A month ago, I was set to type my usual state-of-the blog anniversary post when a set of issues invaded my personal life. Specifically, two people close to me faced serious health crises. I have since spent a good deal of the last six weeks at work, ICUs and hospital rooms while living in a persistent state of anxiety. I couldn't really think of blogging at the time, or collect my thoughts, or even concentrate on writing.
The good news: both loved ones are still here, and recuperating. Now, it's not so much a time of crisis, but rather the start of major lifestyle readjustments. Things are still touchy, but a good deal will be off my chest by April 15, when a scheduled minor surgery (local anesthesia even) will take the biggest danger off the table.
So...to continue on with the state-of-the-blog.
I spent some time researching several new topics. There has also been an interesting development on a story that I've begun here (Assailing the Tender Age). But in the last twelve months, a couple of very good, intelligent and knowledgeable persons have directed my attention to three former series appearing here, and that has consumed much of my X-Dell time over the past year. They've given me much to think about and explore. I don't think I'll post any updates to those series here, but, if I write about them at all, I'll post them on one of my other blogs.
While doing research into these areas, I thought I'd vamp on the topic of conspiracy in a series of posts that I thought would end the blog. I'd been meaning to do that for some time, but kept delaying it to the point where I thought, well hell I'll save it for the end. Yet, now is as good a time as any, I suppose.
Many former peers ask me why I'm interested in this subject. Undoubtedly, they're asking this within a paradigm that processes information in a very strict way -- a way in which I've also been trained. Sometimes I feel this is unnecessarily restrictive and narrow. And given the tendency, in this publish-or-perish context, to obsess over angels-on-the-heads-of-pins arguments, important questions are left unaddressed. These questions have much to do with the nature of power and democracy, and sometimes deal with the conflicts between consensus reality and empirical observation.
I've found valuable purpose in academic rigor. All conspiracy investigators should be aware and critical of sources, knowledge gaps, and, most importantly, their own biases. These are paramount concerns of the scholar, but not necessarily the YouTube poster. And one can see the increasing one-upsmanship of the latter as she or he makes one hypothesis or the other more outrageous, and consequently more entertaining than those preceding it, thus leading to increased hits, attention, and possibly even monetary remuneration.
At the same time, much of the wildest speculation occurs in response to institutional failure to candidly address valid and pressing public concerns. There have, to this date, been only a handful of scholars who have investigated, or are seriously researching the substantial possibility of conspiracy where the stakes are high, most notably (and ably) Dr. Phil Melanson (Political Science, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth). Otherwise, we don't get much pertinent information about the distribution of power and wealth from academia, media or government.
For example, we all most likely learned about various wars in our history classes. Only a tiny fraction of us (if any) studied the espionage that supported these conflicts. There are some classes in Intel that I've seen around the country, at various universities. I've even seen an accredited institution that offers classes and degrees only in intelligence studies. The lecturers of said courses often have a background with CIA or military intelligence. While that obviously makes a certain sense, it nevertheless prompts the question of whether these instructors are mixing education with some measure of indoctrination/propaganda. At the very least, we have little reason to assume that their viewpoints are neutral or objective.
Most of the information we get about espionage comes from off the streets; or more accurately off screens large and small, where CIA's Public Affairs Office (PAO) has performed yeoman's service to increase the Agency's presence in Hollywood. Tinseltown's main business, of course, is the production of myth. The current myth of Intel contains in large part narratives of professionalism (or competence), reasonable adherence to the law, and purely national security missions.
Still, when one digs into the topic, he or she almost immediately has to confront the enormous degree of deception and complexity that occurs within intelligence operations. And after awhile, something else becomes clear: the national-security mission of many intelligence services around the globe have either become entangled with, or have downright devolved into, instruments of domestic political security.
There are other topics of concern here. Yet the above alone should give us all pause to think. I mean, the Church Rockefeller and Pike Commissions (not to mention the Senate Select Committees on mind control chaired by Sam Irwin, Daniel Inouye and Ted Kennedy) gave us ample evidence that Intel had become an apparatus for preserving the political security of the status quo. It's therefore not unreasonable to think that this arm of power saw the US public as an enemy threat. And we can also see that Intel had no compunctions about lying to the public. What's beyond speculative is that the domestic ops exposed by these five official bodies violated US law.
And what is a conspiracy? The collusion of two or more parties to execute a crime or transgression.
Despite the frequently naked bureaucratic agenda of institutional information, many people are satisfied with answers they easily receive about senseless or strange events and situations. They're thus not inclined to look much more deeply into them -- assuming they actually have the time, energy and wherewithal to do so. Yet, there are some who aren't satisfied for whatever reason. Perhaps they've been burned or shafted by political or industrial power. Perhaps they have weird lives full of anomalies that they can't explain through the informational limitations of official or authoritative sources. Perhaps they have political or spiritual creeds that morally bind them to oppose abuses of power.
In any case, one can hardly expect such an individual or organization to accept at face value the talking-point responses often doled by established channels -- especially when they deny, downplay or just plain dismiss glaring inconsistencies as "conspiracy theory." One might also expect said individuals or organizations to collate the information that they have and make the best guesses that they can.
To put this bluntly: so-called "conspiracy theory" exists for a number of reasons. Some of them are legitimate. Some are not. But in either instance, the curt dismissal of a conspiracy explanation becomes very similar to the sudden and irrevocable acceptance of same by true believers. Neither side cares to do the gruntwork of investigation. Neither addresses the valid objections raised by the other. Neither acknowledges their own prejudices (if they are indeed aware of them, or subjects them to any challenge.
