Tweet
As if climate change were not already enough of a political football, Osama Bin Laden has now issued a statement twisting the issue for his own agenda:
The al-Qaida leader blamed the United States and other industrialized nations for climate change and said the only way to prevent disaster was to break the American economy, calling on the world to boycott U.S. goods and stop using the dollar.
"The effects of global warming have touched every continent. Drought and deserts are spreading, while from the other floods and hurricanes unseen before the previous decades have now become frequent," bin Laden said in the audiotape, aired on the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera…
… The change in rhetoric aims to give al-Qaida’s message an appeal beyond hardcore Islamic militants, said Evan Kohlmann, of globalterroralert.com, a private, U.S.-based terrorism analysis group.
"It’s a bridge issue," Kohlmann said. "They are looking to appeal to people who don’t necessarily love al-Qaida but who are angry at the U.S. and the West, to galvanize them against the West" and make them more receptive to "alternative solutions like adopting violence for the cause."
How long until Sean Hannity uses this statement to associate bin Laden with Al Gore and other climate change alarm sounders? Wait for it…
What’s on your mind tonight?
72 Comments
Amazing, since he has been dead since Dec. 2001. Pretty neat trick. At least he didn’t come back right before an election or something this time.
It only seems like he’s been dead since 2001. Gore is alive and well.
not so sure about how the beard is doing.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41679000/jpg/_41679560_bearded_203ap.jpg
(link!)
Well, Gores bank account has certainly been thriving since 2001, that’s for sure.
do people truly think and/or have reason to think that OBL has graced us with his exit?
Funny thing is, you have the recent vote to increase the debt ceiling the other day and people like Dylan Ratigan pointing out that the Fed has been buying our own T-bills for a year now essentially floating the dollar on our own dollars (propping up Wall Street).
China only bought 100 billion worth of our Treasury Backed securities in 2009 even though Geithner and Clinton both went there first thing in 2009 begging them to buy more.
We also just witnessed 8 senators sending a letter to Obama begging him to impose a blockade on the refined gasoline shipments to Iran. Clinton is right there saying we have to impose these sanctions (to make them stop trying to build that nuke they aren’t trying to build)
So it looks like it’s very possible that once that blockade happens, Russia and China and a few others might just get out of the “dollar” business. That happens, and you will see a mad rush for the exits. OPEC would probably start trading in the Euro or Yen.
The increased debt ceiling would allow a little time, but in the end, it isn’t going to be pretty.
And as it just so happens, also included in the deadman’s little audio recording, is a mention about how Muslim nations and OPEC should drop the dollar and start trading a different currency to punish the bad bankers.
What a coincidence, huh? Right before the bottom might drop out of the dollar because certain people in charge won’t give up on the sanction Iran thing, along comes the ghost of bin Laden to provide another excuse as to what happened to the U.S. dollar…
… the “Terrorists Killed the Dollar”.
well, lets see…
former CIA agent Robert Baer said “of course he’s dead” in 2008
Former Foreign Service officer Angelo Codevilla said in 2009 ” “Seven years after Osama bin Laden’s last verifiable appearance among the living, there is more evidence for Elvis’s presence among us than for his.”
President Musharraf, Dale Watson…
Now let’s look at a little work done by D. R. Griffin.
Now, if you also consider just how bin Laden’s “messages” have been perfectly timed for the most effective political advantage. The most obvious being bin Laden’s “October Surprise” message where he spoke just days before the 2004 election.
Even George Bush just a few months after 9/11 was asked about the hunt for bin Laden and he seemed to be a little taken aback by the question. He stumbled around for a minute but basicly said he isn’t thinking that much about bin Laden anymore. bin Laden is just “one guy” was basically what he said.
Pretty remarkable statement considering they were still finding bodies in Ground Zero when he made it.
He knew bin Laden was dead. But a dead bin Laden doesn’t serve the interests of the “Global War on Terror” now does it?
I could go on and on. He always makes an audio tape these days because the last video ones they did were so obviously not bin Laden, it’s all they can get away with.
