Backstage - OOC Forums
General Discussion => The Speakeasy: OOG/Off-topic Discussion => Topic started by: Saede Riordan on 01 May 2011, 21:26
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news article (http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/osama-bin-laden-killed/story?id=13505703)
Vreeee interesting. President Obama is scheduled to make a statement on it Soon™.
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Shot in the head outside Islamabad.
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o7
I'll be coming home now.
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Yay! He could have just faded into obscurity and the world would have gone on without him... but nope. Now he's turned into a martyr and the defecation will hit the oscillation. Damn good job guys.
Mission fucking accomplished.
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I hear Chuck Norris has already boarded a flight home from Pakistan.
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Yay! He could have just faded into obscurity and the world would have gone on without him... but nope. Now he's turned into a martyr and the defecation will hit the oscillation. Damn good job guys.
Mission fucking accomplished.
Emptyquoting for truthiness.
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Yay! He could have just faded into obscurity and the world would have gone on without him... but nope. Now he's turned into a martyr and the defecation will hit the oscillation. Damn good job guys.
Mission fucking accomplished.
Emptyquoting for truthiness.
It just goes to show how far people with an urge to violence will go to justify their behavior.
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Interesting. The figurehead is dead, but this doesn't really change anything.
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/me takes a swig of Starsi.
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Interesting. The figurehead is dead, but this doesn't really change anything.
Apparently you don't work in the community. This changes EVERYTHING.
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(http://www.the-peoples-forum.com/images/DonaldTrump.jpg)
(http://recruitzero.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/barack-obama-cool.jpg)
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Cute indeed Ben, but at the end of the day, Bankruptcy Baron vs. The Kenyan Disaster won't happen.
Most Americans look at presidential races like they do reality TV shows. 3 week attention span max. I am an oathkeeper, and just got two bills I wrote passed on the state level.
Obama taking credit for Usama getting a dirt nap is probably the most offensive thing I have ever seen. But thanks to the three week political attention span in this country, when silver dips below $40, the dollar dips below $.60, gas hits $5.10 a gallon, and the intelligent people in this country realize that opting in to obamacare will cost $22k for earners of over $93k, we will forget about who aced Usama, and real fucking quick.
A certain someones student civilian son and three grand children are about to put this news story to bed, and fast.
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I don't do politics on an EVE forum, that image was meant to be a joke, but this image sums up the feeling here in NYC:
(http://i56.tinypic.com/6y1ssy.png)
I respect the NYPD, been nothing but friendly to me all my life.
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This thread is going places! :D
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Frankly I just wish some of my boys in Randstaadts Militia would have at least sent me a piece of Usama backstrap so I could throw it on the grill.
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Gross, also it's Osama.
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Interesting. The figurehead is dead, but this doesn't really change anything.
Apparently you don't work in the community. This changes EVERYTHING.
No I don't work in the community, and perhaps you are right. I suppose only time will tell if it does or not. From my POV(granted it is probably a bit pessimistic or at least will be viewed that way by many) it does not. Extremists will still exist, people will still be paranoid and afraid, someone will take his place and things will continue as they are. We got a bit of revenge which serves as a morale boost, but we really only cut off one of the heads of a many headed hydra and I don't see that as changing the situation a whole lot.
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Gross, also it's Osama.
Actually no, it isn't. You apparently have had slightly less training in Arabic than I have. I don't know how to make the symbols for the letters. Translating it is a fucking nightmare. Usama is as close to correct as it gets.
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At least everyone can agree that it's much nicer to breathe knowing the royal wedding isn't going to be mentioned ever again.
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Interesting. The figurehead is dead, but this doesn't really change anything.
Apparently you don't work in the community. This changes EVERYTHING.
No I don't work in the community, and perhaps you are right. I suppose only time will tell if it does or not. From my POV(granted it is probably a bit pessimistic or at least will be viewed that way by many) it does not. Extremists will still exist, people will still be paranoid and afraid, someone will take his place and things will continue as they are. We got a bit of revenge which serves as a morale boost, but we really only cut off one of the heads of a many headed hydra and I don't see that as changing the situation a whole lot.
Maybe you should work in the community, as you just called it right. This is going to do NOTHING but escalate things. You get that. But things escalating means major change. And not the hopey changey things the pretender in chief promised us.
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This is going to do NOTHING but escalate things.
About that, we'll see. ObL (or UbL, if you like; perhaps you'd like to give Arabic lessons to the international press corps?) made an excellent spokesman and a first-rate rallying point. And yes, the willingness of his movement to look on death in battle as "martyrdom" is awkward.
But even accepting all of that, I'm not sure I buy your argument.
Actually, I'm pretty sure I don't.
ObL was at war with the United States. He declared it before we really took him seriously, and then proved he was serious with four planeloads of innocents and a heaping helping of jet fuel. Al Qaeda is the absolute last organization able to argue that attacks by U.S. forces on its leaders are "attacks on Islam." They get more ground out of civilian-killing anti-Taliban drone strikes than they will out of this on that front.
As far as motivating the troops? Okay, yeah, ObL has "gone to paradise" to hang out with his crop of virgins, but at the same time it's pretty clear that they did not actually want the man to get shot. They'd successfully kept him hidden from the most powerful single nation on Earth for close to a decade-- them thar be some serious bragging rights. But we caught up to him in the end, so he's looking slightly less blessed by God, now.
Incidentally, failing threes, nice round numbers are handy for religiously-significant matters, as a rule. From a "our cause is favored by God" angle, they'd have been vastly better off with "over ten years" than a sort of flaccid "just short of ten years."
Al Qaeda's most serious threat has never come so much from a few die-hards (dangerous, yes, but die-hards can be killed): it has come from its capacity to look like a force of righteousness on the "Arab street"-- to attract the young and eager, a virtually boundless source of recruits.
Martyrdom or no, that quasi-mythic status has just taken a hit. ObL did not have a bullet-proof vest granted by God. ObL did not have God's hand forever shielding him from infidel eyes. ObL did not even have a nice, appealingly-round number of years of safety before getting offed.
Of course they'll cry "martyr!" --but will the one who takes his place be able to speak in as dangerously effective a voice? Of course they'll try something. --but will they be able to come up with anything they wouldn't have eagerly done under ObL?
I doubt it. Competent motivated charismatic visionaries with a gift for management are not that freaking common, folks, certainly not serving any single cause, and I wish Al Qaeda all the ill luck in the world in replacing their dear leader.
Furthermore, this comes at a moment when Al Qaeda's star is on the wane. The wave of pro-democratic uprisings across the Middle East may result in all manner of outcomes, but its present faces appear to have less to do with Islamic militancy than at any point in the last decade. Maybe two. That's an important sign: the "Arab street" has, at least for now, an outlet for its frustrations outside of attacks on foreigners, and the educated Arab moderates have found a voice.
The question is whether it will last. If it does, the "martyrdom" of the Qaeda "figurehead" may have come at just the wrong moment for it to have the hoped-for-by-terrorists effect. Even if it does not, your "intensification" argument seems far-fetched.
We've been accidentally bombing wedding parties in the Middle East for ten years now. We've done the "pre-emptive" invasion of an MWD-less nation. We've done Guantanamo. We've done Abu Grahaib (sp?). We've done the idiot American general nattering on about "my god is stronger than your god."
From an Arab emotional standpoint, we've been doing our worst for ages.
Ah-- also, about President Obama?
I don't love every last thing the man's done. He's far too much beholden to the constructs of law known as corporations. He goes for moderation even when the other side's arguments verge on the fraudulent-- even when they're well over that verge.
