A Conspiracy So Immense by Naomi Wolf
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?col=§i...
Is this the age of the conspiracy? Plenty of evidence suggests that we are in something of a golden age for citizen speculation, documentation, and inference that takes shape — usually on the Internet — and spreads virally around the globe.
In the process, conspiracy theories are pulled from the margins of public discourse, where they were generally consigned in the past, and sometimes into the very heart of politics.
I learned this by accident. Having written a book about the hijacking of executive power in the United States in the Bush years, I found myself, in researching new developments, stumbling upon conversations online that embrace narratives of behind-the-scenes manipulation.
There are some major themes. A frequent one in the US is that global elites are plotting — via the Bilderberg Group and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others — to establish a “One World Government” dominated by themselves rather than national governments. Sometimes, more folkloric details come into play, broadening the members of this cabal to include the Illuminati, the Freemasons, Rhodes Scholars, or, as always, the Jews.
The hallmarks of this narrative are familiar to anyone who has studied the transmission of certain story categories in times of crisis. In literary terms, this conspiracy theory closely resembles The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, featuring secretive global elite with great power and wicked aims. Historically, there tends to be the same set of themes: fearsome, uncontrolled transformative change led by educated, urbanised cosmopolitans.
Students of Weimar Germany know that sudden dislocations and shocks — rapid urbanisation, disruption of traditional family and social ties, loosening of sexual restrictions, and economic collapse — primed many Germans to become receptive to simplistic theories that seemed to address their confusion and offer a larger meaning to their suffering.
Similarly, the “9/11 Truth Movement” asserts that Al Qaeda’s attack on the Twin Towers was an “inside job.” In the Muslim world, there is a widespread conspiracy theory that the Israelis were behind those attacks, and that all Jews who worked in the buildings stayed home that day.
Usually, conspiracy theories surface where people are poorly educated and a rigorous independent press is lacking. So why are such theories gaining adherents in the US and other affluent democracies nowadays?
Today’s explosion of conspiracy theories has been stoked by the same conditions that drove their acceptance in the past: rapid social change and profound economic uncertainty. A clearly designated “enemy” with an unmistakable “plan” is psychologically more comforting than the chaotic evolution of social norms and the workings — or failures — of unfettered capitalism. And, while conspiracy theories are often patently irrational, the questions they address are often healthy, even if the answers are frequently unsourced or just plain wrong.
In seeking answers, these citizens are reacting rationally to irrational realities. Many citizens believe, rightly, that their mass media are failing to investigate and document abuses. Newspapers in most advanced countries are struggling or folding, and investigative reporting is often the first thing they cut. Concentration of media ownership and control further fuels popular mistrust, setting the stage for citizen investigation to enter the vacuum.
Likewise, in an age when corporate lobbyists have a free hand in shaping — if not drafting — public policies, many people believe, again rightly, that their elected officials no longer represent them. Hence their impulse to believe in unseen forces.
Finally, even rational people have become more receptive to certain conspiracy theories because, in the last eight years, we actually have seen some sophisticated conspiracies. The Bush administration conspired to lead Americans and others into an illegal war, using fabricated evidence to do so. Is it any wonder, then, that so many rational people are trying to make sense of a political reality that really has become unusually opaque? When even the 9/11 commissioners renounce their own conclusions (because they were based on evidence derived from torture), is it surprising that many want a second investigation?
Frequently enough, it is citizens digging at the margins of the discourse — pursuing such theories — who report on news that the mainstream media ignores. For example, it took a “conspiracy theorist,” Alex Jones, to turn up documentation of microwave technologies to be used by police forces on US citizens. The New Yorker confirmed the story much later — without crediting the original source.
The mainstream media’s tendency to avoid checking out or reporting what is actually newsworthy in Internet conspiracy theories partly reflects class bias. Conspiracy theories are seen as vulgar and lowbrow. So even good, critical questions or well-sourced data unearthed by citizen investigators tend to be regarded as radioactive to highly educated formal journalists.
