The Golden Age of Conspiracy

June 2009

I assume that readers do not believe that the CIA, the Mafia, the military-industrial complex or some other manifestation of the System ordered the murder of JFK. Conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination, once everywhere, are now confined to the diminishing audience for Oliver Stone's movies. I am not sure, however, that you can say, hand on heart, that you have not thought for a fleeting moment that maybe there just might be something in the following propositions:

That Nato governments and their tame journalists invented the "atrocities" committed by Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia and her allies in order to justify a war to expand the empire of neo-liberalism into the southern Balkans;
That Prince Philip, along with the British and French intelligence services, arranged the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, because she was about to marry a Muslim;
That the 9/11 atrocities in New York and Washington were an "inside job" organised by a rogue faction within the US intelligence agencies or maybe the Bush administration itself to justify war in the Muslim world;
That Israel warned Jews to stay away from the World Trade Centre on 9/11 but allowed the slaughter of gentiles to stoke up hatred of Muslims;
That the Jews, once again, formed a "lobby" in the US that pushed America into a needless war against Saddam Hussein;
And that the Bush and Blair administrations knew in advance that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction worthy of the name but lied and went to war under a false prospectus.

In the past 15 years, vast numbers of people have believed one or more of the above. For a decade after Diana's death, polls reported that between one-fifth and one-third of the British public thought she had been murdered — even though to sustain that conviction they had to accept that the conspirators must have known in advance that she would decide not to stay in Mohamed Fayed's Paris Ritz, what car she and Dodi Fayed would leave in once they had resolved to move on, who would be driving the car, where and by which route it would travel and — finally and bafflingly — that the poor woman would forget to put on her seatbelt.

Tags:

Like this article? Share, save or print using the icons below:

rockcorn

November 7th, 2009
4:11 PM

Here's Nick's claim that the Iraq war would be fought because we owed the US $243m from WWII. We owe a lot to America - £243 million, to be precise Since 11 September we socialist faggots at The Observer have had two insults repeated in steaming emails from the US. After a homoerotic 'kiss my American ass', we are told we can't criticise Bush because 'if it wasn't for us you'd be speaking German'. The cheap riposte, 'if it wasn't for us you'd be speaking Dutch', won't do. The furious Yanks are right: Britain remains in America's debt for WWII. The last volume of Robert Skidelsky's life of J.M. Keynes has a brutal account of how America exploited Britain's wartime vulnerability. Keynes vainly tried to ensure 'we have enough assets to leave us capable of independent action'. The US made him accept that the US Empire would supplant its British rival. In return for loans, Britain had to cut exports, limit gold and dollar reserves and repay debt from 1950 onwards. Ruth Kelly, the Treasury Minister, told Parliament the other day that Britain still owed £243 million. Rather than relieve the debt of Third World peasants, Britain, she said, intended to meet the bill in full by 31 December 2006. Ms Kelly is a revelation. Until her statement, Blair's sudden enthusiasm for a needless war against Iraq was a mystery; his failure to tell Bush that British troops can't be both peace-keepers and combatants in Afghanistan, a dereliction of duty; his inability to force a concession from Washington on any issue from Kyoto to steel tariffs, a national humiliation. Now what was baffling is clear. Debtors are in no position to demand concessions from creditors. They must do as they're told. According to the Treasury, Britain will be free to have an independent foreign policy on 1 January 2007. I'll leave it to you to imagine how many wars Blair will have fought by then.

July 7th, 2009
1:07 PM

Thank you Mr Cohen, for making people think back once again at what happened that day. Although you achieved it by uttering absolute bullshit. I'm actually kinda wondering if your goal was not to support conspiracy theorists (I hate that name, lets call them people with eyes, ears, and a brain) by showing us all the holes in the Government's fairytale? If not, I would never ask you to speak up for any cause I myself defend. Jeez, I wouldn't like to be in your shoes when the truth is revealed, you will be seen as the naive, subjective and docile dude that followed his leaders to the point of contradicting himself and verified facts and who tried to ridicule their opponents just by saying that what they were saying was too big to be true...

Anonymous

June 18th, 2009
5:06 PM

Emansnas, sorry to burst your little fantasy of the Jooos controllign everything, can we stick to the facts: 1. Sharon and the rest of the leadership thought that the US was barking up the wrong tree on Iraq and that Iran was far mroe dangerous; 2. 'Jewish interests' ascribes a nefarious and monolithic intention to a people. So, um...yes, you are an antisemite. 3. In any case, you seem to suggest that the Jooooos are pulling the strings and that, svengali like, Rice, Rumsfeld and Bush were hypnotised into attacking Iraq. Let's all forge the fact that W wanted to avenge Bush Sr.'s humiliation at Saddam. But you are an antisemite and nothing will get through to you.

