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In the book The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader, author Peter L. Bergen extends his personal interviews of bin Laden with interviews of over 50 other people from a spectrum of society, all of whom have known bin Laden at various times in his life. The result is a verbal documentary of the Islamic terrorist's life.
Given the ongoing failures of American military intelligence, this is probably the best biographical data extant on bin Laden. This becomes more evident when the reader studies Bergen's qualifications as an Islamist, a journalist and an academic; he is probably as, or more, qualified than any CIA staff member.
Bin Laden's changes throughout the book are interesting, though not unexpected if considered from a Muslim standpoint.
He is a quiet reticent bland religious youth, a rich kid who refuses to be spoiled by family wealth. At first, he runs the family business when he has to, including construction of a road in the Tora Bora Mountains of Afghanistan. Later, he goes to Afghanistan to work in refugee relief, then to combat the Russian invasion, as a religious duty, somewhat in an Islamic version of "Onward, Christian Soldiers."
His wealth empowers him to raise his own fighting unit, much as well-to-do Americans used to enroll their own militia units. His combat experience emboldens him. He insists on keeping his unit together as a fighting force small in number though large in publicity. He commits them to audacious but militarily inconsequential battles. As a result, he is regarded as a showoff with little military talent. He draws no backing from Pakistani or American covert operators.
Nevertheless, emerging from the battle against the Russians with a reputation among Muslims as a warrior for his faith gives him the standing to consolidate his brand new organization with other Islamic terrorist organizations. He loses his native Saudi citizenship, is disowned by his family and moves to the Sudan. While there he sponsors the attack against American Army Rangers depicted in Black Hawk Down. His subsequent move back to Afghanistan, and his jihad against the United States, are well known.
This is an anvil of a book, heavy with fact and jargon. It also references a whole library of supporting information that appears to elucidate almost every facet of the interviews.
This reader emerged with some insights that are dismaying, and don't bode well for America. I present them in no particular order.
The Middle Eastern concept of citizenship is a much more fluid one than ours. A man is a Muslim first, a Lebanese or Iraqi or Saudi second. As a result, Muslim citizens seem to travel throughout the Arab world relatively easily.
Muslim ideology also spreads easily. Al Qaeda's ideological roots are as much Egyptian as Saudi or Yemeni.
Our intervention to free Kuwait is a major cause of bin Laden's anger against our country. He believed that Muslims should have freed Kuwait, and that the American presence in Saudi Arabia is an abomination.
Bin Laden hated Saddam Hussein. He claimed that because Saddam was a socialist, he was a traitor to Islam.
Our present invasion of Iraq is considered to be an advantage for al Qaeda. It eliminated a dictator opposed to them, supplies combat training for its fighters and stirs up such discontent it serves as a recruiting tool for their cause.
Israel is regarded by Muslim militants as virtually an American colony. Only its extinction will satisfy al Qaeda and its ilk.
There is probably much much more than this to be gleaned from this book. Certainly, anyone who wants to grapple with the realities of our war in Iraq can benefit from reading it.
E-mail George Dorner at
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Some performers come into our lives and we listen to them, seemingly forever. They become superstars and put out box sets.
Take David Crosby. Great voice; he was the horse's ass on the cover of the Byrds' "Notorious Byrds Brothers." Sang with some guys called Stills and Nash and (Sometimes Y and Young). Good group. Right outside my place singing "My House" right now.
Crosby wrote some good songs; put out an unforgettable LP I've been trying to forget for years. But it just came out as a box set. He could not even remember his name in either version.
Fathered two kids for Melissa Etheridge's wife and got a new liver, the 21st Century everybody who's anybody has to have one trend fast replacing multiple rehab.
I don't mean to pick on Crosby. I still listen to the Byrds and even saw Crosby, Stills and Nash (with
Sometimes Y and Young) once. They were pretty good but not as good as the Beach Boys. The Beach Boys literally raised off the roof on the former now newly rebuilt rebuilt County Stadium in Milwaukee.
By contrast, Stills, when he used the restroom, had more bodyguards to do it for him than County Stadium has johns.
Which brings us to Karen Dalton, sadly dead lo these many years. Kind of like Miles Davis was when you finally heard him.
I won't go on and talk about Phil Lesh, another liver transplant and the only member of the Grateful Dead to blackball Dylan's joining the group.
I once saw the Blind Pew of rock 'n' roll going into the Mill Valley Film Fest and, let me tell you, he was going into the Mill Valley Film Festival like only a member of the Grateful Dead, who hasn't had his liver transplant yet, could.
Jerry, I don't think ever had one. But he is jamming with Karen Dalton way up there in the real Rock 'N'
Roll Hall of Fame, the one without so many rehab repeaters and Cabo Wabbo guys.
Speaking of jamming. There's a photo of Bob Dylan, Fred Neil and Karen Dalton jamming at the Cafe Wha? in 1961, years before the Summer of Love and its many anniversaries - god(des) willin' and the creek don't rise full of claw toed African killer frogs who can only be kept in check by crocodiles and magic mud drying machines).
