It's Not the Oil, but Power... (Part 2) Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit (Continued from "It's Not the Oil, but Power for Power's Sake," Part 1 Emperor's Clothes http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/oil-1.htm THE EMPIRE ISN'T IN AFGHANISTAN FOR THE OIL! - part 2 by Jared Israel At first the list of countries the US promised to bomb for ("harboring terrorists") was limited to Iraq, Iran, Cuba, Libya, North Korea and Sudan. As we noted in our article, there was no evidence that any of these countries had ties with Osama bin Laden. In fact, the opposite was true: "... the countries which collaborated to create the Taliban, training and financing the forces of Osama bin Laden, and which have never stopped pouring money into the Taliban - namely Pakistan...Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and the United States itself - have not been placed on the 'we've got to get them' list. Instead these states are touted as core allies in the New World War against terrorism." - "Why Washington Wants Afghanistan" at http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/afghan.htm We quoted Donald Rumsfeld who, on September 16th, upped the number of countries threatened with US attack to 60: "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the US would engage in a 'multi-headed effort' to target terrorist organizations and up to 60 countries believed to be supporting them. "The US, Mr. Rumsfeld told American TV, 'had no choice' other than to pursue terrorists and countries giving them refuge."- BBC News, September 16th http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/public/imc-waterloo-stories/2001-September/000215.html We made the following argument: [excerpt from 'WHY WASHINGTON WANTS AFGHANISTAN' http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/afghan.htm ] "The threats to bomb up to a third of the world's countries has scared many people, worldwide. This, we think, is the intention. It serves two functions. "First, it means that if Washington limits its aggressive action mainly to attacking Afghanistan, the world will breathe a sigh of relief. "And we think Washington will mainly attack Afghanistan - at first. Other immediate violations of sovereignty, such as the forced use of Pakistan, will be backup action to support the attack on Afghanistan. There may also be some state terror, such as increased, unprovoked bombing of Iraq, as a diversion. But the main immediate focus will, we think, be Afghanistan. "Second, this scare tactic [of threatening to bomb everyone] is meant to divert attention from Washington's real strategy, far more dangerous than the threat to bomb many states. Washington wants to take over Afghanistan in order to speed up the fulfillment of its strategy of pulverizing the former Soviet Republics in the same way Washington has been pulverizing the former Yugoslavia. This poses the gravest risks [of nuclear war] to mankind. (4) [end excerpt] We argued that Washington would strive to bring together elements of all the various Islamic fundamentalist sects in Afghanistan into a united force under its control. Washington did not wish to destroy the Taliban. Rather, it wished to take Afghanistan into receivership, so to speak, because the Taliban was incompetent and unreliable, and the Empire needed to move NATO forces directly into the area to speed up the encirclement of Russia: "It is our conviction, and that of many observers from the region in question, that Washington ordered Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to fund the Taliban so the Taliban could do a job: consolidate control over Afghanistan and from there move to destabilize the former Soviet Central Asian Republics on its borders. But the Taliban has failed. It has not defeated the Russian-backed Northern Alliance. Instead of subverting Central Asia in businesslike fashion, it has indulged in blowing up statues of Buddha and terrorizing people who deviate from the Taliban's super-repressive interpretation of Islam." 'Why Washington Wants Afghanistan." (4) The inefficiency of the Taliban was one of the reasons Washington moved into Afghanistan. The other reason was that Russia was taking independent steps which could challenge Washington's hegemonic rule: "...China and Russia have signed a mutual defense pact. (5) And despite immense European/U.S. pressure, Russian President Putin refused to condemn Belarussian President Lukashenko who, like the jailed but unbroken Yugoslav President Milosevic, calls for standing up to NATO. (6) It is this unfavorable series of developments that has caused Washington to increase its reliance on its all-time favorite tactic: extreme brinkmanship." (4) Since the invasion of Afghanistan, the encirclement of Russia has greatly intensified. For example, NATO has developed much closer military ties with the Central Asian Republics. There are now US 'advisers' in Georgia, a former Soviet Republic on Russia's strategic southern flank, whose government is hostile to Russia. Russian leader Vladimir Gorbachev - oh, I am so sorry, I meant Vladimir *Putin*! - has