But I respect his caution, and his mindfulness. What he did here was what he should have-- the only thing he could have without validating every "the government is keeping ObL alive because ..." conspiracy theory ever.
And he is a much-needed bulwark at a time when the Right has gone mad. Just because I think it would be great fun to watch you Libertarians out there try to keep the country functional doesn't mean I actually want to see it happen.
Four more years. Just try to stop us. :twisted:
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I wonder when and what evidence will be submitted to the public domain. Probably pictures similar to those provided for Uday and Qusay (sp.?), Saddam's sons who met a similar fate.
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This is going to do NOTHING but escalate things.
About that, we'll see. ObL (or UbL, if you like; perhaps you'd like to give Arabic lessons to the international press corps?) made an excellent spokesman and a first-rate rallying point. And yes, the willingness of his movement to look on death in battle as "martyrdom" is awkward.
But even accepting all of that, I'm not sure I buy your argument.
Actually, I'm pretty sure I don't.
ObL was at war with the United States. He declared it before we really took him seriously, and then proved he was serious with four planeloads of innocents and a heaping helping of jet fuel. Al Qaeda is the absolute last organization able to argue that attacks by U.S. forces on its leaders are "attacks on Islam." They get more ground out of civilian-killing anti-Taliban drone strikes than they will out of this on that front.
As far as motivating the troops? Okay, yeah, ObL has "gone to paradise" to hang out with his crop of virgins, but at the same time it's pretty clear that they did not actually want the man to get shot. They'd successfully kept him hidden from the most powerful single nation on Earth for close to a decade-- them thar be some serious bragging rights. But we caught up to him in the end, so he's looking slightly less blessed by God, now.
Incidentally, failing threes, nice round numbers are handy for religiously-significant matters, as a rule. From a "our cause is favored by God" angle, they'd have been vastly better off with "over ten years" than a sort of flaccid "just short of ten years."
Al Qaeda's most serious threat has never come so much from a few die-hards (dangerous, yes, but die-hards can be killed): it has come from its capacity to look like a force of righteousness on the "Arab street"-- to attract the young and eager, a virtually boundless source of recruits.
Martyrdom or no, that quasi-mythic status has just taken a hit. ObL did not have a bullet-proof vest granted by God. ObL did not have God's hand forever shielding him from infidel eyes. ObL did not even have a nice, appealingly-round number of years of safety before getting offed.
Of course they'll cry "martyr!" --but will the one who takes his place be able to speak in as dangerously effective a voice? Of course they'll try something. --but will they be able to come up with anything they wouldn't have eagerly done under ObL?
I doubt it. Competent motivated charismatic visionaries with a gift for management are not that freaking common, folks, certainly not serving any single cause, and I wish Al Qaeda all the ill luck in the world in replacing their dear leader.
Furthermore, this comes at a moment when Al Qaeda's star is on the wane. The wave of pro-democratic uprisings across the Middle East may result in all manner of outcomes, but its present faces appear to have less to do with Islamic militancy than at any point in the last decade. Maybe two. That's an important sign: the "Arab street" has, at least for now, an outlet for its frustrations outside of attacks on foreigners, and the educated Arab moderates have found a voice.
The question is whether it will last. If it does, the "martyrdom" of the Qaeda "figurehead" may have come at just the wrong moment for it to have the hoped-for-by-terrorists effect. Even if it does not, your "intensification" argument seems far-fetched.
We've been accidentally bombing wedding parties in the Middle East for ten years now. We've done the "pre-emptive" invasion of an MWD-less nation. We've done Guantanamo. We've done Abu Grahaib (sp?). We've done the idiot American general nattering on about "my god is stronger than your god."
From an Arab emotional standpoint, we've been doing our worst for ages.
Ah-- also, about President Obama?
I don't love every last thing the man's done. He's far too much beholden to the constructs of law known as corporations. He goes for moderation even when the other side's arguments verge on the fraudulent-- even when they're well over that verge.
But I respect his caution, and his mindfulness. What he did here was what he should have-- the only thing he could have without validating every "the government is keeping ObL alive because ..." conspiracy theory ever.
And he is a much-needed bulwark at a time when the Right has gone mad. Just because I think it would be great fun to watch you Libertarians out there try to keep the country functional doesn't mean I actually want to see it happen.
Four more years. Just try to stop us. :twisted:
Wow. I am rolling like a pig in shit happy now that I know that there is NO difference between you IC and OOC. Fucking beautiful. Obama cautious and mindful? Tell that to the dollar.
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Wow. I am rolling like a pig in shit happy now that I know that there is NO difference between you IC and OOC. Fucking beautiful. Obama cautious and mindful? Tell that to the dollar.
There's a lot of me in her. But then, there'd have to be.
When I was playing a "genuine damsel in distress as genuine menace" in Neverwinter Nights, there was a lot of me in that character, too. Never mind that I'm not exactly tiny, cute, frail, female, translucent, tortured in any meaningful way, or firmly devoted to the cause of Chaotic Evil.
We cannot create what is not of ourselves.
As for the dollar, there's more than one school of thought on economic theory-- none of which have been made happy by this administration, if I remember, but the way I look at it that's because Obama has done too little to correct the failures that led to this last economic near-collapse. If the deregulation fanatics ever get full control again, I'll have to consider whether I'd be better off watching the results from a safe distance.
Like Mars. Apparently private colonization plans are in the sprouting stage. Who knows? Maybe we'll do better in a biosphere we build ourselves.
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I like to think, that if nothing else, this will give us closure as a nation, and allow the more right wing elements to stop crying for blood and guns and violence. 'Justice' will have been served, and we can all go on with our lives.
Where does that put our relations with the rest of the Arab world? I'm not sure. The next few months are going to be...telling.
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/me puts on his RN cap and puffs from his pipe
Good show I say, what what.
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I like to think, that if nothing else, this will give us closure as a nation, and allow the more right wing elements to stop crying for blood and guns and violence.
God, don't I wish. A comment from a military-minded young man around the start of the war in Afghanistan, though, sticks in my mind:
"I don't hope it's over quickly. Do you know why I don't? It's because if it's over quickly, that means we didn't get every last one of the bastards."
I might be paraphrasing a little; it was at a 9/11 vigil in late September 2001. Also, grimly, there's a segment of the (especially the religious) right wing that really does believe this is a war against Islam itself. We can expect that segment to fall silent about a year after the last bullet flies, and not before.
It might make it harder for them to argue that we Dems are "soft on terror," despite increased drone strikes, etc., though. 'Course, just because an argument is hard to make doesn't mean the Right won't make it, these days. See, e.g., Kenya, and claims that Obama was born there; claims that Obama is a muslim; claims that Obama is a socialist (or even a liberal, speaking as an actual leftist, myself: the man's a moderate, much like Clinton).
'Justice' will have been served, and we can all go on with our lives.
Ah-- now in this case, it really kinda hasn't.
... Well, maybe a drop of it. We DID get the bastard, after all, but it seems kinda hard to say that this one life balances all those others (and I'm not just talking about at the Twin Towers).
So, a small thing. Maybe important, though.
Where does that put our relations with the rest of the Arab world? I'm not sure. The next few months are going to be...telling.
Oh, very much /signed.
Fun bit o' history we're living through, no?
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'Justice' will have been served, and we can all go on with our lives.
Ah-- now in this case, it really kinda hasn't.
hence the 'quotes' around justice.
Where does that put our relations with the rest of the Arab world? I'm not sure. The next few months are going to be...telling.
Oh, very much /signed.
