The article <a href="https://www.garbageday.email/p/tiktok-teens-arent-stanning-osama" author="Ryan Broderick" source="Garbage Day">TikTok teens aren't stanning Osama bin Laden</a> discusses a recent flare-up in the mainstream, western (mostly U.S.) media and governing bodies whereby there were several calls to ban TikTok because it's radicalizing the youth. At issue, of course, if the failure to indoctrinate them properly to be able to ignore war crimes and still sleep at night. So, what you need to do is to make a lot of noise about a world-girdling social network---😱 RUN BY CHINAMEN 😱 YELLOW PERIL ALERT 😱--- is corrupting the youth, turning them to the dark side of terrorism. They are all, apparently, in love with Osama bin Laden right now, woe betide the future of our great nation, etc., etc., etc. As you can hopefully tell from the sarcasm, this is entirely untrue. It's about as true as the <i>COLD HARD FACT</i> that the IDF found an Arabic translation of <i>Mein Kampf</i> in a schoolkid's bedroom. It would be comical if it weren't part of the propaganda campaign for an unfolding tragedy---and if so many otherwise-productive and reasonably intelligent members of society didn't just gobble it up like candy. Anyway, Broderick argues that the usual suspects---the powers that be---are jumping on this particular myth that they just invented to ban what they consider to be a thorn in their side: not just the dastardly <i>Chinese</i> version of uncontrolled media streams, but <i>any</i> uncontrolled media streams. <bq>Baseless generational in-fighting, aging millennials who refuse to accept the new status quo of the internet, easily monetizable rage bait, lazy TikTok trend reporting, and bad faith political actors swirled together to create a perfect storm this week. <b>We have invented a version of TikTok that simply does not exist and now many people in power are ready to tear apart the foundation of internet to prove it does.</b></bq> In the U.S., that means you only have to convince a couple of hundred of the most venal, stupid, and hypocritical people who've ever walked the Earth to pass some antidemocratic laws. It's honestly not even that big of a job. All you have to do is shit-talk a whole generation, gaslighting them into thinking that they're the crazy ones for finding a few kernels of truth in what amounts to a 51/2-page screed / philippic / rant / diatribe / jeremiad / tirade on everything under the sun. <h>Which philippic?</h> Which jeremiad, you ask? You can read it for yourself at <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/osama-bin-laden-letter-america-transcript-full-1844662" author="Giulia Carbonaro" source="Newsweek">Osama Bin Laden's Letter to America: Transcript in Full</a>. Young people claim to have been reading this 20-year--old letter that used to be available at the Guardian before they took it down. Why would they remove a piece of historical documentation that they'd hosted for 20 years? Because people were drawing the wrong conclusions from it, and the Guardian had to somehow stop abetting that from happening, so it threw its copy down the memory hole. Newsweek has generously and <i>courageously</i> republished the letter. Luckily, the memory hole doesn't exist yet. I know I've read this thing before<fn>---probably around when it first came out---but I'd forgotten how long it is. I was quite pleasantly surprised for a few seconds to think that the younger generations, even though they were drawing facile conclusions, were at least <i>reading again</i>. But, alas, no. As outlined above by Ryan Broderick, not all that many young people are actually reading this thing, and those who claim to have, read only about the first 5%, up until bin Laden mentioned Palestine, whereby they skimmed that sentence, misinterpreted it, and started using bin Laden to support their existing viewpoint , which is that the subjugation of Palestine is bad. Well done. I hope they at least got some fancy Internet Points for it. Right idea, wrong cite. But how would they know that Osama bin Laden is a <i>bad man</i> whom one <i>should not read</i>? They'd probably been taught nothing in school or by their family---and they certainly wouldn't have learned anything by osmosis either because bin Laden cannot be used to sell things or to promote a hyper-consumer lifestyle. <h>On to the text</h> There are so many sections and sub-sections---four levels!---that I wish that Al-Queda had taken an HTML course---or that someone would have bothered to convert the damn thing to Markdown from what is obviously formerly a Word document written by someone who doesn't know how to use styles. I guess we have more in common with the terrorists than we'd like to think. Hey, maybe our utter inability to use the basic productivity features we've had at our disposal for decades is <i>common ground</i>. But I digress. Again. There is a lot of religious gobbledegook that I suppose would be considered to be killer arguments (no pun intended) if you actually believe in that sort of thing. Otherwise, it's pretty meaningess. Every once in a while, though, a sentence like this one bubbles up out of the froth, <bq>(d) You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of your international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world.</bq> While pretty much spot-on---as far as it goes---to pretend that that's the point of the document is to cherry-pick, to be honest. For example, why wouldn't I assume that this next citation was the most important he was making? <bq>Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this.</bq> While this is probably a zinger for the devout, my confirmation bias leans more in the direction of the next citation, a bit further on. <bq>(f) You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day. It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern. Yet when 3000 of your people died, the entire world rises and has not yet sat down.