Hi Mark,

Intersting post. Two questions come up for me - what is the line between the 'shady and unnerving relationship beween media, government etc' and the notion of a 'global network of evil doers..since antiquity'.  Only time and the scale of the 'conspiracy', and your implied sarcasm, seems to separate them.  Essentially you seem to agree, as I would, that  there are national and global vested interests who communicate and share agendas which the rest of us are victims of rather than party to. 

Secondly, why is your friend credited as a non- thinker for not reading the news?  Noam Chomsky makes a thorough and, I think,  totally convincing case for the media being the instrument of propaganda on behalf of the rich and powerful on a huge scale.  The published and broadcast 'news' is an essential part of that propoganda, and much to be avoided because of it.  It isnt a big stretch for me to find that the derogatory way we view the notion of 'conspiracy theories' is itself a product of the same propoganda - rubbishing the attempts of citizens to investigate and question issues for themselves. 

Interstingly Chomsky himself, while pointing to the scale of government and media control,  distances himself from the 9/11 truth movement.  I have looked at the 9/11 material and agree that there are elements of exaggeration and lack of clear argument in some of the stuff,  and they fail I think  to explain what actually did happen that day.   Nevertheless there are some serious issues raised, supported and argued in that material, especially so the question of how the official version of the 9/11 hijacking and bombing is not itself at all convincing, and therefore must be a lie.  And if its a lie, what is the truth that we can't be told? 

I think the problem we have is accepting that our governments are capable of murder and manipulation on this scale - it seems like madness on a Kafka like scale to conceive of that level of misanthropy towards us from the people (our governments) we rely on to keep us 'safe'.  But if you accept that governments frequently do deliberately kill civilians in other countries (El Salvador, Chile, Iraq etc) for gain, and that they are a self interest group who do not respect the majority of citizens in their own countries, why is it such a stretch to agree that the 9/11 truth movement have a point worth taking seriously in asking us to consider that, as they say in V for Vendetta, its our government who are doing it. 


My point is, when the questioning of governments gets too close to the truth, the truth sayers are too easily written off as crazies.  Frankly, as you imply, nobody is crazier that the tea party crowd at the moment - they work entirely at gut level with no effort to argue logic.  9/11 truth movement at least offer logic and fact to support their case.   The notion of 'conspiracy theories' is itself conversely just a name calling game designed to close our minds, not open them.

All it takes is a cursory glance at history and an honest evaluation of one's gut feelings to realize that while conspiracies may abound in some areas, the governments of nations simply do not have the wherewithal to engage in complex plans of any sort, much less secret conspiracies. Small groups of individuals may secretly conspire; companies, even whole industries (in which can be included government agencies made up of career bureaucrats or military officers), may secretly strategize; but an entire government? That hapless, ever-changing competitive group of crooks, egomaniacs, do-gooders and occasional psychopaths who clamor about in a capitol for a few months or a few decades? Conspiracies? In their dreams. Even Hitler took astrologers' readings into account when deciding whether to invade Russia or Britain.

States are reactive. Period. They may have policies, but the implementation of those policies are always reactions -- usually, knee-jerk ones.