Plus he is always making these tapes just when there is some question about the GWOT. For instance; Umar Fizzlepants. All these questions were coming out about how he got on the plane, and how he got past security, the Indian man seen with him, all the questions about how they didn’t “connect the dots”…
and all of a sudden, along comes bin Laden to assure the American public that Umar Fizzlepants was indeed al Qaeda… and the questions stopped… and we continue to bomb Yemen.
I would suggest that the belief that bin Laden is dead should be not accepted without something more substantial by way of proof.
If we killed him, we would certainly trumpet that.
Any there’s little reason to think that he up and died unless we killed him.
You know what gets me about some people? Some know damn well that every single thing the Bush administration did and said was a lie. Pure and simple. A lie.
And that is pretty much true. And the same can be said for Obama these days, don’t get me wrong.
But those same people, who know the entire Global War on Terror is just being used to attack one nation after another in persuit of Liquid Natural Gas and Pipeline rights and the American Empire…
… those same people who know Cheney and Bush “Shocked and Awed” to death nearly a million people in Iraq all based on lies…
… those same people will accept the Bush Cheney story VERBATIM, line for line, word for word, when it comes to anything al Qaeda and bin Laden.
How is that possible? How is it that they would lie about every single damned thing… but that? Is that logical? The ONE THING that gives them leave to attack ANYONE they want to in the world just HAPPENS to be the one thing they told the truth about?
Without bin Laden, none of this happens. The increased security state, the American Imperialist agenda in the Middle East, the War in Iraq the War in Afghanistan, the involvement in Pakistan and Yemen…
all based on one thing. The one thing that even the most realistic critics of the Bush/Cheney/Obama regimes won’t touch with a ten foot pole…
… bin Laden.
You think that is just a coincidence?
Here’s the deal.
You can continue to be the perennial skeptic, but it has become increasingly boring to most of us who try to add some value to the comment threads.
Either make a positive contribution to this, and any other, threads or the mods will remove your comments
“If we killed him, we would certainly trumpet that.”
You think so? No more GWOT after that. No more justifications to invade Yemen and Somolia. No more invasions, no more endless spending on the Military Industrial Complex, right? Sometimes an icon is worth far more dead than alive… even an “evil” one.
“Any there’s little reason to think that he up and died unless we killed him.”
The man was dying in early 2001 from kidney disease. That’s well documented. Even his stay in the US hospital in Dubai in the summer of 2001 is well known. And unless they dragged a dialysis machine into the caves of Tora Borra, I don’t think he made it.
There is substantial reason to believe the man is dead. And even more to see that these messages that are supposedly from him are forgeries designed for political purposes.
And, I should add my apologies to Mr. Moss that his great diary ended up with comments like this in his thread.
Whoa. I was just anticipating that the right wing pundits would seize on this as a way to discredit climate change proponents. But you’ve taken it to a completely different place.
I tend to agree with macquerman, though. A dead bin Laden is a much more valuable political tool than a live one. We can always invent a new bogeyman.
RBG – No worries. I’m just trying to start some interesting conversation, whichever direction it goes.
People with money and a decent diet don’t die from kidney failure.
http://www.renalpatients.co.uk/capd.htm
machines for dialysis are far from a necessity and are far less common in the rest of the world then they are here.
even a decade ago, people in the US were being moved from hemodialysis and a great many people think that the move is being hindered by reimbursement structures.
bin Laden, as do many fairly-well educated and fairly affluent people, could live well and for decades without machinery.
Elvis is DEAD? Nooooooooooooooooo
Well, I can understand that, but you didn’t mention bin Laden’s suggestion that Muslim countries should drop the dollar, and that is what I first started talking about really.
He also mentioned that he agreed with what Noam Chomsky said about banksters, so I guess they will equate opinions like that with “the terrorists” as well right?
Like I told the other guy and carefully laid out… there is good reason to believe that bin Laden died of kidney failure in 2001. He asked, I told him.
And one more thing, since you brought it up.
“A dead bin Laden is a much more valuable political tool than a live one.”
a dead bin Laden has the pay-off shelf life of about one week, tops. I mean, they have already tortured two guys who we now claim were the “maserminds of 9/11″, right? (though the CIA destroyed those tapes for SOME reason)
So you kill bin Laden, hell, you aren’t even killing the mastermind anymore. KSM holds that title now.
