Osamanomics

Ezra Klein reads bin Laden and is amused that he says

"There are no taxes in Islam, but rather there is a limited Zakaat [alms] totaling 2.5 percent." So he's a mixture of flat taxer and anti-imperialist. Sounds like someone else we've got. So I'm just saying: A bin Laden/Ron Paul ticket would really liven up this race.

Tongue in cheek, obviously, but let's get this straight. Here's bin Laden's context for his awesome 2.5 percent flat tax.

As you liberated yourselves before from the slavery of monks, kings, and feudalism, you should liberate yourselves from the deception, shackles, and attition of the capitalist system… the capitalist system seeks to turn the entire world into a fiefdom of the major corporations under the label of "globalization" in order to protect democracy.

[T]he reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes; and the abject poverty and tragic hunger in Africa; all of this is but one side of the grim face of this global system.

So it is imperative that you free yourselves from all of that and search for an alternative, upright methodology in which it is no the business of any class of humaniy to lay down its own laws to its own advantage at the expsense of the other classes as is the case with you.

So… not a libertarian. When bin Laden takes over (and I blame you, Justin Logan and Chuck Hagel) he will abolish capitalism and bring all of us into some kind of nebulous socialism. Bin Laden's a dumb rich kid, so it'll probably be close to Michael Albert's Parecon.

And scrapping the Constitution to replace it with, well, anything is the least Paul-like gesture you could imagine. 

Comments

[John]

Sounds a lot like what Rabbi Moonbean Michael Lerner supports. I really can't tell one moonbat from another anymore.

[Lost_In_Translation]

9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11

[Derrick]

Does that make bin Laden an "Islamosocialist?"

[NeoCon!]

Does that make bin Laden an "Islamosocialist?"

Osama bin Laden is a neoCommunist! And as such, I now mandate that we spend 25% of our GNP for the next 70 years until he and his followers are wiped out.

[NeoCon!]

Crap.

Osama bin Laden is a IslamoCommunist! And as such, I now mandate that we spend 25% of our GNP for the next 70 years until he and his followers are wiped out.

[tom_sizemore]

David Horowitz tries to convince Michael Albert that Parecon is ridiculous.

[matthew hogan]

Do people actually use "moonbat" with a straight face? LGF dhimmitude.

[joe]

This tape is different from those in the past. It's less about issuing threats and more about issuing criticisms, many of which, like the Global Warming bit, have nothing to do with Islamist ideology.

Osama is trying to set himself as the opposite pole to the American hyperpower by broadening his appeal to other varieties of anti-Americans.

[Lost_In_Translation]

when OBL feels the need to try and broaden his appeal by pandering tot he world, I think we've won.

Can I declare victory on the WoT now?

[joe]

"Feels the need?"

More like "sees the opportunity."

[Lost_In_Translation]

joe

"feels the need"

[joe]

Wishful thinking, LIT.

Wouldn't he have "felt the need" a lot more five years ago? When we were militarily victorious, had the support of the entire world, and he was running for his life?

As opposed to now, when we're stuck in a quagmire, he's safely ensconced among a supporting population, and we're as isolated as we've been in three decades?

[Dan T.]

Say what you will about Osama Bin Laden but the guy appears to have a more realistic view of global capitalism than the great majority of Americans.

[thoreau]

Dying his beard, talking about global warming? He's just one more aging celebrity trying to be hip.

It used to be all about the murder and mayhem, man, but now he just wants to be cool and try to get an invite to Live Earth 2. Dude's sold out.

[Lost_In_Translation]

Joe,

He really sounds alot less triumphant than you think. I mean, where's the fiery rhetoric, the overriding goal to physically destroy the US? Soon he'll be complaining about our medicaid program and its tyranny over senior citizens. After that, the whole terrorist system will collapse in boredom.

[joe]

LIT,

If he's trying to win friends and influence people, then fiery rhetoric and threats of apocalypse aren't going to be terriblly useful.

He's trying to be a statesmen, and broader his appeal.

