Linda Polin wrote:
"IMHO, assuming he is working for 'his people,' Bin Laden would do better to
hijack corporate scientists and use his millions to set up pharmaceutical
companies and agribusiness owned and operated by nationals to solve local
crises in food and medical production based on knowledge bought or
stolen/liberated from the West. While empowering locally, such enterprises
could also export. India's doing considerably better for its self and a
growing number of its citizens by supporting a booming programming and
software development infrastructure which draws outside money."
I think that Linda's assumption is incorrect. I do not think that bin Laden
is 'working for his people', or rather not in the economic sense that Linda
alludes to. I think he is a frightening idealogue who in this case just
happens to be not 'of us' but 'of other', (yes, diane, there is oppression
within North America, but for right or wrong the crafting of a global market
led by North America, inescapably made the oppression of Afghans as much an
instrumental part of your lives as the oppression of any group of domestic
Americans) and who manipulates the desperation of others for his own
purposes.
But I think we also need to consider what bin Laden was saying when he was
still reasonably accessible and fighting the Soviets rather than the West.
Back then he was reported as noting that terrorism was a method of changing
the behaviour of the enemy, and that it was the changed behaviour that won
the war, not directly the destruction of people and property.
His enemy, he said, was BOTH the Soviet Union AND the United States. 'Once
we have dealt with the Soviets we will turn to the United States' he said
sometime in the mid 80's even while he was honing his operational skills
acting as an agent of the United States. And what he was 'dealing with' was
ANY non-Islamic influence over Islam. He has specifically said that
capitalism is centrally dependent on the free movement, not just of goods
and cash, but of people and the knowledge, skills and productive labour that
they embody. Therefore, he has argued, one of the purposes of the use of
terror against captialism is to change behaviour such that the free movement
of people is impaired. For all its tragedy in geopolitical terms the WTC is
nothing more than an exercise in semiotics. He wins (according to his own
model) in what happens next - in the increased difficulty in getting on a
plane, in the numbers of people who will be forever nervous about working in
a high rise, in the 12,000 laid off at Continental Airlines, in further
restrictions in the movement of people around the world, in isolationalism
and xenophobia (through which we adopt some of his own values and become
more like him). This man may be evil, but he is coherent and working to a
strategy that has been long known to just about everybody except the
security agencies of the United States. He confronts us with the
contradictions of the system in which we live.
My earlier point is that there is nothing one can do about this, but one can
do something about the capacity to recruit from the ranks of the desperate
and alienated. But this morning the danger is of exactly the opposite. If
the United States, having successfully obtained the collaboration of the
Pakistani government, does not commit ground troops to the protection of the
citizens of Pakistan (who already tend to favour the Taliban) when the
Taliban launch attacks on them, then the back streets of Karachi and and
Islamabad become the new wellspring sending forth those prepared to die in
order to inflict damage on Americans and the west.
Phillip Capper,
Centre for Research on Work, Education and Business Ltd. (WEB Research),
Level 9
142 Featherston Street
(PO Box 2855)
WELLINGTON
New Zealand
Ph: +64 4 499 8140
Fx: +64 4 499 8395
Mb: +64 021 519 741
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Oct 10 2001 - 15:49:15 PDT