Fellow travellers?

[ALB]

Ed wrote:

Gnome is right we shouldn't dismiss something just because it's dubbed a conspiracy theory. All we can do is analyze the evidence we have and draw our own conclusions from it.

On the other hand life is too short to analyse the evidence for and against every conspiracy theory, however silly, unlikely or implausible. If 9/11 was proved to be an inside job then something would change: Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld would go to the electric chair.

[Anonymous]

ALB wrote:

Of course 9/11 was a conspiracy — by fanatical Islamists mainly from Saudi Arabia. And Neil Armstrong did land on the moon in 1969.

I couldn't give a damn whether Armstrong or anyone else landed on the moon in 1969 but I doubt you could provide incontrovertible proof that they did.On the other hand I could provide a wealth of evidence which would cast serious aspersions on the view that so-called "fanatical Islamists mainly from Saudi Arabia" were involved in the 9/11 debacle.And I'm not a "conspiracy theorist" …

[ALB]

Oh dear

[Ed]

ALB wrote:

Ed wrote:

Gnome is right we shouldn't dismiss something just because it's dubbed a conspiracy theory. All we can do is analyze the evidence we have and draw our own conclusions from it.

On the other hand life is too short to analyse the evidence for and against every conspiracy theory, however silly, unlikely or implausible. If 9/11 was proved to be an inside job then something would change: Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld would go to the electric chair.

Agreed, we have all the conclusive evidence we need to know that we are ruled by murderous bastards. Individuals may be prosecuted but they'll just be replaced with some other equally callous individual.

[ALB]

But wouldn't it have serious consequences for our policy of the working class gaining control of the state machine via the ballot box if, behind the state institutions that everyone can see, there existed some parallel secret state which controlled things and was the real seat of power?

[Ed]

Well of course it's standard for the bourgouisie to rig elections, encourage coup d'etats, assasinate or imprison political opponents. That's not a secret, or a secret state though that's one and the same state apparatus which must be captured. So not really sure what you mean by a secret state or how it would effect an overwhelming socialist majority?

[alanjjohnstone]

Ed, i have done extensive reading of the Kennedy assassination, and i do mean extensive. LHO did it. (and INMHO, Kennedy deserved it)  What are presented as facts to the contrary are simply not so but often repeated inaccuracies or faulty initial off the cuff statements and findings that have since been rectified and clarified such as the supposed audio proof that the follow up to Warren, the House Committee investigation into assassinations had no time to analyse or double check obliging them to accept a conspiracy scenario. As for LHO’s motives see my blog post http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2006/11/lee-harvey-oswald-why-did-he-do-it.html Other posts here http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2012/05/lho-killed-jfk.html http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2007/02/kennedy-assassination-again.html http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2006/09/dallas-1963-again.html I no longer attempt to persuade or convince people they are wrong, since experience has taught me it is a waste of time. Urban myths such as the Magic Bullet and the JFK movie are too deeply imbedded – i now simply say you are wrong, you are mistaken based on factual errors. Now, YOU prove to me i am wrong and that there was a conspiracy and LHO didn’t do it , or did so with the help of others.  As an aside, i unsubscribed from MediaLens discussion list because of the prevalence of conspiracists. Not just your banks create money from nothing types but such as those who insisted HIV didn’t cause AIDS, – not some silly innocent theory but with the practical effect of hundreds of thousands of South Africans needlessly dying because they were denied AZT medicine because the ANC government accepted the view .And that vaccination is all a plot by Big Pharma to make profits (and the Welsh measles jags kills more than than measles itself). Even smallpox has been “proven” not to have been eradicated but is secretly misdiagnosed as another variant of the pox virus. Imagine the conseuquences if such conspiracy opinions was accepted with the return of polio. As a kid i remember, as other older members will also, many with the leg braces and these days i have often had to step over beggars inflicted by polio practically on a daily basis and i am to be expected to treat those who hold anti-vax views as reasonable dissenters rather than the dangerous lunatics they are.   The MediaLens website had a policy of banning discussion on 9/11 but not the other common conspiracies…every terrorist atrocity was a false flag operation apparently.  Gnome…just one question that i have never received a satisfactory answer…if the black ops of the US state can organise on the scale of 9/11 …why couldn’t they fake even the most simplest of  WMD evidence in the Iraq war…a task infinitely easier to accomplish. Given a few million quid or so, even you and i could have arranged for a few WMD to be “conveniently” uncovered in the chaos of post-invasion Iraq much less those with the whole resources of America available to them.  Common sense rather than scientific expertise in explosives chemistry and demolition techniques leads me to conclude that terrorists flew aircraft into the buildings. If, however, it transpires that certain intelligence agencies had information in advance about the attack, and let suspects slip through the security net then did their best to sweep  their ineptitude under the carpet, then, of course, that would be a cover-up conspiracy, something entirely different and wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. Bureaucracies produce balls-ups and are reluctant to confess to them.  Every member can hold their personal view on events but we should not make the mistake of imposing them on to the party. GM foods, nuclear power, fracking, are current examples where there is differing opinions on the scientific validity of the evidence. The party rightly declares itself agnostic. SOYMB blog has tried to walk the neutral line while at the same time exposing the risks of vested interests influence. Not always easy.   As been pointed out on another thread…we as an organisation have not been required to eat humble pie in regards to the failure of some projections to materialise…(such as peak oil, was it?)

