A bit of politics…

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are my own. If you wish to comment, you are free to do so, but please make sure you read the whole post before commenting.

I will not tolerate a single comment that contains any kind of insult, racism or hate against any religion or ethnicity.

 

If you’ve been following me on twitter, then you probably noticed a bit of political “debate” happening lately over there. If not, let me summarize it :

I retweeted a tweet by @LowKeyMusic1 where he says that “burrying” the body at sea does not constitute “respectful of muslim traditions” while talking about the recent death of Osama Bin Laden (OBL), I received some answers from people angry at me for retweeting that, and some people saying that OBL does not deserve respect, to which I replied that any human being deserves respect regardless of what they’ve done, and even if that person had lost all of its humanity (isn’t it true anyways that there are “animal rights” associations and you’re supposed to respect even animals?). Saying something like that was enough to warrant me being branded a terrorist or “supporting and defending terrorism” and people even saying that if Bush or Obama would have been killed, I wouldn’t have said anything about respect, and that I would have been happy. It even went as far as people deducing from what I said that I was “happy that people died on 9/11”.

What also happens was that, in answer to that, @PSXScene told me that OBL didn’t deserve any respect for what he did, to which I answered that nobody knows what he did, he was trained by the CIA and he may have been hired by the CIA for all we know, so we shouldn’t be so quick to judge people without knowing the absolute full truth. That gave me a response from @PSXScene, and I quote “Nice tin-foiled turban you’re wearing”. That remark got me pretty  upset because it was a clearly racist and offensive comment that crossed the line. Other reason was that I didn’t understand the “tin foiled” comment as I didn’t know what the “tin foiled hat” expression meant. I later realized the meaning of it and it did calm me down a little to be honest, but the turban comment was still an offensive, racist and over the line comment that many other people also felt was racist (although they were american and fully understood the meaning of it). When I got into the argument about this racist comment, other people started sending me even more racist comments, like “I pee on the quran and spit on mohamed” or “All you dirty arabs should die”, and other stuff like that.

I have since continued tweeting my opinion and I’ve seen many people agreeing with me, as well as a few others who disagreed. Some of those decided to simply unfollow me (no harm done), others decided to go on an insult rampage (blocked, bye bye) while a few decided to reply and start an intelligent exchange of ideas which usually ended up with either “I understand what you meant now, sorry for being pissed earlier, I agree with you now” (from them), or “sorry, that’s not how I intended to say it, and I’m sorry if I offended you” (from me), or “I disagree with you, but I understand your position and respect it” (from either).

This whole mess is why I decided to write this blog post, because I want to make sure people understand what I’m saying, and also to point out some of my political views so others can think about them too.

First things first, I believe in free speech, and I believe that everyone is entitled to their thoughts and no one should be  silenced for whatever reason. The backlash I got, people insulting me, people threatening me, and people telling me to “stop posting garbage” is in my opinion a way to prevent me from having an opinion. It is not a government going after me to prevent me from speaking, it is a community of people trying to pressure me into shutting up (through insults or through accusations of supporting terrorism, etc..). As you probably know, I will not be silenced, if Sony couldn’t get me to hide behind a rock, then I don’t believe that some twitter ‘friends’ would be enough to make me shut up. On the contrary, I will continue to post or retweet anything that I personally feel is an intelligent comment, worthy of everyone’s attention, regardless on whether or not it’s “pro-american policies”. If you disagree, feel free to discuss it with me, as long as you stay respectful, it will be my pleasure to debate anything with you. If you disagree, you are also free to unfollow me, or to simply ignore me.

 

Now onto the issues at hand. First, about Osama’s death, I couldn’t care less. I do deplore any loss of life, and I did want to see him being brought to justice rather than executed (assuming it was an execution). I was asked by someone how they should have handled his burial,  and my answer still stands : “I don’t care, dump him in the sea, freeze him in a morgue, whatever. The only issue I have here is that Obama said “respectful of Islamic traditions” which is bullshit”. So, yeah, I’m not pro-ben laden, I’m not sad that he got killed or whatever, my original retweet wasn’t about OBL himself, it was rather about Obama’s statement about “respecting Islamic traditions” and I wanted to point out that that statement was not entirely true.

There was also the issue about the celebration of OBL’s death, and my opinion does not change, and I’m far from being the only one to believe that : People should NOT be celebrating someone’s death, no matter who it is. It’s a simple matter of being human or not. As a human being, I don’t think that we should celebrate, yell and chant because some guy, even our enemy, got killed. Now everyone who says that yes they should celebrate and that if I don’t go out and celebrate with them, then I’m “supporting terrorism” are just trying to use fear to assert their opinion. There was this quote that was largely retweeted on twitter which said “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.” which sums up exactly the message that I was trying to get across. The quote was originally attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. but was later revealed to be a misquote (and the original author is actually Jessica Dovey) and I even saw people turn down that argument because it’s a “fake quote”.. but, regardless of who said it, does it make it any less truthful ?

