1. Secret Plan to Overthrow Taliban Regime 2. TEXT OF STATEMENT FROM OSAMA BIN LADEN 3. Modern Mythology and Osama bin Laden ================================================== _______ ____ ______ / |/ / /___/ / /_ // M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S / /|_/ / /_/_ / /\\ Making Sense of the Middle East /_/ /_/ /___/ /_/ \\) http://www.MiddleEast.Org News, Information, & Analysis That Governments, Interest Groups, and the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know! ----------------------------------------------- The new MER Forum and Discussion Room are now open: http://www.MiddleEast.Org/forum http://www.MiddleEast.Org/discussion ----------------------------------------------- SECRET PLAN TO OVERTHROW TALIBAN REGIME MID-EAST REALITIES - MER - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 9/21/2001: The UNITED NATIONS has shamefully bowed out, right when it is needed more than ever. Urged to do so by Secretary-General Kofi Annan -- who had been urged to do so by Washington, which he has quite a habit of taking orders from -- for the first time in history the General Assembly has put off its important international gathering and not even set an alternative date. This is truly inexcuseable. Now more than ever the leaders of the world should be urgently meeting, discussing, debating. Now more than ever the United Nations should be trying to safeguard world peace and prevent international warfare that certainly threatens to spiral out of control and affect millions of lives everywhere. And if not in New York, there is always the Palais in Geneva. But that's not to be it seems. World history is being made; maybe even a World War of sorts -- some kind of War of the Worlds it appears -- may be looming; yet the United Nations, terribly mislead by Kofi Annan following American directions, has decided to sit it all out. Meanwhile, The Guardian in the U.K. is reporting today that the Americans are already planning to do their will with Afghanistan and then use the U.N. once again to clean up the horrible carnage, care of the millions of refugees, and pathetically front for the Americans politically. We've been through this before not that long ago even if in a rather different form -- the last time an Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations feeling forced to resign in moral disgust and publicly charging the organization he served most of his lifetime with "genocide" in Iraq. SECRET MEMO REVELAS U.S. PLAN TO OVERTHROW TALIBAN REGIME By Ian Traynor in Tajikistan and Gary Younge in Washington [The Guardian, UK, Friday September 21, 2001]: The US government is pressing its European allies to agree to a military campaign to topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and replace it with an interim administration under United Nations auspices. Diplomatic cables from the Washington embassy of a key Nato ally, seen by the Guardian, report that the US is keen to hear allied views on "post-Taliban Afghanistan after the liberation of the country". The embassy cable reveals that the US administration is bent on force to evict the Taliban from power because of the shelter it has offered Osama bin Laden, named by the White House as prime suspect for the New York and Washington atrocities on September 11. The Guardian has also learned that two large US Hercules transport aircraft landed in Tashkent, capital of the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan, on Tuesday loaded with surveillance equipment to be installed along the northern Afghan border. The secret landing represented a radical departure since it appeared to herald the deployment of squadrons of US fighters at Uzbekistan's sprawling airfield at Termez, directly on the border. Such a build-up would incur the wrath of Russia which views the central Asian republics as its backyard. The Pentagon yesterday continued its move to a war footing, with orders for up to 130 heavy bombers, fighters, aerial refuelling planes and other combat aircraft to be deployed around the Middle East and Central Asia region. Two B-52 bombers yesterday left Barksdale airbase in Louisiana, joining F-15E fighter-bombers, F-16 fighters, B-1 long range bombers and E-3 Awacs airborne command-and-control aircraft that left on Wednesday. The navy has also sent an additional aircraft carrier toward the Middle East region,which along with the air deployment could place up to 500 US warplanes in the Mediterranean, Gulf and Indian Ocean areas. Tony Blair, in Washington last night to meet Mr Bush, suggested military strikes inside Afghanistan, targeted on Bin Laden's training camps, could come in a matter of days. "These people, if they could, would get access to chemical, biological and nuclear capability. We have no option but to act," he said. The US strategy to depose the Taliban regime is based on more than military thinking. A further plank appears to entail supporting