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The Guardian Deletes Osama Bin Laden's 'Letter to America'
- oatmeal1 3y agoIt's dangerous to allow people to read source content for themselves. You can't have them drawing their own conclusions!
- stefan_ 3y ago[flagged]
- owlstuffing 3y ago[flagged]
- otalp 3y agoFunnily enough Elon just replied to a tweet saying it’s the “absolute truth” Jews as a community promote hatred against white people
- vnchr 3y agoAre you talking about his feuding with the ADL for their defamation activities? This was the closest reply I could find to what you described (feedback welcome). > And, at the risk of being repetitive, I am deeply offended by ADL’s messaging and any other groups who push de facto anti-white racism or anti-Asian racism or racism of any kind. > I’m sick of it. Stop now. Source: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1724934935943979269?s=46&t=IZ1y9ohmA_kdGWXJqxiWsQ https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1724934935943979269?s=46&t=IZ1...
- lazyasciiart 3y agoI think you confused your negatives there!
- takoid 3y agoFor those interested in reading the letter for themselves: https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ubl2016/english/To%20the%20American%20people.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ubl2016/english/To%20the...
- Oddrenaline 3y agoThe deleted letter is from 2002, but this one references the Obama administration.
- danso 3y agoI don't think that's the 2002 letter. For example, it references Obama: > For Obama to leave one-third of the soldiers in Iraq, and the statements from his administration about this The cached version of the Guardian's letter page is here: https://archive.is/6xSxg https://archive.is/6xSxg
- Natsu 3y agoWrong letter, try this: http://web.archive.org/web/20231102065031/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver http://web.archive.org/web/20231102065031/https://www.thegua... More reporting here: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/osama-bin-laden-letter-to-america-goes-viral-21-years-later-tiktok-1234879711/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/osama-...
- rootusrootus 3y agoHuh. I had never read that. Thanks for sharing. He almost sounds like he's trying to be reasonable, and then proceeds to go completely batshit insane. It's hard to feel much sympathy for people who hate us so much and want to subjugate us to their own belief system.
- defrost 3y agoWhich pretty much nails the feelings toward residential schools.
- danso 3y agoGoogle's cached version as cached by archive.today: https://archive.is/6xSxg https://archive.is/6xSxg
- derbOac 3y agoThis is outrageous to me, especially coming from a news outlet. As an American, though, I'm wondering if there's some UK legal context I'm missing?
- Natsu 3y agoIt went viral on TikTok, apparently, and some people there are finding out that Osama was a communist who wanted to attack Jewish control of capital and now are endorsing that.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- digianarchist 3y agoSounds like the lamest reason for removing the article. I hope that's not true.
- jruohonen 3y ago> As an American, though, I'm wondering if there's some UK legal context I'm missing? Plenty. There is now also the Online Safety Act (Bill).
- drewcoo 3y ago[flagged]
- xwdv 3y ago[flagged]
- rootsudo 3y agoOne persons terrorist is another persons freedom fighter. Your thought pattern only adds more fuel to the fire that there is wrong think.
- xwdv 3y agoAnd there we go again with a live example of what I’m talking about.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 3y agoIf there isn’t “wrong think”, is there any “right think” either? Just nihilism?
- nverno 3y agoNo, I think it's pretty clear what a terrorist does - target civilians on purpose. But, terrorists can certainly be freedom fighters as well or vice versa.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoThe real question is if civilians are morally culpable for their choices, actions, and their consequences.
- markisus 3y agoBin Laden makes a point about this. He argues that the American public is culpable for the actions of its government because America is a democracy.
