<nettime> in the aftermath [digest x6]

[nettime_post_traumatic_supervisor <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>]

1. From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>
   Subject: Re: On Vengeance and the people of Afghanistan

2. From: Eric Miller <eric@squishymedia.com>
   Subject: on bombing Afghanistan, and the Islamic world context

3. From: Liz Turner <liz@ephidrina.org>
   Subject: a little bit of optimism?

4. From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>
   Subject: (Fwd) Speculation: Israel Knew!

5. From: roya// <roya@girlfish.net>
   Subject: the tidal wave of rascism ...

6. From: stefaan van ryssen <svr4m@pophost.eunet.be>
   Subject: tears on command

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From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>
Subject: Re: On Vengeance and the people of Afghanistan
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 16:34:55 -0400

Bin Laden had essentially drive himself into a hole. And I am not sure that it
is in the Taliban's best interest to continue to protect him. Afghanistan was
hit by retaliatory strikes after Bin Laden's proteges set bombs off in the US
embassies in Africa. The US chose to play fair and not retaliate when USS Cole
was hit - because that was a military vessel and, in a war, it was a legitimate
target. Obviously, there is no way anybody would forgive the mastermind of this
tragedy. Retaliatory strikes would not do this time, either. Bin Laden is
needed alive and in court. Also, it would be nice to have him around, so he can
tell us how many more groups of pilots live among us as silent neighbors and
wait for the commercial flights resume so they can hijack planes and smash them
in largely populated areas. I think that Taliban understand very well that
their best wager at the moment is to capture and surrender Bin Laden
peacefully. Couple of weeks ago he probably had their main political opponent
assasinated as an act of good will, hoping that would assure him their
continuous protection. But I think he overstayed their welcome with this last
insanity. They are recognized by three countries in the world and one of them -
Saudi Arabia - wants Bin Laden dead. They border with countries of former
Soviet Union, which depend on Russia for their survival, and Russia wants him
dead, too - many mothers there grieve their sons that were killed by Bin Laden
mujahedeen.  They also border with Iran - that also wants Bin Laden dead,
because he was supporting the faction in Afghanistan that fought against the
Iran-sponsored mujahedeen. Escape to China is not an option, either, because
the last thing China needs, regardless of its anti-U.S. rethoric, is an islamic
fundamentalist zealot. And Pakistan values its friendship with the US more than
its friendship with Bin Laden. So, it should be a no-brainer for Taliban. I've
heard that a friend of Garry Adams died in the WTC crash, too. Killing fellow
professionals is never a good way to stay in business. Bin Laden's problem is
that he has no friends left - everybody is frightened and disgusted with the
Sepetmeber 11 events. He reminds me of the evil characters from James Bond
movies - like Spectra - the rich outsider who wants to blow up the world. I
thought that characters like that are confined to movies, comic books and
novels. Bin Laden, however, somehow crossed from the toon-world to our world.
But increasingly his only option to escape is to launch himself into space like
Dr. Evil. 

Date sent:      	Thu, 13 Sep 2001 14:48:01 EDT
Send reply to:  	International Justice Watch Discussion List
             	<JUSTWATCH-L@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU>
From:           	Tom Moran <Tom6294@AOL.COM>
Subject:        	Re: On Vengeance and the people of Afghanistan
To:             	JUSTWATCH-L@LISTSERV.ACSU.BUFFALO.EDU

In any war, there will be innocents who suffer.  That, unfortunately, is the
nature of war.

    During World War II, not all Germans were Nazis.  Only a relatively few
worked in concentration camps.  A majority were not in the military (half of
the population was female and some number of males were either too young or
too old for the military or had other jobs).  Some number of Germans were
active opponents of the Nazis.  Yet, would anyone argue that the Allies were
somehow unjustified in waging war against Germany because some innocents
would be killed, injured or suffer other effects of war?