[Ed]

I seem to have touched a raw nerve here. I too have done extensive research and had many debates on the subject, albeit haven't had one in a while. And I too find that they always, without exception, lead nowhere. I am interested reading the report linked in this post http://mailstrom.blogspot.co.uk/2007/02/kennedy-assassination-again.htmlIt seems it has expired.You have written a lot on his motives. And his motives are speculation either way. It's quite plausible that he was a lone nutter. As with Jack Ruby's motives for shooting Oswald dead. I'd also like to say that I don't offer any alternatives to who killed Kennedy, nor do I really care.The only real points that can be debated is on the weapon, the bullet and the chosen vantage point from which he supposedly shot. The fact is weapons experts have tried to recreate the shot many times over the years with the same rifle and struggled to reload as fast as Oswald supposedly did. When they have achieved it, it is with no accuracy. That is, with even less than the rifle would usually fire with. Coupled with the fact that Oswald's military record shows he couldn't hit the broad side of a barn door. Maybe he improved in the intervening years, it's possible. But not with that rifle and not from that vantage point. Unless it was a freak one in a million shot. 

[alanjjohnstone]

“The only real points that can be debated is on the weapon, the bullet and the chosen vantage point from which he supposedly shot. The fact is weapons experts have tried to recreate the shot many times over the years with the same rifle and struggled to reload as fast as Oswald supposedly did. When they have achieved it, it is with no accuracy. That is, with even less than the rifle would usually fire with. Coupled with the fact that Oswald’s military record shows he couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn door. Maybe he improved in the intervening years, it’s possible. But not with that rifle and not from that vantage point. Unless it was a freak one in a million shot.”Ed, none of the above what you say is actually true.  As i said, certain claims are taken as factual when that is simply not so. Its not just a matter of debate and interpretation but verifiable facts. I could take each of your claims and provide sources that demonstate their error but it would mean de-railing the thread. But just one example of this. The next time you watch the  movie JFK when it is being demonstrating the shots cannot possibly  be made within the time – Costner actually succeeds in doing so !!  Indeed, LHO motives are speculative, particularly since he isn’t around to explain them and even if he was would he even understand his own motivations on a psychological level, (Jack Ruby , i doubt fully understood why he shot LHO) as in innumerable other murders and crimes. But this is to be compared with the large variety of differing and contradictory motives presented by various theorists on who are possibly behind such a conspiracy presenting less convincing and even more speculative motives , some verging on the ludricous as in David Icke’s lizard-people and Garrison’s gay conspiracy but even the more sensible and seemingly plausible ones fall such as Colonel X and withdrawal from Vietnam when the contrary evidence is presented to counter it.  But anyway as an anarchist friend of mine always says…Who killed Kennedy?…Who fucking  cares?  Me? It’s about credit where credit is due….LHO did it…JFK deserved it. Was luck involved? a chance in a million? Well…of course…LHO got a job that overlooked the presidents car route…a few months previous, Kennedy himself decided he preferred open-top limosines…and a countless other coincidences…any accident investigator will tell you , one single fault rarely causes a disaster, usually a series and combination of them is the cause and its often down to bad luck that they are missed. Luck was indeed involved …bad luck …for Kennedy… because  Oswald only missed with one shot and unlike when he attempted to shoot the right-wing ex-General