obama confirms osama bin laden is dead

the world has the option of recognizing that the Americans had every right to pursue him to the ends of the earth and that the Navy SEALs really didn't owe this man a one iota of unnecessary personal risk.
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Nothing gave Americans, or any other nation the right to kill 100's of innocent people in the process. This is called hypocrisy, going after 1 person but killing just as many as that person did in the process.

By rights, this would mean the person who masterminded the orders (Bush etc) should also be killed. It won’t happen due to the disgusting double standards.

By your own logic, Al Qaeda now has every right to pursue the American and British leaders to the ends of the earth. The human right of those they killed being BIGGER than the law.
If you are going to use this argument, you HAVE to apply it to both sides, without law both sides have this right.

I'm not necessarily advocating this guy's views, but everyone in the civilized world should at least watch this video and decide for themselves - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4-QQAifRDc

Yep, crashing airplanes into cities is definitely less of a threat to our way of life than a bee sting.

I enjoy watching Alex Jones, and not just because he resembles the captain of Red Dwarf.  He serves as an example of being too far in one direction - the other end of the spectrum, I reserve for someone like Bill O'Reilly (although if you really look around, there's worse - yes, worse than even O'Reilly, although not much).

He's making a good point about hype here - hype that people who've never done even a rudimentary course in media might be completely ignorant of.  

The unfortunate thing with a guy like Alex Jones (or Bill O'Reilly) is that there really is no middleground - the place where, typically, the truth is to be found.  Waaaay too much hyperbole.  It's unacceptable to a guy like this that a government (occasionally, when it suits them) might tell us the truth; just the same that it's unacceptable to a guy like O'Reilly that the government would ever betray us.

This guy hovers way too damned close to tinfoil hat/RFID chip/NWO territory for me to take him very seriously - as much as I fully agree with him on how things are hyped and manipulated, because they are.  Unfortunately, what people usually take to be one overlord running the show is really the Haves, screwing the Have Nots - as simple as that.  It's nothing that hasn't been going on for thousands of years, and by even being party to the system, you're only making it worse.  They get this funny idea that there's a conspiracy to achieve some malevolent goal when the real truth is that the govt' doesn't NEED a conspiracy or a new world order.  They can do whatever they want already, and it's all a lot more ambiguous than the Emperor Palpatine shit these clowns try to scare us with.

Am I part of the New World Order because I've accepted government handouts or done work for government agencies?  Y'know what - I HOPE so.  I know it'll get up the nose of some pseudo-intellectual somewhere.  I'm more interested in sitting on my arse and playing guitar.  \m/

That "worse than Bill O'Reily" would be Glenn Beck.

Among others!  The fact is, I couldn't pick.

emrabt wrote:

By your own logic, Al Qaeda now has every right to pursue the American and British leaders to the ends of the earth. The human right of those they killed being BIGGER than the law. 

If you are going to use this argument, you HAVE to apply it to both sides, without law both sides have this right.
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The point is that the mere presence of a law does not alone say everything about the morality or rightness of any individual action in contravention of it.  To acknowledge that in no way advocates lawlessness or denigrates the vital role of law and order in society. An example might be assisted suicide, where a person must be prosecuted according to the law but has actually made an ethically courageous and morally correct decision in the specific circumstances.  In the case of the United States the example is violating sovereignty (or agreeing to the appearance of violating sovereignty) to ensure the elimination, one way or another, of a wanted man whose ability to influence, plan and facilitate the deaths of thousands of past and future innocents continued for more than 10 years.  A man who almost certainly inspired and emboldened more in life than in death, despite the martyr rap.  If the choice was between risking letting bin Laden get away and ringing up Pakistan, I do think that without question justice and human life correctly triumphed. The United States needs to answer the questions, perhaps even accept censure if appropriate (and it's far from clear if it even is), but that won't change the fact that they almost certainly did the right thing in the early hours of May 2.  It's necessary for the appropriate bodies to raise the issues about international law and such, but in a situation that is anything but clear the rest of us have a choice in the narratives formed, the characterizations made, and to whom the benefit of the doubt goes.

You could certainly turn the argument on Bush and Obama et al if you wanted and try to make the case.  That's precisely what al Qaeda has done after all. However unlike the American psyche as it relates to 9/11, the people in Iraq and Afghanistan don't have universal or reliably unambiguous feelings about the value of the military intervention or it's place in their history. I personally don't think you can conflate the two issues easily, and there is very little that is yet clear about what the larger result of the wars will be beyond the tragic toll in human life that we completely agree is no more or less precious than any other.

