Oh, looky looky….boys and girls (and billfmsd and arneoker and ____)

“Kathryn S. Olmsted, in her exquisitely researched and annotated new book "Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11," points out that although such views "may seem to belong to the fringe," they are held by millions of Americans and a majority of those between the ages of 18 and 29.

In fact, Olmsted asserts that the tendency to see conspiracies everywhere "long ago spread from the margins into the main body of American political culture," and that the quelling of political dissent is an exacerbating factor. She has set out to track the history and patterning of conspiratorial beliefs as they relate to politics and public policy.

Her thesis—that conspiracy theories thrive in part because the government has misled the public or acted illegally and covertly, and been caught at it frequently enough to make them credible—is a disconcerting one. But the historical detail she marshals (which demonstrates a tendency for fusion of far-left and far-right political views) is persuasive in its cumulative power.

Even as Olmsted covers well-trod ground—such as postwar McCarthyism, the Kennedy assassinations, Watergate and domestic espionage by the FBI; CIA machinations and its testing of LSD on random citizens; the Iran-contra scandal of the Reagan years and more—her compilation presents a startling read of public history….
Olmsted locates what she calls the "taproot of modern conspiracism" in the hearings of a Senate select committee of the early 1930s, the Nye Committee. It looked into the possibility that arms manufacturers had been a factor in the American entry to World War I. In the process, Olmsted points out, the group led by Sen. Gerald Nye (R-N.D.) discovered documents indicating President Woodrow Wilson had misled the public and Congress about [his knowledge of] Allied war aims: He knew of secret treaties to divide up territory, postwar, and had "actively fostered ignorance of that."

Presidents leading the country into war without full or honest disclosure has been a strong theme of political contention and the source of conspiracy theory, from suspicions that Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance of the attack on Pearl Harbor up to the George W. Bush Administration's allegations of connections between Saddam Hussein's regime and Al Qaeda. The latter is among multiple examples Olmsted raises of state-propagated, misleading allegations of conspiracy.

When Olmsted's chronology reaches the arms-for-hostages trading with Iran and funneling money to the contras under Reagan, she said it ‘represented what conspiracy theorists since the First World War had feared the most: the ultimate executive usurpation of power. The Iran-contra conspirators had not subverted the government, they were the government.’ ….

"... transparency in government would cure ‘the disease of conspiracism’”.

Reviews
"...energetic narrative shows an increasingly complex national security apparatus both prompting conspiracy theories and promulgating its own. Convincing study of how alternative histories develop."

--Kirkus Reviews

"Real Enemies is a study of paranoia in American politics, and of course, as Kathryn Olmsted shows, the paranoia begins far too often in the Oval Office. Olmsted makes it clear, however, that it didn't start with Richard Nixon or George W. Bush. Political paranoia, it turns out, is as American as political demagoguery."

--Seymour M. Hersh, author of Chain of Command

"Kathryn Olmsted has written a brave, provocative, and audacious book. Her willingness to subject the systemic effects of consistent patterns of official government deception--together with the popular conspiracist 'blowback' this deception inspires and empowers--to scholarly scrutiny invites us to ask troubling but necessary questions about the nature of our political leadership."

--Eric Alterman, author of When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences


http://www.911blogger.com/node/19489

Suspicion and paranoia are widespread. However, it's not what you suspect or even what you think you know. It's what you can prove.

"TRANSPARENCY IN GOVERNMENT WOULD CURE THE DISEASE OF CONSPIRACISM."

I agree.

Conspiracism. I never heard that word before.

I believe that conspiracies exist. But I also believe that most conspiracy theories are wrong. All it takes is one misfitting piece of the puzzle to throw out the whole theory. That's why O.J. was acquitted in the murder trial. The planted evidence didn't fit with the real evidence.

The more conspiracy theories that are floated, the less likely that any real conspiracies will be proven, the less any one conspiracy theory will be believed. I believe the JFK assassination was a conspiracy. But too many alternate conspiracy theories are whats made it damn near impossible to prove.