I understand people feeling relief, and being glad that OBL is dead, I can even understand people being happy that he’s dead, it makes sense somehow. But what I’m criticizing here is that people are *celebrating* as if their soccer team just won the world cup. And if you say that people were celebrating because they “won the war against terrorism”, that’s bullshit because people were celebrating the death of Bin Laden, as simple as that, and everybody knows that the death of OBL was nothing more than revenge (not even justice since he didn’t get to face a jury) and that although OBL was the figure representing Al Quaeda, his death will be practically (possibly not entirely) meaningless in the running of their operations (it might even anger them and make them want to get their own revenge). Even Obama did say it in his speech, the war on terrorism is not finished and Al Quaeda is still running without OBL, so really, that wasn’t a “victory on the war against terrorism”.

That makes me think about something else I said which seems to have rubbed people the wrong way, I quoted something from Naruto (a Japanese anime that I like watching) where he said that the only way to end the circle of hate is for people to learn forgiveness, that revenge only generates revenge and it becomes an endless cycle of war… (I just checked the exact text I tweeted and it was “The circle of hate must end, vengeance must stop, or there will always be war…”). I’ve received various hate responses of people thinking that what I meant by that was that OBL shouldn’t have been killed. I honestly was not thinking about OBL, it did not cross my mind, and whether or not he should have been killed is not for me to decide, like I said, I do not care about him, all I care about is that humans shouldn’t die by the hand of other humans. I simply remembered that sentence and decided to tweet it because when I heard it (a few months ago), I thought it made sense and something reminded me of it. It is also true, in the sense that the US government did ‘something’ to piss off these terrorists, they got their revenge by the 9/11 attack, to which the US took revenge by invading Afghanistan and Iraq, killing thousands of people over there, who will leave behind families that will be fueled by revenge, thus possibly joining terrorist groups, now they killed OBL for revenge, and some Al Quaeda group might want to take revenge for this, etc.. So I’m not saying that you should forgive and move on with your life, I’m just saying that as long as there is revenge, there will be war, it’s an endless cycle, and I do not believe that the human nature will allow that cycle to be broken.

About the “tin foiled” comment and the “conspiracy theory” stuff, I never said I believed in that stuff, but what I did say is that I don’t believe in what the media says. I do however believe in some of the conspiracy theories, some others I think they are far fetched, and some I don’t know if I should believe in them.  My main point is to tell you : Stop being blinded by what the media tells you, they can and they will lie, think for yourselves for once. And it’s true, the government lies on many things, if not the government then the media will lie simply because the more sensational it is, the more they get to sell! Just like when George Hotz went to South America for vacation and came back to see all the news talking about how he fled the country, etc.. and so many people believed that, simply because they didn’t take 5 seconds to think “does that even make sense???”. The same applies with the mainstream US (and international) media, so if someone tells me “they said on CNN that..”, that’s enough for me to question what he’s about to say. If you don’t believe me then think about the Iraq war. It was proven that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that the government knew it and lied to the US citizens and defied the UN and invaded Iraq anyways. Go read the book “Fair game”, or better yet (for most of you, me included) watch the movie of the same title “Fair game”. I watched that movie recently, and at the end, I was shocked to see that it was all a true story, then I started searching about Valerie Palme Wilson and her story. What shocked me is not the fact that the US Government lied publicly, knowing that it was lying to its citizens only in order to justify a war that never should have happened, or that it then tried to crush and destroy its own citizens, trying to censor them and deny them their right to exercise free speech. What shocked me is that this story was known, shown on TV with a public hearing and the American people should know all about it, and yet, I had never heard of it until I saw the movie. It’s clear that when you see the same things over and over again on TV, you end up believing them, you end up forgetting all the other things that the media doesn’t want to show you more than once (just enough to say that they are fair since they ‘reported’ on the news). Same goes about how some colonel or something lied about the event where the US Army killed journalists in Iraq and until wikileaks showed the video of what really happened, nobody could have proven that the military lied about the events that took place that day. And another rather sad example of the media lying, do you remember right after 9/11 when all medias and newspapers were showing a video/pictures of Palestinians “celebrating the tragedy”? Until it was later revealed that the footage was dated from 1995 during a national holiday? This is a clear example of why you shouldn’t always trust what you see on TV, and that was my point.

And while we’re at it, you probably all heard the news of how Bin Laden was killed in a firefight, then later that he was unarmed but struggling, then later that he was shot after he was in their custody… that’s simple proof that everything you hear on TV isn’t necessarily 100% true. Whether he was killed in a firefight, or when struggling, or was simply executed, it doesn’t matter, we’ll probably never really know what happened in there, what I want people to understand is just that : Don’t state something as a fact if you don’t really know what happened.

One important thing to note.. when I say “Don’t trust the media”, it applies to all medias, not just american ones.

