Casbah Udine

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Autore: Orma

AKI, 8 settembre 2007

Alla vigilia del sesto anniversario dell'11 settembre e a tre anni dalla sua ultima apparizione, Osama bin Laden, il leader di al Qaeda, compare nuovamente in video. Annunciato giovedì, il nuovo filmato, da ieri nelle mani della Cia, dura circa 30 minuti e non contiene specifiche minacce nei confronti degli Stati Uniti. Secondo una prima analisi dell'intelligence, la voce sembrerebbe autentica e il messaggio sarebbe stato registrato di recente.

new bin laden video emerges

new york times, 11 settembre 2007

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Osama bin Laden urged sympathizers to join the ''caravan'' of martyrs as he praised one of the Sept. 11 suicide hijackers in a new video that emerged Tuesday to mark the sixth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. Al-Qaida traditionally issues a video every year on the anniversary, with the last testament of one of the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. This year's video showed hijacker Waleed al-Shehri addressing the camera and warning the U.S.: ''We shall come at you from your front and back, your right and left.''

The new message, which AP Television News obtained from the IntelCenter monitoring group in suburban Washington, came days after the world got its first current look at bin Laden in nearly three years, with the release of a video Saturday in which the terror leader addressed the American people. Later in the day it appeared on militant Web sites, with a note from al-Qaiada's media production wing al-Sahab saying it was intentionally sent to television stations before being placed on the Internet.

It begins with an audiotape introduction by bin Laden. While his voice is heard, the video shows a still image of him, raising his finger. In the image, bin Laden has the same dyed-black beard and the same clothes -- a white robe and cap and beige cloak -- that he had in Saturday's video. But it was not known if the audiotape was recently made. In the past, al-Qaida has used footage and audio of bin Laden taped long ago for release later.

In the tape, bin Laden praised al-Shehri, saying he ''recognized the truth'' that Arab rulers were ''vassals'' of the West and had ''abandoned the balance of (Islamic) revelation.'' ''It is true that this young man was little in years, but the faith in his heart was big,'' he said. ''So there is a huge difference between the path of the kings, presidents and hypocritical Ulama (Islamic scholars) and the path of these noble young men,'' like al-Shehri, bin Laden said. ''The formers' lot is to spoil and enjoy themselves whereas the latters' lot is to destroy themselves for Allah's Word to be Supreme.'' ''It remains for us to do our part. So I tell every young man among the youth of Islam: It is your duty to join the caravan (of martyrs) until the sufficiency is complete and the march to aid the High and Omnipotent continues,'' he said.

At the end of his speech, bin Laden also mentions the al-Qaida leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in an U.S. air strike there. Al-Zarqawi followed in the footsteps of al-Shehri and his brothers who ''fulfilled their promises to God.'' ''And now it is our turn,'' bin Laden says.

After bin Laden speaks, the video of al-Shehri appears. Al-Shehri -- one of the hijackers on American Airlines Flight 11, which hit the World Trade Center -- is seen wearing a white robe and headscarf, with a full black beard, speaking in front of a backdrop with images of the burning World Trade Center. ''We shall come at you from your front and back, your right and left,'' al-Shehri said, asserting that America would suffer the same fate as the Soviet Union. He also praised the losses the United States suffered in Somalia in late 1993. ''As for our own fortune, it is not in this world,'' he said. ''And we are not competing with you for this world, because it does not equal in Allah's eyes the wing of a mosquito.''

Al-Shehri warned Muslims who strayed to return to their religion and deplored the state of those who abandoned Muslim holy war, or jihad. ''The condition of Islam at the present time makes one cry ... in view of the weakness, humiliation, scorn and enslavement it is suffering because it neglected the obligations of Allah and His orders, and permitted His forbidden things and abandoned jihad in Allah's path,'' he said.

Suicide attacks for al-Qaida and other militant groups often videotape last testaments before carrying out their attacks. Every Sept. 11 anniversary, al-Qaida has used the tapes in a bid to rally its supporters by glorifying its ''martyrs.''

Bin Laden's new appearances underline the failure to find the terror leader that President Bush vowed in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks to take ''dead or alive.'' On Sunday, Bush's homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend sought to play down bin Laden's importance -- and added a taunt, saying he was ''virtually impotent.'' But terrorism experts say al-Qaida's core leadership is regrouping in the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region. The latest National Intelligence Estimate says the network is growing in strength, intensifying its efforts to put operatives in the United States and plot new attacks.

Bin Laden's video on Saturday was his first message in over a year -- since a July 1, 2006 audiotape. The images came under close scrutiny from U.S. intelligence agencies, looking for clues to the 50-year-old's health and whereabouts.

11/9, sul web il nuovo messaggio di Bin Laden

AKI, 11 settembre 2001

Roma, 11 set - (Ign) - A sei anni di distanza dall'attacco alle Torri Gemelle di New York e al Pentagono, è arrivato puntuale sul web un nuovo messaggio del capo di Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden. A riferirlo è la Cnn precisando che le sembianze e gli abiti del super-latitante sono uguali a quelle viste nel filmato diffuso in rete venerdì scorso. Anche il luogo sembra lo stesso.

Il video, ha spiegato alla Cnn l'esperta di terrorismo Laura Mansfield che ha visionato il materiale, dura poco più di 47 minuti e mostra il logo di as Sahab media, la compagnia che diffonde i messaggi di al Qaeda.

