Guest Post: Blip 01: Bin Laden the Avatar

October 15th, 2010 by zen

Charles Cameron is the regular guest-blogger at Zenpundit, and has also posted at Small Wars Journal, All Things Counterterrorism, for the Chicago Boyz Afghanistan 2050 roundtable and elsewhere.  Charles read Theology at Christ Church, Oxford, under AE Harvey, and was at one time a Principal Researcher with Boston University’s Center for Millennial Studies and the Senior Analyst with the Arlington Institute:

Regarding the popular intel phrase “connect the dots”,  this is the first, brief ‘blip’ in a series of short posts that Charles will be feeding in here along with more substantial pieces, to capture the sort of stray thoughts, while they are flying by, that may add up to more of a mosaic later.

Bin Laden the Avatar

by Charles Cameron

Just a quick question:

binladen1.jpg

Is bin Laden portrayed as an “Avatar” in the James Cameron sense in this

video in which he also talks about climate change — a significant

ecological theme in his recent discourses?

h/t Ibn Siqilli, frame taken from the video “Help Your Brothers in Pakistan”. People have joked about it – see Here for instance… But is AQ picking up on the meme and exploiting it, as they’ve exploited Tolkien on occasion?

Posted in 4GW, academia, Afghanistan, al qaida, analytic, Charles Cameron, cultural intelligence, extremists, horizontal thinking, ideas, insurgency, intellectuals, intelligence, IO, islam.insurgency, islamic world, islamist, mideast, non-state actors, propaganda, psychology, Religion, social science, terrorism, Theology, theory, Viral, visualization | 4 comments

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  1. zen:

    October 15th, 2010 at 4:23 am

    "ecological theme "
    .
    Hmmm….for some the ecological is eschatological.

  2. Charles Cameron:

    October 15th, 2010 at 5:17 am

    Sounds logical to me!

  3. Bryan Alexander:

    October 15th, 2010 at 6:05 pm

    Interesting set of linkages: to indigenous peoples.  To some anti-technologism (not low tech, but anti tech).  A claim to a better understanding of the ground.And, of course, the Iraq reminder.

  4. Charles Cameron:

    October 15th, 2010 at 8:08 pm

    Hi Bryan:     .     Good to read you here.  To the extent that the caliphate has been colonialized, the global ummah can claim kinship with, say, the indigenous peoples of the Americas, Africa or Australia – but to the extent that the global ummah has itself been a conquering power, and claims a right deriving from previous God-given conquest to re-take such once Islamic lands as India or al-Andalus, the kinship argument would appear to fail…