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In Defense of ‘Conspiracy Theories’

Max Parry

Close up of “The Lee Harvey Oswald Interview” collage by Lutz Bacher from the Met Breuer’s ‘Art and Conspiracy: Everything is Connected’ exhibition

To remain innocent may also be to remain ignorant.”
John Berger, Ways of Seeing

This November 22nd marked fifty-five years since the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Perhaps no other major incident in U.S. history has generated more uncertainty and skepticism towards its official account than his Dallas killing in 1963. A 2013 Gallup poll showed that a clear majority of Americans still doubt the Warren Commission’s determination that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone as the accused sniper, with many suspecting that others in government and organized crime were involved in a secret plot to kill the president.

Although its etymological origins can be traced back further, as a cultural phenomenon the notion of belief in so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ is widely attributed to a surge in distrust of government and media institutions that followed JFK’s murder. Perhaps its only rival would be September 11th, which surveys have similarly indicated a trend of doubt towards the 9/11 Commission Report’s version of events leading up to the attacks in 2001. In other words, most people believe in a major conspiracy theory — yet they generally remain a mark of disgrace and public ridicule.

At no point in time have conspiracy theories been as stigmatized as in the wake of the 2016 U.S. election. Incidentally, what is classified as such is no longer consigned to the societal fringe or ever been more popular. It is alleged that the spreading of “fake news” on social media, featuring debunked viral conspiracies like Pizzagate, was what tipped the voting scales in Donald Trump’s favor. Or was it the very real conspiracy revealed in leaked emails published by WikiLeaks that the Democratic National Committee rigged the party primary for Hillary Clinton? We’re supposed to consider that fake news too, apparently. Regardless, what is consistently never addressed is the reasons why people turn to unofficial narratives because it would require the media to address its own negligence to hold those in power to account.

An examination of the media‘s systemic failure would draw attention to its actual role in society as a tool of mass persuasion on behalf of the ruling elite. Perhaps if the official doctrines of the over-staged Warren and 9/11 Commission Reports were not treated as articles of faith, people wouldn’t be suspicious of a rogue shadow government hidden behind such obvious dog-and-pony shows. If there is no incriminating evidence in the JFK files, why on earth is the public forbidden to see them half a century later?

Instead, it is the working class who are demonized for expressing the human need to grasp the social totality denied by a corporate-controlled media that performs the opposite of its expected function. They are left with no choice but to fill in the enormous blanks left gaping by a press in service of the status quo and a government with no transparency. It is always the people who are blamed for the media’s failure to do its job.

The same can be said across the pond or for the West in general. Look no further than a recent article in British newspaper The Guardian alleging that “60% of Britons believe in conspiracy theories.” Its definition of ‘conspiracy’ is so broad that it doesn’t simply refer to beliefs about UFOs or the moon landing, but a general distrust of institutions, official narratives and authority figures in any form.

The article then conflates Brexit voters who hold anti-immigrant views with anyone polled who believes that “the world is run by a secret global cabal of people who control events together”, and then almost comically states “the most widespread conspiracy belief in the UK, shared by 44% of people, was that ‘even though we live in what’s called a democracy, a few people will always run things in this country anyway.’”

That is to say, The Guardian regards a view generally held by most rational people with an accurate understanding of life under capitalism as a ‘conspiracy’ belief equivalent to racism. The article even concludes that “distrust of company bosses”, a feeling unsurprisingly held by three-fourths of those surveyed, falls under the label of a conspiracy view. Yes, clearly anyone who doesn’t love their oppressors is in equal standing with bigots who want to leave the EU. The world’s self declared ‘leading liberal voice’ is a guardian of power, indeed.

The term ‘conspiracy theory’ itself is a weapon. Its use is so ubiquitous that it automatically implies unconvincing improbability and worthiness of dismissal. How and when did it come to be so widely dispersed in the cultural lexicon? In the 1970s, the CIA had been the subject of numerous scandals with disclosures about its activities ranging from meddling in the affairs of sovereign countries to administering mind-control experiments on citizens in MK-ULTRA. The revelations about its clandestine influence on the press was yet another divulgence. It turns out that a likely possibility for the genesis of the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ and its far-reaching dissemination was revealed in an important 1976 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by The New York Times in CIA Document 1035–960.

The dispatch showed that by the late 1960s, the spy agency was so worried about pervasive skepticism toward the Warren Commission ruling that it issued a bulletin to its elite liaisons in the press to quell subversion. Entitled “Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report”, the communique encouraged the fourth estate to discredit doubters by spreading propaganda. It specifically employed the term while stressing the need to rein in dissenting opinion among journalists and the public:

Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination. Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. 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.

Whether or not the specific document’s usage of the label is directly attributable to its subsequent omnipresence in the cultural vocabulary is beside the point. It was yet another example of the CIA’s efforts to engineer public opinion with media bias and disinformation, ordering its recruits to “employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose.”

Only on occasion does an event like the Kennedy assassination occur where the deep state’s savage nature is glimpsed by the public at large, if only for a brief moment. Such instances require a counterintelligence response if the majority is to stay plugged into the matrix.

The unpleasant truth is that the 35th U.S. President became so despised by the most right-wing and militarist elements in the intelligence apparatus — provoked by his perceived treachery in diplomacy toward Cuba and placation of the Soviet Union following the foreign policy disasters of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Bay of Pigs and apparent desire to deescalate the war in Vietnam — that they most likely removed him in a coup. The extent to which Kennedy was sincere in those efforts is another matter, although it was confirmed in declassified documents last year that he had rejected the proposed Operation Northwoods which would have carried out ‘false flag’ bombings in Miami to be blamed on Fidel Castro which shockingly made it all the way up the chain of command past the Joint Chiefs of Staff for approval. Why is it outlandish for people to suspect they could have done something similar on 9/11?

For Americans to learn the ugly facts behind JFK’s murder, plausibly located in the more than 15,000 documents still concealed from public view, would destroy the foundations of the national security state and the establishment it safeguards. It is on this basis that for more than half a century, corporate-owned media has stifled the multitude of admissions about the assassination brought to light, even when they’ve come from Hollywood movies. What we are witnessing today in the Russiagate fiasco with the “fake news” PSY-OP is an updated version of the CIA’s enlistment of the media following the JFK assassination to orchestrate public opinion which made the phrase ‘conspiracy theory’ a universal pejorative.

Coincidentally, currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Breuer satellite location in New York is the exhibition Everything is Connected: Art and Conspiracy. The show covers more than fifty-years of artists working in painting, sculpture, photography, collage, video and installations addressing a variety of themes ranging from secret torture at CIA black-sites to COINTELPRO to Henry Kissinger’s role in ‘the first 9/11’, the September 1973 coup in Chile which ousted Salvador Allende and installed Augusto Pinochet and Milton Friedman’s Chicago Boys. There are many provocative pieces in the show, such as a Calder-like sculpture of Iraqi oil fields exploring imperialism to an abstract painting suggesting that the WTC towers could have been destroyed by controlled demolition using planted super-thermite explosives.

The timing of such an exposition immediately prompts curiosity. One would assume that the Met was capitalizing on the unprecedented popularity of conspiracies with the “fake news” phenomenon surrounding the Trump presidency, but apparently the lead curator conceived of the show concept a decade prior. Nevertheless, for one of the biggest and wealthiest museums in the world founded by robber barons to permit such a showcase still required a selling point which came in the form of its marketability to satisfy the public’s palate for kitsch. Leaving that aside, however, the content of the exhibit is admittedly of bona fide quality, featuring everything from Black Panther graphic designer Emory Douglas to the late conceptual artist Mike Kelley.

The Kennedy assassination is featured heavily as a spectral motif and the first pieces visitors encounter are two striking neon-colored paintings of Lee Harvey Oswald and his assassin, Jack Ruby, by New York-based artist Wayne Gonzales which sets an ominous tone. Although the individual works of the inspired show are of high caliber, its main shortcoming is the sensationalized presentation. Despite seemingly authentic intentions, it inevitably institutionalizes the idea that when two-thirds of Americans reject the official story of a Kennedy assassination or 9/11, it is ultimately still just a ‘conspiracy.’ Although the exhibit itself is not as culpable as the surrounding cultural context in which it has appeared, it ultimately reifies that what is construed as hypothetical and imaginary conjecture (in the case of the JFK assassination a legitimate consensus) only merits attention as something tacky or niche to be appreciated ironically.

Close-up of “Peach Oswald” by Wayne Gonzales, acrylic on canvas, 2001.

This is particularly advantageous to the establishment at the present moment which is relentlessly selling the naïve idea that we are now living in a “post-truth” era, as if prior to the Trump administration we were in a glory age of ‘truth.’ In order for art to portray such subject matter and be given a platform, it cannot avoid being allocated as novelty of unrefined taste by such a powerful institution. A podcast interview with the gallery curators revealed that one of the artists featured in the show, Hans Haacke, had to earn their trust as he was hesitant to participate in the show because he didn’t wish his work “to be associated with fiction.”

Perhaps for related reasons, the curators refreshingly chose to omit the term ‘theory’ from the title while providing a thorough investigation of such themes by artists which reveal what they describe as “conspiracies that turned out not be theories at all, but truths.”

While everyone is aware of the intimate relationship between the art world and the ultra-wealthy benefactors of its museums, less familiar is its history with the CIA. As part of its psychological warfare during the Cold War, the agency spent millions promoting Modern Art, particularly the Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, a fact only briefly mentioned by the gallery text of the exhibit.

The CIA saw the aesthetic individualism and free form style of Abstract Expressionism as emblematic of Western values of ‘freedom of expression’ in antithesis to the socialist realism of the Soviet Union. The CIA provided covert financial support through the establishment of phony foundations with innocuous names that secretly subsidized exhibitions. The primary front organization was the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) whose leading operative was CIA officer Thomas Braden. Braden was even selected as the executive secretary of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York by Nelson Rockefeller as he oversaw the CIA’s hush-hush cultural activities in the CCF. He would later go on to become a columnist and co-host of CNN’s Crossfire.

Tom Braden, CIA spy and MoMA executive secretary.

