Airstrip One

Video Nasty

Bin Laden's latest video has been pored over endlessly for its various gestures, I'm fascinated by what I think has been a change in content:

Terrorism against America deserves to be praised because it was a response to injustice, aimed at forcing America to stop its support for Israel, which kills our people.

Why not his usually insistent inclusion of American troops in Saudi Arabia or the blockade of Iraq?

Does anyone know where a full translation of this broadcast is?

It is interesting that the collapse of American power is not seen as an end in itself (as we are constantly being told) but as a means to an end:

It is important to hit the economy (of the United States), which is the base of its military power...If the economy is hit they will become preoccupied.

Forget hating the West, the real gripe is that America is the roadblock on the way to Islamicist domination of the Middle East

Another random comment. Isn't the tone of the jihadists similar to some of the armchair generals. Osama says the West hates Islam. Horowitz says Islam hates Western freedom. It seems easy for us in the West to scoff at the idea that we are going in to kill off Islam, we know its preposterous. Yet why do we find it perfectly plausible to think that the Islamicists did what they did due to an irrational hatred of Western freedom?

Are limited strategic goals the sole property of the west, discovered somewhere between perspective in painting and moveable printing type?

India and Pakistan

Now that they are edging closer to war, doesn't it feel great that we may have 1000 odd British peacekeepers close to the first direct war between nuclear armed states?

A good analysis of this is from Stratfor.