Online revelry at Osama bin Laden's death
May 2, 2011 by Glenn Chapman
The logo of social networking website Twitter. Word of Osama bin Laden's death has rocketed through the Internet in rapid-fire Twitter messages, Facebook updates, and YouTube video clips.
Word of Osama bin Laden's death rocketed through the Internet in rapid-fire Twitter messages, Facebook updates, and YouTube video clips.
The number of terse text message "tweets" at Twitter topped 4,000 per second while US President Barack Obama announced that the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks was killed in Pakistan in a surgical strike by a US military team.
The barrage of tweets was among the highest message-sending outbursts at Twitter, which handled a record high number of 6,939 tweets-per-second when New Year's Eve 2010 arrived in Japan.
Messages tagged with "#osama" and "obl" quickly jumped to the top two spots in a list of the hottest topics at the global microblogging service.
"Twitter is our Times Square on this victory day," tweeted New York City journalism school professor Jeff Jarvis, who started his Buzz Machine blog online after being close to the World Trade Center when it was destroyed.
Word of bin Laden's death was apparently first leaked at Twitter in a public message sent by Keith Urbahn, chief of staff for former US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"So I'm told by a reputable person they have killed Osama Bin Laden," read a tweet sent by Urbahn about an hour before president Obama announced the killing. "Hot damn."
An IT consultant in the Pakistan city of Abbottabad, who tweets under the name "ReallyVirtual," appeared to have unknowingly delivered a real-time account of the attack that killed bin Laden.
Sohaib Athar began tweeting messages about one in the morning local time complaining about helicopters hovering and than a window-rattling blast.
His series of messages at Twitter told of a helicopter crash, a family dying, and Pakistani military swarming the area.
"I am just a tweeter, awake at the time of the crash," he said in a Twitter message at 06:30 GMT on Monday.
"Uh oh, now I'm the guy who live-blogged the Osama raid without knowing it," he tweeted after connecting president Obama's announcement to what was taking place in his neighborhood.
By the time Sunday ended in California more than 265,000 people had "liked" an "Osama bin Laden is Dead" page at social networking service Facebook.
The Facebook page was packed with comments, videos and pictures, some purporting to be copies of graphic close-ups of bin Laden's mortally wounded body. Many of the comments lambasted the slain Al-Qaeda leader.
"This is an amazing day for the families of 9/11 victims," one Facebook user commented on the page.
In contrast, a set of English and Arabic Facebook pages titled "We are all Osama bin Laden" had logged fewer than 600 "likes."
"This page is a disgrace to Islam," a fresh comment at one of the pro-bin Laden pages read.
"He tarnished the name of Allah and (you are) proud?" the message continued. "May Allah have mercy on your ignorance."
Google-owned video sharing website YouTube dedicated part of its home page to clips related to bin Laden's death.
At geo-location service Foursquare, more than 185 people in San Francisco had "checked in" to a "Post-Osama bin Laden World" using their smartphones.
"Would've been nice to capture him alive and try him for crimes against humanity; show the world we stand for rule of law," Foursquare user 'Jonathan H.' commented with his check-in.
"But I'll take this close 2nd best and raise a glass to all who made this happen."
(c) 2011 AFP
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May 02, 2011
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May 02, 2011
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Your home is freed from its olefactory nightmare. The stench is banished to the festering, oozing dung where it belongs.
May 02, 2011
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-Just in time for the announced spring Taliban offensive. This will guarantee enthusiastic and fanatic participation by hapless disaffected Moslem youth who will gladly sacrifice themselves for the cause.
In order to prosecute a successful war you have to elicit the proper emotions in the enemy, in order to get them to fight and die in sufficient numbers. Clauswitz said it is more important to destroy the enemy than to capture territory, but in fact there are many reasons to fight.
Young cats hone their reflexes by playing with prey for instance, an important aspect of survival. Indeed cats could not hunt if they did not hunt. The same is true for armies. Work is practice for work.
May 02, 2011
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May 02, 2011
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May 02, 2011
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Hate and vengence is inevitable in cultures whose rate of growth brings them into cyclic conflict with their neighbors. There is NO WAY to avoid this conflict and its secondary effects, without destroying the cultures which make it inevitable.
These cultures mandate death and suffering, one way or another. You cannot 'educate' people who are already educated to the fact that what you teach is EVIL. The ONLY WAY to end their influence is to kill significant numbers of 'carriers', so that the Cycle of Ruin does not repeat itself gen after gen, ad infinitum, and imperil the world. It has always been done this Way.