The CIA did not just work stringently to relegate leeriness of its activities under a catch-all misnomer at the low brow level. The Congress for Cultural Freedom’s ideological weaponry even extended to the level of high intellectual theory for its gatekeeping. The CCF and other front groups like the Farfield Foundation secretly sponsored literary magazines such as Commentary and The Paris Review as an effort to redirect the sympathies of the non-communist left in the West away from the Soviet Union toward liberal democracy. Another literary publication that received undercover sponsoring from the CCF was the British-based Encounter magazine, founded by the essayist and intellectual Irving Kristol who later became the “godfather of neo-conservatism” and real life father of ultra-hawk pundit Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard.

During the 1930s, as a college student Irving Kristol was a member of the New York Intellectuals, a group of Jewish literary critics and writers who mostly were Trotskyists that embraced left-wing politics but were staunchly opposed to the Soviet Union under Stalin. These included prominent figures such as Isaiah Berlin, Irving Howe and Hannah Arendt who overtime moved to the center and became liberals, or in the case of Kristol eventually further to arch-conservatism.

The intellectual voyage from Trotskyism to neoconservatism was a common thread throughout the 20th century, from David Horowitz to the late Christopher Hitchens. Irving Kristol and his intellectual circle were funded by the CIA in order to influence the political leanings of their cohorts in the European left to move toward liberal democracy and away from communism which fractured the left as a whole. To great effect, this split coalitions between social democratic and communist parties across Europe. If European leftists weren’t swayed by the CIA-sponsored intelligentsia, they were likely discouraged from holding any remaining Soviet sympathies by the ‘false flag’ terrorist attacks carried out during Operation Gladio in NATO-member countries by recruited fascist paramilitaries which were falsely blamed on communist organizations to tarnish their reputations.

BBC documentary on Operation Gladio (1992):

Along with the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, the consequences of the CIA’s clandestine activities from the arts to the intelligentsia can be seen in the dominant pseudo-left of today which has further degenerated into excessive preoccupation with toothless reformism and fetishization of gender and race-based identity politics. If the current generation of resolute Marxists are looking to place blame for the dominance of incrementalist politics emphasizing gradual change through existing institutions that has infected the entire left, they shouldn’t be shocked to learn much of it lands on the world’s most powerful spy agency during the Cold War.

The CIA wasn’t just in the business of overthrowing democratic leaders of third world nations for Western business interests but equally engaged in cloak-and-dagger cultural operations which successfully altered the focus of leftist politics away from transformative anti-capitalist positions toward centrist liberal stances. To this day, the reverberations of these PSY-OPs can be felt in the contemporary left’s neglect and obfuscation of issues like imperialism and the class struggle. Without knowing this history, one can only have a vague understanding of how the left came to be what it is at present. The military-intelligence complex’s manipulation of the art world is incontrovertible fact, not a fanciful story, and it was just one element of a larger cultural campaign to splinter the Western left.

Michael Parenti on being called a “conspiracy theorist.”:

As the exhibit aptly points out, often what are designated as conspiracy theories in bygone times become indisputable facts years later. If there is now an abundant market for misinformation online exploiting the appetite of a public disillusioned by establishment media in desperate search of an alternative, the presstitutes only have themselves to blame. Claims on the right-wing margins about school shootings being hoaxes will never even begin to approach the irreparable damage done by every major news outlet in the country selling the lies of the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction to go to war in Iraq, not just to the millions of human lives lost but the trust of the masses in the mass media orthodoxy.

The same can be said about their unwillingness to truly investigate the Kennedy assassination and 9/11. Following the 2016 election, the censorship campaign by social network giants against alternative media under the banner of stopping the spread of “fake news” can be seen as confirmation of the effectiveness of real independent journalism and it’s growing audience. Otherwise, it would not provoke such suppression. This development can either disenchant those hungry for the truth or be interpreted as a positive sign for the future, that people are starting to resist drinking the kool-aid— for now let’s choose the latter.

Everything is Connected: Art and Conspiracy is on view at the Met Breuer until January 6th, 2019.

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Chris Friel (@ChrisFriel7)
Chris Friel (@ChrisFriel7)
Jan 14, 2019 12:45 PM
Chris Friel (@ChrisFriel7)
Chris Friel (@ChrisFriel7)
Jan 14, 2019 12:47 PM

and my own “conspiracy theory” about @GnasherJew:
https://www.academia.edu/38139484/The_Mendacity_of_Gnasher_Jew

harry stotle
harry stotle
Dec 9, 2018 9:30 PM

The problem with conspiracy theories is that people get carried away with them.
Take the claim that our MSM would sink so low as to falsely tarnish any leader not prepared to swear life long allegiance to neoliberalism.

Next, somebody will be trying to convince us that ‘charities’ like The Institute for Statecraft (under the guise of their ‘Integrity Initiative’) has been funded with £2 million of Foreign Office cash and run by British military intelligence so as to mobilise public opinion against Jeremy ‘Mr Antisemitism’ Corbyn.
https://www.rt.com/uk/446025-anti-russia-organization-targets-corbyn/

No wonder conspiracy theorists end up with such a bad rep’ – paranoid nutters the lot of them.

balkydj
balkydj
Dec 9, 2018 1:51 PM

“You are either with us or against us … ” Simples 🙂

Thanks George, for making Balky’s & the majority’s reactions , decisions & conclusions so unequivocally simple to interpret & evaluate >>> the Buck stopped with the Bush’s pre-orchestrated Corporate Belligerence , Avarice & Megalomania , from 9/11 2001 onwards , all was abundantly clear for the public to comprehend, let alone insiders . . . After Chilcot’s Report , nobody should be in any doubt and certainly no Judge >>>

No more theory, pure unadulterated CONSPIRACY 😉 Stop mincing words 😉

And any politician who signs up for the official version of what occurred on the 11th September 2001 , will NEVER be accepted by any rational, credible people , as capable or worthy of serious consideration.

Fortunately , the Deep State over-cooked their Goose and ended up with Mon’Guccifer 2:0 😉

Thanks for stopping the Buck, George … Hell awaits you !

Thomas Prentice
Thomas Prentice
Dec 7, 2018 12:50 PM

After viewing Pt 1 of the BBC Gladio documentary, I am wondering if Americans are asking the wrong questions about JFK and the other assassinations, 9/11 and the rest.

Was a ‘stay behinds” network organized in the US?

If not, is the NRA and are other ‘gun nuts’ the de facto ‘stay behinds’ of the US?

In what ways are the police, FBI, NSA spying, Pentagon weaponization of the local police, Israelification of the local police a de facto creation of ‘stay behinds’ in the certain event of collapse of the US capitalist fake economy with resulting mass discontent?

Are the Israelis operating as ‘stay behind’ agitators in far-flung countriesfrom Argentina to Myanmar?

Interesting that the attempted assassination of the leader of the Christian Democrats in a tight 1948 Italian election was described in the press as having been done by a “madman” (cue Lone Gunman Excuses) and created sympathy for him, propelling him to a slight win over the socialists and communists. False Flag anybody?

Again. Was a ‘stay behind’ network organized in the US, either officially or unofficially. Was the Timothy McVeigh “Michigan Militia” bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City a peek into the US ‘stay behind’ network although McVeigh was sacrificed.

Is all this focus on “hate” such as by the Southern Poverty law Center really a distraction and a diversion from not only considering issues of capitalism, class and empire, but diverting attention away from the NSA and intelligence agencies and any ‘stay behind’ network that might exist in the US?

I mean, really, like the Russians were ever going to invade the US, like, say, from Canada or Mexico so maybe ‘stay behinds’ were a European-only thing?

And George Kennan wanted to outright cancel the Italian elections and send in the US military, vetoed by Truman and General Marshall. Instead the CIA did its first black op to defeat democracy / the socialist/communists in Italy by pouring money into the campaign of the right wing Christian Democrats and maybe by a fake assassination attempt?

Can it be said that democracy died in Europe in Italy in 1948?

Thomas Prentice
Thomas Prentice
Dec 7, 2018 11:52 AM

Indeed, this is the first I have heard about Operation Gladio. Perhaps it was buried under Old Bush’s warmongering against Iraq?

Thomas Prentice
Thomas Prentice
Dec 7, 2018 11:43 AM

The BBC report on Operation Gladio — and the various Walter Cronkite / Dan Rather investigative reports over the decades — confirms my view that, while they were always capitalist empire media, at times — a lot of the time — they engaged in authentic journalism. Indeed, it is confounding to view bbc or cbs or the new york times these days and reconcile it/them with their former august realities. Same with the Manchester Guardian.

When Howard Dean came through Texas on his ill-fated 2003-2004 campaign for president, he drew cheers for noting that ‘most Democrats I talk to aren’t as mad at Bush-Cheney as they are mad at the Washington Democrats for not fighting Bush-Cheney.’

Today, especially as a journalist, I am not as mad at the neoliberal / neocon Democrats (let alone the right wing fascist Republicans) as I am mad at the NOT-journalism corporate media talking heads who do nothing except spew Deep State propaganda and cheap tawdry gossip. Spew, spew, spew, spew.

We have come from two-source confirmation for Watergate stories in 1972-1974 to NO-source confirmation of anything. Notice that the end was near was when ABC White House Reporter Sam Donaldson once defended having reported something, I can’t recall what, by saying that “it was a confirmed rumor.”

A confirmed rumor, indeed.

Thomas Prentice
Thomas Prentice
Dec 7, 2018 11:26 AM

There was always something about ‘modern art’ that struck me as suspicious.

Thomas Prentice
Thomas Prentice
Dec 7, 2018 11:23 AM

I recall watching Tom Braden on cnn’s Crossfire and rooting for him against the bad guys. Now to find out he is the pluperfect of bad guys is yet One More Betrayal.

One cannot trust ANYTHING or ANYONE from or among elites in this Western Christian Capitalist Puritan Empire War Civilization. NOBODY!

All these closet CIA agents is just astonishing.

mark
mark
Dec 5, 2018 10:01 PM

Deep State mouthpieces like Aaronovitch have been tasked to demonise as “conspiracy theorists” anyone who challenges obviously ludicrous and threadbare official narratives.

