Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Zawahiri and Gadahn star in "The West and the Dark Tunnel"

As-Sahab video.

World Analysis has at least some of it. It is also on YouTube.

This is AQ's overdue 9/11 anniversary video. It's in a sort of TV documentary format, loaded with special effects. The makers had access to a large array of TV news footage from various places.

It contains some unremarkable new speeches from Zawahiri, Abu Yahya, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, and Gadahn.

As for its targets, Hamas is one; they eulogize the idiotic "Abu an-Noor al-Maqdisi" and his Jaish Ansar Allah people, who were massacred by Hamas in August 2009. Another target of the day is Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi defense minister, whose bribery by the British arms firms BAE was concealed by Tony Blair personally.

As in terrorist propaganda generally, lots of pieces of this AQ video are selected to incite and to nurse resentment. A frequent trick in this one is to show one person greeting another, or joking with another, or dining with another, for the purpose of spreading the viewer's hate of one of those people onto the other. For example, GWB and Blair are seen sharing a joke in front of the White House.

The video continues a recent pattern in al-Qa'ida propaganda, of calling attention to Abu Qatada, who for the time being is being kept out of circulation by his British hosts. Abu Qatada is the most senior al-Qa'ida member in the UK. AQ regards him as a cleric. One of the URL's of AQ's main online library is named for him. In the past, Abu Qatada has been AQ's go-to guy when they want religious authorization for mass murders in Europe, such as the Madrid train bombings.