Conspiracy theories generally tend to attract people who think there's something going on in the world just beyond their reach -- if only someone could lift the curtain for them to show what's really going on and who's doing it. They want to feel they have a handle on the world but as abstract ideas are generally beyond them they stick with concretes and personalities instead. The true conspiracy theorist will know all the minutiae there is to know about a subject, but have no perspective on it all to ever enable them to see the whole truth instead of the partial glimpse of it that they're sticking with. Like someone using a filing cabinet without any files or any order they'll never have a chance to get their thinking in order, so find it difficult to separate wheat from chaff.
Which side of the grassy knoll did those puffs of smoke come from? -- what does that shadow really mean on that bit of grainy film -- which head of security is who's second cousin once removed? -- what was that white plane doing? -- was it paid for by oil interests? -- the CIA? what's that dust seen on that photo? ... all sorts of tedious speculations are 'adduced' to make a an awful lot of stew from one very small onion while the bigger picture is overlooked, and a whole world of context is dropped. As Mark Twain once said about amateur science, "One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."
The latest conspiracy theory to do the rounds is that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were between them responsible for the fatal attacks of September 11; that no large planes hit the Pentagon; that controlled explosions and missiles were responsible for most of the Ground Zero destruction and death; that all the death, destruction and disaster was planned for ana organised not by Osama bin Laden but by America's President and Vice President. 'Obscene' is the kindest word for this sort of thing. 'Unhinged' might be another. 'Insane' could easily be another. No surprise then to find one of Ian Wishart's journalists, one Clare Swinney, is all over an online newsgroup peddling this rubbish. Dive in and see, if you can bear it.
For a succinct debunking of this nonsense before it gets to your inbox from some of your more over-heated friends (yes, you can stop sending me that stuff now, please), head to Popular Mechanics who've fisked most of the claims so you don 't have to waste your time on it.
And let me leave you with one of the few things said by Eleanor Rooosevelt that ever made any sense: "Great minds talk about ideas, average minds talk about events, small minds talk about people." As they say in term papers, discuss.
LINKS: Debunking the 9/11 myths - Popular Mechanics
CNN poll indicates worm turning - Thread: NZ Politics
TAGS: Nonsense, Politics-US
7 comments:
I kind of like the response Buzz Aldrin gave a reporter. The snivelling hack questioned the veracity of Buzz's moon landing.
Buzz hauled off and drove him with a straight left.
Next question, bucko?
No, interview over.
while most 'conspiracy theories' are absolutely ludicrous, to say that conspiracies don't exist is to ignore history. And it's the investigation of 'conspiracy theories' that lead to the truth being known. While I think the Bush / Cheney conspiracy isn't true, to think that US Presidents are somehow completely above being involved in a conspiracy is to ignore the historical facts of Richard Nixon and the Watergate conspiracy, among others.
- The Reichstag Fire, initiated by Hitler in order to bring about his fascist control. Many have seen similarities in 9/11 and Bush's attempts to have the same kinds of controls.
- Iran / Contra Affair. Arms were sold to Iran in exchange for the release of hostages. The money from the sale went to a terrorist organisation whose purpose was to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicaragua, all authorised by President Ronald Reagan.
So to respond with ridicule that a President could even be considered to be part of a conspiracy theory is, simply, to ignore history.
Alan, that was not ridicule of the idea "that a President could even be considered to be part of a conspiracy theory." It is specifically ridicule of that idea that -- given everything it would mean and all the many diffulties in the way of doing such a thing -- a President and Vice President between them ~would~ have conspired to kill several thousand Americans, rip the heart out of New York's financial district, and God alone knows what else. It is ridule of the idea that that they ~would~ have or could have or did do such a thing, and ridicule too of the idea that such a purely arbitrary claim could be taken at all seriously based only on wild conjecture, myopic minitiae, and a substitution of breathless sensationalism for abstract or intelligent thought.
Fair enough. :-)
PC, if you can pull your one-eyed head out of the sand long enough, i suggest you read some of the articles, and watch some of the videos on:
http://scholarsfor911truth.org/
wake up you brainwashed fool.
Hello Clare.
just to clarify something... I think it's fair enough that your clarification of your comments helped me interpret them better. However... I think it's actually naive to believe that the President and the Vice President would have conspired to kill several thousand Americans. Again, history. Heard of 'Operation Northwoods'? Historical fact: In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in U.S. cities to create public support for a war against Cuba.
Do a Google search for Operation Northwoods and be amazed at what you find. People are people, and 'power corrupts'. The US 'top military brass' developed... ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro. [They] even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."
Again, this is no 'conspiracy theory', but information gained from investigation into the conspiracy theories behind JFK's assassination, as a result of the Oliver Stone movie. It took 40 years for this information to come to light, and only as a result of investigating a conspiracy theory.
Operation Northwoods was approved at all levels of the highest military, and also approved by Secretary of Defence at the time, Robert McNamara, who submitted it to John F Kennedy. That's where it stopped, as Kennedy didn't like the plan. Months later McNamara was reassigned.
But the question is, if they seriously considered it once, they could do it again. I don't see Bush having the same morals as Kennedy, and the events of 9/11 and USS Cole are very simmilar to the plans already created by Operation Northwoods in the early '60s. It's truly fascinating what history drags up... and what was done once, could be done again.
Naive is the person that believes something like that is absolutely impossible, when history proves otherwise.
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