On Conspiracy Part 1
Q. When is a conspiracy not a conspiracy?
A. When it is the Establishment.
Since before setting up this blog I've spent long hours trawling the net. Surfing is a misnomer. It is to fast a word. To surf, to skim the surface playing, you chance more likely than not to miss the richness, the diversity, complexity and the unbelievable weirdness that permeates the net, especially the blogosphere. Not that there's anything wrong with playing but I've needed to trawl, to haul and sift, in trying to find some intellectual stimulation and depth. At times its been tedious and occasionally downright depressing sitting here sieving through the dross to find a nugget that can lift the spirits.
Some sites I've found shine brilliant. Visually stimulating, exciting to the eye and over-flowing with good writing, full of wit, clear and precise. If they meet this criteria (I know it is demanding) and be broadly in sync with my world view - humanist and internationalist and not afraid to use the word class - then they are revisited regularly and linked to. It is not as many as I would like.
Clicking through the links randomly on a lot of sites, site after site, can be quite instructive. The sites I've visited this way and that have not intrigued me enough to revisit comprise 90%. There seems to be an addiction to clutter which affects the ability to navigate easily. The lack of white space is distressing to my eye and may hide good writing. I never stay to find out.
But there is another 9% which are deeply worrying. They comprise those whose comments links are full of conspiracy theory from some seriously disturbed people. In this time of global crisis they are right to be disturbed but searching for conspiracy as a means in trying to explain what is happening, is the intellectual handmaiden of defeatism. Its as if they are caught in an endless maze, trying to find the one final turning that could prove them right and show the way out proclaiming, "I have found the way". Many false dawns will arrive as the one final turning is thought found only to be disabused when another one final turning is found by a fellow conspiracy theorist and the maze still surrounds them. Frustration and disbar are the only outcomes when absorbed by conspiracy.
Another analogy is that they see themselves as prosecution lawyers searching for that crucial piece of evidence to present in a court of law that will prove their case against the war criminals Bush and Blair. The only court that they can possibly face is that of the disenfranchised and dispossessed. When that happens conspiracy will not appear on the charge sheet, just the crime of instigating a war of aggression.
Pessimism finds it's comfort blanket in conspiracy theory and it stifles the will.
We know the treasonous lies, propaganda and psy-ops of the Bush and Blair administrations were and are being used by them to try and justify their actions; to win, if not the active support, then the quiet acquiescence of their populations to immoral acts: to hide the real reasons for invading Iraq. The lies and vicious actions of the ruling elites in America and Britain, down the centuries, at home and abroad, have left enough of a footprint as to be unmissable by even the most perfunctory glance at history. The genocide committed against Native Americans - still going on - or the murderous terror campaign by Britain's SAS against the peoples of Burma and Oman, are examples from living memory.
Since the decision was taken to invade Iraq - probably in Crawford, Texas when Blair visited Bush in April 2002 - the battlespace has included the respective home fronts. The campaign to stampede the populations of these countries to support the war started then. It has taken on many forms. Including disinformation, exaggeration, distortion, omission and the deliberate disappearing of crucial information from the public sphere.
Of the bombings in London on 07.07.05, the bus bomb exploded in Tavistock Square. In a previous post to this blog I have written about the disappearing from the mainstream media of the significance of Tavistock Square as a site dedicated to peace and non-violence - Ghandi's statue and tributes to the victims of Hiroshima and prisoners of conscience are in the centre of the square - and the foregrounding (by the Guardian to its shame) of Szilard's theoretical realisation in 1933, 300 yards south of Tavistock Square, that, "It might be possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction, liberate energy on an industrial scale, and construct atomic bombs." Is this a conspiracy. I think not. In the specific case of The Guardian it could just be shallow writing combined with lax commissioning and editing or it could be a psy-op plant. If it is the latter then that just shows the capitalist state is functioning as it should in a time of war and that is not conspiracy. The problem with that article though is that it does "As Neruda has said, before the hawks of Wall Street and Washington can hurl the atom bomb they must annihilate us morally. That is the mission of their poets - the Eliots and Pounds who degrade life and stultify the will to resist." Not that I consider the originator of the Guardian article a poet when he is but a shill.
The fact Britain and America (and lets not forget Israel nor for that matter Australia) are acting together in committing war crimes is not a conspiracy. It is just business for the capitalist class. Powers whose interests coincide with other Powers, strategically and/or tactically will act together. These alliances are not set in stone, are not omnipotent. Are not monolithic in their unity. There are tensions, contradictions and points of conflict between and amongst the constituent parts. The alliances may be short term or long term and that in many ways will depend on the nature and timing of any intervention by the democratic/left opposition among the populations of those powers. Hence the Patriot Act in America and the Anti-Terrorism Act in Britain which were pushed through to harass and criminalise legitimate dissent to their crime of aggression, under the guise of fighting terrorism. This is not conspiracy.
These are the desperate acts of a desperate class trying to defend their interests while facing a crisis unprecedented in human history. This is no 'ordinary' capitalist crisis. It is deeper than that. It could affect the very survival of our species. The conjunction of global warming and end of the age of oil require a response that capitalism is incapable of.
