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In 1967, the CIA Created the Label "Conspiracy Theorists" ... to Attack Anyone Who Challenges the "Official" Narrative
Conspiracy Theorists USED TO Be Accepted As Normal
Democracy and free market capitalism were founded on conspiracy theories.
The Magna Carta, the Constitution and Declaration of Independence and other founding Western documents were based on conspiracy theories. Greek democracy and free market capitalism were also based on conspiracy theories.
But those were the bad old days …Things have now changed.
The CIA Coined the Term Conspiracy Theorist In 1967
That all changed in the 1960s.
Specifically, in April 1967, the CIA wrote a dispatch which coined the term “conspiracy theories” … and recommended methods for discrediting such theories. The dispatch was marked “psych” – short for “psychological operations” or disinformation – and “CS” for the CIA’s “Clandestine Services” unit.
The dispatch was produced in responses to a Freedom of Information Act request by the New York Times in 1976.
The dispatch states:
2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization.
***
The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.
3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the [conspiracy] question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active addresses are requested:
a. To discuss the publicity problem with and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors) , pointing out that the [official investigation of the relevant event] made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by … propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.
b. To employ propaganda assets to and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories.
***
4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful:
a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider.
***
b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual witnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent–and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) …
***
c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc.
***
d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other.
***
f. As to charges that the Commission’s report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new criticisms.
g. Such vague accusations as that “more than ten people have died mysteriously” can always be explained in some natural way ….
5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission’s Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.
Here are screenshots of part of the memo:
Summarizing the tactics which the CIA dispatch recommended:
- Claim that it would be impossible for so many people would keep quiet about such a big conspiracy
- Have people friendly to the CIA attack the claims, and point back to “official” reports
- Claim that eyewitness testimony is unreliable
- Claim that this is all old news, as “no significant new evidence has emerged”
- Ignore conspiracy claims unless discussion about them is already too active
- Claim that it’s irresponsible to speculate
- Accuse theorists of being wedded to and infatuated with their theories
- Accuse theorists of being politically motivated
- Accuse theorists of having financial interests in promoting conspiracy theories
In other words, the CIA’s clandestine services unit created the arguments for attacking conspiracy theories as unreliable in the 1960s as part of its psychological warfare operations.
But Aren’t Conspiracy Theories – In Fact – Nuts?
Forget Western history and CIA dispatches … aren’t conspiracy theorists nutty?
In fact, conspiracies are so common that judges are trained to look at conspiracy allegations as just another legal claim to be disproven or proven based on the specific evidence:
Federal and all 50 state’s codes include specific statutes addressing conspiracy, and providing the punishment for people who commit conspiracies.
But let’s examine what the people trained to weigh evidence and reach conclusions think about “conspiracies”. Let’s look at what American judges think.
Searching Westlaw, one of the 2 primary legal research networks which attorneys and judges use to research the law, I searched for court decisions including the word “Conspiracy”. This is such a common term in lawsuits that it overwhelmed Westlaw.
Specifically, I got the following message:
“Your query has been intercepted because it may retrieve a large number of documents.”
From experience, I know that this means that there were potentially millions or many hundreds of thousands of cases which use the term. There were so many cases, that Westlaw could not even start processing the request.
So I searched again, using the phrase “Guilty of Conspiracy”. I hoped that this would not only narrow my search sufficiently that Westlaw could handle it, but would give me cases where the judge actually found the defendant guilty of a conspiracy. This pulled up exactly 10,000 cases — which is the maximum number of results which Westlaw can give at one time. In other words, there were more than 10,000 cases using the phrase “Guilty of Conspiracy” (maybe there’s a way to change my settings to get more than 10,000 results, but I haven’t found it yet).
Moreover, as any attorney can confirm, usually only appeal court decisions are published in the Westlaw database. In other words, trial court decisions are rarely published; the only decisions normally published are those of the courts which hear appeals of the trial. Because only a very small fraction of the cases which go to trial are appealed, this logically means that the number of guilty verdicts in conspiracy cases at trial must be much, much larger than 10,000.