Given the shenanigans of the spook agencies, it is virtually certain that a lot of the lizard people and space aliens type stories are the work of planted infiltrators and troublemakers.

milosevic
milosevic
Dec 6, 2018 11:09 PM
Reply to  mark

The Controllers — A New Hypothesis of Alien Abductions

Both Believer and Skeptic, in my opinion, miss the real story. Both make the same mistake: They connect the abduction phenomenon to the forty-year history of UFO sightings, and they apply their prejudices about the latter to the controversy about the former.

At first, the link seems natural. Shouldn’t our thoughts about UFOs color our thoughts about UFO abductions?

No.

They may well be separate issues. Or, rather, they are connected only in this: The myth of the UFO has provided an effective cover story for an entirely different sort of mystery. Remove yourself from the Believer/Skeptic dialectic, and you will see the third alternative.

As we examine this alternative, we will, of necessity, stray far from the saucers. We must turn our face from the paranormal and concentrate on the occult — if, by “occult,” we mean secret.

I posit that the abductees have been abducted. Yet they are also spewing fantasy — or, more precisely, they have been given a set of lies to repeat and believe. If my hypothesis proves true, then we must accept the following: The kidnapping is real. The fear is real. The pain is real. The instruction is real. But the little grey men from Zeti Reticuli are not real; they are constructs, Halloween masks meant to disguise the real faces of the controllers. The abductors may not be visitors from Beyond; rather, they may be a symptom of the carcinoma which blackens our body politic.

The fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.

Substantial evidence exists linking members of this country’s intelligence community (including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the Office of Naval Intelligence) with the esoteric technology of mind control. For decades, “spy-chiatrists” working behind the scenes — on college campuses, in CIA-sponsored institutes, and (most heinously) in prisons have experimented with the erasure of memory, hypnotic resistance to torture, truth serums, post-hypnotic suggestion, rapid induction of hypnosis, electronic stimulation of the brain, non-ionizing radiation, microwave induction of intracerebral “voices,” and a host of even more disturbing technologies. Some of the projects exploring these areas were ARTICHOKE, BLUEBIRD, PANDORA, MKDELTA, MKSEARCH and the infamous MKULTRA.

I have read nearly every available book on these projects, as well as the relevant congressional testimony. I have also spent much time in university libraries researching relevant articles, contacting other researchers (who have graciously allowed me access to their files), and conducting interviews. Moreover, I traveled to Washington, DC to review the files John Marks compiled when he wrote The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate.” These files include some 20,000 pages of CIA and Defense Department documents, interviews, scientific articles, letters, etc. The views presented here are the result of extensive and ongoing research.

As a result of this research, I have come to the following conclusions:

1. Although misleading (and occasionally perjured) testimony before Congress indicated that the CIA’s “brainwashing” efforts met with little success, striking advances were, in fact, made in this field. As CIA veteran Miles Copeland once admitted to a reporter, “The congressional subcommittee which went into this sort of thing got only the barest glimpse.”

2. Clandestine research into thought manipulation has not stopped, despite CIA protestations that it no longer sponsors such studies. Victor Marchetti, 14-year veteran of the CIA and author of the renown expose, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, confirmed in a 1977 interview that the mind control research continues, and that CIA claims to the contrary are a “cover story.”

3. The Central Intelligence Agency was not the only government agency involved in this research. Indeed, many branches of our government took part in these studies — including NASA, the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as all branches of the Defense Department.

To these conclusions I would append the following — not as firmly-established historical fact, but as a working hypothesis and grounds for investigation:

4. The “UFO abduction” phenomenon might be a continuation of clandestine mind control operations.

I recognize the difficulties this thesis might present to those readers emotionally wedded to the extraterrestrial hypothesis, or to those whose political Weltanschauung disallows any such suspicions. Still, the open-minded student of abductions should consider the possibilities. Certainly, we are not being narrow-minded if we ask researchers to exhaust all terrestrial explanations before looking heavenward.

frank
frank
Dec 9, 2018 1:46 AM
Reply to  Editor

“The ‘alien abduction’ mythology is older than the CIA.”

1) That is beside the point even if true.
2) Fairies & Old Hags are not the same as aliens.

systemicfraud
systemicfraud
Dec 5, 2018 9:07 PM

What if I told you that by 1960 CIA had infiltrated other branches of the US military, intelligence and law enforcement?

What if I told you CIA infiltrated the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, too?

My source is a former member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff–a man with 23 military commendations/medals.

Antonym
Antonym
Dec 9, 2018 3:26 PM
Reply to  systemicfraud

Col. Fletcher Prouty was as solid there as he was about the deliberately disabled U2 flight to stall US- USSR détente between Khrushchev and Eisenhower in 1960 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ookITg_u0uc

JFK’s willingness pronounced in the UN to combine manned Moon flight with the USSR was also against that persistent US cabal’s wishes.
Nothing much changed till today in that game, including their grip on the MSN, except that foul play is now exposed on the Internet and theoretically accessible to billions.

Jay-Q
Jay-Q
Dec 5, 2018 8:25 PM

Excellent article. I absolutely hate the Guardian these days. Their approach is sanctimonious, preachy double-think. They use the ‘conspiracy theory’ angle exactly how good old Mockingbird publications are meant to – to discredit anybody who dares venture beyond the confines of a very narrow band of mainstream thought.

Personally, I think their website layout is excellent and this in particular is probably part of the reason why so many still visit it. However, their content is truly dreadful, so it surprises me that it remains popular. Saying that, they open comments sections on only certain articles – normally nonsense issues, sport, films, etc – and rely heavily on opinionated pieces that contain very little journalism at all.

They have become a truly pro neo-liberal, pro-war, pro status-quo operation. If ever there was a conspiracy to expose it would be the orchestration of the MSM in their unified propaganda regarding the West’s regime change operation against Syria, which the Guardian has only been too happy to be part of. Disgraceful.

Keep up the good work, guys!

harry stotle
harry stotle
Dec 5, 2018 6:46 PM

There might fewer ‘conspiracy theories’ if we had even a smidgeon of trust in what our leaders say, but of course only the terminally gullible believe half of the crap they come out with.

Take David Kelly, the arms inspector who gave perhaps the first glimmer tinto the fact the Iraq bloodbath was based on a pack of lies.

After his death and without knowing why Blair immediately phonesd Falconer from the other side of the world to set up an investigative mechanism that was bound to prevent proper scrutiny of the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death.

Incredibly within the first few hours of Kelly’s body being discovered Falconer (Blair’s former flat-mate) was invoking a seldom heard of section from the 1988 Coroners Act (section 17A) a manouvre negating the traditional role of the coroner.
Yet Section17 was a mechanism set up to deal with multiple casualties so that after a ferry disaster for example it would simplify and reduce expenses when dealing with incidents with a large number of fatalities.
Before the Kelly debacle it has only ever been invoked twice: once in the cases of the Ladbroke Rail crash and again in the aftermath of Shipman.

So there has never been a proper account of what happened to David Kelly while the hand-picked judge, Lord Hutton buried the evidence for 70 years after his legal charade concluded.

If pointing out these outrageous abuses makes you a ‘conspiracy theorist’ then so be it but those determined to expose the lies are unlikely to be detered by name-calling from the usual corporate shills.

Jay-Q
Jay-Q
Dec 5, 2018 8:28 PM
Reply to  harry stotle

Brilliant comment, thanks.

harry stotle
harry stotle
Dec 6, 2018 9:50 AM
Reply to  Jay-Q

Thanks for the kind words, Jay-Q but it is the work done by real investigative journalists that really deserve our thanks (in this case based on the analysis by Miles Goslett in ‘David Kelly: An inconvenient death’)

Off-G of course belong to the same pantheon – culteral or political commentators who are not afraid to ask hard questions, and have not decided in advance what the answers should be.

Joerg
Joerg
Dec 5, 2018 5:11 PM

Here an excellent “Conspiracy Theory” – or betteer: “Conspiracy Proof” by James Corbett:
“THE WWI CONSPIRACY” – https://www.corbettreport.com/wwi/ (3 Videos and more)

King Kong
King Kong
Dec 5, 2018 5:04 PM

Forgot: Criminally insane. They are actually prevalent.
Sorry .
Will not happen again.

King Kong
King Kong
Dec 5, 2018 5:01 PM

A title like this piece has, serves as a full moon to all the nutters. The nutters, whose spectacular and ludicrous claims actually serves as a nutter label to smack on very suspicious coincidences and incidents. Which indeed is a shame. The declassifying of CIA and other documents, should make a democratic minded person shiver with fear, the methods devised and the complete lack of any empathy, mark these people as utter sociopaths. False Flags, Fake news, disinformation and propaganda are real, as are assassinations, terror, drug running, proxy wars and smear campaigns.
But known facts are too often put in the sack with the loonies. (Lizard people, UFO abductions etc)
All these loonies are mostly prevalent in the US, who coincidentally abolished Asylums in the 70 ties, so the mentally ill are now running amok in the US. Who would have guessed ?

milosevic
milosevic
Dec 6, 2018 11:29 PM
Reply to  King Kong

The declassifying of CIA and other documents, should make a democratic minded person shiver with fear, the methods devised and the complete lack of any empathy, mark these people as utter sociopaths. False Flags, Fake news, disinformation and propaganda are real, as are assassinations, terror, drug running, proxy wars and smear campaigns. But known facts are too often put in the sack with the loonies. (Lizard people, UFO abductions etc)

see above for a unified theory of the CIA, disinformation, terror, loonies, lizard people, and UFO abductions:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/12/05/in-defense-of-conspiracy-theories/#comment-140166

RetroSpin
RetroSpin
Dec 5, 2018 4:39 PM

Before you click on Loverat’s link to Huffpost, make up your mind to read very carefully the “consent” box that comes up and blocks you from reading. They demand that you consent to their downloading everything they want from your computer, and uploading everything they want to into your computer. The hubris is breathtaking, and outrageous! No one should ever go to Huffpost, ever again, unless and until they delete that demand, and even then no one should go there unless and until they begin printing a few truthful articles from time to time.

wardropper
wardropper
Dec 5, 2018 5:54 PM
Reply to  RetroSpin

HuffPo has certainly changed a lot since I first read it many years ago. When its owner sold it, one knew right away that negative consequences were inevitable.
The thing about all government corruption today is that it imagines that only a few little groups are focused on isolated fragments of this corruption, and that nobody is putting together a picture of the whole.
By now that picture has become a large, strong one in the public’s consciousness, and cannot be undermined just by going into denial about it.
People are getting pretty well informed about all sorts of things now, while continuing to watch reruns of “Friends”, “I Love Lucy” and “Bonanza” in-between.
The “Deep State”, or whatever it likes to call itself, has every reason to be alarmed, and ashamed.

zach
zach
Dec 5, 2018 3:30 PM

Orwellian times when the ‘Russiagate’ Guardian is smearing others as ‘conspiracy theorists’.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Dec 5, 2018 11:04 AM

Claims on the right-wing margins about school shootings being hoaxes will never even begin …

Many people claim school shootings are hoaxes, not just right-wing anti-gun control people – and not just shootings but bombings, vehicle rampages and other events.

