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[Aria Jenneth]

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.

[Major JSilva]

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.

[Wanoah]

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.
 

[Seriphyn]

Republicans and socialism...

They keep using that word. I don't think it means what they think it means.

[Saede Riordan]

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.

[Aria Jenneth]

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.

[Louella Dougans]

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?! 

Which gets more media coverage? Government bungles or government successes, hmmm? 

 

[Saede Riordan]

No Louella! Quickly! Delete your post before they realize you're onto them!

[Usagi Tsukino]

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).

[Wanoah]

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?! 

Which gets more media coverage? Government bungles or government successes, hmmm? 

 

Zactly!

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.

[Lyn Farel]

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...

[GoGo Yubari]

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.

[Saede Riordan]

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.

[Aria Jenneth]

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.

[Wanoah]

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.