The 1997 film Conspiracy Theory (Mel Gibson as the Manchurian Candidate, Patrick Stewart as Sidney Gottlieb) ironically shows the cornucopia of conspiracies to be deeply involved in one.
Sunstein is a debunker in the tradition of the post-Warren memo (unsigned and undated)
The now-memory-holed McDill AFB request for software to operate multiple counterfeit identities online--to disrupt, disinform, create false consensus
CIA now under Muslim director equipping proxy armies in the Arab Spring
From 2005, a classic use of the psyop phrase "conspiracy theory" to marginalise and delegitimise genuine investigative research.
Take a bow, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
My emphasis in bold:
Quote:The CIA's use of UK airports was first reported by the Guardian in September 2005. Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, dismissed the evidence, telling MPs in December that year that "unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States … there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition."
Full 2013 article on the extent of UK involvement in rendition.
Quote:UK provided more support for CIA rendition flights than thought study
The Rendition Project suggests aircraft associated with secret detention operations landed at British airports 1,622 times
The Rendition Project interactive
CIA rendition flights explained
Ian Cobain and James Ball guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 22 May 2013 12.02 BST
US warplanes in Diego Garcia
US warplanes at their base in the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Photograph: Usaf/AFP
The UK's support for the CIA's global rendition programme after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US was far more substantial than has previously been recognised, according to a new research project that draws on a vast number of publicly available data and documentation.
Evidence gathered by The Rendition Project an interactive website that maps thousands of rendition flights highlight 1,622 flights in and out of the UK by aircraft now known to have been involved in the agency's secret kidnap and detention programme.
While many of those flights may not have been involved in rendition operations, the researchers behind the project have drawn on testimony from detainees, Red Cross reports, courtroom evidence, flight records and invoices to show that at least 144 were entering the UK while suspected of being engaged in rendition operations.
While the CIA used UK airports for refuelling and overnight stopovers, there is no evidence that any landed in the UK with prisoners on board. This may suggest that the UK government denied permission for this. In some cases, it is unclear whether the airline companies would have been aware of the purpose of the flights.
Some 51 different UK airports were used by 84 different aircraft that have been linked by researchers to the rendition programme. Only the US and Canada were visited more frequently. The most used UK airport was Luton, followed by Glasgow Prestwick and Stansted. There were also flights in and out of RAF Northolt and RAF Brize Norton.
The CIA's use of UK airports was first reported by the Guardian in September 2005. Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, dismissed the evidence, telling MPs in December that year that "unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States … there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition."
Straw told the same MPs that media reports of UK involvement in the mistreatment of detainees were "in the realms of the fantastic". Documentation subsequently disclosed in the high court in London showed that Straw had consigned British citizens to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba after they were detained in Afghanistan in 2001.
He is also being sued by a Libyan dissident who was kidnapped and allegedly rendered to Tripoli along with his pregnant wife, after secret files seized during the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi detailed the role that MI6 played in the affair. Scotland Yard is also investigating the UK's role in renditions to Libya.
Shortly after September 11, the US government asked for permission to build a prison on the Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia, a British overseas territory that is one of the Chagos Islands and leased to the US for use as a military base. This plan was shelved after a Royal Marines officer produced a report that highlighted the logistical difficulties, and the prison was instead built at Guantánamo.
However, Diego Garcia was used for a small number of rendition operations despite repeated claims by the British government that this had not happened and a number of human rights group remain convinced that prisoners were incarcerated there.
"It means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...."
"Proverbs for Paranoids 4: You hide, They seek."
"They are in Love. Fuck the War." Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon
"Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta." The last words of the last Inka, Tupac Amaru, led to the gallows by men of god & dogs of war
"Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently."Rosa Luxemburg
Whenever the U.S. corporate/military government, and its corporate-stream media propaganda arm, seek to discredit persons who do not accept their packaged narrative of past and present events, it describes such persons as so-called conspiracy theorists.'
