Re: "hit the economy": bin Laden

["Ann Li" <annzl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/reuters/asia-80674.html

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http://www.aljazeera.net/programs/no_limits/

text-translator site: http://tarjim.ajeeb.com/ajeeb/default.asp?lang=1


----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Burford" <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, December 28, 2001 2:28 AM
>Subject: [PEN-L:20996] "hit the economy": bin Laden


>
> >It is important to hit the economy (of the United States), which is the
> >base of its military power...
>
>
>
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1729000/1729882.st
m
>
>
> It is not clear from the URL above which the BBC says is a transcript of
> bin Laden's latest tape why there are dots. Has anyone got a URL for the
> full transcript?
>
> The threat is credible, although bin Laden's idealist ideology may blunt
> the impact. He shows no signs of realising that the spectacular theatre of
> Sept 11 sticks in the minds of people in the islamic world too and
> overwhelms his precise counterpropaganda about the number of milligrams of
> explosive in the attack on the US embassies in East Africa, and the number
> of kilograms that the US has used on not so precise guided bombs.
>
> The threat of economic warfare is credible because this is how the IRA
> forced the British government to the negotiating table. The fact has not
> been publicised for obvious reasons, but my evidence is
>
> a) the choice of the obscure Baltic Exchange for a massive bomb attack is
> only explicable from the fact that the Baltic Exchange featured
prominently
> on an economics module of the Open University courses that Repblican
> prisoners pursued while in detention in British jails.
>
> b) in the months before the British government under John Major took the
> decisive step to call for direct negotiations, the IRA terrorist
activities
> concentrated on bomb warnings, with only a proportion of bomb placements,
> at major rail termini and road junctions in London and other big cities,
> thereby stopping millions of people working for the day.
>
> This coupled with the threat to London's position as the international
> financial centre in the Western European time zone, I think makes it
> virtually certain that the heads of British Finance Capital told Major to
> negotiate.
>
> Bin Laden wants something more theatrical and apocalyptic, and the thought
> of negotiating with Bush is probably as repugnant to him as is is to GWB.
> But the seeds of the threat have been placed in his call. It is like
> disseminating a virus into the internet. Just as the easiest form of
> warfare in the rural parts of the former Yugoslavia was against civilian
> populations, so the easiest form of warfare on urban countries is
economic.
>
> Bush and Rumsfeld would be wise to start negotiating as quietly and as
> rapidly as possible with everyone short of bin Laden himself. Otherwise
> accepting the challenge of being the world's policeman will be a hard role
> for even the US to carry out. Much as the US wants to have its cake and
eat
> it - to be world policeman  but only in its interests, it badly needs a
> strengthened global governance.
>
> Why bin Laden gestures only with his right hand is less important for the
> analysts of the latest tape, who are studiously not commenting on the
> economic threat, and are trying to dismiss it all as propaganda.
>
> Progressives should try to get the agenda back from excitatory terrorism
to
> issues of practical peace and justice in the world, and for a global
> governance that serves the working people of the world explicitly and not
> the objectified interests of abstract global finance capital.
>
> Instead of more money on armaments, the Bush adminstration should support
a
> global development fund of trillions a year to develop the economy of the
> whole world on democratic and ecologically responsible principles. It
would
> be cheap at the price. Ask the financiers of the City of London.
Especially
> as much of it could be in the form of Special Drawing Rights.
>
> Build the World Economy!
>
> Chris Burford
>
> London
>
>
>
>
>
>