I just found out that Osama Bin Laden’s “Letter to America” has been doing its rounds on TikTok but I haven’t seen anything about it been posted here on Lemmy about it. Perhaps people already know about it, I’m not sure. This is a link to the wayback machine. The original in the guardian has just been deleted after being online for 20 years.
Such a weird justification for taking it down, saying it was being shared without context when you can just edit your own article and add whatever context you think is necessary
Yeah I was surprised they took it down. I think it’s a foolish knee jerk reaction and is patronising towards readers.
Ironically there is know nothing to put the current spike of interest in context as you can’t read the letter on the guardian website.
I’m actually really unimpressed with the guardians action - they don’t respect their readers and clearly no longer believe in freedom of speech. They could have modified the article to put the letter in context themselves rather than link to a 20 year old article criticising it. It also makes it hard for those who want to push back against the letter and answer those who are pushing it.
Its quite feasible they had a call from the intelligence services.
There is precedent, from the Cambridge Six affair that they have been compliant.
What is the cambridge 6 affair
Cambridge five in fact - the “6”was a rumour
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Five
Manufacturing consent go brr
Censorship is never the answer.
There are more than a billion Muslims in the world. Obviously, Bin Laden is an idiot. But within those billion Muslims there are enough other idiots that share his way of thinking. Enough that things like Hamas and ISIS are real threats to our societies.
I, for one, do not wish to engage in a holy war against these idiots on behalf of an Apartheid regime.
Neutrality in holy wars is a perfectly reasonable position to take.
If Netanyahu wants to desecrate their mosque, steal their land and kill their children, then we should condemn that. Not support it.
Our governments are painting a red flag on our backs and inflaming the stupid bull.
This will not end well.