You do know that the derivation of assassin is "hashishm", right? They used to get wasted on hashish and run around killing people: Wiki

The Volokh Conspiracy guys have a pretty interesting take on this:

The Wiretap Act makes it a federal crime and a civil wrong permitting the recovery of punitive damages and attorney's fees for intercepting the contents of a person's communications over an interstate communications network. Although there are no cases directly on this, network-level scanning of traffic for copyrighted content is likely to be deemed an "intercept" of the contents of communications. And while there are exceptions for interceptions by parties to communications (18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(d)) and for monitoring narrowly tailored to protect the network provider (18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(a)(i)), it's hard to see how those exceptions would apply to network-level monitoring for copyrighted information.

As obnoxious as the record companies and motion picture studios are, it does seem unfair / strange that they are the industries that will be paying the price for the US Govt's intransigence here.

There's a lot of economics in there to think about- he takes the city off of the gold standard, embraces microlending, and sells municipal bonds to finance expansion of a subway system... it's all concealed by the storyline's fun and humor, but there's a lot of interesting ideas lurking under the surface.

This broomstick, it vibrates?

I think that everyone has missed something important here; she's actually been pioneering a new art form- a combination of Hindi Ghazal poetry and blank verse.

Look at the transcription:

I personally believe that us americans
are unable to do so
because osama.

People out there
in our nation
don't have that,

And I believe that our education
like such as south africa and
such as the Iraq.

everywhere "such as".


And I believe our education
should help the US
should help the south africa
and the iraq
and the asian countries
so we can build up
our future.

The themes are clear; she's worried about the way we are reacting to the war on terror, the way Osama Bin Laden still is free, and the way that we are being "educated". The irony is simply dripping from the last stanza.

She was able to deliver this call to revolution absolutely deadpan, cunningly pulling the wool over America's eyes- and people here have the temerity to mock her intellectual accomplishments? She is the latter-day heir to Rosa Luxemborg- only, without the boathook.