strawman alert 2006 - journalists who fawn over bin laden

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http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/0000000CAECC.htm

also contains hitler-was-a-vegetarian style guilt by association for bloggers, anticorporate types, & a free palestinian state - yall dont wanna be like osama right?!!?!??

― $#@!!!!, Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:12 (twenty years ago)

wow he really didn't want to review this book eh?

― Sororah T Massacre (blueski), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:15 (twenty years ago)

there's a difference between 'straw man' and 'actual idiots who fawn over bin laden', isn't there? the guardian was stupid to print bin laden on the op-ed page -- i doubt they'd print ariel sharon or george bush, so why this guy? cos it was 'provocative', if you're stupid.

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:16 (twenty years ago)

The author seems to have written the piece as a means of self-therapy.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:17 (twenty years ago)

yeah over here we reserve our editorial page for eric rudolph and ted kazinski

― $#@!!!!, Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:18 (twenty years ago)

Even when bin Laden's statements are liberally peppered with references to Palestine

Do you see wot he did there? Clever, that one.

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:19 (twenty years ago)

So what's the deal with Spiked anyway? This piece seems to indicate they're some sort of 'we are thinking beyond the old traditions oh yes' self-conscious 21st century pundit goofos.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:20 (twenty years ago)

Spiked are a bunch of publicity slut contrarians who used to be the Revolutionary Communist Party and their organ 'Living Marxism'. Sued in the 90s for suggesting that Slobodan Milosevic was being demonised and ethnic cleansing was a myth. Utterly tiresome wankers who get publicity for being brave enough to say the unsayable by a self-referential media who have elevated sensationalism to a virtue in itself.

See also: Frank Furedi

― Dave B (daveb), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:24 (twenty years ago)

I like how they say it's NOT SO BAD to drink and drive.

http://www.spiked-online.com/Sections/Central/Panic/Index.htm

― Huk-L (Huk-L), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:26 (twenty years ago)

Thank ya Dave -- I have to say I'm not surprised at all.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:27 (twenty years ago)

yeah yeah spiked are cunts.

but fucking hell, what is VERSO of all people doing publishing bin laden. if we're talking 'betrayal of the left', verso are being as dickish as hume here, dave.

― Theorry Henry (Enrique), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:34 (twenty years ago)

Absolutely, but then I'd never put much faith in Verso's 'leftness', nor by much claiming to be left-wing that issues from the academy (certainly in Cult Stud / Crit theory circles).

― Dave B (daveb), Thursday, 5 January 2006 15:53 (twenty years ago)

"My kidneys are all right"

― Gerard (Gerard), Thursday, 5 January 2006 16:47 (twenty years ago)

Qaddafi has hot FEMALE bodyguards that dress like Professor Griff - bin Laden could never be as progressive: http://tinyurl.com/8jyat

― andy ---, Thursday, 5 January 2006 18:06 (twenty years ago)

O'Neill's article is muddled and self-contradictory. Bin Laden's script cannot both be "ghost-written in the west" and "the ranting of a bearded man in a cave", as O'Neill asserts. Who would need to ghost-write ranting?

O'Neill calls Peter Preston "fawning" for saying Bin Laden is "a resilient, cunning, wonderfully briefed politician", but then asks "Once again: what kind of fighter for Allah needs to cite Western opinion polls to justify his war against Mammon?", a question which can only be answered by some phrase like "a cunning, wonderfully briefed politician". In fact, most of O'Neill's article is an outline of precisely this "briefing", which makes his "rant in a cave" line look silly.

― Momus (Momus), Thursday, 5 January 2006 19:09 (twenty years ago)

# strawman alert 2006 - journalists who fawn over bin laden (14 new answers, last at 2:09 pm)
# the JEWS OF MINNESOTA thread (because the one on the ModReq board got locked) (11 new answers, last at 2:08 pm)

Insert your own bin Laden comment here.

― NoTimeBeforeTime (Barry Bruner), Thursday, 5 January 2006 19:15 (twenty years ago)

Bin Laden's script cannot both be "ghost-written in the west" and "the ranting of a bearded man in a cave", as O'Neill asserts.

maybe he means "ghost-translated"?

― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 5 January 2006 20:09 (twenty years ago)

It's an old story.

The experts who are paid to study bin Laden and advise the government on how best to predict his tactics and combat his strategies, are expected to understand that bin Laden is a cunning, wonderfully briefed politician. They can't afford to dismiss him as a ranter in a cave.

However, the authorities obviously believe the public at large must be taught to underestimate bin Laden, to dismiss him, to belittle him and to feel arrogantly superior to him at every turn. Any public suggestion that he is in any way capable or intelligent is instantly labelled as defeatist or ridiculed as idiotic. This is just propaganda at its most transpaarent. [See also: 'leaked' photos of Saddam in his underwear and the military-planted stories that the captive Saddam whines if deprived of his Doritos.]

The plain fact is that bin Laden has built and funded an organization capable of large scale bombings anywhere in the wolrd, has maintained a steady stream of effective propaganda that reaches hundreds of millions of Muslims and Arab-speakers, and has promoted himself to a world leader, all while eluding capture or assassination for more than a decade.

A longer period has now elapsed since Sept. 11, 2001 than elapsed between the Pearl Harbor attack and the surrender of the Japanese empire. Yet, bin Laden's ability to carry on his war on the West has been only modestly eroded. If Osama isn't very smart or capable, then the US government, the CIA, the NSA, and the world's most advanced military machine must be profoundly stupid. There are no other choices that make sense.

― Aimless (Aimless), Thursday, 5 January 2006 21:58 (twenty years ago)

More on the Living marxism group - very interesting

― Dave B (daveb), Tuesday, 10 January 2006 00:36 (twenty years ago)

For what it's worth, that new Vanity Fair piece I spoke of in the other thread has a pretty consistent view from his former colleagues and comrades-in-arms: bin Laden is not particularly intelligent, and far, far from being a genius. His former teachers say it as well. A Pakistani comrade that fought along side him in Afganistan said that while he wasn't very brilliant, he was tenacious and dogged... which can be dangerous qualities in their own right (see mussolini).

― andy ---, Tuesday, 10 January 2006 01:05 (twenty years ago)

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