Fun bit o' history we're living through, no?
Oh yes. I hope I survive it to see the future we build for ourselves and our children. I hope its one I want to bring children into the world in. I guess time will tell.
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'Justice' will have been served, and we can all go on with our lives.
Ah-- now in this case, it really kinda hasn't.
hence the 'quotes' around justice.
Well ... yeah. But I don't think even the people who have spent the last decade crying for blood think that this was complete justice.
Maybe especially not them.
I hope I survive it to see the future we build for ourselves and our children. I hope its one I want to bring children into the world in. I guess time will tell.
Again, pretty much /signed. Though without the personally-bringing-children-into-the-world bit.
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While we are indeed living in a particular volatile and tumultuous part of history, I know personally that its hugely worrying to see what is apparently a 'crescendo' of turmoil and instability since the market-crash.
We have seen entire countries plunged into civil disputes, civil wars, enourmous and hugely devastating natural disasters etc etc.
And yet people continue to be frustratingly narrow minded and hard to understand and deal with (No-one on this forum - I have much respect for you all and greatly enjoy your thoughts and ideals) to such an extent as I worry that there wont be time for reasonable and stable people to rise and bring back some semblance of balance.
Now, especially the US scares the everloving shit out of me, reason?
a) As an Australian we are LITERALLY caught in the middle, we have China and Asia as our biggest and most powerful neighbour, but we are intrinsically loyal to Britain/United States, have always been and likely always will.
b) From (a) when the US pushes China and China gets frisky the Australians feel the pinch, and we walk a damned small rope to keep from being seriously hurt.
c) If the US becomes more unstable and begins to unravel, which is unfortunately possible - you have the biggest and currently (while debatable) most powerful country in the world on a downhill slide, Thats not cool.
While I could keep on going, and its not just my country I worry for as I see the need for us as a planet to simply try to get along a bit better, I hope I made the point.
Oh, and huzzah for Bin-Laden being 'offed but c*** the world has alot of issues to deal with, Bin-Laden is now sliding backwards in priority while the rest of the world rears its head.
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To paraphrase and apply Mark Twain, I didn't wish for bin Laden's death, but I have enjoyed watching his obituary unfold.
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It is closure for 9/11 and for that I'll give congratulations to those who made it happen.
But it is an event that I can only take with mixed emotions. Here's hoping the intel leaked by Wikileaks regarding a retaliatory nuke in a European city to be blown up after Bin Laden's death was bogus, too. Kinda thinking if they had that type of capability they would've used it at some point.
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And it only took 9 years, $3,000,000,000,000+ and about 6000 of our boys.
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How is this going to affect the Bush / Bin Laden relations? Arent the two families close friends?
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And it only took 9 years, $3,000,000,000,000+ and about 6000 of our boys.
That money and man power was well spent into American arms manufacturing corps, as well as the oil industry. Because if it wasnt for Bin Laden then Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction" would not have been stopped and the oil there would not have been secured.
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How is this going to affect the Bush / Bin Laden relations? Arent the two families close friends?
This is an old leftist kinda-sorta conspiracy theory. ObL was the black sheep (is there a darker shade of black? Perhaps "true black," as per those SitForLess.com sponsorship spots on NPR?) of a powerful and respected Saudi family. They've had business dealings with the Bushes in the past. As far as I know, however, there is no credible link connecting the Bin Laden family or, through them, the Bushes, with the terrorist activities of the Bin Laden family's most notorious member.
Much as part of me would find it emotionally satisfying to think that Bush II was connected to some particularly dark conspiracy (Dick Cheney doesn't count), it looks like he was just a well-intentioned idiot who honestly thought that government sweetheart deals with Halliburton re: Iraq, etc., were just a matter of "doing well by doing good."
The sort of dazed way in which he insisted that "the United States doesn't torture people" pretty much said it all for me: as president, he was an adventuresome cowboy do-gooder who honestly thought God was on his side and governed from within an informational bubble. Poor bastard.
Now if we could just convince the American Right to stop trying to shape national policy from that same basic position....
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On the BBC or Channel4 news type programmes in the UK, a while back, investigating "islamic terror extremists", there were several academic types who appeared on the programme to mention how Usama Bin Laden spoke "very beautiful Arabic". They were very enamoured of how well he spoke.
So, Usama was a well-spoken, intelligent man. And the al-Quaeda organisation, even though Bin Laden wasn't directly commanding things, would take a lot of its morale from him. Eloquent motivational speeches and so on.
Without him, then they will not have this "beautiful Arabic" speeches to motivate and recruit intelligent disaffected islamic people.
So we're left with the ones who make half-baked, clumsy rhetoric, who mostly only manage to recruit the stupider islamic people.
But those have been around for a long, long time. Society can handle them.
As for martyrs, well, many of the extremists go on and on about things such as the Crusades, so really, adding one more martyr won't make much of a difference.
And many of the islamic countries have of late been doing all that pro-democracy stuff, which further sidelines the extremists.
So threat of terrorism may go up in the short term, but I'd think it would decline long term, without a well-spoken smart man to make the speeches.
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If Obama also manages to withdraw troops from Afghanistan then his presidency will be made, no? That's a lot of political capital right there.
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If Obama also manages to withdraw troops from Afghanistan then his presidency will be made, no? That's a lot of political capital right there.
It's not nothing, but we're also a bit hung up on the whole "economy" thing. We'll see whether that stops being "the" issue any time this decade. I'm not hopeful: stagnating middle-class wages + layoffs + nearly complete exporting of manufacturing jobs = "Okay, I'm glad you're making money, but don't you have anything for me to do that actually pays well?"
We're not all Fortune 500 company execs, here, and those of us who aren't have kinda been taking it in the teeth-- and will continue to, because low and mid-level job positions are still easy to fill at the wages they were earning two decades ago.
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(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v205/izumizagari/memes-osama-bin-laden.jpg)
\Dx/
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♥ Izzeh :lol:
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How is this going to affect the Bush / Bin Laden relations? Arent the two families close friends?
This is an old leftist kinda-sorta conspiracy theory. ObL was the black sheep (is there a darker shade of black? Perhaps "true black," as per those SitForLess.com sponsorship spots on NPR?) of a powerful and respected Saudi family. They've had business dealings with the Bushes in the past. As far as I know, however, there is no credible link connecting the Bin Laden family or, through them, the Bushes, with the terrorist activities of the Bin Laden family's most notorious member.
Much as part of me would find it emotionally satisfying to think that Bush II was connected to some particularly dark conspiracy (Dick Cheney doesn't count), it looks like he was just a well-intentioned idiot who honestly thought that government sweetheart deals with Halliburton re: Iraq, etc., were just a matter of "doing well by doing good."
The sort of dazed way in which he insisted that "the United States doesn't torture people" pretty much said it all for me: as president, he was an adventuresome cowboy do-gooder who honestly thought God was on his side and governed from within an informational bubble. Poor bastard.
Now if we could just convince the American Right to stop trying to shape national policy from that same basic position....
So why was the bin laden family allowed to fly out of the states right after 911, and after all flights private and commercial were grounded and not able to leave?
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Man could you imagine meeting the dude that killed him?
"So, you're the guy."
"Yeah... I'm the guy." /long drag from cigarette and revs motorbike
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So why was the bin laden family allowed to fly out of the states right after 911, and after all flights private and commercial were grounded and not able to leave?
Clearly, they booked with Orbitz.
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So why was the bin laden family allowed to fly out of the states right after 911, and after all flights private and commercial were grounded and not able to leave?
Clearly, they booked with Orbitz.