Walker a few months previous and missed completely (who was oblivious about the failed assassination attempt on himself.) Once again i think it is overlooked that most crimes are not one-offs but are built up to, a learning process until they graduate to the serious stuff…a psychopath starts young by torturing animals, they say …LHO fantasy world began when he considered himself a Marxist as a teenager, reinforced when he defected to Stalinist Russia and then tried again to defect to Stalinist Cuba…totally forgetting that he is brandishing copies of Trotskyist papers. So he wasn’t particularly politically astute!! I’m glad he never joined the WSPUS!! 

[alanjjohnstone]

grrrr…i purposfully double  spaced the paragraphs to make it easier read and i still got no breaks …grrrrrrrr… it is a conspiracy, i tell you…a conspiracy . 

[ALB]

Ed wrote:

Well of course it's standard for the bourgouisie to rig elections, encourage coup d'etats, assasinate or imprison political opponents. That's not a secret, or a secret state though that's one and the same state apparatus which must be captured. So not really sure what you mean by a secret state or how it would effect an overwhelming socialist majority?

I don't think it's true that in countries like Britain and the USA  elections are rigged by "the bourgeoisie". I've been to many election counts and can't see how "the bourgeoisie" could do this. To do it, they would have to have a  vast secret organisation involving polling clerks, returning officers, some candidates, etc (so vast in fact that it would be impossible to keep it secret). Theories that 9/11 was an inside job or that flying saucers exist but that the government has covered this up also presuppose a secret organisation.Some of our critics argue that there is no point in trying to win control of parliament because "parliament does not control the government and that the apparent government is not the real government". We deal with this argument in the section headed "Conspiracy" in our pamphlet What's Wrong With Using Parliament?:

Quote:

But is the government that is chosen by parliament the real government or is this some shadowy committee of capitalists? There is not the slightest evidence for the existence of such a parallel government. The idea that it exists is pure conspiracy theory. If it did exist, it is difficult to see how its existence could be kept secret. The ministers of the government we can all see and know about would mention it in their memoirs. None ever has. There are other problems with this conspiracy theory. How would the members of this supposed secret committee of capitalist puppet-masters be chosen? What mechanisms would they have to settle policy differences between different capitalist groups (since the capitalist class is not a monolith with a single obvious common interest)? There certainly exist capitalist pressure groups, such as the European Round Table of Industrialists, but these endeavour to influence governments, rather than themselves being a kind of power behind the throne. The whole theory is absurd. The fact is that the government is the government we see

The ironic thing is that the USA, the land of conspiracy theories, probably has one of the most open governments (relatively speaking) in the world. After all, where does Chomsky get the information to enter into the mind-numbing detail of his books on US Foreign Policy if not from US government documents? Incidentally, to his credit, Chomsky prominently and publicly rejects 9/11 conspiracy theories and gets called a "left gatekeeper for the conspirators" for his trouble.On the general question of conspiracy theories, the important thing is not to get diverted into refuting them (though choosing one to look into in detail could be a useful exercise in critical thinking) but to work out why some people believe in them and why such theories circulate. I think Chomsky is on the right lines when he suggests that it's a reflection of people's sense of powerlessness in a world they can't understand.