But, you keep his ghost running around haunting us every day… well then you can always use him to gin up support for whatever you got going on; Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, … he can always be used to foster instant product recognition, can’t he?
What is the full name of the underwear bomber? Do you know it? Does 10% of the population? What other name is as useful to the imperialists as “bin Laden”?
Plus, since he is dead, he won’t turn up and deny he said any of it.
No, he is vastly more useful dead than alive. He’s no longer a terrorist. Now he is a symbol. Vastly more dangerous.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Dialysis.-a08134767
http://www.sjkdt.org/article.asp?issn=1319-2442;year=2002;volume=13;issue=4;spage=473;epage=477;aulast=Al
factor in his age, wealth, and diet and it’s less than fifty-fifty that ESRD or complications from same has done him in.
Look, all I am saying is, there are people in the intel business and presidents of Pakistan who have said he is dead. There is plenty of circumstantial evidence to support the conclusion as well the least of which not being the fact that the CIA has admitted that they routinely intercepted his communications right up until Dec. 2001.
Now, I’m not going to say that you are clutching at straws, but you are giving me a diagnosis of a man’s kidney disease… whom you have never met.
If even Sanjay Gupta said the man looked like he was on deaths door in the last “verified” video of bin Laden (in 2001) well, I would have to say all this adds up to a dead bin Laden.
I certainly am not going to assert that he’s definitely alive, but I would like to point out that he would have to be very dumb to be anywhere near any communications equipment that we could triangulate.
I was him, I would be whispering to someone who went a mile to whisper to someone else and even that third guy wouldn’t use a phone till he was long down the road.
You think they triangulate video cameras these days? Is a video camera easier to triangulate than an audio recorder?
He’s dead and the War on Terror rolls on and even those who know that everything that Bush and Cheney said was a lie will still support it. Because of bin Laden.
I don’t know about you, but that is the first thing that made me start doing my own research. it just didn’t add up. still doesn’t.
I was suggesting cell phones. Many things don’t add up when we’re short a piece or two or three.
If half of the CIA thinks he’s dead, then progressives should stop taking it for granted that he is alive when these messages get released. Bob Baer. The fact that the MSM never wants to face up to the evidence that he’s dead doesn’t mean that progressives should buy into it. Indeed, with that much disagreement in intelligence circles, to say nothing of progressive circles, it seems that it really is time for qualifications like “purported” or “supposed” to be employed. Failing that, there is clearly clearly an onus on the writer who eschews such qualifications to explain why the opinion of half of the CIA should be dismissed. And obviously (as we see from the discussion here) highly contestable assertions about whether it is better for propoganda that he be dead or alive are not going to cut it and indeed are to first approximation irrelevant as to the actual question.
If we assume that bin Laden is dead, then those of us who don’t believe that the dead communicate with the living should not lend credence to his contention that the United States and the other industrialized nations are responsible for global warming.
On the other hand, people who believe in global warming have felt it necessary to assemble data to support the idea.It seems to be some scientific principle or other that those who assert that things have changed have the burden of showing proof that the change has indeed occurred.
An unsupported theory saying that what we knew to be fact is no longer fact is generally met with skepticism.
We probably should ask Mr bin Laden for more proof.
(this has been somewhat of a jape)
Just to be clear. In your first paragraph, you say that if OBL is dead, then industrial nations have not caused global warming. Have I understood you?
The bin Laden family made its millions in construction funded by Saudi oil money. A lot of money for jihad and fundamentalist infrastructure continues to be funded by Saudi and Gulf oil money. al Qaeda would like to control those spigots not turn them off. So the idea that they have gone all environmentalist is ludicrous. This is just more opportunism and kind of weird opportunism at that (you know like al Qaeda’s late adoption of the Palestinian cause).
not exactly. I don’t mean to say that if he’s dead then the idea lacks validity, but only that if he’s dead we probably should have scant regard for his opinions about the current state of things.
