By William Blum
Online Journal Guest Writer
Feb 15, 2006, 16:14
How I Spent My 15 Minutes of Fame
In case you don't know, on January 19 the latest audiotape from Osama bin Laden was released and in it he declared: "If you
are sincere in your desire for peace and security, we have
answered you. And if Bush decides to carry on with his lies and oppression, then it would be useful for you to read the book 'Rogue State,' which states in its introduction . . ." He then goes on to
quote the opening of a paragraph I wrote (which appears actually in the Foreword of the British edition only, that was later translated to Arabic), which in full reads:
"If I were the president, I could stop terrorist attacks against the United States in a few days. Permanently. I would first apologize -- very publicly and very sincerely -- to all the widows and the
orphans, the impoverished and the tortured, and all the many millions of other victims of American imperialism. I would then announce that America's global interventions -- including the awful
bombings -- have come to an end. And I would inform Israel that it is no longer the 51st state of the union but -– oddly enough -– a foreign country. I would then reduce the military budget by at least
90 percent and use the savings to pay reparations to the victims and repair the damage from the many American bombings and invasions. There would be more than enough money. Do you know
what one year of the US military budget is equal to? One year. It's equal to more than $20,000 per hour for every hour since Jesus Christ was born.
"That's what I'd do on my first three days in the White House. On the fourth day, I'd be assassinated."
Within hours I was swamped by the media and soon appeared on many of the leading TV shows, dozens of radio programs, with long profiles in the Washington Post, Salon.com and elsewhere. In
the previous 10 years the Post had declined to print a single one of my letters, most of which had pointed out errors in their foreign news coverage. Now my photo was on page one.
Much of the media wanted me to say that I was repulsed by bin Laden's "endorsement." I did not say I was repulsed because I was not. After a couple of days of interviews I got my reply together
and it usually went something like this: "There are two elements involved here: On the one hand, I totally despise any kind of religious fundamentalism and the societies spawned by such, like the
Taliban in Afghanistan. On the other hand, I'm a member of a movement which has the very ambitious goal of slowing down, if not stopping, the American Empire, to keep it from continuing to go
round the world doing things like bombings, invasions, overthrowing governments, and torture. To have any success, we need to reach the American people with our message. And to reach the
American people we need to have access to the mass media. What has just happened has given me the opportunity to reach millions of people I would otherwise never reach. Why should I not be
glad about that? How could I let such an opportunity go to waste?"
Celebrity -- modern civilization's highest cultural achievement -- is a peculiar phenomenon. It really isn't worth anything unless you do something with it.
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/printer_507.shtml
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