    It is pretty clear that bin Laden is in Afghanistan.  While there may be
some doubt as to his connection with the events this week, he is under
indictment in a United States court for bombing the embassies a couple of
years ago.  The United States has a legitimate interest in seeing that he is
brought to justice and given a fair trial.

    Clearly, if bin Laden and his people are being harbored by the
Afghanistan regime, the United States has a legitimate reason for delivering
an ulitmatum to the Afgan government to turn over bin Laden and his people
and prevent future acts of terrorism from Afghanistan against the United
States.  And, if the Afgan government does not comply with the demands in the
ultimatum, Congress would be justified in declaring war.  If the Afgan
government is aiding and abetting terrorist attacks against the United States
or other nations, those nations have a legitimate right to declare war.

    Furthermore, I suggest that if the Afgan government is incapable of
controlling terrorists on its soil, the victim nations have a legitimate
right of self defense to do what is reasonably necessary to prevent future
terrorist attacks.

Tom Moran

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Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 13:30:15 -0700
From: Eric Miller <eric@squishymedia.com>
Subject: on bombing Afghanistan, and the Islamic world context

Forwarded to me by a friend.  Good points about differentiating the Afghans 
from the Taliban & bin Laden.

Eric

Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 09:51:18 -0700 (PDT)

I've been hearing a lot of talk about "bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone
Age." Ronn Owens, on KGO Talk Radio today, allowed that this would mean killing
innocent people, people who had nothing to do with this atrocity, but "we're at
war, we have to accept collateral damage. What else can we do?" Minutes later I
heard some TV pundit discussing whether we "have the belly to do what must be
done."

And I thought about the issues being raised especially hard because I am from
Afghanistan, and even though I've lived here for 35 years I've never lost track
of what's going on there. So I want to tell anyone who will listen how it all
looks from where I'm standing.

I speak as one who hates the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. There is no doubt in
my mind that these people were responsible for the atrocity in New York. I
agree that something must be done about those monsters.

But the Taliban and Ben Laden are not Afghanistan. They're not even the
government of Afghanistan. The Taliban are a cult of ignorant psychotics who
took over Afghanistan in 1997. Bin Laden is a political criminal with a plan.
When you think Taliban, think Nazis. When you think Bin Laden, think Hitler.
And when you think "the people of Afghanistan" think "the Jews in the
concentration camps." It's not only that the Afghan people had nothing to do
with this atrocity. They were the first victims of the perpetrators. They would
exult if someone would come in there, take out the Taliban and clear out the
rats nest of international thugs holed up in their country.

Some say, why don't the Afghans rise up and overthrow the Taliban? The answer
is, they're starved, exhausted, hurt, incapacitated, suffering.  A few years
ago, the United Nations estimated that there are 500,000 disabled orphans in
Afghanistan--a country with no economy, no food.  There are millions of widows.
And the Taliban has been burying these widows alive in mass graves. The soil is
littered with land mines, the farms were all destroyed by the Soviets. These
are a few of the reasons why the Afghan people have not overthrown the Taliban.

We come now to the question of bombing Afghanistan back to the Stone Age.
Trouble is, that's been done. The Soviets took care of it already.  Make the
Afghans suffer? They're already suffering. Level their houses?  Done. Turn
their schools into piles of rubble? Done. Eradicate their hospitals? Done.
Destroy their infrastructure? Cut them off from medicine and health care? Too
late. Someone already did all that.

New bombs would only stir the rubble of earlier bombs. Would they at least get
the Taliban? Not likely. In today's Afghanistan, only the Taliban eat, only
they have the means to move around. They'd slip away and hide. Maybe the bombs
would get some of those disabled orphans, they don't move too fast, they don't
even have wheelchairs. But flying over Kabul and dropping bombs wouldn't really
be a strike against the criminals who did this horrific thing. Actually it
would only be making common cause with the Taliban--by raping once again the
people they've been raping all this time

So what else is there? What can be done, then? Let me now speak with true fear
and trembling. The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground
troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done"
they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having
the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's
pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans
dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through
Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that folks. Because
to get any troops to Afghanistan, we'd have to go through Pakistan. Would they
let us? Not likely. The conquest of Pakistan would have to be first. Will other
Muslim nations just stand by? You see where I'm going. We're flirting with a
world war between Islam and the West.

