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2001-12-14
An excerpt from the Bin Laden tape printed in the
Cleveland Plain dealer this morning, has a person named Shaykh saying the
following:
Shaykh (Referring to dreams and
visions):
The plane that he saw crashing into the building was seen
before by more than one person. One of the good religious people has left
everything and come here. He told me, "I saw a vision, i was in a huge
plane, long and wide,. I was carrying it on my shoulders and I walked
from the road to the desert for 0.5 km. I was dragging the
plane". ..............
It is obvious since it was a quote, the editors can't
convert it to FFU. But, it does show that these people do speak metric and
not English or some other pre-metric units of the region.
In a another excerpt, Bin Laden says:....It is 5:30 p.m.
our time. .....
I wonder if he said 5:30 and the Arabic equivalent of p.m.
or said 17:30 h. I know the 12 h clock method is prevalent in areas where
12 h analog clocks are common. But, I'm just wondering if he actually used
the 12 h clock or if the translators converted it.
I can't say if the use of metric by Bin Laden would have a
negative effect on efforts to convert the USA, with anti-metric forces
connecting metric with terrorists.
The entire transscript of the tape is suppose to be
available at:
I couldn't get it to download, maybe someone else
can and find more uses of metric, if it exists.
John
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