May 03, 2011
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May 03, 2011
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Such is life in many places on this planet at the moment. It is getting better though.
The best and brightest and most pragmatic are always given ample opportunity to emigrate. This is how the americas were colonized and how the waves of immigration were created since the US was formed. By exacerbating misery in the old world.
May 03, 2011
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May 03, 2011
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They aren't mad about 1000 year old crap. They are mad about our support for Israel's policy of no Palestinian state, ever. They are mad about our invasion of Iraq that was preceded by years of grinding them under our boot and making the people there suffer for their leaders sins.
They are terrorists but they have legitimate grievances against us which cause us to be a target. Israel will never willingly form a Palestinian state and we should not have attacked Iraq or sanctioned them for years beforehand. Check the facts and you might not just know the past but you might know something about the future too.
May 04, 2011
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If Palestinians had all of Palestine it would be bursting at the seams today just as gaza is, because pops would have only had that much more room and resources to grow. And they would still be miserable, and they would still be blaming it on someone else, and fighting about it. We see this happening right now in EVERY Moslem country in the middle east.
Religion-mandated overgrowth is a Tool of aggression. It FORCES war and rebellion.
May 04, 2011
Rank: 1 / 5 (1)
That's why the major Kurdish, Shiite, and Sunni nations were all split up and portions of each included in the countries delineated by France and Britain at the end of the ottoman empire.
This keeps the people fighting in orderly, constructive, Predetermined ways. Controlled burns so that the entire forest is not lost from inevitable fire. This does not make Leaders bad people, it only means that Somebody understands how to protect humanity from itself, and goes about it in very practical Ways.
May 04, 2011
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May 04, 2011
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May 04, 2011
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We can deduce a conspiracy by the evidence for it, as with any crime. We need never know the Perpretators if we discern an undeniable Motive, and we can find evidence that it has inspired Actions using sufficient and accessible Means. Our suspicions are aroused if the perceived Results were of benefit, and if they could not have occurred any other Way but through Planning and Preparation. We can speculate on alternative outcomes, and this can provide further evidence for our case.
Motive Means and Opportunity, forensics 101.
May 04, 2011
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Wrong, Crim Psyche 101, a social science, in which there can be outliers and incorrect assumption.
When someone gives you indisputable evidence that contradicts your depiction of the world, do you change your mind, or try to change the source of the evidence.
That is the difference between a conspiracy theorist and a genuinely interested party. Propaganda works both ways. When you ask 'qui bono', you must also understand who benefits through the propagation of a lie.
May 04, 2011
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May 08, 2011
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May 08, 2011
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the same reason people realize they are having a dream. When things stop making sense.
"We Shot Him!" - And to prove it here's a single video taken months ago of a man who is alive and watching the news and has his face turned away from the camera. (but he has a beard.)
Bin Laden is most likely alive and tied up in a secure place with a red hot curling iron being shoved up his butt repeatedly, interrogated for valuable information, as well as their amusement.(you know what the yanks are like when it comes to revenge.)
With the body they hurried to get rid of at sea, having to perform a DNA test on, to be sure if it was bin laden - should have been able to recognize him without a DNA test. but it's no surprise it was positive, over there in goat farmer land they've been inbreeding for thousands of years, families share the same DNA, which they have samples of bin laden and his "family" on hand already.
May 08, 2011
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Consider the consquences if they showed him captured alive, He'd have fame and glory, celebrity-like status. He would have been given a lawyer to exploit every hole in every law, and the right to free speech, and free religion (in his case jihadism) which would no doubt be open for him to abuse those rights, leading to any number of problems with matyrdom and amassing more followers.
He would have been given luxury the whole time the trials dragged on, which they would, people on both sides would be angered left right and center.
Most importantly it would inspire further terrorist attacks - more so than if "dead" - followers would be in an uproar the whole time he was in custody, posing a risk to all those involved, as well as Americans in general.
May 08, 2011
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I'm sorry - but I do not just blindly accept any "good word" no matter how popular it is.
May 09, 2011
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May 09, 2011
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If he is anywhere spilling his guts he is doing so freely, as he has done all along. Why do you think he has been resting in the protective arms of the Pakistani military for so long? He was serving Pakistan a vital Purpose, as he did us.
Above a certain Level all Leaders are on the same Side.
May 09, 2011
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