And guess what: that's Bin Laden's program. That's exactly what he wants.
That's why he did this. Read his speeches and statements. It's all right there.
He really believes Islam would beat the west. It might seem ridiculous, but he
figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a
billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a
billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's
point of view. He's probably wrong, in the end the west would win, whatever
that would mean, but the war would last for years and millions would die, not
just theirs but ours. Who has the belly for that? Bin Laden does. Anyone else?

Tamim Ansary

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Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 23:40:45 +0200
From: Liz Turner <liz@ephidrina.org>
Subject: a little bit of optimism?


It's becomming increasingly clear that no-one knows what to do next.  But two
courses of action seem to present themselves.

One: NATO declares war on their invisible enemy. The Middle East is
carpet-bombed, and Pakistan and India are dragged into the conflict with
potentially disastrous consequences. Can we trust these guys not to commit
global suicide? I, for one, hope that they haven't been reading Nostradamus and
taking it seriously.

Two: The international community chooses pragmatism over war and agrees to rout
out and bring the perpetrators to trial for crimes against humanity. An
International Commission is set up against terrorism, support for
state-sponsored terrorism (including that perpetrated by Israel) is universally
condemned, and a meaningful dialog pursued betweeen the Israelis and
Palestinians.

One hopes that this could be an opportunity for peace rather than war in much
the same way that Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended WW2. Now that the US has an idea
of what the rest of the world has been going through for the last 50 years, is
it possible that they could treat this as a learning experience, rather than an
excuse to bomb more innocent people? All-out war would surely be a victory for
the terrorists, who clearly want to provoke some kind of action.

I just read something comparing this situation to the Cuban Missile Crisis,
rather than Pearl Harbour. That was a far more serious stand-off against a more
powerful enemy, and the US administration appears (from where I'm standing) to
be still reviewing its options.  Outside Afghanistan, the winds of
fundamentalism are blowing themselves out, as we can see from countries like
Iran. So why perpetuate conflict in a region which is struggling for stability?

I fear the worst, but I still hope for the best. After all, much of the
international press, not to mention a small but significant portion of the
political class, are calling for caution and reflection rather than immediate
retribution. Perhaps it's time we stopped emailing and took to the streets.

I leave you with this piece, written by a well-respected British historian
resident in NYC:

"So instead of listening to cowboy pieties, or endlessly respooling video
horror, or seeing in our mind's eye those twin towers as phantom, 110-storey
tombstones, we turn to those who do, miraculously, know what they're supposed
to say, feel and do: to Jeremy Glick who phoned his wife from the hijacked
plane over Pennsylvania to tell her there had been a vote of all the men aboard
to try to overpower the hijackers, even though they knew it would cost them all
their lives, and who saved who knows how many other lives by doing just that;
to the son and daughter of one of the dead passengers letting themselves be
interviewed on morning TV so they could appeal to the airlines to get their
sister, marooned in London, back to the States for their father's funeral; to
the handful of politicians who know when to speak and when to shut up; to all
those in this suddenly, shockingly loving town who understand, especially when
they hear the word "revenge" thundered out by talk-show warriors that the best,
the only revenge, when you're fighting a cult that fetishises death, is life."

Simon Schama

full text:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,551614,00.html


bye
liz
(who rediscovered her brain after 3 days' panic)
mailto:liz@ephidrina.org

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From: "Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 18:49:11 -0400
Subject: (Fwd) Speculation: Israel Knew!

This is interesting:

------- Forwarded Message Follows -------


Decades after Pearl Harbor it came forth that certain elements of our
government knew what was going to happen and intentionally allowed the attack
to "surprise" us, because such a massacre was required to drag us into WW2.

