Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories


When Tony Blair wanted to discredit the idea that the coming Iraq was was motivated by oil issues he accused his questioner of promoting "conspiracy theories". So when, yesterday, at a Stop the War meeting someone said to me that he "didn't believe in conspiracy theories" it set me thinking.

If I had asked this person not whether he believe in conspiracy theories, but if he believed that US secret services, the CIA and ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) organised "covert operations" he'd probably say "of course". But covert operations by people who run the secret services (as Bush Snr did, he was CIA director) well, what are they, often, but "conspiracies"?. For example the IranContra scandal in the US in the 1980s was such a conspiracy which involved lying to Congress and going against the US law on a mega scale. Interestingly all the major players in the IranContra are back in the US government, except Oliver North. Admiral Poindexter is (in charge of homeland security if I remember right). Otto Reich is, Elliott Abrams is, John Negroponte is. These were people who were found guilty of lying to Congress about illegal operations organising death squads to destabilise the Nicaraguan government, and who funded this partly by billions of dollars of illegal drugs sales. Then were later pardoned by Bush Snr (e.g Elliot Abrams).....So what is meant here except "conspiracy"?

But of course, "conspiracy" has become a "boo word" - by denouncing someone as a "conspiracy theorist" you effectively bracket them off and discourage people looking into what they have to say - because you've conveyed the idea that they are probably paranoid, and have lost their critical capacities. In fact, paranoia is only a mental health problem when you have lost that critical capacity and openness to other interpretations about things. Typically it is associated with so great a fear that one will be persecuted, that this becomes crippling to one's ability to cope with everyday life and relationships. But for that to happen you have to be important and a big threat to bigger players. (That does happen of course - so I guess there is such a thing as "healthy paranoia").

Actually "conspiracies" (con - spirare - from the Latin to breath together) are a boo word to discourage people looking behind the scenes. They are rather ordinary in the world of business and even in everyday life. People come together to act behind other people's back. People cheat on their partners sexually, covertly. Businesses make deals, or understandings to restrict competition or get an advantage that they don't tell others about. And governments, the business and banking elites, have secret services that can play these kinds of game mega scale too - and then hide what they are doing under the cover of state secrets.

And this is not something that is happening on a small scale. Since the CIA works with billions of dollars, involving, for example, in Pakistan the heroinisation of whole economies to pay, originally, for the Jihad against the Soviets, the illegal operations actually involve huge numbers of people acting outside official government control, partly inside organised crime networks, partly inside government. That doesn't mean that everyone in these networks knows everything about what everyone is doing. A pusher on the streets of Nottingham, selling heroin or crack cocaine probably has no idea about CIA involvement at the beginning of the supply chain. Like underground cells in a revolutionary movement the little players know only a few immediate associates and have a tiny part to play. Moreover the bigger players are regularly double crossing each other, also covertly, and nothing in life ever goes according to string pulling super worked out mega plans. For one thing there is Murphy's law.

So, if you look at what really happens there's a lot of variation. Many of the deeper processes in world economics and politics take place as covert operations and are illegal (as IranContra was) but the law proves impossible to enforce and the crooks are later pardoned (as Bush Snr did for the Iran Contra convicts like Elliott Abrams when he left office in 1992); other operations are not illegal but are hidden (as banking and money laundering through offshore banks, where places are created by multinational capital precisely to evade laws and escape notice - the ubiquitous swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island accounts); other things get revealed, but only partially and then are covered up again as the bigger players can cover their backs (like the BCCI scandal where the big cheeses in US politics prevented the investigation going too deep - or the Scott Inquiry in the UK where arms sales to Iraq in the late 80s were skimmed over, a few scapegoats identified and the big players escape). Then there are international scams using insider knowledge of national and global policy processes e.g. following up on World Bank or IMF programmes - based on insider knowledge and big scale bribery (e.g. privatisation programmes buying local politicians first and then local assets on the back of IMF policy).

There's a rich mixture - and sometimes allegiance, alliances and trust break down among the rival gangsters and then you see the results in world politics - e.g. the fall out with Noriega, the fall out with Saddam Hussein, the current breakdown in business links between the Saudi royals and the Bush oil dynasties

The bigger schemes are not even hidden (like the recent 'Great Game' plans in Central Asia in books by Brzezinski etc about what "moves" the mega US interests should make on the chessboard of world politics). These things only get noticed by investigative reporting, by spending enormous time trying to understand what is going on. Many of these consciously planned global strategies, though open, are hard to find out about, and pass unnoticed by ordinary people - they fail to make the newsworthy/simplicity test plus, of course, they are just not being publicised as the same magnates who are making them often own the media empires too.

