Atta

I heard some of the 9/11 hijackers speaking clips on the radio this morning. Scary stuff. They were so calm and collected and rational and matter of fact - exactly the impression I got from Atta. "Just remain calm." While secretly meaning we're going to fuck your entire country - just wait you see...oh, and murder all of you in the process. Complete insanity.

I can't believe the whole operation cost about $500,000. That had a higher profit margin than Passion of the Christ.

Does anyone want to talk about how terror thrives on news-as-entertainment? "If it bleeds, it leads..." This has not ALWAYS been the case. News used to be run at a loss for the networks, a public service, and source of pride. Networks thought that a good news program (not necessarily profitable) would lead to viewer loyalty to other network shows...

But then came 60 minutes, it was profitable, and boom, we've got celebrity journalists, and dumbed down coverage to capture the mass audience.

We look down on Al Jazeera, but how far off is Fox News? And plus, Al Jazeera just copied CNN anyway, with a different slant. It's the flip side of the same beast. Terrorism feeds off the coverage and the coverage (ie Al Jazeera) feeds off the terrorism. It's the perfect symbiotic relationship, properly compartamentalized.

AL Queda's the producers and directors and actors and the news channels are the distributors. They collaborated to make the biggest, baddest, reality - TV spectacle in the history of the news. The 3000 people were production costs.