The Washington Post | Agence France-Press | The Atlantic Wire
Poor advance press today on the new issue of Inspire, a magazine for people leading a terrorist lifestyle from Al Qaida’s Yemeni operation. Peter Finn writes that losing founding editors Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan to drone strikes has hurt the magazine: Both men were American citizens, and their knowledge of the language is missed in Inspire’s pages. Finn writes:
But absent the two Americans, the magazine is riddled with clumsy English. To wit: “What does it take to be an effective urbanite assassin? This is an inquiry that recurs in the psyche of the personage who apprehends the potency of this policy upon his preys.”
An Agence France-Press report says the magazine suggests bombing Montana — which could be a Slate pitch, I guess — and notices the magazine is looking for a copy editor: “An ad in the eighth issue asks for ‘persons who can help the Inspire team with research & translation.’ ”
Inspire once reportedly drew criticism from bin Laden himself, who apparently disliked a previous issue’s suggestions about making farm equipment deadly. (There is a mainstream application for such journalism.) Bin Laden’s reputation for media criticism is probably overstated anyway, Adam Clark Estes writes. A now-corrected Business Insider story attributed hostility toward Fox News and anger over Keith Olbermann’s firing to the dead terrorist mastermind. Adam Gadahn, who “advised Bin Laden on media matters,” Estes says, probably wrote those critiques.
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