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Yes, Virginia, There are Conspiracies—I Think

Yes, Virginia, There are Conspiracies—I Think

You know those little green-and-white USDA Organic labels you find on organic produce? What if someone told you that their adhesive transmits a powerful drug into the edible that over time can render humans sterile? It’s true, they say; they’ve seen the lab reports, and go on to assert that this is a plot by USDA and agribusiness interests to decimate nutritionally savvy people as a way boost sales of poison-laden GM food products.

Insidious beyond belief, you think. You’re pretty sure it’s a crock, but your doubt gene says “What if…?” and you decide to check it out. You email people to ask if they’ve heard it and some of them do the same. Someone finds a truther blog with a long discussion thread about it and lets you know. Alleging scientific credentials, certain discussants proceed to hypothesize about the chemistry and physiology of the attack vector and argue about that. Others point to connections between certain USDA political appointees and Big Food. The rumor has become a thing, and even if you post refutations that get shot down, you’re now part of it.

* * *

Pop Quiz: Which of these do you think might have been the work of conspiracies?

1) The assassination of President John F. Kennedy

2) The Death of Clinton cohort Vince Foster, also by bullet to the head

3) The Federal Government

Here’s My Take:

JFK: It’s quite likely that JFK was felled by a conspiracy orchestrated by the CIA, involving the Cuban exile underworld and possibly the New Orleans syndicate, pretty much as Oliver Stone said in JFK. Much of Stone’s material comes via CIA whistle-blower USAF Col. L. Fletcher Prouty. Here’s the epilogueto his book JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedythat the printer strangely omitted.

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Deep State 101: A Primer and Prescription

Deep State 101: A Primer and Prescription

Every nation worth its salt has a deep state, a loose network of rich and powerful players who ratify, veto or formulate state social, economic and military policies. Whether monarchy, dictatorship, or constitutional republic, no government worthy of the name lacks for a shadowy unelected elite with hands on the tiller and in the till, influential persons with inherited or recent wealth, upper crust social connections, and old school ties, often found sitting on boards of directors and golf carts in isolated settings.

Like Sandhill Cranes, they are rare and difficult to spot in their habitats, seamlessly blending as they do with their inaccessible surroundings. Amongst themselves, however, they are highly convivial. Partial to receptions, they bibulate and circulate as they joust over canapés. Not to worry they are but degenerates just killing time, important things get done under the buzz. Small talk can have big consequences and decadent environs make deal-making a sport.

Mostly these birds are captains of industry and lords of finance with close ties to useful acolytes in law enforcement, armed services, academia, NGOs, charities, and publishing and mass media. They vet and replace politicians in so-called democracies, knowing that elected officials are too unreliable and the populace too fickle and ignorant of the ways of the world to perpetuate proper governance on their own.

Meddling in affairs of a deep state by the uninitiated is to be eschewed and may be heavily sanctioned, lest intemperate initiatives capsize the ship of state that for generations has been carefully provisioned and cunningly piloted to transport treasure to home ports. Too, they eschew taxation, preferring to direct their resources to projects that will rebound to their own benefit. Should it take a war to maintain or expand their influence, it can be arranged, followed by a fragile peace to consolidate gains and gird the nation for the next remunerative conflict.

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Living With Truth Decay

Living With Truth Decay

“Once a policy has been adopted and implemented, all subsequent activity becomes an effort to justify it”

— Barbara Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam (1984. p. 245).

In the 20th-century but still fun party game called Telephone, people sit in a circle and someone whispers a phrase or sentence to the person to the left, who whispers it to their left, around the clock, until it reaches the original speaker, who annunciates what s/he sent and received. The final utterance may make sense, but it is almost never the one sent and is often complete nonsense. This is one form of truth decay.

Truth is a relatively scarce commodity. Science progresses by disproving theories, not proving them (that only happens in mathematics). In the real world, everything you know to be true just hasn’t been disproved yet, so it’s a good idea to stay tuned.

Not only is the amount of truth finite, it doesn’t grow very fast. Facts and opinions, on the other hand do, thanks to an intensive bombardment of truth-deficient information. Factoids, received wisdom and regurgitated opinions about everything imaginable rain upon us like nuclear fallout. Attempts to verify facts that swim in oceans of discourse finds them as slippery as eels. Truths decay like echoes do, sloping toward unintelligibility inside our echo chambers.