Could we have regard for a dead man’s opinions? Was somebody saying that a dead man could have opinions? Did I miss something?
possibly you have. willyloman and some other folks seem fairly insistent that bin Laden is no longer living, and has been dead for as much as nine years and a bit.
I was attempting to bring to mind some elementary (or high school) reminder that we should assume that he is still among us given a more or less complete lack of fact in conformation of his much-to-be-wished-for death.
Here’s what you said:
“If we assume that bin Laden is dead, then those of us who don’t believe that the dead communicate with the living should not lend credence to his contention that the United States and the other industrialized nations are responsible for global warming.”
Then you said what you meant was:
“I don’t mean to say that if he’s dead then the idea lacks validity, but only that if he’s dead we probably should have scant regard for his opinions about the current state of things.”
Then you said what you really meant was:
“we should assume that he is still among us given a more or less complete lack of fact in conformation[sic] of his much-to-be-wished-for death”
This is a bit of a moving target. Why didn’t you just come out and say we need more evidence for his death?
Sheesh.
Our intelligence agencies must have outsourced the creating of our fake bin Laden tapes to Oliver Stone.
Thank god we won’t need another one until right before the elections.
see comment 8
What do you think of Bob Baer’s assertion that half the CIA thinks he is dead?
Baer’s assertion that half thinks he might be dead leads to the idea that half doesn’t think that.
Anybody coming forward with a scrap of evidence or even a scrap of bin Laden’s corpse is going to be rich and/or famous.
But there’s just nothing other than speculation now to support the idea that he’s dead.
But you assume he is alive. Doesn’t the fact that half of the CIA thinks one way and half think the other make it open question? These folks have been watching him for years.
Well, if they had really been watching him all that well he would be dead by now, don’t you think?
If alive, he would be in his early fifties. Even with indifferent-to-poor renal function, it should be another half-dozen years.
But it’s no sure thing that he’s not dead. Let’s hope for some confirmation of that.
and I’m feeling half-dead, so I’ll wish you goodnight.
Now you hope for confirmation that he’s not dead? I’m confused again.
I thought it was J.J. Abrams, the creator of Lost, by the way the plot goes on and on and keeps changing its own rules and gets more and more outrageous with each new episode.
Time travel works into this script as well- remember the Gretian Formula bin Laden video?
How about the storyline of the fat guy living stranded on an island who just keeps getting fatter? Remember the fat bin Laden video?
I think I am on to something here.
Would we conclude that bin Laden is into climate change for fun and prophet?
LOL
Mr. Moss;
So far I have written a great deal about propaganda. How bin Laden has been a propaganda tool for some time now.
Let’s take a look at your quote. One name sticks out. Evan Kohlmann.
Now, here is why this is important. The man who is called upon to tell us what bin Laden “means” and what is “important” about this new tape, is in fact, a government stooge; a self proclaimed “expert” on terrorism, who, by the way, makes money on all of this.
His entire existance is dependent on bin Laden and enhancing the mythology of “al Qaeda”.
Mr. Ross;
You have a very valid concern. The linking of bin Laden to global warming alarmists is a “alarming” development. Especially when they have a think tank puppet like Kohlmann all ready to step up and tell us all what we should think about it.
Whenever you start looking just slightly beneath the surface message, in this case it is a quick investigation into the first person quoted in the passage you selected, you start to find some troubling info. Like the fact that this guy is a professional liar. He spends his time doing his best to convince juries to convict men to long terms by showing them pictures of things other people have done.
Now here is the real question; you seem concerned that Hannity will use this to connect people who are concerned about global warming to “the terrorists”…
What if I am right? What if bin Laden is dead and he is being used as a PR tool by the CIA and other pro-war think-tank types?
What does that say about the tape? Would you be more worried if Hannity made the connection… or the CIA? Now that is troubling, ain’t it?
RGB, did you delete a comment of mine last night?
You said this to MM:
“Either make a positive contribution to this, and any other, threads or the mods will remove your comments”
My comment was a positive contribution. WTF?
No, I said that I admit of the possibility that he is dead and welcome anything by way of confirmation of that.
The mods did not remove any of your comments from the threads.
hmm.
