I Wonder If There's a Dental Plan...

An Israeli newspaper, Ha'aretz, is reporting on a story that appeared in the Dubai press, that

Al-Qaida has put job advertisements on the Internet asking for supporters to help put together its Web statements and video montages... The London-based Asharq al-Awsat said on its Web site this week that Al-Qaida had "vacant positions" for video production and editing statements, footage and international media coverage about militants in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Chechnya and other conflict zones where militants are active.

I bet they go through interns like nobody's business.

This suggests an interesting reversal effect of the so-called war on terror(ism) that is being waged against friend and foe alike. While the nominal intention of the U.S.-led initiative is to wipe terrorism and terrorists from the face of the earth, the media law of reversal means that a simultaneous inherent property, or effect, of that "war" is to normalize terrorist groups and entrench them into the global political spectrum. This first gives them the patina of legitimacy, that later may evolve into commonly recognized political legitimacy. Witness, for example, the 30-year transition of Yassir Arafat's Al Fatah - who taught the world how to hijack airplanes in 1973 - to today's Palestinian Authority whose legitmacy in representing the Palestinian people is generally unquestioned.

Al Qaida posting job ads. An interesting question to contemplate is, how will the world consider today's major actors, thirty years from now?
[Technorati tags: al qaida | war on terror | reversal | ha'aretz]