Interesting, soooo Orbitz winz then?
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So why was the bin laden family allowed to fly out of the states right after 911, and after all flights private and commercial were grounded and not able to leave?
Assuming this is true, my guess would be that the administration was sensitive to how dangerous it could potentially be to be named "Bin Laden" in the United States at that particular moment. One of them getting offed by an angry American would have been an amazing PR coup for Al Qaeda.
In general, Invelious, I don't buy into conspiracy theories, whether from the right or left. People are insufficiently omnicompetent to pull most of them off.
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Relief, but I find the way his death is being celebrated in some areas rather distasteful.
Calling bullshit that he died in the firefight though. Shot in the head at point blank range to avoid any kind of trial, no doubt.
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Relief, but I find the way his death is being celebrated in some areas rather distasteful.
Agreed. But then, there is a bit of a "Ding-dong, the witch is dead!" feel to the moment.
... and really, I can't blame New Yorkers, in particular.
Calling bullshit that he died in the firefight though. Shot in the head at point blank range to avoid any kind of trial, no doubt.
Maybe. Some more details have been coming out; seems a woman died trying to shield him, which seems to imply that 1) the firefight was maybe not so much a "fight" at that point, but 2) there was space between ObL and the shooter. Also, the mission was apparently a "kill mission"-- they were to take ObL alive only if he unambiguously surrendered. Otherwise, they were to shoot to kill.
So: looks like it was pretty much assassination with an "out" clause to avoid the risk of, say, an unnoticed webcam with a satellite feed or something broadcasting U.S. troops executing a prisoner in cold blood. "Unless the scene would work as an Al Qaeda recruiting tool, kill 'im."
In any case, it seems there were a couple survivors, so it's probably not just going to be a team of SEALS sharing some deep dark secret. And you can be sure there will be people trying to write books about this; we'll likely see the story poked and prodded from every possible angle by the time it's over.
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On a related note, I got harangued in a pub this lunchtime by a student going on about how immensely disrespectful to islam was the fact that Bin Laden's body was given a sea burial and he started going off on one about how this "disrespect" would lead to many thousands being killed in reprisal attacks by true believers etc etc.
So I answered the guy in a fairly even tone and said ...
"not being funny mate, but if I had lost relatives in any of the guy's atrocities I think I'd generally be in favour of a funeral arrangement where his body was eaten by wild dogs."
Horrified silence.
Sometimes I think I'm not cut out for the modern politically-correct world :(
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On a related note, I got harangued in a pub this lunchtime by a student going on about how immensely disrespectful to islam was the fact that Bin Laden's body was given a sea burial and he started going off on one about how this "disrespect" would lead to many thousands being killed in reprisal attacks by true believers etc etc.
So I answered the guy in a fairly even tone and said ...
"not being funny mate, but if I had lost relatives in any of the guy's atrocities I think I'd generally be in favour of a funeral arrangement where his body was eaten by wild dogs."
Horrified silence.
Sometimes I think I'm not cut out for the modern politically-correct world :(
I loled.
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Sometimes I think I'm not cut out for the modern politically-correct world :(
You're not alone there. I'm pretty liberal or left-wing in the old parlance, but I'm routinely appalled at the degree to which this notion of political correctness is applied as a form of de facto censorship. There's something almost comic about the efforts people go to in order to not cause offence. The irony is that these very efforts are often patronising and offensive in themselves.
Besides, interesting as they are, I have yet to see any reasonable grounds for being respectful to any religion. Respect has to be earned. None of them qualify. That's not to say that I'm going to go out of my way to offend people at every opportunity; I'm just not going to take kindly to someone demanding respect for whatever stuff they happen to believe in.
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Relief, but I find the way his death is being celebrated in some areas rather distasteful.
Calling bullshit that he died in the firefight though. Shot in the head at point blank range to avoid any kind of trial, no doubt.
I dunno how to feel, to be honest.
On the one hand, it's a little demoralizing to see a whole stadium full of people receive the news of someone's death, and start chanting "USA" like we just won a game. Being gleeful over taking a life isn't the behavior you'd expect from "liberators."
On the other hand, taking credit for the deaths of thousands of US civies via video tape and acting like a big shot - eh, that's a pretty straight road to getting shot in the head, thrown in a ditch and doused in gasoline in my book.
I'm torn, myself. Despite the toll its taken on our country and theirs, and the fact that we killed an unrelated, if equally fucked up dictator first, I will feel an inexplicable patriotic vindication if this news turns out to be true.
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I will feel an inexplicable patriotic vindication if this news turns out to be true.
For that, you are waiting on ... which authority?
The U.S. gov't. claims it was ObL, with DNA verification. No national authority I'm aware of, friend or foe, is claiming otherwise. The body has been dumped. For whatever reason (likely to avoid some kinda ugly spectacles), no photos have been released.
From the sounds of things, they're as certain as they can be; the administration has now staked its credibility on the truth of its claim. Unless you believe the conspiracy theorists, in which case I humbly submit that nothing will ever convince you (http://xkcd.com/258/), this looks to be as sure as it gets.
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Aria is correct, confirmation bias is the one of the main reasons conspiracy theories exist and Alex Jones / Glenn Beck can spout their nonsense. Conspiracy theorists "expect a significant event to have a significant cause".
Then there's the clinical issues involved with conspiracy theorists; they are more often undiagnosed with paranoia and schizophrenia.
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So I answered the guy in a fairly even tone and said ...
"not being funny mate, but if I had lost relatives in any of the guy's atrocities I think I'd generally be in favour of a funeral arrangement where his body was eaten by wild dogs."
That is win.
Sometimes I think I'm not cut out for the modern politically-correct world :(
Nah. You're perfect for it.
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From the sounds of things, they're as certain as they can be; the administration has now staked its credibility on the truth of its claim.
If OBL/UBL releases a video next week with him holding a picture of a paper with the "We got him" headline, the US credibility will be more damaged than when they couldn't find WMDs in Iraq... oh, wait...
But seriously, yes, if they're wrong about this, they'll look really stupid. So my bet is they were really careful about checking that they had, in fact, got him.
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They wouldn't hold an emergency announcement so late at night on a Sunday if they weren't sure, and the work that goes into both the operation and the logistics of everything is much more than we take in account.
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Relief, but I find the way his death is being celebrated in some areas rather distasteful.
Calling bullshit that he died in the firefight though. Shot in the head at point blank range to avoid any kind of trial, no doubt.
Keeping him alive would have been a nightmare. Number one, you'd have the entire world clamoring for his head. If you were to try him, you'd have half a dozen countries that wanted to execute him - which one gets the honor?
Number two, and more important, if you take him alive, you run the risk of every little extremist in the world holding an airliner hostage and demanding his release. Admittedly, there are likely to be retaliatory attacks, but those were going to happen no matter what. We've just skipped the attacks that would have occurred while he was still alive.
In terms of impact on al qaeda and company, it really doesn't seem like they have anyone able to take his place as the eloquent, articulate, charismatic, unifying leader. No one else has the stature or respect or skills to take his place, even in the limited role he has played lately. Does this mean that the 'war on terror' (fucking hate that phrase, wars against common rather than proper nouns usually go poorly) is over? Fuck no. Not even a little bit. But it's a huge step and it proves that we can actually find people... even if it takes us a lot longer than it should.
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News media are saying that he used his wife as a human shield during the firefight.
If that's...then Goddess, what a dick.
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I will feel an inexplicable patriotic vindication if this news turns out to be true.
For that, you are waiting on ... which authority?