 

The last subject I want to talk about, considering this post is already quite huge, is about the whole “you are anti-american”. Because I’m stating my opinion which happens not to be “Death to all those dirty arabs”, I’m suddenly anti-american? People automatically say that I’m defending terrorism and that I was probably happy that people died on the 9/11 attacks. Seriously? What do you guys don’t understand about “all life is sacred”? Where did I ever say “all non-american life is sacred” ? Human beings should not die by the hand of other human beings, it’s as simple as that. And you know what, I can see all over the internet tons of americans saying the exact same thing as me, are they anti-american too? I simply hate this idea of “you’re either with us or with them”. if I don’t end my sentence with “God Bless America”, it almost looks like I’m anti-american, or that I don’t care about those who died on that fateful day. You keep saying “God Bless America” while I say “God Bless the World” and yes, America IS included in the World. Like I said to @xPreatorianx on twitter : “There are way too many innocents who died, I deplore the loss of life, whether it’s an iraqi child bombed and killed for no reason or whether it’s a US soldier sent there to die while doing the deeds of the rich bastards profiting from the war”.

This whole thing seems to make people see things black or white, where in reality, life is full of shades of gray. When I express my opinion, and if people disagree with it, I get labeled a terrorist for some reason.

I would suggest people listen to what Glenn Greenwald thinks about the subject. He is an american, and yet, everything he says seems to be exactly what I’ve been saying too. The difference between me and him is that he probably knows how to communicate his ideas a bit better than me. You can view an interview with him on the subject at the following URL : http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/35971

 

I believe that’s enough politics for today. I’m not gonna go too deep in that territory for this post as I just wanted to clarify some of the things that people might have misunderstood and make my opinion clear. Also, above all, I wanted to make people open their eyes and think about what’s happening around them instead of following blindly. I hope I achieved (at least partially) this goal.

 

KaKaRoTo

42 thoughts on “A bit of politics…

  1. Good post. I think what a lot of people (not all but most) don’t like about non-americans posting stuff, is that they throw us all into a melting pot. I had a horrible conversation with someone you retweeted, where the person would state how ignorant us Americans were for listening to the media and having the media think for us.

    I proved him wrong, as I’m an adult American, who doesn’t listen to the media and their lies. What I did not like about you retweeting him, is that it made you appear to share his views. You have to understand why so many of us are defensive about being American. Everyday, I see tweets and news stories about how horrible America is, and see all these American bashers treating us like subhumans.

    • Thanks, I’m not sure which one you refer to, but I had someone else make a similar comment to me, where I found out the retweet said something about “americans” and it was interpreted as “american people” where it should have been interpreted as “american politics” (or american government).
      I will often retweet something where I think there’s something I agree to, but sometimes I don’t agree with everything in it (just yesterday I think, I retweeted a link to article which was bullshitting and I disagreed with, but 10% of it was interesting, so I still thought I’d share)

      Quite often when speaking about “americans”, ‘we’ refer to the government. It also happens that it refers to the people themselves (like for example, when saying “americans are blinded by the media”), in which case, it’s a generalization.
      It certainly makes things easier to generalize, but I do understand not everyone is the same, and I understand that it sometimes offends you just like it offends me when people generalize saying “these arabs/muslims”.

      I think the reason you see people bashing america and making you feel like they see all americans as subhuman is because to the rest of world, people see America treating others as subhuman. At least, I think that’s the general opinion, but I wouldn’t know for sure.
      I mean, recently, I’ve seen people yell at me “3000 people died on 9/11”, and using that “THREE THOUSANDS” to ‘shock’ me, but somehow they forget that over a HUNDRED THOUSAND iraqis were killed in the Iraq war that the US started. Comparing 3 000 to 100 000 isn’t fair, in my opinion, every single life is a tragedy, but somehow, some people make it look like an american’s life has more value than a non-american’s life. (And yes, I said ‘some people’, not ‘americans’ ).

      • It saddens me that I have to agree with you about that being the general consensus.

        Thank you for clearing that up for me. While I’m sure most of what you think about Americans is directed toward our government, that’s not what a lot of non-Americans think. It’s a simple trade off for us, our people show ignorance, we get ignorance back.

        • People throw so much hate against americans that it’s easily forgotten that where you’re coming from does not define your intellect and there are ignorant people everywhere.. those who group all americans together are just as ignorant as those who group all arabs/muslims together.

  2. Dude, let it go.

    I watched your whole petty little internet fight and seriously feel like you need to grow a pair and man up. @PSX-SCENE made ONE comment, which you then proceeded to blow out of proportion in your obstinate misunderstanding. Then @PSX-SCENE did the bigger thing and just let it go, while you on the other hand posted a gushing tirade about religion, politics, the value of human life, and all sorts of utter bologna.