Moreover, “Guilty of Conspiracy” is only one of many possible search phrases to use to find cases where the defendant was found guilty of a lawsuit for conspiracy. Searching on Google, I got 3,170,000 results (as of yesterday) under the term “Guilty of Conspiracy”, 669,000 results for the search term “Convictions for Conspiracy”, and 743,000 results for “Convicted for Conspiracy”.
Of course, many types of conspiracies are called other things altogether. For example, a long-accepted legal doctrine makes it illegal for two or more companies to conspire to fix prices, which is called “Price Fixing” (1,180,000 results).
Given the above, I would extrapolate that there have been hundreds of thousands of convictions for criminal or civil conspiracy in the United States.
Finally, many crimes go unreported or unsolved, and the perpetrators are never caught. Therefore, the actual number of conspiracies committed in the U.S. must be even higher.
In other words, conspiracies are committed all the time in the U.S., and many of the conspirators are caught and found guilty by American courts. Remember, Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was a conspiracy theory.
Indeed, conspiracy is a very well-recognized crime in American law, taught to every first-year law school student as part of their basic curriculum. Telling a judge that someone has a “conspiracy theory” would be like telling him that someone is claiming that he trespassed on their property, or committed assault, or stole his car. It is a fundamental legal concept.
Obviously, many conspiracy allegations are false (if you see a judge at a dinner party, ask him to tell you some of the crazy conspiracy allegations which were made in his court). Obviously, people will either win or lose in court depending on whether or not they can prove their claim with the available evidence. But not all allegations of trespass, assault, or theft are true, either.
Proving a claim of conspiracy is no different from proving any other legal claim, and the mere label “conspiracy” is taken no less seriously by judges.
It’s not only Madoff. The heads of Enron were found guilty of conspiracy, as was the head of Adelphia. Numerous lower-level government officials have been found guilty of conspiracy. See this, this, this, this and this.
Time Magazine’s financial columnist Justin Fox writes:
Some financial market conspiracies are real …
Most good investigative reporters are conspiracy theorists, by the way.
And what about the NSA and the tech companies that have cooperated with them?
But Our Leaders Wouldn’t Do That
While people might admit that corporate executives and low-level government officials might have engaged in conspiracies – they may be strongly opposed to considering that the wealthiest or most powerful might possibly have done so.
But powerful insiders have long admitted to conspiracies. For example, Obama’s Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein, wrote:
Of course some conspiracy theories, under our definition, have turned out to be true. The Watergate hotel room used by Democratic National Committee was, in fact, bugged by Republican officials, operating at the behest of the White House. In the 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency did, in fact, administer LSD and related drugs under Project MKULTRA, in an effort to investigate the possibility of “mind control.” Operation Northwoods, a rumored plan by the Department of Defense to simulate acts of terrorism and to blame them on Cuba, really was proposed by high-level officials ….
But Someone Would Have Spilled the Beans
A common defense to people trying sidetrack investigations into potential conspiracies is to say that “someone would have spilled the beans” if there were really a conspiracy.
But famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg explains:
It is a commonplace that “you can’t keep secrets in Washington” or “in a democracy, no matter how sensitive the secret, you’re likely to read it the next day in the New York Times.” These truisms are flatly false. They are in fact cover stories, ways of flattering and misleading journalists and their readers, part of the process of keeping secrets well. Of course eventually many secrets do get out that wouldn’t in a fully totalitarian society. But the fact is that the overwhelming majority of secrets do not leak to the American public. This is true even when the information withheld is well known to an enemy and when it is clearly essential to the functioning of the congressional war power and to any democratic control of foreign policy. The reality unknown to the public and to most members of Congress and the press is that secrets that would be of the greatest import to many of them can be kept from them reliably for decades by the executive branch, even though they are known to thousands of insiders.