TSearl

June 18th, 2009
2:06 PM

Mr Cohen believed the conspiracy theories regarding Iraq and WMDs and Iraq and 9/11, and Iraq and anthrax. As a believer in those conspiracy theories he supported the illegal war on Iraq. Its hard to see why he now feels he has the insight or authority to lecture us on the evils of believing in conspiracy theories or any thing else.

emansnas

June 18th, 2009
1:06 PM

For Cohen to state, as a conspiracy, "That the Jews, once again, formed a "lobby" in the US that pushed America into a needless war against Saddam Hussein", is akin to stating: That workers, once again, formed a union in the US that pushed America into needless strife with big business. The only arguable point is the word "needless". To believe that Jewish interests promoted a war with Saddam Hussein solely for the reason that it was in the best interest of the U.S. is patently laughable. Saddam Hussein was Israel's mortal and capable enemy who for years attempted to obtain the means to annihilate Israel. For Jews not to seize on the opportunity to promote his demise would be, from their standpoint, arguably insane. Many of the actions that Jewish interests took to promote war with Saddam Hussein are a matter of public record - they have nothing at all to do with a secret conspiracy - they were done openly. The only real issue is what is to be done concerning a group that inordinately influences U.S. foreign policy to their agenda. Of course anyone who thus believes will be automatically and harshly denounced as anti-Semitic - a very convenient way of marginalizing all who have concern with Jewish/Israeli actions that are arguably antithetical to U.S. interests.

Mark

June 17th, 2009
10:06 PM

The article is egregiously self-serving, as Cohen was a supporter of the Iraq War. To refer to the Cheney/Bush and Blair Administrations' collective conniving as conspiracy rather than thoroughly revealed fact just covers his own misguided tracks while conveniently effacing the truth. As for what qualifies as a "conspiracy theory," no doubt much of what is dismissed as misguided foolishness has basis in reality; the labyrinthine plot in the basement of Reagan's WHite House to supply Iran with weapons and arrange for the CIA to run drugs in order to raise money with which to arm the Contras in Nicaragua sounds like a far-fetched and utterly absurd fantasy if not for the fact that it had been revealed to be absolutely true. The array of inexplicable deaths associated with the Kennedy assassination (after the event) was no febrile fantasy in the mind of Oliver Stone but rather well documented fact. And the official explanation of the enormous edifice of WTC 7 collapsing due to several small fires is beyond ridiculous. Some conspiracy theories strike me as wrong-headed while others are entirely plausible. Grouping them all together is intellectually dishonest and in its own way oddly naive.

Anonymous

June 17th, 2009
1:06 PM

The article confuses conspiracy theories with actual theories, based on sound evidence, on how governments and other powerful and interested parties, like corporations, shape world events. The former require a belief in improbable backroom plotting, while the latter rely on demonstrable facts and plausible explanations on how the powerful seek to use their considerable influence to create their preferred outcomes. It is not necessary for those in power to conspire when they have similar aims. They need not even communicate with one another. Those who stand to benefit most from imperialism and capitalism simply work in parallel.

Corvus

June 16th, 2009
9:06 PM

I guess I'm another nut case for believing that these documented cases indicate any sort of pattern on the part of governments - although they are only a few examples among many: Operation Northwoods: www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf The "Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments:" www.tuskegee.edu/global/story.asp?s=1207586 Govt. nuclear test endangers unwitting "downwinders:" http://historytogo.utah.gov/utah_chapters/utah_today/nucleartestingandth... CIA tests LSD on unknowing subjects: www.rutlandherald.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081130/NEWS/811300299 CIA works to remove democratically elected leader of Chile: www.fas.org/irp/world/chile/allende.htm

rick

June 16th, 2009
1:06 PM

Well, speaking of conspiracies, I have it from a completely unreliable source that the reason that Obama won't release the torture photos, and especially Sen. Lieberman's efforts to retroactively avoid the FOIA requirements, is because the photos show known Mossad agents assisting in the torture of Muslim detainees. If the Israeli involvement were to become public knowledge in the Middle East, it would further inflame the hostilities and potentially harm Israel's and NOT the US' national security.

Nathan

June 16th, 2009
7:06 AM

Agreed with the majority of the article. However, Cohen more or less states without proof that "two lethal upsurges in paranoid fantasies…produced…global recessions." If the 1930s are referred to because of the worldwide depression the only thing remotely approaching "paranoia" that comes to mind is the punitive bill imposed upon Germany for starting WW1. It is more or less established that in the USA stocks were due for a drastic correction because they were insanely out of proportion to their fair values. Among other causes, Keynes illustrated that the depression was prolonged by the shrinking of the deposit base as banks failed and depositors withdrew their savings, seriously impairing banks' abilities to lend to companies, which in turn did not invest in expansion or even fired workers, which resulted in a vicious circle. I'm guessing a significant portion of the blame for the recession of the 1970s can be placed on OPEC and the inflationary pressures caused by the oil embargo. Not sure how great American support of Israel was as a component of OPEC's decision, but it still doesn't qualify, to me, as paranoia per se. In any case, it is not mentioned in the article. Regarding the abstract from the Open Chemical Physics Journal: is that a peer-reviewed journal? It is certainly not a major academic publication. It's curious that the authors were unable to just use another type of spectroscopy to characterize the "red thermitic material". It's also curious that they would describe the material itself as "energetic", which I would expect as a description of an object with high kinetic energy (i.e. moving). Explosive compounds may be unstable or may require heat to undergo an exothermic reaction to yield a more stable product, but I've never seen any scientific textbook or journal abstract simply call an unknown substance energetic, and since the implication is that this has a surprising catalytic effect on the thermitic reaction between iron oxide and aluminum, why didn't they investigate it further? I'm also not sure why they took pains to list iron as a product and not aluminum oxide.

Post your comment

More Features