[QUOTE][QUOTENAME] Sir GH wrote: [/QUOTENAME]
I'm not necessarily advocating this guy's views, but everyone in the civilized world should at least watch this video and decide for themselves - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4-QQAifRDc [/QUOTE]

Bob, effectively what this guy is saying is right about hype,etc. But you what the over-riding thing I got from watching this? He was telling about governments trying to tell people how to live their lives by him telling us how we should really live our lives. Effectively he was using a similar method to get the point across. 

Thats just what I got anyway...

I don't dislike this fella because he has extreme points of view - I think, most days, that's something that should be applauded.  What I dislike about him (and his opposites on Fox News...) is an almost galling lack of respect for other people's points of view.  We are all stuck on this big old world together, many of us feeling and thinking similar things, and each of us cooking up our own ways to cope with the bullshit.  

There is essentially nothing that this guy is good for, because he rants (repetitively) for 11 minutes, and doesn't really tell us anything positive or helpful.  That's the huge difference between someone like Carl Sagan (effing visionary, man) and Richard Dawkins (dope on a rope).  Sagan could sit there and lambast horoscopy mercilessly, but at the end of it he would have something insightful to say about living in this universe.  Dawkins is just a massive troll, without the unfortunate limitation of obscurity.  

Someone like Dawkins might have a point, but the point is overridden by their appalling lack of humanity, or empathy, or - most important of all - answers.  Know-it-alls like these guys haven't got anything on you or me, because for everything they can tell you about The Big Conspiracy (most of it fictional) or the Non-Existence of God (I agree with this, but practically speaking it actually doesn't matter if He is there or not) there are a million things they can't answer.

GratefulFan
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So are you agreeing that the result was justifiable, but the method  used get that result was totally wrong, both morally and lawfully?

In my eyes the result does very little to justify the method.

emrabt wrote: So are you agreeing that the result was justifiable, but the method  used get that result was totally wrong, both morally and lawfully?

In my eyes the result does very little to justify the method.
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No. I think the decisions and action taken in this case were not a means, but an end itself.  The actions were taken because they were right.  How the law deals with that is a separate issue.

Sir GH wrote: I'm not necessarily advocating this guy's views, but everyone in the civilized world should at least watch this video and decide for themselves - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4-QQAifRDc
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About 3 minutes of strawman followed by a bunch more minutes of circular logic where he doesn't even try to consider if all the "hype" might be having some causal relationship on the chances of being a victim of terrorism.   All minutes conducted in a spectacularly horrible, grating voice.

Zebonka12 wrote: I don't dislike this fella because he has extreme points of view - I think, most days, that's something that should be applauded.  What I dislike about him (and his opposites on Fox News...) is an almost galling lack of respect for other people's points of view.  We are all stuck on this big old world together, many of us feeling and thinking similar things, and each of us cooking up our own ways to cope with the bullshit.  

There is essentially nothing that this guy is good for, because he rants (repetitively) for 11 minutes, and doesn't really tell us anything positive or helpful.  That's the huge difference between someone like Carl Sagan (effing visionary, man) and Richard Dawkins (dope on a rope).  Sagan could sit there and lambast horoscopy mercilessly, but at the end of it he would have something insightful to say about living in this universe.  Dawkins is just a massive troll, without the unfortunate limitation of obscurity.  

Someone like Dawkins might have a point, but the point is overridden by their appalling lack of humanity, or empathy, or - most important of all - answers.  Know-it-alls like these guys haven't got anything on you or me, because for everything they can tell you about The Big Conspiracy (most of it fictional) or the Non-Existence of God (I agree with this, but practically speaking it actually doesn't matter if He is there or not) there are a million things they can't answer.
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I liked this whole post Zebonka.  I'm actually reading Sagan's 'Demon Haunted World' right now and while I'm finding it brilliant I think that Sagan still suffers from the same limitations that all rationalist skeptics do. They're right about so much, but unaware of their own blind spots and the degree to which skepticism itself can become a religion.  When you have the particular kind of intelligence that the world tends to reward from a very early age with good grades and high praise and later on with a good career and admission into the halls of intellectual and scientific power there is very little impetus to look very far outside that particular way of grasping the world.  As a result I think they all miss things.

No. I think the decisions and action taken in this case were not a means, but an end itself. The actions were taken because they were right.
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Well anything else we add will be going around in circles, our views and opinions have been expressed, unless something can be added to change our opinions I’m pretty sure we have reached the end of this dialogue without resorting to childish “your opinion is wrong” type stuff, probably for the first time this has happened on queenzone since 2006. :D

"When you have the particular kind of intelligence that the world tends to reward from a very early age with good grades and high praise and later on with a good career and admission into the halls of intellectual and scientific power there is very little impetus to look very far outside that particular way of grasping the world"

Quite true!  I think everyone has these blind spots in some area or another.  Sagan had 'em, but I still feel he did a better job of retaining his humanity than, say, Dawkins.  Sagan at least had the respect to say "well I might be wrong - cough up the evidence".