Friday, November 11, 2005
Monday, November 07, 2005
Does your mind accept the ideas in this article?
http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/newyork/nyc-nycons064501480nov06,0,3646064.story?coll=nyc-nynews-print
For those who cannot get there by clicking on the above URL, here is the article: (Comments below the insert)
===========================NYC Print Edition -----------------
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
The truth is out there - maybe
BY MARY VOBORILSTAFF WRITER
November 6, 2005
Sept. 11 conspiracy theories have edged into the mainstream.
In September, Fire Department chaplain candidate Imam Intikab Habib questioned whether Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida were responsible for the attacks, then quickly withdrew from the job. A short time later came a two-day conference in New York City that was built around the charge that "controlled demolition" brought down the World Trade Center.
Conspiracy books proliferate, and the Internet is such a cyber-trove of 9/11 arcana - Google the term "9/11 conspiracy," and 5.4 million entries turn up - that one site includes a primer, "Navigation for 9/11 Newbies."
As a cultural phenomenon, though, it's all been seen before: This is a conspiracy nation, and it has been almost since its founding. Those who study conspiracy rhetoric say beliefs in various 9/11 cabals are entirely predictable, that conspiracy narratives, ranging from the thoughtful and plausible to the fringy and fanciful, always have been threaded throughout American culture. (In late 2003, the 925-page "Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia" was published.)
Sense of comfort
A recurring trend, conspiracy theories tend to emerge after major national events as a means of making sense of the senseless.
"The most ambitious conspiracy theories are, in a way, oddly comforting to the people who hold them," said Michael Barkun, a professor of political science at Syracuse University and the author of "A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America," published in 2003.
Historically, Barkun said, conspiracy theories share "a number of related characteristics: that nothing happens by accident, that nothing is as it seems, that everything is connected. Conspiracy theorists have a view of the world in which there is no coincidence - nothing happens because of human stupidity or randomness. Somehow, everything is part of a pattern."
And, said Mark Fenster, a University of Florida assistant law professor whose book "Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture" was published in 1999, "The greater the trauma, the more the desire to have some sort of rational explanation for it ... a desire to have things be explicable in a cause-and-effect framework."
When an official account finally does emerge, added Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political Research Associates, an independent nonprofit based in Somerville, Mass., "there often aren't answers to all the questions. In any investigation, many paths lead nowhere," leaving some disgruntled, angst-ridden and suspicious.
Conspiracy theorists then "turn to the only explanation that's left, which discards randomness," said Berlet, who has studied conspiracy movements. "They develop a very comforting and simple theory that ultimately a handful of really bad people did it."
The way some people connect the dots, 9/11 was the work of the U.S. military; the Twin Towers and 7 World Trade Center were wired with explosives and deliberately blown up; a satellite-guided missile, not a hijacked jet, plowed into the Pentagon; the jet that crashed in a Pennsylvania field actually was shot down by Sidewinder missiles.
Some of those who promulgate conspiracy theories are angry and powerless, Berlet said, and to those susceptible to conspiracy theories, "they become a hero because they are sounding the alarms."
Before the Internet, alarms were sounded by word of mouth or by publications that rarely merited serious note in the mainstream media. The blogosphere changed that, with everyone now his or her own desktop publisher. Anyone with low-grade fears or suspicions can find kindred spirits almost instantly.
Seeds of fear
Some conspiracy theories spring up as an overreaction to "the fear and the loathing that occurs when there is destruction or damage," said Dr. Marc Siegel, who teaches at New York University Medical Center and whose latest book is "False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear."
But a contributing factor, he said, is that "the United States government and others are not inspiring confidence. You almost get a choice: You either inspire people through positive emotion or through negative emotion.
"Right now, the climate is fear. If the government is scaring people all the time, it's only about three steps away from that to distrust the government, too, and say, 'What did they do? Are they behind it?'"
"Fear easily turns to paranoia when there is a climate of distrust that the government is participating in, when you cannot trust your information sources," Siegel said.
That in turn spawns conspiracy theories, which columnist Christopher Hitchens calls "the white noise which moves in to fill the vacuity of the official version."
