Documentary: Bin Laden Loves Volleyball But Not Ice

[Khephra]

OTTAWA (Reuters) - A documentary about a Canadian family closely linked to Osama bin Laden portrays the al Qaeda chief as a well-meaning family man who banned ice in drinks, loves volleyball and has trouble controlling his children.

snip......

``He loved playing volleyball. And he loved horse riding... Kids played around him.... And (when) they'd go shooting he'd go with them. If he missed his (shot), they'd laugh at him and stuff like that,'' she said.

snip......

Zaynab said bin Laden imposed many restrictions on his three wives and their children and banned the use of electricity in their part of the compound.

``He didn't allow them to drink cold water ... because he wanted them to be prepared (so that if) one day there's no cold water, they'd be able to survive and it wouldn't be so difficult for them,'' she said.

Abdurahman recalled: ``He was against using ice, and he actually forbade it (for) the people that lived around him ... He didn't want them to be spoiled.''

more.................

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/arts/entertainment-security-canada-binladen.html

[Ediacara]

1. volleyball?

I know that this article deserves more seriousness, but I just can't picture that. Although that would be one hell of a photoshop!

[TroglodyteScholar]

9. Photoshop? (quick&dirty, but funny nonetheless)

Let's see if this works....

VolleyballBinLaden

[Ediacara]

10. all I get is

a huge page of giberish text.

[TroglodyteScholar]

14. Oh well

Geocities doesn;t allow linking jpg's from other sites, so i had to rename it to .txt. My browser still shows the pic. It wasn't very good anyway...like i said, quick&dirty

[Art_from_Ark]

17. Pretty funny pic

If you have a Macintosh, you can view the pic as follows:

Hold down the "control" key and click on the link. Choose "Save link target as" and when the name "volleyball.txt" comes up, change "txt" to "jpg" and save to your hard disk. The read the jpg file with Picture Viewer or Preview, or drag the file to your browser icon.

[Chicago Democrat]

2. Oh Happy Days for Osama

Must be nice for Osama to have such a boob like George Bush looking for him. Perhaps Osama gives Bush advise about those crazy kids!

Happy Osama riding his horses... so nice. Meanwhile at least we got rid of that bad, bad Jean Bertrand Aristide.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

3. Osama Knows best? Naaaahhh. It would get canceled in a minute.

[Dover]

4. What is this ...the Dating Game?

....

[BearFlagDemocrat]

6. More like CIA Playmate of the Month...

Turn-ons: Horseback riding, volleyball, Sharia law.
Turn-offs: The 21st Century, everything else.

[henslee]

7. ha-ha funn-eeeee!

[BurtWorm]

5. Sounds like Fannie Doolie.

;)

[mumon]

8. His turn-ons are:

women who dress in abayas (see picture),



don't chew gum, smoke, or drink, and are perky.

[underpants]

11. Wilson?

[CaptainClark23]

13. Thats it!

We're looking in the wrong locale! OBL isn't in a eurasian cave, he's in the middle of the fecking ocean!!

seriously though, underpants..you are really a fecked up individual. I'm gonna be laughing all night from that image.

[Lisa]

12. that was quite a revealing program ...

I thought the rebellious son (Abdurahman) came across as being rational and decent. (There has been a lot of concern in Canada about letting him back into the country, since he served time in Gitmo.) Not exactly heroic, but a normal guy. (The CIA involvement does explain how he managed to get from Afghanistan to Europe so quickly, without money ... that was something I'd been wondering about.)

His explanation for why he was enrolled in that training camp seems credible to me, given how his parents seemed to be part of an Usama-centred personality cult. The wife and daughter, who are Taliban supporters, were very upset when Abdurahman became skeptical of Usama and refused to court his favour. They were going on and on about how frugal and simple bin Laden's lifestyle is ... conveniently ignoring the fact that he has given up the trappings of power to focus just on the power itself. What a control freak! Manipulating people to compete for his approval ... I wonder how many other kids ended up being sent to their deaths, just for that.

I hope that Abdurahman is able to rebuild his life. Maybe his sister will change her mind as she gets older (e.g. Jan Wong was a militant Maoist at that age, but she's now writing conservative columns for the Globe and Mail). A pity really, since the girl seems pretty bright ... but under her parents' tutelage, she really hasn't learned how to think for herself.

[Khephra]

15. kick

[underpants]

16. So if you see any 6'5" Saudis playing volleyball in Pakistan's mountains

That'll probably be him.