Laden Flays US on Climate Change, Financial Bailouts
Lecturing the US and other industrial nations on climate change in a new verbal assault, al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden has urged a dollar boycott over US ‘slavery’, reported AFP.
In a message broadcast on Al-Jazeera television, which coincides with the World Economic Forum in Davos, Laden said, “All industrial nations, mainly the big ones, are responsible for the crisis of global warming.”
“Discussing climate change is not an intellectual luxury, but a reality,” he said in the audio recording.
The authenticity of the tape could not be immediately verified, report said.
“This is a message to the whole world about those who are causing climate change, whether deliberately or not, and what we should do about that,” the tape said.
Laden also flayed former US President George W Bush, who declined to ink the Kyoto protocol on cutting carbon emissions, said report.
“Bush… and the Congress before him, rejected this agreement, only to satisfy the big companies,” he said.
“Those (firms) are behind speculation and monopolies, and rises in prices… and they are behind globalisation and its tragic results.”
Slamming financial bailouts set up by rich nations to help big industry cope with the global financial crisis, Laden alleged that the programmes helped companies that caused the economic meltdown, said report.
“When those perpetrators fall victims to the evil they had committed, the heads of states rush to rescue them using public money,” he said.
Borrowing from eminent US leftist Noam Chomsky, Laden said that the US administration operates like the mafia, said report.
“Chomsky was right when he pointed to a resemblance between American policies and the approach of mafia gangs. Those are the real terrorists,” said Laden.
The al-Qaida leader also went on to urge a boycott of the US dollar, report said.
“We should stop using the dollar and get rid of it… I know that there would be huge repercussions for that, but this would be the only way to free humankind from slavery… to America and its companies,” he said.
“Whatever the repercussions of such (boycott) decision would be, staying in slavery to them would have bigger and more dangerous results.”
According to a translation provided by the US-based SITE intelligence Group, he likened the US economy to a bicycle wheel, said report.
“If it loses a link in its chain, it stops running… If the peoples of the world stop consuming American products, this link will become more vulnerable, and this leads to the reduction of harmful gases,” he said.
It may be mentioned that the broadcast came a week after Laden, in another audio message, lauded as a ‘hero’ Nigerian national Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who allegedly tried to detonate explosives on a US plane approaching Detroit on Christmas Day.
