Shezad Tanweer, cricketer, idler, drug dealer...bomber ?

Al Jazeera began airing a tape today which is similiar to the one shown last year. This time it features for 20 seconds of Shezad Tanweer, with the same background as the earlier tape featuring Siddique Kahn.

It also shows al Qaeda's supposed No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri and the full tape is said to also include former Californian Adam Gadahn, AKA Azzam al-Amriki, or "Azzam the American" as Fox TV calls him,former heavy metal skunkhead, now Al Quaeda convert who US "sources" claim is running the al Qaeda propaganda operation from a secret location somewhere inside Pakistan.

What to make of these tapes? There seems to be little doubt that they are of the named persons, but where, when , under what circumstances, why ?

The texts of both , as supplied, convey nothing specific, and would support any argument that they were play acting out of bravado - manipulated into the situation. Certainly there are none of the usual icons of of violence, slogans, flags, guns, grenades, sloganised head bands.... psychoactive substances in evidence ? Those eyes are a dead giveaway .. but what do I know?

They will of course be used to convey the impression that these guys were committed jihadists - one the pampered middle class kid with a red Mercedes and an estate at death of £120,000 and the other married outside the faith with a child expected.

Add to that the kid whose mum called the cops when he didn't turn up after a day out in London, and the Luton lunatic who spent £900 on top of the range scents in a day.

Yeah ! Yeah! fits my picture of the radical islamofascist jihadist, who makes bathtub bombs etc., etc., etc., but can't keep a real job down.

If you believe these four guys, acting without anybody else in asupportive or manipulative role then you are wrong ... there are others out there .. and I don't think they are seeking to extend the Empire of the Saracens.

Pic (c) FBI of Gadahn