History proves Ellsberg right. For example:
- One hundred and thirty thousand (130,000) people from the U.S., UK and Canada worked on the Manhattan Project. But it was kept secret for years
- A BBC documentary shows that:
There was “a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by a group of right-wing American businessmen . . . . The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression”
Moreover, “the tycoons told General Butler the American people would accept the new government because they controlled all the newspapers.” Have you ever heard of this conspiracy before? It was certainly a very large one. And if the conspirators controlled the newspapers then, how much worse is it today with media consolidation?
- 7 out of the 8 giant, money center banks went bankrupt in the 1980′s during the “Latin American Crisis”, and the government’s response was to cover up their insolvency. That’s a cover up lasting several decades
- Banks have been involved in systematic criminal behavior, and have manipulated every single market
- Governments have been covering up nuclear meltdowns for fifty years to protect the nuclear industry. Governments have colluded to cover up the severity of numerous other environmental accidents. For many years, Texas officials intentionally under-reported the amount of radiation in drinking water to avoid having to report violations
- The government’s spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here. And see this.) But the public didn’t learn about it until many years later. Indeed, the the New York Times delayed the story so that it would not affect the outcome of the 2004 presidential election
- The decision to launch the Iraq war was made before 9/11. Indeed, former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11, and inserted “crap” in its justifications for invading Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill – who sat on the National Security Council – also says that Bush planned the Iraq war before 9/11. And top British officials say that the U.S. discussed Iraq regime change one month after Bush took office. Dick Cheney apparently even made Iraqi’s oil fields a national security priority before 9/11. And it has now been shown that a handful of people were responsible for willfully ignoring the evidence that Iraq lacked weapons of mass destruction. These facts have only been publicly disclosed recently. Indeed, Tom Brokaw said, “All wars are based on propaganda.” A concerted effort to produce propaganda is a conspiracy
Moreover, high-level government officials and insiders have admitted to dramatic conspiracies after the fact, including:
The admissions did not occur until many decades after the events.
These examples show that it is possible to keep conspiracies secret for a long time, without anyone “spilling the beans”.
In addition, to anyone who knows how covert military operations work, it is obvious that segmentation on a “need-to-know basis”, along with deference to command hierarchy, means that a couple of top dogs can call the shots and most people helping won’t even know the big picture at the time they are participating.
Moreover, those who think that co-conspirators will brag about their deeds forget that people in the military or intelligence or who have huge sums of money on the line can be very disciplined. They are not likely to go to the bar and spill the beans like a down-on-their-luck, second-rate alcoholic robber might do.
Finally, people who carry out covert operations may do so for ideological reasons — believing that the “ends justify the means”. Never underestimate the conviction of an ideologue.
Conclusion
The bottom line is that some conspiracy claims are nutty and some are true. Each has to be judged on its own facts.
Humans have a tendency to try to explain random events through seeing patterns … that’s how our brains our wired. Therefore, we have to test our theories of connection and causality against the cold, hard facts.
On the other hand, the old saying by Lord Acton is true:
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.
Those who operate without checks and balances – and without the disinfectant sunlight of public scrutiny and accountability – tend to act in their own best interests … and the little guy gets hurt.
The early Greeks knew it, as did those who forced the king to sign the Magna Carta, the Founding Fathers and the father of modern economics. We should remember this important tradition of Western civilization.
Postscript: The ridicule of all conspiracy theories is really just an attempt to diffuse criticism of the powerful.
The wealthy are not worse than other people … but they are not necessarily better either. Powerful leaders may not be bad people … or they could be sociopaths.
We must judge each by his or her actions, and not by preconceived stereotypes that they are all saints acting in our best interest or all scheming criminals.
And see ...
The Troll’s Guide to Internet Disruption
»
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Americans like to take credit for many things that they are late to enter. Much of the technology "pioneered in America" like semiconductors and lasers started in the old countries.
Regarding WWII, Americans tipped the balance. Many captured Germans and spies witnessed the vast scale of American production and realized too late that they had no chance. Hitler's mistake was not keeping his pact with the Russians mainly because he was drugged out of his mind by late 1936. The imperial powers had convinced that poor bastard to take-up with a quack doctor because it was the hip thing to do. Germany's defeat largely rested on the failings of der Führer.