What makes you so sure they aren’t hoaxes, Max? Have you looked at the events.

When Sandy Hook happened in 2012 I had no clue what a false flag or staged event was. However, even though I didn’t pay much attention, tending to simply think it was a terrible tragedy, two things struck me: Adam Lanza’s face seemed very strange and I read that although the police went to Lanza’s house on a good lead that he had guns they didn’t do a search, however, no good reason was presented for them not doing a search. In retrospect, I now know that there was no such person as Adam Lanza and they simply fabricated his very strange, inhuman face and the story of the police is typical of odd stories they fabricate that simply don’t add up.

What I have discovered is that 9/11 is on a continuum which started in at least 1980 with the Bologna station bombing -but I’m sure earlier than that perhaps even much earlier and school shootings, etc are part of that continuum. 9/11 was a hoax where death and injury were staged just as they were in Sandy Hook; Boston bombing; Westminster rampage; London Bridge; Manchester bombing; Las Vegas shooting; Charlottesville (hybrid event I’d say); San Bernardino; Times Square car rampage; Freeman High School shooting; Parkland Florida shooting; Berlin, Nice and Stockholm trucks; Brussels airport bombing; Ottawa shooting; Toronto van rampage; Bataclan concert; Charlie Hebdo; Barcelona rampage; Bronx-Lebanon Hospital shooting; Orlando shooting; multiple Melbourne vehicle rampages and on and on. Really, don’t you think there’s a ridiculous number of these events? How credible even without examination do you think they seem? Vehicles careering down the street and killing lots of people? How credible is that on its face even? Why are there so many vehicle rampages now when we never heard of them until a few years ago?

Then there’s all the false flags in Syria and also in Pakistan and India and I’m sure other Asian countries, Russia (the St Petersburg metro bombing) and the good old Skripals.

All you have to do for any of these events is examine a number of elements: Look for:
— Alleged injury not matching real injury but what we expect to see in an anti-terror drill. Is there any sign of compromise to the body?
— Did drills occur in the days and weeks before or even concurrently?
— Discrepancy between witness testimony and evidence shown
— Extremely chirpy loved ones of the alleged victims.
— Signs of sloppiness such as people seeming to read from or recite a script
— Contradictions, things that don’t add up, strange changes in the story, different versions of the story.
— Alleged perpetrators having connection to intelligence agencies

These hallmarks are as present in 9/11 as they are in Sandy Hook and all the other events. The difference between 9/11 and Sandy Hook and other events is one of scale and the fact that for 9/11 they have truther-targeted propaganda. Thus, they anticipated that people would have grave doubts about their preposterous story and would recognise controlled demolition so rather than try to suppress that truth they capitalised on it by transforming it into a magical propaganda asset! They knew that truthers would get nowhere with the message “inside job” and “US govt killed and injured all those people” so they pushed out the truth of controlled demolition along with constant reference to the dead all the better to suppress the truth of staged death and injury. The only two major pieces of the 9/11 jigsaw that fit together are “inside job” and “staged death and injury”. They “sacrificed” the one truth (which was no sacrifice as truthers have worked it out anyway) to suppress the other – without the other, the truth won’t move.

As told to false-flag analyst, Ole Dammegard, by an insider, the power elite justify their hoaxing of us by signalling it in the belief that in informing us of their crimes in this way, they put the onus on us to call them out and if we don’t, they are spared karmic repercussions. How’s that for crime justification?

I can only infer by no expression of agreement with and occasional objection to what I say about staged death and injury on 9/11 that people resist this truth. This puzzles me greatly as, although it took me so long to catch on myself, now that I have, it makes so much more sense to me than killing and injuring people for real. Why aren’t people happier about the idea that the US govt didn’t actually kill and injure all those people? Would you rather they did it for real? Are you more comfortable with that? Of course, it doesn’t make the perps any less evil – it’s just that that is not their modus operandi – they are able to fool us with their clever propaganda and that is what they enjoy. It’s a wonderful hoot for them.

Occam’s Razor exercises on staged events – https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/

They mock us mercilessly. See how they do it in one of my favourite videos by Woodrow Wobbles – “Walking the dog” at Parkland, Florida. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt0fkI5ZdVQ

Seekhelpurgently.
Seekhelpurgently.
Dec 5, 2018 1:09 PM
Reply to  flaxgirl

Seek help urgently kid.
You are suffering from your great endeavour and the shock of the truth. Like a form of ptsd. It happens to highly trained people when faced with the awful horror of reality beyond the training fields.

You are in a mental loop. Trapped in the calm eye of a storm of a very powerful narrative force.

If you try and get out the eye through the wall by yourself you will inevitably be destroyed.

For the sake of all things good including the reputations of web sites such as this, don’t let that ultimate fate be used against us. As it inevtabily will be by the PTB, if you attempt to do it by yourself and fail.

Please please please seek help – from others who believe as you do even, but in person, in a group, in the open. You can share the burden of your truths. You are not alone. You will benefit from knowing you are not alone. As they do.

I am not denying your truth. No one will try and change your mind or get you to think any differently. No one can. Only YOU are able to decide what you want to believe. That is your RIGHT.

BUT PLEASE FOR THE SAKE OF EVERYTHING PLEASE SEEK HELP.

All the very best to you Flaxgirl.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Dec 5, 2018 9:12 PM

Seekhelpurgently, Surely you should look at some evidence before making such pleas to seek help. I am an extremely prosaic, logical thinker. That is why I have set up 10-point Occam’s Razor exercises to prove what I say and I have also issued a $5,000 challenge on four events to produce an equivalent 10-point exercise favouring the opposing hypothesis … and the judging rule is that the responder can choose their own judge from a relevant profession. No one has been able to respond to the challenge, however, I know one person has really tried while I know others simply don’t bother because they have nothing at all to grab onto to support their favoured hypothesis even though they passionately believe it.

The power elite who perpetrate these crimes are scrupulous in ensuring that those who believe them actually cannot find a single thing to provide as evidence to support them. It’s a seeming paradox. There isn’t a single thing for believers to grab onto. There is no dismembered limb, there is no seemingly genuinely crying parent (but many so anomalously very, very chirpy ones), there is nothing that seems very real when you look close up. It’s all a chimera, all smoke’n’mirrors, that collapses once you expose it to proper scrutiny.

So, Seekhelpurgently, if you would like $5,000 for 10 points showing that any of the following are real (you choose the judge remember) here’s your big chance to show how desperately I need to seek help.

— Collapse of WTC-7 by fire
— Death and injury real on 9/11
— Sandy Hook shooting real
— Manchester bombing real
https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/5000-challenge.html

If you’re not prepared to look though then you are not in any position to ask me to seek help. You need to look at what I say not just judge by what seems unbelievable. You need to look.

mark
mark
Jan 12, 2019 6:40 PM

Yes, please seek help. Along with all those who doubt the official versions of JFK, Gulf of Tonkin, Iraq WMD, Iraq Incubator Babies, USS Liberty, 9/11, Operation Gladio, Operation Northwoods, and the existence of fairies, pixies, leprechauns and Father Christmas. People who refuse to believe these obvious truths are obviously deluded and in need of serious help.

Ross Hendry
Ross Hendry
Dec 5, 2018 2:03 PM
Reply to  flaxgirl

“— Extremely chirpy loved ones of the alleged victims.
— Signs of sloppiness such as people seeming to read from or recite a script”

Well said.

I have realised recently that the Jo Cox “assassination” was a false flag event designed to make floating voters opt for “Remain” in the referendum, which was only days away (and Remain were behind in the polls). To me it looks like a U.K. intelligence agency fake event, and the unbelievably happy relatives at the press conference surely suggests that Jo Cox did not die. Has she been given a new identity somewhere (like the Skripals maybe)?

That such skulduggery can have happened is supported by the ridiculously cack-handed management of Brexit, after the failed attempt to swing the vote, which surely suggests that the PTB would rather have had no Brexit at all.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Dec 5, 2018 9:22 PM
Reply to  Ross Hendry

I so appreciate your comment, Ross. I know my reasoning on these events is perfectly sane (even if my obsession with them isn’t) but I sometimes wonder because so few people believe me even though to me what I say is so self-evident and reasonable.

Yes, I forgot about Jo Cox – not that I’ve looked at the event much but I have seen a video pointing out the smiling grievers at the funeral.

I think what all these events indicate is that at some level, everyone is in it together because no country ever calls out another country (except nominally in the case of 9/11) and no leader ever calls out another leader on them either. Jeremy Corbyn does not call out Theresa May but surely he knows these events are staged (I emailed him about Manchester). They’re all in it together at some level.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Dec 9, 2018 5:35 AM
Reply to  Ross Hendry

There was a man in burqa at Jo Cox’s funeral – https://youtu.be/-o3CJp4jDew?t=49 which reminds me of the man in nun drag at Sandy Hook – https://youtu.be/kStVhwUyKJE?t=3m23s. How they mock us.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Dec 9, 2018 5:37 AM
Reply to  flaxgirl

Sorry – man in burqa link is https://youtu.be/-o3CJp4jDew?t=46

Makropulos
Makropulos
Dec 5, 2018 4:42 PM
Reply to  flaxgirl

I don’t understand this claim about hoaxes. There are so many problems with it.

First, the danger of discovery. Obviously it’s a bad idea to claim that some people are dead when they’re still alive. Or else you have to completely invent people – which would surely also be taking a big risk of discovery.