The U.S. gov't. claims it was ObL, with DNA verification. No national authority I'm aware of, friend or foe, is claiming otherwise. The body has been dumped. For whatever reason (likely to avoid some kinda ugly spectacles), no photos have been released.
From the sounds of things, they're as certain as they can be; the administration has now staked its credibility on the truth of its claim. Unless you believe the conspiracy theorists, in which case I humbly submit that nothing will ever convince you (http://xkcd.com/258/), this looks to be as sure as it gets.
I'm waiting on "seeing is believing" authority.
I believed we had Saddam on visual evidence. When I see ObL on a slab, Guevara-style, I'll believe it.
I'm not saying I have some wild conspiracy theory that he ISN'T dead. I just prefer to see things with my own eyes, before I completely believe them. Call it paranoia.
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Call it paranoia.
You're paranoid. The Council helped fund this project. They have a right to send someone to keep an eye on their investment.
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Relief, but I find the way his death is being celebrated in some areas rather distasteful.
QFT
I will mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.
I know this has been doing the rounds the last few words, but I found it relevant.
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For that, you are waiting on ... which authority?
The U.S. gov't. claims it was ObL, with DNA verification. No national authority I'm aware of, friend or foe, is claiming otherwise. The body has been dumped. For whatever reason (likely to avoid some kinda ugly spectacles), no photos have been released.
From the sounds of things, they're as certain as they can be; the administration has now staked its credibility on the truth of its claim. Unless you believe the conspiracy theorists, in which case I humbly submit that nothing will ever convince you (http://xkcd.com/258/), this looks to be as sure as it gets.
Well, the US have a history of getting the wrong guy. Just look at half the people in Guantanamo vOv
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I'm waiting on "seeing is believing" authority.
I believed we had Saddam on visual evidence. When I see ObL on a slab, Guevara-style, I'll believe it.
That, you won't.
The body's been deep-sixed in the most literal sense-- dropped into the ocean in a weighted coffin that's built to leak. There's some argument over the reasons (and some muslims are apparently offended), but it seems to boil down to not wanting his grave site to become a shrine-- and, though this remains unsaid, probably also not wanting to spend years arguing with various persons over where he should be buried.
ObL sleeps with the fishes. What you'll probably (eventually) get is photographic evidence-- which, of course, might be photoshopped.
Well, the US have a history of getting the wrong guy. Just look at half the people in Guantanamo vOv
That was the product of, first, carelessness, and, second ... probably embarrassment, actually. The United States under GWB was downright allergic to any suggestion that its aim vis-a-vis capturing important suspects had gotten fuzzy; admitting to same would have been just intolerable.
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Actually, I changed my mind.
That's a way more satisfying way to dispose of the bodies of such individuals.
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Using the religious rites seemed as a way to one-up the Islamist extremists..."We did it your way, even though he was a bastard trolololol".
Also,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-13262572 Some reactions from different New Yorkers at Ground Zero. Not sure I agree with that teenager at the beginning, probably wasn't old enough to remember [/half-sarcasm]
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I will feel an inexplicable patriotic vindication if this news turns out to be true.
For that, you are waiting on ... which authority?
The U.S. gov't. claims it was ObL, with DNA verification. No national authority I'm aware of, friend or foe, is claiming otherwise. The body has been dumped. For whatever reason (likely to avoid some kinda ugly spectacles), no photos have been released.
Indeed, the US government has a lot to lose if it is proven that there is a variance between the truth and the facts as they related them. It would probably decide the outcome of the next US election.
I think it would be important to consider certain variables when thinking about how much weight 'no national authority is counter-claiming':
1- What is the benefit of pissing off the USA by making this counterclaim? It is a bit of a diplomatic faux-pas to challenge the truth of an announcement very important to the world's most powerful nation.
2- Believing that the event took place as reported so far is subjective. The evidence produced is...well, not there.
3- The information has yet to be independently verified. Convenient that the body was disposed of within 24 hours.
4- DNA evidence? Unless I'm mistaken, doesn't that take several days to process (i.e. without a queue ahead of you, once it gets to the lab), like at least 5-10? I don't suppose they went in and collected DNA evidence before the strike, what do you think? If they collected it on Sunday, it would be approaching 3 days now.
Edit: Further research suggests there are methods of DNA identification that can be done within 24hrs, so I think point 4 loses strength there.
Anyway, assuming Osama bin Laden wasn't a Goldstein from 1984 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel_Goldstein), as some suggest he may have been, we'll probably get a new video posted of him saying 'you got the wrong guy'...
From the sounds of things, they're as certain as they can be; the administration has now staked its credibility on the truth of its claim. Unless you believe the conspiracy theorists, in which case I humbly submit that nothing will ever convince you (http://xkcd.com/258/), this looks to be as sure as it gets.
They are not as certain as they can be. When evidence is produced the claim becomes more believable. The absence of counter-claims does not necessarily add to the veracity of an argument.
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Presumably everyone has seen by now:
(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5226/5680724572_d4696d593d.jpg)
But they shopped out what really happened:
(http://i.imgur.com/KxuGl.jpg)
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They are not as certain as they can be.
The folks responsible for the DNA tests apparently say they're 99.9% certain of his identity. That's pretty damn certain.
YOU may remain unconvinced.
But they shopped out what really happened:
Ha-- presidential SOCOM! Remote-control your very own SEAL Team 6 member!
... except, the PSN was down.
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That's why they took it down. Needed to air-gap MILNET from the Internet so POTUS could go all, BOOM HEADSHOT.
In all seriousness, here's why I believe the US .gov/.mil is completely convinced they got him: if they didn't, then pretty soon he'll make some sort of appearance and totally destroy all of their credibility. The chances they'd take that risk are effectively zero. Ergo, he's dead.
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No, don't you see? He never existed in the first place!
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you just blew my mind
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They are not as certain as they can be.
The folks responsible for the DNA tests apparently say they're 99.9% certain of his identity. That's pretty damn certain.
YOU may remain unconvinced.
I'd probably be more convinced if the source was independent. To immediately trust the information you are given because it is given is not the approach I take. I view it as important to verify within what bounds one practicably can.
At this stage I lean more towards the truth of the message, but it is not possible to discount doubt is 'baseless'.
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No, don't you see? He never existed in the first place!
I.e. the goldstein character.
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Whatever, I'm pretty sure Osama made 7 Horcruxes anyway.
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I'd probably be more convinced if the source was independent. To immediately trust the information you are given because it is given is not the approach I take. I view it as important to verify within what bounds one practicably can.
At this stage I lean more towards the truth of the message, but it is not possible to discount doubt is 'baseless'.
Doubt is not so much "baseless" as a special kind of naiive, and my belief in the accuracy of the reports is based on more than just blind faith. You may have heard that eyewitness testimony is more reliable than circumstantial evidence; in fact, the opposite is true, and the circumstances here strongly suggest that the administration is telling the truth.
There are two ways the reports could be wrong about ObL being dead (as opposed to merely accurate in describing his death, which some have already been).
First, the administration could be simply, honestly wrong. This has become a one in a thousand chance: the DNA testing compared the dead man's genetic material with that of known, non-terrorist members of ObL's family. The result is a close match. Ergo, it's either ObL or his brother (or a bizarre coincidence). Since ObL is a black sheep without good ties to his family, it's almost certainly ObL.