Much of American high-command wanted to roll into Russia with the Germans at their back... There was a grand love of Germany at the time for good reason.
"I regard ALL of human history as a grand conspiracy of backing up lies with violence. "
bravo, well said as are most of your posts
Government is a conspiracy that works.
Yes, Reaper!
Organized crime is a form of government, while government is a form of organized crime. There are no fundamental dichotomies between people. The allegations of "government versus organized crime" are false. There is nothing but one form of organized crime against another, while those which are temporarily the biggest and best organized gangs of criminals call themselves the "government" and control what that government actually does.
There is really nothing but organized crime, surrounded by controlled opposition. All of the "opposition" that promotes impossible ideals regarding what government should be, and therefore, what money should be, etc., are different versions of controlled opposition. Promoting those impossible ideals always is based on understanding the real mechanisms of how things work backward.
By definition:
Government is a conspiracy that works.
The background problem is that the vast majority of people have been brainwashed to believe in bullshit about that. Therefore, they are easily misled to support the best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites. Hence, those who promote false fundamental dichotomies and impossible ideals always are actually making the opposite happen in the real world. But nevertheless, that kind of bullshit continues to be popular. Indeed, professional politicians primarily work by discovering what lies people want to hear, and then telling them those lies. The most recent example was President Obama, who actually has done pretty well everything the opposite to what he promised he would do. He told the lies that the most people wanted to hear while campaigning, then he actually did mostly the opposite to everything he said, after he gained power. That is the normal way that fake democracies in the Western world operate!
The only way to have better government is to have better organized crime. The only way that would be possible is IF enough citizens understood that. However, it appears to me that less than 1% of the population understands that. The problems of triumphant organized crime being the government, or controlling governments, are extremely intense due to the long history of that creating controlled opposition groups to surround the core of organized crime. The selection processes to become a career politician or bureaucrat are pretty well totally based on developing the skills to be a relatively excellent liar and hypocrite. There is almost nobody else available due to the selection processes that have resulted in the established systems being almost nothing but organized crime, surrounded by controlled opposition groups, both of which spout basically the same bullshit!
Ideally, we should have a greater use of information, enabling higher consciousness, which faces the facts that human realities are always organized lies operating robberies. There is nothing wrong with the theory of a democratic republic operating through the rule of law. The PROBLEM is that the vast majority of people have become incompetent political idiots, who have been brainwashed to believe in bullshit, to the degree that they want to continue to do so. The result is that the basic flow of fundamental organized crime continues, while the different political puppets come and go, as voted for by the masses of muppets, enough of whom can be fooled enough of the time.
Another way to express that is that people have not yet become cynical enough. They have not yet gone through the looking glass of the Bizarro Mirror World. They keep on wanting to believe in magical words ... and applaud those who speak that kind of poetry. Meanwhile, some are becoming more and more cynical, as it becomes more and more blatantly obvious that governments are the biggest form of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals. HOWEVER, it then still tends to be that the new crop of controlled opposition pops up to promote the same old impossible ideals, which then continue to cause the opposite to actually happen in the real world.
George Washington's articles are implicitly like that, in the ways that he tends to provide excellent analysis of the problems, BUT, then still implicitly proposes bogus "solutions" which are going to somehow realized impossible ideals. However, the FACTS are that warfare was always organized crime on a larger scale, and the history of warfare made civilization be what it really is. The real mechanisms are the death controls, which back up the debt controls. The only real solutions are better death controls. Governments are basically military organizations, which have developed to become as deceitful about their own nature as they could possibly be!
HOWEVER, the controlled opposition tends to continue to deliberately ignore that, by suggesting that there should be no death control systems, or at least none that human beings are consciously aware of operating. The paradoxes that warfare was the oldest and best developed social science and form of social engineering, but that success in warfare was based on deceits and treacheries (as the ultimate forms of criminal conspiracies) has warped everything into paradoxical hyper-drive.
