To follow up on the previous post, I went to the "Islamic" kooky website that was cited by MEMRI in its attempt to offer more scare tactics to the American electorate and to help Bush. First, the writer is anonymous: nobody knows who he is, and his "pen name" is Mudad `Uluj (or Anti-`Uluj--and `Uluj is a word (I wrote about it before) that was used by Saddam's buffoon Minister of Information, Muhammad Sa`id As-Sahhaf, to refer to American and British forces. And at the end of the very passage that MEMRI refers to, the writer says: "This does not mean that the Shaykh [Bin Laden] supports Kerry." But that was conveniently left out. But this is typical MEMRI: they basically provide highly selective and not always accurate translations of either kooky Muslim fanatics (as unrepresentative as they are), or of wild Bush Arab fans (as unrepresentative as they are). The majority of Arab and Muslim public opinion is left out. Yet, it is the source that is now used by Middle East experts (with no language and culture skills), government officials, and media people. In today's Al-Quds Al-`Arabi there is a full transcript of the 5 minutes of the 17-18 minute tape that was obtained by AlJazeera and only partially aired. It will be revealed at one point, how the Qatari government (the government, not AlJazeera, makes such deicisions--let us not fool ourselves) made the decision of the selective editing and airing of the tape, and the role the Bush administration played. We at least know that the Bush administration had a copy of the full tape before it aired. And Bin Laden fan, `Abdul-Bari `Atwan (editor of Al-Quds Al-`Arabi) provides a full analysis of the Bin Laden tape in today's issue and he does not make the points offered by MEMRI. And MEMRI is wrong: Bin Laden does NOT know about US electoral system, and his pronounciation of Florida as Floreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeedaaaaa tells me something. And most importantly, any voter who wants to listen to Bin Laden or his threats before casting a ballot is an idiot.