U.S. Government Releases Second Round of Bin Laden’s Letters, Reveals His Surprising Concerns | Sojourners

U.S. Government Releases Second Round of Bin Laden’s Letters, Reveals His Surprising Concerns

Image via Hamid Mir/Canada Free Press/Wikimedia Commons

The March 1 release of a cache of documents obtained during the raid that ended with Osama bin Laden’s death reveals some of the Al-Qaeda leader’s strange concerns.

In one letter, bin Laden writes to his wife, warning her that the dental filling she received in Iran may have contained a computer chip used to track her movements.

“The size of the chip is about the length of a grain of wheat and the width of a fine piece of vermicelli,” he warns.

It also reveals in more detail bin Laden's worries about climate change. In a letter to the American people, he writes that corporate lobbyists are preventing President Obama from implementing the change that Americans had hoped he’d implement — like reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Bin Laden writes:

The way for change and freeing yourselves from the pressure of lobbyists is not through the Republican or the Democratic parties, but through undertaking a great revolution for freedom: not to free Iraq from Saddam Hussein but to free the White House and to free Barack Husayn so he can implement the change you seek. It does not only include improvement of your economic situation and ensure your security, but more importantly, helps him in making a rational decision to save humanity from the harmful [greenhouse] gases that threaten its destiny.

For the American youth to succeed in this change, they need to relive the history of their ancestors and the conditions in their country more than two centuries ago. They need to understand the similarities during that era and their present situation, especially in their fundamental conditions. The British Parliament sided with corporations, then against the interests of the citizens. You have noticed the Congress’s stand with corporations against the peoples’ interests when they refused to legislate against interference in the elections by corporations.

In his call for a youth-led “great revolution of freedom,” bin Laden advises young Americans to read Thomas Paine and to follow the example of the Founding Fathers, whom he calls “men with courage and initiative.”

Browse the entire cache of documents here.

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