Second, the administration could be lying its collective head off. This is the conspiracy theorist angle, and believing it requires more faith in human foresight, loyalty (albeit to a nefarious purpose), and ability to impose order on chaos than I can summon on my most optimistic day. The real governmental lies, the ones perpetrated by autocracies (or democracies going through a bad spot), tend to be simple, straightforward statements that can be repeated over and over again without elaboration: "the pro-democracy activist took money from the CIA," "there are no innocents held at Guantanamo," "we need to study this matter further," and so on. Any detail given is a thread that has the potential to be pulled, so good political liars stick to emotionally-satisfying generalities.
I find it particularly hilarious when people think Democrats are up to something, like, say, conspiring to impose socialism. The core Republicans have an honest-to-goodness message machine, central figures who spread talking points to the troops. The Dems have no such thing (not for want of trying on some people's parts), largely because hardly any of us will take marching orders-- we're collectively determined to be "free thinkers," and we're self-critical to a fault. One of our favorite pastimes is eating our own.
And incidentally, the Republicans, organized or not, couldn't even manage to keep the lid on a campaign office burglary.
That's the world I believe we live in. The more complicated the web of lies, the more difficult it is to keep it all together.
The current situation has none of the hallmarks of official mendacity: no sloganeering, no attempts to condense a complicated situation down to a message that can be hammered into people's heads. And if this is a lie, it's an extremely complex one; they're virtually loading us down with juicy details.
And some of those juicy details aren't even quite consistent, which is not the thing you want to have going on if you're trying to establish a false history. Turns out he didn't use a human shield, for starters, and he wasn't armed, though he was resisting.
I guess they didn't get their "unambiguous surrender."
Knee-jerk disbelief is as bad as knee-jerk belief. One is as dangerous a sickness as the other. I prefer to weigh information and situations as they appear, and the balance on this one overwhelmingly favors a living Osama bin Laden having been shot dead in Pakistan, more or less as described.
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Bout time they killed this bastard. Though you took out the leader/picture of the organzation the job still isn't finished considering there are still multiple cells left and the taliban to mop up.
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I find it particularly hilarious when people think Democrats are up to something, like, say, conspiring to impose socialism. The core Republicans have an honest-to-goodness message machine, central figures who spread talking points to the troops. The Dems have no such thing (not for want of trying on some people's parts), largely because hardly any of us will take marching orders-- we're collectively determined to be "free thinkers," and we're self-critical to a fault. One of our favorite pastimes is eating our own.
And incidentally, the Republicans, organized or not, couldn't even manage to keep the lid on a campaign office burglary.
That's the world I believe we live in. The more complicated the web of lies, the more difficult it is to keep it all together.
I tend to think that most conspiracy theories are absurd. Mostly because success requires a level of competence in the state apparatus that is just not demonstrated on a day-to-day basis.
I certainly think it's a leap of faith to assert that the news of bin Laden's assassination is somehow fraudulent. It seems unlikely to be fake due to the inherent difficulties in faking something like this is in the modern era. On the other hand, there is no independently verified or verifiable evidence and that creates a vacuum that speculation and conspiracy theorising will fill.
As a note of caution, however, there is undoubtedly already a pre-existing conspiracy amongst mainstream media and academia to serve their own vested interests. It certainly isn't beyond the realms of possibility convert outright lies into a perceived truth by introducing false information to be repeated and embellished by the echo chamber of global commercial media and further endorsed by arguments from authority in the shape of respectable academics who happen to depend on certain sources of funding. Indeed, this sort of behaviour is routine and occurs daily. Everywhere. I still don't think that this day-to-day method of disseminating propaganda would be an appropriate tool for faking the death of the US' most wanted.
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Republicans and socialism...
They keep using that word. I don't think it means what they think it means.
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Republicans and socialism...
They keep using that word. I don't think it means what they think it means.
No, it doesn't. Then again, the 'Obama is a socialist' people are the same ones that say creationism is true, so we really can't expect anything else from them.
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As a note of caution, however, there is undoubtedly already a pre-existing conspiracy amongst mainstream media and academia to serve their own vested interests. It certainly isn't beyond the realms of possibility convert outright lies into a perceived truth by introducing false information to be repeated and embellished by the echo chamber of global commercial media and further endorsed by arguments from authority in the shape of respectable academics who happen to depend on certain sources of funding. Indeed, this sort of behaviour is routine and occurs daily. Everywhere. I still don't think that this day-to-day method of disseminating propaganda would be an appropriate tool for faking the death of the US' most wanted.
Specifics?
As the son of a lifelong academic, I'm finding this an eyebrow-raising claim.
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I tend to think that most conspiracy theories are absurd. Mostly because success requires a level of competence in the state apparatus that is just not demonstrated on a day-to-day basis.
Ah, but don't you see? What better way to conceal the nefarious government plots is there, but to maintain a façade of incompetence?! :eek:
Which gets more media coverage? Government bungles or government successes, hmmm? :?:
:ugh:
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No Louella! Quickly! Delete your post before they realize you're onto them!
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So why was the bin laden family allowed to fly out of the states right after 911, and after all flights private and commercial were grounded and not able to leave?
What's funny is 10 years later, and despite being disproven, these kind of conspiracy theories still roll around.
Three questions have arisen with respect to the departure of Saudi nationals from the United States in the immediate aftermath of 9/11: (1) Did any flights of Saudi nationals take place before national airspace reopened on September 13, 2001? (2) Was there any political intervention to facilitate the departure of Saudi nationals? (3) Did the FBI screen Saudi nationals thoroughly before their departure?
First, we found no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals, domestic or international, took place before the reopening of national airspace on the morning of September 13, 2001. To the contrary, every flight we have identified occurred after national airspace reopened.
Source (with further sources included) (http://www.snopes.com/rumors/flights.asp).
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I tend to think that most conspiracy theories are absurd. Mostly because success requires a level of competence in the state apparatus that is just not demonstrated on a day-to-day basis.
Ah, but don't you see? What better way to conceal the nefarious government plots is there, but to maintain a façade of incompetence?! :eek:
Which gets more media coverage? Government bungles or government successes, hmmm? :?:
:ugh:
Zactly! :D
Although, it's quite probable that deliberately fuelling some conspiracy theories has been useful to some departments. I imagine that all the obsessive nonsense surrounding Roswell provided a very effective smokescreen to help protect some more down-to-earth secret research. ^^
As a note of caution, however, there is undoubtedly already a pre-existing conspiracy amongst mainstream media and academia to serve their own vested interests. It certainly isn't beyond the realms of possibility convert outright lies into a perceived truth by introducing false information to be repeated and embellished by the echo chamber of global commercial media and further endorsed by arguments from authority in the shape of respectable academics who happen to depend on certain sources of funding. Indeed, this sort of behaviour is routine and occurs daily. Everywhere. I still don't think that this day-to-day method of disseminating propaganda would be an appropriate tool for faking the death of the US' most wanted.
Specifics?
As the son of a lifelong academic, I'm finding this an eyebrow-raising claim.
I was aiming at brevity, but I guess the idea is not one that fits easily within a paragraph. :/ I actually sat down last night and started expanding on what I meant, but I was at work, and I realised that I would end up writing a mini essay - not good for productivity! Instead, I think it's much easier to defer to a certain Noam Chomsky to explain for me:
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm
It's a long but worthwhile read, I think.
Personally, despite bandying around words like 'undoubtedly' I'm not entirely sure what to think. I have long focused on our mainstream media as problematic in a number of ways, and I have a particular loathing for Rupert Murdoch and his evil minions. Some of the problems with government and politicians in particular are so self-evident that they form a kind of common knowledge and are the basis for much comedy. I have few doubts about this stuff in general, and few doubts about the degree to which there is a conspiracy between politics and the needs of big business.