Ironically, the United States itself came into being as a nation, due to a successful conspiracy' against the British crown. And of course the British Empire referred to those rebellious colonists as terrorists.' Sound familiar?
What is even further ironic is the reality that the U.S. today, in this 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century, is an Empire with over 800 military bases throughout the world. And this Empire is engaged in perpetual wars and/or military incursions throughout Mother Earth. This is of course a gigantic, ongoing, and active conspiracy against not only the everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people inside the United States, but against the ordinary people of the world.
The actual conspirators are the corporate/military power elite of this 21[SUP]st[/SUP] century U.S. Empire, in conjunction with their global puppets. Yet, those who question the legitimacy of this Empire's actions are depicted and/or described as conspiracy theorists,' malcontents, and of course terrorists.'
Moreover, the conspiracy against ordinary people on the part of the corporate-stream media is a conspiracy of disinformation and/or silence. It is a conspiracy that keeps people ignorant and economically, politically, and socially disempowered. It is a cruel hoax on everyday people in this nation and globally. It is an active conspiracy designed to keep ordinary people lethargic, manipulated, fearful, and ultimately powerless.
Every conspiracy is not a successful one, such as the 1961, so-called Bay of Pigs' U.S. government/CIA sponsored conspiracy to overthrow the government of Cuba. On the other hand, other conspiracies are insidiously effective such as the U.S./CIA and British governments 1953 conspiracy to overthrow the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, and the 1973, U.S. corporate-government conspiracy to facilitate the bloody overthrow of the democratically elected Chilean president, Salvador Allende.
However, in this year of 2013, even as the U.S. government continues to engage in coups/'regime changes' and wars of aggression against sovereign nations, there is a very real and active conspiracy right here in this nation between the Wall Street elite-the military elite-the leadership of the Democrat and Republican parties-and the corporate-stream media to distract, hoodwink, politically pimp and economically blood suck the ordinary people in the United States.
Critically-thinking people in the United States, who dare to question and research for themselves are considered to be, and treated as, subversive pariahs by the power elite. This is because the U.S. elite is fully aware of the potential and power of critical thought. And conspiracies cannot be as effective or successful if they are discovered, exposed, and known. Nonetheless, the conspiracy being carried out against ordinary people in this nation is one being carried out almost in broad daylightbut seen and understood by very fewdue to incessant corporate-stream media distraction and disinformation.
None of the above described realities are mere theories, conspiratorial or otherwise. Rather, the unsubstantiated "theories" can be found in such egregious nonsense as the fake U.S. claim pertaining to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction' and Barack Obama's fake promises to close Guantanamo and end the U.S. war in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, there is also nothing whatsoever that is fake or theoretical about Obama's draconian NDAA indefinite detention law (provision 1021) and his outrageous and murderous Kill List.' These are very real conspiracies by the corporate/military power elite against the people of the United States and the world.
There is nothing mythical about the above described conspiracies, no matter what the U.S. power elite propagates. Remember the poignant words of Rosa Luxemburg, when she said, "Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently." So never be intimidated by the smug ignorance on the part of those who banter the term conspiracy theorists' at the expense of paying attention to very real and deadly conspiracies. Be critical thinkers, conduct your own research, and come to your own conclusions.
Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. Onward, then, my sisters and brothers. Onward . . . !
Intrepid Report Associate Editor Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, the San Francisco BayView newspaper, the Black Commentator, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.)
Great little piece. But I fear that we are living in a country where all the liberal Democrats are so drunk on the kool aid that NOTHING can awaken them to the reality
of our present decsent to out and out fascism. If NDDA did not do it, I do not know what will. A drone attack on some of them?
It has reached a point where I can only discuss matters such as this with a few poeple. The rest wll bellow that "all (I) think about is conspiracy" and try to remind me how Obama is trying to do what is right but for those bad Republicans who simply tie his hands.
It's now easy to see how this happened in Germany.
