Today’s TRAB FACT: yes Ed’s trainers are indeed controversial, leaning heavily on the absolute shite side of the fence but thats not it.
Back in 2006, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was the most wanted man in Iraq, leader of Al-Qaeda and the fuel for the ISIS fire. In a series of raids south of Baghdad, American special operations took custody of large caches of intelligence including bag loads of CDs containing grainy footage of Al-Zarqawi and his minions talking in darkened rooms and moving in and out of buildings under cover of darkness. One particular video showed the uncharasmatic leader fumbling with a machine gun in a courtyard surrounded by about 15-20 fighters dressed in their customary black bandanas with gun slinger ammunition bandoliers strapped around their wastebands.
What stood out to analysts back at Langley wasn’t the fact the Al-Zarqawi wasn’t able to operate the weapon, even after being shown many times by one of his bodyguards how to load the magazine into the rifle, it was that he and his men were all wearing what looked like very new and quite clearly unblemished pairs of New Balance running shoes. In fact, one of the analysts even noticed that one of Al-Zarqawi’s trusted men was wearing a New Balance t-shirt under all his gear, the unmistakable NB lettering emblazoned under a green tactical vest. The whole troupe of deadly killers and devout Muslim disciples proudly displaying one of the USA’s most distinguished brands, leading many in DC to ponder for many years after that ISIS were in fact somehow sponsored by New Balance, which when you think of where we are on the global capitalist arc and how cynical the Yanks are, is extremely possible and probably most likely.
New Balance - the proud sponsors of teenage Beijing females, Rhouses, Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