</bq> This is 100% accurate, but...in an essay where bin Laden says a ton of things, some of them are bound to be true---or at least be something with which the reader can agree. I challenge anyone to claim truthfully that they disagree with absolutely everything in bin Laden's document. That doesn't mean you approve of 9--11 or terrorism. It just means that you know how to read and you know how to separate the message from the messenger. Or what about this one? <bq>(e) Your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them; you corrupt our lands, and you besiege our sanctities, to protect the security of the Jews and to ensure the continuity of your pillage of our treasures.</bq> I mean, I can agree with about 80% of it being absolutely correct, that it's an effrontery that the U.S. empire subjugates muslim countries to guarantee its supply of cheap energy. But then there's that part about <i>the Jews</i> that was wholly unnecessary, in my opinion, but which I feel might the <i>most necessary part</i> in the opinion of the author. <h>Agreeing with bad people</h> It's like being at a bar and chatting with a fellow beer-drinker about the overbearing government. You might be in total agreement that they take all of our money and that we see nothing for it. <b>Him:</b> Damned taxes are too high! <b>You:</b> No kidding! And what do we get for it? <b>Him:</b> Nuthin! <b>You:</b> Pissin' it away on foreign wars! <b>Him:</b> That's right! And for what? To protect a bunch of Jews! <b>You:</b> ... <img src="{att_link}homer.gif" align="none" title="Homer backing away" scale="50%"> It's like laughing at a good zinger by Donald Trump. While you're laughing and acknowledging that he's got quite a flair for nicknames, or whatever, you also have to acknowledge that he writes shit like this: <img src="{att_link}donald_trump_call_to_arms.jpg" href="{att_link}donald_trump_call_to_arms.jpg" align="none" caption="Donald Trump call to arms" scale="75%"> <bq>In honor of our great Veterans on Veteran's Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream. The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave, than the threat from within. Despite the hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who want to destroy our Country, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!</bq> He's absolutely not alone in his idiocy. The tweets below are the actual words of an actual human being who graduated from Harvard and is now a multi-term U.S. Senator. <img src="{att_link}tom_cotton_tweets.jpg" href="{att_link}tom_cotton_tweets.jpg" align="none" caption="Tom Cotton Tweets" scale="50%"> <bq>Joe Biden wants to ban menthol cigarettes, which are favored by black smokers. Meanwhile, he wants to legalize weed for white college kids and mail out free crack pipes.</bq> <bq>The administration's ban is paternalistic, it's hypocritical, and it creates a huge black market for Mexican cartels and Hezbollah. And all because Mike Bloomberg told him to.</bq> That's just mental illness, is what that is. That man needs help. I'm sure I could find a statement that Cotton made with which I could agree, though. I bet I can find things that RFK, or Marianne Williamson, or Nikki Haley, or Tulsi Gabbard said that I can agree with wholeheartedly. It's just that, if the conversation goes on just a little bit longer, I'm backing away into a hedge pretty quickly. So, sure, bin Laden's words get scraped off the Internet, so the kids can't read them, but Trump, Cotton, RFK, Haley, Gabbard, Williamson, Biden, etc. get to write and say whatever they want, wherever and whenever they want. This applies to many, many more people than that handful, but I hope you understand my point.<fn> <h>Eliminating the concept of "citizen"</h> It's the same with the bin Laden letter. He spends an inordinate amount of text explaining how, when attacking a democracy, it's perfectly legitimate to use collective punishment because there are no innocents in a democracy. He claims that each individual is equally responsible for the actions of their democratically elected government. This is patently ludicrous because it presupposes a power that no democracy or republic has ever granted to its populace. He is, however, absolutely not alone in this line of thinking. There are many high-ranking members of the Israeli and U.S. government and media who espouse exactly this principle, one that was so central to bin Laden's justification for the 9--11 attacks. Which citizens would bin Laden consider it to be OK to eliminate? In a democracy, you can be a voting citizen and still not get anything you want. If a majority decides to oppress the Palestinians, but you're wholeheartedly against it---too bad. You don't always get your way in a democracy. Does bin Laden claim that his great and good Allah approves of slaughtering those civilians who were already trying to get the right thing done? To what end? Not only is this evil, but it's counterproductive. All you'd be doing is increasing the majority that's already enacting policy against you. This is just stupid. <h>Lowering the bar</h> Bin Laden also makes the same logical mistake that so many others have made before him, and continue to make. In trying to argue for the righteousness of his cause, he compares himself to other war criminals like George Bush and Ariel Sharon---and then justifies his own war crimes as valid and legal because they got away with it, too. He essentially argues that anyone who refuses to condemn Bush and Sharon must also then approve of Bin Laden's actions. Obviously, this doesn't mean that bin Laden is right, but that he's just as wrong as those other idiots. <h>Recruiters always lie</h> After all of these dialectical histrionics, he slowly starts to wrap things up with a bit of missionary work, <bq>It is the religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honor, purity, and piety. It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme. And <b>it is the religion of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people, without regarding their color, sex, or language.