[Anonymous]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

grrrr…i purposfully double  spaced the paragraphs to make it easier read and i still got no breaks …grrrrrrrr… it is a conspiracy, i tell you…a conspiracy . 

Change the input format to Full HTML

[alanjjohnstone]

Two posts on my personal blog on conspiracy theory.

http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2012/01/conspiracy-or-science.html

http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2011/09/we-conspire.html

(and hopefully spaces between them)

[jondwhite]

As Carl Sagan once said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.Occam's Razor argues that when answering a problem or searching for a cause for something, one should never make more assumptions or posit more causes than the minimum necessary to solve the problem.

[Anonymous]

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Ed, i have done extensive reading of the Kennedy assassination, and i do mean extensive. LHO did it. (and INMHO, Kennedy deserved it)  What are presented as facts to the contrary are simply not so but often repeated inaccuracies or faulty initial off the cuff statements and findings that have since been rectified and clarified such as the supposed audio proof that the follow up to Warren, the House Committee investigation into assassinations had no time to analyse or double check obliging them to accept a conspiracy scenario. As for LHO's motives see my blog post http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2006/11/lee-harvey-oswald-why-did-he-do-it.html Other posts here http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2012/05/lho-killed-jfk.html http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2007/02/kennedy-assassination-again.html http://mailstrom.blogspot.com/2006/09/dallas-1963-again.html

If these blog posts were intended to provide some sort of evidence as to LHO's guilt then they singularly fail; they consist largely of speculative opinion and an almost total absence of any critical analysis.As for the USA, the land of conspiracy theories, having "one of the most open governments (relatively speaking) in the world",  consider this list of proven conspiracies which is far from exhaustive:-The following information was found on Wikipedia:MKULTRA was a CIA experiment where drugs were given to Americans without their knowledge or consent. This involved giving LSD, marijuana, barbiturates, heroine, mescaline, alcohol and more to unsuspecting people. This project was started in 1950 to study mind control and behaviour modification. In 1973 Richard Helms, the then head of the CIA, deliberately destroyed all the records.Operation Mockingbird was a CIA project created to control the domestic and foreign media. They bribed well-known writers and journalists to write CIA slanted propaganda. The goal was primarily to bribe writers to write about the dangers of 'communism' and suppress any left wing political writing. In 1976 George H.W. Bush, the new director of the CIA, announced that this activity will stop but they would welcome the voluntary unpaid cooperation of writers.Project SHAD was created by the United States Department of Defense in 1962. They intentionally exposed military personnel to biological and chemical agents on 46 different occasions. This was done without the military personnel's knowledge or consent. They wanted to experiment on how soldiers can be exposed to dangerous chemicals and continue to fight. This testing was conducted from 1962-1973. The Department of Defense refused to admit SHAD existed until 1998.Project Ajax was a successful CIA operation to overthrow the government of Iran in 1953. It was executed by British and American intelligence to gain greater control over oil in that region. The American public may not have ever been aware of this if it were not for a leaked CIA document. A writer at the New York Times gained access to this document and wrote about it in 2000.Operation PBSUCCESS was a CIA operation to overthrow the President of Guatemala in 1954. The CIA was concerned because this country had new policies that seem to favour 'communism'. Before the invasion the CIA orchestrated a widespread radio propaganda campaign designed to create dissatisfaction.Tuskegee Syphilis Study ongoing from 1932 to 1972 knowingly killed hundreds of low-income African American men. U.S. Public Health Service wanted to experiment with the effects of untreated syphilis. Low-income African American men were lured into study with promise of free health care. Instead they were intentionally lied to and given placebo treatments. Even when they could have easily been saved by penicillin they were left to die for the benefit of the syphilis study program. Then there was Watergate, Gulf of Tonkin, Operation Northwoods, Bay of Pigs, Chilean coup, Iran-Contra, etc, etc.

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