Bin Laden’s Curse: ‘Death to America!’

Editors Note:  Dear readers, This is Lasha’s main debut article for VT, something that she has put a lot of work into and we have done a special magazine layout for it. You will be getting a full dose of the usual review of 911’s unfinished business over the next week, but we wanted to add something new into the discussion, and we certainly have.

The focus on the art was symbolic in that while we must certainly deal with a lot of ugliness in the world, we must never forget about all the beauty that has been created, and the motivation behind it.  While fighting the bad, we must protect the good…Jim W. Dean

Bin Laden’s Curse: ‘Death to America!’

“September 11? That was just the beginning! Prepare for more of the same!”
— Osama bin Laden, Bin Laden’s Curse — ‘Death to America!’

by  Lasha Darkmoon

A puzzling new poem, reportedly written by Osama Bin Laden in the wake of 9-11, is here presented to the reader in the run-up to the 12th anniversary of 9-11.

The reader is asked to decide whether the poem, prophesying Armageddon and the coming destruction of America, is an authentic bin Laden poem or an imitation.

On May 16, 2007, on my twenty-ninth birthday, a beautifully written manuscript in calligraphic script fell into my hands in India. This was simply a series of sentences separated by diagonal strokes (/) which purported to be a literal, word-for-word paraphrase in English of an extended poem written in Arabic by Osama bin Laden in the immediate aftermath of 9-11.

Bits had been added to the manuscript (in the broad margins) over the intervening years. These served as commentaries and clarifications. The poem was divided into several parts, each headed by a symbol which I took to be a letter of the Arabic alphabet.

The scary title of the manuscript: Bin Laden’s Curse — ‘Death to America!’

I was given to understand that various versions of this poem, both in Arabic and Urdu, had begun to circulate in late 2001 in the tea houses of Rawalpindi, Karachi, and Lahore. One such version of the poem had been obtained by my Sanskrit tutor, Bengali poet Ananda Kumar Bannerji, while vacationing with his family in Srinagar, Kashmir.

He handed me the manuscript in Pondicherry, South India, at the Sri Aurobindo ashram at which both of us happened to be staying at the time. He asked me what I thought of the poem.

I was in no position to judge the “authenticity” of the mishmash of ravings that confronted me; nor did I attempt to do so at that stage.

Being a poet-translator myself, I decided on an impulse—and purely as a literary exercise—to translate into rhymed English verse the somewhat disconnected scraps that had come my way. It seemed to me that this fascinating material, which was essentially a rant of rage against Western civilization in general and America in particular, would provide a useful clue to Americans who keep asking, Why do they hate us?

The intelligent reader may be wondering at this point if his leg is being pulled. Did Osama bin Laden actually write this hysterical diatribe? Is there the slightest evidence that this poem ever existed in original Arabic?

There are certainly no traces of such a maledictory poem in existence right now, either in Arabic or Urdu or in any other language, as far as I know.  Bin Laden was of course a skilled poet, and many of his poems have been translated into English, but did he write this one?

My own view is that it is not altogether certain that bin Laden is the author of this particular poem, although the possibility cannot be discounted.

He may have written it originally in the wake of 9-11 and added bits to it over the years, e.g., the references to the Iraq war and the Abu Ghraib scandal which surfaced in early 2004.

To a large extent, it would depend on whether bin Laden was the evil genius behind 9-11. If he was, this would obviously increase the chances that he had written the poem—for in the poem he gloats over America’s humiliation on September 11, 2001, and predicts more 9-11s to come.

Nowhere in the poem, however, does bin Laden accept personal responsibility for 9-11. He is pleased that the act was done, but so were thousands of other people throughout the world who celebrated the event with champagne parties and dancing in the streets—as Tariq Ali revealed in the introduction to his excellent book The Clash of Fundamentalisms.

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What finally persuaded me to offer this poem up for publication, given that it has been gathering dust on my shelves for so many years? I guess the time is right. It would be a shame to let the poem lie around unread. The material has curiosity value.

It provides, moreover, an insight into the terrorist mind. It is certainly a shocking poem, though its shock potential would have been far greater if there had been proof that Osama bin Laden had actually written it. There is no such proof.

Indeed, there is no proof that Osama bin Laden orchestrated 9/11 at all.

The only “proof” that Al Qaeda was behind 9-11 is that the American government and the notoriously unreliable and mendacious mainstream mass media say so.