Those of us who are of a certain age remember in our youth being told constantly about the "International Communist Conspiracy." And now they wonder why Americans are so prone to believing in conspiracy theories.
Tracy Riddle Wrote:Those of us who are of a certain age remember in our youth being told constantly about the "International Communist Conspiracy." And now they wonder why Americans are so prone to believing in conspiracy theories.
Great point Tracy. That was back in the era when it was good to believe in this particular conspiracy. A psyop in itself.
But no fear, now they have an "enemy" that can't be found, defined, or defeated: terrorists. Their goal of war without end is
achieved.
Lord Deben, aka John Gummer, 'warned that green campaigners with "extremist" views close to Trotskyism are putting the battle against global warming at risk'. Photograph: Rex Features
You'd better love fracking. You don't want to be called a "Trotskyite", do you? Lord Deben, the government's independent adviser on climate change, (aka the Conservative ex-minister John Selwyn Gummer), has warned that green campaigners with "extremist" views close to Trotskyism are putting the battle against global warming at risk.
What is it about the Conservative party and the spectre of Trotskyism? During the scandal of the government's unpaid workfare programmes, when several businesses were flash-mobbed in order to highlight their participation, the Tories blamed the Socialist Workers party for engineering the protests. SWP members were exultant, but puzzled: "Since when were we that efficient?" Michael Gove fondly referred to opponents of one of his free schools as "Trots". Boris Johnson fancied that the previous mayor of London's office was filled with the very same beasts.
In a sense, this is a very old-fashioned type of anti-communism, a variant that Joel Kovel has referred to as "black hole" anti-communism, in which everything that is not virtuously "free market" is compressed into a single communist entity. In this purview, there is a consistent focus on the figure of a cabal, a small knot of conspirators orchestrating havoc. This idea is commensurate with a certain conservative view of society as a unified, well-ordered hierarchy in which everyone is happy with their lot. Social conflict is not a normal or inevitable state in a democratic class society, but rather is something whipped up by "extremists" with malign motives.
This conception has been at the root of "counter-subversive" practices since Edmund Burke imagined that the French revolution was brought about by a conspiracy of freemasons and other secret societies. Indeed, we forget at our cost that the major conspiracy theory of the 20th century was anti-communist. And, generally speaking, this took a racialised form. In the United States, communism was almost invariably viewed through the lens of black insurrection. In the Third Reich, of course, it was seen as part of a Jewish conspiracy. The point of anti-communism, then, was not to identify real atrocities perpetrated in the name of communism, but to establish a chain of equivalence linking social struggles to communist conspiracy.
It is tempting to see this Tory bombast about "Trotskyites" as simply a pale, beleaguered, toothless version of past anti-communisms. In this case, however, one has to wonder, why don't the Tories simply berate "commies", as their ideological antecedents would have done? After all, the term "Trotskyite" which Trot-baiters generally prefer to the more neutral usage, "Trotskyist" has a peculiar history.
On 19th January 1937, an indictment was drawn up in Moscow that charged 17 people with offences against the Soviet Union, particularly that of belonging to the "Trotskyite centre", which sought it was alleged to overthrow the state and bring back private capitalism. Trotsky had become the most notorious opponent of Stalinist repression something that, since he came from the Bolshevik old guard, had to be explained away as apostasy.
The term "Trotskyite" was thus an insult, but in a complex way. It meant subversive, terrorist, criminal and so on; but it also meant reactionary and counter-revolutionary. (Those liberals who spent the "war on terror" denouncing opponents of American wars as traitors to progress, apostates of the great liberal revolutions, would understand this nuance well.) At any rate, the right, when it appropriated the term, dropped the association with counter-revolution. By the time the "Trotskyite terrorist international" became a focus of US senatorial investigations, the term was simply a name for a variant of political lunatic plotting to bring down civilisation.