    Firstly, if this had been closer to the actual events of 9/11 you wouldnt give a shit. Dont try and tell me you cannot justify the killing of any human life. Come on?! Quit trying to hop on the hipster-hacker bandwagon and flouting your high and mighty ethics. Leave that kind of shit to real hacktivists like @ioerror and go back to having third grade level […] fights with @Mathieulh like you used to. Osama bin Laden was a horrible man, who orchestrated multiple terrorist attacks, including the largest attack on American soil EVER which killed at least 3000 innocent men, women and children. If ever a man has deserved to die so far in my lifetime, it was Osama. You reap what you sow, and he sowed nothing but the seeds of hate.

    Secondly, @PSX-SCENE did not insult your ethinicity, Islam, the value of human life, or anything like that. Just your r-tarded borderline conspiracy theories regarding the whole killing of Osama. At the very worst the tweet made people laugh at you for half a second. But that wasnt good enough for you because you needed to launch a full out attack and basically throw the most childish temper tantrum I have ever witnessed on Twitter.

    YOUR comments were clearly the ones which went over the line. This new blog post, and its wack-a-doodle conspiracy theories, not only disgust me, but prove that you are a loony when it comes to politics. I may not /always/ be bursting with pride that I am an American, but I sure as heck will always be proud that you are not. Go back to coding, and leave the real world for people with common sense.

    Thanks!
    – Anthrax

    PS. This post contains no racism or discrimination against any foreigners or religion etc etc. The only one any of this malice is directed towards is yourself, your wacky ideas, and your disturbingly weak grip on reality :]

    • I’m keeping your comment even though it’s not much more than a huge load of thinly veiled insults (actually quite transparent insults), I’ve just censored one word though, the rest is as is.

      Your whole comment makes no sense, I don’t know if you even read what I wrote.
      You complain that @psx-scene made “ONE comment”, but if you’re not arab, then you have no idea what that ONE comment means. I’ve seen people being sued and politicians resigning for making “one little comment” that may, possibly, potentially sound antisemitic. If you’ve never been victim of racism, then you can’t make it sound like it was fine because it was just one comment.
      Also, like I explained in this post, I didn’t know what “tin-foiled hat” meant, and didn’t get the connection, when someone explained it to me, it did calm me down from being infuriated to being pissed, but that comment was still unacceptable, no matter how you want to spin it, and I’m clearly not the only one who thinks that.

      If you think OBL deserved to die, good for you, I’m not saying the contrary, I’m saying human life should be respected, and a human being should not kill another. If you don’t agree with that, fine, say you have no humanity, but I don’t see why you need to insult me with these, rather low, remarks.

      Either way, this blog post isn’t about @psx-scene at all, if you’ve read it, you’d probably know, so I don’t know why you keep coming back to him. And for your information, the connotation of saying I’m wearing a turban, IS in fact a racist insult that attacks me, my beliefs and my religion (probably not my ethnicity though). And if he wasn’t a racist, he could have fixed it by a small “sorry, i didn’t mean it like that, this is what I meant..”, but no, his answer was “Not racist. Just don’t like terrorists or people who support or defend them” which is just as infuriating and clearly not a “I didn’t mean to offend” reply.

      P.S: You have a weird definition of “common sense” from what I can see. Next time I’ll blog about how I hate when people say “You either think like me or you’re stupid/crazy/loony/disgusting/childish/etc..”.
      Thanks for the idea.

  3. It’s nice yet futile attempt, to make THEM understand…

    There is two kinds of people: people who got it a long time ago, who were nodding at your tweets and shaking their heads at psx-scene’s tweets
    and ignorant people, who will not ever think for themselves

    This seems like an attempt to make some of those understand. I just don’t see that happening.
    To quote the Matrix “many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it”

    • Yes, it’s a futile attempt to make some of them understand, but not for others who are still open minded and simply are missing some facts.
      I was one of those “idiots listening to the media and believing anything” not too long ago, then I got enlightened because I was ready to listen to other people’s points of view and they made me realize that nothing is as it seems.
      So there are 3 types of people, those who got it a long time ago, those who never really thought about it, and those who don’t care about what you think and only think that they are right.

      You quoted the Matrix, I’ll quote the Quran : “Allah has set a seal on their hearts and their hearing, and there is a blindfold on their sight” (it’s said multiple times, but referring to those who do not believe in God.. it goes on to say that no matter what you say, or what crystal-clear miracles/proof you show them, they will never believe because their eyes and ears are sealed). The same applies here, although about ideology rather than religious belief.
      I like that quote because the first time I’ve read it, I thought “wow, this is basically a message to all these terrorist, and it shows that they never took the time to read and understand the Quran that are supposedly defending” because along those lines it also clearly says that religious belief is for one’s self and that there is no use in trying to convert people, they will not accept it because God made it so. So those extremists who think they must convert people are by definition going against what the Quran tells them.

