Astonishing collaboration of the day
I have to admit, I can’t really find any words for this. Osama is worried abut global warming? Maybe he should have thought of that before he sent all those ashes and smoke into the atmosphere on 9/11?
HT Salon
On Friday, an essay signed by Castro namechecked the Kyoto Protocol and blasted as hypocritical George Bush’s call, at the APEC summit in Australia last week, for countries to band together to fight global warming. Neither the U.S. nor Australia, Castro noted, had signed the Protocol.
In a suspicious display of climate change harmonic convergence, bin Laden also mentioned the Kyoto Protocol in his latest communique:
“In fact, the life of all of mankind is in danger because of the global warming resulting to a large degree from the emissions of the factories of the major corporations, yet despite that, the representative of these corporations in the White House insists on not observing the Kyoto accord, with the knowledge that the statistic speaks of the death and displacement of the millions of human beings because of that, especially in Africa. This greatest of plagues and most dangerous of threats to the lives of humans is taking place in an accelerating fashion as the world is being dominated by the democratic system, which confirms its massive failure to protect humans and their interests from the greed and avarice of the major corporations and their representatives.”
uh. ..
Yeah, well, he wasn’t worried about how attacks on mass transit systems would affect the environment either, or how they would help prevent more mass transit systems. Though the less mass transit systems, the greater reliance on the automobile, and oil.
So…either the guy is truly insane, or he apparently sees elements in the Left as “useful idiots” who should be cultivated as allies.
I would bet the latter.
It’s just Osama trying to bolster Bush again by providing ammo to the “Leftys Hate America” contingent.
Osama wants this war to get as big and as nasty as possible, just like Bush does. The two of them benefit in power and money every time the rest of us loses.
Why is is suprising? Islamism is nihilism. The myth about man made climatic change is also nihilistic. I can imagine that in a few years leftists will sport “shadow warrior” OBL shirts, together with peace-kafiyah and “pace” flag. Seems to fit the bill.
This alliance may be new, the strategy is old. It was successful employed by the FLN in the war in Algeria against France and it used by North-Korea and the Vietcong. It was still successful when George Habash and his PFLP sought moral support from the european left and more active support from international pro-communist terror groups.
It’s clear that OBL targets a young, western audience in his last video message. Almost none of the subjects (apart from “death to america”) he mentions in his message has any relevance in the muslim world. Wich makes sense, since most new recruits are from western countries and some of the staunchest islamists active today are converts. This is certainly a shift in paradigm. But for the network of islamist terror organisations it is necessary to survive. See the proportions: how many people were killed in the last months due to factional fighting? How many people were killed in terror attacks on US american, israeli and other western targets? Man, if I was OBL I would feel like a big miserable failure. It was about time that he got himself a ghostwriter like Adam Gadahn: http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/gadahn_a.htm
Ah, what’s so crazy about that, at least Osama & AQD wanna pitch in a little.
Maybe Osama could get together with Tom Cruise, Dubya and do a doc. about the environment & how everyone just needs to relax. Maybe premiere it in Germany if they’ll let a few Sciencetologists and extremists join the Aryans who haven’t emigrated to Israel!
Ooops. Meant to change the link to the above. I loved how poor Cruise got slapped down by those sensitive Germans over the summer.
I’m sure those leaders remember exactly when Rosh is.
OBL is obviously cruising for allies. He is also aware that the most profound impact he can have on his enemies is the weakening of their sense of mission and destined victory.
As a statistical matter alone it’s clear that persons who are strongly “environmentalist” tend to have the lowest level of hostility towards terrorism/mass-murder. People who hate “big corporations” are also correlated with greater tolerance for Muslim terrorism and Islamist ideology. Likewise they also tend to be the most hostile and opposed to the Western response and offensives against such terrorism.
Trying to attract such people as allies, and lobbying them by projecting shared interests and concerns is a logical strategy for OBL. At the very least he wants to make sure that their opposition to the West’s anti-Islamism operations will continue. Demoralization of Western society is the key to forcing the West to reject the very validity of fighting, which is why he’s condemning the West using similar language to the Left.
OBL is playing to an audience, and he’s got some interesting ideas on what will make them tick.