[John]

Joe aren't you a little bit bothered that OBL thinks that his best shot or succeeding is by appealing to progressive leftists? That really doesn't say to many good things about the progressive left if the most evil man in the world figures they are the easiest mark to woo to his side.

[kohlrabi]

thoreau,

Your comment made me laugh! Thanks!

Joe,

I think you're right.

LIT,

I don't think Joe's saying that he sounds triumphant at all. That's why he's changing his rhetoric.

[joe]

John,

Aren't you little bothered that Osama thinks his best shot is to complain about high taxes?

That doesn't really say very good things about the libertarian right, if the most evil man in the world thinks that they're his easiest targets.

The answer, for any intelligent person, to either quesiton is "No, not even remotely, trying some actual thought instead of a guilt-by-association smear."

[kohlrabi]

John,

In all fairness, it doesn't really say much about the left. The right and the Klan might both be against affirmative action, but it doesn't reflect poorly on the right.

[ClubMedSux]

If he's trying to win friends and influence people, then fiery rhetoric and threats of apocalypse aren't going to be terriblly useful.

Seems to have worked well for Pat Robertson & Co.

[J sub D]

In a not-so-divinely inspired flash of inspiration, I have come up with a solutoin to two of America's problems.
Put Osama Bin Laden in charge of Iraq. 1) He initiates his economuc theories.
2) He is killed by the locals.
3) We'll be out of there.
4) A new dictator will be in charge. (Which is gonna happen anyway.)

Does anybody see any problems with this scenario?

[John]

"The right and the Klan might both be against affirmative action, but it doesn't reflect poorly on the right."

Fair enough. But frankly it does bother me for the right to be associated with the klan or whatever is left of it. It bothers the hell out of me when some anti-semetic isolationist nutjob like Pat Buchanan appeals to the right and claims to be the "only real conservative". So yes, if I were a leftist I would be a little pissed to see OBL borrowing my ideology and rethoric.

[joe]

CLubMedSux,

Robertson never gained any support ourside of his existing angry-fundie base with that rhetoric.

[thoreau]

kohlrabi-

Who can forget the way he'd do a scimitar solo on a live prisoner in the middle of a show? Or his remake of that AC/DC song? He'd sing "For those who wage jihad--we salute you!" and fire his AK47 into the air 21 times.

Now it's all about trying to be hip.

[J sub D]

Robertson never gained any support ourside of his existing angry-fundie base with that rhetoric.

But he has significant influence with the republican party and GOD.

[JBinMO]

I think that one of his followers, a guy from Califirnia, Adam Gedan is now a speetch writer. Either him or Noam Chompski.

[Marcvs]

bin Laden is the manifestation of all that is evil in the world and represents "that which I do not like." So I will now freely associate people that I disagree with as "people that bin Laden would support."

[iih]

It is interesting to see how people on the left and the right (and everywhere in between) are trying to dissociate and differentiate themselves from what OBL said recently, but when moderate Muslims tried to do so (i.e., dissociate themselves from OBL), they were usually easily dismissed as apologetics and co-conspirators by some elements on the far left and the far right (and often people in between).

[Mr. Nice Guy]

"It bothers the hell out of me when some anti-semetic isolationist nutjob like Pat Buchanan appeals to the right and claims to be the "only real conservative"."

John
I like Pat Buchanan. I don't agree with him, or his strange sister on everything, but he strikes me as a man of principle. He could have just shilled for the current GOP switch in principles like the majority of conservative pundits, but he stood his ground and articulated what might be a wrong, but at least consistent, worldview.

I don't think he's anti-Semitic, just one of those few folks who dare criticize Israel (I know the two are often conflated these days, mostly by Likudian fanatics). I also don't think that an isolationist is necessarily a bad thing...

[kohlrabi]

thoreau,

There was time when for $5 a ticket you'd see heads roll for the show opener. Total punk, he didn't care what anyone thought. Well, just the other day I saw him listening to his zune protesting outside KFC. Sad, really, dude didn't even have an iPhone.