We seem to be getting some “cognitive infiltration” here as promoted by Fascist Cass Sunstein.
Then Bin Laden narrative had started as violent, secret Jihad to convert us all to Islam. These killers promised to relentlesly attack and destroy public transportation at any time. Now that Evil Doer, financed by Prince Bandar and petro dollars, is complaining about fossil fuel pollution, and international bankers. USAma Bin Laden is now “progressive”. So anyone who criticizes the Oil Companies is a supporter of Al Qaeda.
These “tapes” are pure neo-conservative propaganda. Al Qaeda is a small, secret army created by neo-cons. Just as Ollie North tried to do in the 80′s. They need Bin Laden for their Oil Wars and destruction of our freedoms.
Bin Laden speaking English, lol:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUiNiB2yVCQ
Whatever one might think about the various conspiracy theories presented in this thread (I personally don’t put much stock in them) – one does have to admit that this tape is on target. The US does bear more than its fair share of the responsibility for climate change. And since climate change will cause great suffering in the Muslim world (and everywhere else, too), it is natural that America’s enemies would use this information to discredit the US and entice new recruits. It doesn’t make it right, but it does make sense.
“What about Kucinich? You might as well be voting for Saddam. That’s guys a vegitarian, for Allah’s sake.”
hahahahahaha that was awesome. thank you.
You know what is funny? The “conspiracy theories” put forward on this thread are the only theories to be backed up with supporting evidence on this thread.
So far, the conventional wisdom has only been supported by MM’s diagnosis of bin Laden’s kidney disease (without ever having met him) and the statement used in your original article that comes from the neo-con think-tank member who helps convinct “terrorists” by showing juries pictures of stuff other “terrorists” supposedly did.
Now you can choose to believe or not believe all you want. You can also choose to do your own research and look into the piles and piles of evidence that is out there.
All I can say is, go out there and do the research. Prove me wrong. Don’t take a war-monger like Bush at face value. Like the song says…
“The work will set you free lord,
the work will set you free.”
Now, please try to be a bit more fair. I did not speak of any specific diagnosis of OBL, I spoke to provide the information that even should his kidneys have failed entirely, hemodialysis and related machinery would not have been requisite.
If your kidneys aren’t functioning and you aren’t being dialyzed, you are dead in a week give or take.
your comments about the specific condition of bin Laden:
@37 “If alive, he would be in his early fifties. Even with indifferent-to-poor renal function, it should be another half-dozen years.”
@19 “factor in his age, wealth, and diet and it’s less than fifty-fifty that ESRD or complications from same has done him in.”
@15 “bin Laden, as do many fairly-well educated and fairly affluent people, could live well and for decades without machinery.”
@15 “People with money and a decent diet don’t die from kidney failure.”
You have established his chances, his diet, howmany years he might have left, and the fact that he actually won’t (didn’t) die from kidney failure.
What exactly do you call that if not a “specific diagnosis” of his condition? Which, by the way, is completely different than intelligence officials and medical professionals have said about the man in 2001.
Call it what you want, but it isn’t evidence or even a compelling argument that bin Laden is alive. Break out the Gretian Formula video or the Fat bin Laden video… how about those bits of “evidence”? Not even going to try mentioning those are you?
there are other forms of dialysis, quite effective ones, that do not require complex machinery.
there’s a link or two earlier in the thread. one describes CAPD. (comment 15)
my comments were meant to describe likelihoods and can not fairly be called a diagnosis.
possibly gratuitous link!
http://www.answers.com/topic/diagnosis
what I would call it is an attempt to apply some few nuggets to counter the contention that he should be thought likely dead from renal insufficiency.
he’s considered dead because of many intelligence officials and real professionals (unlike Mr. Kohlmann as I have already pointed out) who have come out and said he was dead. Because they haven’t intercepted communications from him since Dec. 2001.
He is considered dead because of so many proven fraudulent videos that have popped up at politically advantagous moments.