Beyond this authoritative assertion of fact—an assertion that becomes increasingly unconvincing by the day—there is no proof whatever for the claim that bin Laden orchestrated 9-11. There is certainly no scientific evidence for such a claim.

Indeed, newly released evidence proves conclusively—contrary to government claims—that the World Trade Center twin towers and Building 7  must have been brought down by the prior placement of nanothermite and other powerful explosives within the buildings. (See here)

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Here are some relevant facts the reader would do well to consider before reading the poem.

Though many taped messages had purportedly been issued by Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri, not one of them after September 9, 2002 has been authenticated as genuine by independent experts such as the Dalle Molle Institute for Perceptual Artificial Intelligence, based in Martigny, Switzerland. (Institut Dalle Molle d’Intelligence Artificielle Perceptive, now the IDIAP Research Institute).

For further details of doctored bin Laden tapes, see 1 — [2] — [3] — [4]

The only “experts” to validate the later bin Laden tapes have been those same intelligence agencies whose reputation for deceiving the public is now legendary.

Thus genuine videotapes delivered to Al-Jazeera TV in late 2001, featuring an emaciated and white-bearded bin Laden disclaiming responsibility for 9-11, offer a bizarre contrast to the obviously fake bin Laden videotape of November 9, 2001—a tape conveniently “discovered” by American soldiers in an abandoned house in Jalalabad.

Here a suspiciously plump and black-bearded Osama is suddenly found fessing up to 9-11.

Bin Laden was not a man given to lying. On September 17, 2001, he issued a message to al-Jazeera, disclaiming all responsibility for 9-11:  “I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation.”

Just ten days later, on 28 September,  he repeated his denial of involvement.  “I have already said that I am not involved in the 11 September attacks in the United States. As a Muslim, I try my best to avoid telling a lie. I had no knowledge of these attacks.”

The real perpetrators of 9-11, many people seem to think, were Israeli intelligence and their neoconservative accomplices in America. Possibly bin Laden thought this too—which would make him a “conspiracy theorist” as well as a “terrorist”.

Such an explosive conspiracy theory (Mossad + American neocons = 9-11 masterminds) could hardly be allowed to take root in the American psyche. It was therefore deemed necessary to pin down the blame for 9-11 on bin Laden and a bunch of jihadis armed with box cutters.

Hence their was a need for a whole slew of bogus tapes in which an actor playing the part of bin Laden accepts full responsibility for 9-11, thereby giving America and Britain a pretext for pulverizing the Muslim world and plundering its resources—all this at the instigation of Israel and their neoconservative allies in the Bush administration.

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Bin Laden was almost certainly dead long before his sensational “assassination” on May 2, 2011, in his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, at the hands of the CIA and US naval Special Warfare operatives.

An obituary notice announcing his funeral appeared in al-Wafd (an Egyptian newspaper) on December 26, 2001.

It became perfectly safe after this date to issue bogus bin Laden tapes ad nauseam, threatening the West with fire and brimstone, given that the real Osama was no longer around to deny the authenticity of the same tapes.

All these fake tapes and phony bin Laden lookalikes have been a sign of acute desperation. The perpetrators of Abu Ghraib have not only lost the moral ground—they have lost the war on terror.

One person who is convinced he knows who did 9-11 is Dr Alan Sabrosky. Former director of the Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, he does not mince his words in a relatively recent interview.

He places the blame for 9-11 fairly and squarely on Israel.

“I have made it absolutely clear,” he says, “that it is one hundred percent certain that 9-11 was a Mossad operation.

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Here now is the four-part poem purportedly penned by Osama bin Laden in the wake of 9-11. I have translated the English paraphrase I received into 8-line rhymed stanzas based on a strict A-B-C-D-B-A-C-D rhyming scheme.

This was because the original Arabic, according to my Indian friend Mr. Bannerji, was couched in the complicated rhyming prose found in the Qur’an.

The reader is asked to make allowances for the apocalyptic language. This is all part of the original. Toning it down so as to make it more palatable to Western tastes would be self-defeating.

Decide for yourself if this is a genuine Osama bin Laden poem, penned by the Master Terrorist himself, or if it is an imitation.

One final point: I would like to assure the reader that, in submitting this poem for publication, I am not myself the perpetrator of a puerile literary hoax. I did not write this poem myself, nor am I receiving either fame or fortune from its publication.