The real problem with this frantic conspiracy theorizing is that it leaves citizens emotionally agitated but without a solid ground of evidence upon which to base their worldview, and without constructive directions in which to turn their emotions. This is why so many threads of discussion turn from potentially interesting citizen speculation to hate speech and paranoia. In a fevered environment, without good editorial validation or tools for sourcing, citizens can be preyed upon and whipped up by demagogues, as we saw in recent weeks at Sarah Palin’s rallies after Internet theories painted Barack Obama as a terrorist or in league with terrorists.
We need to change the flow of information in the Internet age. Citizens should be able more easily to leak information, pitch stories, and send leads to mainstream investigative reporters. They should organise new online entities in which they pay a fee for direct investigative reporting, unmediated by corporate pressures. And citizen investigators should be trained in basic journalism: finding good data, confirming stories with two independent sources, using quotes responsibly, and eschewing anonymity — that is, standing by their own bylines, as conventional reporters do.
This is how citizens can be taken — and take themselves — seriously as documenters and investigators of our common situation. In a time of official lies, healthy investigative energy should shed light, not just generate heat.
Research the Fed more Naomi! Then get back to us.
There was a time when I would have agreed with her. But that was before I learned about many of the 100% verifiable facts exposing the banking fraud. I agree that Alex Jones isn't the best investigative journalist. But he does generally point in the right direction. That's why we all have to do our homework, read people's sources, and come to our own conclusions.
Just ask youself, "Where does money come from in our system?"
G. Edward Griffin calls the process of converting debt into money the "Mandrake Mechanism." Put simply, the government creates debt through bonds. These are given to the Fed which ultimately uses this debt to create new money. Some of the new money is loaned to the government. The rest is loaned to the banks as "reserves." Through the fractional-reserve system, the banks then are able to create a second wave of new money on top of the reserves for lending. As this new money finds its way into banks vaults, the money is used as further reserves and even more money is created. The ultimate result is an increase in money by about 10 times the original government debt. This is of course debt to the banks that did precious little to earn the money they are lending out.
As the supply of money increases, the value of money ultimately decreases. But those that spend the newly created money first get full value. Only after the money has been spent into the economy does it begin to raise prices. So not only does the mechanism cause inflation, it is also a form of taxation where the government can receive and spend new money as it devalues the rest.
It gets worse.
Believe it or not, through the Federal Reserve System, we are all working for the banks. It's really a form of serfdom. Why do I say this? The Madrake Mechanism only creates the principle. No where in this process is the money to pay for the interest created. So then is it possible to pay back the interest and the principle when it would seem there's just not enough money in the system to do so? While, it isn't possible for everyone to pay off all outstanding loans at once, there still remains a way to eventually pay the principle and the interest without getting still more loans. When loans are paid back to the bank, the principle is taken out of the existing money supply. But interest payments are the banks' profit and thus aren't taken out of circulation. Somehow, either directly or most likely indirectly, we must work for the banks to get back the money given to them for interest payments in order to make further interest payments. This loop keeps us in continual servitude. While the rest of us our collectively running on the hampster wheel to pay off debt, the banks are uniquely positioned in the system to institutionally make money (pun intended) without working for it. This is as incredible as it is outrageous.
End the Fed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cL5Ik_7lG8
I've started to ignore her
I loved her piece on the 10 steps to dictatorship. Most of her writings are heavily wrought with the herd mentality even though she specifically claims she is against our currently shameless propagandized culture. She tries to label herself as an academic but I don't see logic as her forte. Basically, she's hypocritical and that's not an admirable trait when attempting to garner support for any cause.
My interpretation
I think, in a nutshell, what she's saying is:
Conspiracy theories originate due to social change and media neglect of critical questions. Conspiracy theorists become "fringe" due to not getting proper reporting from journalists, and journalists don't report because conspiracy theorists are fringe. The questions of conspiracy are not without merit; the media needs to do a better job of addressing them.
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It seems she's in favor of having more investigation into the conspiracies.
I don't think she's insulting conspiracy theories. She right - that there's a lot of overblown and false information out there due to the circumstances of society and the media.
Too bad her plea to journalists won't do much good. Perhaps she doesn't know that it's all owned by people who have done this purposefully, suppress the information, and that mainstream journalists have little power to get these stories through the filter.