  4. As summary, quote from twitter(not mine, but I like it): “It’s 2011. The West is debating whether or not torture was effective in finding a guy suspected of a crime and murdering him without trial.” USA always like to teach everyone about democracy, freedom and human rights. But conveniently ignore all those when it suits them.
    P.S. Don’t understand me wrong I do not support jihad or any other sacred wars waged in the name of someone or something. Just can not stand hypocrisy.

    • Yeah, but the US isn’t the only being hypocrite, the whole world, every politician of every country is playing the hypocrite.. and those who “play nice” are probably hypocrites trying to get more votes.. I believe that every country in the world is doing the whole “do what I say, not what I do” thing, and it’s pathetic.
      Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

  5. Yes because all people who disagree must be simple and ignorant. That is such an enlightened view point.

    • I think his “ignorant” remark referred to people who actually refuse to listen and start insulting, etc.. not necessarily “you are ignorant if you don’t agree”, at least that’s how I read it, but I can’t be sure of what was his intention by using that term.

  6. The second comment was @ArtificialZero. Thought it would be with his. Sorry for the spam.

  7. 11 Sept. 2001: Two planes crash into the WTO in New York, thousands die. Some people in some other part of the world celebrate this event and burn american flags (or, at least, that’s what we’re told)
    2001-2011: The USA and its allies attack the sovereign country of Afghanistan blaming them and their government for the attacks on the twin towers. This war kills thousands of innocent people and culminates with the killing of Osama Bin Laden (in another country), who is presumed to be responsible for the aforementioned attack. Some people in some other part of the world celebrate this event and burn pictures of Osama Bin Laden.

    Now I ask you… What’s the difference?

    About the burial: Americans should read the Iliad to learn about respect for the dead. Osama’s dead body could have been given back to his family, it would have been a display of respect and civilization, and it could have helped mitigate the wrath of his followers.

    About the usefullness of killing Osama I really see none, except for Obama’s presidential election campaign… To Americans it will only mean being hated more by muslim extremists, to the muslim extremists it will only mean they will have to replace him with another leader and resume terroristic attacks…

    Now to answer what I read in some comments:
    “I think what a lot of people (not all but most) don’t like about non-americans posting stuff, is that they throw us all into a melting pot.”
    So do Americans when talking about the Arab world. Truth is everywhere there are people thinking differently, but sadly there are leading trends which are shared by most people. And the leading trend in America is thinking that “Americans are the good ones, the USA is the best democracy in the world, we have a right and a duty to rule the world”. This is the kind of ignorance I (and many others) hate in americans, and it is what makes me think that America really needs a cultural revolution.

    “Osama bin Laden was a horrible man, who orchestrated multiple terrorist attacks, including the largest attack on American soil EVER which killed at least 3000 innocent men, women and children. If ever a man has deserved to die so far in my lifetime, it was Osama.”
    And exactly how many innocent men, women and children were killed by the choices of G.W. Bush and other american presidents in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?
    By that same reasoning, Bush would deserve to die. Don’t you see the stupidity of all this?

    • “So do Americans when talking about the Arab world. Truth is everywhere there are people thinking differently, but sadly there are leading trends which are shared by most people. And the leading trend in America is thinking that “Americans are the good ones, the USA is the best democracy in the world, we have a right and a duty to rule the world”. This is the kind of ignorance I (and many others) hate in americans, and it is what makes me think that America really needs a cultural revolution.”

      Actually, most people that I know and talk to (who aren’t misinformed high school students), don’t think that. A lot of people here do NOT believe we should be the world police any more. We take so much flak for just being American and living here, from people like you. I am American, I’m proud of it, but I have to disagree with that part of your post. Your post simply strengthens mine, when I see someone lumping all of us together.

      It’s nice to see that Americans aren’t the only ones who are ignorant. I guess it reciprocates throughout the entire world. And how exactly do you propose a cultural revolution to one of the biggest melting pots in the world? We have so many different kinds of backgrounds and ethnicities here, I’d really like to see your answer to all our problems.

      Cheers.

      • Maybe I am unlucky with the americans I get to know, maybe most of my knowledge of the american culture comes from the media which may not reflect the true nature of it, but I do not see what you say. I wish one day that will be different!

        There really is no single answer to all problems, but do you suggest America has a more diverse culture than, say, Europe? Or India, or China for that matter… When I speak of cultural revolution, I mean changing the “American Dream” paradigm.

        Now do not think I am not as critical of Europe as I am of America, but that is another matter…

        • Oh trust me. Do not believe the media, even if it isn’t American.

          Take the Guardian, for example. I’ve seen some serious American hating coming from them that does not reflect at all what a lot of Americans think or act like.

          I’m not saying we’re more diverse as Europe. (That’s a country to a continent lol) But we get a lot of diversity in a lot of different settings. And the ‘American Dream’, does attract quite a few immigrants.

          I hope for everyone’s sakes that people generalizing American’s as fat, obnoxious white people when we have so many different cultures in one country.