the campaign of the exiled 86-year-old monarch of Afghanistan, King Zahir Shah, to return to power by encouraging the guerrilla army of the Northern Alliance opposition to fall in behind him. Diplomatic documents seen by the Guardian show that Washington is funding and organising the travel of several Northern Alliance figures to Rome to confer with the exiled monarch who is expected to call for a revolution. "The king plans to call on all the Afghan tribes to rise up against the Taliban," the diplomatic cable reported yesterday, citing the advice of the US administration. US plans to overthrow the Taliban regime were revealed when a senior European politician in Washington this week was told by the US administration that it wanted to hear his country's views on how Afghanistan should be run after the Taliban were defeated and that "closer consultations" were necessary. The Americans also spoke of a role for the UN in the new "interim administration" for Afghanistan and for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe in central Asia, without mentioning Nato. Washington is routinely sceptical of the UN and OSCE, but the key role was seen as an attempt to build as broad a coalition as possible behind the imminent campaign. The Europeans, Russia, and even China might be swayed by the unusual US inclusiveness, diplomats said. "It's a major change of US policy," said one. The spying mission in Uzbekistan is also fraught with political risk. The two Hercules could not fly over Iran, but Turkmenistan, the third ex-Soviet statX-Mozilla-Status: 0009n granted permission. However, diplomats said the Turkmens were less keen to grant overflying rights to US fighter aircraft heading for the Afghan border. ============================================== 2. TEXT OF STATEMENT FROM OSAMA BIN LADEN [Associated Press, Monday 24 September - DUBAI, United Arab Emirates –– Here is the text of Osama bin Laden's statement as provided on Monday by the Al-Jazeera television news network, based in Qatar. It was translated from Arabic by The Associated Press. Some sections of the faxed statement were illegible. In the name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful Sunday, 6 Rajab 1422 (Sept. 23, 2001) And for martyrs from their God their reward and light To our Muslim brothers in Pakistan Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah and his blessings; I received with great sorrow the news of the murder of some of our Muslim brothers in Karachi while they were expressing their opposition to the American crusade forces and their allies on the lands of Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan. We ask Allah to accept them as martyrs and include them with prophets, their followers, martyrs, good doers and the like and ask that their families be gifted with patience and consolation, and bless their children and money, and reward well for their Islam. Whoever of them left children behind, they are my children, and I am their caretaker, Allah willing. It is no wonder that the Muslim nation in Pakistan would rush to defend its Islam, since it is considered the first line of defense for Islam in this area, just like Afghanistan was the first line of defense for itself and for Pakistan before the Russian invasion more than 20 years ago. We hope that these brothers are among the first martyrs in Islam's battle in this era against the new Christian-Jewish crusade led by the big crusader Bush under the flag of the Cross; this battle is considered one of Islam's battles ...(text illegible) We incite our Muslim brothers in Pakistan to give everything they own and are capable of to push the American crusade forces from invading Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Prophet, Peace Be Upon Him, said: Whoever didn't fight, or prepare a fighter, or take good care of a fighter's family, Allah will strike him with a catastrophe before Judgment Day. I announce to you the good news my loved brothers that we are steadfast on the path of Jihad for the sake of Allah, following the example of the Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him), with the heroic, faithful Afghan people, under the leadership of our fighter emir, who is proud of his religion, the prince of the faithful, Mullah Mohammed Omar. We ask Allah to make him victorious over the forces of infidels and tyranny, and to crush the new Christian-Jewish crusade on the land of Pakistan and Afghanistan. If Allah makes you victorious, none will defeat you and if He fails you, who after Him will make you victorious and on Allah the faithful shall trust. Your brother in Islam Osama bin Mohammed bin Laden =========================================== 3. Modern Mythology and Osama bin Laden Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Myth-men do not die when their bodies are destroyed... they often grow more powerful as time goes by.... Their story has many versions, and although the