Adam the American

Our best shot at looking into the mind of Al Qaeda came along about a week ago in the form of an American auto-videoblogger who is regarded by the CIA as a high ranking member of Al qaeda, at the relatively young age of 28. Quite precocious- and to think I'd written off my generation as underachievers. He even had Al Zawahiri as a warm up act.

If you've ever sat through a sermon of around 45 minutes you'll have experienced something like this before. I was going to say it's the most boring thing I'd ever heard, but it isn't- he just lost me a bit when he started to say how you have to balance what the Koran says with other bits of the Koran, and then quoting in Arabic. The early part when he lists the failures of the West while omitting any of the things that have really gone wrong, eg. the holocaust, communism and many related massacres- things mostly only tangental to our responsibilities- is a masterful show of selectivity. Towards the end he starts to make little idiomatic gestures- "you don't have to be a rocket scientist"- and gets a little more personal than at the beginning (you can use the cursor at the bottom of the video to run through some parts and cut to the chase, I think).

My conclusion: he's no dummy, but he is a hectoring little dictator, and I'm glad he's not my dad.

The best thing I read on it, which picked out the central points I missed in my fascination with this personality before me, is here. (via Daniel Pipes)

Not part of my usual beat, but, this is a remarkable and illuminating take on feminism, modern society, and Islam by the extraordinary Fjordman at Brussels Journal.

"The Bad Israelis: a poem"

I have a thought. If the BBC weren't producing dreamy explorations of the supposed psychoses at the heart of Israel such as this one, but instead were reporting the reality of the savagery on Israel's doorstep among its neighbours, would they be producing rubbish entertaining the question of whether it's "time to negotiate with Al Qaeda?"?

According to Paul Adams of the BBC "Nadim Injaz is a man without a home, without friends, afraid for his life, trapped by more than a decade of bad luck and bad decisions."

If you read the article, you will see that the only mistakes referred to relate to his decision to be an informer for the Israelis; or maybe his brother's decision to do so. I also noticed this little encapsulation of the BBC's mentality:

"In Palestinian society, collaboration with Israel is a crime usually punishable by death. This hasn't stopped the Israelis recruiting thousands of snitches"

Got that? The mob murders that await informers are referred to as though some kind of judicial process was involved: a 'crime' , 'punishable' by 'death', carried out in the name of 'Palestinian society'. Have a look at my second link and you will see an example of Palestinian 'punishment'- and yes, sadly, Palestinian 'society'.

Meanwhile the Israelis sources are referred to informally as "snitches".

Something back-to-front here. The Israelis are painted as heartlessly abandoning their sources having stirred up Palestinian society against them, while the Palestinians escape blame for their vicious and unjust, not to say utterly savage and barbaric, behaviour. In fact the truth is their psychotic hatred of Israel is- if I may be so bold- the root cause of every informer's behaviour. Maybe that's why Europe's 'alienated youth' are turned on by the jihadis and turned off by civilisation, when savagery steals the garments of respectability, and civilisation is written off as a fix. When even a jihadi spokesman can be more honest than the BBC, what has "Western Civilisation" to offer?