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Enjoy www.freetalklive.com
"Too bad her plea to
"Too bad her plea to journalists won't do much good. Perhaps she doesn't know that it's all owned by people who have done this purposefully,"
and therein lies the greatest conspiracy of them all. Until people can understand how and why consent is manufactured through propaganda they will never be able to see the forest from the trees....Wolfe being one of them.
Honestly, I just don't trust her.
Famous CFR Quotes:
Here are some quotes from CFR members:
http://presidentialcandidates.wetpaint.com/?t=anon
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is the American Branch of a society which originated in England... (and) ...believes national boundaries should be obliterated and one-world rule established." - Carroll Quigley, member of Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), mentor to Bill Clinton
"The main purpose of the Council on Foreign Relations is promoting the disarmament of U.S. sovereignty and national independence and submergence into an all powerful, one world government."
- Admiral Chester Ward, former CFR member and Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy
"We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries."
-David Rockefeller (CFR member), founder of the sister organization - Trilateral Commission, in an address to a meeting of The Trilateral Commission, in June, 1991.
"Once the ruling members of the CFR shadow government have decided that the U.S. Government should adopt a particular policy, the very substantial research facilities of (the) CFR are put to work to develop arguments, intellectual and emotional, to support the new policy, and to confound and discredit, intellectually and politically, any opposition." - Admiral Chester Ward, former CFR member and Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy
"The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world." - Carroll Quigley, member of Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), mentor to Bill Clinton, quote from “Tragedy and Hope”, 1966
"We shall have world government whether or not you like it, by conquest or consent."
-Statement by Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member James Warburg to The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 17th, l950
"The New World Order will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down...but in the end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece will accomplish much more than the old fashioned frontal assault."
-CFR member Richard Gardner, writing in the April l974 issue of the CFR's journal, Foreign Affairs.
"An agreement was reached; the policy of the papers was bought, to be paid for
long-held promise of a New World Order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind."
-George Herbert Walker Bush
CFR President Richard Haass, on globalization and sovereignty:
http://www.cfr.org/publication/9903/sovereignty_and_globalis... ssue%2F109%2Fsovereignty
I suggest reading it all (it’s not long). There are many interesting and scary quotes; here are a couple of them:
”Globalization thus implies that sovereignty is not only becoming weaker in reality, but that it needs to become weaker. [UN] States would be wise to weaken sovereignty in order to protect themselves, because they cannot insulate themselves from what goes on elsewhere. Sovereignty is no longer a sanctuary.”
”Our notion of sovereignty must therefore be conditional, even contractual, rather than absolute.”
Respectfully, I dissagree
I'm not a writer. I wish I was. I am a reader. I read every Ayn Rand book on the book store shelves by the time I was 17. I consider "Atlas Shrugged" a conspiracy novel. Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea wrote, "The Illuminati" over a decade ago, which is an outstanding conspiracy theory (AKA mind fuck) I enjoy conspiracy theory. So as an open conspiracy theory fan, here's my position:
Conspiracy theory is ENTERTAINMENT. It is a futile mistake to act or react to any conspiracy theory. Conspiracy theory is conspiracy theory because YOU WILL NEVER KNOW THE TRUTH, THE WHOLE TRUTH, so help you God. You will find many truths. Conspiracy theory is like black licorice. Not everyone likes black licorice, but the people who like black licorice, really really like black licorice.
Conspiracy theory is not for everyone. Is not for those who are weak in the head, tend to be paranoid, or have low self esteme.. I believe it takes a mind willing to be open to risk.
When I was reading "The Illuminati", I will admit to you, the book had me so "spun", I pulled out a dollar bill to see if the eagle had a marijuana branch in it's talon, KNOWING with all my heart, it did not.
With all the censored YouTubes, I have no doubts the vids that are available in this country are irrelevant in the big picture, for example, Armeggedon is also a conspiracy theory. Truth IS strager than fiction. If it is not a whole truth, what is it? ENTERTAINMENT ;)) Enjoy....
WE ARE GOING TO WIN!