Thus one gets a whole dynamic going on behind what is said on the front pages - which mega players are perfectly well aware of. Their elite education trains them to play these games in world politics and gives them the start in life that gives them the connections. They are, as the phrase goes, "well connected" - something that in Britain starts in the public school system. And so they know how to pull the strings. All the public hears, as they return home from work is that "Britain has decided to support this" "Washington is pushing for that", "Berlin is opposed to intervention in that"......From whence these decisions have come - discussions in clubs, boardrooms, the corridors of power, private meetings at Davos - about this ordinary people have no idea. Thus there is nothing secret about the fact that the Bushes and Bin Ladenes are long term business associates.....

Here's some links to illustrate these ideas:

1. Drug Trafficking

CIA's own web site which gives the evidence from the famous Iran-Contra hearings of the 1980s when the CIA was funding operations in Central America with money earned by smuggling cocaine to the US. (They couldn't fund their covert operations through US government channels as what they were doing was illegal so they traded in drugs and arms to get the money). The address is www.cia.gov/cia/publications/cocaine/index.html . All the major players involved by the IranContra scandal, except Oliver North, including those jailed, and subsequently pardoned by George Bush senior, are now back in senior positions in the US government - Admiral Poindexter, Otto Reich, John Negroponte, Elliott Abrams.

The drug problem problem originated before that - in the 60s, CIA operatives allied with warlords and hill tribes in the so called 'Golden Triangle' in South East Asia to "contain" Chinese communism. The local mafias also traded in drugs - including to US troops in Vietnam. By 1971 34% of the GIs in Vietnam were heroin addicts. Source: www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/CIAdrug_fallout.html and www.drugwar.com/dwindex.shtm and http://socrates.berkerley.edu/~pdscott/q.html Then, in the 1980s 'Jihad', against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the CIA and Pakistani secret service, the ISI, funded the "holy" warriors again through the sales of drugs. It led to the "heroinisation" of the Pakistani and Afghani economies. During a decade of wide-open drug-dealing, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency in Islamabad failed to instigate any major seizures or arrests. They later admitted - drug policy was subordinated to building up people like, yes...Osama Bin Laden, against the Soviets.

For the CIA, drugs trafficking performed another useful role - it tied up the growing black movement in the US ghettoes in futile games of cops and robbers with the local police forces. Young people who thought they were being cool and rebellious were in fact duped by the powers that be.
 

2 The IMF Scams - Buying Up the World Economy on the back of the IMF

Mega plans following behind the world bank and IMF partly based on Joe Stiglitz, chief economist of the World Bank and Nobel Prise winner who got disgusted with what was going on and spilled the beans to journalists at the Guardian and people like Greg Palast:

www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=125&row=1
www.almartinraw.com/uri1.html

3. The Bush Bin Laden connections - and why they have prevented serious investigation of Sept 11th.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/events/newsnight/newsid_1645000/1645527.stm

In conclusion

The most famous conspiracy of all was that of the Nazi leadership of Germany that led to World War Two. It is worth reflecting upon in these times (early March 2003) which look so much as if the US and UK will conduct an attack upon Iraq, in a war drive that appears to be being driven to a pre-ordained timetable, whatever Iraq and the rest of the world does.

This was the charge sheet as drawn up at Nuremburg:

"All the defendants, with divers other persons, during a period of years preceding [Date], participated as leaders, organizers, instigators, or accomplices in the formulation or execution of a common plan or conspiracy to commit, or which involved the commission of, Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity, as defined in the Charter of this Tribunal, and, in accordance with the provisions of the Charter, are individually responsible for their own acts and for all acts committed by any persons in the execution of such plan or conspiracy. The common plan or conspiracy embraced the commission of Crimes against Peace, in that the defendants planned, prepared, initiated, and waged wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements, or assurances. In the development and course of the common plan or conspiracy it came to embrace the commission of War Crimes, in that it contemplated, and the defendants determined upon and carried out, ruthless wars against countries and populations, in violation of the rules and customs of war, including as typical and systematic means by which the wars were prosecuted, murder, ill-treatment, deportation. . . of civilian populations of occupied territories, murder and ill-treatment of prisoners of war and of persons on the high seas, the taking and killing of hostages, the plunder of public and private property, the indiscriminate destruction of cities, towns, and villages, and devastation not justified by military necessity. The common plan or conspiracy contemplated and came to embrace as typical and systematic means, and the defendants determined upon and committed, Crimes against Humanity, both within [the homeland] and within occupied territories, including murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations before and during the war, and persecutions on political, racial, or religious grounds, in execution of the plan for preparing and prosecuting aggressive or illegal wars, many of such acts and persecutions being violations of the domestic laws of the countries where perpetrated."
 

Shortly before he committed suicide Nazi leader, Hermann Goering made these comments privately to Gustave Gilbert, a German-speaking intelligence officer and psychologist, who was granted free access by the Allies to all the prisoners held in the Nuremberg jail. Gilbert noted his conversation with Goering in diaries which were later published:

:

"We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Gilbert, G.M. Nuremberg Diary.

New York: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1947 (pp. 278-279). http://www.snopes.com/quotes/goering.htm
 

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