used the excuse of a supposed "united fight against terror" to isolate Russian patriots and make major concessions to Washington. As an added Imperial benefit, the supposed war on terrorism has confused some patriots in Russia and elsewhere in another way. Seeing that the U.S. *says* it wants to fight the Islamic terrorists, and having failed to organize ordinary people to defend and reclaim the social gains of the Soviet period, they toy with the "solution" of allying with Islamic fundamentalist and authoritarian Muslim states under the illusion that in this way they can build a real coalition against the New World Empire. In fact, the Islamic fundamentalist and authoritarian forces are the deadly enemies of ordinary people, pushing the most backward ideas (such as the most brutal oppression of women, violent hatred of Jews, religious tyranny, glorification of terrorism, and so on) and the most authoritarian conditions of political life. It is far better not to have allies than it is to have allies like these. In fact, the only solid basis on which to build if one would oppose the New World Empire is: the political understanding of ordinary people. Perhaps the most important people in the world - because of where they live - are the peoples of the former Soviet Union. In October we published an article which discussed the danger that those who want to resist the Empire would adopt the superficial political strategy of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." That they would support the Islamic fundamentalists (e.g., Islamic Jihad, Hammas, etc.) and the equally dangerous authoritarian Muslim regimes and movements (e.g., Saddam Hussein, Arafat) because, superficially, the Empire *seems* to oppose them. That article is called 'Osama bin Laden, Terrorist Monster: Take Two!' at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/taketwo-a.htm Now we see, unfortunatly, that some in the former Socialist countries, who should know better, and others in the Western peace movement are making this mistake. We will discuss this more in other articles. And as for the Taliban, despite the ruthless bombing of Afghanistan, which killed so many civilians, despite the pictures released by the US military of prisoners in Guantanamo, intended to show how *ruthlessly* they were suppressing the Taliban, in fact what has happened? On October 19th we wrote: "We have been sold a vicious little war, my friends. The terrorists will not be eliminated. They will be regrouped into a more effective force. The talk of keeping 'moderate Taliban' in the government is the tip-off. A 'moderate Taliban' is one who does what the U.S. tells him to do. Washington plans to combine some of these moderates with moderate muhajedeen (i.e., terrorists) from the Northern Alliance, with the aim of creating a unified moderate terrorist apparatus modeled after the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)." (12) So we predicted that much of the Taliban would be absorbed into the armies of the new Afghan puppet state. And look what was reported as early as January of this year: "THOUSANDS of former Taliban soldiers are being recruited into a new Afghan army, where they are being armed with Russian AK47 rifles and dressed in uniforms provided by the United States. Some soldiers in Mullah Mohammed Omar's former stronghold estimate that as many as 6,000 Taleban will soon be part of Kandaharís new army." [This was originally published by the (London) Times at http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2002027355,00.html But you can more easily access the article at http://www.tribuneindia.com/2002/20020118/world.htm#3 ] The U.S. claim that it is fighting Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan is a farce, as demonstrated by the policy of continuing to ship Islamic fundamentalist textbooks into that tortured country. See http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/jihad.htm How well this new puppet state, based on an army combining all the gruesome factions of Islamic fundamentalists which Washington and Saudi Arabia have created in Afghanistan and Pakistan since 1979, an army which is more like an archeological dig, with its various layers representing the various nightmares schemes of the boys in Langley, Virginia, how well this living expression of the agony which Bryzinsky's slick schemers have inflicted on the people of Afghanistan, how well this puppet state and army will ever function remains to be seen. We read in the Washington Post of a week ago that the CIA has been trying to assassinate Gulbuddin Hekmatyar: "In the U.S. view, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is a villain who deserves a violent death, although he is different from the al-Qaida and Taliban leaders previously targeted by the military and CIA in Afghanistan. "The CIA took a shot at Hekmatyar with a missile from one of its unmanned Predator drones on Monday near Kabul, but missed, defense officials said. The missile killed some of his followers. "U.S. officials accuse Hekmatyar of plotting attacks on American troops, offering rewards for their deaths and trying to destabilize the U.S.