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http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/21/14018495-protesting-libyans-overrun-militant-compound-in-backlash-against-armed-groups?lite=obinsite

What goes around comes around.


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From this story it looks like the libyans are pissed at al quaeda.

I thik this is more to to with disbanding the militia groups that started during their revolution rather than a pop at Terrorism.

Or it could be like the cued rent-a-mob who turned up to beat Saddam's statue with shoes after the fall of Baghdad.

Most of what appears spontaneous is not. The attacks on the consulate which killed the US ambassador and three others appeared spontaneous yet are believed to have been pre-planned.

 Orlanth wrote:
Or it could be like the cued rent-a-mob who turned up to beat Saddam's statue with shoes after the fall of Baghdad.

Most of what appears spontaneous is not. The attacks on the consulate which killed the US ambassador and three others appeared spontaneous yet are believed to have been pre-planned.

I read a report that 30,000 people were involved. There had to have been preplanning on that one.

 Orlanth wrote:
Or it could be like the cued rent-a-mob who turned up to beat Saddam's statue with shoes after the fall of Baghdad.

Most of what appears spontaneous is not. The attacks on the consulate which killed the US ambassador and three others appeared spontaneous yet are believed to have been pre-planned.

This could be, but taken with the report that some Lybians were happy that the ambassador was still alive and tried to get him to the hospital and the pictures of people carrying signs appologizing for the attacks, it could very well be that this is more than just a staged event.
That's me hoping antway. I'd just like to see these people get some chance at a decent life without all the craziness they're having to go through.

djones520 wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Or it could be like the cued rent-a-mob who turned up to beat Saddam's statue with shoes after the fall of Baghdad.

Most of what appears spontaneous is not. The attacks on the consulate which killed the US ambassador and three others appeared spontaneous yet are believed to have been pre-planned.

I read a report that 30,000 people were involved. There had to have been preplanning on that one.

Quite easy really, use a flash mob. And to use a flash mob all you need is a few agitators and some mobile phones. The 30000 might join in on their own accord, but people are easily led, lead them and they may follow.
Politicised direction of mobs goes back a long way, modern communications just make it much easier and achievable with far fewer resources. The Romans knew how to manufacture and direct a mob over two thousand years ago..

Here's the story about Lybians trying to aid the ambassador

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/17/world/africa/libya-benghazi-video/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

Relapse wrote:


This could be, but taken with the report that some Lybians were happy that the ambassador was still alive and tried to get him to the hospital and the pictures of people carrying signs appologizing for the attacks, it could very well be that this is more than just a staged event.
That's me hoping antway. I'd just like to see these people get some chance at a decent life without all the craziness they're having to go through.

Nearly all mobs are staged events, its rare that people just meet and just happen to notice something that pisses them off, though it can happen. The trick is to out mob the other guys, it looks to me like an active policy backed by the Libyan government and probably with direct assist from western agencies.
Radical Islam works on mob power, turning it agaisnt them is a valid counter strategy.

 Orlanth wrote:

Relapse wrote:


This could be, but taken with the report that some Lybians were happy that the ambassador was still alive and tried to get him to the hospital and the pictures of people carrying signs appologizing for the attacks, it could very well be that this is more than just a staged event.
That's me hoping antway. I'd just like to see these people get some chance at a decent life without all the craziness they're having to go through.

Nearly all mobs are staged events, its rare that people just meet and just happen to notice something that pisses them off, though it can happen. The trick is to out mob the other guys, it looks to me like an active policy backed by the Libyan government and probably with direct assist from western agencies.
Radical Islam works on mob power, turning it agaisnt them is a valid counter strategy.

True enough, I just hope they don't end up being used like pawns to be discarded and we end up with another policy failure at the cost of the lives these people could have had.


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This story about the party proves your point about how easy it is to get a mob together.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/09/22/14028638-thousands-descend-on-tiny-dutch-town-after-facebook-invitation-goes-viral?lite

 Mr. Burning wrote:
I thik this is more to to with disbanding the militia groups that started during their revolution rather than a pop at Terrorism.

It doesn't really matter why, it's a good thing for Libiya. While I love to say Justice, in relation to our national outrage, I'd rather see a stable Libiya than have them circle the drain like Afgqnistan.

 Orlanth wrote:
Or it could be like the cued rent-a-mob who turned up to beat Saddam's statue with shoes after the fall of Baghdad.

No, I don't think they're at all similar. The folks at the statue of Saddam were mostly anti-Saddam Iraqis who had been working against his regime for years, many of whom WERE literally shipped into Iraq along with the invasion. It was a very small group (dozens, IIRC, no more than a couple hundred at most), as opposed to tens of thousands in Libya right now.

The idea that you can easily set up a flash mob of 30,000 people seems absurd. Most flash mobs are a few dozen people or so.

The crowds whipped up to protest against the video were pushed into it by substantial numbers of imams preaching against it during services. Not by somebody with a cell phone. That Dutch birthday party thing was publicized in a Western country where a very high percentage of people have internet, facebook and twitter, and was promoted by two DJs with thousands of twitter followers. It still took a while to build momentum, and the town found out what was going on at least a week in advance. And that event still had only an estimated 3,000 attendees; a tenth of the Libyan thing.

 Orlanth wrote:
Most of what appears spontaneous is not. The attacks on the consulate which killed the US ambassador and three others appeared spontaneous yet are believed to have been pre-planned.

No argument there.