I have merely translated, in good faith, a prose paraphrase of someone else’s rendition of an extended poem in Arabic reportedly written by Osama bin Laden in late 2001 and added to subsequently by bin Laden himself or other scribes (s).

If there are any Western resonances in the poem (e.g., “shooting fish in a barrel”), this is because my version is presented through the prism of my own personality and bears the stamp of my style and character.

This is not only a translation, remember, it is a translation of a translation. Many of the ideas sketched in the poem, particularly in Part 3 which is about Israel, are clearly out of date and erroneous. The idea that Israel is an American colony is one such wrong idea.

Here now is the poem: an extended malediction of America and a prophecy of its impending doom.

Bin Laden’s Curse — ‘ Death to America! ‘

“Do what you can, and so shall we.
Just wait!—we too are waiting.”
— Qur’an XI. 121-22

1. THE GREAT SATAN

America!
The inhabitants of the earth
Are drunk
With the wine of your fornications!
You have given birth
To terror, hatred, hysteria!
Your people are sunk
In stupefaction.

Darkness has come upon you.
Nevertheless
You think you live in the light.
Your eyes have been blinded.
Your people stumble in darkness.
Greed has undone you.
Pride and lust are your blight.
God sees, and has minded!

Miserable crew, forever whining
About 9-11 and your precious virtue!—
As if you alone had known pain
And the world were under obligation
To kiss your feet and court you
And approach you with shining
Eyes—you blot, you stain!—
You object of utter detestation!

Country of murders and thieves,
Bloodsuckers of the Third World,
Devils with smiling faces—
My curse on you forever!
May your land be reduced to a wild
Desolation, may all that lives
In your tainted spaces
Never know peace—or joy—ever!

2. THE COMING DOOM

Where your people once lived
Secure in the illusion
Of their superior virtue,
There the bison will roam
Again, the frog spawn confusion
Over the marshes, the vulture thrive.
There’ll be none to hurt you
There, buried beneath your slime!

Another people will possess your land
Taking your place, a race
From beyond the sea, superior
In virtue: one that practices
What you only preach, showing a face
Of kindness and compassion and
Care for mankind: a race far dearer
To God, and less prone to vices.

You brew trouble, you foment wars
So you can peddle your arms.
Pain screams
From the mouths of children so
That your hatchers of harm
Can trinket their whores
And live the American Dream.
That way lies hell, and there you go!

You defile all the regions you rule,
You scatter your bases and rob
The lands you begrime and bescum!
Who helps to kill children for kicks
In Palestine? May Abu Ghraib
Gnaw away at your inmost soul
Like a maggot! The time will come
When your own back will be beaten by sticks!

3. THE HOLY LAND

Israel!—an American colony
Disguised as a Jewish state,
Deliberately planted to destabilize
And drive entire races demented!
A country whose main product is hate,
Whose raison d’être is to make misery,
Where peace would be the only surprise.
A country not owned, but rented

From the Arabs temporarily, by force—
Where the rent is always in arrears.
America, the day will come
When the rent will have to be paid
With compound interest. You’ll reap in tears
What you sowed in joy. At the end of this course,
You will pick up the tab and become
Chief debtor for the monster you made.

See, the betrayer of the Jews—
The Jews themselves! Or rather
Those who call themselves Jews, the pseudo
Ashkenazi Jews with their blue eyes
And blonde hair! Could any race be further
From the true Semitic Jews whose
Blended blood has been poured into
Other bloods under alien skies?

These are the ones, the hocus-pocus
Imposter Jews, who now blow the trumpet
For Zion, stigmatizing
Their critics, and heaping abuse
On those who object to the rank armpit
Of Israel!—Oh, how we loathe these bogus
European Jews whose devisings
Were all learned from Hitler’s hellcrews.

4. THE DAY OF RECKONING

September 11? That was just
The beginning! Prepare for more
Of the same!—for further contingents
Of “cowards” hell-bent on suicide
Flying into your hated shores!
How can you win? You’ve already lost!
You’ve lost respect: the moral argument.
You are universally despised!

Invincible America, aren’t you glad
You’re so strong? What “courage” it must take
To skulk behind the clouds and rain
Cluster bombs on the weak, without peril
To your own skins! Yes, it’s a piece of cake
Killing women and children in Baghdad!
Congratulations, America! You win
First prize for shooting fish in a barrel!