Fishing for evidence floating in the Net is far from compiling facts in a controlled empirical study and—contrary to the scientific method—is likely done to support a hypothesis, not to disprove one. In any event, facts are not truths. Truth rests on facts, vetted as dispassionately as possible. For instance, it’s a fact that mean global CO2 in the atmosphere officially was 404.55 PPM at the end of 2016 and 406.75 one year later, or one-half a percent more. Here are other fun facts about that:

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The Net’s Good Old Boys: Dr. (Don’t Be) Evil Meets Dr. Strangelove

The Net’s Good Old Boys: Dr. (Don’t Be) Evil Meets Dr. Strangelove

Dr. Eric Schmidt has called for intelligence agencies to stop illegally prying into personal information and has been doing his best to convince the government to pay Google to do it legally instead. That said, in 2009 he was widely rebuked for telling CNBC:

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place, but if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines including Google do retain this information for some time, and it’s important, for example that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities. ~ Dr. Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, 2009

Schmidt didn’t add that Google is obliged to turn over email content under court order and not tell users it did so. He didn’t have to. We all know about FISA and PATRIOT. Same goes for Hotmail, AOL, or any US email provider, only Google has much more to give.

When Schmidt described Google searches as being up for grabs, he left out Gmail, Google Maps, Google Store or Google Play. Neither did he mention that you can enhance your privacy by encrypting your email and search Google anonymously via VPN servers and proxy search engines like StartPage and DuckDuckGo. He doesn’t want you to do that. It’s bad for your personality profile, and you’re likely up to no good if you do. But you are free to open “incognito” (private) windows on your browser that don’t record your search history. Google’s Your Data page says:

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NPR, the CIA and Corporatism

NPR, the CIA and Corporatism

Photo by Todd Huffman | CC by 2.0

In her five-minute interview with Ursula Wilder, a CIA psychologist whose job there is debriefing returning spies, NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly (their alleged National Security Correspondent) spoke of what makes someone who reveals state secrets tick. Kelly failed big-time to probe Wilder about whether she ever thought an insider might ever have a patriotic motivation to inform the public of illegal behavior on the part of the agency. Based on Wilders’ profile of leakers, the answer would surely have been No, but it sure would have been nice to ask.

Instead, the official story is simple. Each and every leaker, Wilder maintained, suffers from some DSM psychopathy, such as impulsiveness, narcissism or drug addiction, often compounded by exigencies such as marital discord or gambling debts. Leaks all stem from character defects, Wilder says—and Kelly doesn’t contradict—not to blowback by thwarted careerists or misdeeds the agency wants to disappear. She also neglected to point out that leaks should only happen when authorized by superiors, but Kelly didn’t ask about that kind either.

Wilder’s job description implies she treats agents for PTSD but she probably doesn’t admit to it. Wants the world to think they’re all so well motivated, trained, equipped, and managed as to be impervious to shock and awe. If they’re stressed, it’s likely that their personal lives are out of control, their problems self-inflicted. Any time you have a problem with power, the problem is you. Hear for yourself.

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Harvard, the CIA, and All That 

Harvard, the CIA, and All That 

Members of the Center for International Affairs, 1958–1959 by Center for International Affairs with Henry Kissinger and Robert R. Bowie front and center

After Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government rescinded its invitation to Army whistle-blower Chelsea Manning (whom Obama sprung from the brig by pardoning her), a chorus of protest (led by 19,000 Harvard alumni and 169 professors) ensued. The main issue, according to them and the press, was how the Institute of Politics (IOP) at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG) caved to deep-state pressure. Specifically, current CIA Director Mike Pompeo cancelled his talk at the school, and former CIA deputy director Michael Morrell tendered his resignation to Harvard’s Belfer Center, saying “I cannot be a part of an organization…that honors a convicted felon and leaker of classified information,” apparently believing that only the best and brightest war criminals deserve such honorifics (horrorifics?). When, after all, has the CIA ever taken Harvard publicly to task for slack on the national security front?

Lesson learned. Sure enough, a penitent dean Douglas Elmendorf quickly issued a statement admitting that Manning’s appointment as a Fellow “was a mistake, for which I accept responsibility. … I think we should weigh, for each potential visitor, what members of the Kennedy School community could learn from that person’s visit against the extent to which that person’s conduct fulfills the values of public service to which we aspire.” Ranking high among those values, one is forced to presume, is the necessity of continuing Harvard’s engagement with the deep national security state.

Sic Transit Veritas

Elmendorf’s reaction was not unexpected. Harvard’s association with spooks goes way back. Let me tell you a little story about the good old boys in the good old days.

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Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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