Academia though? I'm less sure of. I'd certainly never really considered academia, the press and the government as some kind of triumvirate of converging interests. As a Brit, I have mentally rejected the idea of 'The Establishment' as something belonging to our past. A grim spectre of our class-bound history. Now that we have had successive governments dominated by the Old Boys clubs of our elite private schools, and evidence showing that social mobility has been in decline for a number of years, I maybe have to revisit my views of how the modern world works. Perhaps it works just like it used to, and we've just had a brief blip where meritocracy was cherished.
What is certain is that funding is important to academics in every field. Where does the money come from? Follow the money!
I have also witnessed the following typical chain of events on a regular basis:
1. A news story is published in a British tabloid proclaiming that drinking tea is good for haemorrhoids. It will be accompanied by a picture illustrating tea in case anyone in Britain is unsure what tea is. Specifically, the image is of Tetley's Teabags. The story will quote Prof. Camomile, who carried out this ground-breaking research making some bold claims about the efficacy of tea.
2. Some idle googling will reveal that the journo responsible for the story has basically CTRL C, CTRL V'd the story from a press release, changing a few words for emphasis and chopping out anything inconvenient like moderate language or numbers.
3. The press release itself will have heavily editorialised a published paper.
4. When you look at the published paper, it doesn't actually say what the PR person said it did.
5. The original research that led to Prof. Camomile's paper was funded by Tetley's Tea.
The uncritical newspaper reader will see a solid argument from authority that he should drink lots of tea to sort out his Farmer Giles; Tetley's will have had some free product awareness to help their business; and Prof. Camomile is left quietly seething that his work has been publicly misrepresented.
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Republicans and socialism...
They keep using that word. I don't think it means what they think it means.
Socialism IRL has so many meaning depending on the people, and the countries, that even a gallente partisan could find that too much diversity...
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I have few doubts about this stuff in general, and few doubts about the degree to which there is a conspiracy between politics and the needs of big business.
Except it's not a conspiracy. The dynamism between politics and big business is pretty obvious and sustained by countless corporate actors looking out for their own interests, no secret cabal of hidden masters required. If the typical self-serving corporations had their way, they'd naturally slide their incumbent government towards fascism (in the actual meaning of the word). To combat this natural tendency, government needs to apply controls.
The problem with this is that corporations can make following their agenda quite lucrative for politicians and lobbyists, while the only thing you get for opposing this trend is a clear conscience. It doesn't help that in many countries brandishing this idea will get you labeled as a leftist commie who thinks that government should utterly control how we live our lives.
Banks are one of the major players in this worldwide, embedded as they are firmly in the infrastructure of our financial systems. The medical industry comes to mind, too. The military industrial complex in America at least, as well. But there is no conspiracy needed. It's just common sense and self interest at work.
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I have few doubts about this stuff in general, and few doubts about the degree to which there is a conspiracy between politics and the needs of big business.
Except it's not a conspiracy. The dynamism between politics and big business is pretty obvious and sustained by countless corporate actors looking out for their own interests, no secret cabal of hidden masters required. If the typical self-serving corporations had their way, they'd naturally slide their incumbent government towards fascism (in the actual meaning of the word). To combat this natural tendency, government needs to apply controls.
The problem with this is that corporations can make following their agenda quite lucrative for politicians and lobbyists, while the only thing you get for opposing this trend is a clear conscience. It doesn't help that in many countries brandishing this idea will get you labeled as a leftist commie who thinks that government should utterly control how we live our lives.
Banks are one of the major players in this worldwide, embedded as they are firmly in the infrastructure of our financial systems. The medical industry comes to mind, too. The military industrial complex in America at least, as well. But there is no conspiracy needed. It's just common sense and self interest at work.
Yeah, its not a secret conspiracy, it doesn't have to be, you can look and see it happening with your own two eyes. The things that are letting it continue are:
1. The American middle class seeing themselves as the wealthy, and vote against their own interests to support the truly wealthy 5% of the population.
2. Corporations are allowed to lobby for things, creating a huge power disparity between the people and the big business and turning politics into a war of the individual vs. the corporation.
3. Politicians paychecks are coming out of the pockets of these wealthy investors and big business.
4. Greed.
Its a slippery slope we're on, either the democratic party is going to need to stop being a bunch of wusses and stop making concessions to the GOP, or the socio-economic structure of the country is going to give out and the entirety of the middle class will fall into poverty, and its really irritating to me because it could be dealt with easily by the voters if they actually paid attention.
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http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm
It's a long but worthwhile read, I think.
Ah, Noam.
Heh-- well, first off, I wouldn't call that so much a conspiracy as a systemic issue. Conspiracy requires intent and agreement, and a large percentage of the academics I've encountered have been suspicious of corporate power-- even if much of their funding comes from corporate sources.
(It's usually part of why they're academics, rather than private-sector workers, to begin with. There's a chance that some of my animosity towards corporations and corporate power is a prejudice based on my academic upbringing.)
Academic institutions may be part of the problem, but it's not because they, or even their administrators, necessarily agree that a corporate/governmental/academic elite should be in charge. Their funding, however, depends in part on their ability to turn out graduates educated in such a way as to feed that machine, so....
This does not prevent individual professors from criticizing the system as it stands. It doesn't even prevent the majority from doing so in some areas; university humanities programs are not packed to the gills with pro-corporate feeling (if only because the humanities, as an area, most often do not appeal to pro-corporate people).
Even outside of that area, Mr. Chomsky overplays his hand by suggesting that critics are "weeded out," at least throughout the system: the most radically anti-corporate prof I think I've ever encountered was my constitutional law instructor, who made a strong case that America has been duped into conflating the best interests of our society's merchants with the best interests of society. This guy was one of the most respected professors at the (admittedly left-leaning) school. The Obama administration tried to offer him a position as a federal appellate judge.
So the present "elites" are not so monolithic an entity as all that.
Oh-- another indicator of the general lack of conspiracy: the hostility of the modern American Right towards intellectuals. We're all "elitists," and tend to think the world is a complex place that has moral ambiguity and things like global climate change in it, even though Texas is irrefutably having a cold spring. Horrors.
I cannot possibly express enough bitterness or spite for the "know-nothing" branch of the Republican Party, or for the business interests that bend said know-nothings to their will. It's not a conspiracy; it's just politics, but it's profoundly toxic in nature, and not just because it's going to result in the free release of a lot more toxins when they finish gutting our environmental regulations.
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Perhaps conspiracy is overstating it. Perhaps not.
It's certainly not a conspiracy if I lobby my MP as an individual citizen on an issue that concerns me. It's not a conspiracy if I meet my MP and discuss those issues. It could start to become a conspiracy if I'm the CEO of Big Bank PLC and I meet with my MP, who also happens to be a senior minister and say, "I might not donate to the Conservative Party next year if you don't do x," or, "You should consider proposing this legislation. Oh, and we'll be looking for non executive directors in a few years, a man of your intellect might fit the bill." You have intent and agreement, and it probably helps that they both went to the same school, the same university, and are Masons. They are right-minded people coming to an understanding.
In general, and everyone encounters this sooner or later in their careers in almost every discipline, you get on by being the face that fits, by being the guy that networks, by being the guy that has the right opinions. You still get to have a job if you're a free-thinking intellectual, but the people that play the game become the decision-makers. This is so endemic that, yeah, you'd be hard-pushed to even rate it as a conspiracy.
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You have intent and agreement, and it probably helps that they both went to the same school, the same university, and are Masons.
Hm. Yeah-- a bit workaday, compared to your average conspiracy theory.