He is considered dead because 6 months after 9/11 even George Bush said “I don’t spend much time thinking about him”
He is considered dead because the president of Pakistan said he was dead.
and, once you factor all that in PLUS the fact that he was very sick and in a hospital in Dubia in June or July of 2001, reportedly on his deathbed, you come to a certain conclusion. All based on a progression of logic through an evaluation of evidence.
willy, to “logically” consider a person dead, you need a logical cause of death.
you’ve posited two causes, violence and renal failure.
I’ve attempted to say that the second cause, while not entirely unlikely, is fully open to doubt.
Scratching the second might be helpful to you and all of us in pointing inquiry toward death by violence.
I thought I was contributing to the discussion, willy, by helping to concentrate the minds’ wonderings toward violent death.
You do understand that CAPD takes 8 to 10 liters of dialysate per day and there is risk of infection at the tube site and/or via the tube? That would be 3 to 4 thousand liters a year. Interesting logistics for Waziristan.
I don’t think that the logistics are at all daunting.
The problem would be in making sure that source of supply would be difficult to find and the supply route untrackable.
It doesn’t matter whether or not he is dead. Half the CIA thinks so, President of Pakistan thinks so… but ultimately that doesn’t matter.
The videos and the audio recordings are phonys used for political purposes.
You know, all this talk about “alive or dead” MM and you have never addressed the question of why this is the ONE THING that Cheney and Bush never lied about.
You have not addressed what I put up about Kohlmann’s think-tank and PR firm background and how he just “HAPPENS” to run a website dedicated to perpetuation of the bin Laden mythology.
This man is used to taint juries when there is no evidence to support “terrorism” charges against people… and you are willing to believe someone like him over rational, evidence based debate?
And all you want to talk about is whether or not you can treat diabetes in cave in Tora Borra?
Good question.
willy, this started as a rather casual question about bin Laden.
I’m not trying to stop you from exploring other things and don’t wish to give the impression that I’m a fan of Bush and Cheney, but try not to lumber me with the burden of having to assume bin Laden’s dead as a starting point for discussing everything that followed Dec 2001.
That’s perhaps allowing zeal to overtake reason.
I would regard using the mendacity and overblown rhetoric of the Bush administration to deny that there really are terrorists also as an overindulgence.
yes, it was rather a good question.
it’s nice not to get stuck on a single thing and to move forward and consider other possibilities.
ultimately, we should agree that it’s not all-important whether this guy bin Laden is still here or not. The more important point is not that he says it, but whether he has anything we need to heed.
Mac,
This is getting mighty dang boring.
How about you write a diary about what you personally believe rather than just poking holes in the works of others?
I’ll give that a try next week-end, if you think it a good idea and if we manage to get through the week.
Whether or not there is a terrorist somewhere in the world was not the question was it?
The question was, if Bush and Cheney lied about everything else, why take them at face value, and in direct conflict with existing evidence, on this ONE topic? The story of the great boogieman and al Qaeda?
I never said terrorists don’t exist. Anyone who kills and maims and attacks civilian targets in order to change a political, social, or economic system is a “terorist”. Kinda like what was done in Iraq and Gaza. so terrorists do exist.
You’re still missing the point aren’t you?
Of COURSE it’s important whether or not the videos and audio tapes are bin Laden (because it means someone is faking them obviously)
What I said was that it’s not important if he is alive or dead. Either way the fake messages are still being made.
Now if you wish to agree to that, then we are agreed.
willy, (and all) forgive me for pointing out that the tapes could be just as fake if he were alive.
it’s even possible that one or two of them could be seen as an effort at provocation. sort of release a tape making him sound stupid enough to provoke him into releasing a real one.
I think it’s a great idea for you to actually do some hard work instead of just poking at the efforts of other good folks who have invested no small amount of time to post diaries here.
Regarding your comment about “if we manage to get through the week”… that is totally in your hands.
You will either find ways to make a positive contribution to this community or the Mods will do what they would prefer to not have to do.
It’s your call.
wow.
just… wow… they are making fake bin Laden videos… in order to trick him into making a real one…
wow
here’s a guy who seems to be saying that maybe the whole Al Qaeda thing is a way to extort aid money.
I’m not sure if he’s not being a little bit sarcastic or something.
http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=19701