          Hitler convinced a whole country to turn against the Jews, and that’s all I see when I see everyone against Americans. I think it’s only a matter of time before the hate in the other countries overflows into something more sinister.

          Like the fake MLK quote says, “Returning hate for hate multiplies hate.”

          • You keep wondering why so many people hate America, maybe a consequence of American foreign policy?

  8. It was fascinating to watch the MLK misquote spread across the twitterverse. Regardless of its misattribution, the principle it expressed certainly struck a chord with many people.

    If you’ll forgive my curiosity, can you speak more to Muslim burial procedures? It seemed that there were some Muslim authorities that were willing to express justification for burial at sea and some who did not. Can you speak to the details of this aspect of the Muslim faith?

    • I’m not an expert on Islam, so I don’t think I can speak about the burial procedures, but as far as I know, from my personal experience, you must not refrigerate the body, it must be burried as soon as possible, usually on the same day, or if it’s late (after the 4th prayer), it’s done the following day (after the 2nd prayer of the day). But from what I was recently told, the burrial can be delayed to a maximum of 3 days after the death.
      We are made of earth and to the earth we shall return, so it has to be a burial in the earth. Although Islam is very forgiving and you are allowed to transgress any laws or rules if following the rules are not easy/appropriate. So from what I heard, burial at sea is allowed IF you cannot find any earth to bury the body in. So I’m guessing that if you’re on a boat and the next coast is at 1 month travel, then you can bury at sea, otherwise, if it can be done on earth, then you shouldn’t just dump the body in the sea.
      Also, if burying at sea, you must attach a heavy weight on the body to make sure it sinks to the bottom to make sure it doesn’t get fed on by fish.
      That’s about all I know, but again, I’m no expert, so I can’t say that this is 100% true.

  9. 1.) The disclaimer at the top was unnecessary, this is your blog, ones blog is a place they can express their opinions and not care if it insults people or not.

    2.) I think the only people truly pissed at you are the hardcore Americans, the ones that scream freedom and moan about human rights, but celebrate the death of a man, who was granted no human rights, no fair trial, etc.

    3.) Bin Laden did very evil things, he believed he was doing these things for his god, people forget quite alot about history, Christianity is drenched in the blood of innocents.

    4.) Bin Laden was responsible for a lot of evil deeds, but my personal belief is that he should have been put on trial, he should have been punished according to law.

    5.) Bin Laden was responsible for the murder of many Americans, that was wrong, evil, cruel, there are so many words i could use, but people forget that the American and British Governments for that matter are responsible for the murder of thousands and thousands of innocent civilians, Abombs in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Agent Orange in Vietnam, Cluster bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the small things, like Humans Right marchers murdered in the US, by the police, the Humans Rights protesters murdered by the British armed forces in Ireland, the atrocities caused to the Irish people at the hands of the British were vile, yet no one blinked an eye at that.

    6.) Am i anti American, hell no, my best friend is American, i am however Anti American Government, just as i am Anti British Government, am i worried my opinions offend people, hell no.

    Anyhow to wrap this up, KaKaRoTo, allays be real to yourself, never be afraid to express your opinions 🙂

    • 1) The disclaimer was necessary considering recent events, also I do care about not offending people, otherwise I’m no better than them. And the “no insults” was about “don’t insult me” not “i’m not trying to insult you” :p

      2) Yes I know, but there were also some people who were pissed because they didn’t understand what I was trying to say, twitter’s limitation is annoying when trying to explain things in so many words. This was to make sure there was no ambiguity, it seems I succeeded, haven’t seen much people here saying that I’m wrong.

      3) oh the dark ages 🙂 christianity was used as an excuse to kill so many people.. it still is honestly.. the whole “we will kill 100 000 iraqis because of our “christian charity”, trying to “help them”.. Islam is used to kill many people by some bastards who don’t understand it and who use it for revenge (or out of desperation), and Judaism is used as an excuse to oppress and kill innocent people every day.. people seem to think that Judaism and Christianity used for murders is a thing of the past and Islam terrorism is a thing of the present where in fact, it’s all happening in the present.

      4) agreed, but that never would have happened, especially if putting him on trial would mean that he might tell the world about the real conspiracies that are happening behind the curtains 🙂

      5) hehe, yes, I wanted to bring the issue of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but decided to leave it for a future post.. it’s true, it is by definition, american terrorism.. the killing of innocents with the purpose to achieve political goals, terrorizing the whole world (listen to us, we got nuclear weapons) and subsequently taking control of it. Note how they bombed two cities? not just one and said “oups”, no they killed more than 150 000 innocents and then 3 days later, they said “that’s not enough, let’s kill another 100 000”.

      6) I think it’s best to just say “against all corrupt governments” which means pretty much every government.. At one time in my life, whenever I was asked where I’m from, I always said “I’m a citizen of the earth”.. I eventually grew out of it, but it is true, the whole concept of “countries” is so archaic, what defines a country? it’s borders! And what defines the borders of a country? “where the soldiers stopped”!