Also, much of what people believe is evidence of conspiracy is instead cover up from those who are embarrassed by evidence of incompetence on their part or the part of the agency, whether or not they knew of a conspiracy.

Transparent government is the cure for both conspiracism and much of the incompetence in governing.

ONLY reason a conspiracy is not proven is the people committing the conspiracy keep throwing strawmen into the argument, so just when something breaks they throw another log on the fire and keep it going

It is so vast and is all the same family

From Iran/Contra to the present. One family One Man One Hate. That's all it takes.

Repudiate Bill Clinton and it would be so much easier.

Thinking that so few people have that much power over the many only makes it worse. If everyone thought that way, it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As tragic as the Kennedy assassination was, it was hardly the end of what he stood for. The progression shouldn't have missed a beat after the assassination.

Oh, billfmsd, you are being revisionist again. The progression shouldn't have missed a beat but ... you're not allowing for the fear and intimidation factor... or the fact that what he stood for -- for example, the termination of the CIA and the windback of the Vietnam war -- did indeed "miss a beat" -- and the people who might have continued "what he stood for" -- like RFK and MLK -- were themselves assassinated.

And the idea that so few people have so much power will change when I get invited to join the Council for Foreign Relations, or financially empowered by the wealth of the old oil barons like the Rockefellers or the new ones like the Cheney/Saudi bunch, or they let me in on the inside scoop from the tia/echelon/promis/maincore machine in the basement of the department of lebensraum schutzstaffel.

But right now I'm probably one of the many being watched instead of one of the few doing the watching.

Don't you think so, huh?


***

The Origins of the Overclass
By Steve Kangas

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-overclass.html

http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2...-corporate.html

***

"They don't like information unless it fits what they want to hear. They hate the CIA because the CIA tells them what they don't want to hear. They want assessments that prove ideological points. They are looking for simplistic answers to complicated issues. They inhabit a make-believe world of moving up into perceived areas of expertise. It's the same guys; they all resurface when Republicans are back in power. It's the same group. It's a system. The similarities are amazing in all these wars we've been dragged into."

Sidney Blumenthal's article for Salon entitled The Sad decline of Michael Mukasey
http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/20...asey/print.html

***

Seymour Hersh in his great piece for the New Yorker entitled The Redirection wrote the following:

I"ran-Contra was the subject of an informal “lessons learned” discussion two years ago among veterans of the scandal. Abrams led the discussion. One conclusion was that even though the program was eventually exposed, it had been possible to execute it without telling Congress. As to what the experience taught them, in terms of future covert operations, the participants found: “One, you can’t trust our friends. Two, the C.I.A. has got to be totally out of it. Three, you can’t trust the uniformed military, and four, it’s got to be run out of the Vice-President’s office”—a reference to Cheney’s role, the former senior intelligence official said."

***

Main Core, PROMIS and the Shadow Government (Pt. 1)
http://stationcharon.blogspot.com/2009/01/...government.html

Main Core, PROMIS and the Shadow Government (Pt.2)

Main Core, PROMIS and the Shadow Government (Pt.3)
Saturday, January 31, 2009

I highlighted in BLOOD RED and enlarged a great paragraph.

If you look up 2 words in the dictionary, the people involved in Iran/Contra fit both of them.

Too bad they were not properly punished. To think they finagled their way by technicalities (which I bet they pre-arranged knowing it would get them
off).

the rhythmic progression of the Kennedy assassination

Good points all. I myself am not sure about the JFK assassination, but most of the conspiracy theories involving that one are much more plausible than the conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 (other than those few involving "accessory after the fact" actions by the Bush Administration and bureaucracy).

And to the point about conspiracy theories being believed by so much of the public, I must ask what will be the the next startling revelation. That people are often cynical about politicians?

There have been reports that GHWB was in Dallas on Nov 22, 1963. Whether he was a CIA spook or not is still speculation.

FWIW, E Howard Hunt, on his death bed, confessed to have been a part of the JFK assassination.

Truth or fiction?

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story...ward_hunt/print