For all the transfiguring awfulness of 9/11, subsequent conspiracies have not overtaken the public imagination the way the Kennedy assassination did in 1963, a skepticism that persists to this day.
Conspiracy has been a recurring topic in political discourse since ancient times, though the most fertile ground has been that of American history, according to Michael William Pfau, whose book "The Political Style of Conspiracy: Chase, Sumner and Lincoln," is to be published this month.
In the 1850s, for example, the North and the South used conspiracy theories to discredit each other. Southerners feared that Northerners conspired to create slave revolts because the North sought to destroy the institution of slavery. Northerners believed that Southerners were determined to spread slavery throughout the Western states. The Republican party, Pfau says, rose to power in 1860 partly through the use of such rhetoric.
Kernels of truth
Florida's Fenster noted in a telephone interview that to label something a conspiracy theory "is an act of political rhetoric. It's an act of de-legitimization of something." And some of those who study so-called "conspiracy narratives" say it's a mistake to automatically dismiss or marginalize them, because sometimes they hint at a larger truth.
Or they are exactly on target.
In the 1960s, some warned of FBI surveillance of dissidents and infiltration of anti-war and countercultural groups, and they were disdained as paranoid. That very activity, of course, was a staple of the J. Edgar Hoover era, as were Cold War claims that the civil rights, voting rights and other progressive movements were "communist conspiracies."
Fears that the government deliberately spread AIDS and recreational drugs in inner cities may strain credulity, but, in the infamous Tuskegee syphilis program, the U.S. Public Health Service did experiment on 399 black men, a program that ended only in 1972.
Supposedly complicit in the 9/11 cover-ups is the national media cartel - which leads Berlet, of Political Research Associates, to wonder, "How could there be a conspiracy involving the military, the executive branch, Congress and the media in which somebody didn't rat it out and get a Pulitzer Prize?" He adds, "It's very difficult to maintain conspiracies over any length of time with a large number of people. Inevitably, someone rats it out. Or someone gets arrested and turns."
=============================
My comments:
Since the middle ages, governments have used the 'purloined letter' method of de-
legitimization of leaked information, 'hiding it in plain sight'.
When something is leaked or is deduced which is true, the government will make ten thousand slightly different stories which makes the acceptance of any true story very unlikely, mainly because who can figure out which is true and the rest false? Most people, faced with all the slightly different versions, will simply opt out of even checking out any of them, becoming blind followers of the government's version.
Also, the conditioning of the population to the acceptance of those with letters after their names, either political, religious, or academic, allows the government or the terrorists, (especially if they are the same people) to simply put something horrific but true to rest in the popular mind by having a 'accredited authority' come forth and pronounce this one true and that one false. In our culture, it works amazingly well.
As to the idea that someone 'in the know' can come forward and win awards by blowing the lie out of the water and into popular knowledge, it seldom happens because of the 'wipe from history' threat maintained by most terrorists, government or freelance.
If someone talks, tells the truth, they are simply killed, their families are killed, and in the 3rd world, sometimes their entire village was killed, wiping them from existence totally, or as totally as possible.
Winning awards, getting into the public eye, ends quickly when the award winner is killed 'robbing a store' and their family dies in some 'freak but common accident'. This tends to chill anyone else who hears of the events and knows anything.
A myth, you say?
It's called a 'redundant deterrent motivator'.
There are other strategies used to blind the minds of those who seek out what really happened.
The American government has a policy of 'no paper trail' since the viet nam war, and that has gotten easier since everything has gone computerized.
The science of measuring people's personalities and finding those who will do what they are told and not talk about it has jumped by leaps and bounds over the last few decades.
Also, 'accidents' and 'random murders' are really well scripted now. Anyone who has any real proof of government murder finds themselves living the movie 'run from the authorities' scenario, but unlike the movies, they don't survive.
I've often wondered what was going on when the Simson trial was blocking out all other news a decade or so ago, and many other events which blanked out all other news.
Nuff said!
http://www.newsday.com/news/printedition/newyork/nyc-nycons064501480nov06,0,3646064.story?coll=nyc-nynews-print
For those who cannot get there by clicking on the above URL, here is the article: (Comments below the insert)
===========================NYC Print Edition -----------------
CONSPIRACY THEORIES
The truth is out there - maybe
BY MARY VOBORILSTAFF WRITER
November 6, 2005
Sept. 11 conspiracy theories have edged into the mainstream.