Dylan, in "Chronicles, Vol. 1" – which I'm sure Usher, who didn't know his name was Bob when he gave him his Album of the Year Award in 1997, has never read, nor have all the members of Van Halen both in and out of rehab – said: "My favorite singer ...was Karen Dalton. She was a tall white blues singer and guitar player, funky, lanky and sultry ... Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday's and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed and went all the way with it ..."
There's a picture of Mr. Dylan and Fred Neil and Karen Dalton on her second reissued CD, "It's So Hard To Tell Who's Going To Love You Best." On that one a true legend – not a legend in Eddie Money's "mind"? – has it that Fred Neil tricked the notoriously shy Karen into coming to one of his recording sessions and bringing her instruments along.
There, Nic Venet (Capitol Records, Beatles, Beach Boys, need I say more), who had been pursuing Karen Dalton for several years, turned on a tape recorder and another Karen Dalton CD is now available for less than the price of the box sets of "I Can't Even Remember My Name" and "Cabo Wabbo Gone Wild," combined.
Sticking with the first CD, produced by the bassist's bassist, Harvey Brooks, which you will likely not stop playing until you wear it out, I will only say a few more things.
In Nick Cave's liner notes, "The Understanding of Sorrow," Cave, the "grocer of despair" of Australia
says he listened to this CD, "In My Own Time" during most of the three years he traveled with it in his
suitcase at all times, all through Brazil. The other thing he listened to in that triumvirate of time was
Samba music.
I will just challenge you to read "The Understanding of Sorrow," Lenny Kaye's "In Her Own Time," or
Devendra Banhart's "A Stream Outside of Time," the other liner notes on this CD and not lose it, as in
losing it.
When I first heard and re-heard "Katy Cruel," with Karen Dalton on banjo, I was totally incapable of
getting up and walking around the room for a great deal of time.
Nick Cave says he listened to Karen's version of Dino Valenti's "Something On Your Mind" for most of his three years in Brazil.
You could try Richard Manuel's "In A Station" or Paul Butterfield's "In My Own Dream" or anything else on here.
Next thing you know you'll be trading in all your CDs on www.lala.com for $1, 75 cents shipping and something else you really want or need even if you don't know it yet.
There's a third Karen Dalton, a five song live set. I'm not even sure you can get.
But you can try. "How Sweet It Is."
P.S. "Katy Cruel" is available as a free download on www.lightintheattic.net.
E-mail Gary Peterson at
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CLEARLAKE – Lake County's inaugural International Women's Day, organized by county poet laureate Sandra Wade, gathered writers and artists at Redbud Library March 8.
Wade opened the event with a brief reading of poetry, then welcomed several local writers: Janet Riehl, Fran Ransley, Torrie Quintero, Joyce Anderson, JoAnn Sacccato, Carol Batho, Laurelee Roark and Linda Drew.
They read from both their own works and writings by admired poets, and presented historic background on women's wisdom.
Wade ended the evening with a poem in Spanish and English by Claribel Alegria, a moving childhood experience by Mary Tall Mountain and notes for a poem on women's experiences in the military based on a radio interview she did that morning with Sgt. Ellie Painted Crow.
Artist Mary Schossler showed recent paintings and drawings, and a collection of back issues of Ms. magazine and the British feminist journal Spare Rib were offered free.
An exhibit of newspaper articles and posters featured Native American women, Muslim women in Afghanistan, Iran and Somalia; herbalist Juliette de Bairacli-Levy, and local twin sisters Madge Johnson and Foddy Rowland, who celebrated their 97 th birthday last year.
Writers Mary McMillan and Chris Kirkwood attended. Hiram Johnson videotaped the event for airing on PEG channel 8 at a later date.
"Next year, we hope high school and college students will want to join in this joyful day to mark the creativity, courage and perseverance of women through the ages," Wade said.
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Local author Meredith Lahmann has re-imagined the Knights of the Round Table in her novel "Sir Gawain's Challenge."
Many of us may have dim memories of distant cardboard knights galloping across musty pages or late-night screen.
Lahmann has refreshed and reinvigorated this ancient myth in her book. Her Gawain is a complex man of strong spirituality, bearing his self-chosen burden of service to his king as well as the involuntary burden of single fatherhood.
Gawain, Lancelot, and other knights are humanized, with their quirks and foibles, their secret fears and public shortcomings.
A notable feature of her book is an appreciation of military equipment, training, strategy, and tactics of the time. The logic underlying knighthood is woven artfully into the story.
The ending of the book shifts into a higher dramatic gear and really takes off. I found myself thinking that Gawain's pursuit of the psychopathic sadist Viscount De Longe could have been expanded into a book in itself. I liked the insight into the villain that Meredith imported from modern psychology.
"Sir Gawain's Challenge" is available from Catfish Books in the Willowtree Shopping Center in Lakeport. I was fortunate enough to buy a signed copy.
It is also available directly from the publisher, Authorhouse, over the Internet, at www.authorhouse.com.
E-mail George Dorner at
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