And the idea that no-one was actually harmed makes it all sound like a bit of a laugh really. Hell – our deep state isn’t that bad after all. They don’t really kill anyone.

It also sounds bizarre e.g. calling 9/11 a “hoax” rather than a fraud makes it look like a big illusion – as if it didn’t happen. This may be a way of discrediting false flag theories.

The word “truther” is also an own goal. Those who reject the official account should be called “9/11 sceptics”. “Truthers” makes them sound like nuts.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Dec 5, 2018 9:15 PM
Reply to  Makropulos

But Makropoulos 9/11 was a big illusion, that’s EXACTLY what it was, except for the building collapses. Otherwise it was all fake – the plane crashes and the death and injury and all the different theories they pushed out about it being a Let It Happen On Purpose event and all the rest of it. It was all an illusion except for the building crashes. You have to look at the evidence. It so very, very clear.

Makropulos
Makropulos
Dec 5, 2018 10:15 PM
Reply to  flaxgirl

You’re saying that no-one died on 9/11?

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Dec 5, 2018 11:05 PM
Reply to  Makropulos

I’m saying that death and injury were staged but I’m not saying no one died as perhaps there were deliberate targets or a couple of people died accidentally. However, I think it’s quite possible no one died. Everyone was evacuated from the buildings before they came down. Think about it. Do you think they had the fake plane crash happen and then an hour or so later say, “OK, whoever’s evacuated now – good luck to them – the rest are goners.” Do you see how terminating the evacuation process would be quite tricky and really makes no sense? 9/11 was a massive drill comprising many smaller drills including the evacuation of the twin towers. First responders were involved in these drills – they are not going to be involved in any event where the people are genuinely killed, including themselves. It simply makes no sense.

The visual record in no way shows convincing evidence of any of the alleged 3,000 dead or the 6,000 injured and there are clear signs of drills and fakery. That’s nothing on the visual record for 9,000 people. An impossibility if death and injury were real. I’ve done a 10-point exercise on it. If you can find any visual evidence of real death or injury please let me know.
https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/3000-dead-and-6000-injured-a-lie.html

Makropulos
Makropulos
Dec 7, 2018 8:31 AM
Reply to  flaxgirl

This exchange made me recall one point that really annoyed me. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 I kept hearing about how the terrorists were incredibly “imaginative” and “perceptive” since they struck at “symbols of American wealth and power”. This played so well into the logic of defending “our values” that I suspect it was deliberately introduced as part of the propaganda. But if the terrorists were truly fanatical then they wouldn’t have been fiddling around with mere “symbols”. They would have gone for the biggest devastation imaginable. Starting the final war to destroy the planet would not have bothered them – indeed that is precisely what they would have wanted. They would have flown for the nearest nuclear power plant.

That they didn’t do this shows that whoever was behind 9/11 wanted destruction …..but not too much destruction. They wanted spectacular footage. And that’s we got.

Makropulos
Makropulos
Dec 7, 2018 8:35 AM
Reply to  Makropulos

Last line should read “And that’s what we got.”

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Dec 8, 2018 5:01 AM
Reply to  Makropulos

Exactly and, in fact, the destruction that happened they really wanted in any case. They wanted all the buildings down. There was no sacrifice at all in this operation in relation to the perps. It was “all good” for the perps. All fantastically good for the power elite. Just bad for everyone else – even, no doubt, ultimately for many of their collaborators. Collaborators, in many cases, really puzzle me.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Dec 13, 2018 6:45 AM
Reply to  flaxgirl

— Alleged perpetrators having connection to intelligence agencies

https://www.rt.com/news/446221-strasbourg-shooting-suspect-terrorism/
The gunman who shot multiple victims in Strasbourg had previously been convicted and was known to French intelligence as a possible ‘security risk,’ yet managed to slip through the cracks despite tightened security across France.

“was known to” is a euphemism for “was employed by”. I mean how do so very, very many terrorists “known to” intelligence agencies manage to give them the slip? It’s a complete joke.

I just googled “was known to intelligence” and got 66,200 results!

I have to confess I haven’t looked at this event one little bit so I’m really overstepping it by calling it a hoax right off the bat. If anyone is convinced it was real, please say so in a comment.

Simon Hodges
Simon Hodges
Dec 5, 2018 10:46 AM

Proposal for the Manifesto of a Deplorable Party

We the Deplorables, wish to stand for election as a government for the following reasons and with the following aims.

‘Power’ at present is currently in the throes of its own existential crisis.  The strength of this crisis is such that power has now reached a state of complete hysteria as it cannot accept the unwanted conclusions of Brexit or Donald Trump and the agony that arises when the ‘powerful’ realise that despite their assumption of ‘power’, and all the incredible array and daily barrage of ‘forces’ that were deployed in Brexit – via project economic fear which was deployed alongside project racial slur in trying to control the masses – they were inevitably confronted by the now historically documented and electorally measured social reality that the masses were simply not available for their control.   

So power’s hysterical reaction to the stark revelation of its own powerlessness in existential crisis is to hysterically declare the depraved deplorability of the masses in general whom they now openly despise.  Without any conscience the progressive elites who preach about the danger of stereotyping – hysterically stereotyped every single person who voted for Trump to be an ignorant, bigoted racist.  It has become clear that in recognising the masses as ‘deplorables’ that progressive governments have finally admitted that they despise the masses.  It is only in the midst of power’s existential crisis that they confirm this for us.

Brexit, Trump and the current democratic yellow vest protests in France, and even the Bitcoin phenomenon – are all symptoms of the stark reality that neoliberalism has been a degenerative, corrupted political, social and economic failure and that it has become obvious that governments around the world are not serving the best interests of their peoples and that what are presented as representative parliamentary democracies are in fact unrepresentative parliaments going through the motions of democracy.  Once the choices of ‘fake’ democracy are deconstructed, then it becomes rather necessary for the masses to want to mount an investigation as to whose best interests all our governments have actually been serving all this time.

To all those of who might politically identify themselves on the left, centre, right and also the apolitical, we must advocate a “Deplorable” party that can be formed to fight coming elections around the world.  This will be a party advocating a short term government with no political or economic manifesto to govern their country but a simple promise to uncover and reveal the truth.  Many countries have operated perfectly well without a functioning government for years so this will not be an issue.  If required, markets can be suspended for the duration it takes for us to come to our senses.

This party not in government so to speak, would abolish official secrets acts and reveal all the possible evils that have been carried out by our governments across decades.  It will examine and make public all damning information it finds as we will fully expose what has been done in our names by our governments around the world.  How can you have open government and still retain an official secrets act where evil and corruption can hide behind its curtains?  We need honesty and openness in government. 

Once our work is done, we can step down and politicians can re-enter the scene in new conditions of complete openness.  Without an official secrets act, D-notices and all the dubious machinery of concealment there will be no logical need for conspiracy theories any more. 

All any of us really want is the truth.  We do not seek any dangerous universal truth, we seek historically contingent political and economic truths.  Once we have the truth then we can proceed to acknowledge and redress the evils carried out in our names around the world and begin to establish social and economic fairness and true justice.  There are terrorists because the people of the Middle East have justified grievances from our governments imperialist interference in their histories.  The only way to defeat ‘terrorism’ is to be honest with ourselves and show that our governments were entirely wrong in pursuing the ends that they did.  Once the truth is revealed and the evil that has been carried out in our names established then this will bring great shame upon our governments and trash our international reputations.  Good.  If these things have all occurred as we suspect, then we fully deserve all international shaming and in terms of justice nothing else will suffice.  To do any less is pure hypocrisy.

We want the truth about the invasion of Iraq, we want the truth about the Great Financial Crisis, we want the truth about the Arab spring, about the bombing of Libya and the truth about Syria and Yemen.  We want the truth about destabilizing Russia and events in Georgia and the Ukraine which were so fundamental to destroying the anti-imperialist axis between France, Germany and Russia which so frustrated Tony Blair and US Neoconservative deep state in the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.   We want the truth about JFK and 9/11.  The citizens of Greece need the truth about their corrupted politicians whom in conspiracy with a corrupted neoliberal EU state saddled them with their odious public debts in order to impose austerity upon them and rob them of their wealth, assets and dignity.   We need the truth about governmental manipulation of statistics and information in general.

We need the truth about Unipolar globalism and the deep state hiding in plain sight.  We need the truth about attempted government and corporate manipulation of us via the mass media.  We want the truth about Brexit, we want the truth about the EU, we want the truth about the functioning of military industrial complex and its role in all of this.  We want the truth about how corrupted neoliberal and neoconservative governments and capitalism have actually become.

All we want is the contingent truth.  Once that truth is revealed and established we can start to view the world with clearer eyes and help rebuild it honestly with justice for all. 

So now we need to build a comprehensive list of all the things we want the truth about, get our truth seeking governments elected and start going through all the secret records.  We will prosecute the war criminals as we expose them.  If it proves that Bush and the Neocons knew about 9/11 and let it happen as acceptable collateral damage to get the political momentum to justify the invasion of Iraq and prosecute their war on socialism in the Middle East, then they will be held to full account. 

Where there is corruption we will expose them and we will hold the guilty to full account.  But we will also be merciful in our judgements because the true quality of a society is best judged by the quality of its mercy and we are deplorably merciful because we abhor power, war, violence, social conflict, poverty and human suffering everywhere and will erase the conditions for their possibility in principle and show the conceit and arrogance in the fallacies of power’s discredited operations and practices.

We want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth and that is our only demand for global human justice.

Zero Redaction

Vote Deplorably

balkydj
balkydj
Dec 10, 2018 7:59 AM
Reply to  Simon Hodges

Yoyoyo , Balky learns summit’ new everyday >>>

Balky never knew he was so Deplorable, truthfully speaking 😉

What a relief . . . 🙂

Cherrycoke
Cherrycoke
Dec 5, 2018 10:30 AM

The Gladio documentary is essential, but note that the person in the still frame is Oswald LeWinter, a poet, Shakespeare expert and disinformant of the highest order. LeWinter spread lies, half-truths and truths with regard to Operation CHAOS, the October Surprise, the death of Princess Diana, the terror attack in Bologna, the assassination of Olof Palme, got involved in the Manson case, and turned up in Allan Francovich’s Gladio and Lockerbie documentaries.

