedman of the New York Times. His anger may have been fueled during the Ariel Sharon-led Lebanon incursion beginning in 1982, the same event Osama says is the "cause" of 9/11.

More on Fisk and his hatred of Bush and Sharon (and Israel and the US) here.

Natch, the tone in that linked article of Fisk's is not comparable to the gentle understanding the writer displayed to the people (Muslims, one assumes) who physically beat him nearly to death in Afghanistan a few years ago. The beating evidently occurred simply because Fisk appeared to be an American - totally excusable and justifiable reasoning on the part of these poor downtrodden, intimates Fisk, momentarily suspending his standard rabidity for Pope-like, cheek-offering Christian virtue.

But you'll look hard to find such understanding and sympathy for Israel (or the US, especially under Bush) from the pen of Osama's "unbiased" scribe.

In what may or may not be his first article after Osama's speech, the subject is ailing Yasser Arafat, whose loathsomeness Fisk assures us (again and again) is (of course) tied up with his being some kind of stooge agent for Israel.

Imagine that.

Says Fisk:

"The only time he (Arafat) did stand up to his Israeli-American masters -- when he refused (at Oslo) to accept 64 per cent of the 22 per cent of Palestine that was left to him -- he returned in triumph to Gaza and allowed the Israelis to claim he was offered 95 per cent but chose war."

One assumes that the former Palestine of which only 22% is now left included the entire Arab country now known as Jordan, comprising most of pre-mandate Palestinian territory.

Of the same events that Fisk talks about in this quote, Arafat's then-counterpart, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, says that he offered all or more "than the Israeli body politic could stand."

William Safire too describes those same events in today's New York Times slightly differently to Mr. Fisk:

"...(A) soon-to-be ousted Israeli prime minister ... made the Palestinian Authority an incredibly generous and dangerous offer: dividing Jerusalem, handing over almost all of the West Bank, and even partially establishing a "right of return" for some Palestinians who fled an Arab invasion of the new Jewish state a half-century ago.

"Arafat's 'good deed' was to reject this sweeping offer and to launch another wave of suicidal homicide... if those huge concessions had later been presented to Israelis in a promised referendum, Jewish voters would surely have turned down the Clinton-brokered deal. Proof of that was in the avalanche that then ousted the desperate Ehud Barak and elected the determined Ariel Sharon."

Seeing as Barak lost his job over those events, one might take heed of his opinion, even though it seems to run counter to that of Osama's nominee, or to the (shocking, I know) view that the Palestinians might have treated the Israeli offer as a starting point, at least, to build and grow a homeland and end bloodshed.

After all, so the saying goes, any dunkie can pull down a barn, but it takes hard work to build one. There is a distinct dearth of such barns in the Middle East. And a lot of nasty dunkies, armed with rockets and apologists.

Regarding Osama, for those feeling scorched by the burning question: "WHERE BE HE?", I put it to you that the answer is simple: Osama lives, and has for some time consistently lived, on our television screens. His reliance on them as a prize tool in terrorizing and embarrassing his enemies is self-evident, never more so than in this recent speech.