Government is a conspiracy that works. Therefore, to make a better government requires a conspiracy that works better. Ideally, that should and could be achieved if enough citizens understood that they were members of an organized crime gang, called their country. However, the majority of citizens were brainwashed to believe in a bunch of absurd bullshit. Therefore, the best available professional liars and immaculate hypocrites continue to get away with controlling the powers of governments.
It would take a series of political miracles for enough people to understand what I am saying enough to make enough of a difference. But nevertheless, those kinds of radical truths are what are theoretically necessary for human beings to develop a better political science, which is consistent with physical sciences. Primarily that means we should stop using the biggest bullies' bullshit language based on false fundamental dichotomies and the related impossible ideals, because that only works to assist professional liars and immaculate hypocrites continue to be those kinds of professional hypocrites.
Honest government would have to be honest about the nature of government itself: "Government is a conspiracy that works." As long as the established systems of organized crime continue to be able to surround themselves with controlled opposition, then there can be no realistic resolutions to the real problems, because the promotion of impossible ideals will continue to actually cause the opposite to happen in the real world.
What is the government sanctioned explanation of THIS??
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-ame...
Radical, when's your book coming out? You need to reach more people.
I agree. I would be willing to sponsor such a project, as I imagine many here would be. We could take up a collection and everyone could contribute the core concept of a chapter.
Because everyone wants to read a 40 lb. book that contains endless permutations of the same 4 sentences?
If anyone had the time and interest, then it would be possible to do a content analysis of my material, which has been published on the Marijuana Party of Canada Web site for about a decade (plus some of my previous self-published books, going back a few decades.) Such a content analysis could look at how many times I repeated the same ideas, and then repeat those once, in the order of how many times I repeated those ideas in my previous statements. That would not be a 40 lb. book, but would contain a lot more than 4 sentences.
As gswifty pointed out above, I highlight the most important points. Someone could skim through looking for the coloured, bold font sentences, to see my main ideas, and how those have developed over time in my collection like this Some Monetary System articles.
I merely like to try to understand things, and writing is a tool to help thinking. I write comments on Zero Hedge primarily for my own interest, and because it seems there is small group that appreciates those. However, from a practical point of view, the overwhelming vast majority of people will continue to not want to know about the real world, because they will want to continue to believe in bullshit that they grew up being brainwashed to believe.
My current work is through Canadian Electoral District Associations, whereby, every single day, I continue to demonstrate the standing social FACTS that ~99% of the people always act like incompetent political idiots. For more than thirty years, I have been trying to make the Canadian Political Contribution Tax Credit WORK ...
When windigo suggests a "collection" to sponsor a project, of course, I think of using the Canadian political tax credit ... However, I REPEAT, the only thing I have proven is that ~99% of the people always act like incompetent political idiots, because the existing social systems are based on the long history of backing up lies with violence, which have succeeded in making the vast majority of people become too ignorant and afraid to want to participate in trying to do anything to change that social situation.
Overall, that is automatically getting worse, faster! Hence, there is no practical political point that motivates me to edit my material better, because no matter how well that might be done, it would still not be remotely enough to make any significant difference.
IF I again did a vast editing job to present my ideas better, that would still MAKE NO REAL DIFFERENCE, since the vast majority of people would continue to not be interested. What I do now is merely pass the time with my own quest to endeavour to understand the world better, in the sense of attempting to build a better mental model of the world around me, as expressed through my use of language ...
If you care to send me copies of your works (desktop publishing files, like Word etc) I would be happy to edit them, flesh out core concepts, and assemble them into a book. I am willing to bear the financial concerns of getting it to press. Credit, of course, would remain yours.
I am quite surprised by that!
I am not interested in any credit nor copyright claims. I do not maintain any copyright on the material on the Marijuana Party Web site content. I have been using that public platform to develop my ideas for a dozen years, which have gradually been taking the shape that one can read in the kinds of comments that I have been posting on Zero Hedge.