- jjgreen 3y agoI think it's pretty clear what a terrorist does - target civilians on purpose. So Hiroshima: the US is terrorist, Gaza: Israel is terrorist, etc etc
- user982 3y agoDavid Cross: "I don't think Osama bin Laden sent those planes to attack us because he hated our freedom, I think he did it because of our support for Israel and our ties with the Saudi family and all our military bases in Saudi Arabia. You know why I think that? Because that's what he fucking said." (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggUXa2UVNYc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggUXa2UVNYc)
- naijaboiler 3y agoI used to get so mad when I heard that simplistic rubbish “they hate us because of our freedoms” How could any person with even a high school education ever repeat that nonsense, much less accept it as true. People hate you because you’re doing or supporting something that hurts them
- arp242 3y ago> People hate you because you’re doing or supporting something that hurts them So all the people who hate gays do that because gays are doing or supporting something that hurts them? I don't think you believe that, but I'm just following your argument here. "They hate us because of our freedoms" is simplistic rubbish yes, but so is "people hate you because you’re doing or supporting something that hurts them". Recall that The Troubles started not with Republican terrorism (e.g. the IRA), but Protestant terrorism in response to Catholics demands for equal rights. Recall the many "lone wolf" unhinged nutjobs with delusional world-views. Etc. etc. It's a shame when people criticize poor simplistic unnuanced viewpoints with ... other poor simplistic unnuanced viewpoints.
- throwaway48r7r 3y ago[flagged]
- rootusrootus 3y agoHave you read the letter? "Because you are attacking us" is on the list, yes. But then it goes on to specifically call out our freedoms. Pretty much using those words, even. > How could any person with even a high school education ever repeat that nonsense, much less accept it as true. I'd guess that most high schoolers can read the letter.
- oefrha 3y agoA few hundred thousand views isn’t “viral”. Smells like intelligence agencies monitoring the Internet picked up the blip.
- arp242 3y agoIt was in The Guardian's "most viewed" list that they have at the bottom of most pages, at #4 IIRC. That's why I read it earlier, before it was deleted. Was wondering what this old article was doing there...
- oefrha 3y agoWell, then I highly doubt a few TikTok videos with merely x100k views (according to TFA) are driving all those Guardian views. How many people search for the source material after watching a TikTok? 5%? But maybe I overestimate typical Guardian traffic.
- arp242 3y agoI would imagine that traffic is highly distributed over many articles, but I don't know. Does it matter? "Intelligence agencies monitoring the Internet picked up the blip" is certainly nonsense and that's the bit I wanted to address. And even if The Guardian didn't have that public list, of course they have some insight on which pages are doing well on any given day, because that's how they make money.
- oefrha 3y ago> they have some insight on which pages are doing well on any given day Obviously. I didn’t know it was on the most viewed list when I wrote my original comment, so I was just going by the numbers in TFA: a few videos with >100k views (plus a dozen or two with >10k) multiplied by a quite generous 5% source material lookup rate gives you maybe 50k views on the Guardian side, which seemed entirely too low to trigger a panic at Guardian.
- jameslk 3y ago> The Guardian has removed a letter written by Osama Bin Laden, explaining his war against the United States is partly because of its support of Israel, after it had gone viral on TikTok. If I recall correctly, the terrorists attacked the US because they "don't like freedom". That was the narrative on TV nonstop and any wavering from full support of the wars or "supporting the troops" was tantamount to supporting terrorists. The irony being "terrorists" are just viewed as "martyrs" and "freedom fighters" on the other side of the coin, and every bomb dropped fighting them resulting in civilian deaths creates new terrorists/freedom fighters, who then go on to attack again killing more civilians, creating more radicals on the other side, who then bomb killing even more civilians. It's a cycle that never ends.
- kiba 3y agoThe terrorists don't like the US for many reasons, some of them seem legitimate. Either way, they're still folks who hijacked planes and crashed them into the towers. The irony being "terrorists" are just viewed as "martyrs" and "freedom fighters" on the other side of the coin, and every bomb dropped fighting them resulting in civilian deaths creates new terrorists/freedom fighters, who then go on to attack again killing more civilians, creating more radicals on the other side, who then bomb killing even more civilians. It's a cycle that never ends. I am sure some of them viewed themselves as freedom fighters, and that us dropping bombs which inflict collateral damage generates the kind of people who are willing to fight the US. That doesn't make them heroes or martyrs.