Hear now my message: Depart
From our lands: you have your own.
Don’t steal our oil! It lies under
Our sands, and there it shall stay!
Get out of our sight! Leave us alone!
Practice the torturer’s art
On your own people! I wonder
What Christ would think of Camp X-ray?

Nation of impudent parasites!—
Supervirus of the world!—
So you think you hold all the aces?
Hear now my curse: May all your bones
Be broken, your ashes all whirled
To the wind! May you who delight
In sowing tares in all places
REAP, REAP, REAP WHAT YOU HAVE SOWN!

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Is the poem authentic? — The reader is advised to waste as little time as possible on this ultimately futile question. To do so would be a distraction.

Questions of far greater import are these: Was bin Laden a paper tiger? Is Al Qaeda a myth? Are Islamic “terrorists” a figment of the neoconservative imagination?

Was 9-11 orchestrated as an excuse to wage war on the Muslim world and plunder its resources? Have all these events been put together for the aggrandizement of Israel?

Consider first Al Qaeda, menacing in the extreme and criminally malevolent. How helpless Americans must feel before this diabolically omniscient organization that managed somehow to get the better of all sixteen US intelligence agencies, the National security Council, NORAD, air traffic control, and the Pentagon.

It managed not only to pull the wool over the eyes of the finest military intellects in America, it contrived also to make fools of Mossad and every single intelligence agency in Europe.

It even had Britain’s plucky Prime Minister Tony Blair quaking in his ankle socks and agonizing over the prospect of seeing London obliterated by Saddam Hussein’s WMD in forty-five minutes!—top secret information which was provided, unbelievably, by an Iraqi taxi driver.

Nor has this sinister organization Al Qaeda rested on its laurels since 9-11. It still manages to terrorize the Western world with its shoe bombs, its shampoo bombs, and its underwear bombs. Not a day goes by but dozens of bearded “ragheads” are rounded up and tasered, their doors crashed open and their apartments ransacked, only to be released later for lack of evidence.

They are so fiendishly cunning, these jetsetter jihadis, that they never leave behind a single trace of their guilt. Scary. Who needs weapons of mass destruction when you can bring the America Empire to its knees with a few box cutters?

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How many Muslim civilians, mostly women and children, have America and its allies now killed and maimed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, the West Bank and Gaza?

How many more innocents are expected to die in Iran, Syria and Lebanon in future wars orchestrated by neoconservatives in Washington for the sole benefit of Israel? One would think that Al Qaeda, having pulled off 9-11 with such superlative ease, would get its act together and assassinate every neoconservative in America.

To quote Paul Craig Roberts, a highly respected columnist and former assistant Secretary of the Treasury:

If Muslims were capable of pulling off 9/11, they are certainly capable of assassinating Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Libby, Condi Rice, Kristol, Bolton, Goldberg, and scores of others during the same hour of the day…

The argument is not believable that a government that was incapable of preventing 9/11 is so all-knowing that it can prevent the assassination of unprotected neocons…

Try to imagine the propaganda value of terrorists wiping out the neoconservatives in one fell swoop, followed by an announcement that every member of the federal government down to the lowest GS, every member of the House and Senate, and every governor was next in line to be bumped off.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?  Terrifying, what can be done with a few box cutters?

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(This is a revised and updated article originally published here)

Lasha Darkmoon

Dr. Lasha Darkmoon (b.1978) is an Anglo-American ex-academic with higher degrees in Classics whose political articles have been translated into several languages. Most of these can be found at The Occidental Observer and The TruthSeeker, but others on a variety of different topics—such as philosophy, religion, art, and poetry—will be found on the net.

Because of her radical political ideas in regard to 9-11 and the role played by organized Jewry in international affairs—ideas that would alienate her friends and family and make them ostracize her—Lasha Darkmoon is forced to conceal her true identity at the present time under a pen name.

The need for the strictest anonymity makes it impossible for Lasha Darkmoon to reveal her home address or telephone number to anyone; nor to accept the numerous invitations she has received to appear on people’s radio programs, to give talks and interviews, or to enter into audiovisual communication with anyone. She remains a strictly reclusive and private person whose only contact with strangers, for the foreseeable future, must be through the written word.

Indian mysticism remains Lasha Darkmoon’s chief influence. Though echoes of her favorite poets—Blake, Keats, Baudelaire, Yeats, and TS Eliot—may sometimes be heard in her verse, Darkmoon’s work is marked above all by a lush exoticism and otherworldliness.