[joe]

I only like his first album.

The unreleased one.

I'm sure you've never heard of it.

[QSL]

After that, the whole terrorist system will collapse in boredom.

You mean like this?

😉

[iih]

QSL: 🙂

[DenisL]

I think Osama is directing this video directly at Bush the born again Christian. He is trying to provoke him into escalating by saying we need to all convert to Islam to be good humans. Unfortunately for us an escalation would serve both their purposes.

Check out the transcript of Osama's video at:

http://counterterrorismblog.org/site-resources/images/SITE-OBL-transcript.pdf

Fascinating stuff if you have not read it all.

It really is informative to read a translation of Bin Laden's actual words and not the spins of 10,000 writers around the world.
I find it interesting that Osama Bin Laden, Noam Chomsky (actually mentioned!!), Mike Gravel, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich are in substantial agreement on the problem.

Of course, the solution is another story!! In my opinion neither Bush's nor Bin Laden's solutions are viable when they include "collateral damage" and killing kids.

In any case it is interesting what one can find on the the web.

[libertyman]

I think the OBL tape was a fake. It just seems too conveniently timed. It also contained words like neocon. Not something in the vernacular of most Arabs I would venture. FAKE TAPE another bull crap production of the neocon Intel Center.

[kohlrabi]

Joe,

I bet it's nowhere near as good as the bootleg from afghanistan. That show rocked.

What's sad is, I tried to get him a commercial spot for our local Ford dealership but he got passed up for Mario Lopez, tv's AC Slater from Saved by the Bell. Apparently the focus group thought "Go Bayside" had more resonance than "Go Jihad." The upshot is, I heard he's going to be on The View talking about Michael Vick.

[joe]

*pretends to own the bootleg, while seething inside because he's never heard of it*

[John Kindley]

"So... not a libertarian. When bin Laden takes over (and I blame you, Justin Logan and Chuck Hagel) he will abolish capitalism and bring all of us into some kind of nebulous socialism."

There Reason goes again, illogically confusing libertarianism with Radicalism for Capitalism. To take just one very prominent example, Benjamin Tucker, an influential and radical libertarian, was an anti-capitalist. But the real problem with our statist capitalism as we know it is the one Henry George so eloquently illuminated: the conflict is not between labor and capital, since capital is merely a saved up and materialized species of labor, but between labor and capital on the one hand and the landlords on the other hand, who have been granted a privileged exclusionary monopoly on natural resources that rightly belong to all of us equally, allowing the landlord without producing anything of value to soak labor and capital of the fruits of its labor.

[Smappy]

What was remarkable to me about this speech was it's focus on how nifty Islam would be for the U.S. Mostly in the past bin Laden has just said "get the hell out of the middle east" but everybody hears "convert or die." The text of this speech is the closest I've seen him come to the latter statement (still not all that close, though).

[orion]

The video was just another fake given to you by the same people who gave you the computer edited clip of mohammed atta taken from a made for tv movie and from the same media who managed to kill the immortal al-zarqawi 5 times before being done with him. This whole thing is staged. bin Laden works for the neocons-if he's still alive. After all Bush sr. and the bin Ladens had some of the largest investments in the worlds largest defense contractor (Carlyle Group) on 9/11.

[NoWayOut]

Every single country in the Middle East will become a US state.

I know, I know. You are right now thinking how silly that sounds. But when it happens, I only want you to remember, "What about this is so familiar? Oh yeah, I remember now... someone said this would happen, and I thought then about how silly that sounded. Gosh, the poster known as NoWayOut was RIGHT!"

[bill]

Does anyone else find it strange bin Laden now has a BLACK BEARD (fake beard? it's against the rules of Islam to dye your beard, except with henna, which turns it orange) where before he's always had a WHITE BEARD? It's also strange how the "new" (some suggest it's been around for months) video freezes at the 2 minute mark and doesn't start again until the 12 minute mark? Just during the time it talks about Sarkozy, et. al..