- kyruzic 3y agoDropping bombs on innocent civilians in a third world country doesn't make you a hero either, but that doesn't stop our media from calling all members of the military involved in the wars in the middle East heroes. Also read more carefully they never said the "terrorists" were heroes they explained the point of view of the "terrorists"
- beebmam 3y ago> Dropping bombs on innocent civilians in a third world country Is this really what political analysis has stooped to on HN in 2023? A total abdication of any attempt at nuance, or framing, or examining underlying intentions. Such a shame.
- gumby 3y agoOf course the letter, and even the attack itself, were not really messages for American anyway. Quite the opposite of the Hamas atrocity, except that both resulted in the death of a relatively large number of innocents.
- neilv 3y ago1. Artifacts of major historical events shouldn't be put down the Memory Hole, especially not by a journalism organization. You publish it, you preserve it. 2. I object to rewarding terrorists (including mass shooters, etc.) with a platform/publicity. If they do evil, IMHO, the first priority is to stop and remedy the harm, and second priority is to make the evildoing be counterproductive to their motives. (Not to do a surge of listening/engagement/publicity, even if there was a failure to do that appropriately before.)
- hindsightbias 3y agoI guess this is a case of history not being written by the victor.
- concinds 3y agoFrom Wikipedia: > Raymond Ibrahim, as a researcher at the Library of Congress, found a significant difference between Al Qaeda's messages in English directed to a Western audience and al Qaeda's Arab messages and documents directed to an Islamic audience. The Western-directed messages listed grievances as grounds for retaliation employing the "language of 'reciprocity.'" Literature for Islamic audiences contained theological motivations bereft of references to the acts of Western nations.[55][56] But people will trip over themselves to swallow literal propaganda. The underlying assumptions is also highly racist: "Americans view them as terrorists, but the Muslim world views them as freedom fighters!" No, Al-Qaeda supporters view them as freedom fighters. Surely people know that Bin Laden doesn't represent every Muslim, and that most of the Muslim world didn't support the 9/11 attacks?
- rootusrootus 3y agoWe have a similar problem today with Christianity. Who is a evangelical/Christian nationalist that wants a theocratic government, and who is a normal American who believes in our fundamental principles and respects individual freedom but happens to have Christian faith themselves?
- throw310822 3y ago> But people will trip over themselves to swallow literal propaganda. And which do you think is propaganda, the religious discourse to the Muslim public, or the grievances discourse to the Western public?
- megous 3y agoAnd what's propaganda about adapting your presentation to the target audience? Just in general? If I live under occupation, I don't need to constantly remind it to the locals. They get reminded each time they get randomly sent back at a checkpoint and miss work or cancer treatment, because the checkpoint occupant is frustrated today, or whatever. Western audience, which has no concept of day to day abuses, however, may need a different message. (just an example)
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
- topato 3y agoI think feelings about this really fall along the pre/post 9/11 genesis lines.... But really, in the end, I think Sheryl Crow said it best, in 1996: If it makes you happy It can't be that bad If it makes you happy Then why the hell are you so sad? https://youtu.be/dyihQtBes1I?si=lIDeKrTDmRQlwGpm https://youtu.be/dyihQtBes1I?si=lIDeKrTDmRQlwGpm
- ChrisArchitect 3y agointernet outrage! 404media is there! It's pretty weird to delete the page, but since no one knows the reason (what if it was some tech issue like the cache hits were thru the roof or like others have pointed out, they didn't was the post necro bumped to their trending list? Stupid to do it while everyone was watching but whatever) Anyways, everything is archived, https://web.archive.org/web/20150115193859/http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/nov/24/theobserver https://web.archive.org/web/20150115193859/http://www.thegua... so what. ever. Lots of ways for people to find out stories and reports from 9/11 times. These tiktok kids are always always acting like something is new they just discovered. They live in an ephemeral world of now without history so finding stuff out always shocks.
- megasteel32 3y ago[flagged]
- freefreepalesta 3y ago[flagged]
- freefreepalesta 3y ago[flagged]
- bebop404 3y agoDid they realize that deleting the letter would only cause more people to take interest in reading it?
- CTDOCodebases 3y agoIf only he knew that elections are just glorified popularity contests.