Here he is again, Big Brother holding forth, bearing poisoned gifts, giving the infidels a chance--both to convert and to see our own Stalinized image reflected back to us in its Islamist form. This guy could get a professorship at any allegedly distinguished American university. (Have the Middle East Studies Institutes or anthropology departments at Berkeley, Santa Cruz, or Columbia already approached him?) He certainly has the rap down cold. Capitalism is evil, the war in Iraq is about corporate profits not about terrorism, America is an oppressor and terrorist nation-state, our presumed loss of prestige is our own fault and known to all. My God, he even quotes Noam Chomsky and echoes countless ideologues who remain bitter about America's failure to wrestle global warming right down to the ground. I do not know if bin Laden taped this first video long ago or whether it was filmed recently. Others have pointed out that the video "freezes" twice, precisely when he refers to recent current events. What I do know is that he is one smooth and dangerous liar--but then, so were Hitler and Stalin. Like his totalitarian predecessors, bin Laden is also a mass murderer. His contribution to death is not entirely unique but his mass production of a self-replenishing cadre of suicide killers might be. It is impossible--and perhaps unnecessary--for me to focus on all the lies, brazen hypocrisy, and reversals of truth in which he engages and which so aptly characterize the cultural front in this fourth World War. I will revisit only a few of his hilarious--and deadly--points. According to Big Brother Laden (who is, in reality, the seventeenth child of fifty seven and formerly known as the "son of the slave woman"): The West must forsake democracy which he seems to equate with capitalism and embrace Islam; only if we submit or surrender to Allah will we know true freedom and be able to abolish class oppression and war undertaken for profits. (Where have we heard that before?) He then offers the West a deal: If we convert to Islam, we will only be taxed at 2 1/2 percent of our incomes and, what's more, will finally be able to get into heaven which we cannot do in our current Judao-Christian or atheist state. Not bad--40 acres and a mule and a guaranteed place in the life to come. What is this human devil not telling us? That Islam has a long and exceptionally cruel imperialist history of its own, that it oppresses fellow-Muslims and ex-Muslims in ways that are barbaric (think about indigenous Islamic gender apartheid, the Iran-Iraq war, the hot religious war between Shia and Sunni Muslims; also think Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin for starters). Islam has in the past, and still continues today to treat non-Muslims in ways that are terrible and getting worse. The liar insists that Jews are better protected under Islam than we have been in the Christian West--and he then goes on to "teach" Christians that the Quran upholds the "chastity and purity" of Maryan/Mary, the mother of Jesus, a prophet whom, like Abraham, was supposedly supplanted by the more evolved prophet Mohammed. Here is where he turns feudal himself. He contrasts the "magnificent Quran's" view of Mary as honorable "in contrast to the fabrications of the Jews against her." Say what? And, even as he seeks to divide Jews and Christians (some protector he would be), he denounces both "the rabbis" and the "monks" for having "altered the words of Allah...and sold them for a paltry price." Does he not know that Judaism and Christianity preceded Islam? Osama: Go tell it to the Marines! And our country has done just that. May they prevail on behalf of liberty and justice for all and in the merit of those who were killed and wounded both on 9/11 six years ago, and in all the Islamist attacks upon Jews, Israelis and Americans that have been going on for lo these many years.

Phyllis Chesler