characters are different, the plot is the same. They usually stand up for the weak and poor, like St. Joan and Jesus, and they often outwit established power, like Robin Hood and T.E. Lawrence. MODERN MYTHOLOGY by Tom Crumpacker If our government has any evidence of a link between last week's attackers and Osama bin Laden, it should make it public now, so as to justify its upcoming attack of Afganistan. It says it has such evidence, but so far the only thing made public is that one of the attackers, Muhamed Atta, was seen in Germany last year talking to an Osama follower. Last year Osama already had thousands if not millions of "followers." The real Osama was virtually unknown, except to some CIA operatives and Mideast people, until July, 1998. The myth-man Osama was born then, when the CEO of the world's only superpower, fresh from answering questions about having sex in his office with an intern, rained down 75 Cruise missiles on a phamaceutical warehouse in Khartoum and some camps in the Afgan mountains. He said that Osama was responsible for bombing US embassies in Africa. Like a fox, Osama had left the camps before the missiles arrived. US intelligence, military and political leaders said that he owned or controlled the Khartoum warehouse and that his weapons and bombs had been stored there. They had the evidence to prove this, they said, but they chose not to disclose it. A year later they quietly admitted there was no such evidence and compensated the families for the people they had killed. The thing about myth-men is not only - do they not die when their bodies are destroyed, but also - like Joe Hill - they often grow more powerful as time goes by. The reason is that influential leaders are always to some extent the creations of their followers, because they represent ideas. Their story has many versions, and although the characters are different, the plot is the same. They usually stand up for the weak and poor, like St. Joan and Jesus, and they often outwit established power, like Robin Hood and T.E. Lawrence. When the Mexican Federales ambushed and machine-gunned Emiliano Zapata, they left his barely recognizable body in the town square, hoping that the people would understand he was dead. Unfortunately for them, his white horse ran away and many thought they saw him on it. The same with Ernesto Guevara when he was run down by the CIA and shot by Bolivian soldiers. They published numerous photos of his bullet-ridden body, but when I was in La Paz a few months later, many people in the streets were sure it wasn't him. Today Emiliano and Che are much more powerful and influential than they ever were in life, because they represent the hope of liberation for millions. Last week's attack was not primarily motivated by religion or culture or even anti-Americanism, as our media is proclaiming. It resulted from the extreme poverty, disparity and lack of social mobility and participation in Mideast societies, which in turn results from the unjust way the neo-liberal global corporatist system is operating. In the process of continuous enrichment of the rich and impoverishment of the poor, there is always going to be domination and struggle for liberation. Any country which assumes the responsibilty of enforcer, by empowering authoritarian regimes or trying to bomb or starve people to promote system functioning (which also promotes its own economic interest), is rightfully going to blamed for all problems. What many Mideast moderates, progressives and radicals have in common is the desire for autonmomy - to get the US out of the area militarily and otherwise. The experience of the last 50 years is a clear demonstration of why, given the present state of development of world political economy, only an international agency like the UN would have any hope of functioning as system enforcer. The nineteen suicides who pulled off the attack unjustifiably killed thousands of innocent people. Any who helped them should be brought to justice, but it's irrational to punish nations for the crimes of individuals. They also as tricksters destroyed the seats of global financial and military power. What the world saw when the towers came crashing down was the the crumbling of the international empire which happens to be centered in New York City and Washington. It doesn't matter how soon the the towers are rebuilt, the world has seen the emperor without his clothes. We have to start from reality if we're going to change things in a progressive way. Starting from our own myths can only lead us into other myths. If the people who run this country could understand this, we'd all be better off. * [Tom Crumpacker lives in Miami Beach, Florida. He can be reached at [EMAIL PROTECTED] ] Copyright (c) 2001 by Tom Crumpacker and NY Transfer News. All rights reserved. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] =================================================================