-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai. At the same time, officials acknowledge that Hekmatyar, who once served as Afghanistan's prime minister, has limited ties to the Taliban and is only suspected of working with al-Qaida. But they say his anti-U.S. activities make him a more immediate threat than the other feuding warlords. "'I can assure you when we go after individuals in the theater of war, it is because they intend to do some harm to America,' President Bush said Thursday when asked about the strike." [Associated Press Online * May 10, 2002 Friday WASHINGTON DATELINE * "CIA Fails to Kill Afghan Warlord* By JOHN J. LUMPKIN] "Go after individuals in the theater of war." What a nice, Bush-folksy way of saying "trying to murder people." To understand the horrible irony of this, you should know that Gulbuddin Hekmatyar was the fanatic into whose pockets the CIA pumped much of its billions of dollars of Afghan blood money, and who was installed as a "Prime Minister" after the overthrow of the Afghan secular government. For more on this go to http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/camps.htm#1 Some news reports said that the recent unpleasantness had occured because Mr. Hekmatyar was trying to murder Americans. Perhaps he was. Or perhaps he wasn't. Perhaps Hekmatyar heard that the CIA was trying to murder him and in proper gangster fashion, he tried to kill them first. Or maybe he and the CIA boys were trying to murder each other. Maybe 'Murder' is the proper word to describe what Washington has visited upon Afghanistan. Maybe it was Murder Incorporated that set up shop in Afghanistan in 1979 when the idiot-monsters at CIA in Langley, Virginia began trying to "draw Russia into the Afghan trap," in the process of which they turned an ancient land of wonderful people into living hell. And maybe by the time Washington finishes this latest phase of its 23 year old murderous "we're-in-it-to-destroy-Russia" Afghan nightmare, maybe by the time it's all over, the New World Empire will earnestly wish that in fact it had gone to Afghanistan only for the oil. * Further Reading 4) 'Why Washington Wants Afghanistan,' by Jared Israel, Rick Rozoff & Nico Varkevisser, analyzes the geo-political designs behind the massive deception called The War On Terror" http://www.tenc.net/analysis/afghan.htm * En Français http://emperors-clothes.com/french/articles/pourquoi.htm * Deutsch http://emperors-clothes.com/german/articles/d-afghan-i.htm 5) What's the Target of the U.S. Move into Central Asia? Two news reports look at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) which includes Russia, China and the Central Asian former Soviet Republics. http://emperors-clothes.com/news/sco.htm For more on the encirclement of Russia: 5a) Afghan Operation Leaves Russia 'Encircled' by US-NATO by Sergey Ptichkin and Aleksey Chichkin http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/encircle.htm 5b) "US Military Pushes into Ex-Soviet Georgia Under Guise of Fighting Terror," by Rick Rozoff can be read at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/rozoff/pushes.htm 6) 'Why is NATO Decimating the Balkans and Trying to Force Milosevic to Surrender?' by Jared Israel and Nico Varkevisser. Can be read at http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/whyisn.htm 7) Osama Bin Laden was propelled into power as part of the U.S. drive to create an Islamist terrorist movement for use, in the first instance, to crush the former Soviet Union. See the truly amazing account from the 'Washington Post,' 'Washington's Backing of Afghan Terrorists: Deliberate Policy.' at http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/anatomy.htm 8) 'Osama bin Laden: Made in USA,' by Jared Israel. This article includes quotes from a New York Times piece documenting the vast sums spent creating Islamist terrorism. It can be read at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/madein.htm 9) To read the New York Times piece quoted in the above article, go to 'Afghan Taliban Camps Were Built by NATO,' By TIM WEINER The New York Times August 24, 1998, at http://emperors-clothes.com/docs/camps.htm 10) One of Washingon's most amazing uses of terrorists (amazing because of the extent of the hypocrisy involved) is against Macedonia, whose government, like that of Mr. Putin, did everything to please the American Empire. Macedonia is nevertheless - and indeed, all the more easily - now being destroyed. See "Articles Documenting Washington's Terrorist Attack on Macedonia,' at http://emperors-clothes.com/mac/listm.htm 11) Regarding bin Laden's supposed break with the CIA, see 'Gaping Holes in the 'Washington Hates bin Laden' Story,' by Jared Israel at http://emperors-clothes.com/news/probestop-i.htm 12) 'Kosovo Concentration Camps : The KLA Archipelago' Can be read at http://emperors-clothes.com/news/reporter.htm ================================================================= 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: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytcari-06.25.02-16:11:02-10915