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Politics : Dutch Central Bank Sale Announcement Imminent? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_urchin who wrote (19711)	12/1/2003 4:49:17 PM
From: philv	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 81102

"That's the way I feel. In fact, I doubt if the organization ever existed --- except in the minds of those who plan US foreign policy --- or attempt to justify it!?" That has been my impression as well. Certainly not the great world-wide organization, capable of destroying civilization, with sleeper agents by the thousands simply waiting to be activated for their pre-trained destiny in the name of Allah. The U.S. has exaggerated threats before. Take the Taliban for example. It turned out to be a few thousand fighters at the most, not the great invincible Afghan Mujahadeen who drove the Russians out. But these exaggerations have great political significance. It can unite the people, even at their own peril and in a cause that is unjust. Pure and simple propaganda a la the Third Reich. We the people simply do not learn, what worked then, works now because human nature is what it is unchanged. Add a few modern twists and turns and voila, a cause celebre for the making and exploitation.

To: sea_urchin who wrote (19711)	12/1/2003 9:15:02 PM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81102

> I doubt if the organization ever existed --- except in the minds of those who plan US foreign policy --- or attempt to justify it!? (2) spiked-online.com >>>What is this al-Qaeda? Does such a group even exist? Some terrorism experts doubt it. Adam Dolnik and Kimberly McCloud reckon it's time we 'defused the widespread image of al-Qaeda as a ubiquitous, super-organised terror network and call it as it is: a loose collection of groups and individuals that doesn't even refer to itself as al-Qaeda'. Dolnik and McCloud - who first started studying terrorism at the prestigious Monterey Institute of International Studies in California - claim it was Western officials who imposed the name 'al-Qaeda' on to disparate radical Islamic groups and who blew Osama bin Laden's power and reach 'out of proportion'. Both are concerned about the threat of terror, but argue that we should 'debunk the myth of al-Qaeda'. There is a 'rooted public perception of what al-Qaeda is', says Dolnik, who is currently carrying out research on the Terrorism and Political Violence Programme at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore; but, he says, such perceptions are far from accurate. Dolnik argues that where many imagine that al-Qaeda is 'a super organisation of thousands of super-trained and super-secret members who can be activated any minute', in fact it is better understood as something like a 'global ideology that has not only attracted many smaller regional groups, but has also facilitated the boom of new organisations that embrace this sort of radical and violent thinking'. Dolnik and others believe that, in many ways, the thing we refer to as 'al-Qaeda' is largely a creation of Western officials*.<<< * and for reasons best know to themselves.

To: sea_urchin who wrote (19711)	12/5/2003 9:14:32 AM
From: mcg404	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 81102

Searle, <I doubt if the organization ever existed --- except in the minds of those who plan US foreign policy --- or attempt to justify it!?> Well you can't have a war without an enemy. The reality of al-quada makes sense if you consider that it gives us a target to which the US military can direct its response. The US military definitely NEEDS an identifiable organization upon which to focus its efforts. And to people who see a military solution to every problem, something more concrete than the amorphous enemy of arab rage is useful. If you consider bin laden to be the equivalent of al-quada, A. Roy's description is interesting: "But who is Osama bin Laden really? Let me rephrase that. What is Osama bin Laden? He's America's family secret. He is the American president's dark doppelgänger. The savage twin of all that purports to be beautiful and civilised. He has been sculpted from the spare rib of a world laid to waste by America's foreign policy: its gunboat diplomacy, its nuclear arsenal, its vulgarly stated policy of "full-spectrum dominance", its chilling disregard for non-American lives, its barbarous military interventions, its support for despotic and dictatorial regimes, its merciless economic agenda that has munched through the economies of poor countries like a cloud of locusts. Its marauding multinationals who are taking over the air we breathe, the ground we stand on, the water we drink, the thoughts we think. Now that the family secret has been spilled, the twins are blurring into one another and gradually becoming interchangeable. Their guns, bombs, money and drugs have been going around in the loop for a while. (The Stinger missiles that will greet US helicopters were supplied by the CIA. The heroin used by America's drug addicts comes from Afghanistan. The Bush administration recently gave Afghanistan a $43m subsidy for a "war on drugs"....) Now Bush and Bin Laden have even begun to borrow each other's rhetoric. Each refers to the other as "the head of the snake". Both invoke God and use the loose millenarian currency of good and evil as their terms of reference. Both are engaged in unequivocal political crimes. Both are dangerously armed - one with the nuclear arsenal of the obscenely powerful, the other with the incandescent, destructive power of the utterly hopeless." al-quada = the incandescent, destructive power of the utterly hopeless (but now do we have to also add, 'and those who sympathize with the oppressed and resent the hegemonic US') John