A. When it is the Establishment.
Since before setting up this blog I've spent long hours trawling the net. Surfing is a misnomer. It is to fast a word. To surf, to skim the surface playing, you chance more likely than not to miss the richness, the diversity, complexity and the unbelievable weirdness that permeates the net, especially the blogosphere. Not that there's anything wrong with playing but I've needed to trawl, to haul and sift, in trying to find some intellectual stimulation and depth. At times its been tedious and occasionally downright depressing sitting here sieving through the dross to find a nugget that can lift the spirits.
Some sites I've found shine brilliant. Visually stimulating, exciting to the eye and over-flowing with good writing, full of wit, clear and precise. If they meet this criteria (I know it is demanding) and be broadly in sync with my world view - humanist and internationalist and not afraid to use the word class - then they are revisited regularly and linked to. It is not as many as I would like.
Clicking through the links randomly on a lot of sites, site after site, can be quite instructive. The sites I've visited this way and that have not intrigued me enough to revisit comprise 90%. There seems to be an addiction to clutter which affects the ability to navigate easily. The lack of white space is distressing to my eye and may hide good writing. I never stay to find out.
But there is another 9% which are deeply worrying. They comprise those whose comments links are full of conspiracy theory from some seriously disturbed people. In this time of global crisis they are right to be disturbed but searching for conspiracy as a means in trying to explain what is happening, is the intellectual handmaiden of defeatism. Its as if they are caught in an endless maze, trying to find the one final turning that could prove them right and show the way out proclaiming, "I have found the way". Many false dawns will arrive as the one final turning is thought found only to be disabused when another one final turning is found by a fellow conspiracy theorist and the maze still surrounds them. Frustration and disbar are the only outcomes when absorbed by conspiracy.
Another analogy is that they see themselves as prosecution lawyers searching for that crucial piece of evidence to present in a court of law that will prove their case against the war criminals Bush and Blair. The only court that they can possibly face is that of the disenfranchised and dispossessed. When that happens conspiracy will not appear on the charge sheet, just the crime of instigating a war of aggression.
Pessimism finds it's comfort blanket in conspiracy theory and it stifles the will.
We know the treasonous lies, propaganda and psy-ops of the Bush and Blair administrations were and are being used by them to try and justify their actions; to win, if not the active support, then the quiet acquiescence of their populations to immoral acts: to hide the real reasons for invading Iraq. The lies and vicious actions of the ruling elites in America and Britain, down the centuries, at home and abroad, have left enough of a footprint as to be unmissable by even the most perfunctory glance at history. The genocide committed against Native Americans - still going on - or the murderous terror campaign by Britain's SAS against the peoples of Burma and Oman, are examples from living memory.
Since the decision was taken to invade Iraq - probably in Crawford, Texas when Blair visited Bush in April 2002 - the battlespace has included the respective home fronts. The campaign to stampede the populations of these countries to support the war started then. It has taken on many forms. Including disinformation, exaggeration, distortion, omission and the deliberate disappearing of crucial information from the public sphere.
Of the bombings in London on 07.07.05, the bus bomb exploded in Tavistock Square. In a previous post to this blog I have written about the disappearing from the mainstream media of the significance of Tavistock Square as a site dedicated to peace and non-violence - Ghandi's statue and tributes to the victims of Hiroshima and prisoners of conscience are in the centre of the square - and the foregrounding (by the Guardian to its shame) of Szilard's theoretical realisation in 1933, 300 yards south of Tavistock Square, that, "It might be possible to set up a nuclear chain reaction, liberate energy on an industrial scale, and construct atomic bombs." Is this a conspiracy. I think not. In the specific case of The Guardian it could just be shallow writing combined with lax commissioning and editing or it could be a psy-op plant. If it is the latter then that just shows the capitalist state is functioning as it should in a time of war and that is not conspiracy. The problem with that article though is that it does "As Neruda has said, before the hawks of Wall Street and Washington can hurl the atom bomb they must annihilate us morally. That is the mission of their poets - the Eliots and Pounds who degrade life and stultify the will to resist." Not that I consider the originator of the Guardian article a poet when he is but a shill.
The fact Britain and America (and lets not forget Israel nor for that matter Australia) are acting together in committing war crimes is not a conspiracy. It is just business for the capitalist class. Powers whose interests coincide with other Powers, strategically and/or tactically will act together. These alliances are not set in stone, are not omnipotent. Are not monolithic in their unity. There are tensions, contradictions and points of conflict between and amongst the constituent parts. The alliances may be short term or long term and that in many ways will depend on the nature and timing of any intervention by the democratic/left opposition among the populations of those powers. Hence the Patriot Act in America and the Anti-Terrorism Act in Britain which were pushed through to harass and criminalise legitimate dissent to their crime of aggression, under the guise of fighting terrorism. This is not conspiracy.
These are the desperate acts of a desperate class trying to defend their interests while facing a crisis unprecedented in human history. This is no 'ordinary' capitalist crisis. It is deeper than that. It could affect the very survival of our species. The conjunction of global warming and end of the age of oil require a response that capitalism is incapable of.
posted by les at 18:17
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