I think there are a number of reasons that "Trotskyites" have become a convenient whipping post for the Conservatives. First of all, the Trotskyist parties that expanded in the flux of 1968 and beyond, subsequently proved to be the major surviving residue of revolutionary socialism after the collapse of the Berlin wall, albeit with many now entering their own crises. Second, the label "communism" is no longer charged with menace. There was a time when, at least to many adherents and opponents, communism was a whole orientation of state power. It could kill. Today, it is a philosophical "hypothesis", or a slogan to be brandished in a half-ironic way by radical students: "Full Communism Now!" There's even a certain chic in the term, if truth be told.
Finally, however, direct anti-communism has been discredited. It is not just historically irrelevant; its manifest evils have been exposed to light and ridicule many times. If conservatives want to persist in blaming real social antagonisms on a few saboteurs, they must by necessity tweak the language.
I come from a Trotskyist background and, though I no longer care for the term, I can't help taking a certain pleasure in the idea that everyone to the left of John Selwyn Gummer is a Trot. I suggest the next time the Tories use the label, we take them up on it. Yes, minister, we are all Trotskyites now. http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree...servatives
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="width: 50%, bgcolor: #ccFFFF"] Con-spiring
etymologically breathing together
Thus question number one.
Don't our masters share
the same sighs
at our all too poor performance?
And don't they in the same oval rooms
plan and plot
how to squeeze
that last drop of blood
and devise appropriate punishment
should the carrot they dangle in front of us
fail to convince us that
god himself designed
their productivity charts? Conspiracy, dreadful word
full of ominous reverberations;
glimpses of closed doors
silently dispatched orders
evil intents.
Impossible you say,
don't let that right wing propaganda
con you.
That bullet that goes right
through your head
was planned for you and me
since the beginning of capital's time.
And that paycut,
so deep it went through
our pockets
tearing our pants apart,
is all in the logic of the system.
So beware of the
conspiracy theory of history.
No suspicion is fit for us,
brothers and sisters,
no stretching of the eyes
to read between the lines
or to follow a trail of blood
beneath our masters' footsteps.
We talk stocks, bonds and profits.
The price of gold goes down?
There is shooting in South Africa.
Interest rates go up?
We starve in Nigeria.
What you see is what you get
and they tell us so.
[/TD]
[TD="width: 50%, bgcolor: #ccFFFF"]
But I know that stocks carry no guns
and paper bonds can't decide
that price tag on a can of milk
that will cause children to starve
in the shantytowns of the empire.
And no company chart sends
hands dripping with blood
to hunt at night
the alleys of El Salvador
for that wound in the flesh
that will square their profits.
Between the stocks and the unemployment line
the bonds and the torture chambers
fall the consultations
of scores of men,
some ferociously bold
others cringing in the daylight
like worms under a lifted brick.
Restless pilgrims
in bullet-proof limousines
they congregate to
the Meccas of their murders,
New York, London, Geneva,
where decisions are made
that will spread ripples of fear
in the four corners
of capital's world.
No conspiracy, you say?
By what linguistic invention
should I name the act and moment
when crushing cigarette butts
some men convene on that 100% increase
that will take food off our tables
and keep us turning in bed at night
endlessly calculating
our chance to survive.
Come then,
let us sing praises
to the conspiracy theory of history.
For as long as there are men
who sit and plan deeds
that cause any of us to die,
no conceptual flight
or verbal trick
will stop me from concluding
they are conspiring against us. Silvia,
Port Harcourt, Nigeria 1985.
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
Excellent run down on the use of 'Conspiracy Theory' to discredit the curious
Quote:
Turkey's Pro-Western Imperialism Puppets Accuse Turkish People of Being "Conspiracy Theorists"
Sibel Edmonds | February 20, 2014 8 Comments Western Influenced & Directed Regime Change Operations are Deemed as a "Conspiracy Theory"I just finished reading a ridiculous hit piece published at Eurasia.Net accusing the Turkish people of being conspiracy theorists for believing that the imperial US and EU are engaged in schemes towards regime change around the world. According to the article and its sources, one must be ignorant, uninformed, uneducated and a big time conspiracy theorist in order to believe that the US-EU are engaged in political manipulations and regime change operations around the world.
