Dysonology

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Making fun of terrorism: the best ammunition we have

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZVfyQyu9RY&hl=en_US&fs=1&]
[by Tim Edwards in The First Post]
Chris Morris's comedy film, Four Lions, about a group of bungling British Muslim terrorists who try to attack the London Marathon, premiered to a warm reception at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday - the same day Home Secretary Alan Johnson announced he was raising the UK terrorism alert level from 'substantial' to 'severe'.

Yet if Four Lions contains any truths at all, the government has little chance of being taken seriously when it makes such pronouncements. As for Osama bin Laden, he came out on Sunday to 'claim' for al-Qaeda the Christmas Day plot to blow up an airliner over Detroit. Why would the world's most feared terrorist leader endorse a bungled attempt that has landed the perpetrator, Farouk Abdul Mutallab, with the moniker "The underpants bomber". Does Osama perhaps have a sense of humour?

Four Lions was conceived by Morris, the satirist behind such media-skewering TV series as The Day Today and Brass Eye. He says he first came up with the idea of a film about incompetent jihadis when he read of a plot to destroy a US warship at night. The terrorists slipped their boat into the water at the quayside and stacked it with explosives. It sank. "I laughed," said Morris.

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