ARTICLE: 'Bin Laden's new image: younger, more Marxist:The former multimillionaire now blames global capitalism and class for the tragedies in Iraq and Afghanistan,' By Fawaz A. Gerges, Christian Science Monitor, September 13, 2007

Cool piece by Farwaz Gerges, with whom I did 3 hours of Japanese TV a while back (with Francois Hesbourg) in Times Square.

He impressed me plenty then.

This, to me, signals how pathetic Bin Laden has become: his 7th-century shtick doesn't sell well, so now he's resurrecting bankrupt neo-Marxist diatribes against globalization in general and capitalism in particular. But since he promises only a pre-economic alternative, this angle is about as unappealing as the previous one.

Some will hail this as a clever tapping into anti-globalization sentiment, but this is Bin Laden watering down his message to attract a wider audience, and that just ain't gonna work with his attached fundamentalist package, which remains amazingly unappealing to anyone outside his narrow religious framework.

Most of Islam's revival and radicalization is an attempt to engage globalization while retaining identity, not trying to mount some complete alternative, much less one with so many unappealing social strictures.