Quotulatiousness

June 14, 2010

Deadly would-be killers, or incompetent bumblers?

Filed under: Media, Middle East — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:32

An interesting article in The Atlantic points out that the formidable image the media has bestowed upon Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations belies much of the reality:

To be sure, some terrorists are steely and skilled — people like Mohamed Atta, the careful and well-trained head of the 9/11 hijackers. Their leaders and recruiters can be lethally subtle and manipulative, but the quiet truth is that many of the deluded foot soldiers are foolish and untrained, perhaps even untrainable. Acknowledging this fact could help us tailor our counterterrorism priorities — and publicizing it could help us erode the powerful images of strength and piety that terrorists rely on for recruiting and funding.

Nowhere is the gap between sinister stereotype and ridiculous reality more apparent than in Afghanistan, where it’s fair to say that the Taliban employ the world’s worst suicide bombers: one in two manages to kill only himself. And this success rate hasn’t improved at all in the five years they’ve been using suicide bombers, despite the experience of hundreds of attacks — or attempted attacks. In Afghanistan, as in many cultures, a manly embrace is a time-honored tradition for warriors before they go off to face death. Thus, many suicide bombers never even make it out of their training camp or safe house, as the pressure from these group hugs triggers the explosives in suicide vests. According to several sources at the United Nations, as many as six would-be suicide bombers died last July after one such embrace in Paktika.

Many Taliban operatives are just as clumsy when suicide is not part of the plan. In November 2009, several Talibs transporting an improvised explosive device were killed when it went off unexpectedly. The blast also took out the insurgents’ shadow governor in the province of Balkh.

In the early 1980s, I remember reading a book (possibly Dean Ing’s Soft Targets), which made a strong case for the use of a very different anti-terrorism tactic: ridicule. Instead of investing these shadowy enemies with mystique and cunning, point out their all-too-human failings and poke fun at them for these weaknesses. An attribute of many fanatics is a total lack of any sense of humour or irony: this makes them very attractive foils for this kind of media counter-attack.

It’d be hard to come up with anything to make the Taliban appear more ridiculous than what they’re doing themselves:

If our terrorist enemies have been successful at cultivating a false notion of expertise, they’ve done an equally convincing job of casting themselves as pious warriors of God. The Taliban and al-Qaeda rely on sympathizers who consider them devoted Muslims fighting immoral Western occupiers. But intelligence picked up by Predator drones and other battlefield cameras challenges that idea — sometimes rather graphically. One video, captured recently by the thermal-imagery technology housed in a sniper rifle, shows two Talibs in southern Afghanistan engaged in intimate relations with a donkey. Similar videos abound, including ground-surveillance footage that records a Talib fighter gratifying himself with a cow.

I can haz bizness empire?

Filed under: Humour, Technology — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 07:18

The New York Times discovers LOLcats:

Three years ago Ben Huh visited a blog devoted to silly cat pictures — and saw vast potential.

Mr. Huh, a 32-year-old entrepreneur, first became aware of I Can Has Cheezburger, which pairs photos of cats with quirky captions, after it linked to his own pet blog. His site immediately crumbled under the resulting wave of visitors.

Sensing an Internet phenomenon, Mr. Huh solicited financing from investors and forked over $10,000 of his own savings to buy the Web site from the two Hawaiian bloggers who started it.

Hallmark gets attacked for “racist” message

Filed under: Media, Randomness, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 07:06

Sometimes a company will innocently create a message that is completely misunderstood. Hallmark is having an attack of the “racist” accusers, based on someone mis-hearing the term “black hole” as “black whore”:

The bad news? Rather than stand up to this idiocy, Hallmark looked at its bottom line and figured a PR war with the NAACP wasn’t worth it. The card’s been yanked from the market. The good news? The clip’s destined to be a viral hit and big media outlets like FNC have already picked up the story. (A segment ran within the past hour or so.) I hope the outrageously outraged enjoy the widespread derision they’re going to draw for it. The best news? If this is what the L.A. NAACP now considers a priority for direct action, Los Angeles must be completely racism-free. Three cheers for progress.

H/T to Jon (my former virtual landlord) for the link.

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