Israel is the only winner after this attack. Israel, who faced with a
previously intractable conflict now has the full understanding and sympathy of
an enraged superpower -- whose problems cast a media shadow over the slaughter
yet another dozen Palestinians, and the re-invasion of Jenin & Jericho. (Before
the deletion of the WTC, Israel invaded Jenin but pulled out due to US
pressure. Now afterwards, not two weeks later, they roll their tanks right back
into Jenin and take a second city as well, expecting no outcry from the US in
the current environment.)

Israel, who seems to offer their personal irritants, Hezbollah & Fatah &
Hussein, as the culprits of this unprecedented American holocaust, while the
evidence presented to the American people points 1000 miles away to Osama Bin
Laden!

I assert that future decades will reveal that Tel Aviv knew of this plot, and
typically would have warned Washington but this time chose not to, in order to
drag us into WW3. It forces us into finally resolving this issue, which before
the US committment to crush Jihad, loomed to threaten Israel's existence.

(I say "WW3" not as hyperbole, but because if we take seriously Bush's threat
to treat supporting countries as harshly as the terror networks themselves, it
means NATO (+ Russia? + PRC? + India?) up against Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria &
Lebanon, Libya, and Sudan!)

I suspect it was Mossad who tipped off the White House to insure the safety of
the President. They wanted America mobilized but they didn't need the full,
murderous plot to unwind:

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/story.jsp?story=93993

Tel Aviv is better than Washington at stopping the Jihad teams in the US,
implies this creepy article:

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/256/nation/Analysts_see_pause_in_uprising+.shtml

If my analysis is true there is no fear of further attacks on US soil.  Since
the US is already inexorably committed to the elimination of Jihad, enough
information will be provided to Washington, or gained directly by Washington,
to defuse the teams operating in the US.

-----
A Nationalist is a Globalist who's city has been bombed.

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Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 13:00:25 +0100
From: roya// <roya@girlfish.net>
Subject: the tidal wave of rascism ...

the media as well as increasingly hysterical speechs from US and UK
heads of state is creating a new tidal wave of rascism across the
western world. 

muslim or not muslim, if you have a tan, a beard or an accent you are a
target. 

the wave arrived in london sometime yesterday evening. reports of
threats and assaults pile up. everybody's scared.

take care of each other*roya*

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Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 18:53:05 +0200
From: stefaan van ryssen <svr4m@pophost.eunet.be>
Subject: tears on command

Politicians and media try to sell us the attack on the WTC and the Pentagon as
an attack on freedom and democracy.  Obviously, the symbols that have been
struck have nothing to do with freedom, unless this is defined as free trade or
the right of US and worldwide capital to exploit the masses in the First,
Second, Third and Fourth worlds. Neither is the Pentagon a symbol of democracy.
It is simply the head quarters of the military power of the US, a nation that
has killed more civilians over the past fifty years than any other in world
history.

If this is an act of war, the victims are no more than 'collaterla damage', a
phrase used when the US and Nato attacked civilian and military targets in
Iraq.

And now, after being ordered to eat mcd's 'food', wear Nike shoes, smoke
Phillip Morris cigarettes and drink a sweet brownish concoction called Cola, we
are ordered to shed tears and be silent for three minutes. We are commanded to
grieve in preparation of a self-declared war.

If there needs to be silence, let it be an hour, for the millions who died in
Viet Nam, Kamputchea, Grenada, Panama, Burundi, Iraq, Palestine, Nicaragua and
the ghetto's of the US.

Stefaan Van Ryssen
	UIT LIEFDE VOOR HET VIRTUELE EN HET DIGITALE
	     PAR AMOUR DU VIRTUEL ET DU DIGITAL
	   FOR LOVE OF THE VIRTUAL AND THE DIGITAL
           Stefaan Van Ryssen, magister cypernicus
                Jan Delvinlaan 114, b-9000 Gent
			 (09) 228 19 89


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