  10. kakaroto, thank you for posting this. It’s great to see some well grounded and rational thought on the OBL topic. Yes, he was a war criminal and a murderer (by his own admission) but he should have been put on trial. Regardless of a persons crimes, judicial trial is the way things must be done. To do anything otherwise sets a terrible precedence for the international community.

    As for people who are happy about the operation: America acted illegally, performing an extra-judicial execution while encroaching on another nation’s soverignity. Sure, America has killed the man who masterminded the Sept 11 attacks, but at what cost? If you have to sully your integrity on international law and human rights to achieve a political victory, then that victory is pretty shallow.

    I live in the UK, and grew up with the threat of terrorism (The IRA blew up my shopping mall in 1996) and after years of war, we saw that only way to prevent it is for society and politicians to be self-critical about their own actions and the actions of their predecessors, and to engage with the terrorists/freedom fighters/whatever and work out a compromise. An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind.

    So again, thank you for your post.

    • Thanks, yes they acted illegally and people seem to ignore that.. maybe because it’s the US.
      As much as I do not condone terrorism, I always find myself asking the question “how could someone do something like that”, and you realize that for people to do such things as suicide bombing, they must be in such a desperate state that’s it’s frightening.. the next question is “what made them become so desperate” and I find that most often than not, it’s caused by something the attacked nation did to them.
      I’m not justifying their actions, but I’m saying that these “foreign policies” is what creates terrorism.

  11. I totally agree with the truth disclosure

    I am an Indonesian and live in Indonesia,
    Our country has a dark history. During the 32 year Suharto regime led the country with great bloodshed, he is deceiving people by saying the PKI (political party) is a communist and violent political party, He accused PKI killing the generals to seize power, The fake history is recorded and taught in all schools nationally for years to brainwashed the next generation, All the people involved in PKI executed without being brought to justice, even their families got discrimination for participating in social activities. After the fall of the Suharto regime, revealing the truth that the one who kill the generals was Suharto him selves, PKI is a figure of the terrorist image of the Suharto regime created to make them do anything against his goverment. who oppose and criticize the government will be accused as terrorist/PKI and detention without trial.

    Same pattern with 9/11
    there are references to see from different view of the terrorist attacks
    Zeitgest Series
    The Arrival series

    PS. Sorry my bad english just want to share some information.

    • Thank you for sharing that story with us, I didn’t know about Indonesia’s history, this is very sad and shocking, but we see it repeating itself all the time everywhere unfortunately.
      Know that there is no “real history” because “history” is always written by the winners, and by definition, they will always be partial. This is a big problem because you are always thought to believe whatever lies and false excuses the winning party wants to say.
      Read this
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
      and tell me if you see the word “terrorism” mentionned even once… And yet, to me, it’s far worse than what happened in the last decade that gets so easily attributed the term “terrorism”.. even the attack on Sony’s Playstation Network and they said “cyber terrorism” and yet, it’s not mentioned once on that Hiroshima/Nagasaki article… shocking!

  12. Well like I said on twitter, me and you had a couple of disagreements about politics and OBL, which in turn lead me to attack you unnecessarily. I apologized and we have had a good exchange of intelligent ideas, as well as discussions. I completely 100% agree with your blog post in every way shape and form. I completely despise people that use “terrorism” outside the context of it’s original meaning. In fact I reamed someone out on Psx-scene for comparing the PSN hack to terrorism. Which in turn lead me to post a video about what is happening in bahrain.

    Anyways very good read, and I’m glad you did a full blog post on this issue. If people are too immature to deal with a bit of politics on twitter than they should just unfollow you. Twitter is a social networking platform designed for anyone to share an opinion on any subject they decide to. The last time I checked twitter wasn’t “PS3 twitter” or “coding twitter” so anyone who can’t deal with a bit of political discussion should just unfollow you instead of getting pissy and sending hate messages.

    • Thanks, no worries, we had a good discussion and I didn’t feel offended by what you said, otherwise I wouldn’t have replied 🙂

      You’re right about twitter not being “ps3 twitter” or “coding twitter” and I do plan to use it to make my voice heard, having that many followers is just an advantage I got by being an active ps3 scene member 🙂

  13. Also like another user said, the reason why a lot of Americans get a little pissed off when other nations start talking about us is because of all the hate we have been receiving the last couple of years. Everywhere I go on the internet I see comments such as “Look at all these ignorant Americans, I bet they all share the exact same opinion.” I see this everywhere I go. Basically they all boil down to the USA is full of ignorant ass people. So most Americans are automatically on the defensive because people tend to love using blanket statements when they point out something about American citizens.

    /Signed an American citizen :P.