Also, the Integrity Initiative seems to be of relevance here:

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/11/british-government-behind-secret-anti-russian-disinformation-campaign.html#more

Loverat
Loverat
Dec 5, 2018 10:24 AM

“It is alleged that the spreading of “fake news” on social media, featuring debunked viral conspiracies like Pizzagate, was what tipped the voting scales in Donald Trump’s favor”

I remember reading quite a bit about Pizzagate. Alot of it was based around some of the Podesta emails, some establishments in Washington and various other information. But I can’t actually recall where it was debunked. I know some sites featured this theory and after it died down a bit gradually disappeared off the internet. I remember BBC and others saying it had been ‘debunked’ but took that with a pinch of salt.

At the time I thought that although bits of it could be dismissed (and this seemed to be the sole basis for people saying it was not credible) there seemed alot of circumstantial evidence which at least warranted an investigation. It was also the first time I heard the term ‘fake news’. Maybe I got too sucked into it and saw something which wasn’t there. But I would like to know where the ‘debunking’ took place.

.

BigB
BigB
Dec 5, 2018 12:19 PM
Reply to  Loverat

@Loverat

So would I. I think it was safe to say it was purged from the internet; sites demonetised, people discredited, false flag shooting. The ‘citizen journalists’ also hit self-destruct by ‘identifying’ John and Tony Podesta as Madeleine McCann’s abductors …which was an obvious, and perhaps deliberately infiltrated, discreditation. (Even Alex Jones did a very public volte face – at midnight: under duress?)

But the emails? They were never debunked that I know of. Nor where they denied: and they make no sense in ordinary language terms. And they give at least some credence to a pattern of elite deviance that goes all the way back, past Franklin (implicating the eulogised ‘saint’ who just died: Bush the greater evil in a ‘carefully crafted hoax’). So no, not debunked – purged from the collective psyche …which are obviously not the same thing. Which makes me ever more suspicious.

Loverat
Loverat
Dec 5, 2018 1:13 PM
Reply to  BigB

Thanks BigB

Yes, it’s all coming back to me now. I remember the McCann connection and some guy supposedly going into one of the named establishments threatening the staff. This was when some of the mainstream publications (BBC, Washington Post) first began reporting it as debunked. It seemed as if someone was trying to deflect attention away from the parts which seemed credible.

And looking at recent tactics used in smearing academics as ‘conspiracy theorists’ it all seems so familiar. No substance in the ‘debunking’ – just misdirection.

Prof Piers Robinson, a university professor specialising in propaganda, the latest one to be smeared – this time by Huff Post. Quite ridiculous because out of all the experts and independent commentators offering an alternative narrative, he is one of the most measured, polite in debate and sets out the facts carefully rather than jumping to conclusions.

Here’s the latest smear piece (painfully embarrassing to read)

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/professor-piers-robinson-sheffield-university_uk_5bd70ffae4b0d38b5885c5c5

And other experts being smeared by Eliot Higgins who is now posing as a chemical weapons expert. It’s quite surreal – the truth (for example Syria) obvious to anyone who takes time to read up yet the likes of Huff Post and BellingCat claiming the opposite. I suppose they can rely on any readers they have left either being too stupid or finding the facts so disturbing to accept, they go with what they want to hear..

BigB
BigB
Dec 5, 2018 1:56 PM
Reply to  Loverat

I follow Piers Robinson; Tim Hayward, Paul Mckeigue, mainly for the Syria Group academic study (I fear for their tenures too!) [Interestingly, I just wanted to check the spellings using a well known search engine (Bing – which searches Google) …and they do not exist. I had to switch to Yandex].

I’m not quite at the point of inversion, everything ‘they’ say has to be turned on its head. Nor am I quite at the point that if it is shut down, it must be true …but neither am I too far from such an automatic processing.

As for Higgins, I was not sure who shot down MH-17 …but he swung it for me. Thanks, Elliot!

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Dec 6, 2018 12:54 PM
Reply to  Loverat

I think the term fake news may have slightly predated Pizzagate but perhaps it didn’t.

It was never debunked. You see an interview between Podesta and a journalist where Podesta says it was “debunked” a number of times but doesn’t say how.

Of course, the media have never asked him what the words really meant if they weren’t connected to children. That would have been the easiest thing to do to debunk the emails – explain what the words referred to – but – what a surprise – no one has ever asked. No journalist has ever asked the elephant-in-the-room question.

It seems that the police/media link the Podesta brothers to the McCann case and you wonder if they are actually telling us they really are connected or what.

Drawings that closely resemble the Podesta brothers were released as E-fits (Electronic Facial Identification Technique) in relation to the disappearance of the Madeleine McCann, in Portugal on May 3, 2007.

Odd things about the E-fits:

They were released in 2013, over 5 years after the event and there is no explanation for this.
Why were Maddie suspect E-fits kept secret for five years? (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2478087/Why-Madeleine-McCann-suspect-E-fits-kept-secret-5-years.html)?

It is claimed that they are of one person, even though each is very detailed and resembles a different person, namely, the two brothers, John and Tony Podesta.
British detectives release efits of Madeleine McCann suspect. (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/14/british-detectives-efits-madeleine-mccann-suspect)

It is claimed that the E-fit is of a man with brown hair aged 20 to 40 but both E-fits show a man (or men) who look from about 35 to 60, certainly nowhere near 20, with grey hair.
Madeleine McCann: E-fit ‘suspect’ was carrying child, police reveal. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/madeleinemccann/10377714/Madeleine-McCann-E-fit-suspect-was-carrying-child-police-reveal.html)

One has to ask the question: Why does what is said about the E-fits not match what the E-fits show? If these E-fits are really simply drawings of the Podesta brothers then obviously not both of them were carrying the child so why are they showing both of them to represent a single person?

Weird, huh? But nowhere near as weird as what these people are up to.

flaxgirl
flaxgirl
Dec 6, 2018 9:02 PM
Reply to  flaxgirl

Just to add. I forget who said it but someone said that the paintings of children showing signs of abuse on Tony Podesta’s walls are not “made up” but show clear signs of being from photos of children in the situations depicted. (And really even if they were “made up” what on earth are they doing on his walls?) Fiona Barnett, an Australian woman, who, as a child, was hired out to an international VIP pedophile network by her step-grandfather says that a carpenter she met told her he saw images of “kiddie porn” on the walls of the house of Bruce Spence, a NZ/Australian actor who was in this network. These people have no shame whatsoever about their utterly criminal and disgusting activities.

frank
frank
Dec 5, 2018 11:40 PM
Reply to  Loverat

It was never debunked. But a lot of wild claims about it were made, which were debunked.
I never looked into it deeply, but this documentary gives a good summary:

#PizzaGate / #PedoGate – The UnAnswered Questions Documentary – Part 1
#PizzaGate / #PedoGate – The UnAnswered Questions Documentary – Part 2

(Unfortunately this documentary is extremely long winded and could have been improved. Also the author Titus Frost is (or has become) controlled opposition. Don’t trust this guy. But his documentary really is just a long list of everything that was discovered and you can make up your own mind.)

it’s pretty mind blowing though, this documentary, all things considered.

Antonym
Antonym
Dec 5, 2018 8:50 AM

Press curbs are not automatically proof of a conspiracy; example: the Sandy Hook school shooting where authorities tried to shield the families of the victims from too graphic exposure, but probably were too ham fisted. .

Makropulos
Makropulos
Dec 5, 2018 8:33 AM

Gore Vidal: “Conspiracy theory has become a code word for the unspeakable truth.”

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Dec 5, 2018 8:14 AM

Here is the latest bit of ‘cover up’ reported in the Groaniad

‘The rise of authoritarian governments and the threat of internet censorship has redoubled pressures on reporters globally, according to the human rights organisation Article 19, which found that a further 326 journalists were imprisoned for their work during 2017’.

Yawn! 326? You sure you can count? That is less than one a day in the whole wide world! Doesn’t sound completely off the scale…i know ONE is bad , but you know what i mean, i thought it would a lot worse!

Not a single mention of Assange, wikileaks, internet censorship by FB/Google/Atlantic Council!!!

Who the fuck is Article 19? Who runs it? Who funds it? How?

It is not so easy to find out despite their glossy site and annual report.
Established in 1987, named after a clause of the declaration of human rights Blah blah … no real detail. Vague board of directors,executive committees and trustees! Who?
Funders – the odd foreign embassy based in some country, a foundation that can’t be contacted – they provide grants by invitation only, oh hang on here we go..
Danish, Swedish,UK, US international development agencies. The foreign offices of the uk, holland, norway, usa. Various foundations and trusts with names like open society, Hewlett, Ford, MacArthur, ‘Guardian’, Angelica… Open Society…National Endowment for Democracy… enough said?

A budget of £6 million quid, based in Farringdon, central London, yet not a single mention of the elephant trapped in the embassy room down the road from them!

Way to go you social justice and freedom of press warriors! Or just another conspiracy to add to our lists?

Antonym
Antonym
Dec 5, 2018 8:03 AM

One non-CIA fake theory: CAGW.

??
??
Dec 5, 2018 5:47 PM
Reply to  Antonym

CAGW: Citizens Against Government Waste?

Antonym
Antonym
Dec 5, 2018 8:02 AM

There is also an element of “too big to fail” involved.

axisofoil
axisofoil
Dec 5, 2018 8:01 AM

Here we go again

Schlüter
Schlüter
Dec 5, 2018 7:50 AM
GorgeousGreece
GorgeousGreece
Dec 5, 2018 4:43 AM

see this critique of the MOMA exhibit by one who went on a tour of it with its curator http://www.catmcguire.com/art/The-Art-World-Weighs-In-On-Conspiracy-Theories_05Nov2018.html

intergenerationaltrauma
intergenerationaltrauma
Dec 5, 2018 5:03 AM
Reply to  GorgeousGreece

GorgeousGreece – Thanks for sharing that post. Interesting observations by the person on the tour.

Frances Stoner Saunders’ book, “Who Paid the Piper?: The CIA and the Cultural Cold War” is an excellent history of some of the CIA’s cultural operation during the Cold War.

