Bin Laden Book Club: Terrorist's Recordings Recommend More Than Killing Americans

Sunday's New York Times includes a somewhat original, overlooked take on the most infamous terrorist in the world, the still-not-caught Osama bin Laden, who released two new audio recordings over the weekend. The article, instead of the standard "Where's Waldo?", focuses on bin Laden's "wide-ranging, idiosyncratic commentaries on current events," which include -- in 30 audio, video and text messages since late 2001 -- support for flood relief in Pakistan and shouts to former President Jimmy Carter. What else? Below is a list, so you can know what to avoid if you hope to remain a Real American.

Climate Change/NASA
Osama bin Laden, in voicing the need to support victims of Pakistan's deadly floods, singled out climate change as a cause of the destruction: "We are in need of a big change in the method of relief work because the number of victims is great due to climate changes in modern times," he said.

Plus:

This year, a January message discussed climate change, even referring by last name to James E. Hansen, a NASA scientist who has warned of global warming.

Noam Chomsky

A 2007 message carped that Democratic control of Congress had not ended the war in Iraq (he blamed "big corporations"), complained that the Bush administration was not moving against global warming and commended the writings of Noam Chomsky, the leftist professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jimmy Carter/Books by ex-C.I.A.
Bin Laden "recommended Jimmy Carter's book supporting Palestinian rights" and "a book said to be by a former Central Intelligence Agency officer that Mr. bin Laden called 'The Apology of a Hired Killer' set off a guessing game -- including at the C.I.A. -- for which of several books with similar titles he might have in mind."

Flowers

"He had a seed laboratory," Mr. Wright said. "He went around Khartoum showing off his sunflowers and saying they should be in the Guinness Book of World Records."

You've been warned. So if you insist on that garden, don't be surprised when the men in suits come knocking.

Bin Laden Resurfaces in Recordings [NYT h/t David Carr]