    • Sorry one last comment. I know that Americans tend to do the same thing with other nations as well. But my point is are always on the defensive because people automatically lump us in the same boat as the sheep in our country. There are some of us still left in this country that don’t share the views of the majority (the sheep in this instance.) and we protest the war, and hate innocent people being killed on all sides just like other nations. Basically what I’m saying is ignorance knows no gender, no race, no ethnicity. Wherever you are in this world there will be ignorance. So just because some Americans use over exaggerated generalizations, doesn’t mean that you should in return do the same thing.

      I don’t believe in this war, in fact I share the same view that we should stop all the needless bloodshed of innocent people from not only America, but all sides of this war. I value human life no matter the culture, the race, gender, or any other variable in the equation.

      But I also despise seeing all these generalizations from both sides. Americans generalizes other nations, and other nations generalizing Americans.

      (BTW my ADD/ADHD is in full swing so I hope I’m making sense.) It’s hard to articulate my thoughts when my ADD/ADHD is acting up. My mind is moving about 300 steps ahead of my hands and mouth lol.

      • Yes, I know it sucks, and I also hate it when people say “all arabs” or “all muslims”, but you said it yourself “the majority (the sheep in this instance)” so it’s easier to generalize on the majority.. although I’m not sure that the majority is pro-bush/pro-war/anti-islam, I know that a lot of people are not like that, but maybe it’s just the most vocal ones that are like that..
        Also, I think the people who actually have an opinion like mine automatically get shut up by others, it’s what I call “peer pressure censorship”. If you say something about “the media lied”, then it’s automatically “you’re a crazy conspiracy theorist”.

        I’m glad we share the same ideas, and don’t worry, I understood everything you said perfectly fine 🙂

  14. Man, you are a good Human! keep it on….

    There is so much more going on in this word that we could never imagin…like a network of a bunch of lies…too much to describe in this post only…but I want only to emphasize somethin….

    Everybody who read this post, spread your words out there and keep positive influence to the people around you….thats very important….educate the younger people….you*ve even won when there is ONE human, that you could show him “the good will of life”

    The human rights is something that we achived with the “blood and sweat” of our ancestors….regardless of “religion or ethnicity” let it dont be a choclate for the Media and Sony and President(s) of our country(ies) and Nestle and OPEC and Mr. ROTHCHILD 😉

    dont give up the fight!

    • Thanks, I don’t think we achieved human rights, we only achieved “political correctness” and “let’s stop saying all the stuff we do”.
      Lol @ Nestle and ROTHCHILD 🙂 Familiar with BDS I see? 😉

      We will never give up fighting the good fight! 🙂

  15. You can’t kill/murder/assassinate an idea.

    oh btw, Anthrax, go watch some FOX news.

  16. I enjoy talking about the topic of free speech and I agree with most of your opinion on it, with one exception. Forgive me if this sounds like a reach for a moral loop-hole but it sounds like you have a double standard on free speech.

    The particular quotes are:

    1). “First things first, I believe in free speech, and I believe that everyone is entitled to their thoughts and no one should be silenced for whatever reason.” (- I agree completely -)

    2).”I’m far from being the only one to believe that : People should NOT be celebrating someone’s death, no matter who it is.” (- This is where I see the problem -)

    This statement implies a limitation to a persons free speech and freedom of expression.

    However I realize it could be your particular wording that’s throwing me off.

    Your opinion might be similar to mine. I do not support celebrating someone’s death but I believe people should not be silenced for choosing to do so.

    In certain situations, I can understand the celebration of a persons death (understanding and agreement are not the same). An example of this would be the celebration from a formally oppressed people due to the death of a tyrannical despot. Granted, my view is of the people celebrating new found freedom with the despot’s death merely being the key event that led to it.

    • Hi,

      Thanks for commenting.
      I may have a double standard, I don’t know! One thing I know is that I’m human and so I can’t be perfect 🙂
      About that particular double-standard you noted, I disagree, I’m not saying that they should be prevented to celebrate, I’m not saying that they should be killed for celebrating.. What I’m saying is that I personally disagree and I believe it’s inhumane to celebrate. If you were to see “arab countries” celebrating 9/11 (which I don’t believe ever happened), you get shocked, and disgusted and you think that those people celebrating have no morale and are animals. This is the same thing.
      What I find most shocking is that the world seems to see it as “normal” and I get treated as a terrorist for simply stating that I disagree with the open celebration of death!
      I’m not preventing you from celebrating, I am stating my opinion (which I’m free to do), you are free to celebrate if you want to, but know that I find it inadequate.

      About your last paragraph, I agree, same here, I was about to say the same thing while reading it halfway through, then I saw you said my thoughts. Celebrating the death of a despot is rather viewed as celebrating newfound freedom but in this particular case, those people were celebrating the death of OBL in itself. And maybe it wasn’t clear, but that’s what I meant in the blog post by the sentece :
      “And if you say that people were celebrating because they “won the war against terrorism”, that’s bullshit because people were celebrating the death of Bin Laden, as simple as that”

      Thanks again for sharing your thoughts.
      KaKaRoTo

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