Nei primi 14 minuti, si vede un'immagine fissa di bin Laden mentre una voce a lui attribuita loda in arabo uno dei 19 attentatori dell'11 settembre, il saudita Walid al-Shehri. Sotto scorrono sottotitoli in inglese, mentre sullo sfondo un'elaborazione di una foto ritrae uno dei due aerei che sta per impattare le Torri Gemelle.

Poi viene diffuso il testamento video letto da al Shehri. E' il settimo dei 19 dirottatori suicidi ad apparire in un video del genere. Al Shehri era seduto nel posto 2B del volo 11 dell'American Airlines che si schiantò contro la torre nord del World Trade Center.

A differenza del messaggio di Bin Laden diffuso la settimana scorsa, nel nuovo video non vi sono riferimenti temporali tali da poter ritenere che sia stato registrato di recente. Vi è soltanto una menzione ad Abu Musab al Zarqawi, il leader di al Qaeda in Iraq ucciso dagli americani nel giugno 2006.

Il filmato era stato annunciato annunciato pochi giorni fa dalla stessa rete terroristica che intende così "celebrare" il sesto anniversario dell'attacco.

Bin Laden Unplugged. Analyzing the latest video.

by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, the weekly standard, 8 settembre 2007

OSAMA BIN LADEN'S STRENGTH as an orator has always been his ethos. He is an eloquent and seemingly honest speaker, proud of his role in the attacks of 9/11, a principled spokesman for radical Islam's war against the West. Though bin Laden may not have penned all his words personally, the force of his ideas always shines through. As Bruce Lawrence notes in Messages to the World, "these messages are not ghostwritten tracts of the kind supplied by professional speechwriters to many politicians in the West, whether American Presidents, European Prime Ministers, or their Middle-Eastern counterparts."

In bin Laden's last video--released on October 29, 2004, on the eve of America's presidential election--bin Laden mocked President Bush: "Free men do not forfeit their security, contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. If so, then let him explain to us why we don't strike--for example--Sweden?" But even while skewering President Bush for his simplistic framing of the conflict, bin Laden has been hesitant to explain the roots of the struggle to a Western audience. (His rhetoric differs when the target audience is Western rather than Muslim.) The closest he has come was the October 2004 video, where bin Laden outlined his grievances at length and urged his audience to look for 9/11's "causes in order to prevent it from happening again."

This vagueness has led some commentators to conclude that bin Laden is fundamentally a political terrorist rather than a religious one. The sociologist Michael Mann wrote, "There is a simple reason why he attacked the United States: American imperialism. As long as America seeks to control the Middle East, he and people like him will be its enemy." Doug Bandow of the American Conservative Defense Alliance--after quoting bin Laden's quip about Sweden--declared that al-Qaeda's attacks are "in pursuit of specific geopolitical objectives. The evidence is overwhelming that they attack Americans because they believe Americans are at war with them."

A NUMBER OF COMMENTATORS have described bin Laden's latest video, released yesterday, as breaking new ground--and it does.

One way the tape does not break new ground is through the breadth of topics covered. The video is somewhat of a tour de force. Bin Laden's complaints run the gamut from the invasion of Iraq to Hollywood, global warming, and interest-bearing loans. The authorities he cites to bolster his case include Noam Chomsky, Michael Scheuer, and a soldier he calls only "Joshua" (presumably from a mid-summer ABC News report). But broad lists of grievances and a complex narrative have always been signatures of bin Laden's rhetoric. This is not the first time he mentioned the Kyoto Protocol, nor is it the first time he cited leftist intellectuals.

One discernable shift in this speech is that bin Laden is far friendlier to the Jews than ever before. He declares that if the Nazi holocaust had occurred closer to Muslim countries, "most of the Jews would have been saved by taking refuge with us." Bin Laden also recalls how Jews found shelter in Muslim countries during the Spanish Inquisition.

A second discernible shift is that the speech is more anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist than past work. Bruce Lawrence writes in Messages to the World, "The word 'imperialism' does not occur once in any of the messages he has sent out. He defines the enemy differently. For him, jihad is aimed not at an imperium, but at 'global unbelief'." But this speech is more explicit. Bin Laden describes the media as "a tool of the colonialist empires," and refers to America as an empire twice, predicting its collapse. More to the point, he says that capitalism lies at the heart of the current struggle. In the West, bin Laden says, "those with real power and influence are those with the most capital." He continues:

And since the democratic system permits major corporations to back candidates, be they presidential or congressional, there shouldn't be any cause for astonishment . . . in the Democrats' failure to stop the war. . . . As you liberated yourselves before from the slavery of monks, kings, and feudalism, you should liberate yourselves from the deception, shackles and attrition of the capitalist system.

THE VIDEO'S EMPHASIS on the evils of empire and capital make its third rhetorical shift all the more odd. Up through bin Laden's denunciation of capitalism and plea that his audience should "search for an alternative, upright methodology," it seemed that his speech would successfully appeal to a certain audience. Those who believe that curtailing American power is critical to solving the terrorist threat could find bin Laden's words at least somewhat reassuring: there was enough meat to suggest that the root cause of al Qaeda's grievance is an aggressive American foreign policy. I have previously noted that, after the Madrid train bombings swung the Spanish elections to the Sociali

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