From the Associated Press:
Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden has called in a new audiotape for the world to boycott American goods and the U.S. dollar, blaming the United States and other industrialized countries for global warming.
In the tape, aired in part on Al-Jazeera television Friday, bin Laden warns of the dangers of climate change and says that the way to stop it is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a halt.
He says the world should “stop consuming American products” and “refrain from using the dollar,” according to a transcript on Al-Jazeera’s Web site.
The new message, whose authenticity could not immediately be confirmed, comes after a bin Laden tape released last week in which he endorsed a failed attempt to blow up an American airliner on Christmas Day.
The AP could not confirm the rumor that Al Qaeda will soon launch an Al-Gore-a division to lobby for cap-and-trade.
I’m glad to hear you believe most folks don’t think Gore is worse than Bin Laden.
Unfortunately you proved my point, though, by following up and saying Gore is an economic terrorist. A thief, a liar, a dishonest and corrupt politician, perhaps. I don’t have the details, though I hear he’s going to make bank off of cap and trade, if the corporate controlled congress can even pass something like that. But he’s no economic terrorist. A terrorist’s prime motivation is inflicting destruction, suffering, and terror. Even if Gore is completely corrupt, that’s not his goal. His alleged goal would be money and power. If you can’t see the distinction, and believe me it’s an important one, then the propaganda is working.
Walkingawake: You need to relax. Most folks would agree that Bin Laden is worse than Gore.
But if one were to believe what Gore wants, it would be to provide billions to other nations to clean up their environments and would do diddly for the US environment and economy. In this way, he is an economic terrorist. And the rationale, global warming, is pathetic nonsense. Big Al is an enemy of the United States, his methods are different.
So then if this is a financial scam, it would make more sense to compare Gore to the likes of Jeff Skilling, Bernie Madoff, Rod Blagojovitch, or the international banksters.
As someone who believes in AGW, I none the less agree with your assessment that the crisis will be used to create leverage for power hungry individuals. Sort of a worst of both worlds scenario.
At a GW talk I attended, which was supposed to be hosted by former marine and R. Senator John Warner (he couldn’t make it), his fill in was a navy admiral who briefly mentioned the coming resource wars caused by climate change and increased global US military deployment for disaster relief and regional stabilization as a likely future. Most of his speech was geared toward boasting about the coming “green” military and the benevolence of militarism. As you said, I hope the complexities are not ignored.
Nice Simpson’s quote BTW.
Well, it’s not like many Americans support Real American Hero Gore anyway. He’s discredited himself with his own greed, hypocrisies, refusal to debate with “deniers” (speaking of demonization) such as Christopher Monckton, and, of course, his continued preaching despite the breaking of climategate casting much if not total doubt on the whole AGW issue.
So bin Laden didn’t shoot anyone in the foot, really. If anything, OBL is trying to gain more support from the high amount of anti-US sentiment in the world that was expressed in Copenhagen. “Climate debts” “owed” by the U.S., and all that, and Gore happens to support this idea, as do many AGW peddlers.
“Life is one crushing defeat after another, until you just wish Flanders was dead!”– Homer Simpson
It’s not even about money, at least not the way we would commonly think of it. It’s all about _currencies_. No one wants to say it, because if they did, there would be a stampede for the exit (into monetary metals). Carbon credits are just a “new” currency, and the justification for them is that the U.S. owes the world a climate debt, and Gore, and now bin Laden, think so. Of course, OBL hasn’t said “make the U.S. buy credits”, and in that regard he’s not like Gore. But so what? Floating a new currency is just as bad as a jihad. In fact, fiat currency and war have much in common.
What’s destabilizing the world is far from mere sound bites of fiction. A much more insidious work of fiction has been at work here. A monetary system built entirely upon easily manipulated floating abstractions needs no propaganda to divide and destroy civilization, though misinformation thrives within such a system. So does a lot of bitterness. After all, the game of fiat currencies is one of eventual total bankruptcy. But not all “propaganda” is entirely untrue. In fact, quite a bit of it is at least half true, which only makes all the more confusing because the need for a simple explanation urges the mind to adopt the belief that event A,B,C etc is all one big lie from one side or another. Were it only that simple.
Brr09,
The story talks about Bin Laden. It is the blog commentary that connects Bin Laden to Gore, clearly not to make Bin Laden look more reasonable, but to make Gore look extreme. My point is that regardless of your thoughts on AGW, connecting Bin Laden to Gore harms American political discourse. Who is supposedly emulating whom is irrelevant. Bin Laden’s violent extremism, religious zealotry, attitudes toward women, and anti American sentiments, and not his nonexistent “cap and trade policy,” are the characteristics through which we understand him. Talking about Gore and Al Qaeda in the same sentence as if they had something to do with each other would be like calling a political leader Hitlerian if, like Hitler, they were Christian.
The real reason, as I said, to make an association between Bin Laden and Gore is to reveal and promote hatred and subvert reason for short term political gain. The danger, of course, is that when enough people start hearing Gore and think Stalin or Hitler or Chavez or Bin Laden, the logical conclusion is not simply to prevent Gore and people like him from being elected. At first, when adequate numbers of people buy into this line of thinking, the result is an obstruction of intelligent public debate. If over time a critical number of people think the Gore/ Bin Laden association “makes sense,” a moral imperative can be created for violent revolution, as a government administered by such people would not simply be seen as ineffective but literally run by the terrorist enemy itself. Thus Bin Laden’s “environmental” statement could actually be geared toward weakening American society, not by enlisting anti American sentiment outside our borders with a boycott that clearly won’t succeed, but by doing precisely what we see in this blog post.
By using Bin Laden’s words to demonize influential Americans, posts like this are actually bolstering Al Quaeda’s methods of using propaganda to further divide and destabilize the country. Bin Laden is being artificially constructed in our own nation by angry, traumatized Americans, with disatrous consequences.
Actually, walkingawak, the story paints a radical bin Laden acting more like Gore, not Gore acting more like a radical bin Laden.
At any rate, though, neither are good for the U.S., intentionally so or not.
As I think you know, a few of the major differences between Al Gore and Bin Laden are that Al Gore’s rhetoric is clearly pro American (he did run for president), even if you believe his policies would be bad for US business interests. He’s advocating green policy not because he wants to bring down the “great American Satan,” but because he thinks that a stable and clean environment would be good for the US. Gore also doesn’t advocate violent extremism, and is clearly not a terrorist.
Your implication that Gore and Bin Laden are in the same camp shows an obscene lack of interest in facts and rational debate, an approach that ironically more closely resembles the hate filled propaganda of extremism than actual political or scientific discourse. Sadly, the sort of stance that you advocate undermines our society, as it subverts informed discussion and instead plays on the violent passions of an already scared and angry nation.