Obviously completely controlling MSM reporting and narratives is the current manifestation of what had been often a bit more subtle CIA approaches. You can’t make this stuff up, as they say.

milosevic
milosevic
Dec 5, 2018 5:44 AM

some of the CIA’s cultural operation during the Cold War

If it seems like Identity Politics is highly compatible with ruling class power, maybe that’s because it was designed that way.

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Dec 5, 2018 9:06 AM
Reply to  milosevic

Identity Politics as has been exposed by a few has been the secret war of culture upon society even before Orwell wrote about it.

I consider the whole variety of media to have been deployed in ID politics – newspapers and magazines (cartoons included); radio (Wells cracked it, rock and roll embedded it, not just Elvis was a G-man, and now shock jock talk shows – finally figured what LBC is about), Film (Hollywood is the centre of propaganda, from the very beginning, the whole shoot em up, superpowered hero(ine) interventionist exceptionalist bs; TV (endless endless, just think of the iterations of crime procedurals and judaeo christian white power fantasy promulgation); and now the new media – smart phones (landlines are where telemarketing got politicians in your homes!); google results, FB personal data hoovering and direct marketing, news management and top level coarse censorship and vexatious ruinous legal ‘challenges’ against independent journalists. Twitter and comment banning!

The Groaniad running non-stop ID politics stories for weeks now as the wheels finally fall of their beloved tory/liberal bandwagon and are powerless to stop the ascent of the genuine social demands, just as in France,as many of us predicted and hoped for – a little delayed by the massed forces of the pathocracy.

The Groan as they flush themselves down the sewers trying to destroy the unity with desperate ID politics is not working alone.

Keep up the resistance and keep watching for every new iteration of division they try slip on us. We are nearly through the post-modernist mind fucking!

BigB
BigB
Dec 5, 2018 1:30 PM
Reply to  DunGroanin

DG

“We are nearly through the post-modernist mind fucking!”

So we can return as meek voluntary slaves to the ‘modernist’ Enlightenment synthesis (Cartesian-Newtonian-Darwinian-Freud) mind fucking?

Do you know who is under the PoMo banner definition? Anyone who has ever challenged (directly or indirectly) the hegemony of Anglophone ‘mind-fuck’ imperial exceptionalism. That is everyone from Marx, Nietzsche, Brentano, Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Barthes, Saussure, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Kuhn, Popper, Levi-Strauss, Weber, Deleuze, Guattari, Friere, Gorz, etc …anyone who has ever deviated from Enlightenment exceptionalism, or the imperial hegemony of democratic separationism in the last 150 years …not just Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault, Baudrillard, etc. Even Richard Rorty (and of course Judith Butler) is included under the sub-banner of the Continental School …which is poor geography to say the least.

I take my classification from Stephen Hicks “Postmodernism Explained”. In lieu of his cultural preference: a “libertarian Enlightenment” hybrid theory. That is the Enlightenment plus Anglo-American Analytic school and Logical Posivitism/Empiricism. Do you really want to close down 150 years of philosophical investigation in return to Enlightenment exceptionalism? Because that is the way the debate is being manipulated. If you want to live under a genetically determined, uber-competitive, fixed psychological, humanity parsed, ultra-violent, sectarian, mathematicised logic (metaontological), technological, AI-technocratic (AI-managed management for the sake of managing) machine dominance regime …that is the way opinion is being manipulated.

If not, I respectfully submit that there is plenty under the simplistic reductionist winding sheet labelled ‘PoMo’ to lead our intellectual development away from such a fate. Not least: the Brentano/Husserl to Merleau-Ponty (via Dewey – who is not a target) development of an embodied humanism. Or Sartre’s Existential humanism. They, the ideologues behind the ‘ban PoMo’ pseudo-debate, have an ulterior motive of keeping humanity under the rule of 18th and 19th century values. I’m guessing from your other comments, that is not what you want? Don’t be deceived. Humanity’s problems did not start with Foucault in the 60s. They preceded, but are quasi-deified in Enlightenment Values. The implications of their continued dictatorship is frightening, to me at least. Not least, the free speech implications of a virtual PoMo book burning. How about a book reading first?

[Reading just some of the authors mentioned places Structuralism and Post-Structuralism as a legitimate response to the Analytic parsing of human emotion from science and philosophy. Or the Phenomenological approach to Being: which Analytic scientism (Logical Posivitism) has nothing to say anything about (absent the machine dictation of ‘it has to be this way’). PoMo, as it is identified, is a manipulation and recuperation of much of the serious inquiry that is under threat. Just about anyone identified by the PoMo banner rejected it. Gender dysphoria is as old as tribal humanity. Maybe read Foucault’s ‘archaeological’ insights? 😉 ]

Simon Hodges
Simon Hodges
Dec 5, 2018 2:16 PM
Reply to  BigB

I agree entirely. The problem with identity ‘politics’ as such is that under the terms of the postmodern and poststructuralist critique that it can never become a ‘politics’ as such because postmodernism denies the principles of autonomous human subjects to be placed into conflict with each other in the first place. The political complaints of theories such as ‘Queer Theory’ are totally grounded in the modernist philosophy of power and its eternal struggles that end up understanding everything only in terms of acts of repression or resistance an autonomous authentic human subject. Critical power theory can never resolve these conflicts or recognise that every resistor must necessarily be someone else’s oppressor.

Far from trying to resolve conflicts on actually sees that theories such as Queer Theory are far more interested in creating conflicts and trying to raise the conflictual bar, a desire which is animated by a twisted psychology with a general lust for revolutionary violence which has always been a disturbing presence in the philosophy of the left.

These theories have borrowed a particular conclusion of postmodernism because they thought it suited their argument and their violent revolutionary desires, but this was an inappropriate seizure of a postmodern conclusion in that they did so without acknowledging how and why postmodernism reached its conclusions in the first place. From a postmodern perspective gender identity or specific sexual preferences are no more real than any other consumer choices. As such they cannot become ‘charged’ to support the critical conflict that critical power theory attempts to construct in the debate which entirely relies upon the notion of a repressed and resisting transgender subject being subjected to the oppression of the more popular heterosexuality or gender acceptance of the masses.

As we are the products of Baudrillard’s system or of Derrida’s language and text which have no exterior – then there is no question of resisting the things that are actually constituting us and they must be taken as either ambivalent or positive ‘forces’ as opposed to the binary oppositions of oppression and resistance that critical power theory employs. Postmodern cannot accept any such reductive or simplistic account of the world as part of the postmodernist project is to educate itself to recognise and resist such temptations to reduce the phenomenally complex to anyone’s simplistic and reductive readings of them for any political convenience. Postmodern conclusions erase the foundation for conflicts to take place with the message that the class,gender, race, sexual preference wars etc are all over out of logical necessity and we can therefore all stand down from them.

What theories like Queer Theory are saying is something far more socially divisive which actually creates and feeds conflict out of their own bloody revolutionary desires for violence which seem to underwrite the inevitability of power and its conflicts when they are in fact damaging, meaningless and pointless.

BigB
BigB
Dec 6, 2018 8:36 AM
Reply to  Simon Hodges

Simon

You highlight the reason I object to the umbrella term ‘postmodernism’. In the aspectual, that is to say in the recent culturally recognised face of PoMo as a micropoliticisation, decontextualisation and relativisation of social identity and gender issues …I am, on the surface, as anti PoMo as anyone else. This chronicling dissipated into wool gathering of data and navel gazing analysis. I see this as nothing more as an inauthentic and recuperative attempt to redefine the cultural hegemony as inclusive …which it is not.

In attempting to expose what is being bundled, quite deviously and unnecessarily (except for the ideological reasons I highlighted), under the PoMo ‘winding sheet’ – there is no heterogeneity of definition that can be developed to cover such a large corpus of work. If you take the broad categorisation (from Hicks): then any definition of PoMo breaks down (Nietzsche PoMo? Not in anyone but Hick’s wildest imagination. He definitely did deal with autonomous human subjects and the ‘will to power’, for instance). There would be points of reference pro and con in such a comprehensive corpus. Hence the simplistic rendition of ‘PoMo’. I do not suppose that many people actually know what they are being incited against, in this one simplistic diminutive expression.

Identity politics aside, I’m not sure I recognise much of your categorisation of ”Baudrillard’s system” or “Derrida’s language” (Baudrillard critiqued the ‘Code’ and ‘simulacra’ but offered little alternative: Derrida said “make your own [alterity of] language” …but these were reactions to the hegemonic system ‘as-it-presents’ – i.e. it wasn’t “their” system they were talking about). Aside from Paulo Freire (who also had nothing to do with PoMo, but is bracketed in as a ‘Critical Theorist’); and Sartre’s existential humanism (a singular subjective injunction not to enter into bad faith) …the major point I would agree with you is that PoMo had no praxis and cannot constitute a cohesive politics.

Where we might depart, is that for me, all but recently, PoMo contains a reactionary, but rational, critique of an identity fragmentation that was already fully advanced BEFORE PoMo (alienation and cultural dysphoria are pan-historic). In Phenomenology, there was an attempt to understand Being (which constitutes a subject). In structuralism (and semiotics) there was a valid attempt to understand the role of language (which constitutes a subject). Critical Theory posits that institutionalised power structures (ISAs and RSAs) ‘interpellate’ our subjectivity (which constitutes a subject). These and many more examples I could draw, advanced our understanding of identity formation and its relationship to power – absent a praxis or politic. In short, PoMo, in the broad categorisation I mentioned, is not a thing. It is a pseudo-definition designated to strengthen the status quo ante of Enlightenment Values. That is, validate the existant power structure.

The singular cause for identity fragmentation and atomisation (within and without the subject) is Cartesian. The Enlightenment Values are Cartesian. Cartesian uber-individuation (the ‘me’ adulation) is the cause of identity atomisation. The solution cannot be more Cartesianism. Bracketed in with the undesirable, easily critiqued and quantifiable ‘PoMo relativistic values’ are plenty of other valid intellectual advances (as mentioned) that are being intentionally repressed and silenced …in favour of immortalising Cartesianism. Will that ameliorate identity disintegration? No, it will precipitate new levels of alienation, addiction, suicide, and identity dysphoria.