</b></bq> I wish this were practically true, but the Wahhabism that bin Laden practiced was absolutely not blind to gender/sex. This is just bullshit. Perhaps bin Laden is arguing from the purity of the message in the Quran that has been warped in its application to actually-existing Islam---as he himself practiced it!---but I'd be surprised. I just think he's lying here because he really got going on his rant and he---like so many other people---just couldn't help himself: he couldn't just say everything else is bad and worthy of destruction; he couldn't just quit while he's ahead; he had to double-down and claim things about his religion that it doesn't even espouse. His next plea is to <iq>[...] reject the <b>immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality</b>, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest.</iq> Ok, so usury is pretty bad, agreed. And gambling is generally pretty socially harmful, sure. But intoxicants? And ... homosexuality? Dude, c'mon. How do you reconcile the statement above, where you wrote that <iq>without regarding their color, sex, or language</iq>, but then you write NO QUEERS. Seriously---that's just stupid. <h>The problem is "no Shariah"?</h> So much of this is just like that. A little further on, he addresses the U.S. again directly, <bq>It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind [...]</bq> Hey, OK. There's an argument to be made there. There are a lot of contenders, but the U.S. Empire has certainly done its damnedest to climb to the top of the heap. The only reason people might think that this is a facially ridiculous claim is because they have literally no idea what their country is up to. But then, just as you're trying to come up with reasons to disagree or to cautiously agree, bin Laden follows it up immediately with this, <bq>(i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the lord and your Creator.</bq> That's just ridiculous. He argues that the problem is that the U.S. invents its own laws? That's not the problem. The problem is that the U.S. <i>doesn't adhere to laws that it finds inconvenient.</i>. Bin Laden's advice to stop thinking for yourselves and let a thousand-year--old book make all of your decisions for you <i>wouldn't help</i> because the U.S. would just <i>ignore those rules too</i>, even as it continued to pretend to espouse them. The problem is hypocrisy and lawlessness, not that the U.S. hasn't found the <i>one, true law</i> to follow. Hey, bin Laden: maybe you should shut up and sit down while the adults are talking, ok? <h>Blowjobs and climate change</h> He's winding up now, but feels the need to deliver a few examples of Western/U.S. depravity. There is a wealth of history to choose from---but he spends an inordinate amount of time on Bill Clinton's oval-office blowjob. You old horn-dog, bin Laden. That story really got to you, huh? You just can't stop imagining that cigar and that thick, Jewish girl? Then, in the middle of a long list of highly debatable social detriments, he whips out this one about climate change: <bq>(xi) You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and industries.</bq> Yes! Correct! <bq>(x) Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who control your policies, media and economy.</bq> Yes! ... no, wait!?! What is with you and the Jews, man? Back. Away. Slowly. <h>The wheels are coming off</h> Deep into the last pages of the essay, there are still reasonable points being made, but in an increasingly incoherent manner. <bq>What happens in Guantanamo is a historical embarrassment to America and its values, and it screams into your faces - you hypocrites, "What is the value of your signature on any agreement or treaty?"</bq> As with a lot of essays by people writing in a language that is not their native one, the prose falls apart more and more the longer the essay goes on. By the last 20%, it's only barely comprehensible. You can almost see the spittle dotting his lips as his fingers fly over the keyboard. <bq>[...] discover that you are a nation without principles or manners, and that the values and principles to you are something which you merely demand from others, not that which yourself must adhere to.</bq> I mean, I get what he means, but I had to read it a few times. <h>Winding things up</h> It's basically done now. Excepting a few more paragraphs of quotes from the Quran---as if anyone reasonable considers that kind of thing to be slam-dunk proof of anything---it's over. This thing just has way too individual points for a blog post. It's both too long, but also too short, if that makes any sense at all. It really could have used some serious editing down, to punch it up and make sure it's focused on its main points. I fear, though, that then it would have just been a three-paragraph tirade against the perennially beleaguered Jews, most of whom are just like the rest of us, just trying to go along to get along. Sure, they've got some raging assholes, but those are everywhere. Hell, I'm reading a long letter by a raging Muslim asshole right now, but I don't think that means that all Muslims are raging assholes. I'm not an idiot. At least, I don't think I am. But then, who does? <hr> <ft>The article <a href="{app]/view_article.php?id=772" date="February, 2003">Osama’s Latest Hit</a> is as close as I can get. That article is about a tape that was released, but the content was probably very similar.</ft> <ft>You may even be smugly wondering to yourself whether I even see the irony that it might apply to me! That I'm part of the problem, not just those other bozos! That I'm an Internet bozo too! In my defense, there should be no way that you accidentally stumble across this article. It's reasonably well-hidden and hosted on such weak infrastructure that it would quickly no longer be accessible if it "went viral", as the kids like to say. So, if you're reading this, well, <i>you</i> came to <i>me</i>.</ft>