osama bin laden
Image via MarineCorps NewYork / flickr.com
On first thought, cheering someone’s death sounds vile. But if I’m honest, I’ve never been so gripped by the sentiment of patriotism as on the day that I sat around a table with more than a dozen men, only one of whom — besides myself — was American. This was the day that President Obama announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed.
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.
Image via Carolina K. Smith MD/Shutterstock.com
Displayed over a blurred image of Osama bin Laden, the headline on the cover of The New York Times Magazine for October 18 reads, “Do we really know the truth about his death? The mysteries of Attobad.”
Weirdly, the article is not an investigation of the truth about bin Laden’s death — it’s an investigation of other investigations. Jonathan Mahler decided to report on two competing narratives about the raid in Abbottabad. His article is a soul-searching reflection on how we can know which version of events is true, or if the truth about our government’s actions can ever be known at all.
After reading his article, it’s fair to wonder if we ever will. If our concern is to learn the facts of the raid, we may easily get lost in a tangle of facts and lies. But that is a truth in itself — a truth of how violence works to destroy the truth.
We need to state the obvious here: the subject of all this reporting is a death by violence. The subject of this story is not the truth. The subject is violence itself.
Model breastfeeding, Fox News vs Jesus, 'Street Sense,' Bin Laden's bookshelf, and more!
Seattle Times and other U.S. newspapers report the death of Osama bin Laden. Carolina K. Smith, M.D. / Shutterstock.com
A year ago today, I read a Tweet that President Barack Obama was interrupting primetime TV to address the nation regarding terrorism. My heart dropped. All I could think about was that terrifying feeling 10 years earlier while watching 9-11 coverage. It only took about half an hour of speculation on 24-hour news stations, Twitter, Facebook, etc., before reports came out that Obama would be announcing the death of public enemy No. 1, Osama bin Laden.
My first reaction was relief. The second, I confess, was one of pride—shared by the nation at the time and many still. But at some point in the aftermath, I read a friend’s post that convicted me and brought me back to reality.
Detainees stand during an early morning Islamic prayer at the prison for 'enemy combatants', in Guantanamo Bay. Getty Images.
The anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death at the hand of U.S. troops has reawakened the political controversy over the use of torture.
In an opinion piece today, Jose Rodriguez, Jr., former director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, says it wouldn’t have happened without torture. He writes of an al-Qaeda operative captured in 2004, who was “taken to a secret CIA prison – or ‘black site’ – where he was subjected to some ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’”
Bin Laden image/meme by Jim LePage that's making the rounds in the blogosphere today.
I’m sipping on a root beer at Barnes & Noble as I work on my revisions for Forest Life. In the meantime I’ve noticed a handfull of debates raging over this photo that has been spreading around the Internet today. This makes sense given that today is the one year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.
Of course thinking people know that his death did not bring about any worthwhile social change.
"Dexter" image via Wylio http://www.wylio.com/credits/Flickr/3484952865.
I’ll admit I’m a sucker for stories about the malleability of human morality. From the mob movies, where a guy can whack his cousin but better not show his Patron any “disrespect,” to justice-seeking serial killers like “Dexter,” there’s plenty of justified violence to be found.
Where do such seemingly contradictory value systems come from? And do they actually happen in the real world today?
How about the politician who claims a platform that values a respect for “all life,” while justifying war and advocating for capital punishment? Or those who celebrate the death of Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein? And the list goes on.
It’s common in western culture to objectify the Islamic faith, cherry-picking texts from their scripture and plucking choice sound-bytes from extremist leaders, to portray the whole of the religion as inherently violent. This, in turn, is employed to justify violence in-kind, or worse, preemptive violence, as in the case of our invasion of Iraq.
I call this “Dexter” theology.
In mid-December, the Religion Newswriters Association released its top 10 religion stories of the year.
The Associated Press now has its annual poll of U.S. editors and news directors and their choices for the top news stories of 2011.
Since this exercise is certainly a subjective one, your list might also be different from mine or the AP's. What would you add or delete from these lists?
Osama bin Laden in 1997. Image via Wiki Commons http://bit.ly/pJ0ufx
Each year, members of the Religion Newswriters Association, the world’s premier association dedicated to helping journalists write about religion, vote on what they believe are the top religion stories of the year.
This year, more than 300 religion journalists cast their ballots in an online survey conducted Dec. 10-13, choosing the death of Osama bin Laden on May 2 in a covert operation in Pakistan by U.S. Navy SEALs and CIA operatives ordered by President Barack Obama as the top story of 2011.
See the complete list of RNA's top religion stories of the year inside.
Last night, death was interrupted when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay of execution for a Texas man convicted of a double murder in Houston in 1995.
Duane Buck was set for execution by lethal injection sometime after 6 p.m., Thursday September 15 in Huntsville, Texas. His execution would have been the second this week and the 11th so far this year in Texas alone. Two more executions are scheduled for next week.
Here's a little round up of links from around the Web you may have missed this week:
- Sandwich coasters are fun.
- Guy lets the world use his Starbucks card for free.
- Voters put corn kernels into jars with their favorite Republican presidential candidates.
So now we know why over the past few years our Internet service would sometimes slow to a crawl: Osama bin Laden was tying up the circuits Googling himself. Repeatedly.
Using online and wireless communication to organize large, diverse groups of people has been a key component of the nonviolent Arab Spring uprisings.