Article: CONSPIRACY THEORY by Paul Craig Roberts

[James H. Fetzer]

http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2011...cy-theory/
June 20 2011
Foreign Policy Journal

Conspiracy Theory
Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration.

While we were not watching, conspiracy theory has undergone Orwellian redefinition.

A "conspiracy theory" no longer means an event explained by a conspiracy. Instead, it now means any explanation, or even a fact, that is out of step with the government's explanation and that of its media pimps.

For example, online news broadcasts of RT have been equated with conspiracy theories by the New York Times simply because RT reports news and opinions that the New York Times does not report and the US government does not endorse.

In other words, as truth becomes uncomfortable for government and its Ministry of Propaganda, truth is redefined as conspiracy theory, by which is meant an absurd and laughable explanation that we should ignore.

When piles of carefully researched books, released government documents, and testimony of eye witnesses made it clear that Oswald was not President John F. Kennedy's assassin, the voluminous research, government documents, and verified testimony was dismissed as "conspiracy theory."

In other words, the truth of the event was unacceptable to the authorities and to the Ministry of Propaganda that represents the interests of authorities.

The purest example of how Americans are shielded from truth is the media's (including many Internet sites') response to the large number of professionals who find the official explanation of September 11, 2001, inconsistent with everything they, as experts, know about physics, chemistry, structural engineering, architecture, fires, structural damage, the piloting of airplanes, the security procedures of the United States, NORAD's capabilities, air traffic control, airport security, and other matters. These experts, numbering in the thousands, have been shouted down by know-nothings in the media who brand the experts as "conspiracy theorists."

This despite the fact that the official explanation endorsed by the official media is the most extravagant conspiracy theory in human history.

Let's take a minute to re-acquaint ourselves with the official explanation, which is not regarded as a conspiracy theory despite the fact that it comprises an amazing conspiracy. The official truth is that a handful of young Muslim Arabs who could not fly airplanes, mainly Saudi Arabians who came neither from Iraq nor from Afghanistan, outwitted not only the CIA and the FBI, but also all 16 US intelligence agencies and all intelligence agencies of US allies including Israel's Mossad, which is believed to have penetrated every terrorist organization and which carries out assassinations of those whom Mossad marks as terrorists.

In addition to outwitting every intelligence agency of the United States and its allies, the handful of young Saudi Arabians outwitted the National Security Council, the State Department, NORAD, airport security four times in the same hour on the same morning, air traffic control, caused the US Air Force to be unable to launch interceptor aircraft, and caused three well-built steel-structured buildings, including one not hit by an airplane, to fail suddenly in a few seconds as a result of limited structural damage and small, short-lived, low-temperature fires that burned on a few floors.

The Saudi terrorists were even able to confound the laws of physics and cause WTC building seven to collapse at free fall speed for several seconds, a physical impossibility in the absence of explosives used in controlled demolition.

The story that the government and the media have told us amounts to a gigantic conspiracy, really a script for a James Bond film. Yet, anyone who doubts this improbable conspiracy theory is defined into irrelevance by the obedient media.

Anyone who believes an architect, structural engineer, or demolition expert who says that the videos show that the buildings are blowing up, not falling down, anyone who believes a Ph.D. physicist who says that the official explanation is inconsistent with known laws of physics, anyone who believes expert pilots who testify that non-pilots or poorly-qualified pilots cannot fly airplanes in such maneuvers, anyone who believes the 100 or more first responders who testify that they not only heard explosions in the towers but personally experienced explosions, anyone who believes University of Copenhagen nano-chemist Niels Harrit who reports finding unreacted nano-thermite in dust samples from the WTC towers, anyone who is convinced by experts instead of by propaganda is dismissed as a kook.

In America today, and increasingly throughout the Western world, actual facts and true explanations have been relegated to the realm of kookiness. Only people who believe lies are socially approved and accepted as patriotic citizens.

Indeed, a writer or newscaster is not even permitted to report the findings of 9/11 skeptics. In other words, simply to report Professor Harrit's findings now means that you endorse them or agree with them. Everyone in the US print and TV media knows that he/she will be instantly fired if they report Harrit's findings, even with a laugh. Thus, although Harrit has reported his findings on European television and has lectured widely on his findings in Canadian universities, the fact that he and the international scientific research team that he led found unreacted nano-thermite in the WTC dust and have offered samples to other scientists to examine has to my knowledge never been reported in the American media.

Even Internet sites on which I am among the readers' favorites will not allow me to report on Harrit's findings.