I think these people were predisposed to some kind of action against al quaeda and its sympathizers, with the killing of the ambassador perhaps being the final straw. It appears he was well liked, and immediatly after he was attacked, maybe the calls started going out.
This is all my guess, of course, but it didn't take much for that dutch town to be the center of thousands of partiers.

I wish we could see things like this world wide every time Radical Islam did anything...

You'd probably see it more often if more majority- Muslim countries had US representatives present who they really LIKE, such as the Ambassador. If their exposure to us was comprised of a higher percentage of good people, and a lower percentage of Predator strikes, they'd be less-inclined to hate us, and more inclined to support us.

 Mannahnin wrote:
You'd probably see it more often if more majority- Muslim countries had US representatives present who they really LIKE, such as the Ambassador. If their exposure to us was comprised of a higher percentage of good people, and a lower percentage of Predator strikes, they'd be less-inclined to hate us, and more inclined to support us.

I'll put an "amen, brother" to that one.


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I wonder if the people responsible fo the attack realized they had an "oh,gak!," moment when they saw the crowd of people going into the burning building in an atempt to save the ambassador?

I saw a nice picture that was most likely photoshopped:




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Putting human faces front and center, like the ambassador and more actual videos of US officials talking to and interacting with countries and people in the ME can only be a good thing.

Of course! the new constitution should come out. Militia should drop their guns and take plowshaire, time to go civil. Counter-revolutionary threats are no more so no reasons to keep militia around or they will be consumed by power hunger.

The Lybian government has given the illegal militias, like the ones that murdered our ambassador, the order to leave the country.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/09/23/libya-orders-disbanding-illegitimate-militias/

Relapse wrote:
The Lybian government has given the illegal militias, like the ones that murdered our ambassador, the order to leave the country.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/09/23/libya-orders-disbanding-illegitimate-militias/

Well, that should do the trick.


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 Mannahnin wrote:
You'd probably see it more often if more majority- Muslim countries had US representatives present who they really LIKE, such as the Ambassador. If their exposure to us was comprised of a higher percentage of good people, and a lower percentage of Predator strikes, they'd be less-inclined to hate us, and more inclined to support us.

Well, we perform remarkably few drone strikes in France. Or Norway. Or even Kenya.

Why? Because forming stable governments that are both capable of and interested in policing extremist criminals who want to kill us is a pretty good way to make sure we don't have to do the job ourselves.

 Seaward wrote:

Relapse wrote:
The Lybian government has given the illegal militias, like the ones that murdered our ambassador, the order to leave the country.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/09/23/libya-orders-disbanding-illegitimate-militias/

Well, that should do the trick.


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 Mannahnin wrote:
You'd probably see it more often if more majority- Muslim countries had US representatives present who they really LIKE, such as the Ambassador. If their exposure to us was comprised of a higher percentage of good people, and a lower percentage of Predator strikes, they'd be less-inclined to hate us, and more inclined to support us.

Well, we perform remarkably few drone strikes in France. Or Norway. Or even Kenya.

Why? Because forming stable governments that are both capable of and interested in policing extremist criminals who want to kill us is a pretty good way to make sure we don't have to do the job ourselves.

If the rest of the country feels the way about the terrorists the way the ones that overran the compound feel, it probably will do the trick. Hoping this isn't just wishful talk on my part, but people over there don't seem accepting of al quaeda.

 Mannahnin wrote:

The idea that you can easily set up a flash mob of 30,000 people seems absurd. Most flash mobs are a few dozen people or so.

The crowds whipped up to protest against the video were pushed into it by substantial numbers of imams preaching against it during services. Not by somebody with a cell phone. That Dutch birthday party thing was publicized in a Western country where a very high percentage of people have internet, facebook and twitter, and was promoted by two DJs with thousands of twitter followers. It still took a while to build momentum, and the town found out what was going on at least a week in advance. And that event still had only an estimated 3,000 attendees; a tenth of the Libyan thing.

One person with mobile phone, not unless you are very very lucky, you need a few and a cascade preferably with Twitter to back you up. 30000 quickly, very doable in an urban area, besides when some people begin to march others come out, humans have a herd mentality which kicks in in certain situations. crowds can snowball quickly.

Take for example the Twitter backed protest in Iran two years ago. I think they were purposely orchestrated at some level and allowed to cascade into the size they were. Most governments keep a suspicious eye on the mass media, when 7/7 happened and other unexpected major political events the plug was pulled on cell phone networks as a precautionary measure. Iran learned the hard way that cell phones and the internet need an off switch in cases of mass disturbances.

http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Police-shut-mobile-phone-network-London-7-7-bombings-inquest-hears/story-12215599-detail/story.html

Iran during the elections was a totally different kettle of fish. Social media sites helped people organize, but there was a massive protest movement already in place related to the political issues at stake and the elections.

That has no relation whatsoever to this flash mob stuff.

Much less your (so far unsupported) claim that one could quickly and easily assemble a flash mob of tens of thousands of people. In reality, even getting a few hundred is a challenge requiring some advance time.

 Mannahnin wrote:
Iran during the elections was a totally different kettle of fish. Social media sites helped people organize, but there was a massive protest movement already in place related to the political issues at stake and the elections.

That has no relation whatsoever to this flash mob stuff.

Much less your (so far unsupported) claim that one could quickly and easily assemble a flash mob of tens of thousands of people. In reality, even getting a few hundred is a challenge requiring some advance time.

One could classify the early occupy protests as flash mobs, but by definition flash mobs require a call to action.