Internet

What the Dickens? Symbolic details in Inspire issue 3

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[ cross-posted from Zenpundit ]

It’s easily missed. It’s part of the “small print” that most small-format paperbacks carry on the copyright page:

The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”

Here’s the picture that AQAP took of the copy of Dickens’ novel Great Expectations they inserted into one of their bombs recently which they then published in issue 3 of their English language magazine Inspire:

Dickens

And here’s the explanation that accompanies that photo, in a piece titled “The Objectives if Operation Hemorrhage” by their “Head of the Foreign Operations Team”:

This current battle fought by the West is not an isolated battle but is a continuation of a long history of aggression by the West against the Muslim world. In order to revive and bring back this history we listed the names of Reynald Krak and Diego Diaz as the recipients of the packages. We got the former name from Reynald de Chatillon, the lord of Krak des Chevaliers who was one of the worst and most treacherous of the Crusade’s leaders. He fell into captivity and Salahuddeen personally beheaded him. The name we used for the second package was derived from that of Don Diego Deza, the Inquisitor General of the Spanish Inquisition after the fall of Granada who along with the Spanish monarchy supervised the extermination and expulsion of the Muslim presence on the Iberian Peninsula employing the most horrific methods of torture and done in the name of God and the Church. Today we are facing a coalition of Crusaders and Zionists and we in al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula will never forget Palestine. How can we forget it when our motto is: “Here we start and in al-Aqsa we meet”? So we listed the address of the “Congregation Or Chadash”, a Gay and Lesbian synagogue on our one of our packages. The second package was sent to “Congregation B’nai Zion”. Both synagogues are in Chicago, Obama’s city.
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We were very optimistic about the outcome of this operation. That is why we dropped into one of the boxes a novel titled, Great Expectations.

They may not have read the book or seen the movie, as Ibn Siqilli comments at the link above, but they do have long memories and/or a taste for history, and they are indeed sending signals with small details like the fictitious names of their addressees.

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This is in line with one of the basic premises of Islamic thought: that the world we inhabit is a world of ayat or symbols (the singular is ayah, and the word is also used to refer to the verses of the Qur’an, each of which is viewed as a symbolic utterance). Here, for instance, is a passage from Fazlun Khalid’s paper, Islam and the Environment, from the website of Jordan’s Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought:

The Qur’an refers to creation or the natural world as the signs (ayat) of Allah, the Creator, and this is also the name given to the verses contained in the Qur’an. Ayat means signs, symbols or proofs of the divine. As the Qur’an is proof of Allah so likewise is His creation. The Qur’an also speaks of signs within the self and as Nasr explains, “… when Muslim sages referred to the cosmic or ontological Qur’an … they saw upon the face of every creature letters and words from the cosmic Qur’an … they remained fully aware of the fact that the Qur’an refers to phenomena of nature and events within the soul of man as ayat … for them forms of nature were literally ayat Allah”. As the Qur’an says, “there are certainly signs (ayat) in the earth for people with certainty; and in yourselves. Do you not then see?” (Adh-Dhariat, 51:20, 21).

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BTW, I don’t think Penguin (or, for that matter, Charles Dickens) got paid for that book… whatever their expectations may have been.

Net Protest: extending the Anglosphere

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[ cross-posted from SmartMobs ]

One little detail caught my eye in a Foreign Policy AfPak Channel blog report yesterday.

Whether their first language is Kashmiri or Farsi, the internet makes English the language of choice for protesters.

Kashmiris are slowly harnessing the power of the internet to create a communal digital protest and to forge a voice for themselves in the democratic realm of cyberspace. In 2010 Kashmir’s Generation Next, those who were born or young during the turbulence of the 1990s, found their voices. Unlike Kashmiri youth of the 1990s who were silenced given India’s media, U.N. and NGO blackout of Kashmir, new technologies and social media have made it possible for Kashmiris to begin to tell their own stories, to have a voice and a narrative that can reach beyond the Valley and into international consciousness. Facebook and You Tube have been transformative, creating a cadre of citizen-journalists and more artistic expressions in which Kashmiris create video montages set to music and images, providing a voice whether in Kashmiri or English, such as Kashmiri-American Mubashir Mohi-u-Din’s take on the Steven Van Zandt song Patriot.
 
This summer Kashmir’s youth have learned two lessons from other international struggles for justice: Iran and Palestine. In 2009 Iranian youth and social activists harnessed the power of social media as young Iranians took to the internet and street in the face of state suppression. Iranians demanded “where is my vote?” — the slogan, appearing curiously and ubiquitously in English, was meant for an international audience, to raise attention to the struggles occurring within the Islamic Republic of Iran after the results of the presidential election were called into question. Similarly, “I protest” cries out in a language that is not native to Kashmir but has united Kashmiris globally as they seek an international audience.

The left’s romance with terrorists.

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It is a bit peculiar how the left seems to be fond of terrorists. Bill Ayres and his wife, of course, are prime examples but not the only ones. Some of them have adoring books written about them. Naturally, Sarah Jane Olsen had become a “community activist” in her new identity.

Now we have a new example disclosed today by Andrew Breitbart. Bradblog is a left wing blog that has become very successful while attacking such people as James O’Keefe of the ACORN tapes, and it has spun numerous conspiracy theories about the right and election fraud, etc. It turns out that one half of the blog, which has received over $1.3 million in donations from such sources as Teresa Heinz’s Tides Foundation, is a convicted murderer and terrorist. His name is Brett Kimberlin although he was once known as the “Speedway bomber” as he terrorized a town in Indiana. He was also a drug smuggler and dealer and he eventually ended up with a 50 year prison sentence. He was paroled after only 13 years but, when he refused to make any payments to the widow of one of his victims who had won a civil suit against him, he went back to prison for four more years.

Today he is a prominent figure on the left and his story of how he went to prison, a total fabrication, has made him even more of a hero. It’s pretty interesting reading.

“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”

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“Small Wars Journal has kicked off our first fundraising campaign.”

So to better serve you, the small wars community of interest, we are in the unpleasant but necessary position of coming to you, hat in hand, in an NPR-like scenario. We are counting on your contributions, coupled with support from grants and foundations, collateral income (advertising and referrals), and volunteer contributions of effort and content, to help us do more of what you seem to value and want us to do.

I learn a lot from the SWJ community and the folks that gather in the comments section. Sort of like the Chicago Boyz community and comments section. Hmm – thanks, CBer’s!

My Boss’s Phone

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Not my boss's phone
Not my boss's phone

Per Lex’s request, on this, the day America laid siege to Boston, MA, interrupting the otherworldly disputations of many a Brahmin:

Noted American science fiction writer Philip K. Dick once observed:

The ultimate in paranoia is not when everyone is against you but when everything is against you. Instead of “My boss is plotting against me,” it would be “My boss’s phone is plotting against me.”

My boss’s phone is rather nondescript. It’s color is a few shades darker than full oppression gray. It whimpers with the soul draining anonymity of the standard corporate VoIP phone design. It has a gray LCD, gray buttons with obscure functions, and an incomprehensible gray user manual.

It frequently finds itself on sales calls.

If it was a person, it would have no face.

My boss’s phone lacks the personality of the door from Ubik:

The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”
 
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.”
 
“I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.”
 
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
 
“You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug.
 
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door.
 
“I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.
 
Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”

Of course the motives of doors are usually open and shut. The hang ups of boss’s phones are more cryptic:

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