As I reported earlier, I myself had experience with a Huffington Post reporter who was keen to interview a Reagan presidential appointee who was in disagreement with the

Republican wars in the Middle East. After he published the interview that I provided at his request, he was terrified to learn that I had reported findings of 9/11 investigators.

To protect his career, he quickly inserted on the online interview that my views on the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions could be dismissed as I had reported unacceptable findings about 9/11.

The unwillingness or inability to entertain any view of 9/11 different from the official view dooms to impotence many Internet sites that are opposed to the wars and to the rise of the domestic US police state. These sites, for whatever the reasons, accept the government's explanation of 9/11; yet, they try to oppose the "war on terror" and the police state which are the consequences of accepting the government's explanation. Trying to oppose the consequences of an event whose explanation you accept is an impossible task.

If you believe that America was attacked by Muslim terrorists and is susceptible to future attacks, then a "war on terror" and a domestic police state to root out terrorists become necessary to make Americans safe. The idea that a domestic police state and open-ended war might be more dangerous threats to Americans than terrorists is an impermissible thought.

A country whose population has been trained to accept the government's word and to shun those who question it is a country without liberty in its future.


Sometimes Conspiracy Theories Are True

[Peter Lemkin]

A++ and two gold stars.... sadly, so very true.

[Jan Klimkowski]

In the run-up to the second Gulf War (the post 9/11 invasion), British Prime Minister Tony Blair explicitly silenced serious debate in MSM organs by stating that the claim that an attack on Iraq would be a War for Oil was a "conspiracy theory".

Having spent more than a decade working for the BBC, and also been employed as a freelancer by such as NatGeo and Discovery, I can attest that MSM's only allowable position with regard to any subject called a "conspiracy theory" is to ridicule it.

"Conspiracy theory" is a highly toxic and pejorative term used by politicians as an order to exclude that particular viewpoint from the realm of "serious" debate.

"No reasonable person could entertain such a view..."

In NLP terms, it's a signal denoting exclusion and a call to ridicule.

Here are some of Blair's quotes circumscribing discussion, and framing the MSM narrative:

Mr. Dennis Skinner MP (Bolsover) When the Prime Minister meets the American President at the end of the month, will he tell George Bush that there is almost certainly a majority of the British people against the idea of a war with Iraq? Will he tell him that a lot of the British people are against the war because they can see that it is all about America getting its hands on the oil supplies in the middle east? Will he also tell him that we are not prepared to fight a war based on the fact that this vain American President is concerned more about finishing the job that his father failed to complete 12 years ago?

The Prime Minister: It will not surprise my hon. Friend to hear that I am afraid I cannot agree with him. Let me first deal with the conspiracy theory that this is somehow to do with oil. There is no way whatever, if oil were the issue, that it would not be infinitely simpler to cut a deal with Saddam, who, I am sure, would be delighted to give us access to as much oil as we wanted if he could carry on building weapons of mass destruction. The very reason why we are taking the action that we are taking is nothing to do with oil or any of the other conspiracy theories put forward. It is to do with one very simple fact: the United Nations has laid downindeed, it has been laying down for 10 yearsthat Saddam Hussein has to disarm himself of weapons of mass destruction and that he poses a threat because he used those weapons, and I believe that we have to make sure that the will of the United Nations is upheld. I also believe, incidentally, that a majority of the British peoplewho, I think, always take a firm view of the need for action in the face of dictators such as Saddam Husseinknows that the UN, having laid down its mandate, has to see that mandate through.

Hansard (British House of Commons) 15 January 2003 vol 397 cc673-82

Blair: Iraq oil claim is 'conspiracy theory'

Matthew Tempest, political correspondent guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 15 January 2003 13.35 GMT

Tony Blair today derided as "conspiracy theories" accusations that a war on Iraq would be in pursuit of oil, as he faced down growing discontent in parliament at a meeting of Labour backbenchers and at PMQs.

The prime minister's double defence of Britain's backing of president Bush came as one of Tony Blair's oldest political allies, Peter Mandelson, insisted that the US and British governments did not need a second UN resolution to justify an attack on Iraq.

I also personally recall hearing PM Blair at an early 2003 press conference with lobby correspondents (the highly paid hacks who receive off the record briefings from the PM's official spokesman) droning on about how 9/11 had changed the world, and how regime change in Iraq was essential to protect the world from terrorist threats. Not one single lobby correspondent asked him ,"Prime Minister - what is the link between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein?" The lobby hacks didn't ask because they would have had their lucrative accreditation withdrawn.

And thus Prime Ministers and Presidents lay down the territory of "legitimate" public debate, and commit war crimes and crimes against humanity with the acquiescence and genuflections of MSM.