He is worse than his father. His claims about the establishment of Islamic emirates in the country is not true at all.A local Muslim Brotherhood leader in Libya • Disputing the comments made by Mummar Gaddafi’s son, Saif, earlier this evening, which suggested that Islamists would cause civil war if the protests continued in the country. Meanwhile, Obama’s folks have been fishing for “clarification” what Saif meant. We can already tell you what he meant: He meant to impress us all with the way he inherited his crazy from his dad. source (via • follow)
As always, inothernews says it better than anyone else. Wow.
A tragically messed-up moment: Gaddafi’s kid, Saif El Islam Gaddafi, is making some pretty wild claims about what’s going to happen in the country: “Libya is not like Egypt, it is tribes and clans, it is not a society with parties. Everyone knows their duties and this may cause civil wars. Libya is not Tunisia and Egypt. Libya has oil - that has united the whole of Libya.” Saif also says that the death toll is 14! Just 14! Are you kidding? Not even the most conservative estimate is ten times that. Unfortunately, few journalists are on the ground to refute these claims. (above tweet from Al Jazeera English’s Ayman Mohyeldin) source
Yeah, this sounds accurate: “In TV speech, Gaddafi’s son says media reports are inaccurate; claims a plot to divide Libya into several small Islamic states”
There’s a lot going on here, and there is much to parse. There isn’t a clear picture of the death toll in the country, with Human Rights Watch saying that at least 173 people have died in the violence, while other tallies have been much higher. Word is even spreading that some of the protests have shown up outside of Gaddafi’s stronghold of Tripoli. But none of it is as bad as it’s been in Benghazi. ”It’s like a guerrilla war,” one female resident of Benghazi said of the violence. “There is a battle going on, and sometimes one part is controlled by the protesters, and sometimes other parts are. There are corpses in the street.” More items of interest:
» And in case it wasn’t clear already: No, the State Department, which has been very slow to respond to the Libya crisis, doesn’t think you should be doing any non-essential travel there. And in case that isn’t enough for you, we’d like to also suggest you stay home.
‘Facebook’ received many gifts from the youth who were overjoyed by her arrival and the new name. A name [Facebook] that shocked the entire world.An article from Al-Ahram • Revealing that an Egyptian family had named their newborn girl “Facebook.” We’re guessing that Mark Zuckerberg didn’t expect this to happen when he was sitting around his dorm room, trying to think up an elaborate way to meet girls and screw over the Winklevi. Which goes against the company’s whole stay-out-of-this-mess mantra. source (via • follow)
» China doesn’t screw around: The pro-democracy “Jasmine Revolution” protests, inspired by the situations in the Middle East, haven’t drawn very large crowds. But China’s elaborate and sophisticated response has basically been designed to discourage dissent against the state, making the road the anonymous protesters took much harder than, say, in Egypt.
So how many Tea Partiers went to Madison today? While these crowds look reasonably large in size, they don’t appear to hold a candle to the 40,000+ union protesters going around Madison today. These arial shots seem to suggest much smaller crowds of Tea Partiers than pro-union folks. But guess which ones CNN decided to cover today? Take a guess. (photo from Americans for Prosperity’s Flickr stream) source
Many of the dead and the injured are relatives of doctors here. They are crying, and I keep telling them to please stand up and help us.A Libyan medical official • Describing the scene at a poorly-equipped hospital in the country. The official reported fifteen dead. As painful as this quote is, this one is nearly as gut-wrenching: “The blood of our martyrs is still leaking from coffins over the shoulders of the mourners,” said a protester in Benghazi, the epicenter of the current crisis, in the wake of an attack on protesters who were mourning during a funeral. Libya is a hard country to get accurate information from, because journalists are not allowed to freely work in the country. In other words, much of this information is coming from phone calls and informants and can’t be independently confirmed. Libyan protesters are facing a very tough road; stand with them. source (via • follow)
Congrats Tumblr!
Don’t screw this up Yahoo.
In 2007, I was...
I started tumblr when I was at one of the lowest points of...
Exclusive: How the Syrian Electronic Army hacked the...
soon
Yahumblr.
» When clever names go bad: As we have noted in the past, Bit.ly’s name is tied very closely to Libya. However, as the Interwebs have gone down of late in the country, many are wondering if this means anything bad for the URL shortener market, which also counts owl.ly and ht.ly as potential victims, among others. We’ll let Bit.ly’s CEO, John Borthwick, take it from here: “For .ly domains to be unresolvable the five .ly root servers that are authoritative *all* have to be offline, or responding with empty responses. Of the five root nameservers for the .ly TLD: two are based in Oregon, one is in the Netherlands and two are in Libya.” And plus, they have backup plans in place, like j.mp or bitly.com. So no, nothing to worry about.
Copyright 2009-2013 Ernie Smith • Ask us stuff! • E-mail us • Follow us on Twitter • Follow us on Facebook
