...more recent posts
Bizzare article in the Village Voice about Laili Helms, niece by marriage of former CIA director Richard Helms, and suburban Mom living in New Jersey, who is the unofficial Taliban representative in the U.S. (via scripting news)
Microsoft worms are running rampant on the web today. I've been experiencing mail problems on one of my servers. Anyone else seeing this? These sorts of things happen rather frequently, but now it just seems more ominous. In any case, DO NOT open attachments.
I don't know if he wants me throwing his theories around the internet, so I'll just say that my friend B., who seems to understand more about this stuff than anyone else I know, was scaring me again last night with his near future mid-east scenarios. He thinks Bin Laden is probably already hiding in Pakistan under very tight security, and that his big play will be to show up in Mecca where he will start preaching against the infidel. We cannot bomb Mecca. It will be exceedingly difficult to go in there and get him. And of course, the infidel is not just the west, and not just the jews. It will also be the moderate Islamic leaders. And what might his rallying cry be? How about: seize the oil fields.
Probably he would need us to strike the holy land a few times first to get people really upset or else the Saudi royal familly will be able to stop him themselves. This rubs up against the well circulated ideas of Mir Tamim Ansary
who thinks the U.S. is being led into a trap. And I think Bush's use of words like 'crusade' show that he is taking the bait.
(Here's a map of Saudi Arabia showing Mecca on the west coast by the Red Sea.)
Here's a directory of central Asian news sources.
I guess Steve and I weren't the only ones to think about dropping food and medicine on Afghanistan instead of bombs. Still, I know it won't happen. Plus, it wouldn't necessarily work. Still, if we are in a struggle with a trickster like enemy it seems very foolish to react the way we are expected to react. Or maybe people don't know much about trickster spirits.