News you may or may not know — Osama Bin Laden recently ordered an attack “far greater than the 9/11 attacks” set for the near future, according to a supposed inside source. Al-Qaida’s second-in-command Al-Zawahri recently called Obama a “house negro” and “the direct opposite of honorable black Americans”.

While you (and that little voice in my head) may be thinking “so what?”, I’m gonna share something I think is interesting. I think that everyone’s still so euphoric about Obama’s victory, that none of this really matters. Obama is now Superman, the savior, the one who’ll make the boogeymen go away. Al-Zawahri’s statement is reduced to meaningless propaganda to mar Obama’s image. Osama bin Laden’s threat isn’t even making as many headlines as you’d normally expect. Nobody’s talking about it at work, but then again you’d sooner see a dozen paper planes flying across the room than hear people talk about politics there.

Anyway, I think people have counted the years since 9/11 as a sign that Osama bin Laden is no longer relevant, or perhaps just feel such a strong sense of security that what the news says must be an exaggeration. A strange figure of speech, a misinterpretation even.

But is it really? I don’t claim to know more than average about this topic, but I am wondering why the threat seems to be downplayed. These days, you can’t even say the word “bomb” in an airport, so this to me doesn’t add up.

What about Iran? Its continued refusal to cooperate with IAEA, arguing that they won’t “succumb to bullying” and insisting that they are acting according to their rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, blah blah you all know the story — so how can they honestly expect people to believe that they have nothing to hide? Well, the sanctions seem to be doing more harm than good without actual serious penalties for non-compliance. I mean, if it were true that they were doing something fishy, I don’t think trade sanctions would stop them now that they’ve gone this far.

And yet, I can’t blame the US for taking its stance. Ahmadinejad was right when he said a preemptive (or any) attack would be a stupid move, not to mention a pain to justify (based on our experience with the Iraq invasion), and yet with Israel’s scared out of its wits, there’s a lot of pressure to do something. Now, anyone who’s been following the news knows all this, but let me get to my point (finally!).

Despite pressure from Israel, it seems that given the current situation, the US will not initiate anything other than negotiations — “unconditional” ones at that. Even though it makes sense, I am convinced that something big is gonna happen in the very near future, and if the US isn’t going to start it, the other parties will. These things don’t just happen and die down on their own, now do they? This is very similar to the situation that drove the Iraq invasion — Al-Qaeda attacks, US can’t find the terrorist so they pick on someone else. Of course, it’s pretty clear that Obama is no Bush, but I’d say that makes it more interesting. ;)

It was pretty good too, not to mention, it was the first time we’d all even heard of the brand. I was even against buying it at that time, because it seemed like an “ambiguous Chinese brand”. I was kinda joking — what irony. Oh well, too bad. :<