I figure that if anyone takes enough time to understand what I am attempting to explain, then they have made those ideas their own through that process. Meanwhile, like I said in my comment above, for the last dozen years, I have been collecting my stuff on the Marijuana Party Web site, mostly in the English Discussion Forum, that I have been using like my personal diary, or blog: http://www.marijuanaparty.ca/forum.html
One of the most common ironic comments about good paradigm shifts are that those are obvious, after one sees them ... but seemed to be invisible before that. I have been trying to look at things in radically different ways, which work as paradigm shifts in political science. Those different ways of perceiving political problems then result in reconnecting all of the other issues from 9/11 to Monetary System articles.
wendigo, if you are serious about taking the time to distill that stuff, or to cut and polish what might be those sort of diamonds in the rough, then everything is there, which you could download, and take you time to wade through. I repeat that, in my opinion, IF you do that, then you make those ideas become yours. I have no doubt that someone else could do that, IF they had the time and interest to do so. You should feel free to appropriate any of my ideas, to make them yours, in any way.
As another pleasant day dream, it would be nice if it was miraculously possible to turn that in a series of entertaining videos, because there are none that I am aware of which I think are completely satisfactory, although there are now quite a few Excellent Videos on Money Systems:
I am not aware of anyone else that has put together political science that is like the one I have been working on. However, I do not feel like I "own" that, since to whatever degree it is an improved model of the real world, then that should be free to the public. IF those ideas resonate with you enough to be motivated to try to organize and present them better within your own mind, in ways that you would like to share with others, then I would be flattered by that. By the time you actually did all that work, you would understand those ideas just as well, if not perhaps better, than I do.
My ancient writings, of self-published books, Megasynthesis and Letters Home From Oedipus, no longer exist in any computer friendly versions, although they were first made on big university computers, way back at the beginning of the 1980s. They may be interesting regarding how I originally developed the ways of thinking which I later applied to politics. However, that is not necessary to understand those kinds of paradigm shifts in perception now.
Most of what I do is review the standard available material, while attempting to put it all through the same basic paradigm shifts. In that way, I try to overcome my disappointment in other works, that tend to do a relatively good analysis, but then collapse at the end to bullshit "solutions" which are not consistent with their own original analysis of the problems.
That is what I would like to see in any possible future book or video, or other presentation: the review of the history would be deep enough so that the suggested solutions which arise out of that continue to be consistent with that analysis. My usual complaint is that almost all articles, books, and documentaries that I am aware of go through more than 90% relatively good analysis, only to end with the last 10% or so being a collapse back to bullshit "solutions." ... I believe that a better, deeper analysis could enable one to avoid that ...
P.S.
I approved the sharing of contacts that you requested on Zero Hedge. Therefore, we could exchange emails about such a project, if you wanted to do that in the future ...
Thanks for your response and consideration. I was aware of the party website link from your homepage. I also understand you relinquishing ownership of the content you posted there, as you regularly down-play the recognition and aggrandizement of ego. However, I believe you're making a tactical mistake to do so. Ultimately, though you are B today, someone else will become B tomorrow. That reference is from Daniel Quinn, who if you are not familiar with,...you should be! I believe his theories will help you to augment/supplement your own., especially along the lines of the social sciences. Sometimes we have to go two steps backwards to go three forward. Thanks for the additional links. I will be sure to check them out.
"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats."
-- http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ideas
ok, so you explore ideas. and as you rightly point out, most people are idiots. however, if you think working on a theoretical framework is going to change the paradigm, look at history. change doesn't happen due to theorys, it happens when people get hungry, killed raped or some other such intolerable act. that's the way its going to happen this time, like it or not.
you remind me of the earnest fools at yale that tried to get me to subscribe as a foot soldier to their 'beyond war' paradigm shifting revolution. google it - pathetic fail, but got somebody a grade in some poli sci class, and probably entry into the ford foundation or some shit. it amounted to exactly nothing, because they repeated - ad nauseum - that change would happen by "educating people". people don't want to be educated. people want what they want, and when that want becomes severe, things change, sometimes unpredictably. ie. American Revolution. if the general state of affairs is broadly known to be the cause of the problem, that will be avoided in the future.
afaik, ZH is doing pretty well making the general state of affairs known. i for one am done with isms. every one fails. freedom happens in stutters, and runs more smoothly as time goes on.
put that in your bong.