Masons! Ah, now that's a fantastic example of an actual, real-life conspiracy. Seems way back when, being a mason was an amazingly profitable business based on exclusive knowledge. The thing is, the knowledge in question-- use of the old mason's tools, the ones you see on the masonic seal, is ridiculously easy. Anybody can do it.
The masonic order, therefore, was created in order to protect the masons' livelihoods. They established levels of initiation and such, complete with the robes and fancy hats, in order to protect a few genuine, simple secrets. And apparently they were largely successful. Very interesting.
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And in this blogpost Fiona poses an idea that shouldn't seem as radical as it does (http://angels-have-ears.blogspot.com/2011/05/rant-vengeance-justice-and-bin-laden.html)
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Hm. Nikita, I'm not sure it's so much a matter of vengeance being "what we've been reduced to" as it being something that society, certainly American society, has never really risen above. We like to say that vengeance is a bad motive, but ultimately we admire those who seek and take it successfully.
... at least when their grievances are something we sympathize with. We thus tend to conflate vengeance and justice. One of the considerations that keeps the death penalty going in this country is the thought that, "If it had been my daughter that son of a bitch had raped and murdered, I'd want to cut his liver out and show it to him with my own two hands!"
"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" is alive and well in the U.S. of A.
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Hm. Nikita, I'm not sure it's so much a matter of vengeance being "what we've been reduced to" as it being something that society, certainly American society, has never really risen above. We like to say that vengeance is a bad motive, but ultimately we admire those who seek and take it successfully.
... at least when their grievances are something we sympathize with. We thus tend to conflate vengeance and justice. One of the considerations that keeps the death penalty going in this country is the thought that, "If it had been my daughter that son of a bitch had raped and murdered, I'd want to cut his liver out and show it to him with my own two hands!"
"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" is alive and well in the U.S. of A.
It is, and its something we need to grow out of. We need to break the cycle of violence. Its not going to fall apart on its own, we have to really want to change.
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Hm. Nikita, I'm not sure it's so much a matter of vengeance being "what we've been reduced to" as it being something that society, certainly American society, has never really risen above. We like to say that vengeance is a bad motive, but ultimately we admire those who seek and take it successfully.
... at least when their grievances are something we sympathize with. We thus tend to conflate vengeance and justice. One of the considerations that keeps the death penalty going in this country is the thought that, "If it had been my daughter that son of a bitch had raped and murdered, I'd want to cut his liver out and show it to him with my own two hands!"
"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" is alive and well in the U.S. of A.
It is, and its something we need to grow out of. We need to break the cycle of violence. Its not going to fall apart on its own, we have to really want to change.
Not possible. Not with the level of complanency that western society is at.
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It's not just about complacency: for better or worse, the desire for vengeance is part of human nature and not something easily left behind, certainly not in just a generation or two.
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The death of a human being, especially if he/she was assassinated or otherwise killed by someone else, should never be cause for celebration.
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The death of a human being, especially if he/she was assassinated or otherwise killed by someone else, should never be cause for celebration.
While I sympathize with this ideal, the death of a major enemy can be, well, cathartic (as it was for the U.S. in this case). Even with my own mixed feelings, I admit to a couple cups of glee being part of the recipe.
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I'm in no position to tell other people what to feel, especially those who have lost loved ones.
That goes for all sides, frankly.
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The death of a human being, especially if he/she was assassinated or otherwise killed by someone else, should never be cause for celebration.
While I sympathize with this ideal, the death of a major enemy can be, well, cathartic (as it was for the U.S. in this case). Even with my own mixed feelings, I admit to a couple cups of glee being part of the recipe.
There are two general motivations for 'punishment': the retributive motivation; and the deterrent motivation. I think both are potentially valid.
Under the first category, a lot of people feel that justice has been done in bin Laden's death. They derive a lot of happiness from knowing he has been killed, as can be seen from the celebrations. Personally, I don't subscribe to this view, but I also feel that it's not my place to tell these people they are wrong. That's a value call.
The second category is much more valid. The leaders in situations like this are rarely placing their own necks on the line. They sit in their expansive Pakistani mansions and issue decrees from afar. They send young men to their deaths and risk others. They might be avid believers, but they don't face the disincentive associated with their actions.
This sends a very strong message to the selfish leaders: you are not safe. It may be expensive. It may take some time. But they'll find you.
Edit: fixing my terribad spelling
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The second category is much more valid. The leaders in situations like this are rarely placing their own necks on the line. They sit in their expansive Pakistani mansions and issue decrees from afar. They send young men to their deaths and risk others. They might be avid believers, but they don't face the disincentive associated with their actions.
This sends a very strong message to the selfish leaders: you are not safe. It may be expensive. It may take some time. But they'll find you.
This would be a nice little bonus.... If there were any solid evidence that human beings actually worked like that.
One of my favorite anecdotes about human behavior is from 19th Century England, a time at which pickpockets were hanged. Said hangings were great places for getting your pockets picked.
In general, anyone with the necessary ego to go and become a self-serving militant leader is not going to believe for a second that he (and it seems to almost always be a he) will ever be the one getting caught and shot. The more ego-driven segments of our own society do the same: "Oh, MY pet economic bubble isn't like all those other ones!"
It's nonsense, but it's nonsense we're apt to believe.
Often I think that it's not so much that we don't learn from history as that most of those who study it have a special eye for the bits that tell them it'll be different this time.
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This would be a nice little bonus.... If there were any solid evidence that human beings actually worked like that.
I think people do respond to incentives, in particular the likelihood that they will get caught (and the consequences if they do). They just attach a very low probability to getting caught themselves, even if the consequences are dire.
This doesn't mean that there is zero deterrent effect... it just means that it's very small. Maybe if they never caught Osama there would be 100,000 bastards ready to step up, but maybe now there's only 99,999.
Just because pickpocketing was rife at hangings doesn't mean there was no deterrent effect. Rather, it's just that the deterrent effect was more than offset by the high potential payoff associated with the target rich environment.
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One of my favorite anecdotes about human behavior is from 19th Century England, a time at which pickpockets were hanged. Said hangings were great places for getting your pockets picked.
Vaguely related, one partial explanation I heard mentioned for the Golden Age of Piracy around that time was that criminal law was simply too harsh; if a man could get hung for stealing a bread, why shouldn't he try and steal a fortune instead? Mutiny was another capital crime, so if a crew ever rebelled at poor treatment -- and there was plenty of that to be had -- their only option left was to become outlaws.
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The second category is much more valid. The leaders in situations like this are rarely placing their own necks on the line. They sit in their expansive Pakistani mansions and issue decrees from afar. They send young men to their deaths and risk others. They might be avid believers, but they don't face the disincentive associated with their actions.
This sends a very strong message to the selfish leaders: you are not safe. It may be expensive. It may take some time. But they'll find you.
This would be a nice little bonus.... If there were any solid evidence that human beings actually worked like that.
One of my favorite anecdotes about human behavior is from 19th Century England, a time at which pickpockets were hanged. Said hangings were great places for getting your pockets picked.
In general, anyone with the necessary ego to go and become a self-serving militant leader is not going to believe for a second that he (and it seems to almost always be a he) will ever be the one getting caught and shot. The more ego-driven segments of our own society do the same: "Oh, MY pet economic bubble isn't like all those other ones!"
It's nonsense, but it's nonsense we're apt to believe.
Often I think that it's not so much that we don't learn from history as that most of those who study it have a special eye for the bits that tell them it'll be different this time.
That's so true, sadly. Also, Aria, I am a bit in love with your brain.