As far as I am concerned, what is broadly labelled PoMo (which I hope to have shown is an establishment ‘regime of truth’ definition) holds the answer. Not in the neutered wool gathering, but by developing a praxis. That praxis, for me, will be an ’embodied realism’, developed as a humanism, in the Sartrean tradition, and an enacted ecosophy, based on Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘three ecology’ model. In case no one can tell, all my references and knowledge (apart from secular buddhism) are under attack from the likes of Hicks. But no one wants his view of a “libertarian (fascist) Enlightenment” hybrid theory to prevail. No one.

Simon Hodges
Simon Hodges
Dec 6, 2018 6:50 PM
Reply to  BigB

We seem to have very different understandings and experiences of these things that leads me to pose a question. If you studied philosophy then did you do so by each topic where it was discussed in terms of how a selection of philosophers approached and addressed those topics or did you study in terms of its history starting from Plato and Aristotle then working your way through Descartes, Lock, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and the enlightenment, Marx, Freud and Nietzsche and all the way through to postmodernism and Derrida?

BigB
BigB
Dec 7, 2018 6:31 PM
Reply to  Simon Hodges

Simon

I did a foundation year in Western philosophy way back when God was a boy (early 80s): rejected it and went off to be a Buddhist monk! It didn’t work out, my point being that my auto-didactic study of philosophy is through a profoundly Eastern lens. The Western elements I am drawn to have a strong self-similarity with Eastern thought: which includes the various philosophers I have mentioned. My own ‘school’ would be Abhidarma-Yogacara-Madhyamika: a buddhist epistemology, phenomenology, and psychology (buddhism predicates no metaphysics or ontology) allied with Western Critical Theory. I also am strongly influenced by ‘Engaged Buddhism’, particularly of Thich Nhat Hanh, which applies buddhist principles to geopolitical and macro-social issues. Which is my way of saying I do not have a systemic approach: all buddhism is primarily liberational.

As such, I see the history of Western Thought as a struggle to come to terms with its own Beingness …that is our Beingness. It is a history of an intellectual evolution of an epistemological, metaphysical (a priori; transcendent), and ontological separation from life: and the self-imposed anomie, Abandonment and social dysphoria this caused and causes. That struggle entails an identity crisis, exploitative social realism and unerring relationship to power.

The simple logico-epistemic break is the proposition that the subject is (spatio-temporally) separated from the object. The entailment is the individuated self and objectified Other. There are various themes and variations on this throughout Western Thought (the Cartesian and Sartrean cogito, for instance) …but the basic premise of a subject/object dichotomy is a holy relic that cannot be disinterred. It remains an unquestionable cultural Given. My POV would be that it is one hell of a supposition, or epistemic falsehood, to enshrine in nearly three millennia of discourse. It remains enshrined as the Holy Grail foundationalism and essentialism of self and society.

The simple truth, as I see it, is that it is self-evidently false that we can ever be separated from anything, let alone each other, except by uncritically absorbing (internalising; acculturating) such mystifying nonsense. I would add, the Cartesian paradigm, the so called Age of (disembodied) Reason, is rapidly failing us. It is imperative we re-evaluate the subject/object; self/other antipodes to auto-catalyse an Age of (embodied) Wisdom. Categorically imperative and existentially acute.

The longer we consider ourselves apart, the longer we tear ourselves apart …all for a cognitive and epistemic break that is self-evidently false. That’s a madness we cannot easily pin on a 60 year old development in philosophy and social science, is it not?

Simon Hodges
Simon Hodges
Dec 7, 2018 7:43 PM
Reply to  BigB

Thanks for the confirmation, that is more or less what I figured and it explains a lot to me which I probably could not communicate back to you in an understandable or reliable way.

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Dec 5, 2018 2:57 PM
Reply to  BigB

BB it is never difficult to learn something from each of your posts. 🤔

In this one you have reinvented the Python philosophers song!

I am happy to clarify,I am no scholar of philosophy.

I do however have plenty of experience of news media output and how they sell us their fishy thinking.

Consider me a cod-philosophy dabbler at best.

History did not end. That was a lie.
Identity politics is not the same category as social democratic beliefs of the majority.
Intellectualism without practicality is just the same as a religious fairy tale and gives us unthinking extremists alt right/left/centre (yes i believe centrists are just as deluded)

People anywhere in the world should not be living in poverty; be uneducated; have no free healthcare, affordable housing, free utilities, security and above all prospects in their own neighbourhoods and homelands – no one should be forced into choosing to leave their ancestoral homelands to find any of these basic human rights. It is easily doable – as China has shown.

Beyond that everyone should understand that when humans went to the market to barter their surplus foods and goods for others – who grew the money to bring to the market to do the same?

You picked up on my lazy reference to post-modernist mind fuckery and Foucault, elsewhere.

For others here is the link to that. It was an accidental find while looking into the Kerch strait incident. I am not a regular of MSM sites except one, that i like to give a daily kicking to. 👊
https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201811251070113860-foucalt-patriarchy-demonization-of-russia-as-post-modern-putsh/

BigB
BigB
Dec 5, 2018 4:28 PM
Reply to  DunGroanin

I read the link before, it’s a bit of an unstructured rant. BTW: just about every French intellectual, not just Foucault, signed the petition to lower the age of consent – which I would not condone, nor welcome – including Sartre and de Beauvoir. The French, eh!

I certainly would not put my hand up for everything PoMo, but there is a lot being bundled in with the inferior …and no one wants a “libertarian Enlightenment” hybrid theory to prevail. That would be the end of history, humanity, and the world!

In the briefest overview: Enlightenment (Modernist) pure objectivity – bad. PoMo pure subjectivity – just as bad. Balanced ‘middle way’ – objective/subjectivity; ’embodied realism’; second order (socially responsible: observer as participant; first person experiential inclusive) science and philosophy – good. Both subject and object extremes are dictatorial. Foucault’s absent morals are an easy target: but no one wants Anglophone Enlightenment morality to be the hegemony of culture for another century. PoMo needs to be surgically developed, cutting out the toxic and deviant (especially the inferior rote application that has devolved and recuperated much of the source material). PoMo was all critique, and no praxis. There are exciting humanist interpretations coming out of phenomenology: under the ’embodied cognition’ label …following Varela et al “the Embodied Mind”. The implication being that we could overcome Cartesian Enlightenment Values once and for all. Goodnight Pax Americana. Then we got a humanist evolution on the go!

Yarkob
Yarkob
Dec 5, 2018 1:10 PM
Reply to  milosevic

and of course, there are persistent rumours that the Dead’s John Barlow was part of the CIAs 60s counter-culture LSD/music/Art/Literature experiment, along with Tim Leary et al

“I’m Uncle Sam, that’s who I am; Been hidin’ out in a rock and roll band.
Shake the hand that shook the hand of P.T. Barnum and Charlie Chan.
Shine your shoes, light your fuse. Can you use them ol’ U.S. Blues?
I’ll drink your health, share your wealth, run your life, steal your wife.
Wave that flag, wave it wide and high.
Summertime done, come and gone, my, oh, my.”

Grateful Dead – US Blues

Yarkob
Yarkob
Dec 5, 2018 1:11 PM
Reply to  Yarkob

And let’s not even mention Anderson Cooper…

DunGroanin
DunGroanin
Dec 5, 2018 3:01 PM
Reply to  Yarkob

The Boss?

The Noble laureate?

Any number of Hollywood / broadcast media actors/writers/producers?

Yarkob
Yarkob
Dec 5, 2018 4:05 PM
Reply to  DunGroanin

the Boss? i confess i’ve not heard that, but yes, any number of every public-facing body one could care to mention, but with a particular slant on the entertainment industry as you point out, for obvious reasons…the ending of Wizard of Oz springs to mind for some reason..something about pulling back curtains…

QuietRebel
QuietRebel
Dec 5, 2018 5:01 PM
Reply to  milosevic

I have come to the conclusion that modern feminism has done little for the average woman. Instead modern feminists are using average women as foot soldiers to help elite women get into more positions of power. I am tired of hearing that simply getting more women in power will automatically make the world a better place, because it is not true. women are not better nor worst than a man. A woman leader can usher destructive policy just like a man.

It is unfortunate to say this, but women getting more leadership positions has not made things better for the average person.

Another thing that I notice is that modern feminists are ironic sexist against professionals that are predominately female in favor of male professions. Feminists deem predominately female professions such as nursing, administration support, paralegal, caregiving, and to a lessor extent teaching as inherently demeaning. Modern feminists also look down on women who work on those previously mentioned professions.

this also goes to temperament, modern feminist think that a reserve kind temperament due to it being associated with women as being inferior to a dominating and aggressive temperament since that is associated with males. Modern feminist favor the worst parts of the stereotypical male temperament such as dominating and aggression and feel that women in power should take on these attributes.

I read an article that excuses bullying behavior of woman leaders in the workplace due to sexism. The article actually blames workers for the bullying behavior of female bosses, because the article claims that workers don’t give female bosses as much as male bosses. I think is has to due with many women in leadership expecting to be able to act as authoritarian leaders and not want to have anyone question them.

QuietRebel
QuietRebel
Dec 5, 2018 5:03 PM
Reply to  QuietRebel

I forgot to post the link to the article that I referred to at the end of my post.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-queen-bee-in-the-corner-office/534213/

George cornell
George cornell
Dec 5, 2018 6:47 PM
Reply to  QuietRebel

If you want them to squirm, or choke on their double lattes, just remind em how woman, prefer male bosses. The reasons are always the same.

Simon Hodges
Simon Hodges
Dec 7, 2018 8:05 PM
Reply to  George cornell

Could you please explain those reasons in more detail?

George cornell
George cornell
Dec 8, 2018 1:02 PM
Reply to  Simon Hodges

Simon, these are detailed in many of the objective studies, although a few of the more recent show signs of being manipulated. You want a wild rumpus?
Men are perceived by women as being more fair, less vindictive, less cruel, less prone to forming exclusionary cliques, less gossipy, less bullying, less slutshaming, etc.

Take a look at girl on girl cyber bullying for this in its purest form? Seasoned FBI investigators, looking at cyber bullying suicides have stated that human cruelty has not been surpassed.