Here is one of the article sources attributing the Turkish people's distrust of the West to their ignorance, paranoia and conspiracy mindedness:
"Turks love it," argued Cengiz Aktar, a senior scholar at Sabanci University's Istanbul Policy Forum, "because they don't know the world. Turks are very much monolingual. They don't read newspapers much. They don't know what the world thinks about them. So, when you don't know about it, you fear or you invent theories. The majority of Turks love these kind of stories."
You see, there is no mention of history such as the US-delivered military coup in Turkey or of the US-backed and directed Mullah named Fethullah Gulen. According to the authors of the article and their agenda-driven sources, the latest US-EU produced regime change operations around the world, such as in Libya, Egypt, Syria, Ukraine, and now in Venezuela, never happened! Seriously! Contrary to what they claim, Turkish people are extremely involved in political developments. The ignoramus source claims that most Turkish people don't read newspapers. I tell you what: if they were to survey and compare the number of critical newspaper readers in Turkey with those here in the United States, the ratio would be something like: Turkey: 75%, USA: 20%. The propaganda source also accuses Turks of being monolingual, thus, ignorant. Are you kidding me? Again, if you were to compare the percentage of Turks fluent in two or more languages with those here in the United States, you'd be asking this guy what he's high on! All right, it gets even more bizarre. The authors and their sources engage in this self-fulfilling prophesy to make a point that the Turkish people's conspiracy theories on Western manipulation of their politics has resulted in a decrease of investment and financial contributions by the West in the country:
Turkey also could be paying an economic cost for the conspiracy theories. "The problem is that the foreign investors are just laughing at this and Turkey is going through a very serious test of creditability," analyst Aktar said. Turkey's net foreign-direct investment (FDI) of $9.6 billion is just over half its level in 2009, The Financial Times reported on February 13. …
Okay, let me explain the perverse logic (or actually, lack of logic) here. What is one of the first guns brought out by Western Imperialists when they are faced with a foreign government that is refusing to bow and submit? Right: money guns. Whether it is bribery via IMF, World Bank or military aid, or, strategically (with agenda) made investments, money is one of the first vehicles used to destabilize a government or a regime when the purpose is regime change. So what happens when the Turkish PM flexes his muscles and starts showing an independent streak? Of course: you get US and its European allies showing their displeasure and pressurizing via withdrawing their money: foreign investments in the country, IMF loans, military and humanitarian aid, etc. Now, Turkish people who read and pay attention to the news and developments around them, Turkish people who observe and witness how governments are being brought down right next to them in their own backyard, Turkish people who have a long experience of Western operations on their soil are called conspiracy theorists and ignorant for believing that the current state of affairs in their nation is largely due to Western-Scripted plots. And to prove the point, the author and his idiotic sources are pointing to Western players withdrawing their money from Turkey and pressuring the country financially! I totally understand our media here in the United States concocting propaganda filled and false news and analyses. In fact, if you pay attention to the line of reasoning (or lack of), labeling, marginalization and insults in this article, you see solid parallels with those written on 9/11 and civil liberties activists, real government whistleblowers or those who have dared to run as independent candidates without the establishment's backing. What I don't understand is the sources in Turkey who have willingly played into the hands of the operatives and joined the imperialist choir in portraying and accusing the Turkish people and their vigilance as being ignorant and being conspiracy theorists. For those of you in Turkey: please find these sources and demand some explanation and accountability.
![[Image: Tesco-opens-worlds-first--011.jpg]](http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/1/21/1390308157647/Tesco-opens-worlds-first--011.jpg)
Lord Deben, aka John Gummer, 'warned that green campaigners with "extremist" views close to Trotskyism are putting the battle against global warming at risk'. Photograph: Rex Features