"people don't want to be educated. people want what they want"
Yes, forexskin, I must agree that is correct regarding the vast majority of the people, especially inside of the real social system being based on backing up lies with violence, which reinforces that!
What I want is to be educated! I like to learn about how things work more than anything else, and so, that is what I have been doing ... However, I still agree with you that that appears practically pointless, since the majority of people do not want to be educated, especially since being educated about politics means that the more that one knows, the worse that it gets, due to the vicious spirals of lies and violence, ignorance and fear, getting worse, faster ...
P.S.
https://afww.wordpress.com/2011/06/06/paradigm-shift-and-a-future-of-pea...
That looks like old-fashioned reactionary revolution to me. "Paradigm shift" that is NOT really a paradigm shift. That view promotes the opposite to my view. I say we need better death controls, not to stop them. That means radically different thinking about what death controls ARE, and therefore, how to do those. I think that promoting politics without violence is like asking for physics without force.
That especially does not work because the various kinds of sociopathic or psychopathic people who tend to not FEEL empathy or compassion, and cannot be made to FEEL those. Dealing with human aggression realistically can only be done as better dynamic equilibria of REAL systems of organized lies operating robberies.
forexskin, you misread or misunderstand what I was saying if you think that is anything like 'beyond war' paradigm shifting revolution ... which is why I quite agreed with your reply.
Everything that I have been doing for several decades can be traced back to worrying about the development of weapons of mass destruction, making old-fashioned forms of warfare become omnicidal insanities. I try to get a deeper understanding of militarism, and a broader view of death controls, so that a better militarism could operate better death controls.
That is NOTHING like 'beyond war' paradigm shifting revolution, since it promotes much more genuine paradigm shifts, and therefore, promotes actual mechanisms which are the opposite to the old-fashioned impossible ideals promoted by those in what I regard as the controlled opposition of 'beyond war' paradigm shifting revolution ... While my end goals may be similar, the mechanisms to achieve those are the opposite to the impossible ideals of "non-violence."
dooooood, appreciate your points, but try getting out the red pencil and learning about efficiency in your comms - please.
He highlights his points all the time. They're in black, in case you haven't noticed.
RM makes a good point, but its always the same point with way too much verbage. OK, .gov is extortion backed by murder. What else you got RM?
Cog Dis writes a lot as well but he moves the focus around. His last post, along the lines of - Don't get too gung-ho about revolutions because the revolutionary leaders are prone to sell-out and then he explains why, perfectly anticipated the Siyrza sell-out in GreshenLand. For example. I bet he's rightfully patting himself on the back over that one.
Things I add are discussing the possible solutions as better organized crime, instead of stopping it.
I am stuck in a rut, because the world is.
My rut is getting deeper, because it all is.
!
Once you realize government is fraud then up is down and left is right. Keep on calling it what it is - fraud - all of it.
really? it still sounds like a stoner riffing on one thought - over and over and over.
like i said, valid points on his part - but i'll stay with my point - posts are much hay, few needles.
informative expression doesn't need to repeat "lies supported with state violence" or "government is a conspiracy that works" in every post - we get it. lots of wordy explanation with a few good observations and not particularly enlightening conclusions. everybody's got an asshole and an opinion - in this case, another cynical blind man on an elephant, same elephant. as if cynicism is the default, criticism-proof bottom line - it ain't. say it a hundred times, and there's still not much to chew on.
since we can't change this crap happening (at least not right now), predictive power of analysis would appear to be most useful. got some?
and since my comment was friendly, and yours is condescending, i'll suggest you take a good hearty fight club fock off.