In September, Fire Department chaplain candidate Imam Intikab Habib questioned whether Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida were responsible for the attacks, then quickly withdrew from the job. A short time later came a two-day conference in New York City that was built around the charge that "controlled demolition" brought down the World Trade Center.
Conspiracy books proliferate, and the Internet is such a cyber-trove of 9/11 arcana - Google the term "9/11 conspiracy," and 5.4 million entries turn up - that one site includes a primer, "Navigation for 9/11 Newbies."
As a cultural phenomenon, though, it's all been seen before: This is a conspiracy nation, and it has been almost since its founding. Those who study conspiracy rhetoric say beliefs in various 9/11 cabals are entirely predictable, that conspiracy narratives, ranging from the thoughtful and plausible to the fringy and fanciful, always have been threaded throughout American culture. (In late 2003, the 925-page "Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia" was published.)
Sense of comfort
A recurring trend, conspiracy theories tend to emerge after major national events as a means of making sense of the senseless.
"The most ambitious conspiracy theories are, in a way, oddly comforting to the people who hold them," said Michael Barkun, a professor of political science at Syracuse University and the author of "A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America," published in 2003.
Historically, Barkun said, conspiracy theories share "a number of related characteristics: that nothing happens by accident, that nothing is as it seems, that everything is connected. Conspiracy theorists have a view of the world in which there is no coincidence - nothing happens because of human stupidity or randomness. Somehow, everything is part of a pattern."
And, said Mark Fenster, a University of Florida assistant law professor whose book "Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture" was published in 1999, "The greater the trauma, the more the desire to have some sort of rational explanation for it ... a desire to have things be explicable in a cause-and-effect framework."
When an official account finally does emerge, added Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political Research Associates, an independent nonprofit based in Somerville, Mass., "there often aren't answers to all the questions. In any investigation, many paths lead nowhere," leaving some disgruntled, angst-ridden and suspicious.
Conspiracy theorists then "turn to the only explanation that's left, which discards randomness," said Berlet, who has studied conspiracy movements. "They develop a very comforting and simple theory that ultimately a handful of really bad people did it."
The way some people connect the dots, 9/11 was the work of the U.S. military; the Twin Towers and 7 World Trade Center were wired with explosives and deliberately blown up; a satellite-guided missile, not a hijacked jet, plowed into the Pentagon; the jet that crashed in a Pennsylvania field actually was shot down by Sidewinder missiles.
Some of those who promulgate conspiracy theories are angry and powerless, Berlet said, and to those susceptible to conspiracy theories, "they become a hero because they are sounding the alarms."
Before the Internet, alarms were sounded by word of mouth or by publications that rarely merited serious note in the mainstream media. The blogosphere changed that, with everyone now his or her own desktop publisher. Anyone with low-grade fears or suspicions can find kindred spirits almost instantly.
Seeds of fear
Some conspiracy theories spring up as an overreaction to "the fear and the loathing that occurs when there is destruction or damage," said Dr. Marc Siegel, who teaches at New York University Medical Center and whose latest book is "False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear."
But a contributing factor, he said, is that "the United States government and others are not inspiring confidence. You almost get a choice: You either inspire people through positive emotion or through negative emotion.
"Right now, the climate is fear. If the government is scaring people all the time, it's only about three steps away from that to distrust the government, too, and say, 'What did they do? Are they behind it?'"
"Fear easily turns to paranoia when there is a climate of distrust that the government is participating in, when you cannot trust your information sources," Siegel said.
That in turn spawns conspiracy theories, which columnist Christopher Hitchens calls "the white noise which moves in to fill the vacuity of the official version."
For all the transfiguring awfulness of 9/11, subsequent conspiracies have not overtaken the public imagination the way the Kennedy assassination did in 1963, a skepticism that persists to this day.
Conspiracy has been a recurring topic in political discourse since ancient times, though the most fertile ground has been that of American history, according to Michael William Pfau, whose book "The Political Style of Conspiracy: Chase, Sumner and Lincoln," is to be published this month.