The good news: both loved ones are still here, and recuperating. Now, it's not so much a time of crisis, but rather the start of major lifestyle readjustments. Things are still touchy, but a good deal will be off my chest by April 15, when a scheduled minor surgery (local anesthesia even) will take the biggest danger off the table.
So...to continue on with the state-of-the-blog.
I spent some time researching several new topics. There has also been an interesting development on a story that I've begun here (Assailing the Tender Age). But in the last twelve months, a couple of very good, intelligent and knowledgeable persons have directed my attention to three former series appearing here, and that has consumed much of my X-Dell time over the past year. They've given me much to think about and explore. I don't think I'll post any updates to those series here, but, if I write about them at all, I'll post them on one of my other blogs.
While doing research into these areas, I thought I'd vamp on the topic of conspiracy in a series of posts that I thought would end the blog. I'd been meaning to do that for some time, but kept delaying it to the point where I thought, well hell I'll save it for the end. Yet, now is as good a time as any, I suppose.
Many former peers ask me why I'm interested in this subject. Undoubtedly, they're asking this within a paradigm that processes information in a very strict way -- a way in which I've also been trained. Sometimes I feel this is unnecessarily restrictive and narrow. And given the tendency, in this publish-or-perish context, to obsess over angels-on-the-heads-of-pins arguments, important questions are left unaddressed. These questions have much to do with the nature of power and democracy, and sometimes deal with the conflicts between consensus reality and empirical observation.
I've found valuable purpose in academic rigor. All conspiracy investigators should be aware and critical of sources, knowledge gaps, and, most importantly, their own biases. These are paramount concerns of the scholar, but not necessarily the YouTube poster. And one can see the increasing one-upsmanship of the latter as she or he makes one hypothesis or the other more outrageous, and consequently more entertaining than those preceding it, thus leading to increased hits, attention, and possibly even monetary remuneration.
At the same time, much of the wildest speculation occurs in response to institutional failure to candidly address valid and pressing public concerns. There have, to this date, been only a handful of scholars who have investigated, or are seriously researching the substantial possibility of conspiracy where the stakes are high, most notably (and ably) Dr. Phil Melanson (Political Science, University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth). Otherwise, we don't get much pertinent information about the distribution of power and wealth from academia, media or government.
For example, we all most likely learned about various wars in our history classes. Only a tiny fraction of us (if any) studied the espionage that supported these conflicts. There are some classes in Intel that I've seen around the country, at various universities. I've even seen an accredited institution that offers classes and degrees only in intelligence studies. The lecturers of said courses often have a background with CIA or military intelligence. While that obviously makes a certain sense, it nevertheless prompts the question of whether these instructors are mixing education with some measure of indoctrination/propaganda. At the very least, we have little reason to assume that their viewpoints are neutral or objective.
Most of the information we get about espionage comes from off the streets; or more accurately off screens large and small, where CIA's Public Affairs Office (PAO) has performed yeoman's service to increase the Agency's presence in Hollywood. Tinseltown's main business, of course, is the production of myth. The current myth of Intel contains in large part narratives of professionalism (or competence), reasonable adherence to the law, and purely national security missions.
Still, when one digs into the topic, he or she almost immediately has to confront the enormous degree of deception and complexity that occurs within intelligence operations. And after awhile, something else becomes clear: the national-security mission of many intelligence services around the globe have either become entangled with, or have downright devolved into, instruments of domestic political security.
There are other topics of concern here. Yet the above alone should give us all pause to think. I mean, the Church Rockefeller and Pike Commissions (not to mention the Senate Select Committees on mind control chaired by Sam Irwin, Daniel Inouye and Ted Kennedy) gave us ample evidence that Intel had become an apparatus for preserving the political security of the status quo. It's therefore not unreasonable to think that this arm of power saw the US public as an enemy threat. And we can also see that Intel had no compunctions about lying to the public. What's beyond speculative is that the domestic ops exposed by these five official bodies violated US law.
And what is a conspiracy? The collusion of two or more parties to execute a crime or transgression.
Despite the frequently naked bureaucratic agenda of institutional information, many people are satisfied with answers they easily receive about senseless or strange events and situations. They're thus not inclined to look much more deeply into them -- assuming they actually have the time, energy and wherewithal to do so. Yet, there are some who aren't satisfied for whatever reason. Perhaps they've been burned or shafted by political or industrial power. Perhaps they have weird lives full of anomalies that they can't explain through the informational limitations of official or authoritative sources. Perhaps they have political or spiritual creeds that morally bind them to oppose abuses of power.
In any case, one can hardly expect such an individual or organization to accept at face value the talking-point responses often doled by established channels -- especially when they deny, downplay or just plain dismiss glaring inconsistencies as "conspiracy theory." One might also expect said individuals or organizations to collate the information that they have and make the best guesses that they can.
To put this bluntly: so-called "conspiracy theory" exists for a number of reasons. Some of them are legitimate. Some are not. But in either instance, the curt dismissal of a conspiracy explanation becomes very similar to the sudden and irrevocable acceptance of same by true believers. Neither side cares to do the gruntwork of investigation. Neither addresses the valid objections raised by the other. Neither acknowledges their own prejudices (if they are indeed aware of them, or subjects them to any challenge.