You said red, i said black. That was hardly condescending.
Dr. Manhattan told me personally that there are no fat conspiracies...
;-D
Tyler, fix the font size in the editor. We're going blind here!!!
+1 on the font size in the editor needing to be LARGER.
clearly a conspiracy to keep older, wiser commenters at the bottom of the stack...
Example 2: the Tuskeegee Syphillis experiments.
Example 3: Gulf of Tonkin
[Edit. I forgot Panama: Pineapple face. Granada (who the fuck knows). Somewhere in there my Marine brothers in Beirut. And a shitload of war criminal actions in South America.]
Example 4: Iraq "Yellowcake"
Example 5: Libya Terrorists
Example 6: ISIS
Exampe 7: Ukraine
Example 8: Washington DC
I fucking wish.
Jeb Bush is FAT
So is Hillary Clinton.
It was that "vast right-wing conspiracy" of hers that was the only one not to turn out as fact.
Name ANY politician that wouldn't be enhanced without the loss of eight to ten pounds (one fucking head).
LOL
Superb article, George. Keep up the great work.
K
Not really.
If you really think about it. Logically, conspiracy theorist have been about as long as government. It in only in modern history to we have actual recordings and records.
Thus, an Egyption slave, who was a conspiracy theorist bout the building of pyramids may not have had his theory sent down through history for us to see as an example.
I can only hope you are being sarcastic. Yea, the CIA is involved in this and that. But to give them credit for the label conspiracy theorists, is no bid deal. It has happened again and again over history. You don't agree with the current thought pushed by TPTB, you are the crazy one.
Jeb Bush is FAT
No, he's a freaking Kark!
Now, say it again please.
Name calling is not a form of debate. Thats how I know when Im right. If the other side goes to name calling?
There is this thing among techs. Yes I am an asshole/idiot, But am I wrong? Because if I was wrong you could prove it.
It is the honest debte that lets us find the truths.
Honest Debate? I tried that after I woke up.
There's no honesty anymore. All I could find was minddead repetition of political talking points.
I'm still disappointed.
Yep it is pretty rare these days but it does happen now and then. Those are the conversations worth having.
For some reason pissing contests are the norm.
"It is the honest debte that lets us find the truths."
Are you just borderline mentally retarded or is this CIA tactics in practice in order to dilute the outrage that should follow such an excellent article on how we are manipulated?
Asshole.
Ah borderline mental. Duh! I keep talking to walls.
Asshole? Well ya! But am I wrong?
Fuck the CIA.
How bad is it in West, when you don't trust your major news outlets and have to read ZH and RT to get more accurate details.
best single book imo on the half century long conspiracy to kill jfk running through 9-11 and the nsa spying:
http://smile.amazon.com/JFK-9-11-Years-Deep-State/dp/1615776311/ref=sr_1...
other candidates?
My dad worked in the shipyards during WWII and was a conspiracy theorist back in the 1950s, long before the term was invented. What great conversations we had at the dinner table. When he retired in the '70s, the book he couldn't stop talking about was None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen (with most Amazon readers even today giving it 5 stars).
My dad worked in the shipyards during WWII and was a conspiracy theorist back in the 1950s, long before the term was invented. What great conversations we had at the dinner table. When he retired in the '70s, the book he couldn't stop talking about was None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen (with most Amazon readers even today giving it 5 stars).
http://www.amazon.com/Billie-Sol-Estes-Texas-Legend/dp/B000ANCGGS/ref=sr...
My autobiography
Wait. What? There are some conspiracies that are not true? Which ones?
This one: "Bill Clinton deployed a significant amount of his time into finding ways how to keep cigars moist with the ultimate goal of damaging the humidor producers in countries ruled by or with governments sympathetic to dictators the Clinton administration was determined to eliminate and replace with flourishing democracies."
Busted. He was simply horny beyond what he was able to bear.
Research on the possibility of assassinating Castro?
Oh, that one. Ok, thanks. Carry on.