In the 1850s, for example, the North and the South used conspiracy theories to discredit each other. Southerners feared that Northerners conspired to create slave revolts because the North sought to destroy the institution of slavery. Northerners believed that Southerners were determined to spread slavery throughout the Western states. The Republican party, Pfau says, rose to power in 1860 partly through the use of such rhetoric.
Kernels of truth
Florida's Fenster noted in a telephone interview that to label something a conspiracy theory "is an act of political rhetoric. It's an act of de-legitimization of something." And some of those who study so-called "conspiracy narratives" say it's a mistake to automatically dismiss or marginalize them, because sometimes they hint at a larger truth.
Or they are exactly on target.
In the 1960s, some warned of FBI surveillance of dissidents and infiltration of anti-war and countercultural groups, and they were disdained as paranoid. That very activity, of course, was a staple of the J. Edgar Hoover era, as were Cold War claims that the civil rights, voting rights and other progressive movements were "communist conspiracies."
Fears that the government deliberately spread AIDS and recreational drugs in inner cities may strain credulity, but, in the infamous Tuskegee syphilis program, the U.S. Public Health Service did experiment on 399 black men, a program that ended only in 1972.
Supposedly complicit in the 9/11 cover-ups is the national media cartel - which leads Berlet, of Political Research Associates, to wonder, "How could there be a conspiracy involving the military, the executive branch, Congress and the media in which somebody didn't rat it out and get a Pulitzer Prize?" He adds, "It's very difficult to maintain conspiracies over any length of time with a large number of people. Inevitably, someone rats it out. Or someone gets arrested and turns."
=============================
My comments:
Since the middle ages, governments have used the 'purloined letter' method of de-
legitimization of leaked information, 'hiding it in plain sight'.
When something is leaked or is deduced which is true, the government will make ten thousand slightly different stories which makes the acceptance of any true story very unlikely, mainly because who can figure out which is true and the rest false? Most people, faced with all the slightly different versions, will simply opt out of even checking out any of them, becoming blind followers of the government's version.
Also, the conditioning of the population to the acceptance of those with letters after their names, either political, religious, or academic, allows the government or the terrorists, (especially if they are the same people) to simply put something horrific but true to rest in the popular mind by having a 'accredited authority' come forth and pronounce this one true and that one false. In our culture, it works amazingly well.
As to the idea that someone 'in the know' can come forward and win awards by blowing the lie out of the water and into popular knowledge, it seldom happens because of the 'wipe from history' threat maintained by most terrorists, government or freelance.
If someone talks, tells the truth, they are simply killed, their families are killed, and in the 3rd world, sometimes their entire village was killed, wiping them from existence totally, or as totally as possible.
Winning awards, getting into the public eye, ends quickly when the award winner is killed 'robbing a store' and their family dies in some 'freak but common accident'. This tends to chill anyone else who hears of the events and knows anything.
A myth, you say?
It's called a 'redundant deterrent motivator'.
There are other strategies used to blind the minds of those who seek out what really happened.
The American government has a policy of 'no paper trail' since the viet nam war, and that has gotten easier since everything has gone computerized.
The science of measuring people's personalities and finding those who will do what they are told and not talk about it has jumped by leaps and bounds over the last few decades.
Also, 'accidents' and 'random murders' are really well scripted now. Anyone who has any real proof of government murder finds themselves living the movie 'run from the authorities' scenario, but unlike the movies, they don't survive.
I've often wondered what was going on when the Simson trial was blocking out all other news a decade or so ago, and many other events which blanked out all other news.
Nuff said!
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About Me
- Roan Carratu
- I dedicated myself to saving the planet back in 1958,after an imaginative vision of the world destroyed by nuclear war. In my 10 year old mind, it made everything I was ever taught suspect, and I vowed to find out what was really true, knowing that only the truth, defined by Universe, would lead to the survival of Humanity and our ecosystem. Despite being sick for more than 15 years, I remain dedicated to that vision and the realizations I had because of it many times in my life. I know what we have to do, but getting people to think about it is very difficult indeed. I continue to try, for what else are our lives for?