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read the article again..
her article is directed at both the media elite and what she terms 'the citizen journalist'.. she's calling for objective research of these theories and in so many words has actually suggested the reinvestigation of 9/11 is not a bad idea.. what's the problem with this article? she's even suggesting the media rejects certain theories based on class bias.. i think her aim is to slowly warm the mainstream media crowd that she runs with to the idea that these 'theories' may be more than simply theories.. she's also challenging the citizen journalist to cough up the data and confirm the sources. not a bad idea as far as i'm concerned.
Ron Paul's Foreign Policy of Peace
"Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." - Romans 12:21
Christians for Ron Paul in 2008!
http://www.christiansforronpaul.com/
I agree with you
and I appreciated her article. There are so many news stories that never make it to the MSM but they should.
A
long and winding road to truth. I think we have a good handle on what the truth is by now. Everything the sob's said they would do they did.
Prepare & Share the Message of Freedom through Positive-Peaceful-Activism.
Naomi
Naomi I love you, now shut the f#%k up and start to listen for a change. No pun intended.
MrTom
Rhodes scholars
Cecil Rhodes thought the US and the UK should one day be one nation. So I can see why people would be hesitant of Rhodes scholars.
Im sure Obama will have her
Im sure Obama will have her as a liasion for the DHS to We The People as the Homegrown Terrorist and Radicalization Act gets passed on through.
Exactly
She can do a nice photo essay as we are shipped off to FEMA Camps.
Ron Paul is my President.
I like this...
At first I started to get defensive while reading this, but then by the end I realize, she's right. Real Journalism is pretty much a dead art. We've got the preprogrammed MSM and the over the top excitable, entertainment value, expose type of news.
Alex Jones in particular has always pissed me off BECAUSE he is NOT a journalist. I wish he really did present real stories that you could fact check and forward to people who aren't awake to what is going on and have them accept what he's saying as fact as opposed to his current "makin' money off freaking you the fuck out freak show".
I'm not saying he doesn't hit upon real or interesting things...its just I believe he serves a purpose. His presentation is so over the top that when REAL issues get talked about on his program its easy enough for most of sleeping America to brush ANYTHING covered by him off as "fringe" and not worth even thinking about.
Did any of you attempt to send a link of his interview with Ron Paul a couple of days ago to a family member? Jeese!!! My family was thinking I joined a cult or something BECAUSE of him and didn't even listen to what Ron Paul was saying. And unfortunately both Ron Paul and Alex Jones are referring to "them" and "they" and never define who these perpetrators are...of course YOU AND I suspect that it is the international banking cartel....but if you are not already in this mindset the interview was pointless!
So Alex Jones serves a purpose...it easy to brush off real issues and rational conversation regarding these issues when AJ's presentation is so inflammatory that is promptly puts all of us into the FRINGE FREAKS category and cuts the conversation off right there (and call me a conspiracy theorist) but who would benefit from that in the end??
I agree with you
He is over the top and this doesn't serve his purpose well. While he is right on virtually every issue (fluoride in the water, police state, military industrial complex etc.) it would be difficult for people to accept it as truth or even pursue the information further to verify it simply because AJ makes it so over the top. It is over-the-top news but it turns people off who want to know the truth.
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"Greater than the force of mighty armies is the power of an idea whose time has come"
- Victor Hugo
"Greater than the force of mighty armies is the power of an idea whose time has come"
- Victor Hugo
Barrack Obama is a Terrorist in league with Terrorists
He confirmed that this past week.
Can we not talk about her any more?
"We shall have world government whether or not you like it, by conquest or consent." Statement by Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member James Warburg to The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 17th, l950
Ron Paul is my President.
This lady is relentless.
I can't believe how retarded she is. "Now that Obama won----SHUT YOUR EYES" nothing to see here folks. Those crazy nuts.
Explore Orthodox Christianity
that was your interpretation???
did we even read the same letter? you should probably re-read.
what i got was, anybody paying attention has discovered that conspiracies exist. and if we did a better job in journalism then they would get taken more seriously because, as citizens, we don't make good reporters.
naomi is right.